One Week Left in Lampang.

Hello Everyone,
Due to a prompt from my dear mother, I've decided to squeeze in one last blog post. My apologies for giving you all so much to read over the last few months. If this summary of my current life as Leelawadee is not enough, you are welcome to visit me upon my return next month to take a peek at the unclassified, juicy info which, for now, is confined to four (soon to be five) different journals.

By some kind of time warp, I've arrived at June 9th..a mere 9 days before I will have to change my Facebook status from, "Lives in นครลำปาง, THAILAND" to something much less fabulous. At this point, my heart breaks and soars on a daily basis and the people around me have somewhat gotten used to my random crying, chocolate, and dance sessions. I imagine the Thais whispering their analysis of this new behavior; deciding that the heat finally got to be too much for the exchange students. 
"They've gained so much weight, it serves them right!" 
I cannot neither imagine leaving my loved ones here nor contain my excitement to be reunited with those back home. 

Since December, life has been culturally rich and, as every exchange student here will attest to, full of surprises. While staying with my second family, my dear host grandmother passed away suddenly and I experienced a mesmerizing and overwhelming week of Buddhist funeral proceedings. Due to Thailand's very different take on relationships, I was pleasantly surprised by a super enthusiastically celebrated Valentines Day that left Sarah and I with loads of flowers, heart stickers, and digitally edited pictures of ourselves. From March to May, we Thai students enjoy our summer break which for some, includes taking extra classes more intensive than those at regular school and for others, includes a relaxing soak in more of the wonderful cultural experiences that Thailand has to offer. After participating in some of the graduation activities which included sprucing up our extremely flattering school uniforms with all manner of notes and drawings, I embarked on the Central Trip to the Bangkok area with the 30 other exchange students.   We enjoyed our 10 day "family time" exploring the exquisite monuments and museums of BKK, floating markets, and some night life. 

During April and May, I had a bike and a few weeks of freedom with which, despite 4 flat tires and one accident, I went on some of my greatest adventures. During this time, I began to become quite a bit more comfortable with the Thai language and culture which made every experience all the more enjoyable and less crisis ridden. The famous aspects of the Songkran Festival's city wide water fights, face painting, and tipsy new friends were perfectly balanced with the traditional side of the holiday when Thais travel to pay respect to ancestors and elder family members. At the end of April, I once again set out with the exchange students for our much anticipated Southern Trip down to the provinces of Phuket and Krabi on the Andaman Sea. Not a single movie nor picture can capture the powerful peace of exquisite creation that I experienced in some of these areas. We spent hours snorkeling where I experienced colors and textures like nothing I have ever known before. We all suffered bad sunburns but, like the unfazed exchange students that we are, sunscreen was slapped on, giant hats were bought, and a dreamlike mangrove forest was kayaked through. I am also proud to have witnessed the sacred cliffs of the lovely Mr. DiCaprio, daring Johnny Depp, and ...dun dun dunn... James Bond! Of course, the deep glow of a full moon and glittering stars suspended above was the backdrop to wonderful memories that again, you'll have to come see me to hear about. 

That trip marked the end of the carefree spirit of the summer as many of us students said goodbye to each other for the last time, headed back to our provinces to start school again, and eventually got ready to say goodbye to our beloved spots in Southeast Asia. Some of the family started to disperse back to their homelands as early as May and those tearful trips to the airport definitely put me on the mindset to enjoy every second of my last months here. School for me has not been the picture of enjoyment as I still cannot read or write enough Thai to pass a Thai class but I've made the best of it with lots of reading and some very special experiences outside of school. In my Rotary district, there is not a whole lot of support in finding extra language or cultural classes outside of school so many of us have had a tough time battling boredom syndrome as our Thai friends are not too big on doing much outside of the home during the school year. God knew that watching every season of Gossip Girl would not be a sufficient end to an incredible year and towards the middle of the summer, I moved to my third host family whose house is located right next to a School for the Blind that I had visited months ago and always been meaning to get back to. One Saturday morning, I mustered enough bravery to walk into the office to ask if I could help out at all. I was thinking that I would be playing with kids in the back of a classroom or cleaning or something "no experience required." Before I knew it, I was signed up to teach English alone every Saturday and Sunday morning to all 30 students living at the school. These precious guys and girls are from 4 to 20 years old with varying degrees visual and mental disability. I have taught there for about a month now they have taught me incredible lessons, completely stealing my heart. I have had hilarious, frightening, and heart melting experiences there as I struggle to come up with fun, appropriate activities which have completely flopped many times. With lots of divine intervention and support from the best teacher I know back home (my momma with her masters degree in hand WAHOOOO!), I've done alright with them. Luckily, they all have a great attitude about my lesson flops and love meeting the other exchange students who I've brought in to teach a little Spanish, French, and Portugese. Now, I'm pretty sure that many of the kids know more of these languages than their teacher and I'm very lucky that they're forgiving.

My current host family is truly wonderful and I feel very blessed to be able to finish my exchange with them as with them, I feel more like part of a family than every before. Some of that that has to do with the language which I thankfully now have a decent handle on. Besides working at the lignite mine, my family owns a large mango farm in the mountains which I visit frequently to help out. There, I've had great experiences spending time with those who work the farm and live in the rural village which though only an hour away, is very different than Lampang. I have learned so much about creativity in relationships as I strive to show and accept love and appreciation from people who lead lives that are in some instances, still completely alien to me. I am now moved to tears by the way a blind child gently clasps my hand, a teasing smile across an thickly wrinkled face, and a piece of chocolate left at the front door for me to find after school because I have finally come to accept that these little things can mean as much as a ten minute speech. Thailand has changed me in numerous ways, many that I have yet to notice. I praise God that I finally have a peaceful satisfaction that I've left a piece of myself here for the Thai people; though I know that I could never spend enough time here to give back an equivalent to what I feel I will take back with me to Red Hook.

I had some problems with my first host family due to various cultural differences and misunderstandings that have burdened me quite a bit as I felt that we never quite reconciled. At my last Rotary meeting, that first host father pulled me aside and sincerely told me that I have been a good ambassador for my country. With that moment in hand, knowing that I've been forgiven for my farangness (what they call foreigners), I am ready to go home full with love for Thailand and her people. I'm excited to get back to my own country but I believe that I am destined to return to the Land of Smiles. Next Tuesday, I will travel to Bangkok to pick up my parents to start them on their discovery of my second home. Pray for us! 

ALL OF MY LOVE! 
Emily              

White Temple: "Contemporary nonconventional Buddhist temple started in 1997 and expected to be completed in 2070."

The Golden Triangle

Burma!

Painting a man at the night market: nothing new there

Karen Tribeswoman

Pre-Facial Spa in Pai

Those of us that shaved our heads ;)

Here begins the Sports Day pictures

Jarja

The three in the middle are boys

My hair at the end of it all. At the end of the day, we must all go back to who we truly are..no sparkles and hopefully less hairspray. At the end of my trip, I look forward to coming home and showing you what I've truly learned aside from all the fancy buildings and luxurious experiences the pictures point out. These are really just some of the highlights; you can see more pictures on Facebook: Emily Avis

What is time exactly?..It's been 4 MONTHS!

Hey everyone,
Yes, it's been over a month since my last blog. It honestly hurt to write that because I know that there are too many wonderful and not so wonderful experiences that I feel like I need to share with you (you being anyone who wants to really know what this year has been like so far). To include my full analysis of them all would require a team of novelists so I can't really imagine what it will be like trying to explain it all to people when I go home..especially if they didn't read the blog. Call me Princess Procrastination; for some reason, it's insanely hard to get myself to sit down and write even though I enjoy myself when I  do. But enough of that, there's always room for improvement!

At the end of October (WOW), I went with my exchange brothas and sistas on our Rotary District's 10 day Northern Trip. The thirty of us graced the provinces of Prae, Nan, Pai, Maehongson, Chiang Mai, Chiang Rai, and Chiangsaen with our excited farang presence. I had a fabulous time visiting the exquisite places that Northern Thailand has to offer. "Places" includes the Golden Triangle (where Laos, Burma, and Thailand meet as well as where the Opium trade began), white water rafting (4 hours of awesomeness except for the fact that one of the girls fell out of the raft but gladly ended up just fine), shaving heads and hotel pool hopping (what?), the famous White Temple (nothing ancient about it: check out the pictures!), incredible views (accompanied by many smacks in the face from my friendly bus window), visits to the Karen Hill tribes (long necked women with the rings around their necks), and altogether another indescribable look at the Thai life and culture. I also have to again mention the meticulous beauty of each temple and religious place that we visited. Buddhism so deeply influences the Thai life and is so respected here that even the smallest and most remote temples are sights worth the 23 hour flight. Personally, I would love to travel back to some of the places that we briefly visited while running our tight tourist schedule. As an exchange student, I've learned to appreciate the value of time spent in one place as only with time and patience can you gain a full understanding for something. We students ultimately devoted the trip to time spent with each other which was wonderful and very important but at the end of each day, I was exhausted from trying to juggle my friends and learning about where I was. Post Northern Trip, I returned to school for a stretch that will last until February without much of a break. We were supposed to have a Central Trip to the Bankok area in December but that was postponed for eh..disciplinary reasons. When thirty students, each with their parents halfway around the world, get together, mischief is bound to happen and ,well,  it did to an extent.

Since then, in school, I have become much closer to my Thai friends and made new ones with three American teachers just out of college who have come to teach English. My Thai girls are the sweetest and have definitely changed my outlook on life. They stay consistently positive and giggly despite their tough school workload and are always willing to help me out with absolutely anything. For example, my best friend and other exchange student at my school, Sarah, mentioned to them how her light stopped working in her room and her host family wouldn't fix it. The next morning, our friend Jarja showed up with a giant floor lamp that she brought for Sarah from home.

Sarah and I held a Halloween/Fall Party for our friends which, like everything, turned out to be another big learning experience. We did a ton of planning because most of them had never been to a party before and we spent our monthly allowances on everything candy and games. Our 25 or so friends ended up all coming together an hour late and being way less interested in the games than taking pictures of themselves in the seriously scary costumes they had all put together. We had no idea that they would be most excited about the costumes and they had no idea that our party would be more than food and dancing. It was a classic cultural miscommunication, something that happens to me just about everyday, only on a bigger scale.

The second big event that occurred recently was Bunyawat's Sports Day. Sports Day is a huge deal for every high school in Thailand and to be honest it has very little to do with sports. It's a day that the students spend months preparing for because they plan and execute every aspect of it themselves. The school is divided into 5 or 6 teams of different colors and each grade has a different job to do for their color. The big event is a huge parade which each team creates a huge float for. Certain members of each color also get exquisitely dressed up..I mean it's incredible..and walk in the parade with their float and specific theme. Thousands of dollars and many hours go into each team's performance. I was asked to walk in a traditional Thai outfit and had to arrive at the school at 10pm. the night before the 10am parade. Magical doesn't even accurately describe this experience; it fits any little girl's princess dream. See the pictures!

As I write, I am sitting the living room of my second host family. I have been here for three days I'm absolutely loving it but at the same time I'm exhausted by the adjustment. It's amazing how different two families can be. My experience with my first host family sadly did not end well. I so appreciate my time with them and hope that our relationship will heal with time but for now, I'm having to move on. God truly held me through the whole experience and I truly feel blessed by this new family. I now have two lovely host siblings and an adorable grandmother. My host sister is 14 and studies at Bunyawat with me and my host brother is 18 and studies at Chiang Mai University. The family owns a tour bus company so there are about 15 giant double decker tour buses in the front of their beautiful house which is pretty cool. Living with another family is like opening a new chapter to the entire experience. I am so excited to see where Thailand will take me now. Oh and this family doesn't speak English so my Thai is rapidly improving!

I'll wrap this up as it's getting late and I have to perform in a little play early tomorrow morning at school. This was really just an update and I'll follow up with all the really good stuff that I've learned soon! I thank every one of you ,who got this far through the blog post, for your support and pray that you are well and enjoying the holiday season. I miss and love you so much. You're always close to my heart.
Blessings,
Emily

My Thai Dance Group

Friends from school! 

Temple in Lampang

One of many FABULOUS meals

Singing Karaoke "Survivor" at a Class Party

Chaesorn Hot Springs

Boiling Eggs in the Springs

Chaesorn Mineral Baths

Making Khanom Kruoi 

Making Katom Pat with Host Grandmother

It's not easy to fold the banana leaves: this is my first good one out of  about 15

Khanom Boiler : I want to bring one home

I was so excited to knit that I couldn't wait to get home. Knitting outside the knitting store. 

Other YEX at a classic midnight snack: peanut butter, leftover sweet pea soup, jolly ranchers, hot sauce, and sunflower seeds. We miss the snacks at home!