Sorry for the late blog post, we’ve been having too much fun living in the moment – we are all alive and well (parents please don’t worry, all is top notch on our end).
After orientation in Chiang Mai and our trek with third eye travel, our group headed about 6 miles north of Chiang Mai to a town/village called Mae Rim. We met our Thai teacher, Petchara, at the Eco lodge for another round of Thai classes before we met our various homestay families. We stumbled through our introductions and settled in. Our main form of communication for the first few days was smiling, pointing and charades(thank you, families, for all the games growing up – it really helped us communicate)! Eventually we were able to learn basic Thai.
A normal day for us consisted of waking up around 7:30, eating breakfast with our new families, hopping on our bikes and picking up people on our way to the Eco Lodge for thai classes. Imagine a posse of backpack wearing young adults/hooligans speeding down the street singing songs, talking, and laughing. During Thai classes we learned vocab for food, places, family members, and basic phrases. Then we enjoyed a packed lunch from our families or a delicious meal from the lodges restaurant; curry and thai coffee were the most popular choices among our group. We then had another hour of Thai class and planned our evening. Our afternoon/evening normally consisted of ultimate Frisbee, going to others’ houses, making soap, fruit carving, practicing thai boxing, learning thai dancing, or exploring the area.
For Charlie’s birthday we didn’t have class and headed to the local waterfall! We explored all twelve levels of the waterfall and decided we had two we liked the best. One of them was huge and some of us meditated under the waterfall. It was a natural back-rub and cleansing treatment built in to one:)
On the last night of our home stays we had a party. To prepare, all the families made food dishes and the Carpe Diem students made floating lanterns out of banana leaves, flowers, toothpicks, and styrofoam. We all wrote a little speech in Thai to say at the party and sang two songs, one in Thai and one in English. After the planned festivities there was a dance party. We showed everyone how much dancing we had learned that week and taught them dance moves from America. The evening ended with floating lanterns and high spirits. The week was filled with new experiences, new families, new languages and new challenges. At the end of the second week together we had gotten over the awkwardness of the first interactions and started to get to know everyone on deeper levels.
That’s all for now folks!
Taryn and Grant
