It has been officially two weeks since I have updated my blog, and I feel bad about it. There is so much that is happened these past two weeks that I can't even remotely recall even ten percent of it. But I'll try. Maybe as I write things will slowly start coming back to me.

A week ago, my parents and Katie arrived! So, now, it's the Lerer family in Chiang Mai. They are going to be here for 4 weeks. It seems like it would be weird after having an email and phone relationship with them for so long, but it actually wasn't. It was great seeing them. AND they brought a lot of food that we had requested them to bring from Dallas with them including but not limited to bagels, macaroni and jolly ranchers. It's weird what you miss. It was pretty crazy when they opened the apartment door after not seeing them for so long, and greeted us with a grocery store.

In two weeks we get out for spring break, and we are going to travel to Luang Prabahng, Laos. The transportation to Laos is a logistical maze. But basically we are going to be staying there for three nights after many hours of bus and boat rides. I'm psyched for the trip. We have some friends who live in Vientiane and Luang Prabahng that we are going to meet up with. But this is in two weeks so more on that later.

As of these past two weeks, we have not been in boarding so it has been a drastic change. We are now day students and take a 45 minute bus to and from school each day. The bus ride is one of the greatest things ever though. It's kind of hard to explain but for some reason I really enjoy them. Today my parents and Katie visited Prem. My parents had a thirty minute meeting with each of our teachers. Classic move on their part. This past weekend we went back and visited Doi Suthep again.  Unfortunately the elephant wasn't there but it was still awesome. Oh yeah, and randomly my Dad decided to rent a car for 30 dollars a day even though everyone drives London-style here and he is not used to it. So we drove all the way up the hill to Doi Suthep with him driving which was quite an uncomfortable experience.

Well that's all for now. More to come later.  

Oh yeah and everyone should read The Onion News because it is a great thing.

Tonight I have no homework! So I decided to post. Sorry for not posting this past week. I've been pretty busy. 

Today is Purim and I am unfortunately not celebrating it. I really wish I were. I was on facebook today and I saw an album of my friends from Yavneh celebrating Purim. It really made me miss everyone at Yavneh, in Dallas, and Israel. Hope you guys had a good Purim.

In history I am writing a paper on Che and how he really isn't as great as everyone projects him to be. He is presented as a microcosm of counterculture, when he was really a massive killer. Not too sure if a massive killer is appropriate for a counterculture symbol, but I could be wrong. He was not nearly as bad as Stalin, Lenin, or Mao but he should definitely be listed with them. For some reason the Che-images on posters, t-shirts, ect. have overshadowed his real personality and developed given him misleading one. It just goes to show how ignorant or indifferent people can be (me included. I have two Che shirts). I'm not really sure where I am going to go with the paper but I am interested in finding more dirt about him.

I also joined Model United Nations. It has been pretty good so far. It is mostly focused around modern events. There are five people in the club (We are trying to boost more interest. But I like the small group because everyone is really interested and wants to be there. Our lessons take place after school on Friday so it takes real interest to show up every week). I was assigned Russia so I've been catching up on my country's current events, not something I know too much about.

I've also started studying US history by myself because I realized that I wanted to take the AP test next year. I am not too sure how self-studying is going to work out but I figure that it's better than nothing. My history teacher gave me some textbooks to help me study so that also helped a lot. 

Oh yeah and I recently bought some great music from itunes. So I've been listening to that a lot lately. 

That is all for now. Talk to you anonymous viewers later. Wait, that's not true... I know a few people who have been keeping up with my blog. That comment refers to the other viewers.

Chag Sameach!

View from Ban Jabo

A lot happened over these past five days in the hill tribes. I'm going to start from the beginning. The bus ride to Ban Jabo was about 7 hours long. We stopped on the outskirts of Pai on the Pai River and bamboo rafted to Pai. Bamboo raft was really fun. The river was really small but it was great relaxing on a bamboo raft with everyone. I was on a raft with Stan, Jin, and Ollie.

Bamboo rafting

 Then once we got to Pai we ate lunch. Pai is a really relaxed city about 3 hours by bus north of Chiang Mai. It is the reggae-town of Thailand. I was excited to go to Pai cause I hadn't been there yet and really to check it out. I think I'll return to Pai eventually because it's a pretty cool city. Then we departed from Pai and took the long and windy road (Beatles reference) over a mountain to Ban Jabo. It was about 4 hours. Supposedly there was 3,000 curves in total. But luckily I took a Tylenol PM so I was asleep.

Like I already said before, Ban Jabo is in the hills of northeastern Thailand right on the border with Burma. The border to Burma was walking distance from Ban Jabo, about 2 kilometers away.  The view was beautiful. The villagers were excited to have visitors and were very hospitable.

Once we arrived to Ban Jabo we met our host families and went to put our belongings in their house. The host families were great. They were a great part of the experience. Even though no one spoke Lahu, we communicated through sign language. It was actually pretty surprising how much you are able to relay through hang language. We had some pretty long conversations with out host families. Also our host mom spoke a little Thai and Thomas also spoke some Thai. Our host family's house was completely wooden with a bath house outside. The bathrooms  consisted of Asian toilets, and buckets of water that you use to shower with. This took the most adapting to.

Our house

We gave English lessons at the local school. Here's a picture of the kids:

Peace

Posin' like a gangsta' for us.

Jin, Stan, and I

 The lessons were great. We taught them fruit: apple, strawberry, banana, melon... and animals: rabbit, dog, cat. Then we played interactive games. It was actually really fun teaching them. They were energetic and lively once we got them interested. Unfortunately there is a sad story about the school. The government gives the school a annual salary to buy computers, books, and school supplies. But the principle of the school hoards the money and keeps it for himself. Apparently he drives a nice car to school everyday which is very unfair. It was too bad to learn about this. It made me sad for these kids.

There were a lot of wild animals in the area. You had roosters, pigs, dogs, cats, and cows. All the animals were stray and wondered around aimlessly all day.  The roosters promptly woke us up at 5 am every morning.

Every morning after being awakened by the roosters, instead of going back to sleep I got up and read on the porch of our house. Usually our host grandpa was on the porch cutting bamboo. He signaled to me that he didn't like reading and then started laughing. The noises of him slicing bamboo with his huge hatchet mixed with the sounds of the animals were definitely rememberable. He was a pretty crazy guy. I wish I had a picture of him because he was also cool looking. He was short and old and had a long gray goatee. The noises of him slicing bamboo with a huge hatchet mixed with the sounds of the animals were rememberable.

For some reason I expected the villagers to be tradition based but they were more community based. They had some tradition but they were more focused on the community. Meals were like a huge co-op in our host family's house. They had friends over to eat everyday.

We had a lot of relax time during the day. Pretty much after our main activity which usually ended around 5 we had free time for the rest of the night. Everyone didn't know what to do with all the chill time. Lilly and I were among the few who knew how to just hang out and relax without getting bored. Some of our friends couldn't freaking sit still for more than five minutes. 

The village was one road with houses on either side. It was extremely small. The lower village was a lot bigger. Our village had more of a community feel because of its small size. All the villagers were interwound in each others' lives. 

Old villager. This guy was 99 years old and still in perfect shape

From Left: Risa, Thomas, Lilly, and Stanley 

(I was taking the picture) 

   This was from our hike to Coffin Cave.

Now I'm going to get a little political. I believe that Bush gave a bad image to the United States. So this entry follows that premise. Take it or leave it:

The image of the United States that George Bush left behind after eight years in office has marred the world's view of our country. I think we can all agree with this statement to a certain degree. The Bush administration brought a frustrating image of the United States to the global level. Part of this image was alleviated with Barack Obama's election but the core of it remains. The image of the United States is not as strong as it used to be.

Being from Texas and at an international school, people here ask if I am a Bushie. At first, I always quickly responded saying that I wasn't, trying to distance myself from Bush. However, now, I find myself defending Bush's presidency. I think that when you are around international kids it's important to marginalize your personal opinion and stick up for your country definitely. Lilly, this intern James, who is half Japanese half American raised in New York, and I were discussing this and all agreed that defending the United States is necessary when in an international environment like Prem. What begins to happen if we don't back the United States is that other kids from different nationalities get the feeling that they are entitled to bash the United States because they see Americans doing it. To fully rid the United States of this reputation, I believe we must all support the United States even when supporting is unnatural. No one should fully disassociate themselves from Bush's eight years of presidency because dissociating further weakens our country's international image. I think that the United States has made it too apparent that Bush screwed up, which enabled the world to adapt the same negative thoughts. Only instead of applying these thoughts only towards Bush, they replaced 'Bush' with 'Americans'; giving all Americans a bad wrap.

On a less serious note:

Yesterday our art class went to Navin Rawanchaikul's house in Lamphun for his birthday and a special art exhibition. Lamphun is about an hour outside of Chiang Mai. The celebration took place outside and it was extremely hot and humid. 

His exhibition is called Fly With Me To Another World. It was a really interesting exhibit and I'm not one to find art exhibits particularly interesting. Thai people aren't very interested in contemporary art either and this exhibit was aimed to get more interest. 

After graduating college in Thailand in 1961, Inson Wongsam traveled all around the world on a Lambretta scooter. His ultimate destination was Florence, Italy. Everywhere he went he set up art exhibitions at the local art galleries. He inspired Navin who then started the Fly With Me To Another World collection.

That's all I really remember from the visit but if you want to learn more you can check it out online. 

Tomorrow we leave for the hill tribes so I won't be able to post until next week. Update you guys then.

Okay, so our grade is going to spend this next week in the Mae Hong Son province of Thailand, in northwest Thailand at its border with Burma. About 200 years ago, inhabitants of the Shan tribe of Burma came to this area along the Pai River to grow rice. Many of the Shans left this area after a while but some stayed. This was the beginning of the Mae Hong Son region that we are going to visit.  

'Mae' means river, 'Hong' is the narrow part of a river, and 'Son' means training. Mae Hong Son got this name because the former governor of Chiang Mai used to go to this area of Thailand to capture wild elephants for his army. When he got to this area he came across the village and left the elephants there to be trained.

Half of our grade is going to one village and the other half is going to another. The two villages are the Ja Bor Black Lahu Village and the Mae La Na Shan Village. Ja Bor is located on the mountain and has apparently has a beautiful mountain view of the area and Mae La is cradled in the valley of the mountains. Both villages have different lifestyles and traditions. I'm not quite sure what these differences are yet but will find out next week. I know that Ja Bor has a classic hill tribe feel and Mae La has a northern thai style village feel. 

While we are on the villages we home stay with the locals. I'm rooming with two of my good friends Kazi and Thomas. It should be a humbling and widening experience.

These shrines are seen all around Chiang Mai along with the pictures of King Bhumibol Adulyadej.  They are really fun to see as you walk around. For some reason I really like all these small shrines on the streets. Everyone else in Chiang Mai regards them as regular, but even after being in Chiang Mai for 5 weeks (I know I can't believe it either) I am still fascinated by them. As you can see from the picture, they are randomly placed on the sidewalks kind of like public statues some are more decorated than others.

Later today, after school, I'll write a little about the two specific hill tribe villages we are going to be staying at next week. Lilly already went into detail about the Mae Hong Son province so I won't reiterate what she said, but I will give some information I have about the two villages and maybe talk a little about the province because I also think it's interesting. As if right now, I have to go to school. This was just a quick morning post because I felt that my blog needed a new  picture. To be continued after school. Talk to you then.