I was picked up by the Warm Heart crew Thursday night in Chiang Mai, and by the time we got to Aomodoi it was pretty late. I met my new roomie, Andrea, who is a fellow IRPSer that had been abroad all year. She's fantastic, and I'm looking forward to getting to know her over the summer. The class of '09 is lucky to have her. I also finally met up with Huyen and Areeluck who had gotten in a few days ahead of me.
The work day started out with a morning meeting, a trip to the office (in the back of two pickup trucks) and another group meeting. From there we split off, and I joined a group of engineers without borders to visit the land that is going to be transformed into a small school community. They had been sold on the idea that I was a hydrogeologist (not remotely true, as I immediately pointed out). So I had to convince them that I could be useful to the water project without an advanced knowledge of groundwater.... After a leisurely lunch break and our first visit to the town of Phrao, we spent the afternoon surveying the land and taking gps points. Good times. :-)
The evening was low key, and I joined the engineers for dinner at the resort. The food here in Thailand is great. Spicy, all stir fried, and probably going to make me gain weight.
Saturday was technically a day off, but we went to visit one of the district officials to learn about organic farming. The guys worked hard, mixing rice hay, rice husks, urea, buffalo poo and water to make fertilizer, while the girls sat in the shade and took entertaining pictures.
After lunch we all crammed into one pickup truck to visit the Bua Tong Waterfall. The waterfall was cool - the water is high in calcium and secretes limestone over everything, meaning that the waterfall was all smooth and incorporated all the rocks and logs and what not into it. It also meant that the rocks weren't slippery and we could walk up and down the waterfall.
From there we went to a Thai barbecue at another official's house. The house itself was amazing, and the food was even better! We helped out with cooking and then sat around drinking beer and whiskey and eating until we couldn't possibly fit anymore food into our stomachs.
All in all a great 2 days to start out. Everyone in the program is great and we're having a great time.
I'll be blogging here if you want to read more, and will try to occasionally add updates here.
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