It's been a while, no? Sorry, I've been busy activating. As in, that which is done by an activist. Work has been great. Great and mundane. But delightfully mundane. As this is my last week, I'm working on compiling all the research I've done over the past three weeks into (what will eventually become) a hefty ten page (single-space) memo, for use by the staff here. It's really satisfying putting it together, though writing a paper on "The Processes and Related Environmental Effects of Mining [confidential]" sounds like one of those absurdly hyperbolized papers that teachers on television shows assign kids for screwing up. One of those "you owe me ten thousand words on [mundane topic of your choice] by next week" / "but it's the weekend of the big game!!!" sort of deals. For all you teachers out there, I openly endorse such assignments. They students will hate you, but come on, it's really funny.

But I have been doing other things as well. As far as work has gone, I got to attend a conference and workshop type event for a current campaign. It was very interesting, seeing how all these different activists came together and started hammering out a cohesive plan. And then when it was all over we all went out to dinner and I got to split a bottle of brandy with [identities and ethnicities withheld for confidentiality] (Prize awarded to the person who can come up with the best joke. Points will be determined based on the degree of clever and incendiary social commentary, not on shallow, colonialistic maintenence of stereotypes surrounding marginalized and ethnic peoples [this is gonna be a lot harder now huh without me saying what the were]). But I won't suffocate you with details because: a) I don't want to bore you (even though you shouldn't be bored and if you are you're a touch on the cold-hearted side), and b) I'm kind of unsure about how much it's safe to divulge, given the sensitive nature of the people involved. This last part goes to a lot of my work here. And I'm really not trying to build it up as some sort of espionage adventure, I just don't really know what's kosher as far as writing things in a public space. That's all.

Aside from work, though, it's pretty much been anotherday-anotherdollar sort of life for me. I don't have a whole lot of time and energy to go out and explore, and I don't even really want to that much anyway. I don't really have any Thai friends or anyone to help me get into the culture here a little more, which is unfortunate. It also means my Thai is really starting to suffer, going unpracticed save for the rare time when a salesperson engages me in Thai rather than broken English.

This week also saw the official passing of the "90 days left" point. My program will end in less than sixty days, but I will be staying in Chiang Mai for a month extra, probably doing some work back at my organization. It's weird though, seeing myself pretty neatly in the middle of my time here. I'm sure I've written it before, and even if I haven't I'm sure you can all assume, that it's passed remarkably fast (see the December 1 entry of juliainecuador.blogspot.com for a terrific account of how repetition and routine have affected the passing of time abroad).

And then there's the upcoming holidays. From the look of things, you'd think Thai people love Christmas. But really it's probably just another case of them being all about some fragmented and diffused concept from Western culture without really having a damn clue what it means. And can you blame them? It's also an issue of a lot of the businesses decking the halls (read: malls piping out the Christmas tunes to get shoppers in the spirit for something completely irrelevant), while everyone else doesn't really pay attention, except for the loads of tourists here on their holiday vacation. It's kind of frustrating, but it's really cool in a sick sort of way. Just seeing how such a vapid and senseless holiday can be seen for all its vapid-senseless-ness once its taken out of the normal cultural context. That being said, I look forward to having the loneliest, most prototypically pathetic Christmas imaginable, hopefully spending it in an empty restaraunt eating a too-small portion of noodles. I only wish that I could walk past the warmly lit homes with the views of the families reveling in love and holiday cheer inside, and then listen to the faint echoes of carollers down the street as I chew my food and mull over the painful alienation from it all. But unfortunately that won't be here, so I'll have to make it up. Regardless, I say that because, even though I know you'll now pity me, I think the whole thing will be very funny. After all, how often could something that splendidly pathetic and cliche happen to me? I know! It's hilarious. But I'm jumping the gun a little bit on the holiday writing. I should have saved it for the Very Merry Christmas edition of the blog.

And with that I've effectively killed the last hour of work and it's time to go home.

I need to make an important correction. I had previously captioned one of my photos as "Ninja from the future" in reference to my Halloween costume. I actually was an Indian from The Future, and should have labeled the picture so. Apologies for any confusion/disappointment.

This week I started my internship at an organization in Chiang Mai. So far it has just been an amazing experience. I'm working on a research project by myself on the environmental effects of mining to be used in a possible advocacy campaign in the future. It might not be the most interesting or engaging material, but it is really great getting the chance to do something like this, to be working in a place like this with such amazing people. Working there has definitely helped give me some guidance as far as what I want to do in the future, career-wise. I feel like someone who grew up loving medicine and the human body, and then found out after twenty years that "doctor" is an actual occupation. I'm just amazed that this is what people can actually do. I'm pretty excited right now. Also, I spent today, Saturday, playing soccer with the staff from the office as well as the students that are currently attending the activist school that they run. It was fun, though I obviously have nothing on willey Burmese fellas when it comes to football. The funny thing about the whole affair is how seriously they take it. Today was the first day of the yearly tournament-type thing (kind of like offices have softball leagues in the States), and it's apparently a big enough deal to warrent a referee and professional uniforms, shirts and shorts. My team donned the uniform of Chelsea Football Club and our opponents went as Liverpool. It was quite goofy.

Apart from that, not much is going on. I've just been taking the lack of school work as an opportunity to take things easy. Last night we went to a very very very good Thai restaraunt, managing a delicious dinner and drinks for under ten dollars, which is expensive. It did help me put my unease about Thai food to rest, as I realized that good Thai food is AMAZING, and it's the other stuff that just ain't so hot.

So I'm set to be in Chiang Mai for the next month and a half or so, first working at my internship and then break and then going to the island course in January.

I posted my mailing address for a reason...

I've just added a wealth of photos the my photos site, from both this trip and the last one. It's too difficult right now to put captions on all of them (I already did a few) so you'll have to interpret them yourselves. It took me a solid three hours in front of an iMac at a coffee shop to do it, so you better enjoy. There's hundreds more where these came from.

Well all, I'm back. Just about. As of now I'm still in the lovely, commodified, tourist kitsch-drenched city of Mae Hong Son, but I will be back in Chiang Mai later today. Say, six o'clock or so. We wrapped up our tour of P'gaganyaw (pronounced: Ba-Gin-Yaw, the proper term for the Karen hill tribe) villages in Mae Hong Son province, which is in the Northeast of Thailand. I have absolutely no idea how to condense such an incredible, complex, insightful experience into a handful of words, so bear with me. Basically, the P'gaganyaw are a hill tribe, of which there are many, but they are the largest, and also most politically empowered. However, they still face face a fair amount of conflict with the government. They live in the mountains and still maintain many elements of their traditional way of life, such as weaving and rotational agriculture. Rotational agriculture is a fairly major one. You may know it as slash and burn agriculture, and probably learned about it (and maybe how "bad" it is in middle school social studies). Well, it's not bad, and in fact it is amazingly ecologically sustainable, as well as often providing the P'gaganyaw people with a healthy, self-sufficient livelihood. So back off. Perhaps the biggest lesson I learned, which I didn't necessarily expect to get, was in seeing how they are able to negotiate a nuanced and empowering relationship with modern forces, such as technology, culture, and government. They do not need to be shielded from these forces, as many Westerners like to think, reducing the people and their culture to a two-dimensional romanticized charicature. Howeveer, nor should they be forced to modernize and develop along traditional top-down models, which has often been the other, more common, alternative. Rather, living in these villages, seeing how they incorporate everything from televsision to GPS to modern materials to Thai schools to government positions (and so on down the list) into their so-called "traditional" way of life just convinced me of their ability as people to take charge of these issues, and what's more, in so doing, strengthening and empowering themselves politically, culturally and ecologically. This might all seem uninteresting or unremarkable to you all, but coming away with this understanding is fairly significant to me.

As far as the non-"academic" side of things, which is impossible to really separate from everything else, the trip was amazing. I stayed with a total of five wonderful P'gaganyaw families. We stayed in the villages (in order): Hua Nam, Nam Hoo, Huay Koong, Huay Hee, and Huay Tong Kaw. We stayed in each village for two to four nights, spending the days either in the field learning from village members about their ecological systems or political structures, or simply spending the day with our families, harvesting rice or just idling the time away. We would then hike for six to eight hours in between villages, going through spectacular green mountains or wading through rivers. My time was filled with so many little things that are just impossible to recount in any fair way. But just to give you an idea: there was a cat who I'm sure was convinced it was wearing an invisibility cloak, a seven year old boy with an unwieldy passion for rockpaperscissors, teaching English with Nick and Aaron in a school, herds of water buffalo roaming around and two AM, being freezing cold in Thailand, eating flying squirrel and chicken organs (rather, avoiding them at all costs), communicating surprisingly well when Thai was a second language to all involved, climbing Doi Pui (the highest point in the province), swimmin in rivers, a ridiculous fat and sassy host family, the father of which was an important governmental representative for the village but nonetheless wore a huge fleece blanket as a do-rag or wandered around in nothing but a teal spandex briefs, amazing stars (stellar, even), an adorable two year old boy with a cleft pallette named Hero, our hilarious and unfathomably jovial Thai guide Pi Wissain who looked like a forty-year-old Thai Ben Levick, and so on and so forth.

And whew. What more can I say. As much as I have loved it here, I long for Chiang Mai. And I am so happy to say that I will be there for the next two months, which will encompass my internship and a radical activist organization and my winter break, with adventures and yoga to fill in the gaps.

Here's to Rumsfeld gettin what he had coming to him, may he suffer every ounce of it. Cheers!