Yesterday evening I had my final dinner with the kids. Jon and some of the older children and I prepared food at the OPC office. We sang songs and peeled garlic together as the sun set. I closed my eyes and listened to the wind rustling the almost-ready rice and the kids quiet chatter and laughter and thought about everything that has happened to me at OPC. I do not know if I have changed, and I am not sure if I "made a difference" as many people ask me, now my trip is almost complete. I feel that things deterioriated towards the end of thie five and a half months, and I can't help but wish that they had ended differently.

We all ate Kham Chuen's delicious cooking together. I was unable to eat much of it because I am ill right now, but I enjoyed watching the kids go back with their tin plates for seconds, thirds, fourths...

After the kids left Jon and I got on the motorbike and drove to one of the wats in town. Three OPC sdtudents were dancing in a celebration. The wat was flooded with bright lights, people were milling about everywhere, and two stages were set up - one with loud rock karaoke, and another with traditional song and dance recitals. I could see Mokam, Puttaraksa, and Myaou peeking atme from behind the bright pink curtain, laughing and waving. When they began dancing I started to get emotional, and I am not sure why. They finished, changed, and then grabbed our hands and dragged Jon and I off to the mandala maze in the center of the wat. We chased each other around in the mandala for what seemed like hous, and then bought bubble tea.

After a final dash through the mandala maze again we left under a brewing thunderstorm. The girls hugged me and then ran off to find their friends. I held back from crying, but it was difficult.

Katie left this morning and I am glum. It was so nice to have fluent conversation, a friend that I have known my whole life, and her sense of humor here for company. Together we traveled from the far north to the upper southern gulf, shopping mercilessly, drinking daiquiris out of glasses shaped like naked women, getting kicked out of market stalls, soaking in a mineral pool, discussing intricate topics such as the multifaceted mysteries of chocolate and our annoyance at unwanted body hair. Oh, and we went snorkeling but our masks kept leaking.

To console myself I moved into a different guest house. A sullen lady boy wearing a blue headband with a bow checked me in. now I have three days to kill in Bangkok until Jon arrives on Friday.

All of my careful planning came to naught - my visa expired and I had to leave my friend Katie in Bangkok to rush to Aranya Prathet to dash into Cambodia and back into Thailand again. Annoying because Katie is leaving Thailand tomorrow and this took two days out of the time that I could spend with her.

After a five hour bus ride I arrived in Aranya Prathet at 9 p.m. In the dusty orange light from the halogen street lamps I could see...nothing. The place was deserted and creepy. A tuk tuk driver hailed me and offered to take me to a guest house for 60 baht. I had no other options, so I climbed in, his tuk tuk roared, and he drove me a mere 300 meters, across a busy intersection, threw my backpack and I out of the car and demanded his cash. A lot of money for a short distance.

The guest house was locked, but after enough pounding on the door a small twenty-something Thai man materialized and offered me the second worst room I have ever stayed in for 200 baht a night. Immediately next to my room was a raucous karaoke bar where a fight between three women was building up gradually, and would come to a full-blown brawl at about 2 in the morning. I had to give the guest house owner my passport (it's a long story, please don't criticize) with the understanding that I would get it back form him at 8 a.m. the next day so I could leave town. My throat was swollen and sore, and a racking chesty cough rattled my lungs.

The next morning the guest house owner was nowhere to be seen. According to the Cambodian cleaning lady, he was a very bad man, and was sleeping off his hangover in room #10. I waited until 8:30, telling myself that it is not polite to rush the Thai people - they have a different concept of time than Westerners, I am a visitor to their country, I don't want to set a bad example, etc. etc. etc.. I have been very good about being patient with the Thai people, but that morning my stamina failed and I dropped back into a very American attitude. I ran over to room #10, and tapped on the door.

Nothing.

I tapped again. Nothing.

I knocked, loudly. Nothing. The disgruntled Cambodian cleaning lady peeked around the corner, clutching her mop handle with both hands. I pounded my palms against the door. Then I hauled back and started punching it until the the building shook. I also yelled some names at him, but for the sake of my poor Christian mother I won't mention them. I could hear him stirring inside, then he wrenched the door open and blinked at me from crusty, bloodshot eyes.

My passport retrieved, I jumped in a tuk tuk and we puttered towards the border. I meandered through immigration lines, down catwalks and across cesspools in my little blue sun dress, bribes of pink 100 baht notes tucked snugly inside my passport - none of them were refused. After the deed was done I jumped on the first bus back to Bangkok and ate cashew nuts and dried bananas for lunch.

Poipet, the Cambodian compliment to Aranya Prathet, is a sick contrast between arrogant and humble, wealthy and poor. Casinos as big as airplane hangers, white and sparkly in the sun, tower over dirty, sick children begging in the dusty, stinking streets. Rich Asians climb into chauffeured cars and drive past lean, sweaty young Cambodian men and women pulling wooden carts loaded with oranges, pomegranates, and other tradable goods. Just another nasty border town where the absolute best and worst in human nature stands out starkly. This is the last time I'll have to go to one of these towns, and I will not miss it.

When I returned to Bangkok I took a motorbike taxi back to my guest house. While we were tearing down the crowded streets at 80 kilometers an hour, slitting lanes and driving the wrong way down one way streets, a helmet fell from the basket of the motorbike in front of us, directly in our path. I saw the helmet bouncing towards the front wheel, and then I saw our dog that I grew up with - Kiahulani, red apples on my parents apple trees, falling and skinning my knee when I was ten, Joshua hitting me with a tennis racket when I was 15, me throwing my drink in my ex-boyfriends face when I was 22, the first time Jordan told me he loved me, and then I realized that must have been a "life flashing before your eyes" moment just as my hero of the moment, the motorbike taxi driver deftly dodged the helmet, fingered the driver who had lost it, and swore in Thai. Then he stopped the bike.

"Ok you?" He asked?

"Ok, yes", I said, with my heart pounding somewhere in my throat, which was getting more and more sore by the minute. "Ok you?" I asked.

"Very goot!" he yelled, and then we were off again.

First wedding dress fitting today, and the verdict is: for the $250 that I am paying for this dress I am most impressed. Olan the tailor is also impressed with herself, and she told me so emphatically. Now I wish I had my mother and girlfriends with me so that I could have someone to be excited with...

Tomorrow morning I am leaving for Chiang Mai to have my wedding dress fitting, buy Christmas gifts for my family, and meet my friend Katie who is flying out here to visit me. The last few days have been frantic as I have been packing up some things, cleaning, teaching my last classes, and starting a construction project at our office.

Lately the alcoholic neighbor has stepped up her aggression, and continually breaks into the office to steal food, or harasses Kham Chuen, the kids, and me while I am teaching. My friend Jon donated money and time (he will fly out here in November) to build the fence, but we cannot wait until November because she is starting to become violent. Therefore, the fence was started this week, and the cost was surprisingly more than I expected.

If anyone reading feels the need to donate some cash towards the fence project, at this point we will come up about $50 short.

There is a night market here in Mae Hong Son that will last until the end of October. It is a quiet affair, with local vendors selling things they made themselves on one street, and a prodigious food market on another street, where the Thais lazily stroll from stall to stall, swinging bags of goodies wrapped in green leaves.

This evening, as I was prowling the food market for dinner (I chose some sticky rice, chili paste, and satay) the lights flickered simultaneously, and then abruptly went out. The people in the market let out a collective "oi!" but it was good natured. All of the late night diners sitting by the lake continued to joke with each other, sip their beer, and paw at their sticky rice in the dark. Some children brough out a package of sparkler fireworks leftover from the lent festival, and soon flares of pink and blue lit the street. I tiptoed to the side of the lake and waited for the lights to come on – and chanced to look up. The stars were twinkling with vigor, and for the first time since I was a little girl I saw the murky streak of the milky way. Honestly, I am so unused to nights without light pollution that I had quite forgotten about the existence of the milky way.

Five minutes later, while I stared open mouthed at the sky and Thai people caroused around me in the dark, the lights went on, and a whoop erupted from the market. The people assumed their original positions and commenced to shuffle in their flipflops, swing their bags of leafed treats, and yell good natured insults at each other.

This may seems surprising to many of you, but the weather here is starting to feel decidedly Octoberish. The evenings and mornings are crisp and downright chilly. The afternoons are scorchingly hot. The full moon has been giving creepy shows in the late evenings, as it's smooth yellow face leers from behind the dark clouds at night and illuminates the mist that rises from the rice paddies.

This is a long post, and it is a rant.

Yesterday I distributed the gifts that my aunty Cheryl and cousins Michelle and Justin sent for the OPC children. I felt like Santa Claus. The kids were screaming with delight, squabbling, playing with such vigor that you would think someone was paying them. I walked away feeling warm and fuzzy, thinking that from now on I just want to be the person who gives handouts. Yeah, everyone wants to be that person. I am just glad I got to be it for one hour.
As I slipped and slopped through the orangy mud back to my apartment I saw the poor, pathetic shack that is the neighbor’s house. Inside two small boys were sitting quietly. In the dark room next door a man dozed, probably drunk, I thought, and in the “kitchen” an extremely pregnant young woman was putting away dishes in the dark. I made a quick decision and changed my direction.

“Sawatdee ka!” I called out.

“Ka…” the pregnant woman said nervously, and then gave a very low, very respectful wai. “Herro” she said shyly. I saw that she was indeed VERY pregnant.

I grinned and handed her a bag of cookies. “Kup koon ka, er…tank you” she said, still smiling and looking down. Although it is difficult to tell, she looked only about 23 years old. I gave a bag of cookies to each of the small boys as well. Their eyes were wide and their mouths hung open. A foreigner was talking to them! The sleeping man sat up and demanded some cookies, so I acquiesced, although I thought about saying no. I knew that this man was one of the people throwing firecrackers on my balcony a few nights earlier, and that he was usually intoxicated in the evenings. I turned to the woman again, “only four? Um…See…pu chai, pu ying?” I asked, butchering her language, holding up four fingers. “Mai chai, haa” she said, holding up five fingers. I handed her another bag of cookies. I had a garbage sack full of them. She gave another low wai, the man grinned, the two boys peeked with massive brown eyes, from around the corner.

When I got back to my apartment I got directly on my motorbike and went to the supermarket. I bought Ovaltine for the little boys, and found some special pregnant mother formula. This evening I will deliver it along with the baby clothes that I found for cheap in the market.
Pregnant.

Young. Living in a tin shack, in the middle of a muddy construction site, and the whole time I had no idea. This woman will have her baby in the shack because there will be no money to have the child in a hospital. Her husband will deliver it, and if he doesn’t know what he is doing, she or the child could die of infection or hemorrhaging, or any number of complications.

I hate myself right now. I walk past them every single day on the path to the OPC shelter. I see the little boys playing in the street, but always assumed that they living in a house somewhere. There is so little that I can do because I am leaving soon, and they need long-term care. I will never forget her standing in the mud with no shoes, in a nightgown, round belly, and yet even in the dark, and through the mud, I could see the late term glow of motherhood on her face; the indescribable, intangible secret smile that is always underlying every facial expression on a woman who is a mother, because she chose to be.

Oh we have been given such a gift, to live in America, where our quality of life is the highest in the world. Oh I wish that every spoiled, SUV driving, Abercrombie wearing teen in America, that wonderful, awful country, could come here and see my neighbors, in their corrugated tin shack.

I couldnt sleep last night for thinking about it.

Ten Mexicans sleeping in a room the size of a walk in closet, a single, druggie mother and her fetal alcohol syndrome child living in a squalid apartment somewhere…all of this happens in America, and like the Thai people living in Mae Hong Son, in my apartment building, we chose to ignore it. The Mexican situation in America is identical to the Burmese situation in Thailand.

This morning I saw her as I walked out my front door to go to the office. She was wearing a wide brimmed straw hat, Wellington boots, and a flannel shirt buttoned over her belly. She was using a shovel to dig in the ground at the construction site where she and her husband work. Next to her another worker, a young man, lay on the grass talking to her, but she ignored him, raised her hoe high above her head, and continued to chop at the rocky ground.

Last night was too dangerous to drive, so I was unable to visit SaZing. The poor little guy is usually all by himself during the day, and I felt terrible. When I was driving past the airport earlier today some security guards, tipping back bottles of Thai whiskey, threw an M80 type of firecracker at my motorbike as I drove past and laughed as I screamed and sped off. I decided to stay inside for the rest of the evening.

BOOM!

At 3 a.m. I woke up to an enormous BOOM and then a crash outside my door. I was terrified. It sounded like someone blew my front door right off its hinges. In the dark of my apartment, I thought the building had been bombed. Then another BOOM! I hid under my covers and shook - I had no idea what was going on. Then all around my building more explosions – from the front of the building, from the back, from across the street... I realized they were fireworks, but most of them were exploding on my balcony. The neighbor girl, a feisty 27 year old, came flying out her door, swearing and started yelling at the drunk young men who were throwing the firecrackers on balcony (which is shared). They started throwing the firecrackers at her. She screamed and ran downstairs in a rage, picked up several large rocks, ran back up to the balcony, and started pelting the men with the rocks. I could hear the large stones hitting flesh, and dirt and motorbikes below. They threw more firecrackers at her, which kept missing and hitting my door instead. Inside, I was crouched on the ground of my apartment, quickly packing a bag and changing into some clothes for a quick escape out the back door. Tempers rose, the police were called, there was a fight...I fell asleep half on my bed, half off of it, fully clothed, arms wrapped around my bag. When I walked out of the house this morning there was exploded ordinance all over the balcony, and a pile of sizeable rocks, but no one else was in sight.

This morning I dropped my friend Katharina off at the airport - she is leaving Thailand. Katharina and I hardly met each other before she had to leave, but we became good friends. The two of us used to type furiously in the same internet cafe for the last four months and steal curious glances at each other, and both assumed the other was just a tourist. BY the time I got up the courage to say hello to her she had only a month left ion Mae Hong Son, but we went out often, talked until late in the evenings, and I am sorry to see her go. I went home and ate chocolate because I was so depressed at her leaving.

Last night a father and son came to the OPC shelter and brought a guitar for the children. Then they played their own instruments (guitar and harmonica) until the sun set and Kham Chuen lit small white candles (we have no electricity at the shelter). It was so nice to sit with the kids and hear live music that isn't Thai! The mood was a bit spoiled when the other volunteers came bearing a big battery powered fluorescent light, which drown out the calm ambiance of the candles, but it was a delightful evening anyhow, and several of the children learned some basic chords on the guitar - which they were then allowed to keep after the visitors left.

This morning as I drove to the internet cafe some drunk Thai men and children (yes, children, this was at 9:45 a.m., by the way) threw a handful of lighted firecrackers at my motorbike and laughed as I screached and skid off the slick road. I maintained my composure, but I didn't smile, didn't look at them, just started my motorbike and drove off. This morning was the point where I decided that I am officially sick of Asia and I am ready to go back to a country where I can yell at someone who throws firecrackers at my motorbike in my own language.

I visited SaZing in the hospital yesterday. He was playing hide and seek with no one in particular in his room, wearing a face mask. Although I couldn't see his face, I could tell that he is feeling much better...either that or the doctors have him on some pretty strong medication. In either case, his black almond eyes were sparkling , he giggled, played, ran around his room, and even talked! My aunty Cheryl sent a box of toys and cookies to me and I will deliver a bright yellow Big Bird and a bag of animal cookies to him today.

I leave Luang Prabang in an hour for Chiang Mai, where I will visit the hospital to have some bloodwork done and then continue to Mae Hong Son. The last several days in this town have been difficult and great. I met some fantastic people, relaxed, and ate bread and butter. I also worried constantly about SaZing, missed Jordan, and felt guilty about said bread and butter.

On the whole, Laos is not as friendly as Thailand, and I am happy to leave this graceful city of con artists and cold shoulders for the friendly smiles and low-pressure atmosphere of Thailand again. Even as I rode my bike around at 5:30 a.m. this morning (some stoners were busy having a smoking-jam session outside my room at 4 a.m. and I decided to just leave), women were running after me in the street demanding that I buy goods from them, and yelling curses at me when I told them to back off.

I booked the first flight out of Luang Prabang that I could find because I want to see SaZing as soon as possible, however said flight leaves on Friday and I find myself trapped in this little hamlet for another day. I distracted myself by taking photos on top of Phousi mountain at sunset...

Day 2 in Luang Prabang: This place is amazing. The uncomfortable boat ride, sleazy stay in Pak Beng, were worth it. The city is filled with crumbling, elegant colonial buildings, with charming spots of chipped mortar and peeling paint, old vines growing around shuttered windows, graceful pillars, and endearingly slippery cobbled streets. In this town, atmosphere and presentation are important, and I am realizing how much I have missed that while in Thailand. The street cafes have nice lighting, tablecloths, and use actual china plates, where in Thailand any street cafe that I go to is usually a florescent-lit warehouse style shop with flimsy tables and several mangy dogs begging for food.

I rented a little red long handled bicycle with a basket and bell and peddled languidly around the city. The pace is slow here. People sit and eat croissant, sip thick Lao coffee and people watch. It is a nice respite after the flood-chaos of work and the stress of trying to renew a visa after the coup.

However, it is time to go home. I just received word that SaZing has tested positive for TB. I am getting on the first boat (leaves tomorrow at 8) and heading back to Mae Hong Son as soon as possible.

I arrived in Luang Prabang last night after two days of the most horrible and uncomfortable travel I have had in Asia. The slow boat on the Mekong river is charming for a few hours on the firs day, but the novelty wears off quickly. The presence of three Israeli soldiers who consistently harassed every female on the boat and treated the Laos people like serfs didn't help, nor did the accomodations in Pak Beng - never stay at the Bonmee Guest House in Pak Beng. The overpriced rooms are moldy, infested with rats, things were stolen, and the staff is sleazy.

After a full day of traveling in one of the most irritating bus rides I have taken so far in Thailand I am now in the border town of Chiang Khong, right on the banks of the mighty, muddy Mekong river.

Chiang Khong is in the Chiang Rai province - an incredibly beautiful province that definately gives the Mae Hong Son province some competition for awe-inspiring scenes, although Chiang Rai is very calming and pastoral looking, where Mae Hong Son is mountainous and wild. I didn't get to see as much of the scenery as I would like because I was busy glaring at the bus driver while he first attempted to eat a bowl of noodle soup while driving on the highway (he spilled about three quarters of it down his shirt and into his lap and then gave up. After that he changed the SIM card in his cell phone twice while driving through curvy mountain roads. I stared at him with enough malice to make my father proud, and eventually he put the phone down and concentrated on the road for the rest of the trip.

So now I am stuck in purgatory on the banks of the Mekong river. The hostel (Nam Khong Guest House) that I have been placed in is the most disgusting that I have stayed in so far, there are two Israelis in here yelling loudly into their webcams, and a deaf man just asked if I want to share a room with him in Laos. I'll be really glad to get away from the rest of the tourists and strike out on my own.

The border to Laos just reopened, and I will leave from Chiang Mai to Luang Prabang tomorrow to renew my visa! I will take a bus from Chiang Mai to Chiang Khong, then I will board a slow boat on the Mekong river that will travel for two days into the northern part of Laos, to the old colonial city, which looks like this: http://www.trekearth.com/gallery/Asia/Laos/North/Louangphabang/Luang_Prabang/

After that, provided the borders are still open, I'll return to Thailand and to Mae Hong Son - I already miss the kids!

The real downside to this coup and the situation in Bangkok is the influx of irritating tourists in Mae Hong Son...

Everything feels completely normal here. The tense atmosphere and the worried looks on people's faces have disappeared. There seems to be a mixture of relief and confusion that remains. Many people are discussing the coup quietly, but they are careful about what they say. The government recently banned political meetins and meetings of five of more people, so we are all still being careful. Also, the borders are closed, which means that my trip to Laos is canceled, and my visa will expire in three days. Panic!

Hmmm...there appears to be a coup happening right now. I had a phone call from my mother last night and an hour later another one from my fiance, who were both kind enough to inform me. I had no idea.

This morning there are tanks in Bangkok and martial law has been declared, but in Mae Hong Son everything is pretty normal. There is the usual rush hour hum of motorcbikes, loaded with entire families headed to work and school. The market was busting with shoppers taking noodle soup, coconut jelly, meat filled pasties, and fried shrimps for breakfast, and the Thais as usual, are still smiling.

Everyone has their televisions on but most of the stations only show a screen of the royal emblem.

It's been a slow weekend and looks like it will also be a slow week. I had a piece of rotten fruit fall on my head while I was driving the motorbike out of town, Katarina and I delivered 12 pomelos, each the size of a soccer ball, to the shelter, and we ran out of soap for the children, as well as money to pay our staff and the electricity bill. Kham Chuen is sick with worry. Fortunately, thanks to a donation from my second cousin Davey we will be able to pay for the truck this month to get the kids to school.

Just as an FYI, these are what our most current needs are, as well as prices in Thai baht (THB)
- Used truck, good condition – 200,000 baht (about $5000)
- Staff salaries – 6000 THB
- Paper and stationary costs – 800 THB
- Intern salary – 3000 THB
- Electricity for office – 800 THB
- Fuel for the generator – 1000 THB
- Guardian’s salary – 2000 THB
- Food for the children – 1000 THB
- Clothing and hygiene supplies for children – 500 THB
- Bedding sets for cold season – 300 THB / blanket and pillow

Last night, as I nibbled on bananas and oranges and read the Marie Claire magazine that my deranged friend Pie sent to me (if only you know how I loath girlie magazines, than you will know how deranged Pie is, although since I was actually reading the English words with interest I guess it is debatable that I might be MORE sick in the head than him) I felt a familiar warm breeze on my face and the curtains jumped up in the wind - rain was coming. I thought very little of this at first. The rain comes suddenly, with a roar, not softly like in Seattle. For another hour or so I turned and read pages of vapid materialism and looked enviously on pictures of toned, tanned waifs and the rain intensified.

Then it occurred to me that rain meant more water, which meant that the already swollen river would rise and rise. First I pulled out my rain pack that I made for myself: one pair of pants, a synthetic t-shirt, headlamp, sandals with straps, passport and receipts and bank cards in a plastic bag. Note the absence of rain gear. The pain pack is for me to grab in the event that a damp, hasty exit is necessary. Next I thought about going to the school to check on the water level. Eventually I decided that it would be more of a hazard for the people to have a clueless farang in a headlamp scampering around in the dark near a flooded river than it would be to just stay indoors and hope that Kham Chuen was already at the shelter assessing the situation.

Fortunately, my cowardice paid off this time.

Kham Chuen went to the shelter at 4 a.m. and sure enough, the water was reaching the wall of the school. He woke the children and staff and they waited. The rain stopped the the water level remained steady. Bill walked to the shelter at ten this morning to look at the damage. By the time I made it to the shelter an hour later he and Han were scrambling to shore up the wall of our pig pen with boulders. The water was gushing over all of the banks, overflowing the rice paddies, eroding what little was left of the land in front of the shelter, and tearing trees from the ground at a terrifying rate. It looked brown, like Willie Wonka's Chocolate River in the creepy Gene Wilder version, only this river was creepier.

We decided that until the water level recedes we cannot risk working in the river. The current is strong enough to wash large boulders downstream – despite what my tailor might way, I am still light enough to be easily carried away. The skies are growing more ominous with rain clouds, and I think tonight is going to be a long night.

Jordan brough me a pile of teaching supplies when he visited; mostly phonics and math workbooks made by Disney. In the center of each book is a section with stickers of Disney character that say things like "Good job!" or "You're magical!" or some other such drivel. I cut the stickers out of the books, intending to use them as prizes when we play bingo on Fridays.

Last Friday, I learned something really important about Western moals and Disney porn from those stickers.

I had them all spread out on the table before class and I was busy clipping off the extra paper fom some of them. Two of my 15 year-old boys came to the office to read books. They started talking to me and froze when they saw what was lying on the table. "Stickers!" I told them, "for bingo tonight". No answer, but they continued to stare. Then I noticed that they were staring at a sticker of the little mermaid, smiling coyly from on top of a rock. The aquatic little tramp was wearing nothing but a few seashells on her proudly protruding bosoms - she is very well endowed for someone who is supposedly only 16 years-old. Then I noticed another boy fingering a sticker of minxy Jasmine in a bra and baggy pants, hugging a huge tiger. One of the boys asked if he could keep one. I didn't know what to say.

Do I tell him no? What right do I have to tell him no, I don't exactly know what is "right" or "wrong" according to the society that this little Buddhist grew up in. Then again, the way they were acting around the stickers (giggling and blushing) led me to believe that they were considered "wrong" by the standards they they were raised with. I know that Kham Chuen is in charge of giving them their moral and ethical training according to their own culture, and usually he is quite strict (the girls are not allowed to be alone with the boys, the older girls are not allowed to wear tight, stretchy pants, the boys are not allowed to swim in the river wearing only their underpants etc.) and I wished he was there to tell me what to do.

I offered him a sticker of Dumbo instead, hoping that national pride in the elephant (chang) would bring him to his senses, but no, he wanted Jasmine, so I gave it to him. I wasn't sure what to do.

Later that evening all of the boys wanted stickers of "pretty girl". I gave them Winnie the Pooh instead.

Note to self: In a country that is known as the Sex Capitol of Asia, where child prostitution is rampant, where perverts come on organized tours to abuse children, it is NOT a good idea to park yourself in an Internet café and research flower girl dresses for your upcoming wedding!


I sat in my internet café for a few hours to do some serious research (finally) to try and decide what kind of style to use at my wedding – this included looking for flower girl dress ideas. But the man next to me was instantly alarmed as I looked at photos of small girls in pretty dresses online. He nervously glanced at my screen, then imploringly looked at the internet café owner, then back at my screen again. Fortunately the owner is a friend of mine and I wasn’t questioned, but as soon as I noticed what was going on I stopped browsing for flower girl dresses. That can wait until I get home!

Yesterday Puttaraksa, my adorable, squirly little girl who never pays attention in class because she is always drawing pictures of flowers and mountains, interrupted me as I was talking. She grabbed the marker from my hand and started writing on the whiteboard: J...E...R...K...Y.

"Teacher!" she said excitedly, pointing at it, "Same same as cow?" I told her it was "same same but different" which is a bit of a cop-out, but I was caught off guard.

The day before SiHkur was reading his Thai-English dictionary and asked me if I thought I was a very good occulist. I told him that I have never been an eye doctor before (he probably got this idea because I was constantly administering eye drops last month when everyone had pinkeye). Then he told me that he wants to be an aurist. After that he asked me to explain the word "positively". I told him it was similar to "yes yes" or the Thai euphamism, "jing jing". He grinned and said that he positively had to go to English class at 6 p.m. and he would positively be back at the office after he ate lunch.

Today I went to the shelter to observe the damage caused by the flood here in Mae Hong Son. The trees have been stripped from the banks and compiled into ugly snarls of branches, mud and garbage. The banks receded towards the OPC shelter about three feet, so that in one area the crumbling bank is almost flush with our pigpen. The water line is completely exposed, hanging preciously over the brown, rushing water.

Kham, Chuen was standing in the river up to his knees, picking up rocks and flinging them towards the nearest bank to reinforce the fragile dirt holding up the pigpen. “I’ll come back and help you!” I called to him. “Mai bpen lai! You should make rest!” he grinned.

I returned after lunch, an hour later. Kham Chuen was sitting up to his chest in the water, looking depressed and miserable, slowly tossing rocks from one side of the river to the other. I walked in and joined him. He told me to go back to the bank because the water was rushing dangerously high and fast. I refused and started tossing rocks alongside him. Two of my 14 year old students moseyed past on their way back from lunch. Seeing their English teacher slopping around in the brown river bothered them, so they stripped off their shirts and joined me. Three more of my students came and helped. Soon a visible wall began to form, subtly directing the patch of the water to the left of the shelter. I looked up from my work to see that a large crowd of people had gathered to watch. Small children, a few women, a lot of men who enjoyed watching, but not helping.

I worked in the river for two hours. It was refreshing, and felt good to do some work where I could actually see a result of my labor. I would have worked longer, but one of my students started yelling suddenly “Oiii! Oh no teacher NO!” and pointing to something bluish and long lying between the rocks. Oh yes, it was an intestine. I am not sure what animal it came from, but it was a really long piece of blue entrails, that looked like it had been recently liberated from its body. I looked at the water swirling around my knees and dripping from my shirt, and fought the urge to start vomiting. We cleared out of the river and I squelched through the rice paddies to my apartment where I marinated in my precious anti-bacterial soap for 15 minutes, before collapsing on my bed and falling asleep.

Back in Mae Hong Son it is sweltering - in fact it feels hotter today than it every has the whole time I have stayed in Thailand. Currently it is 7 p.m. and apparently the temperature is only 30 c with a 72% humidity rate, but it feels much hotter. Yesterday Julia and I met in Chiang Mai for dinner and debriefing after her month of volunteering. She feels exhausted, defeated, burned out, and a little lost...which is exactly what happens to me at the end of each month. It is embarassing to say this, but I found it a relief to know that I am not the only one who feels this way. Tomorrow I will go view the shelter and see what the damage is, then I'll introduce the two new volunteers to Kham Chuen.

At the instruction of the tailor who is making my wedding dress for me, I am now on a strict diet of veggies only, no sugar, and exercise every day.

Standing in a silk shop while the tailor and her assistants pinch my hips and giggle while taking my measurements is enough to make me comply. She said that she is making the dress a tad too large in case I manage to gain any more weight by the time it will be finished in October and then she asked me "are you sure you can lose weight? I hung my head in shame and said yes, and she told me that I look pretty disgusting right now. I think the secret to having the pixilike figure of a Thai girl isn't chilli, it's peer pressure!

Jordan has left Thailand for Seattle and I am now in Chiang Mai feeling abandoned, weepy, and self-pitying. This is entirely inappropriate since I just received word yesterday that the river near OPC flooded, the bridges to the shelter all washed out, part of the building has been destroyed, and all of the children have been evacuated to the office and the farm a few kilometers away. I met with our two new volunteers this morning over coffee in Chiang Mai and as luck would have it, Bill is an engineer and is eager to get to work on repairing bridges. It's a disaster, but perhaps that is exactly what I need in order to keep my focus and take my mind off of how desperately I want to be with my fiance right now.

I suppose that many people know by now that I have decided to partake in a socially approved nuptial ritual, even though I spent the previous 10 years telling friends and family that said nuptial ritual was for stupid breeders.

As if I don’t have enough to do trying to figure out how to feed 43 children and send another 35 of them to school, now I have to plan a wedding from Thailand. My wedding! Easy enough for girls who have been thinking about their wedding since age five, but I just put my mind to it for the first time in my life. Did you know that if I wear a cream-colored dress the men cannot wear white shirts, or that most formal invitations involve five pieces of paper, or that if one of my best friends is a man (Jon) I can’t put him in a pink bridesmaid dress like all the other maids?

Jordan (who I have been dating for two years and nine months) flew to Thailand and gave me a “stand-in, anti-mugger” ring that looks low-profile, so that in the unfortunate event that I get robbed while traveling/working I won’t have my finger cut off. It will be replaced when I return home in November. We got engaged on August 27, the supposed day that my visa expired, although through some stroke of luck, my visa is good until September 24, which would have been nice to know before we spent five hours traveling to the immigration office the next day to get it renewed.

No date for the wedding yet, but it will probably take place some time in late February.

No not on Valentines Day. Don’t be cliché…

Today, to distract myself from the fact that Jordan will be here in two days and I am sick of waiting, Julia and I decided to climb to the top of wat Doi Kong Mu at the request of our teenage girl students. They said they wanted to pray or meditate, or make an offering...I couldnt really understand exactly what they were talking about. Julia and I both wore long skirts and nice shirts because we were unsure of the formality of the situation on top of the wat. The girls didn't show up, so the two of us sweated slowly up the hill, the agonizing steps to the top were each punctuated with the deafening sound of our own perspiration hitting the pavement.

It wasn't really that bad, we're just out of shape.

The wat was completely empty. We took pictures, and then skipped back downt to the bottom of the hill, only to meet six of our girls coming up. The grabbed our hands, and boundless energy, they dragged us to the top of the wat again. We decided that two trips to the top of the wat in one day merited a tasty treat, so we ate ice cream, browsed slowly through the temple shops, and took photos of our cute, wild girls while the teenage novice monks peeked at them from around trees and doorways.

A curious thing is beginning to happen to me. I am starting to develop that loathsome habit that many western parents have of thinking that “my children” are better than all other children and that the world revolves around them. I first noticed the problem when Blaise and I were leaving the public school last month and I blurted out “Blaise our children are MUCH more intelligent than these other kids!” To which he replied “Our children??!”

I hang their sloppy paintings up on my wall because I have no refrigerator. I obsessively take photos of every little accomplishment, brag to other people about how intelligent and cute they are, and if another adult so much as gives them one cross look I prickle with irritation …but say nothing. It is hard to be an irritating parent-type in a different language.

In a country full of nose pickers, why do epidemics ever suprise anyone?

After teaching at the public school last week I was accosted by a rainstorm and had to spend a half hour sitting in a noodle shop waiting for it to pass. The phone rang as I sat. It was Julia, our new volunteer from Austria. She told me that a Thai NGO was at our office with a woman and child and they wanted us to take them both. I told her to see if she could get them to leave.

After the rain calmed I drove to the office. The NGO workers were still there. Two men and two women. Sitting on the floor of the office, with a sleeping baby on her legs, was the most sad looking woman I had ever seen. Her face was badly sunburned, one of her eyes stared dully in the wrong direction. Slow tears dribbled from her eyes and made clean tracks on her dirty face. They told me she was 24 years old, but she looked like she was 40. The baby had thin, short hair and looked to be about 2 years old. Both the mother and the child were infected with HIV and had been living in a corner of the market in Mae Hong Son. The Thai authorities were worried for her safety because several men had been hanging around, taking an interest in her.

I tried to explain to them that we are not properly equipped to take care of so many people with HIV. They require special care and more attention than we cannot give. We simply do not have enough money or staff. I also am worried about the risk of having infected people near our otherwise mostly healthy children.

The NGO workers wouldn't leave, and the woman continued to sit by my feet crying. I knew that we couldn't take her, but I couldn't turn her away. Kham Chuen was nowhere to be found still. "What will you do?" they asked. I decided to let her stay for a night until I could talk to Kham Chuen and figure out what we should do. I stayed up most of the night worrying about them. Where will they stay? How will we ever be able to afford the cost of their medication? What measures will we have to take to contain the virus? Can we trust this woman?

Today Kham Chuen cleaned out a small hut that is just outside the shelter and moved the woman and her baby inside so they will not be around the other chidlren. He arranged a deal with the Thai NGO that brought her to us: if we house her they will pay for all the children's hospital visits and medical bills, so there is an upside to all of this...

Today was Tuesday which means that I teach the most difficult class of the week: public school kids aged 6 - 14, who either have no idea how to say the alphabet or can have good English conversations. I hate this class.

Today I tried to get the kids to play tic tac toe. We used letters first. I put an X in the "e" square and asked the kids where they wanted to go next. "E!" they shouted.

"Mai me E, it is already taken, try a different one".

"E" They shouted again, as if they had just hit on a new idea.

Finally one team had three in a row and all they needed to do was put an X in the J square.

"Where next?" I asked them.

"L!" they screamed.

"Are you sure you don't' want J?" I asked.

"L!" they yelled again.

After 10 more minutes of choosing every square except J, no one won.

Ok, so the next time I tried it with numbers since they can't seem to remember anything past 11. "Where?" I asked them

"Q!" they yelled.

"There is no Q. These are numbers, not letters."
They pondered this quietly for a few minutes. One kid yelled out "H!" then everyone yelled out "H!" I started swearing at the blackboard. I can't wait until school semester ends in October.

OPC's website has changed to www.opportunityforpoorchildren.com Please take a few minutes to check it out. We'll be doing a site refresh soon and there will be some new content as this current site is pretty out-of-date.

Our current needs are the same:
1. We need a truck to transport munchkins to school and to drive chicken and pig food from the market to our farm
2. We need food for over 40 little mouths
3. We need funds to cover our administrative costs (staff salaries) until we can secure another long-term donor

I thought for a few days that if I left Mae Hong Son for a few days all of the problems at OPC would magically disappear and I could return and have a fresh start. When I walked into the office on Monday morning Kham Chuen informed me that a belligerent drunk woman had come into the office the day before threatening Sonny and demanding money to buy more alcohol. When I taught class that evening one of my 14 year old boys lost his temper, picked up a chair and threw it across the room in frustration. Shortly afterwards our neighbor, a toothless, suntanned old woman, walked in. She had just picked all of our beautiful flowers that bloom outside the office. "Hey, those are our flowers!" we told her. She grinned and then offered to sell them to us for 25 baht per bouquet.

It is absolutely impossible to maintain a decent case of denial here.

Back from Chiang Mai and visa renewal trip. Chiang Mai is not a beautiful city, but it is what I had hoped Bangkok would be: cheap, not stinky, and it has good sidewalks for walking. It is a very low city because there is a ban on high-rise buildings, so it feels townish instead of cityish.

This was also where I said goodbye to Blaise, or tried to. There was a miscommunication and I said farewell over the phone while he was at the bus station. I am really sad about this. Blaise has been a very good friend for the last two months and things don’t’ seem the same around OPC without him.

On July 26 I boarded a bus to Mae Sot (pictured above). The only busses that go to Mae Sot are the luxurious Green Line busses that have reclining leather seats, air conditioning, leg room and large windows. I balked at the 237 baht price, but had no other choice. As it turns out, I really enjoy riding the Green Line. The bus was air conditioned to near freezing temperatures, so I shivered most of the way to Mae Sot…shivered while I slept. It had been days since I slept. The weather was lovely to behold from the large, clean windows. When not sleeping on the six hour bus ride I listened to This American Life episodes on my iPod and giggled to myself like an idiot in the nearly empty bus. Eventually the road took a downward town into some deep mountain ravines, and I felt a palpable change in the passengers on the bus and saw it in the landscape. Mountains and cliffs loomed close together, dark with foliage-heavy trees. A low ceiling of fat, gray clouds seemed to stick to the tops of the mountains and to the hillsides like gum. No more sun, no more heat. A persistent drizzle of rain slopped over the bus windows, and soon after we were in Mae Sot.

Although I was on the nearly empty bus by myself I took note of my few other travel companions. There was one old man who kept his hands folded patiently in his lap and stared silently out the windows. There were two girls near the front of the bus who also stared straight ahead. There was a sickeningly sweet Thai couple next to me. The woman dozed with her head on her husband’s chest, smiling. Occasionally she would sigh and open her eyes and smile at me. Last, there were two men who appeared to be Eastern European. They peeked at me from over the tops o their leather seats, but never spoke to me.

The bus pulled into a large, mostly deserted square that seemed to be actively in the business of falling down. Stains of mold spread over the three storey buildings and dripped into the littered, muddy streets. Rain wept from the dark gray sky, and not a soul was present in the square except some sodden and depressed looking tuk tuk drivers and motorbike taxis. The two men, Lithuanians, looked at me with wide eyes. The larger one asked “Do you know where we are?” “No”, I told him.

The three of us stepped, bewildered off the bus. The tuk tuk drivers started their ritual of clucking “tuktuktuktuk!” at us. The Lithuanians huddled under a tree. I considered setting out on my own to find a place to sleep, but thought better of it. Mae Sot did not have the easy, comfortable feel of Mae Hong Son, and was so deserted and dingy. So, I walked up to the Lithuanians and said “Shall we find a guest house together?” They nodded. They scoured their Lonely Planet guide and came up with Ban Thai guest house. By the time we arrived there the light (what little of it could be found) was failing and turning from dirty gray to dirty dark. Rain still leaked from the dirty sky. Two European young women, one elderly gentleman, and one Thai gentleman were sitting outside the guest house, and stared as I walked up, flanked by two hulking, hairy, 6’5 men. “We would like two rooms please”.

Ban Thai guest house felt like a clean, orderly island in a sea of muck. The building is made of teak, inside and out – polished rich reddish-brown wood on the floor, ceiling, walls, and furniture. It smelled pleasantly of teakish – somewhere between weathered lumber and barbeque sauce, I think. Nothing was dirty, nothing was out of place. My room was large, with a bed in one corner shrouded in clean, cotton sheets and a generous mattress. A low couch in the other corner next to a low table. Elegantly simple. Silk curtain rustled like paper in the three open windows. Outside the rain slipped down limp coconut palms.

In the evenings the guests congregated at the great table in the front of the building. The ceaseless rain pattered the leaves around us as we read, chatted, and played cards by the lamplight. I had to consciously remind myself that I was not an observer in some Agatha Christie short story. There were the two British nurses, who gossiped perpetually in the corner near the teapot. There was the older American gentleman who seemed to take a keen interest in the single, German thirty-something girl. There was the loud Australian, the quiet British man who rolled cigarettes pensively and smoked them while reading the newspaper. And there were the two Neolithic-looking Lithuanians who played dice and kept to themselves.

The next day I toured Mae Sot. In hindsight, I shouldn’t have done this. The only word that I can use to describe Mae Sot is “grimy”. Every surface seemed to be in a state of decay. Mold and mud, rust and holes. The air was chilly, nay, it was actually cold, and the rain never really stopped. Mae Sot is known for its activity in the jewel and gem trade, so on the main street there are many jewel malls, where a jewel seller has a small glass case in a large room with other jewel sellers. All the real jewel buying and selling, however, seemed to take place on the sidewalks, where men gather in tight knots of arms, legs, and short-sleeved button down shirts to haggle, inspect, and purchase jade, rubies, amethyst, and other stones. I thought about buying a stone or a bracelet, just as a keepsake of Mae Sot, but decided that I would rather just forget the place.

The Mae Sot market is large and more chaotic than the small, tidy Mae Hong Son market. The Mae Sot market sprawls across three city blocks and spills into the middle of the streets. Meat, vegetables, soap, clothing; everything is sold next to everything else, unlike MHS where the meat is sold in a screened off, room with stainless steel booths and is scrubbed every single evening by men with fire hoses. The Mae Sot market stank. Rubbish and meat scraps marinated together in puddles on the ground. People pushed and bustled around with a sharper edge than in MHS where shoppers mosey and giggle while they haggle with shopkeepers.
In Mae Sot I saw, for the first time since I arrived in Thailand, women and children begging in the streets for food and money. This is difficult for me. My time in Rome taught me that if I give so much as one baht to a child, seventeen others would come and mob me, so I had to tell every set of wide brown eyes “Mai dai”. I can’t.

I didn’t receive so many smiles. Maybe it is because there are many foreigners living here who work for the various NGOs – the IRC, the United nations. They like to drive around in their large, logoed trucks and talk loudly on their cell phones in restaurants. This is a massive generalization, but I felt that the inhabitants of this town carried a lot of sorrow and weariness with them. Oppressive clouds could be the culprit, but I think that the oppressive regime, mere kilometers away, is responsible.

An American expat cautioned me to get to the border as fast as I could and renew my visa straight away. The heavy rains have caused the Thailand-Myanmar Friendship bridge to crack and there was talk of closing it down. I headed straight for one of the blue Songtoews parked in front of the supermarket. These cheap pickup-truck taxis run a regular loop between Mae Sot and the Myanmar border. Once I arrived there I was unsure where to go, so I marched straight up to the bridge but was stopped by an unusually tall Thai guard who bore a startling resemblance to Samuel L. Jackson…or could that just be my overactive imagination? Silently he pointed to a small shack and motioned for me to stand in line. I chose the wrong line. No, No, he motioned with his hands, the other line. I chose the wrong other line. Frustrated, he grunted at me, put his hands on my shoulders and guided me to the proper line, and stomped back to his post.

When it was my turn to have my passport inspected there was a problem. My departure card had been destroyed during a wild dancing fiasco in front of the 7-11 in downtown Mae Hong Son during a torrential rain storm in a Buddhist lent parade. Calmly, I explained this to the soldier holding my passport, but he wasn’t buying it. “No, you cannot cross the bridge” was the answer. Blaise had taught me that when bargaining in the market always, always, always, smile, no matter what. Reluctantly I mustered my best grin, which really is not a pleasant sight at all, otherwise I would use it more often. As I expected, my horrific smile solidified his resolve not to let me cross the bridge. Then he started yelling at me “You GO! You go home now!”

“Go where?” I asked him, “I have no home.”

“Then you go to Bangkok, you not come here! GO!”

…Ok, smiling didn’t work, persuasion didn’t work, I decided to try yelling…

“NO! I will NOT go! You have to let me through!” To my right I could hear the Samuel L. Jackson guard giggling.

The Immigrations guards face turned red and he leaned closer to me “Go away! I do not want to see you any more! Go!”

“No!”

More yelling. It occurred to me that I shouldn’t berate a man holding a weapon. A new tactic was in order. I started crying. Real panic set in. I couldn’t afford to go all the way to Bangkok; it had already cost me so much to come to Mae Sot. My visa would expire soon and then I would be fined 500 baht for every day that I overstayed in Thailand. I sobbed as I told the guard this. The Samuel L. Jackson guard now began to look concerned. A different guard with a cul-de-sac bald patch replaced the angry guard. Solemnly he handed me a new departure card and told me to fill it out. “Ok?” He asked quietly. “Ok”, I sniffed. Then I walked up the bridge.

The bridge is very large and wide. Beneath it the brown river rushes past, full of silt and trash. Dirty grass grows on the banks of the Thai side, and steep muddy banks with men fishing are on the Myanmar side. Large trucks were parked on either end of the bridge, behind the border lines, and men were busy scurrying around unloading sacks of what appeared to be hay and also old, rusty canisters onto small carts with bicycles attached. Then the carts were peddled from one side of the bridge to the other. The men peddling the bicycle carts grinned red betel juice stained grins and yelled at me as I walked “Hello! Where do you go?” “Hello bay-beeee! I love yooooo!” Besides “where are you from” I think these are the only English words the men knew.
The Mywadi side of the river is in a more positive state of decay than the Mae Sot side. A mucky street leading away from the bridge lined with three storey buildings, most with gaping windows, rusting ironwork, and black lichen greeted me. In many of the doorways women sat with their children. People sat on the sidewalks, on cars, under trees, kids played with each other in muddy alleys. I knew that when I got to the Myanmar immigration office they would ask me if I wanted to stay in Mywadi for a day. I wanted to, desperately I wanted to explore, but the drippy rain was starting to concentrate on becoming torrential rain and my cheery red rain parka screamed “RICH TOURIST”. I would have to explore another time.

In the immigration office I was escorted to a chair by a man in a dirty t-shirt and longyi (sarong). He took my passport, took 505 baht from me, photocopied the passport and stamped it. A Myanmar soldier in an unmemorable uniform sat nearby at a decrepit desk and absently swung his bare feet and smiled at me. I walked back across the bridge, dreading my next encounter with the Thai guards. Samuel L. Jackson and the cul-de-sac hair guard were both standing outside to greet me. Samuel L. Jackson gave me a thumbs up and smiled. Cul-de-sac guard asked me if I paid the Myanmar guards, asked me if I was OK, stamped my passport, and sent me on my way.

I only had a 500 baht note left with me, and I needed this to get a ride home and a bus ticket back to Mae Hong Son. Knowing that a Songtoew driver would not have change for 500 baht, I walked to a small woodcarving shop nearby and bought a long wooden box with carved chopsticks inside. I call them my chopsticks of trauma.

Ok, this is the thank you blog entry, and I apologize, because it is long. I have not been faithful about thanking the people who have sent support to OPC in the form of money and in material donations.

First of all, thank you to Steve and Becky Andersen for their very generous donation which allowed us to pay for the truck transportation to school for the month of July. Their donation also paid for the remainder of the school uniforms for the children, bought several school desks, stationary, pens pencils and other school supplies. Now we no longer owe the public schools any more money to send our unrecognized (therefore not “public”) migrant children to school each month.

Thanks for Jon Schwegler for his donation which paid for the electricity bills for the generator at the OPC shelter. We can only afford to have electricity for a few hours in the evening but the kids enjoy it since we have one, barely working TV that they use to watch soap operas at night. Jon’s donation also will pay for food for the last half of July and the first half of August. Thanks also to Jon and for Megan Aemmer for collaborating on a box that contained more than 20 candy bars (we cut them into pieces and served them as dessert to the children one evening), God only knows how many packets of beef jerky for my little protein deprived angels, and packs of gum that I use to hand out as prizes when the kids do well in English class. They also provided much needed first aid supplies, and best of all, children multivitamins! Thanks also for the Dr. Pepper chapstick.

Ada Cole sent a box with adorable children’s clothes that were NOT made in Asia, which means that they won’t fall apart within weeks of being worn! Thanks for the antibacterial soap, the first aid supplies, and the encouraging note. She also sent more children’s vitamins, so I think that I have enough to hold us over until I leave in November.

Professor Hans Boersma and Professor Mark Charlton made a donation that will pay for our school transportation for August and the rest will go towards paying the salary of the Learning Center cook, a delightful woman who works from sun-rise until sun-down. We were not able to pay her in June, and we are very grateful to her for being understanding and not walking out on us.

Thanks to my mother and father for their donation which was designated specifically to buy underpants for all the kids. Our properly underclothed children smell better, although I still can’t get the little boys to stop peeing on the Learning Center fence. I’ll leave that job up to Blaise. Thanks to Meme for her donation, which will be used for our orphans (we have seven real orphans at the moment) to buy lunch at school every day. Only the kids who have relatives living in Thailand get spending money, and our little orphans don't have any support, thus they don't eat lunch during the week – until now.

Now that all the thanks are out of the way, here is what we still need:
A used truck. This is our most urgent need because the man who drives the kids to school charges us a grossly inflated price for transportation and has threatened to spread bad rumors about OPC if we try to hire someone else for less money. A used truck (a good one) would cost about 200,000 THB or ~ $5000 dollars.

Bedding. With the recently increased violence across the border Thailand has been swamped with many more refugees, which also means many more children who have been orphaned, displaced, or abandoned. OPC had an unexpected 20 children show who needed emergency assistance and we do not have enough mattresses, pillows and blankets.

Day five of the rice diet. I decided to cut from 7 to 5 days because I noticed that when walking down the street in the heat I would become lightheaded and wobbly. I think that the refugees are better able to cope with eating almost no protein because their bodies have learned better how to store proteins and fats, where as mine just rebels and lashes out against all of these sly starches that are securing themselves to my thighs, my waist, and my upper arms.

I also though it would be good to cut it short on behalf of Blaise, who in the last five days has gone from a happy, smiling, perpetually singing Frenchman to a wrecked empty husk of a man, who pokes forlornly at his rice and lets out long sighs at every meal.

In any case, I had to cut it short because on Friday Kham Chuen and three other OPC staff members (Usa the Thai language teacher, Dao, the other teacher, and Seng Murng our new intern) asked to take us out to lunch to celebrate the first victory in one of the projects we are working on with the IRC. We were first given a light vegetable broth with tofu, mushrooms, cabbage, and bean noodles, and then a heavier, tangy seafood broth with a different kind of mushroom, oysters, squid, and fish-balls. After that they placed two plates of sizzling pork with basil leaves in front of us, heavily seasoned with fish sauce, soyu, and chili peppers. While everyone else talked around the table Blaise and I quietly focused on tasting things again for the first time. We hardly said a word. After everyone had left the two of us let out a cheer outside the restaurant, spent some minutes jumping up and down and talking about how absurdly excited we were, and immediately went to a different restaurant to eat something else!

This morning, despite the fact that this has happened to me before, I put on my orange t-shirt without checking it first. After pulling the fabric over my head and turning to find my shoes I felt the familiar burning, pricking sensation under the folds of shirt on my stomach, back, shoulders, arms. ANTS! Believe me; I am not kidding about this, the ants only live in my orange colored clothes. How do I know this is true? How can I prove it? Last month I sent some clothes off to the laundry, including my yellow shirt – and I expected to receive a yellow shirt in return, but by some misfortune when it came back, clean, it was also a lovely shade of tangerine. Ants, who had never given my yellow shirt a second glance took up residence in my newly died “orange shirt”. Now, I not only have three orange shirts instead of two, but I have unwittingly given free housing to my insect nemeses. They lurk in my closet despite the number of times I have sprayed clouds of insect poison into their orange homes. The happy color that I once sought out on department store clothing racks is now becoming my least favorite.
Every bad circumstance is only a circuitous pathway towards something positive; if you look hard enough at your own problems you can see how they cause you to become a better person. I never had any sympathy for my poor Meme living in Westport, Washington, who for years went out into battle against the ants every morning and scolded us grandchildren for leaving crumbs on the kitchen counter. The only safe haven from ants in her kitchen was the oven and the refrigerator, neither of which I have in my apartment. Maybe it is not the color orange that the ants are really interested in but in fact they are most excited to plague the spawn of the Cloutier family. In any case, Meme, I salute you!

Day two of this irrational diet: I am hungry! This morning I had an orange and some coffee for breakfast (no sugar) and had rice in some vegetable broth for lunch at OPC.

Somehow I became involved in a parade to celebrate the beginning of the Buddhist season of lent. Blaise and I accompanied our fabulously attired children through the sloppy rice paddies and knee-deep brown water of the river to their wat (temple) and ended up walking with them across town with a parade of hundreds of other Thais who were beating drums, singing, dancing, dressed in wildly bright shades of pink, yellow, green, and blue. The sun was shining with relentless heat and the kids, who had by now been standing for over an hour, were starting to wilt. Suddenly a sharp breeze blew and over the hills came massive gray clouds that within ten minutes of their appearance began to sprinkle and then send torrents of rain on our heads. Still, the parade marched on. We tore leaves from some nearby trees and the kids made hats to keep the water off their heads. The rain fell harder. My bright yellow “God Save the King” shirt was completely saturated. My long purple skirt wept large purple tears and dyed my legs a ravishing shade of bluish-pink. The water in the streets rose higher and faster, but still the parade marched on – drums beating and people cheering. The harder it rained the more excited the Thais became, until the once dignified march became a whooping and hollering party of wet people dressed in their best clothes, flinging water at each other and dancing. The women near me grabbed my wrists and flung me into the midst of their dancing crowd, so I pranced with them…past the 7-11 store…down the main street of Mae Hong Son…in front of a crowd of camera clutching tourists.

It is now 9:30 p.m., one hot shower, and two bowls of rice with fish sauce later.

After spending some days of thinking about it I have decided to spend this week living on the same ascetic diet of most illegal migrant workers that live here in Thailand. That is, eating only rice and chili paste for seven days - I also decided to allow a little bit of fruit. Blaise agreed that if France lost the world cup he would join me. For obvious reasons, Blaise is a bit grouchy today, a condition which is aggravated by the fact that the only thing he has eaten in the last 24 hours is rice, fish sauce, and one banana. Today is the conclusion of day one and I feel satisfied with my two bowls of rice and my banana, but I don't think I'll last long. So far, the most amusing thing about this diet is the look on the faces of the restaurant owners when I tell them the only thing I want to eat is rice.

Teaching English at the local Thai public school is by far the biggest challenge for me. The children are less responsive than the OPC kids, and seem to have less interest in studying and more interest in shooting rubber bands at each other across the classroom. To console ourselves after rainy a day of public school teaching Blaise and I stopped at a small book/gift shop that had a sign out front: Cappuccino! Brownies!

Naturally I was intrigued by this mention of brownies and I thought that it would be good in investigate further. I ordered, the waitress grinned, the brownie arrived – a massive brick of brownish gray. It was frozen…and I think it is safe to say that it was a flourless brownie. As I sawed through its dense, cold chocolate carcass I recalled that I have never seen a single kitchen in Thailand with an oven. First bite…holy cow this brownie is not made of chocolate!
Well, it was a little bit chocolate. Ovaltine, to be exact. Ovaltine and raisins, to be taste-buds-in-agony correct. It tasted more like sugar water and chalk than chocolate, with small, hard raisins liberally dispersed to add texture or perhaps to warn the unsuspecting consumer to turn back before it is to late.

Now I have a stomach ache and I feel a bit in shock, almost the same as when I fell off the motorbike last week.

This morning Kham Chuen and I drove 25 kilometers outside of Mae Hong Son to oversee the project that we have been working on with the IRC. Two of our staff members are conducting a training session (for four days) to members of the community to teach them about child nutrition, development, and health. The training is going well...better than planned, actually, since there was a span of about four days when I thought that the whole thing wouldn't get off the ground.

On our drive back from the training we stopped at a very small community of huts which was accessible only by a narrow, slippery trail that snaked innocently off the highway. Three of the children at the shelter came from this "village", and after seeing where they used to live I feel that I understand them a little better, and also Kham Chuen's relentless desire to give these kids proper food and education.

The first hut we saw belongs to OPC. When Sa Zeng's mother was dying of AIDS she stayed in the OPC hut which is a bit larger and newer. That is where she died, and where six year old Sa Zeng, also infected with HIV, stayed while the members of the community refused to touch him for fear of getting infected as well.

Next to it is the hut where LaTeng's family lives. It is about the size of two dining room tables pushed next to each other. Two blackened tin cans are what they use to cook food over an open fire. Laundry hangs across the ceiling. Five people sleep in there.

Across from LaTeng's hut is the hut where the brothers Zawone and TuVing's lived. It is a little larger than the rest, but beer cans are stashed in the corners - physical reminders of the presence of their alcoholic and abusive step-father.

The village was deserted except for one old woman who looked as creased and ancient as a banyan tree, and one young woman with her small child. The child's (boy? girl?) head was too large for its tiny body. Although it could walk it's hair was thin and fair, instead of dark. "Malnutrition" Kham Chuen told me. Then he asked the mother how many times she had eated today. Once. What did she eat? Rice and some chili paste. How often does she have meat? Once a week.

Most of the people in the village work from 7 in the morning until dark in the rice fields. They earn 50 baht a day. To give some perspective, this evening I had one bowl of soup at a restaurant (50 baht) and a pot of tea at a different restaurant to scare away the cold weather (40 baht).

I have something to say about idealism and the “holy fire of justice”. There is an overabundance of soap-smelling, wide-eyed new NGO workers who come armed with the flame of justice and rightness in their bellies who know that they will change the world very shortly, as soon as they can start healing the sick and handing out food to poor refugees. Well, when I was at the UN in 2002 I remembered noticing something strange about the UN workers – they had a different kind of fire; the dying fire of defeat. I think they all were once just like the small-time NGO workers who come here to the border, excited to do something and “make a difference”, curse the day that phrase was coined and also the blithering idiot who first let it pass his lips. Working at an NGO in Thailand is not about handing out food and healing the sick, counseling prostitutes and rallying financial support from other foundations, it is about negotiating bribes and tiptoeing around extortion.

I thought that I had gone to Europe to study non-profit management so I could learn how to support people, and that those skills would come into play more than my degree in Communications. As it turns out, working here is like living in a PR scheme. Every day the local people of Mae Hong Son make attempts to threaten and extort money out of these kids and out of this organization, from the greedy man living on the corner who charges us a severely inflated rate to drive the children to school because we don’t have the money to buy a truck, to the OPC kindergarten teacher who stole the gift of 1000 baht that was given to one of our kids by a distant family member.

The head man of the village refuses to help us pay to installing solar panel at the shelter so we can have cheap, efficient electricity 24 hours a day instead of the few hours of generated fluorescent light that we get every evening at 7 P.M. Even though he has put up solar panels elsewhere for free. Just today the man who owns the corner store (corner stores here are also responsible for collecting money for people's electricity bills) claims that we never paid him for the electricity bill, and every week it seems various community members threaten to spread bad rumors about OPC if we do not comply with their demands (always demands of money).
Last week one of our boys – Zawone – contracted a staph infection at the base of his eye and was in pain for several days until we took him to the hospital. I had to accompany him, not because he needed moral support, but because I couldn't be sure that the doctors and nurses would treat him fairly since he is not Thai. The sight of a massive farang (Westerner) woman with arms crossed, deep frown, notebook in one hand, standing behind him seemed to get the job done.

My fire of idealism is snuffed out and it gets depressing here, but at least, if I don't know how to communicate to the people here through words “Be nice! Don't discriminate against these children just because of where they were born!” at least I can say it with my 5 foot 9 stature!

This weekend Blaise had two friends visit from France - Jerome and Matilde (all three are pictured above). We decided to rent motorbikes and drive to Ban Rak Thai on Sunday. Ban Rak Thai sits uneasily at the northernmost tip of Thailand, in the heart of the Golden Triangle. It is a KMT village, which means that it is mostly populated by a band of ex-KMT soldiers who spent their lives dedicated to fighting communism in China. It is also a border town with Myanmar, which I just a few short meters outside the city limits. Ban Rak Thai is most well-known not only for is ties to the KMT but also for its tea, which is grown locally and sold in every restaurant and shop. When you sit down for a meal several teas are always provided in small teapots, served in small delicate cups, with the hope that the traveling tourist will chose to buy one of the air-tight parcels of tea-leaves along with his meal.

Driving to Ban Rak Thai was a stupid idea. I had spent the day before in the hospital with a badly infected foot, and although I received medication, the foot was still swollen and sore when I left on Sunday. We took a leisurely drive through mountains so green and lush that they make me angry. It is a privilege to see such beautiful land and people every day, but the knowledge that I am going home to an ugly city full of unattractive functional building, functional cement freeways, and functional public parks almost ruins the experience.

When we reached Ban Rak Thai we realized that we were not sure where to go (and I suspect that we actually didn’t know why we went there in the first place) and we found ourselves driving up a red, muddy trail, presumably towards the Myanmar border. Suddenly, and I don’t quite remember what happened, my motorbike spilled to the side, throwing me to the ground with my steadily swelling foot caught underneath the searing hot exhaust pipe. I don’t expect it to be my last motorbike accident, but I think it might be the only on that happens on the border of a country with an oppressive regime.

After that my foot doubled in size and burned and throbbed and my mood grew dark. At Blaise’s suggestion we ate lunch and then took a nap under a shelter next to the small lake in the center of the village. We drank coffee and smoked cigars with a jovial Chinese man who used to work as a trekking guide in Mae Hong Son. His father was a KMT soldier. We asked him if Myanmar looked different than Thailand. Yes, he said. In Myanmar there are many beautiful trees. In Thailand all of the trees have been cut down and replanted again.
It is now Monday and my foot still feels hot, sore and swollen.

Two days ago I experienced my first starry night in Mae Hong Son. Since there are so few street lights, the stars here are brighter and more clear than anywhere else I have seen. Fireflies bobbed and twinkled in the rice paddies, and if I half-closed my eyes just right I could almost believe that I was looking at a reflection in a lake: stars above, stars below. On the mountain, behind the wat, fat storm clouds gathered slowly. My neighbor, a depressed 40-something woman who speaks a little bit of English, came out of her door to greet me.

"Good evah-ning!"

"Good evening! It is very beautiful tonight!"

"Yes. Suay mak mak."

Suddenly the storm-clouds gave up two magnificent flashes of purple and orange lightening. My neighbor spread her arms up to the sky in the direction of the clouds. "Bicycle!" she shouted.

"Lightning" I said, pointing to the direction of the storm. "That is called lightning".

"Bicycle!"

"No, not bicycle. Lightning"

"Huh?"

Flash from above again, and this time several deep rolls of thunder.

"Nevermind. Bicycle is fine."

I was delighted to find when I arrived at the school (OPC) that the diet of the children seemed very romantic to me. Every day at lunch there is a bowl of warm rice and some sort of strange vegetable, usually in a broth. One day we might eat rice and steamed forest ferns, bamboo in a very watery broth, morning glory with some chilies, fried pumpkin, and a sauce of ground peanuts, salt, chili, and soya beans.

For some reason, just today, it suddenly occurred to me that the reason why they eat this food is beacuse the rice is donated to OPC through another organization, and the vegetables are gleaned by the cook from the small bit of land surrounding the OPC office and the school. In the mornings the cook and her mother take their large baskets and pick morning glory from behind the office, taro from the creek etc. These kids rarely get to eat meat or even fruit (fruit is expensive in the market and it is considered very bad form to pick it from someone else's tree). Blaise and I decided to go to the market on Sundays and buy oranges for all the kids so they can have fruit once a week, but meat is a bigger problem.

Today, Kham Chuen drove us outside the town of Mae Hong Son and showed us his solution to the food problem(pictured above). On a large portion of donated land he has built a fish farm with two small ponds squirming with whiskered catfish, a clean, covered pen for ducks and chickens, and land that he recently planted with pumpkins, bananas, chilies, eggplants, and lemongrass. On some days the kids go with him to the farm and learn how to cultivate the fish and grow vegetables. "It is good for the kids to know English and math and computers" he explained "But when they go back to Burma those things will not help them. They also need to know farming".

This weekend Blaise and I hopped on bus for a four hour stomach-turning trip to the small mountain town of Pai, which is a sort of Disneyland for hippies. So far I see more white people than asians, many of the restaurants say "we serve Thai food" on their doors, but most of the cuisine is western. There are stores that sell wine and restaurants that serve cheese, beautiful European women who dress in fashion jeans and sunglasses, dreadlocks, psychadelic knick nacks, beards, armpit hair, piercings, and old, overweight, ugly white men with beautiful young Thai girlfriends. Blaise and I are a little disgusted and quite anxious to leave, but alas we missed the bus to go home so we will be spending another night here.

I think I finally have compiled a list of essentails that every woman should have in her purse at all times if living in a small town in Thailand:

- Flash light
- Bug repellant
- Flash disk
- Pen and notebook
- Waterless hand sanitizer
- Iodine and bandaids
- Kleenex or toilet paper
- Chewing gum
- Sunglasses
- King paraphenalia (in my case it is my yellow Long Live the King bracelet)
- Small comb
- Chapstick
- Eye drops
- Bandana
- Piece of paper with the following phases in Thai: "No, I will not teach you English", "No, I do not want to teach your son English", "No, I do not want to buy skin whitening powder", "Why has the water in my apartment been shut off for an entire week?" and "I don't understand" (last one is also a great way to get out of teaching someone English).

Last night OPC threw a going away party for Ruby, the outgoing OPC teacher. Kham Chuen donned a sea-foam green apron and a white shower cap and cooked a feast of traditional Shan food for over 40 children and the office staff. This was by far the best foor I have ever tried in Thailand, and if Kham Chuen ever finds himself out of a job I am certain that he could be very successful as a professional chef. There were curries, noodle soups, a salad made of marinated ti leaves, spicy and salty meat balls, pumpkin, green beans and chicken, fried rice, and that is all I remember before I collapsed from over eating. Kham Chuen proudly stalked among the rows of children as they ate yelling “Eat eat! Eat more!” And they did. Those kids ate three times as much as I could. We also served soda, cookies, and ice cream, which is extremely rare for them, and consequently, the kids became extremely hyper, especially after we handed them two packages of balloons. The blew them up and tied them onto rubber bands, which they put around their heads so the balloons stuck out like ears or flower petals.

After that was Shan dancing, which was very beautiful, performed with wooden swords and 20 baht notes, among other things. It’s difficult to explain. The children’s dance instructor was at the party, and started to teach me. Later that night in my apartment I hopped around my room in a clumsy attempt to practice.



At OPC the electricity only runs from 7 a.m. until 7 p.m., so after the sun set we lit candles and placed them on the walls around the school. With the torrential rain outside, the warm glow of candles, and the stoic Shan band of drummers and cymbalists I began to feel that the evening was so magical that it was all a dream and it would disappear in an instant, leaving me standing by myself in the jungle in the rain. As it turned out, that did happen. The rain did not let up, my flash light did not work, and the candle I took to light my way back home quickly snuffed out from the wind. It was a damp, dark walk to get to my bed.

This will be a long post since so much has happened and I have not written in several days.

Mae Hong Son is delightfully different than Bangkok. The market here is cleaner than the Pike Place market in Seattle, and they even keep the flies off of the meat that they sell and hose everthing down at the end of the day. It is possible to walk through the Mae Hong Son day market and not retch because it hardly smells at all.

I have spent the last several days watching Ruby teach classes, getting to the know the children, and settleing my living situation. The children are energetic little angels with big smiles. They are extremely affectionate with everyone they meet, and quite precocious. They relentlessly ask questions in whatever language happens to be on their lips at the time (Shan, Thai, English, Burmese...and all of the other languages they speak...). They have a very difficult time saying my name (sounds like "Header") so instead they just call me teacher, or "Teechuh", but they have the most difficult time saying the name of the other volutneer, Blaise (sounds like"PraySH").

These kids have been learning English for 8 months now and their proficiency is better than I thought it would be. I, on the other hand, am not learning Thai as fast as I would like. Ruby's command of the language is so good that it is downright embarassing to be around her sometimes. Blaise and I are going to sit through the children's Thai language classes in the mornings (The kids mostly speak only Shan, so here in Thailand they can't really communicate with anyone very well except each other).

The children have so much energy that someimtes it feels like electricity is in the air when they are all in one room together. When asked to repeat a sentance in English they all yell at the top of their lungs "AYE AM A CAHPENTER! WHAT EE YOUR NAME?! HOW OL AAAHH YOU!" etc. They are so cute that I have a hard time leaving them alone to play or to study. They are so eager to learn that I think I will hate all American children when get back. These kids are so grateful for their education, and American (or European, for that matter) kids slack in school, skip class, and don't do their homework. I think that if I let them these kids would take English class even on the weekends.

My living situation has improved greatly. After a day of shivering, terrified in the thick darkness of the room under my mosquito net fortress that I built I was a jumpy and nervous ball of sashimi raw nerves the next day. Everything came to a head when a small black crab crawled out of the rice paddy and sidled through the front door. I saw it out of the corner of my eye, and first thinking it was a spider, I jumped up, screamed, and immediately started crying. Ruby packed me up on the motor bike and dropped me off at a guest house for the night. The next day Kham Chuen helped me negotiate rent on an apartment that is just down the street from the office. I pay 1800 baht a month, which is less than $50. Yeah, I could get used to living here...

Today, after my first ride in a propeller plane through a thunderstorm, I arrived in Mae Hong Son. What can I say, I was unprepared for how primitive this place is. The house that I will be living in has a thatched roof, no shower at the moment (I have to bathe with a bucket and cloth), there are beetles in my bed, chickens that come through the front door, and no hot water. Also, there are apparently very large spiders that like to live in the bathroom, and there is some sort of cricket outside that sounds like a loud electric drill.

I am typing this entry on a Dutch computer with a Thai keyboard. Please excuse mistakes.

Last night I went to see a Thai Ska concert on the beach. There were thousands of people packed so tight onto the beach that it was impossible to walk anywhere. These are wealthy Thai at Hua Hin, and the ones on the bea h were every bit as pretentious as wealthy Americans. They drank cheap red wine out of champagne flutes (wine is VERY expensive here, so even a bottle of nasty Gato Negro, which sells at Trader Joes for $3.99 can be priced over $10 here, which is REALLY expensive in Thailand) and ate Jell-O (American “imported” food) with as much nose-in-the-air haughtiness as any American swirling brandy and chewing on a cigar in a mahogany-lined bar. Eventually the entire crowd erupted into dancing and spilling their beer into the sand.

I met two Economics professors who teach at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok – an American man and a Thai woman who have been married for 10 years. They were friendly and talkative, shared their food with me, and then gave me their contact information should I ever need any help with anything. That is how I spent my Saturday night. Sweating, covered in sand, and dancing with two 40-something economics professors at a beach music festival. Stranger things have happened before I guess.