August is over!?!

My long absence from writing on here proves that essentially since the end of July, I have been traveling. Oh the life of a Peace Corps volunteer, right? It's honestly quite ridiculous. Happily I'm now back at site for the next couple of months and am approaching about 6 months of service left, which is crazy in itself.

Here's a recap of the past month or so. It's been a whirlwind!

After returning from the beach trip with other volunteers and recovering my my stomach issues, I headed to Bangkok for a Peace Corps meeting. Earlier this year I was one of 4 people elected by my fellow PCVs to represent their issues and concerns to the Country Director four times a year on a committee called the Volunteer Advisory Committee. The meeting was quite successful and we discussed quite a few issues, the biggest being collaboratively creating a policy for volunteers interested in being ordained as a monk in their communities. (If you are curious, I can go into this more).

A few days later, Kelsi and I flew to Malaysia and Singapore for a whirlwind week long trip. Last November (which seems so long ago), Air Asia was having a special on tickets and we randomly decided to buy tickets and finally the time came to actually go on the trip. It was a short trip, but I'm glad I was able to see and experience more of SE Asia. We spent 1 night in Kuala Lumpur, 2 nights in Malacca (city about 4 hours from Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia), and 2 nights in Singapore. Malaysia is a Muslim country and Ramadan had just started and I realized I had never been to a Muslim country before. It was interesting to hear the call to prayer throughout the day and find that many restaurants were closed during the day as most people would not be eating after sunrise and before sunset. Malaysia (and Singapore) are a mix with influences from India, China, and Europe so the food was all very delicious and the architecture unique. Of course, we went to the Petronas Towers in KL, a must see for sure.

Upon my return to Bangkok, I immediately met PJ and Errin, my two dear friends from college. PJ did Peace Corps in South Africa, and Errin and I visited him there, so it was their turn to return the favor and experience the wonder of Thailand. We spent a week in my village, including trips to my office, the preschool, and walks around the rice fields. As the end of my service approaches, I'm beginning to reflect on my experience and it felt so great to show PJ and Errin my life here. I felt a certain level of ownership and pride about my life here that I haven't really felt before. It felt really nice.

After a week in the village, it was time to head to the beach; no trip to Thailand is complete without some beautiful beach time afterall. We randomly decided to stay on a small island smack dab in the middle of two big tourist destinations Phuket and Krabi. The island was AMAZING. It quickly became my favorite place in Thailand. Despite it's amazing location and beauty, it has managed to stay off the radar of the tourist path. In fact we only encountered a handful of other tourists. We stayed in simple bungalows near the beach that are owned by an Italian woman who randomly came to Thailand 22 years ago and never left. This meant delicious Thai food - I ate pasta and Errin ate Thai food, the irony. We also rented bikes, went on an all day boat tour around the bay and even went into some crazy caves, and took a Thai cooking class. Great times and it was so wonderful to spend time with Errin and PJ.

And now I'm back in the rice field and it feels good. My travels were awesome and I yet again I feel so fortunate to be able to experience so many things. Right now my focus is to raise money for the preschool cafeteria project (Please donate: https://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=donate.contribute.projdetail&projdesc=493-160) and focus on studying for the GREs and grad school applications. Eeeek! I's exciting and stressful all at the same time. Now that I'm no longer traveling, I promise to write more frequent updates.

Above are some photos from my travels with Kelsi around Malaysia and Singapore.