There And Back Again

(Mmmh literary cliches...)

I'm going back. Back to Thailand and Thai and the most beautiful host family and rain and mosquitos and dengue (but hopefully not) and bucket showers and confusion and tukes and sticky rice and capsaicin and stupid moments and rice fields and mountains and feral dogs and cities and lights and noise and nonsense and and friends and regular people going about their everyday lives and mistakes and recoveries and adventures and being lost and new questions to answer and new answers to question.

I leave in the morning and AND I AM SO FREAKING EXCITED OHMYGOD. And nervous and scared and other things but if we don't think about them they go away, right? (Wrong, on so many levels, but we're going to ignore that for now.)

I'm heading back this summer on numerous grants to do research for my SIP, which is fancy Kollege-speak for a big senior-year paper that's supposed to be cool or something. I will be researching and interviewing and derping around with the Upland Holistic Development Project (UHDP), which you may remember from a previous post as the place where we killed and ate a pig. Basically, it's this super cool organization that works with a bunch of different hill tribe villages to promote sustainable development.

Here's a photo the view from UHDP during said pig harvest.
Ohh baby that sky.

I will be working with them to research the barriers that hill tribe peoples face in gaining citizenship. Citizenship is really important because it affects things like the right to vote, land holdings, travel, education, and access to health care. Unfortunately, many hill tribe communities lack access to this basic right. I'll be looking at why this is and what can be done to change it. Basically, roughly, something like that.

It MAY sound to you like I have absolutely NO idea what I'm doing this summer, and if you thought that, BRAVA! 10 points to Gryffindor! You're be pretty much spot on. But that's ok because at some point, sometime in the future I might, possibly, maybe have some idea and AND I'll have loads of fun trying to figure it all out and that could be what's important, maybe.

Now, on to 20+ hours of flights and wat lies beyond. (What puns? Wat puns. So good.)

Wish me luck!

Back From the Dead: A Zombie Blog

WOAH! BLOG!

So as some of you may or may not know, I'M GOING BACK TO THAILAND THIS SUMMER!!! And as such I've decided to reawaken the long dead blog. :0)

Ever so much as happened since I last posted about Ocean, which was MONTHS ON MONTHS ago, so here is the briefest of recaps.

The Dolce/Yamada clan came to visit me over winter break! It was both lovely and strange to have them there. I did enjoy the family time very much and impressing them with the simplest of things like being able to order food in Thai, despite the usual family vaca stress. But none of us died so score one for that! This is Mom and Dad looking cute and awkward at Wat Prah Singh.

I did an internship! With a beautiful organization called NEED Burma. NEED is kinda sorta a bit like ISDSI in some ways. It operates as a school for young people from Burma to learn about sustainable development, organic agriculture, leadership and empowerment, community building and a whole host of other things. During my time there I got to meet some truly wonderful people. The staff was so much fun to work with and the students were such a unique, talented, hilarious, kind, intelligent, and caring group. It was so great to get to know other people my age who case about the environment and people and important things and it was sooo wonderful to learn from everyone at NEED. Here is their website if you want to know more: http://www.need-burma.org/ 

Another great thing about my last month in Thailand was these people (plus some more who weren't on this particular venture).  Our last month was spent in Chiang Mai working as interns at various NGOs. As such, we had a lot more time to hang out and explore the city than we did during field courses and I really couldn't have asked for a better group of Kalamakrazies (plus some CC'ers, and randos from Colby and Woo) to spend copious amounts of time with. They're literally some of the best people ever and I'm gonna miss adventuring with them when I'm back this summer.

And then Charlotte and I went to INDONESIA! This is the view from our little bungalow one morning. We stayed and WWOOOFed at the beautiful Portibi Farms just outside of Bogor, a suburb of Jakarta. It was a super awesome and fun experience and I had a great time hanging out with Charlotte. She has a much better way with words than I do so here is a link to her blog post about our time in Indonesia:
http://pomegranatesandpassersby.blogspot.com/2013/02/the-cooking-altar-indo-adventures.html  

And here we are at the Jakarta Zoo with HIPPOS!!! It was one of the best moment of my short life and I'm so happy Charlotte could share it with me. Ask me about it sometime. It was literally the best ever. 

So there you have it. I didn't think I could adequately sum up 2+ months of experiences in 5 photos plus captions and it turns out I was totally 100% right but at least maybe you have some idea kinda sorta? Ask me question if you wanna know more. I love questions. I may even have a few answers for you. Probably not, but ask anyway.

Anywho, at some point, preferably before I leave in 7 days (OHMYGODWHAT), I will write about this summer and it will be glorious and exciting.

Happy Thoughts to you, wherever you are!