Recharging

Today was a very relaxed laid back day. We all got up at about eight-ish to have breakfast before we all gathered outside the pool area to head to Wat Chedi Luang also known as the Elephant Temple of Chiang Mai. Sadly it was under construction and we couldn't go inside (though I couldn't go inside at all because I wore shorts and a tank top and you're supposed to cover your knees and shoulders). There was one that was open but only men could enter that one...So there really wasn't anything that you could do...

There was something that peaked my interested (besides me counting how many monks I saw). On the far side of the entrance they had the Chinese Zodiac. I ran the bells for the year of the dog, cause I'm one before continuing on. Out off all the years, the year of the dragon had the most offerings. Like no one else had nearly this much. You can't even really see the dragon itself...well I guess you kind of can. But it had the most offerings.

I continued to wander on before I stumbled upon something that I had seen before but there was no English to explain what it was. It's a huge roll of orange or yellow fabric. Like huge. It's on a triangle form where one side you can see all this writing rolled up and the other side is completely fresh rolled up, but the piece of fabric that is on the triangle may or may not have writing on it already. The whole point is to donate to the temple and then write your name, where you're from and something else, either it be a blessing or just a small prayer to give some peace to your mind. They then will take this fabric once it is done and walk it up to the top of the temple and leave it unraveled for the prayers and blessings to be seen by the Lord Buddha himself. So after a few minutes of contemplating, more like ten minutes I decided to donate and wrote this:

Considering I had just come from the Elephant Nature Park I only thought it be appropriate. And I hope you don't mind Mom, but I added you too cause I know how much you like elephants as well. So when the roll is finished this will be taken to the Lord Buddha on the top of temple and hopefully may this a thing where we do not have to worry about elephants leaving this world forever.

I then headed back with a few people before I hung out in the room for a while, before the same people invited me to food. I was quite happy too due to the fact that I was sick and tired of Thai food, which I thought was kind of funny. So we headed to an Italian restaurant where we ordered two pizzas. Let me just say this: That pizza was AMAZING. Like seriously, I wish this was how pizza was in America sometimes. Like out of them all Donato's will always be my favorite, but this pizza was just incredible. Not too much sauce but not too little. A nice stringiness for the cheese and the meet on top was mmmm. I'm drooling just thinking of it. We also did that because there was going to be a cooking class later on in the day where we would be making our own Pad Thai and then eating it for dinner.

We returned where I got a little alone time before the other girls left for the cooking class. I took this chance to fully recharge from being around humans for a good, what, ten days now? I needed it badly and didn't really feel like Thai food once again. So yeah....this is a short post. I've been by myself now for a good...four hours just reading and watching New Girl. For once, I'm glad that sometimes I need to be a hermit and pull back into my shell. I felt like I was back in a normal position even though I'm on the other side of the world right now.

Tomorrow is the crazy travel day, so that'll probably be a short post too...If you haven't seen the last post the last post is all the images from Elephant Nature Park I thought worthy of posting. Also if you haven't seen it, I posted on my FB a video of the baby elephant attempting to drink water.

-Claire

And I thought the electricity wires were insane in our cities!

Photo Mash from Elephant Nature Park

One week old baby!

Baby trying to drink from the water

The massive amounts of food for the elephants

So many cats slept like this

This cat fell in love with me and wouldn't leave me alone.
I had only just noticed that she is very similar to Olivia two days before we left.

Cation! Elephant Crossing!

Cat on the shoulders. She wanted company and saw I had the Olivia cat with me
on my lap so she took my shoulders.

Cat basket! 

Future flag twirler of Elephant Nature Park

Sunday Market Walk

There are a few things that every city I have seen so far is really obsessed with. For starters, the cars, it's either Toyota, or Volkswagen, but mainly the Volkswagen Bus. They are EVERYWHERE. If you aren't driving either of those, I have no idea what they do drive cause I've only seen those two plus one Infiniti. Another thing is motorbikes, either vespa like things or motorcycles. I thought that India had a decent amount (from what I've seen in photos and whatnotes), but so does Thailand. They don't follow the laws of the roads, but no one really does. We did something that could get us in trouble in the US of completely avoiding the stop light by changing directions just to go around the light.

This morning was kind of sad. I got up, had breakfast and we had our last gathering. We did a second elephant walk...er...third? We had one on Sunday or was that Monday...? Those first two days blurred together so I don't remember anything from those. I worked a little on my project as we went around but it was kind of hard cause the babies wanted to play. Like seriously wanted to play! The only problem is is that when a baby elephant wants to play you have to move, but they move fast, but you can't run or they think you want to play too. So it was the Otterbein Group going in circles trying not to run from a baby elephant that was chasing us around the area. It was kind of fun, but also a little disappointing that you actually couldn't play with them. We went around until the very end where Mix gave us certificates of actually doing Volunteer work there.
That place was so amazing. There was so much to do, and so many things that frankly I seriously can't sum it up in one word. I am completely speechless towards the experience I had that I can't get over it. So don't ever ask me to describe it one word because I will say many many many things about it. Lek is the coolest woman in the world (minus my amazing relatives and friends). She really has taken it upon herself to dedicate the rest of her life towards working to free elephants from how horribly they were treated. Its overwhelming and I swear if you ever EVER have to pay to ride, or pay to give it food or Teak Wood, or the furniture from World Market, just don't. Don't. NEVER. Those are elephants beaten into submission to give you those things, to drag those logs to create those furniture. Nope, just no.

We returned to Chiang Mai and the same hotel where we had an hour of downtime, which I used practically in the bathroom the entire time because my body did NOT want to deal with the last meal I had (even though they were all foods that I had and handled before). Before we had a class meeting at three to catch up and reflect before we were released to the Sunday Market. It happens EVERY Sunday. It's insane! It's incredibly repetitive, but also not cause there was a few things I saw last time that were here this time and vise versa. I can understand that it's a treat to the locals, and discount galore. I will not be spending money until Koh Chang or the second round of Bangkok. I went around with my roommates before they left and I did a little bit more wandering, looking into the side streets that we didn't do together and learned that's where all the food is. I was always wondering why I had never found really any food and thats why....they're all on the sides.

I'm working on uploading the images as I write this. But boy do my feet hurt and its almost midnight....sooo you know...goodnight :3

-Claire

The Elephants' Last Night

Over this past week I have had an experience that could happen once in a lifetime and can make it even more. Although I have no idea if I will ever come back. I was told that they only hire Thai citizens, but in fact there is a woman from the Us who is now working for the ENP. She started off just like me, a volunteer whose heart felt her calling here. She kept returning until she decided that one day she would do a long term stay. I happened upon her room on the way back from a walk to the convenient store earlier in the day and she had decorated the whole area she lived in with images and a normal comforter and everything. She said that I could talk to her more tomorrow.

But today was another day of elephant poop cleaning. I have no idea if we finished faster, but it felt faster. Since we had the day before to learn how things worked we had it down quickly on what to do. Today I really did just scoop poop. Over and over and over, and I never felt grossed out and I do have to thank the zoo for my immunity towards the smell. There were many flies, but I was totally fine.

That was the only job that we had today. We got to hang out after lunch where I finished one of my books and watched some of the girls play the card game speed while I waited for my Nook to charge to continue with my second book that I had started to reread so I could continue on for the second and third book of the trilogy/series?

At 1:45 we took a group photo with a few elephants and the rest of the volunteers and then had just an Otterbein Group photo with Mix and an elephant before I hung out in the Pavilion for a while before wanting to return to the room only to have been called over by Mix to unload watermelon from a truck. I didn't mind even though we weren't assigned and worked on my upper arm muscles as I caught watermelon. We finished a little before I returned to get a few things before going to Lek's talk. It made me even more inspired to want to work here as we watched a horrific five minute movie on the treatment of the working elephants here in Thailand and the surrounding areas.

We then had dinner and a performance by the local school before coming down and doing an evaluation and a drink with the rest of the class. Today wasn't much but it was still amazing to do what we have done. this place is amazing and always expanding and I really want to come back for years to come. I could do this for the rest of my life and really hope that Lek will think again about an apprentice cause I know what to expect. It'll be hard work, not full of luxury until the end when another elephant is saved and die with honor free here like she said herself. This world is harsh, and she encouraged us to use social media to promote the Save Elephant Foundation and any and everything that has to do with the cruelty of the animals of the world. So I do apologize but I will be taking that to heart and may swamp people with my Facebook about that. Please please please go follow Elephant Nature Park and do not fear on donating. The money always go towards things like food, expansion, and the most important, saving not only Elephants, but the cats, dogs, horses, goats, rabbits, pigs, water buffalo, etc. that are living out their lives in this wonderful place.

-Claire

The Queen of Poop

During my times of working at the Tulsa Zoo, I was recognized for one thing that I got a certificate for, Top Poop Cleaner. I got this reward manly because the guy I was working with in the Africa area that day, I think his name was either Eric or Chris, we were struggling to get through the smaller animals to get to the giraffe because a storm was coming in and the Tulsa Zoo has one of the tallest male giraffes in the country. So we had to hurry to get the inside enclosure clean so that we could bring him in for the fear of an eighteen foot tall giraffe getting hit by lightening. We got most of it clean but it got down to cleaning out the drains. He opened them up reached his hands in and said "This is a giraffe waffle, you'll never look at waffles the same, or at least everyone else hasn't, but we need to clean these out." At the time I was either completely oblivious to the fact that he was actually holding up wet, mashed together giraffe poop or something but I was like "Okay!" and reached into all the other drains bare handed and not afraid as I fished the giraffe waffles out of the drain and into the back of the truck. Now your probably either thinking, yeah I've heard this story before, so what? and then what does this have to do with being in Thailand working with elephants?

Well for starters I have also cleaned up elephant poop, and everyone thinks its the worst smelling poop out there in the world. Ha! Lies, tiger poop after the day they get their meet fresh off the bone, that is the worst poop out there, but it's because this morning and this afternoon (even though it wasn't our assignment) we picked up elephant poop. It was interesting to see the stalls we had cleaned out the day before with piles of chopped corn and piles of poop. We went around the whole camp of the enclosures, or at least the ones that I know of minus the male elephants enclosure, and cleaned them out. It was kind of weird, cause they normally group two groups together for this job, but there was so much of us there were moments where people would be standing around not sure what to do because everything was being taken care of or already over crowded. We were done at a decent time and I laid down to take a nap in the upstairs area of the Pavilion until lunch time, which I devour because I got up and arrived too late to sit down and eat any breakfast (luckily I was running on a lot of water so I wasn't dying of starvation until after we were done for the morning).

I wasn't as tired of the food, but I did shake it up a little by getting soup instead of sticky rice and the potato curry that I have been having for the past week. I still had fries and watermelon, but those I thin are things I won't get tired of.

We had asked Mix in the morning what we were doing for the afternoon but he wasn't quite sure what cause none of the groups were assigned to anything. But while we were waiting for people to do...things...there was a guy who was selling popsicles and boy am I glad I got one. It was refreshing and it was good. It was two colors of red and orange and both flavors I have no idea what they were but I liked them. Though I liked the red a little bit more than the orange and hope that he returns tomorrow or Sunday so I can enjoy some more before we leave.

For the afternoon we were assigned up cleaning up the park, which in the beginning was confusing cause we weren't quite sure what that meant until Mix had us all get rakes and we climbed into the back of the truck. We took a five minute drive to land that ENP owns, but a little separated from the rest of the park (ENP is always looking for land to expand into) and cleaned up so really old elephant poop and corn stalks. It was very similar to the morning routine, but we kind of avoided the elephant food? I wasn't quite sure why cause we were cleaning and was told to clean up the piles, and there was elephant poop in the piles so who knows.

We were done at about three where we returned and I rinsed off (though you can see where the dirt still is from where the water reached the top of my legs and no father up), crawled into my neatly made bed where Doppellump hung out from the cleaning ladies that morning and read.

I was better today, but only because I had my predicted mental breakdown yesterday after writing the blog for yesterday. I wanted to talk to my mom the most, wanting to hear some sort of familiar voice who happens to be half way across the world right now probably just getting up. So to hide from people and be able to cry openly I went to the elephant stalls we had cleaned out earlier that day and watched the elephants swing their heads back and forth and eat as I cried. Though one stopped what she was doing and watched me until I couldn't cry anymore and got annoyed by the buzzing of a bug that wouldn't leave the area and left to return to the room. With this my emotional battery meter is a little bit under 50% because of today, but Saturday afternoon and Sunday I'm taking all the time I can to sit in the shade, alone to fully recharge my emotional battery cause it's not as easy as plugging in my computer or phone, who hadn't been charged for a while because someone always kept unplugging them and plugging in their phone over night this past week. Again, google drive does not want to work with me so images will not be on until probably once we return to Chiang Mai where I will like promised post a blog page filled with just images and descriptions.

Well the dinner bell has been rung and I have been still typing. I might get an alcoholic beverage tonight in celebration of feeling better and cheering to the elephants for tomorrow morning is our last day and we will be having a small powwow tomorrow to talk about projects possibly. I have settled on my and hope to get some more images of elephant eyes on our elephant walk on Sunday and then try to withstand the pain of the tourist elephants on Koh Chang for I have decided to focus on the eyes of the captive elephants versus the free for I feel you can probably read the emotions within both strongly.

-Claire

P.S. I wore my Zoo Teen shirt from the Tulsa Zoo in honor of picking up poop today

Emotional Battery at -2%

The last two nights the elephants have been very vocal, trumpeting when they can. One just did it and it sounded very angry. I do have to wonder why they have been doing it so much recently. I hadn't started hearing them until two nights ago.

Today was kind of a nice day where we were working the shade both the morning and evening. The morning we did elephant food. We washed pumpkins and cucumbers, then washed watermelons, then peeled bananas and threw them into tubes of rice, then made rice balls adding in brown sugar and grain. Then we got to feed them. This was also the time where I finally got to get a photo of Doppellump with an elephant. I had several taken but the ones that turned out the nicest were when I was holding him. I wanted the elephant to hold it but I doubt there was anyway to actually get her to hold him, but Happy Birthday and Happy Retirement to him. He is now a wonderful sixteen year-old who could try to get his drivers license.

Begin rant: Although I cherish him very much, most of the students that I have been traveling with don't understand why I have him with me. The two teachers and a few people think it's actually sweet that I brought him along, but the students were talking about me carrying him around when we went to feed the elephants. I'm sorry that I brought him? Seriously, I am quite proud I brought him, and haven't lost him yet. I have always left him on the bed or in my bag and this has been his only outing where I knew he would return promptly after feeding. There is a girl who in the beginning didn't mind me (not my ex-roommate), but now just by the slight body language she has with me or the slight wording she has used with me I can tell that she dislikes me a lot. She was the one that began it all she was whispering to her close friend about why I had him the entire time we were walking to and feeding the elephants. I'm a little irritated that she has whispered about me these past few days, but from elementary school I have learned that people either like me and we're good friends, or hate me. I don't really know any people in between. End rant.

I didn't eat a lot for lunch today, I wasn't really hungry, and my emotional state is at an all time low that I know a break down is just around the corner if I don't actually get alone time, that has not happened. We have always been doing so many things that I don't think I've ever been alone alone. Alone time is usually me in bed reading or at my desk somewhere online surfing or typing.

My computer is hot and an elephant is rumbling. Google drive kind of working, I got a few photos up, but it will throw fits, so I don't know when they'll all be uploaded.

In the afternoon we cleaned out the overnight enclosures for the elephants. Never trust Mix or the boys with the hose, they were just get water all over you. I lucked out by not getting too wet, so my phone was safe, it was just my shoes that were soaked in the end. So I kind of wished I had brought some flip flops but I told myself Shannon said closed toed shoes, and I doubted we would actually be going to the beach. Bad decision on my part, but oh well.

We finished pretty fast leaving us a decent amount of free time to hang out so I went to get a few gifts for some people before going back to the room and reading for a while before deciding to come here for snacks and hopefully so solo writing time that didn't happen. So I've been playing music, they don't see to mind.

We've been sleeping with the door open now because it cools down a lot during the night. With this we have been having a lot of visitors throughout the night, one was a yowling cat that really wanted attention. I was woken up by him but it was a very drifty state that it was really only my ears that were functioning as well as a little bit of my train of thought but nothing else before I fell back asleep.

Google drive has stopped working.

Can't you just tell my energy is in a low area right now? I seriously need alone time and that is not possible at all. People always want to talk or they are always around. I have not found any alone time and I cannot withstand it for much longer. I hate to say it but I might take tomorrow off in the morning to actually have the room to myself. I'm getting completely irritated and I know it's just showing in my writing.

So yeah...a guy just walked up who smells really bad.

I haven't had dinner yet, but I think I might get some happy water tonight, cause they sell it here.

GAHHHHH....

-Claire

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