Two Triangles, Four Triangle

Guess who’s allergic to the sunscreen she was told she shouldn’t be allergic too! So now I’m allergic to the normal sunscreen everyone uses and the special sunscreen that was supposed to be used by people who are allergic to the normal sunscreen. It’s really annoying right now due to the fact that every day I have to go outside and work and I still have four more days left at Elephant Nature Park and all of those days will be spent outside in the sun. ~sigh~

So yesterday after I posted my blog for the day, I ran into Lek and was able to ask her if she was willing to take on an apprentice. She said she had done that a few times before but each time had to let them go because they thought what they were getting into was not what they thought. I kind of assumed that was probably what happened when she said she did. I was even prepared for many of the things she said she did. No hotel, just staying with the village, cooking and eating with them and sometimes there is no running water or shower. Traveling all around the country sometimes getting no down time. If anything it would be trying to withstand the torture the captive elephants go through. I got a lot of alone time after that to think, and walked back to the room with Thaichewie (a dog that Shannon named Thaichewie because it reminds her of her dog Chewie back in the States) and crawled into bed for a little more alone time before getting ready and falling asleep.

I got up a little late today, well I was woken up a little late today and let everyone leave for a little bit more alone time. I arrived with forty-five minutes for breakfast were I told Shannon and Janice my emotional meter was dropping decently due to the fact that I have not had a day of just me in the room all day long, alone. They gave me the choice of staying behind but I wanted to cut the corn, get the full experience and not try to get out of it. So we all gathered a pair of gloves, again, gloves that don’t fit my hand well, though Janice had this little trick that made my fingers actually fit and all clambered into the back of a truck. It took longer to get to the cornfields cause the truck needed to get gas and we took a total of like three u-turns just to get to where we were going, which was like in the middle of nowhere from Elephant Nature Park. We were given these hook things that would cut the grass and Mix told us how to us it. We were then sent to work in the field and each of us made at least six bundles of twenty-five. They were then wrapped by some of the men that worked for Elephant Nature Park then we hauled them to the side of the road while the men loaded them onto the two trucks. This is supposed to be a day long project of cutting the corn, it took us a total of an hour and a half to cut, tie, and load the truck. I have no idea if the guys were impressed, but I know I was.

Although I wasn't totally alone, it was a very zen thing to do that I did check out and feel like I had a little alone time even with the men and students around me. I have no idea if I'm actually allergic to corn or not but I still have some pretty bad red spots from the corn left on my arm.

We then had lunch that was actually really good for being out in the sun and transported around for a while before Mix passed the time by giving us a game to play. It was a spacial game, but I didn't get it probably cause I was way too tired to even think. He laid out two triangles where one point was touching two he then said "I have two triangles, I need four triangle. You can only move one stick and they all have to be the same size." We took about thirty minutes before we gave up and Mix gave us the answer where he moved one of the sticks to form a four and left the other looking like triangle. We asked for another where he laid out thirteen sticks to look like a pig and four sticks to look like a spear and we had to figure out how to change the position of the pig so that it would dodge the spear. We could move two sticks this time. We were definitely over thinking it and took us less time to give up when Mix move two of the sticks our of the four that formed the legs to the other side so the pig looked like he was laying flat on his belly.

We then had a small class meeting in which we were asked to describe the experience we had with Lek and the elephants yesterday in one word. I seriously was drawing blank on a word to describe it then but the more I think about it know I would have probably said release or relaxing. I didn't feel scared and Lek is probably the most amazing woman to work with if anything to do with animals. I swear she could probably walk the earth and not only have elephants, dogs, cats, and water buffalo to fall in love with her but every animal on earth. If there was any way of talking her into letting me become her apprentice I would love to. Mom sadly told me though that they only hire Thai citizens to work there. (So sorry mom but I am leaving America to become a Thai citizen! Probably not, I don't know if I could last being so far away from my parental units for the rest of my life...and I'm not sure about how everything works over here in Thailand, besides that my body can handle the food XD. By then the truck to take us back had arrive.

If there is a speed limit in Thailand, they don't listen or pay attention to it. On the way up to Elephant Nature Park the speedometer reached one hundred and thirty kilometers, a good eighty miles per hour, but boy I swear we were going faster. If not, we were totally going faster today on the way back from the fields. The wind was a cold wind either, it was a hot breeze and it just made my skin way more irritated. We got back, I filled up my water and returned to the room to plug my dying phone in and reading for a little bit, but I ended up falling asleep and being woken up again for dinner.

Today was good, but the dam was much harder than the corn cutting. I am burned on my shoulders,  a little lower on the arms, and back of my neck. Worse is that I am running low on my 'special' sunscreen, and will end up having to use other sunscreen that I will also react to. Is there seriously a sunscreen I won't react to? It's annoying and incredibly unsatisfying that I can't were sunscreen without reacting anymore, especially cause I pale as a piece of white lined paper.

Today I have a cat and dog friend hanging out with me, and somewhere below me there is a guitar being played, but is being out tuned by Rhianna or Beyoncé (my computer added the accent over the e on its own, lols).

Again I can not upload any of the images that I took from yesterday, I didn't take any today, and I do not know when I will be able to so for now probably the rest of the stay here there will be no images and I might just post a blog thats just images when I return to Chiang Mai.

Now to go back, take my contacts out and read until I fall asleep.

-Claire