First Two Weeks

"A tourist sees what he or she has come to see. A traveler sees what he or she sees"

I'm sorry to everyone who I told this would be posted a lot earlier, I have barely had time to breathe, let alone sit down and write about all the wonderful adventures I have been on since arriving in Thailand. Also sorry for how long this is, its super hard to summarize two amazing and super busy weeks. It has been just over two weeks since I arrived in Thailand and man is it ever different from what I expected. I cant say that I'm disappointed, but I can say I have had to make adjustments for my expectations for my year abroad. To summarize my experiences here so far I would say that its been a lot of early wake up calls, falling asleep at 7pm, eating rice, nodding my head, smiling and pretending to understand what is going on.

On Saturday morning, my day started fairly early in the morning. Luckily the sleep I got on the airplane helped to keep my jet lag to a minimum. My day felt pretty average, in the morning I went to work with my parents. They own a business that sells and installs car accessories and sound systems. After a few hours of being in the store, we went for lunch I had Pad Thai (which was super delicious), then my parents drove my brother, third, and me to the city center. We walked around for a bit and visited a museum.  

My dads first car

Sunday was a jam-packed day. We drove up a mountain to visit Bhubing palace, which is in the middle of Doi Suthep national park. It is surrounded by beautiful scenery and has a beautiful rose garden. The palace is the winter residence for the Thai Royal Family, as well as where they host many prominent state visitors. Just down the mountain from the place is Wat Prathart Doi Suthep an extremely beautiful and very touristy Buddhist temple. People believe that you have not truly arrived in Chiangmai until you have visited this temple. So I guess I actually arrived in Chiangmai on the tenth. After visiting the national park we went to the famous Chiangmai night market where I met my first YE student since being in Thailand. Unfortunately it started to rain so we were not there for very long.

A beautiful view from the mountain

Rose Garden

A little girl from a hill tribe in Doi Suthep

Doi Suthep National park

Wat Prathart Doi Suthep

Monday happens to be one of my favourite days since I have been in Thailand. I spent the day with my brothers and his friends. We went to the royal park where we made a movie about the use of technology today and how it can make us distant from each other. After that we went to three different cafes. The first one was just a random café that happened to be close. The second was on the bank of a river. We sat and drank iced coffees at a table in the river. The third was a coffee shop that won 6^th place in the world for there late art.  I also got to go to my first Thai movie. Thai movie theatres are sooooo cheap. We saw this really messed up horror movie about a guy who gets his best friends girlfriend pregnant, and she is so ashamed that she commits suicide. After she commits suicide some how the baby ends up in the boys stomach… I'm not really sure how it ended because we had to leave half way through in order to attend a party with my rotary club. We celebrated Thai mothers day, by singing, dancing, eating and giving our mothers flower garlands. My host mom cried when we presented her with her flowers. It was adorable.

Cafe in the river

Latte Art 

Tuesday was real Thai mothers day. We went to a temple where a monk passed away a year ago and has not started to decay. They believe that there was something special about him, and that he was for some reason chosen to remain the same even after his death. It was the first temple I had been in that did not have an abundance of tourist in it. After the temple we spent the rest of the day at the mall.

The monk who has not decayed

Wednesday, Thursday and Friday where pretty boring and simple. I got my school uniforms, I went to work with my parents, I went to school and made garlands all day. I got my first Thai massage, I had cooking class, I walked around with an English teacher at my school and I went to a birthday party with my brother.

Saturday was my first orientation. I met all of the lovely exchange students in my area, and again reviewed the rules and regulations of the exchange program. In the evening we went to the walking street night market. Sunday was just like every Sunday, we spent the day as a family and then went to dinner at my host grandparent’s house.

On Monday I started Thai dance school. Thai dance is unbelievably hard, and your wrists and fingers have to be super super flexible. Tuesday I went to school, came home and slept. Wednesday I was sick and spent the day in bed. Thursday I went to school and got of super early so me and the other exchange students in my school went for a walk, hung out and did some studying. Friday was boring I went to school and then to yoga class.

And last but not least today I went to the school from 8am-4pm to help teach at an English camp. At times it was frustrating attempting to teach a second language, but I loved every second of it because it gave me the chance to interact with other students in my school well passing on my knowledge. After language camp some other exchange students and I went to the movie theatre to watch 22 Jump Street. And now I am sitting in my room writing this blog post half asleep. So I think it is time to get some rest, because tomorrow I am going to have a long day of RIDING ELEPHANTS!!!

Airports and First Impressions

"how lucky I am to have found something that makes saying goodbye so hard"- Winnie The Pooh

The last few days have been a whirlwind of emotions. I have gone from being unbelievably over joyed to start my journey, too an unbelievable crying mess in the middle of a forgien airport and everything inbetween those two emotions. I am so blessed to be able to embark on such a wonderful journey. I feel so much joy about this opportunity. Unfortunately I never really thought about how hard saying goodbye to my loved ones would be or how hard it would be to be unable to communicate with my new family.

My goodbyes started early as some of my closest friends left on their own journeys, Ath was off to Greece, Brook left to Ontario to spend the rest of the break with her boyfriend and his family, and Sar left me to go pretend to be a pioneer for a few days and then she was off to EFY. I don’t think when I said these goodbyes it had really hit me, how long the goodbye would be for. As the days began to fade away I found myself saying my final goodbyes at the security gate in the Calgary airport. My parents and Jake walked me to security, where we exchanged our final hugs. Although I was at the airport ready to go, the fact that I was really saying goodbye was still yet to sink in.

As I walked through the line in security I was trying my hardest to hold myself together, but with every step things only seemed to be get harder. Of course in a time like this I would be picked for a random security check, where the rummaged through my bags, and swabbed my laptop, of course for some reason this made me start to bail my eyes out even more. From there on out I hoped that my travels would be a little be easier. Unfortuntley my hopes did not do much good.

My flight to Vancouver was slightly delayed, which ended up working to my advantage, because my flight leaving Vancouver was delayed for over an hour. Sitting in the Vancouver airport by myself for three hours was pretty lousy and uneventful. I basically sat there attempting to hide the fact that I was crying, until it got to hard and then I just let it all out.

From Vancouver I had a thirteen hour flight to Hong Kong. I attempted to sleep the entire plane ride in order to fight off some of my future jetlag. Sleeping in an airplane sucks. When I arrived in Hong Kong I ran to my next gate in order to not miss my connecting flight to Chiang Mai. I boarded my plane as soon as I arrived at the gate, and again tried to sleep to ease my jetlag.

When I arrived in Chiang Mai I went through costumes, which was fairly easy, and then went to the baggage claim. I stood there forever watching the same few pieces of luggage go around, until I finally realized mine was not coming. Lets just say that the airport luck was not on my side today. Fortunately my bag should be here by tonight.

My host family greeted me with open arms, and automatically started to feed me, they must know airplane food is not all that great. From the airport we went to the market to pick up a few things, and then home. There house is beautiful to say the least. There are a thousand of sticky notes around the house with thai words on them for me to practice. As soon as I had some alone time in my room all of the emotions began to hit and I was a crying mess once again.

I'm feeling quite overwhelmed. Everything here is so different. I feel super alienated, I cannot read any signs, or understand anything people are saying to me. I can’t even recognize my Thai name, let alone say it. I can however tell you that it means “clear blue sky”. It is super hot here plus 35, and it is currently pouring rain. The fan I have blowing on me is not doing a very good job at keeping me cool.

Well that’s about as far as my adventure has gotten. I would like to take the time to thank my sponsor Rotary club for giving me this amazing opportunity, as well as my friends and family for all of the support.

Hong Kong

Chiang Mai