North Trip!
I just got back from my trip
to the North with all the other exchange students in my district (Space Peopls
what we call ourselves) and all the Thai outbound students (one of whom is
going to Alaska next year—shout out to Mew!). We saw tons of historical sights,
went to the old capital of Thailand—Sukothai, visited the Golden Triangle, the
famous White Temple (Wat Rungkun), saw two beautiful pagodas that were built in
the mountains for the King and Queen, walked through many beautiful gardens, went
to a few museums, a hot spring, a gorgeous and enormous waterfall, a painted
fan village and a ceramics factory. All of those wonderful things and I still
haven’t even listed my favorite three!
So here goes…
First, on April 11th
after visiting the gorgeous White Temple, sticking our feet and hard boiling
eggs in the scorching water of the Mae Kajarn Hot Spring we headed to the province of Chiang Mai where
we visited the Chiang Mai Zoo. Zoos are
just awesome to begin with, and even more so when you are with your best
friends and you get to see your favorite animal in the whole wide world! Those
of you who know me well enough will know what that is…
Secondly, we all got to
celebrate the Thai holiday Songkran on April 13th! Though Songkran used to be more
of a family holiday in which people would go and visit grandparents and elders
and be sprinkled in holy water, over time it has evolved and changed into
modern day Songkran which is basically just three days (this year it was April
13-16) where everyone in Thailand stops, drops everything their doing, closes
up shop and heads out into the street for a country-wide water and squirt gun
fight! Songkran was simply amazing! Everyone in the whole country out to have a
water fight on one of the hottest days of the year… perfect.
Thirdly, April 12th
may just have been the best day of my life up to this point. We started the day
with watching the adorable elephants at Maetang Elephant Park play soccer,
dance and paint beautiful pictures with their trunks! During the show an
elephant presented my friend Turi with a basket of flowers! While standing
around waiting for the show to begin, I got kissed by an elephant… well… more
like it stuck its trunk on my face and got me all slobbery… that doesn’t happen
everyday! After the show we took a ride in a cart pulled by two oxen, some
early birds had already started playing Songkran, but luckily we didn’t get
splashed… yet, we road the oxen to another area where we transferred from the
low to the ground oxen carts to the high back of an elephant. I rode the
elephant with my friend Lea, from Germany. As we walked through the forest
bumping and jolting from side to side neither of us could stop smiling. We
finally came to a river… which our elephant walked straight into and started to
spray us a bit with water from it’s trunk. Let Songkran begin! Sitting on an
elephant walking in a river through the mountains and forests of Northern
Thailand was one of the most amazing and best things I have ever done in my
entire life. After we returned to the elephant enclosure we got off, thanked
our Mahout (elephant trainer) and elephant and we were off once again, this
time we had a bamboo raft as our mode of transportation. Seven other exchange
students from USA, France and Germany--Sophie, Willis, Jon, Turi, Alex, Tom,
Maieul-- and I, our awesome Rotex Pick, one of our tour guides and two Thai
boat men all floated together. As we started Pick asked “So… do you guys want
to play Songkran?” “YES!” we all agreed. And so we splashed and screamed and
sang our way down the river. The raft man let me steer the back while my friend
Tom from France steered the front, we made a good team but unfortunately we
were too slow so we let the raft man steer instead. By the time we got back,
wet from splashing each other and being splashed by random Thai children and
families swimming in the river we were all more than content. We headed to Bor
Sang Umbrella village where we watched women hand paint on umbrellas, fans,
papers and anything else you can imagine. My friend Saeko, from Japan, and I
both got things painted on our cameras, Jonas from Germany got his wallet
painted on and Helen and Ariel from Canada and Taiwan got their clothing
painted on. It was a fantastic and
tiring day and we were all glad to be back at the hotel and take a shower… but
no rest here because that evening we were off to a traditional Thai dance show
where we sat on the floor and ate dinner while listening to live Thai music and
watching the beautiful dances from all corners of Thailand. The day ended with
staying up into the early hours of the morning talking with friends, a perfect
way to end a perfect day.
The last night of the trip we
sung karaoke, talked and danced. For some reason I was feeling kind of saddened
by it all and so, when four of the Outbound girls came out with a cake and a
big poster saying “We Love Inbounds!” with a silly face that matched each
inbound’s personality drawn on it and then sang a song for us all, I’m sure I
was the first one crying… but I wasn’t the only one. Luckily someone started a
cake in the face fight and that wiped away all of our tears. After jumping in
the pool the clean off we all stayed up late talking through the very last
night of the trip.
We are meant to have a
goodbye party sometime in mid June, but unfortunately some Inbounds probably
will have left already… I didn’t realize at the time that that may have been
the last time we are all together… ever.
I cannot thank Rotary enough
for having these amazing trips for us and for giving me the opportunity to have
this amazing year. I cannot believe how much my life has changed in the past
250 days. I will never, ever forget the memories of the Rotary trips and the
friendships I have made with all the Space People of D3350 will definitely last
forever.
I love Thailand! I love my
exchange student family! I love life!
Here is the link to the photos of the North Trip ---> Adventures in the North
Hope you are all well.
Kearn
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