Open your eyes and the world will open up to you

Note: This blog is basically yesterday's journal typed up with some photos slotted in because I know people back home like to 'see' stuff. I'm having a great time, but I want this blog to be a real reflection of this experience- not all saccharine and twee. So I'll leave the stories of massages and gold temples for another blog. Here's a very different story-

"I knew I was volunteering in a third world country. But the poverty is hard to understand. I was angry at first to see skinny cats wander round the foundation. I pointed this out to Momo and she said “that’s what a cat’s supposed to look like Georgia, that’s how they look in India too; you feed them too much in England”. And I wonder which is true?

Then there’s the stories Thai staff told us about stray dogs in Chiang Rai getting driven to Vietnam and sold as meat. Wait, what? Cute fluffy stray dogs… but then I remembered horsemeat and Tesco and I wonder just how similar or different the East is from the West.

We were told in Orientation that we’ll be teaching in the poorest parts of the country. You don’t see that when the classrooms I teach in are pastel painted and decorated with children’s work and paper flowers. But the kids sleep on blankets on the floor in their homes and the nearby stream I’ve seen the hilltribe kids play, bathe and dive in is a murky brown. It could hold any number of diseases or snakes. But they are happy.

It’s hard to say what I really want to say here. It’s fascinating, for sure, this world so far from home. And weirdly, I’ve felt calm all the time I’ve been here- I’m happy to leave all my valuables in the back of a taxi for the day and trust the driver will return when we phone him, or dance in smoky clubs all night with people I met that morning.
If that’s one thing I’m learning, it’s that people are people. And however crazy it sounds, trust everyone you meet, everywhere you go; you’ll never be lost, alone or bored."

 

 

Weekend Adventures!

We get time in the evenings and weekend to do what we like. It’s fun- the girls on my last placement were English, Irish, American, Australian, New Zealand and India so dinnertimes sitting round talking about gun crime felt like a UN meeting with all our different accents. We’ve been visiting 7/11’s (like a corner shop) and stocking up on oreos and things. Oreo is now a food group in my diet.

 Visiting the White temple (Chiang Rai). It is, like it's name suggests, a white temple.

 The Night Bazaar in Chiang Rai. Here's where I bought some pants we all wear out here and it's full of Asian food to try (Sam, Lisa and I got some deep fried banana. You should try it)

 Lilly and I out in Chaing Mai (everyone went out to celebrate Kate's 20th birthday). I didn't know the cocktail matched my dress until it came over. Cute!

We stayed out until 3am. I told Kate in Britain it's still technically her birthday so we should keep celebrating. So we all (Josh, Tom, Alex, Martin, Lauren, Kate, Lucy, Laura, Arthur and I've forgotten a name...) went to nightclubs and rain dances in the street.

 10 of us in a songtao (pronounced song-toe). You can also have two people hang off the back on rails. There's no safety standards in Asia.

 

Behold: This weekend's hostel. It costs 400baht for two nights (almost £9! And it's gorgeous!)

My Senior Prom Night

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ytBR7ET_6uU

Tonight, back in England it's my senior Prom.
The story Facebook shows is of girls in pretty dresses and boys in tuxes sitting in a decorated room.
I'm on a bamboo platform hut, totally exposed to the elements in rural east Asia. It's Tom, Andy, Sam, Jake and I. The conversation alternates from sociology and cultural politics to the stuff you would expect teenagers to speak about.

But tonight's incredible. So much more so than Prom could ever have been. Ever. Last week, these guys were strangers, tonight the only thing louder than the laughter is the rain- it's a monsoon. Torrential, deafening, but not cold, heaving streaming, pouring, like you've never seen it rain. So we sit for a few hours, until gone midnight on this platform. Listening to crickets. Watching fireflies.

I've never seen a firefly before.

 

First School Placement

Note: I’ve been on a homestay for a couple of days now, and everyone could get wifi except me! So sorry it’s taken so long. Blogging will probably be pretty erratic, even at the foundation it’s hard to get signal unless no one else is connected (never) so  I’ll have to wait until 1am or something…

On Wednesday morning a van pulled into the foundation to transport my group to Chiang Rai for our first placement. The man on the left of this photo with tasselled socks is the head teacher for the next few days he’s our go to guy, whenever any of us asks a question like “What time do we start teaching” he laughs and says “Don’t be serious!”, I think that’s his favourite phrase, in Thailand there’s never any schedule, you just have to ‘go with it’ and be prepared to tear up the lesson plans. He, like all his students is wearing a scout uniform as that’s what they wear on Wednesdays.
 We’re the first international student teachers the school has had and they were as excited we were there as we were to be there, which was really fun. The head teacher (his English name is Jimi) took a photo of us all in the van before we got to the school to send to the staffroom because everyone was really excited.

The staff room was gorgeous!

He gave us a tour of his school and all the students wai’d to us (a wai is when you put your palms together and bow your head, it is used as both a greeting and a sign of respect).  We are expected to wai back to teachers who have the same status as us but not to the children. All my wais to teachers were conducted with my water bottle between my palms. I’m not sure if this is allowed but I was thirsty and didn’t want to go anywhere without my water!

 

The Thai sense of humour is cute. They like to laugh. So I spend lessons pulling faces, dancing round and trying to get them to shout answers back. At first they shyly laughed but by the end they were all dancing, even the shy kids (special credits to the kids that did ‘Gangnam Style’ with me). That was funny. We can’t speak Thai and they speak little English so minutes were spent repeating “you have paper?” and waving paper in the air to no avail, but when I said ‘Gangnam Style’ every child knew to start horse hopping.

Classes!

 

Our third class of the day were impossibly shy, going round and asking their names was painful, I couldn’t hear most of them. So we made paper hats and everyone wrote their names on the hats.

While on the tour the head teacher pointed out one boy in the class and told the group he was a host family one pair would stay with. The little boy (he’s 8) then pointed at me and said something in Thai, roughly translating as “I want her!” all the teachers and students laughed, the joke was lost on us but later translated. So that’s how Chandra and I joined the Chutimadee family.

The 48 hour day, Villages and Campfire-ing

 

I planned to write about the journey here (I arrived in London at 9.30am and landed in Chiang Rai at 9.35am (Thai time). Which was confusing. Basically I spent 24 hours travelling across a time zone and arrived 5 minutes later, the next day. I didn’t sleep for 48 hours, I had breakfast-lunch-dinner-breakfast-lunch-dinner and then slept (for 6 hours). And then this morning I woke up (voluntarily) at 6am for a shower. A cold water shower. Hot water doesn't exist here.

Anyway, instead of writing about the foundation or things that happened over the 48 hours I wanted to write about this evening. There’s around 60 volunteers right now from all over the world: Ireland, India, America, Canada, France…and we’re all aged between 18-27 so it’s like being at a summer camp. Constant craziness and banter. It’s also hilarious the language differences between US/UK/Australian/Canadian English. We all keep laughing at each other and having to explain what was funny. Example-

Emily: I’m just going to nip to the toilet
Steph: You’re going to  do what to the toilet?

Steph: We just had our national celebrations
Emily: Independence day?
Steph:*laughs* No, it’s like Canada’s birthday?
Me: (deapan) What do you do, bake a cake?

Then we walked into the local village. The village shop is basically a load of products at the front of this womans house. Her cats and kids run around the ‘store’ (her house) this never fails to amuse me. It’s so far from CMK: the huge air conditioned shopping complex. She then told us if we turned right we could visit her hilltribe village, and that seemed to nice and offer to pass up. So four of us went.

We also befriended the cutest hilltribe kids who we played with for a while.

 

Tonight we decided to make a fire.
I love campfires. Campfires camping, campfires at parties. So when an older volunteer mentioned we could make campfires whenever we wanted I was literally like-

 

 

The foundation is located between all these hills covered in lush green jungle so it’s the most beautiful place to be. It’s superhumanly beautiful: lightning on the hillside, dragonflies and twenty teens and twenty-something's sitting on logs under the stars. We could literally be the advert for a travel brochure. Then MoMo got out her Ukulele so we all sang (cumbaya style) 'I'm Yours' and 'The A Team' and roasted bananas (you don’t get marshmallows here. You can't get anything sugary in Thailand it seems, but that’s a whole other blog!).

 

 

 

Bucket Lists, Danny O'Donoghue and Hammocks

One youtube time I came across an interview with Danny O’D (The Script/ The Voice)  talking about his childhood with a Dad for a musician and how, as a kid, when his father returned they didn’t get gifts but they gathered around him as soon as he got through the door for stories. He said-
“Being Irish, stories, it’s like our currency”
 And I thought about that quote for a while. It really resonated for me in some way. Because as a young teen my shoes always had holes in and my phone would take 5 minutes to turn on but I was at London going to shows and hanging out in theatres whenever I could. Stories are something I’ve never been short of.

I remember being 14 and swinging in a hammock I’d found with my DofE group “Awesome! Hammock!” and one of our teachers came over and talked to us, turns out it was his hammock we hijacked. Oops.  But he told us stories about all these places in the world he’s taken that hammock- places I’d never heard of and couldn’t pronounce if I tried. If I had to pinpoint a moment where I wanted to travel, that would be it.

So, I’m young and broke (this trip is born through a mix of savvy research, fundraising, kind sponsors and lifetime savings) and for the next forever I’ll be broke (£50,000 student debt… *cries*) but I won’t always be young. When I do have money I’ll have a real job, I might have a partner, possibly kids: you can’t have youth and finance on your side. What I do have is time 3 months of summer with no commitments to school or boyfriends. (Woohoo!)

I have a bucket list 228 items long that my 13 year old self dreamed of doing. I promised her I’d do all those things. One day. But time is running out and the list keeps growing!
I don’t want to keep that notebook buried in a box in a cupboard. I want to pick it up in 30 years having crossed it off and written all over it with new notes and ideas. When I dream, I don’t sit around and watch clouds, maybe that’s how it starts but it becomes something more real. And I wanted to do something real with Summer. Not just getting drunk, partying and wearing stupid costumes (hey, that’s what Freshers is for right? ;)

           This summer: Travel, Teaching, Theatre. I’m doing all three
For me summer is about going to places further than a young person’s railcard can take me. And experiencing that kind of magic and wonder I’m sure exists in the world. If I search to find it.

I’m eighteen and I think this summer deserves challenges, tears, and hyperventilating laughter, photos that make no sense, new friends and new stories. The kind of stories you think to yourself in that moment “Oh my. This is one to tell the grandkids”.

I'm flying to Bangkok then Chiang Rai tomorrow!

Questions and Answers

Since my last blog I've began telling people my travel plans. Like all conversations, there's a certain rhythm to these conversations with these questions being frequent. Here's my thoughtline if you're wondering the whys/how/what of my volunteering :D


Why Thailand?
Well it's gorgeous: hello waterfalls and jungles (I have a weakness for pretty things..) and I've never been to Asia. I want to experience another culture but not go somewhere I think I won't feel comfortable for a month, like Africa where I would eat nothing and whine about the heat all day. Thailand caters well for vegetarians as it is a Buddhist country: the staple diet is rice so I know I won't starve there :D and it will be the monsoon season, which will prepare me well for living on a welsh coast this autumn!


Do you want to be a teacher then?
It's something I've considered but not as career plan. You see, I hate routines and curriculums so schools don't seem like a fun workplace, I'd get bored and restless after a year. But I'm keen to help others learn things I'm passionate about and mentor people so teaching itself appeals to me and the people I'll be teaching are eager to learn English so I think it will be great!


Are you going on your own?
Yes. I'm going on my own but I won't be on my own. I'll be staying with a group of young people- volunteers who come from all over the world the average age being 18-25. Most volunteers sign onto the programme as individuals too so I won't be on my own. I'm so excited. At the start of the year my friends and I tried to arrange a holiday together but it quickly became impossible with so many conflicts- boyfriends allowed? City break or beach? Hotel or Hostel? England or abroad? That we got nowhere. So I researched and booked this myself :P


How did you afford this?
I'm not rich. I'm so not rich. I don't have a job. The last time I earned money I was 15 and had a paperound! I don't have an ipad and I don't go out much so already I don't spend money so that's pocket money savings, haha. I've saved up money from Christmas and my Birthday, and am fundraising (selling books at a Church coffee morning and my Nan's having a fundraising quiz).
My grandparents saved up money for my 18th from my birth which they gave to me for driving lessons, uni accommodation or the like. As I won't need to drive or be able to afford a car for the foreseeable future and have a maintenance loan for Uni I decided to make the most of having a long summer, being young and having no commitments so spent the money on flights instead :)
Between saving, fundraising and using savings I'll get by. This is something I really want to show: that you don't have to come from a rich background to be able to do these projects. Be determined, have initiative and be savvy- check student deals and countries with cheap currency...


Don't you think it's dangerous?
Whenever I mention I'm solo flying to Bangkok eyes widen, maybe it sounds risky but if I thought everyone in the world was a murderer/rapist/terrorist/pimp then I would never leave my house in Milton Keynes! I want to see the world and I can't do that if I don't open my own front door. I believe most people in the world are good people. It's also worth saying that thousands of young people go abroad each year and return safely it would be somewhat egotistical to think I'm any different to them!


Do you think you'll get homesick?

There are things I know I'm going to miss like flushing toilets (don't think squat toilets are going to be my favourite thing) and Cadburys Dairy Milk. And yeah, I'll be missing my senior prom. But for me the benefits by far outweigh the costs. Cadburys won't close up in my month absence (hopefully!) and on my return I can eat as much of it as I want. I also trust my friends will give me a minute-by-minute breakdown of Prom accompanied by photos and sarcastic commentary...so I won't miss out too much.