Goodbye Party

Last night was our goodbye party with our families! It was great!! A bunch of us got there early so we got a headstart on all the food. It was DELICIOUS. We had amazing kanom (desserts). Some of them were just like the ones I made the other week with my family. My Thai class (five of us) has been learning the song about the beautiful girl at the hotel asking an admiring boy where the bathroom is. I think I explained the song in another post. Because we love our professor so much, we decided to do it for the talent show part of the party! She was SO HAPPY! It was adorable. Katherine, Hish, and Meredith sang while Andrew and I acted it out. It was so embarrassing. I pretty much just "gracefully" walked across the stage pretending to strut...but graceful isn't really my thing.

Some people had some really great talents. Everyone who performed was awesome and just did whatever their families had them do! My mom couldn't go because she felt sick so Paw's hippie friend who I went to Tak with last weekend came to fill in! I am obsessed with him. He's hilarious and laughed at me the entire time. He told me I have a "Thai smile" because I smile a lot and he loves that. So, I was really glad he came!

Other than that, we had a really great time and we all sang the "sticky rice" song together, which was a lot of fun!

So, an update on the week! This week the field professor from each field course had a day to give us an overview of the course and the last hour was given to us to write an essay about what we had learned in the overview and how it relates to what we learned in Foundations. Agroecology sounds like it is going to be SO interesting. It is all about food systems around the world and in Thailand and how they could become more sustainable. We visit farmers and an NGO ( I think). Forests sounds cool but I didn't really understand the goal...but we will be backpacking to all the different hill tribes and learning about their cultures. Sounds really cool! Oceans is going to be the most aesthetically pleasing for sure! We go to the coasts and islands south of Phuket. Half the time we spend on the coast learning about mangroves and the ecology and people of the area. We stay with families on the coast. The other half of the time we spend sea kayaking and skin diving everyday and traveling to the different islands with locals to camp on the beaches! Apparently its hot and uncomfortable but I really couldn't care less. I'm SO EXCITED. These field courses are going to be really cool.

If you want to see more about any of the classes, you can check out the ISDSI website! http://www.isdsi.org/

Also I just realized that ISDSI has a blog also where they post pictures they have taken of us!! So that website is http://www.isdsi.org/blog/