Sometimes you just need toast

Hiking to a village: W.O.W
Organic Farmers market "JJ": We helped our Maes and Paws sell what we helped harvest
Wat in the mountains: worth the walk
Kids at one of the palang villages: So. Cute.

So I guess I have a lot of updating to do.

I returned to civilization on Wednesday afternoon after 3 weeks of bliss. Back to the big city of Chiang Mai.
I think my school is trying to kill us with culture shock.

From the aroma of countryside to the stench of the city.
The sweet smell of manure to the sour smell of dirty streets.
From the endless chirpings of chingree (crickets) to the blaring bars and car horns

But I must admit It’s nice to get some internet access
And have a break from eating sticky rice (which was throwing my digestive system for a loop)
And have a chance to reconnect with everyone (I had my first bout of home sickness 2 weeks into the expedition)

Surprisingly though I didn’t really miss a lot of the things I thought I would.
Not having a computer and phone was more of a relief than anything, and I must say I’ve become a fan of the once dreaded and feared squat toilet and wish I had one in my dorm. There’s something about the squatting position that really helps things get moving if you know what I’m saying. Sorry, we like to talk a lot about our bowel movements here in Thailand. On the regular. Especially when we’re regular.

Anywho
3 weeks ago I left for our first field course about Food Systems.
We began the trip in Mae Ta, a rural village North of Chiang Mai. We stayed for 5 days, living with host families learning about their switch from industrial mono-crop farming to polycultural organic farming. This community was beautiful.
From the green land with its abundant fresh/delicious/heavenly/succulent/mouth watering produce to the warm/caring/smiling/considerate/knowledgeable people. Beauty enveloped me and sent me soaring to new heights of happinesss.
In was a good life.Waking up at to the sound of roosters to help Mae cook sticky rice and breakfast. Going to the co-op to meet with community members. Walking by rice paddies and grazing cows, mountains looming majestically in the background. I had a really hard time comprehending that it was indeed real. Helping Mae and Nong Tui (17 year old host sister) harvest peanuts at their farm. Hiking the local watershed. Touring agroforests. Cooking dinner, at least 70% from straight from the farm. Every day was filled with adventure and laughter, but my favorite part was just hanging out with my family.

Being able to communicate was such a huge boost in confidence for me. It hadn’t really sunk in yet that I had actually learned enough Thai to not just get by, but talk about so much and to joke (my family way so funny, especially my Paw). They had to literally pry me from my host family the day I had to say goodbye. At 4 am. On a Saturday. To go help sell produce with some of the Mae Ta farmers at an organic market. Sanook maaaak (So fun)

Then school again hit us up with some culture shock. A trip to Tesco, a grocery store equivalent to Meijers in the U.S. It was so weird. It felt so sterile, and kinda gross. We had to compare the prices, atmosphere, customers, etc. of the organic market and the big grocery store. Mai sanook (not fun)
Then just to keep with the theme of never letting us get too comfortable with one atmosphere they took us to the Nest. A posh tropical resort in Chiang Dow. Wow.

From there we met up and stayed at an NGO even further north in Mae Ai. UHDP-Upland Holistic Development Project. Basically they are working with villages of marginalized hill tribes to help them gain access to citizenship and land while also training the village members to do a variety of projects such as plant backyard gardens and raise livestock or other forms of protein. We visited about 5 of these villages.
We talked with their headmen and played with their children, helped the women dish out dinner, were performed to and performed for children around a bonfire,slept under their mosquito nets and took showers in ceilingless room on stilts under the stars, stayed up late learning palang vocabulary with the cultural guru who laughed harder than anyone I’ve met in Thailand. I loved every second of it. The more people I meet here, the more beauty I see.

At UHDP itself we learned how to make organic pesticide and compost. How to cook using bamboo and banana leaves. How to measure biodiversity the way the pros do it, getting all up in that dirt, classifying understory and overstory, measuring wind and temperature. We played a lot of soccer and a lot of pranks (we lived camp style: bunk beds, separated by gender, boys vs. girls) We did a lot of stretch circles (sound effects included) and ate a lot of peanut butter. Again, it was a hard place to leave.

There are a million stories and a million pictures but there's an overview of my life the past month.
Today I'm off to the queen's botanical gardens which is supposed to be stunningly beautiful.
Thailand is about to start cool season which means I can stop sweating through everything I own.
I think I know where I'm doing my internship in the fall and I'm trying to get a bartending job in Chiang Mai while I do it.

More to come.
Yuh Ah-Nuh (I love you in Kahren, a hilltribe dialect, sounds like someone grunts and then says my name hahahah)