Hope all is well in your part of the world. Thought I should send around a lovely little update.
Well this week we had homestay which is basically where we stay at a village and either help
in building something or/and teaching. We left at about lunch time on Tuesday and headed what we think was north. The first village we stayed at was quite small, it had about 30 families living there, they were a Lahu tribe.
Very interestingly for us they were about to celebrate New Years which consists of building a tower using bamboo, decorating it with ribbon and bright paper and then placing rice patties and a pig's head on top. Then they light a fire and we spent the night dancing around the pigs head!!
It was so much fun, one of our guides explained to us that the men of the Lahu tribe are of a lower status to the women and they celebrate New Years over 10 days, the first 5 to the women and the second to the men. So we danced the night away.
The next day we were off to the next tribe, where we were actually going to spend the majority of our stay. Once getting there we were put straight to work, Ken and myself helped build a storage area for a children's school room. The others had to head off trekking to find and cut down bamboo to make the walls of our storage room. The fun bit was when a truck came along and dumped a massive pile of sand and pebbles below us, which we then had to one bucket at a time bring up to the teaching area. That nearly killed us all, we had a line going of pass the bucket but it was still
very slow going. Some of the men of the village that were there also jumped in to help, thankfully!!
After our long hard day of working we were off to party again for the Lahu New Year, more dancing around a fire this time ( and no pig's head). The children loved taking pictures of themselves using our cameras but they loved even more so, was taking pictures of us using our cameras. I have about 10 or so closeup pictures of me!! They were so cute and we had a blast with them.
Sam and I stayed in one of the families homes, was very interesting sleeping there on bamboo, no mattress, just a floor mat and sleeping bag. Some of the other girls were freezing so much during the night they actually tried sleeping under the mat!!
Thursday was meant to be spent finishing our building but we had finished our work the day before, so we went sight seeing around the area. We went to a temple saw an amazing big white buddha and then were off to Hot Springs in a national park. They were amazing, and so warm (55-65C).
Considering all we get at home and on homestay are cold showers the hot spring where heaven!!
We stayed so long in them. Thursday night we were at a different village, still Lahu and celebrated yet again New Year with them!! By this stage we were all pretty over New Year and ended up leaving quite early for bed.
Friday we left our homestay village and headed back to Mirror, very casual and chilled out. Some of us were sick so it was good to be back home.
Today was an amazing day, we got up early and headed out to the elephant park. We got to ride and feed the elephants they were amazing, and so beautiful and gentle. Except for one elephant who was after food (sugar cane and bananas) in a plastic bag and ended up putting his trunk into my actual bag!!!!
But yeah it was awesome! Then we went to the temple where some of the indoor people teach the monks english and got to have a look around. The temple was of course amazingly beautiful but it was also the home of the Emerald Buddha which currently resides in Bangkok.
Tomorrow a few of us are heading off to The Golden Triangle, we should be able to see Burma, Laos and China if we are lucky, and we are catching one of the boats up the river. Should be a great day.
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