Hey Everyone!

My name is John-Michael and I am a Senior at The Westtown School. For my Senior Project I am going to Thailand and will be there for about two weeks. One of my passions is creating videos and so most of my trip I hope to be vlogging, which is video blogging. Hopefully this will give everyone a visual of what we are doing.

I’m going to be honest with you, I’m actually kind of scared about this trip. Last week we had a meeting about our travel plans and what to pack, and let’s just say it’s going to be quite the adventure. We leave on February 22nd out of Philadelphia to Detroit. Then from Detroit we fly to Tokyo, and then from Tokyo, we fly to Bangkok. I think it comes out to about a 30 hour flight. Well, at least I’ll be rackin’ up the frequent flyer miles. During our time in Thailand, we are spending the first four days in Bangkok, then a week in an Elephant Nature Park, and then back to Bangkok for a day. While we are in Bangkok we will be site seeing and experiencing the unique culture. We are visiting temples and touring the city of Bangkok. While at the Nature Park, we will be working with elephants right outside the city of Chiang Mai. There we will wash them, feed them, and clean up after them. I have always wanted to see an elephant because I hear they are some of the smartest animals and they have very similar emotions as humans. It is going to be hard adjusting to the new lifestyle and culture and I have never really backpacked around a foreign country before.

I am going with a great group kids and I believe four of us are blogging. I have traveled out of the country many times before, but I have never been to Asia. Also I love animals and I can’t wait to see an elephant up close. I hope I will be able to post some video and pictures of the elephants up on my blog. So with seven more days until we leave, I am extremely excited but also very nervous. I’ll also be putting up a welcome video up for those of you who like visuals. Thanks

John-Michael