School for Shan students.

My roomie took one look at this shot and said, "If you had boobs, that would be porn." I..i.was going for Wicked Witch of the West (to continue with my fairy tale gone wrong theme, duh)! See?! There's even a mortar n' stone for evil potion making and my broom stick is laying right there! But then again I'm not sure why I'm being so defensive, if you think about it there really isn't anything wrong with Wicked Witch of the West porn...right? Neways, I got a little wild with the eye makeup and hair this time, the inspiration for which came from a recent young volunteer. It's good to have those skills up your sleeve, you can pretty much make anyone look super spooky with a wave of your evil wand! And you know how much I love spooky...

Thursday I am off to Laos for a border run/long weekend of exploring another country! It's been a crazy hectic week and this girl needs a little one-on-one time with her camera. Photies to come soon! :)

Check out Inge's Fairy-ness!

Today as I was walking home with my pack shucked full of delicious fruit (yum!), I saw one of our little Burmese girls selling flowers on the street and she ran to give me a big hug, which always puts a huge smile on my face. I bought a string of jasmine from her, which she over charged me for, and halfway down the street I heard her call to me. She ran to me, pigtails flying, holding out 10bhat and saying "sorry". Small things like a 8yr old kid who as been working the street all day in the hot sun (lives in the slums) deciding for herself what is right, gives me hope! She got a 10bhat tip to buy some candy with for being honest.

In the 3 months I've been here in Thailand, I've watched this little girl absolutely blossom. She has gone from being all clenched up and afraid to look at the world and showing little to no expression, to now being able to move more freely and smiling when Judy gives her little kisses. It is beautiful to work with these children and to see them improve in such a short amount of time. When we walk in with the volunteers for our weekly workshop, they literally light up; faces break into smiles, legs begin to shake with excitement and joy. It's equally fun to take new volunteers to Hope Home because the expressions on their faces when they walk in and meet the children initially is so tragic and full of self doubt as to whether they can handle it. But the kids always win them over with their big smiles and happy laughter and heartrending effort to do what we want them to do. We always leave feeling lighter and happier having spent time with these special little children!

Self Portrait #11

I always thought Princess and the Pea was an incredibly genius and silly story all at the same time. To complain about feeling a wee pea to score truckloads of mattresses?! Genius plan! (Kinda jealous I never thought of it myself) But then not to use them for what God made them for?! (jumping on, of course!) Super silly! But then that's always the trouble with darn fairy tales...Like prince charming? Puhlease...I can think of all sorts of better things to do with a pair of glass high heels than wear them around to attract a silly boy. Or to live in a house full of 7 midgets?! (Ever heard of midget bowling?) And I dunno, I kinda like the idea of having an evil grandmother who can cast spells on random people...call me crazy.

Self Portrait #12

At one point or other in our life, we start looking for Prince Charming. I know, I just made horrible fun of the guy above, but it's true, we all want our knight in shining armor to come sweep us off our feet. But sometimes our knight in shining armor doesn't always look like what we envision. Our lovely dog Murphy is possibly the most atrocious dog you can imagine, and yet for some odd reason this makes him terribly endearing. I say 'terribly' because, well, he's pretty terrible! He has some seriously gross tendencies, like slobbering profusely and wiping it all over you at any given moment, going #2 right in the lane so you get a nice squishy midnight present whenever you sneak home late at night, snorting goop in your face...He is the most bumbling stinky mess of a dog that we have even give him his own Murphy voice that sounds very droll and dopey. He is seriously lacking balls (unless a dainty poodle is put in his path) and a number of teeth, and always wants you to rub his bum and if you don't he solves the problem and rubs it ON you. This is why I thought he was the perfect candidate for Prince Charming! Admit it ladies, men have a lot of these characteristics too! ;)

Check out Inge Kathleen's greatness of the week: http://www.ingekathleen.com/blog/

Raincheck

I would like to apologize for all you waiting with baited breath for my side of the Minge Self Portrait Challenge. There is this rule of threes for all failures and successes in life (but mostly failures) that I read about once. Three things must go wrong (or right) for there to be a horrible/lovely tipping point...in this case I changed jobs to Art Director that increased my workload 10X. I hit the Muay Thai boxing gym hard this week which lead to making crazy fun Muay Thai friends who have tried to get me drink every night this week with varying success...AND my 4th card reader of the month broke after using it once...(grr...I am starting a real nice graveyard for all my broken SUPER cheap made in China CRAP!) AND I'm traveling to Burma tomorrow...All in all I know this is a pile of excuses, however a rain check is in order! I promise not one but TWO awesome self portraits on this coming Tuesday! Pinky promise! Until then please enjoy these photies from our past workshop:

Burmese refugees, immigrants, and hill tribes people tend to have a hard life in Thailand . Without proper papers their children are not allowed to attend school, have legal transportation or get a decent job. You will usually find the whole family on the streets selling strings of jasmine, babies strapped on backs and small children running around with grubby fingers begging. Or you will find them working in the hot sun in construction camps where they get terribly exploited and live in the surrounding slums. I run into my little Young Lion students while eating out at restaurants or sometimes even when going for drinks at bars because their parents will cart them around and drop them off to beg for money from foreigners. This also puts the children in dangerous situations where human trafficking occurs and where the jump from selling a few strings of jasmine and selling yourself is a very easy and encouraged one. It is a sad cycle that is only perpetuated by racism and lack of education.

Wat Pa Pao is a Shan temple that provides schooling for these children and gives them the chance to break out of this cycle of poverty and exploitation. It is not a well funded school, but the need is incredibly high for what they offer. The classrooms are located around an ancient old crumbling temple where teachers will take their classes to sit in the shade and teach. Some classes have 50 students varying significantly in age.

We went to Wat Pa Pao for just one art workshop which now seems to have become two or three. They adore us and because the children rarely have the luxury of art classes and meeting strange looking foreigners, they literally begged us to come back.

"Front yard Salsa"

Art workshops that turn into impromptu salsa dancing in the front yard have got to be close to my favorit-est things ever! We all bumped into each other randomly at Sizzling Salsa night in Chiang Mai and decided to share that crazy dancing experience with the Burmese refugee kids who come to our Young Lions workshops every Thursday. Well really, this little charmer was all over the girl volunteers and spent the hour terrorizing us with his fancy little eye lid flipping technique *shivers*. So to distract him, Laura decided to teach him some Salsa dancing moves that she'd learned the night before. It was such a hit we might just make a whole Salsa dancing workshop out of it! :)

Self Portrait #10

Some days what you've got your hiney perched on isn't all that much to boast about. One of my favorites songs has a super sweet line that I think is necessary to live by:

"You might be a big fish

In a little pond

Doesn't mean you've won

'Cause along may come

A bigger one"

(can anyone guess the song?:)

Neways, yes this is a portrait of complete randomness. My new cool roomie (blog shout out to Loweell!;) strapped me into this crazy corset thing I found in a random box upstairs (I also found a feather boa...hmmm) and I ran outside to catch the light but found it had left without me...heartless. So I chased it around back and found some of it's last beams perched on an old broken toilet. I thanked it kindly for my new throne, hopped aboard and took self portrait #10. This will have to be revisited in the future, but currently life has taken a turn towards chaos. Embrace the chaos! Due to a bad tempered dog who randomly bit our former ARI Art director/coordinator lady, I've moved into her job early, working with our awesome volunteers to put together super sweet art workshops that will wow the world. That's not as easy as it sounds. BUT I adore the challenge! I will try my utmost bestest to keep up with this self portrait craziness, BUT if I'm a wee bit late *cough* *cough* please forgive me! :)

On Friday, we visited a home for children with disabilities in Chiang Mai. Our volunteers decided to do a music workshop that consisted of decorating small instruments made out of paper cups and plates. Then we sat in a circle and sang songs rocking the children back and forth and using our new instruments to accompany our singing. The children were beautiful and the staff incredibly loving. This is quickly becoming one of my favorite ARI workshops.