Underwater caves + Islam

This course was the desert. A tasty treat to end the semester with. I dont have any time- look at these pictures.

Pet maak, very spicy

Tomorrow we leave for our last field course- we bus through the night down to Southern Thailand, where the food is spicy and the sea is clear.
There will be a lot of camping on the beach, snorkeling in reefs, tromping through mangrove forests, and sea kayaking (on the Andaman Sea)

We stay in a Muslim village for 9 days, fish with them, and learn how they live with the ocean on a subsistence level.

There may be sea turtles,

there may be dugongs (endangered, and only found in thailand),

I may decide to stay down there forever.

"The ocean is impossibly complicated, intricate, turbulent, and nonlinear, and it touches every part of life. Humans can only understand it by trying to grasp far simpler proxies, such as: every tear you cry ends up back in the ocean system. Every third molecule of carbon dioxide you exhale is absorbed into the ocean. Every second breath you take comes from the oxygen produced by plankton."

"I wonder whether humans have become symbionts who have lost the knowledge that we depend on other creatures for the basics of life support. In terms of pure self-interest, this is a problem. If we depend on corals, algae, plankton and millions of other species, and if we are killing them off, how will we survive?"

Alanna Mitchell, author of Sea Sick

This next course is titled, Coastal Ecology and Culture: Islands, Reefs, and Mangroves. I'm very excited about this one- it probably was the initial attraction to the Thailand semester. We are half-way through a week of reading and lectures to prepare us for our next field course down south. Along with reading Alanna Mitchell's book Sea Sick (which is about the degradation of the global ocean and it's ties to climate change), we are learning about coastal ecosystems (corals, plankton, fish, mangroves, nutrient cycles, food chains, etc...).

some pictures:

this is what we all usually look like, in our uniforms. just like every other student in the country.

this is what we look like out of our uniforms, when we celebrate, for instance, cinco de mayo.

this is the biggest and best market in chiang mai, and i love it. right now mangos are cents a piece.

this is what we look like in our little thai classrooms. we meet here in the mornings (thai class), then as a big group in the afternoons (field course).

this is a pagoda with bamboo construction

Homestay Fest, Backpacking Fest, Swidden Fest.

this field course was so different. a lot more complicated, more physically demanding, and the issues weren't as easy to sort through and categorize.
we took public buses to mae hong son province (crazy 8 hour ride though the mountains in a cramped, decrepit school bus with holes in the floor and people sitting on top of each other. there were monks with televisions, hilltribes people in purple velvet, and babies hanging out of open windows.)
so look at that map- in the upper left corner, you see Mae Hong Son really close to Myanmar (Burma). all along that border, all the way to the bottom are the mountain ranges that separate thailand from burma. these mountains are home to dozens of different ethnic groups of people, each of whom have their own language, dress, traditions, and culture. Some live on the burmese side (or used to... before the military dictatorship in burma) and some live on the thai side.
there is a specific ethnic group that isdsi has ties to, they are called the Karen (pronounced, kuh-REN. emphasis on the second syllable, dad). Karen. so there is a Karen woman who works in the isdsi office, her name is toto, and she came with us on this field course because we visited 5 karen villages. they don't speak thai in these villages, they speak karen (although many villagers knew some thai, so we were able to communicate some).
so what we did was backpack from village to village.
we started in pakalo village, stayed one night there,
backpacked with all our belongings and clothes and notebooks and socks, up mountains and down valleys and along ridges and through jungle and over rocks and between vines and over rivers and past caves and vipers and leeches and fig trees and termite mounds and we heard gibbons howling and saw a thousand lizards and sweat like pigs (it was some tough hiking) to huey nam village,
we stayed 2 nights there,
then backpacked to nam hoo village, spent 2 nights there,
then to huey hee village, 4 nights there,
then huey tong kow village, 5 nights there.
all these villages were karen villages, and some had no road access- the paths we took though the jungle were the ONLY way in and out of the communities. the villages were maybe 20 houses large, all of them rice farmers (and chicken owners and pig owners and water buffalo and goats and dogs and cats). we would split up into 2's and each have a host family- sometimes they were young families, sometimes they were old grandparents, sometimes the houses had 4 generations living in them and we students were welcomed as one of them. the host families were truly amazing. just in a matter of days, the connections we had with these people and their community were unexplainable. we would eat, sleep, work, and sit with them, yes, but in every village we would all meet together as a community so we students could ask them questions about their livelihoods. sometimes we would sing american songs for them and they would sing karen songs back, and the joy that we all felt was wonderful.

but let me explain this further.
we visited all these communities because of what they all had in common- their relationship with the forest. all of them lived subsistence-based lives, growing and gathering all the food they consume, cutting all the wood they use, and fetching all the water they drink. the history of these karen communities with the forest was one of harmony and sustainability. they always have lived with the forest and their lifestyles have not been destructive to the ecosystems they inhabit. but the government begs to differ.
back about 100 years ago, the region's valuable hardwood forests (mostly teak wood) were discovered and started to be logged and exported. eventually it got out of control and thailand's royal forestry department decided to ban all logging and set up a thousand national parks, wildlife areas, and watershed protection areas. this seemed good because it protected the forests, but when these national parks were established, the government told all these hilltribes living in the mountains that they had to leave. the karen, the hmong, the akha, the lisu, the mien, the lahu all had to leave. their homes were now located on protected land and their human interference could not be tolerated.
sudden conflict of interests. it's the environmental groups that were pushing for the establishment of these protected areas. but the results were obvious human rights violations.
the karen villages we visited had attempted to push back on the government, claiming their way of life was in harmony with the forest, but their plea has not been heard. mostly for one reason: their form of agriculture.
lots of the karen practice swidden agriculture.
this entails a lot of slashing and burning, crop rotation, long fallows, and mixed seed. in actuality, the whole process is very sustainable and healthy for the forests they live in. it protects the watershed, diversifies the forest, and doesn't deplete soil nutrients (we studied a lot about this... we even got to help plant some). but whenever the government officials came out to the villages to see 'how they live sustainably with the forest', all they see is the karen lighting sections of woods on fire and they are immediately discounted.
so lots of these villages have had to leave,
some have been allowed to stay, but had to switch their livelihood,
but some have stayed against the rules, continuing to practice swidden agriculture, and every year forest rangers come to check on them, but the rangers feel sorry for them and let them stay, or they are bribed (... corruption is so common and it's really frustrating). but their place as karen farmers in protected areas is not stable- the government could put their fist down at any time and force out these villages. the future is unsure.
SO when we've spent a few days with a strange family, gone out and planted rice with them, played endless hours with their children, and met with the whole community about what we've learned and what else we want to know, the villagers are overjoyed. the government comes for one day and condemns their lifestyles, but we come to learn from them, legitimize them, and find that their lifestyles are beautiful and inspirational. the kind of connection that is then forged between us 17 american students and the community is strong and hard to explain.

so that is what the issue was generally about- there is a lot more too it and i could write pages and pages of all the conflicting interests and philosophical theories, but the experience was much more to me than that. seeing such simplicity in villages so disconnected from a destructive world was something i will never forget. when you killed a chicken, every bit of it was used and not wasted. when a six year old turned on the water spigot, she only turned it on for what she needed, not letting a drop spill. just living a lifestyle of MODERATION blew my mind. i growing up and even now i'm surrounded surrounded by EXCESSIVE everything, and i am glad and filled with hope after living in the same homes as these families. their affection toward each other was also a powerful thing to witness. the villages housed such an open sense of community that bowls were borrowed and friend's kids were disciplined. during one community meeting, my host dad, a new father, came and sat next to me. there was a kid sitting on the floor in front of us and my dad scooped him up onto his lap, gave him a big hug, then looked to see the face of whose child it was. it wasn't even his son, but that didn't matter. everyone showed such affection with each other, especially noticeable was fathers' affection to children. this is something not as common in american or thai cultures, affection being predominately effeminate.

other random experiences:
climbed to the highest point in mae hong son,
lived by myself with a village medicine man for 6 days,
attended a karen church service (many karen are christian... go figure),
husked rice by hand,
didn't sit in a chair once (you always sit on the floor),
slept through rain storms under fan palm roofs,
wove a basket,
got really sore,
got really strong quads,
swam in thailand's last major 'untouched by tourists' waterfall,
took 3 rolls of film,
learned a little of the karen alphabet,
identified tons of trees,
swat at a million sweat bees,
received gifts from strangers,

and received generosity, inclusion, and love from acquaintances who i could barely communicate with.

Huey Tong Kaw Village

My host mom is the one on the right, standing up. with that necklace on.

This is what planting rice on the side of a mountain looks like.

Departing for MaeHongSon

Sorry for my infrequent writing.

Tomorrow we leave for another field course in Mae Hong Son- northwest Thailand (bordering Burma). The purpose of this trip is to learn from the Hilltribes (specifically the Karen tribes) about the Forest.

How do the Karen live as farmers and maintain the forest? How can humans be in relationship with nature? Why is major deforestation happening? Why are the establishment of national parks destructive to the Karen way of life? How do the Karen view nature, and how is that different from how Americans view nature?

Again we will be looking at how human rights and environmental rights are the same thing, again we will be living with many generous host families, again we will be close with nature by hiking though the woods from village to village.

I'll write again in a few weeks

Human Rights and the Environment: Rivers, Dams, and Ecosystems

Wow.
These last few weeks have been a rush.
So many new sights, sounds, tastes, and languages. I can now claim an ability to speak a little Lao, I've eaten loads of red ants (and their white eggs), drank lots of home-distilled rice whiskey, can identify several types of freshwater fish as well as macroinvertebrates (bugs), pulled in fishing nets, saw the interworkings of a hydroelectric dam, swam in 3 major South East Asian Rivers, canoed down one of those rivers, got sun burnt, played the dulcimer, talked with an anti-dam activist 80 years old, talked with anti-dam activists 15 years old, experienced crazy lightning storms, lived with the poorest of the poor, listened to the marginalized, sat at the feet of those fighting for justice, and stood beside communities in their struggle to maintain their basic rights as human beings.

So, this field course (the first of 3) focused on rivers, dams, and human rights. We read lots of articles, received lots of lectures, and prepared for one week before leaving on the course. We then jumped into a few vans, us 17 students, 1 professor, and 4 instructors in their 20's (2 thai instructors, 2 american instructors). We traveled to a village outside of Ubon in Eastern Thailand. This is very near to the Thai-Laos border. We spent one week doing homestays with families in a village called Nong Po. Now, this village (and the whole eastern Isarn region of Thailand) is actually Lao in ethnicity, language, and culture. back when Laos was a French colony, random borders were drawn to establish some kind of separation between the Siamese and Lao kingdoms. Like most borders in the developing world (determined by Europe), they separated ethnicities of people. This being said, the village we lived with spoke Lao and Thai as a second language, so we were able to communicate with our Thai, but learned a lot of Lao as well.

Now, this community we lived with (just a village of a few hundred people) isn't just an arbitrary poor group of people. They are a typical example of a community impoverished by the building of a dam. 20 years ago the Pak Mun dam was built on the Mun River, 30 kilometers downstream from the village. The community was told by the government that a 'project' was going to take place that would better their livelihoods. They were told the dam was just a temporary weir-like wall for irrigation that wouldn't affect them much, but would provide jobs and better manage the water. On the contrary, the village of Nong Po was devastated. For years the majority of the community had relied on fishing as a major source of income and subsistence. Once the dam was put in, all of that was destroyed.

Now from here, I must branch into a few directions to explain what is going on. There are so many factors in play here- I hope this doesn't get confusing.

Let me explain why it is that rivers are destroyed by dams. Ecologically, rivers are their own systems. There are forest ecosystems, lake ecosystems, ocean ecosystems, river ecosystems, etc. These systems are based on the PRODUCTION and MOVEMENT of energy. Nutrients. The circle of life- trees, squirrels, ants, bacteria, mushrooms, humans, vines- every living thing has some energy and we are all passing it around. "Our bodies become the grass and the antelope eat the grass." We are all apart of this system and the whole system can't exist without plants. Plants that use photosynthesis are the BASIS of the system. We all would not exist if it weren't for those plants that use the sun's energy to produce nutrients to sustain our lives.

Humans are not outside of this system, obviously. We are secondary consumers, on the same ecological level as dogs, and rely on the balance of our ecosystem as much as a moth does.

Now, when looking at all the life involved with rivers (bugs, fish, bacteria, animals, plants, and algae), it is important to see the most important factor in a river ecosystem.

flow.

The idea of a flow of nutrients, migrations of fish, distribution of sediments, etc, is vital to the health of a river ecosystem. Actually, flow is the very thing that makes a river ecosystem a river ecosystem. So when a dam is built, or the flow of a river is severed, the ecosystem is strangled.

this is what happens upstream:
huge water retention basin.
sediment builds up, keeping it from flowing downstream.
decomposing organic matter creates a significant amount of methane (global warming).
stagnant water breeds insects not usually at home in the area.
algae builds up.
fish aren't able to travel downstream (necessary for some species' reproductive cycles).
basically, a lake is created where there should not be a lake. The surrounding ecosystem is not prepared for a lake, and things are thrown off balance.

this is what happens downstream:
difference in water temperature, disrupting fish migrating patterns.
no silt is let through, so fewer nutrients
fish are not allowed upstream to spawn (necessary for most species)
floodplains are dried and the general flow of the river is reduced dramatically. what usually happens, and this is also the case for the Pak Mun dam, is the amount of water let through the turbines changes depending on the demand of electricity. so not only is there an inconsistency in flow of water, but the natural yearly flooding patterns of downstream are ended. without these yearly floods, underground aquifers aren't restored and nutrients are not distributed to the floodplains surrounding the riverbed.

An ecological disaster.

Since people are connected to this delicate balance of moving energy, it had impacts. This is how we discovered how severe those impacts are:
It was the last night with our host families in Nong Po. We had spent the week fishing with them, eating sticky rice with them, and talking with them. Jeremy and I lived with a family of 6 out in the middle of rice fields- stunningly beautiful. We were far from any road- you needed to walk between rice paddies for 15 minutes to reach their house from the road. They had chickens, roosters, cats, and a talking parrot (hilarious. it would actually repeat whole sentences back to you. or mock your laugh when you walk by). Jeremy and I spent lots of the time playing with the kids of the family. They were super shy and it took a few days for them to warm up to us, but we eventually broke through to them. Thank you soccer balls. We spent hours playing soccer in our bare feet in the dry rice fields, making goals and slapping high-fives. Often the kids from neighboring ricefields would show up and we all would play giant rounds of Thai duck-duck-goose until the sun set. It was wonderful. We loved our family and from what stories were shared by other students, they loved their families as well. Lots of our families were relatives or friends of each other and would often meet up, bringing 3 families and their respective host students together. We were connected. The whole community welcomed us. They arranged a religious blessing ceremony for us one night and every host parent came around to every student and blessed us by tying strings of good spirit around our wrists. We did this sitting on the floor in a circle and the parents approached us on their knees. No one was allowed to stand. We were all on the same level. It was overwhelming and wonderful and overwhelming.
But anyway, on the last night, we had a community meeting. All of us students sat in a huge circle with all of our fathers and mothers and we talked about why we had come. We had come to learn from them, we said. We had come to understand how they have been affected by this Pak Mun dam, we said. We then asked them questions.
Are there fewer fish now than before the dam was built?
Yes. There used to be more fish. And bigger fish. There used to be over 200 species of fish. Now there are 50 species. In one rainy season, they used to catch over 1000 kg of fish. Now they only catch 40 kg.
How can you survive with so few fish?
We can't.
Since many of your livelihoods centered around the fish in the river, what do you do for food or money now?
We send our children to work in factories in Bangkok. They send money home.
How many of you have children in Bangkok?
All the hands go up.
How many of you have several children in Bangkok?
All the hands stay up.

The meeting progressed like this. We kept getting deeper and deeper into the impacts this dam has had on the community. One fisherman said he used to have a good life before the dam was built. He was a wealthy man with fish to feed his family and even more fish to sell. But now he is poor. He has been made poor. He has no rice fields or gardens to grow vegetables- he relied on the longevity of that river. And most of the villagers have been protesting the dam. They protested before it was built, they protested at the dam site and were beaten, they protested in Bangkok after the dam was built and got the gates to be opened a few months out of the year. But talk of decomissioning the dam is ignored. They have been fighting this for 20 years and are weary. There is no more money left to spent on protest- the next generation of young people is all working in other cities, and the youngest know nothing of their parents' struggles.
It was at this point in the meeting that one of the villagers stood up and asked us a question.
What are we going to do about it?
Did we just come to study them and leave? They shared their struggle with us. What are we going to do with that?

We were stunned silent, at a loss for an answer, and that was basically how the meeting ended. We had come to love these villagers and they were gracious to us. They shared what they had with us and we listened to them tell their story. Even though they aren't sure if we can help them (i'm sure all of us will try), by us being there and sitting at their feet, we validated them. They were thankful and so were we. It was an intense and touching experience to become apart of the community of Nong Po.

So after that,
we all loaded up into vans and drove along the MeKong River (border of Thailand and Laos) for a few days, and ended up in the second village.

This village was called Don Chai. A larger community of about 800 people.
What is similar about this village and the one we had just come from is that they are both connected to their rivers for subsistence.
What is different about Don Chai from Nong Po is that Don Chai has no dam on their river (the Yom River). There have been plans to dam the Yom River for 15 years now, but the people have resisted. They have organized. They have demonstrated. Upon driving into the village, we saw huge banners hanging from people's homes and graffiti painted on the roads saying, "NO DAMS" and "OUR RIVER, OUR LIFE" and "NO DAM, NO WAR". We had entered a village of intense activists. They are known around the world for their successful struggle, and for good reason- if the projected dam were to be built, their village would be flooded. Not just a few inches of water- since they would be upstream of the dam, their whole village would be tens of meters under water.

So we spent a few days with these villagers, each of us living with a host family, talking with them about their struggle, and having community meetings. The energy of the place was amazing- the people had such a passion for their place- they had organized as a collective and fought against the might of the government and actually won. Although the government is still pushing for the dam to be built and the villagers are still pushing back, the fight looks promising.

We were able to meet with a youth activist group while we were there in Don Chai. It was a group of teenagers who, having grown up with activists for parents, took the struggle onto themselves as well. They met every weekend and made banners or took trips to neighboring villages to educate other youth. They are 15 and 16 years old- passionate about justice and willing to do what it takes to ensure their livelihoods arent taken from them. It was very inspiring. Our conversations with them were good.

After our time in Don chai was over, we all embarked on a 6 day canoeing trip. The point of the trip was to study the Yom River more closely. Over the 6 days, we boated the whole section of river that would be flooded if the dam were built. It was very eerie to be canoeing down the river valley and look up and around at everything that would be flooded.
But anyway, while we were on the river, we boated about 13 km per day, sleeping at a different camping site every night, taking river health measurements along the way. This involved lots of bug catching and recording, chemical testing, and river area surveying. The whole process was much more detailed than that, and there were little gadgets that tested this and that, as well as chemicals for nitrate and phosphate levels. We recorded lots of data, lots of reference books were consulted, and by the end of the 6 day paddle, we had determined that the quality of the river was excelent.

It is the last major river in Thailand that has no dam on it. May it stay that way.


So,
all in all, the Rivers, Dams, and Human Rights field course was brilliant. I now know how to scientifically test a river's health, I know what dams do to the ecosystems they sever, I know how these environmental injustices are inextricably linked to human rights abuses, and I have learned all of this directly from the sources themselves.

What an amazing opportunity I've been given here...

This week in school we learned, mainly, about three things:

1. Human rights abuse and environmental abuse are inextricably connected.
2. River ecosystems are extensive, delicate, and beautiful.
3. Dams are absurdly destructive.

Now for the next three weeks, we will:

1. Live, work, and sleep with communities suffering from environmental/human rights injustice.
2. Touch, see, and study river ecosystems that have been dying, out of balance, severed in half by dams.
3. Visit a whole lot of dams.

I'll update again when I get back!

We've been learning a lot and much has changed in the last week.
Overview:
The first 'course' of the semester (overview of Thai history, culture, politics, etc...) has come to an end, and this means we are no longer living with our host families. We have moved into small apartments in the city and are preparing to embark on our first field course in Eastern Thailand.

Let me expand:
The first foundations course was wonderful. There was so much information to take in and all of it was new and fascinating. From the ancient Siamese kings to the informal sector of the economy, our professor, Christina Fink, was knowledgable and engaging in her lectures. I am better equipped to live and interact with the Thai people because I better understand where they came from and why things are the way they are. Good feeling.

The host family experience was nice. My host family was always kind and welcoming to me and I was sad to leave them. ISDSI held a celebration on Friday night to show thanks to the host families for their generosity. The evening took place in the most beautiful building I have seen here in Thailand. It is built in the traditional Lanna style (this is the Northern Thailand style) and is basically a tree house. The whole complex of dark wooden buildings are on stilts a whole story off the ground. Sometimes trees grew through the centers of rooms and balconies, huge trees with blossoming flowers, candles hanging in paper lanters, everyone dressed in traditional Lanna clothes, everyone in bare feet, all the students with their host families, little round floor tables with bowls of rice and curries, sweet tea in cups made out of bamboo sections, sweets and fruit wrapped in banana leaves. After the sun had set, candles everywhere, we sat on the floor and ate, watching traditional dances and music being performed. All the students gave thank-you speeches in Thai (tough), we took a lot of pictures, and the evening was beautiful.

The next day we moved into apartments. They are located in a wonderful location- close to internet cafes, the mall, and the old city. I live with the three other guys on the trip (two calvin students, one knox student) and the television in our room has a Japanese channel. We just moved in yesterday, but all of us have been exploring the area around us, eating different places, and buying a lot of iced coffee (thai iced coffee is the best on earth. they put in sweetened condensed milk...). Although I miss living with my host family, I am glad to be out on my own, exploring the city. We are able to walk to school every day, so that gives us a lot more free time (I am determined to use this free time constructively, seeing new things, learning new things, experiencing new things). Tonight some of us are going to the 'walking street', which is a market that only comes out on Sunday nights. There are a lot of local artists selling clothes, notebooks, postcards, and more.

For the next week, we will continue to attend Thai class every morning. In the afternoons, we will have lectures to prepare us for leaving on our first field course, "Human Rights and the Environment: Rivers, Dams, and Local Struggles". On our field course, we will travel to Eastern Thailand (Isarn), and kayak a portion of the Mekong River (5th largest river in the world), visit a lot of communities that have close relationships with rivers, and visit communities that have been displaced or affected by the construction of dams. There is a lot more we will be doing, but that is the gist.

I hope this finds all of you well, and if you are reading this regularly, please let me know who you are (post a comment?) because I want to write these posts directed toward my audience...

thanks
peace
love

The climate here has been striking. Because this is the tropics and the sheer amout of biodiversity is greater, humans' relationship with the environment is different. In North America, for example, there is less life- creatures great and small have space to live as they please, including humans. But here things are more tightly woven. Because the climate can support more life, more life exists. It is everywhere- canopies of leaves, strings of ants, birds, bees, people, snakes, vines, fruit trees, and butterflies. All of these living, growing things exist in very close proximity to each other, unlike the living things in North America's cooler climate. This closeness, for humans, means living in a unique harmony with nature and everything nature entails. So basically, there are little gekkos on the walls of the livingroom and ants on the kitchen floor. If you sit outside, a butterfly will probably circle your head while other unidentifiable insects rest on your arm. There is so much life it's spilling everywhere.

Intense Thai Lessons and Host Families

For these first 5 weeks, we (17 students from Calvin College, Colorado College, Hamilton, Knox, etc...) are living with Thai host families and attending Thai school every day. We live all over Chiang Mai and either take public transportation (thai busses) or get driven by our host parents. The school (ISDSI) is situated a bit back from a busy highway, in a complex with lots of trees and hammocks. There are a few classrooms on the second floor and little offices for the staff on the first floor. We are in Thai school from 8am-noon, then there is a lecture in the afternoon. Our lecture subjects range from Thai politics to geography to agriculture.
So far I have learned part of the alphabet, the numbers, lots of foods, and basic verbs. Everyday our heads hurt.

My host family is very nice, sometimes hilarious.
My father is a furnature salesman. He makes copies of expensive couches and sells them cheaper. He likes using his English and used to be a streetcar racing driver (like 'the fast and the furious'. neon lights, subwoofers, and an orange steering wheel).
My mother is a nurse and cooks marvelously. I say everything she makes is delicious and she likes that. She also smiles a lot.
My little brother Net (18) is finished with high school and studying for entrance exams for the university. He is very smart, relaxed, and proficient in English. Net always helps me with my Thai homework.
My other little brother, Not (12) is 12. He likes playing badminton, online golf, and always comes home from school with stains on his shirt. If you ask him a question and he doesn't know the answer, he makes something up. Example: "Not- have you ever gotten a hole-in-one on online golf?" "Yes, yes, it is easy" (completely untrue).

And apparently when a Thai family decides they want to host a student from America, they find another family to host a student too. This way the two Thai families can get together and watch their two American students converse like furbies.
My mother works with Ally's mother, so our families get together a lot. Ally goes to Calvin, so we know each other and it's nice to have a friend. She comes over for dinner, movies, and we take the same bus to school every day. We also get iced coffees every morning for 15 baht. They are the best iced coffees on planet earth and cost 45 cents.

For pictures of the school and general information about the program, you can visit the ISDSI website-
www.isdsi.org

love

Forced Picture Upload #1

My host family has a digital camera and took pictures of me and my friend Ally on the streets of Chiang Mai. They insist I post these pictures immediately so my home can see I'm not being starved over here.

picture #1- me and ally next to a frozen mime-statue-man
















picture #2 me and ally drinking ice coffee. 60 cents and delicious as all get out.















picture #3 me and ally eating thai noodles and soup. we were sweating from the chili spices.














me and ally looking at someone selling something.















this is a crc garbage can. that may or may not stand for "christian reformed church"

Bangkok: The Big Mango

I have only been here in Bangkok (Gurung-tehp) for two days and I leave tomorrow. But what I have seen here has made an impression. This city is intense. The air is thick with bus exhaust and heat, the jack fruit on the street is cheap, and cokes come in glass bottles. It's the kind of city where, unless you're being enticed into buying something, no one looks you in the eye (I guess like any city...). Everyone is enveloped in his or her own business, whether that be making soup on the side of the road or sleeping with a stray dog on the side of the road.
Today I went looking for a pair of converse shoes (and got 'em. 5 bucks.) and came across the craziest phenomenon. I found a section of downtown that was ridiculously developed. I'm talking cross walks, starbucks, air conditioned malls 5 stories high, lacoste, and sidewalk fountains. The area went on for blocks and blocks. Tourists (like me) were crawling everywhere. But as I kept walking, the nice sidewalks eventually ended and the tight, dirty streets began again. The change from 'developed' to 'underdeveloped' was literally across a street. If I tried, I could get people sitting at plastic tables eating soup under a bridge and Adidas Outlet in the same camera frame. The difference was so drastic, and by looking around a bit I could see posters for new planned apartments and shopping malls.
I call this a 'phenominon' because this happens often in quickly-industrializing places (like Bangkok). New markets based on tourism (good) bring new life to an economy (good). The economy expands, stuff is built, and the poor are pushed back. Granted the added wealth to a country is good and the jobs provided are also good, but at what cost? I bring up the difference between the developed and the underdeveloped not to illustrate the stark difference between the rich and the poor, but to illustrate the illusion these fancy buildings give us. Today, while strattling the street between the clean and the dirty, I couldn't help but notice how easy the clean half looked. Why don't they just redo the dirty part like they did the clean part? The illusion that building a bunch of new structures (to light, heat, and furnish) is easy and simple is dangerously misleading. All development like that comes at a cost. The reason why I am in Thailand this semester is to study how the industrial boom of Southeast Asia has raped the environment of its resources. Places like China and Thailand are 'developing' so fast that the countries' respective natural resources are being abused and ignored. Tomorrow I travel up to Chiang Mai (base), where I will begin taking trips around the rural portions of Thailand to learn more about these environmental atrocities. I don't know very much at this point and I realize my thoughts are naive and short-sighted, but I hope to better understand this place as the semester unfolds.
grace, peace, and love to you all.

Here is a bit from a book I am reading now.

"As countries undergo the initial stages of industrialization, environmental indicators- air quality, water quality, forest coverage- generally deteriorate. Then, a turning point is reached and many of these indicators gradually start to improve, although there are exceptions (carbon dioxide emissions, for instance, have continued to climb). Preindustrialization conditions may never be fully restored, but sometimes they can at least be approached.
This pattern is controversial with many environmentalists because of the prevailing assumption, particularly among leaders of industrializing countries, that societies inevitably follow this curve and it is therefore okay to put off attempts at cleaning up. Under this traditional development paradigm, the curve becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy- a result of the tendency to separate economic and environmental concerns, reflected most fundamentally in the way statistics are kept. GDP numbers account for the benefits of economic activity, but ignore environmental and public health costs. A car crash, for instance, generates lots of economic activity by sending people to hospitals and spurring them to buy new vehicles. Similarly, a polluting factory contributes its basic production to economic statistics, along with its clean-up activities and the medical spending required by victims of its pollution. But you wouldn't consider all that activity to be beneficial. As a result, the high GDP growth rates recorded by industrializing countries are misleading about the real progress being made in quality of life. "

A Land on Fire
James David Fahn

beginning

Hello friends and family- I will be studying abroad in Thailand from Feb to August.
Maybe I will be able to keep updates here.

For more information on things, click this: www.isdsi.org

Peace