Introducing...

The wild Travel to Teach volunteers!!

After a long day exploring Chiang Mai on our motorbikes, we cooled off at a beautiful waterfall on the way up to Doi Suthep. The place was absolutely stunning with a natural slide and monks splashing in the water. After a fun time of chasing each other to the top and riding the water down, the boys decided to hop off a cliff into the falls and decided I had to do it with them...and like a crazy person I agreed. I made them go twice before I would go and then I stood there for literally 10minutes staring down and trying to swallow my fear. I had to jump over a rope tire swing and aim for the waterfall's V, the deepest portion of the pool. I had been dared to do cliff jumping once before while up in the boundary waters only from an even greater height and I chickened out. But this time I was determined...I told everyone if I died it was their fault, took a running step, and hopped off. When I came up my body was still humming from the adrenaline rush and I was smiling SO big and SO proud of myself!

I like to keep my quota of firsts pretty high as it makes life loads more interesting and in one day I managed to do TWO firsts: jump off a cliff into a waterfall and munch bugs...

This is the story of how I convinces a group of innocent volunteers to eat the biggest, ugliest bug at the Chiang Mai Sunday market...

After a day of motorbike explorations, we sat in a small cafe near Thapae Gate sipping fruity smoothies and cooling down. On my second sip I had an epiphany, "Let's eat bugs today!" Every Sunday a sweet little Thai lady gathers all her dead, partially dead, or soon to be dead bugs and heads to the market place to show her munchable friends to oogling foreigners and bug loving Thais. I had been waiting for just the right moment to dare a group of people (preferably males) to a bug munching competition and the time was exactly right, we were all suffering from an adrenaline overload from jumping off a cliff into a waterfall and extremely hungry. To my surprise Kyle responded with a very serious face, "Today is the day we eat bugs."

So we went in search of the bug lady...She had big bugs, small bugs and in between bugs...Nick got a weird glint in his eye and said it would be lame if we didn't eat the BIGGEST bug there ever was...with a falling feeling in my stomach, I told him I'd munch anything he munched... Kyle tried desperately to talk us out of our decision, he couldn't be shown up by a girl...but to no avail. We left the bug lady with our arms full of plastic baggies full of cooked buggies. We found a quiet table to set out our wares with coke chasers and convenient shadows to run to if our stomachs weren't as stupid as our brains...

First, Kyle eyed Mr. Massive Bug...

And Mr, Massive Bug eyed him back...

We finally convinced Nick to go first (he decided to play with the bug a little bit before giving it a good munch)...

And then we watched closely to see if he died...

He didn't, but Anna and Kyle nearly did...

Guess what?! We survived! We were so proud of ourselves we pranced around the the market place. For proof check out this FB video.

The world doesn't look quite the same after you've eaten the biggest bug you've ever seen. On the way home a cockroach tried to surprise us (Like they always do) by running out of a hole on the sidewalk right under our feet...not one of us blinked, we kept walked unimpressed muttering, "We've EATEN bugs bigger than you buddy...*sniff*"

Munching bamboo shoots and catfish on-a-stick with our fingers, perched on the banks of this raging river with Inge = heaven!

Goodbyes

Never feel good...
This sweet little man has taken a piece of my heart with his soulful eyes and beautiful smile. It always surprises me how hard leaving can be and it's never the people you would initially expect. I never got the chance to tell this little guy in Thai that I was leaving, but he seemed to know clinging to me like a monkey, legs and arms wrapped around me for the entire workshop. When anyone else would work with him he would always reach back for me, and I took him for rides while he guided my steps. To the fence so that we could pick little flowers and take them back to the home or to the sink to wash our hands. He took my hands in his and scrubbed them with soap like a little grown up, tsking over my cut and wiping it so clean it hurt. When it was time to finally say goodbye, his eyes welled up with tears and he kissed both my cheeks and forehead. As we headed to the van, he stood by the fence looking so sad and desolate I had to go back to give his salty cheeks one last kiss. There is no easy way to say goodbye.

Photogrpahy Workshop

Last week we gave the neighborhood Burmese refugee and hill tribes children cameras and sent them home with the assignment to tell the story of their life in photographs. A big project for little tykes, yes? Some of them came back with cameras full of unused film and others fully used and reluctant to give back their new toy. After developing the roles of film, the REAL fun began! As I opened each folder I got to peek into their lives, to see the faces of their mother, father, sisters and brothers. I got to see little girls playing dress up in princess clothes and where they sleep on the floor at night. Below is the pieced together story of 11 children's lives. 11 children whose families came to Chiang Mai to escape poverty, cruelty and abuse and who started a new life in this city. These series of photographs give us a rare peek into their personal lives from the perspective of a child. Enjoy!

On Thursday, we held our weekly Young Lions workshop with the neighborhood refugee and hill tribe kids. We gave them each a film camera to take home for a week of snapping fun! After teaching them some simple photography rules, we let them go wild in the yard on a photo scavenger hunt. Every time they saw me put my camera to my face to take a photo of them they would do the same to me...I suppose that's fair play. ;)