Sorry I lied to you all, promising that I would blog. I would have, but yesterday morning Emily, Natalie and I woke up early to do laundry and grab breakfast.

Let me briefly explain what happened on day 2 in Bangkok, and if my descriptions aren’t enough, I hope my pictures will help you.

That morning, our day plan was all set. We planned on visiting the snake farm, going to Chinatown & Indiatown and going to watch Thai boxing. But, like always, we are out of luck. We got lost and weren’t able to find the snake farm. Before we got lost, we had our first  sky train experience. In Bangkok, they have subways that go above the car roads and they call them  sky trains. Wei-Hao got something similar to a water ice on the way. Everyone took a bite out of it and it was very tasty. (On a side note, mom, here are two pictures of me with friends. I am alive and having fun in Thailand!) Anyway, eventually we gave up on finding the snake farm and headed towards china town. We browsed through the streets, and saw more street vendors. We had lunch at a chinese restaurant and I had egg noodles with shrimp.

After touring more of china town, we tried to find the snake farm again, and when we turned to the other direction and found the snake farm. The snake show was pretty cool. We saw king cobra, mango snake, etc… and at the end they let us take pictures with the snake.
We went back to the hostel to rest a little and left for the Thai boxing match. I don’t have much to say because I was asleep for more than half of the program. It was very humid in there and we did not eat dinner before. (Mom, you will see pictures of me sleeping later.)
After the Thai boxing, we did some shopping on our way back to the hostel and I got an orange purse which I am very happy about 🙂

Day 3 (which was yesterday), like I mentioned earlier, the girls got up and went to Starbucks for coffee and muffins. We left the hostel around noon, after checking out, and went back to china town to find the singing bowl place. We had our first tuktuk experience! We divided our group into 3 tuktuks and headed to “Ban Baht.” T. Deb and Wei-Hao, JM and I were in one, and Alex, Paul, David and Emily were in one, and Amadou, Peter and Natalie were in one. When my tuktuk got to the right place, we did not see the rest of the group. JM and I were stunned to not see the rest of the group there and looked for the others for a little, and T. Deb and Wei-Hao decided that we would eventually meet at the hostel anyway, so my group went to see the golden mount, another Buddhist temple.

On our way back, we got in a boat, headed to the national stadium and went to the biggest mall I have ever seen in Bangkok, maybe the only real mall. We ran into David and Paul in the mall. Us four, 2 teachers and 2 students grabbed dinner, and walked around for a while and went back to the hostel. If there weren’t enough trouble for the day, there was one more problem that we ran into. Our original plan was to leave the hostel by 8 for our train to Chang Mai at 9. T. Deb said that we should get some water and snack for the 10 hour train ride, so we went to Seven Eleven. We were taking our time, deciding on our snack but T. Deb ran in to tell us that our train was at 19:25 and she confused 7:25 as 9:25. So once again, we were in a hurry, running to the hostel, grabbing our luggage.

We lost one taxi, but ended up grabbing enough to get to the train station. We were afraid we were going to miss our train but we didn’t! The train station looked really cool. But we were in a hurry, so I did not get to take any pictures. We chilled on the train for a little bit and I eventually went to sleep around 9.

Day 4 (today!)

I started out the morning with taking pictures of everyone who were up and who were not up. We had breakfast on the train and arrived in Chiang Mai close to 10AM. We drove to the guest house that we will be spending the night at, RUX THAI, and we had free time until 7. So we browsed through the city and went to the market and got some bracelets and presents for people back home.

For dinner, we went to this fancy restaurant filled with tourists. The food was absolutely yummy and there were shows following the meal. Now I am sitting in my room, getting ready for bed. We leave for the Elephant Nature Park tomorrow morning. We are all excited to work with the elephants.

Flickr is currently not responding, so I will upload the pictures to the blog post later, but for the time being, please visit my Flickr to see the pictures! Sorry!

February 26, 2011

Lynn

I’m not really sure if what I’m learning is correct or not. Sure it makes sense, logically, but it doesn’t feel right. I was filmed numerous times and told there are a lot of great things in my swing, but a few major things I need to work on. The first two days I worked with a lady, Annie, who was on The Big Break in Mexico, a show filled with contests on golf courses all over the world. She’s awesome and very patient. She stands there, ball after ball, telling me what was wrong. Every day she has given me something new to work on, which I’m excited about. But I’m not sure what my swing is supposed to look like. I’m not sure if I’m even going to know that by next Friday. I’m worried because I cannot swing without feeling embarrassed. Every ball barely lifts off the ground. They keep telling me it will eventually get there, but when I try my old swing, it’s completely worse than when I showed up. The three girls in the Academy tell me everyday that the only way I can get a lot out of the program is to be here for a few months. They have all been here since September, and have improved dramatically. It’s making me want to come for a long period of time. I keep thinking about next year and how I want to be a much better player, but I’m not sure if that is realistic. There are many post graduates here, and they play in tournaments every weekend and get lessons and instruction during the week. They have been encouraging me to come next year. I’m really interested, even though I’m accepted into college!

Because I’ve been really frustrated and worried I‘m not getting enough instruction, I’ve been pushing myself to play as much as I can. My parents paid a lot a lot of money for me to come here but I’m not sure if I’m getting my money’s worth. I wouldn’t say it is a waste but I wish I was getting more out of it. The director of the Academy told me the most I will get out of my two weeks here is a workout plan done by Atay, a Turkish trainer, pro golfer, and gymnast. He assessed me on Tuesday and was shocked that I had to work on so many things. By Thursday he made me a four-page workout plan. He taught me all of the exercises and told me I had to get a trainer when I got home to help me. It made me really worried. I’m not sure if I can even improve my swing if I don’t fix those things first.

Through all the tiredness and frustration, I still managed to have a great day today. It was my first day off, and we drove two hours to the beach. It was so nice to get away from golf clothes and bad tan lines. I laid out on the beach for the whole day and it let me think about what I really want to get out of golf in the next few years. It made me feel more confident and even though I’m nervous to start playing again tomorrow, I’m more relaxed.

I’ll let you know if my experience gets any better next week!

Since I last wrote we have been doing a lot of traveling. Yesterday we went to Nazareth  and visited the Church of the Annunciation and the Church of Mary. Then we rode to the Sea of Galilee and visited Capernaum, Mount of Beatitudes, and one more small church right on the lake (I forget the name). We got a chance to take some touristy picture by the lake and we all touched the water and such. The restaurant we ate at served St. Peter’s fish, so a bunch of us, including me, ate it. If you don’t know what it is, it is simply a type of fish caught in the lake that they stick in the fryer and serve with the head and all. To be honest I didn’t realize that when I ordered it.

We spend the night back in Jerusalem and in the morning we went to a church service at the Church of the Redeemer. Afterwards we had some time to do some shopping. Before I left my dad taught me how to haggle so I was excited to put my skills to use. Unfortunately, I think I let my dad down. I was too eager to buy a Keffiyeh. The man asked for 150 shekels and I got it down to 90 (about $30). I was excited that I got it down that much so I took it. I didn’t realize until after that it was way too much for what I bought.

In the afternoon we visited the organization, Rabbis for Human Rights and had an interesting talk with the executive director of the organization, Arik Acherman. Now we are all in Beit Sahour, a town five minutes from Bethlehem. Each of us are in pairs and staying with different families from the town. The family I am staying with is very nice. They have three boys who are 4, 10, and 15, and a daughter who is 18. They served us a very nice meal and then two of the boys asked Tom (the other person from our group with me) and I to teach them how to play Monopoly. We spent the rest of the night playing. They taught (or at least tried) to teach us the Arabic numbers every time we rolled, but Tom and I took a while to get some of them down. By the end, the game turned into chaos. We were all stealing each others money and finally decided to call it quits and go to bed.

طبتم مساءا (good night),

John

The gang and I had another great day in Bangkok, but it stared off kind of hectic. We decided to go see the milking of a snake at a snake farm. We were really tired of walking so we took the sky train, which is a subway above ground level, and the metro. After breakfast, we went out in search of the snake farm. Unfortunately as we were looking for it we passed it and missed it completely. We kept walking until we eventually got lost and missed the milking of the snake. Suddenly Teacher Deb realized that she didn’t have her wallet. She decided to go back to the hostel thinking she may have left it in the room. That made Mr. Wei Hao Wu our new tour leader, and let me tell you that was an expierence…just kidding, he’s a good guy. Oh and just so you don’t worry Deb found her wallet, it was in her room, but anyway.

Now with Wei Hao in charge the group went into Bangkok’s Chinatown. It was a lot less hectic from most Chinatowns I have seen and it wasn’t as dense of an area. Here we had lunch at a hot spot restaurant. Wei Hao and I made a deal that from now on whatever he ordered I would get as well, so this lunch ended up being very…can I say – exotic. For starters David ordered shark fin soup, which we all had a taste of. It was actually surprisingly good. Then Wei Hao and I shared goat meat, and for dessert Wei Hao ordered this dish called birds nest. Birds nest is a type of cold sweet soup, that is made up of the spit a bird creates when making its nest. Unfortunately he told me this before I ate the dessert, so you can imagine how hard it was to get down. I was able to get most of it down, but at one point my mind just couldn’t handle the texture of the bird spit.

After we ate lunch, we decided to take another stab at finding the snake farm. This time we were able to find it and we saw a snake bearing show. It was amazing to see how these people got so close to venomous snakes. It was actually kind of scary. I think the snakes were drugged though because they had a very slow reaction. After their show, the audience was able to put some snakes around our neck and take pictures. It was very cool. We looked around the snake farm a little more, and then we headed back to the hostel.

That evening the group went to a Thai boxing match. Luckily Wei Hao was able to get us ringside tickets. Boxing is a huge sport in Thailand and the difference between Thai boxing and american boxing,is that you can kick in Thai boxing. We were lucky and got to see one of the two biggest names go against each other. We got there very early, but in a matter of seconds from when the first fight began, thousands of people filed in and the arena became filled to the max. The crowd was going crazy and every time someone got a good hit on another person, half the crowd would yell/chant. It was actually very funny, because as Americans we had no idea what was going on. The fighting was very intense and we were able to see one knock out which was unbelievable. Most of the fighting was kneeing the other person, however there was some interesting moves. After boxing ended we went out for dinner, and walked around a street called Pat Pong. Pat Pong is very similar to New York’s finest Canal Street in, which there is a line of vendors selling fake goods at a low negotiable price. Once everything settled down we headed back to the hostel, and everyone slept like a baby. Now we still have our last day in Bangkok, and head up the Chiang Mai tomorrow. Thanks

John-Michael

P.S: Hey guys, I was able to put videos up, however they are not edited only because I do not have the time. I hope to edit them once I get home. These are only quick clips of the boxing match and the Snake Farm. Again I did not edit or speak  for these particular clips. I do have a few more and I will definitely try and get those up before we leave for the elephant park. Also if the videos aren’t working on the blog you can check them out on my youtube page at http://www.youtube.com/user/outsider202?feature=mhum

Greetings from Ghana! We are once again siting in the Internet cafe in Saltpond, which is the next major town after Mankessim. It is about 45 minutes away from JIMMYCOM, the guesthouse at which we are staying. We have had pretty reliable electricity, except for today when they turned it off due to a thunderstorm. We have a refrigerator, but no air conditioning. We are supposed to have running water, but it relies on a cistern that needs to be filled every other day at the rate that we use it (since showers are in high demand), and we can’t seem to find someone to fill it.
I have several other things which I have written, but Internet access is difficult to come by here, so I will post it as soon as I can. A summary of our trip so far:
There are ten of us here: five girls and five boys. We have Julie, Meredith, Bella, Malinda, Justine, Will, Patrick, Kevin, Harrison, and myself. We have taught four days of classes so far: Tuesday through Friday. Harrison and I are teaching fractions, decimals, and percentages, as well as conversion between the three. Meredith and Julie are teaching Music and Dance, Patrick and Will are teaching vocabulary, Malinda and Justine are teaching human anatomy, and Bella is teaching reading comprehension. We all also help out with providing extra english and reading practice for the kids.
The kids at Heritage are great, but sometimes we get a little overwhelmed when they all crowd us. The school covers kindergarten through the equivalent of eighth grade. We teach JHS1 and JHS2 (Junior High School 1 and 2, or 6th and 7th grades). These two grades are split into A and B sections, with the A being considered the more advanced of the two.
In the afternoons, we have alternated (so far it was between boys and girls) with the forming of cinderblocks, which will be used in construction of mini-main hall, the new building that will become a high school and eventually become a boarding school at Heritage.
Whichever group was not making cinderblocks instead went to Mankessim, where we visited a cloth shop to buy material for clothing. It is patterned using dyes and wax to prevent the cloth from taking the dye.
On Thursday, a tailor came to take our measurements in order to sew the cloth and have the clothing made by the time we leave. He also came back on Friday to check to make sure he had our orders correct.
On our first visit to this cafe, Julie, Will, Patrick, and I walked to the beach. We had several local kids following us. While we were there, a man asked to talk to Julie, and she dragged me over with her. I wasn’t exactly paying attention to the conversation, but it turns out that Julie received the first marriage proposal of our trip, and I became the first honorary husband.
On Friday, we drove to Ochiso Heritage Academy, formerly Faith International. We took a short tour before meeting the kids. Some of us ended up playing a rather chaotic football (soccer) game with them.
Hope to see more from me soon,
Daniel.

Hey everyone,

Today is Saturday and I worked again at Back Alley Bikes this morning from 10-12. We took all of the rusted and unusable bike parts to the local scrap center for cash. Afterwards one of the volunteers took three of us out for the best Arab food I have ever had. Then to the Arab version of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. I’m lying here at 5 in the afternoon still digesting. Last night however I went to a party at the Trumbullplex’s sister collective called The Crow Manor. 12 people are packed into one house that is constantly creating art and playing or blasting music. It was a really cool site. I didn’t have my camera on me last night or today but I met a really great guy named Scott who told me about a documentary he was in. I just looked it up and its the best thing I have seen yet that can describe what Detroit is all about.

Peace,

Henry