Lampang!

On Friday after school, Mel and I headed over (on our wonderful new bikes) to the bus station, to head over to the nearby district of Lampang. It is a two hour bus ride, between Phrae and Chiang Mai, not too bad at all.  We were going to meet up with two friends from OEG, Nick and Allison.  We made reservations at the Riverside Guesthouse, which was adorable and owned by a nice Swiss woman.

Lounging at our beautiful guesthouse!

At the guesthouse, we met a couple, Henry and Chloe, English, who are traveling around the world for a year! So fun! When we met them they were on day 51, having been to India, Southern Thailand, and a couple other places.  We talked with them awhile and ended up going to a night market with them.  We met up with Allison and Nick later where I had "pizza." 555 there was broccoli, corn, and other random veggies on it, not bad just weird! Their school coordinator, Khru Pot, had driven them in and she was going to drive us all to the famous Thai Elephant Conservation Center the next day.
The TECC was so much fun! I LOVE elephants! This place is the only government-owned elephant camp and is all about conservation and science. The first ever artificially inseminated elephant was born here, aptly named AI, houses 6 of the King's white elephants in the Royal Stables. We went to watch the show and visit the hospital.  The show was so cool, they painted, played instruments and did a ton of tricks.

An elephant painting!

Finished paintings!

Dumbo!

The TECC was so much fun! I LOVE elephants! This place is the only government-owned elephant camp and is all about conservation and science. The first ever artificially inseminated elephant was born here, aptly named AI, and houses 6 of the King's white elephants in the Royal Stables. We went to watch the show and visit the hospital.  The show was so cool, they painted, played instruments and did a ton of tricks. The hospital was super sad, obviously. There was an elephant who was born with his bones all disjointed and he looked so uncomfortable :-( Another had a stump and so they had made him a prosthetic, which was pretty cool.  We didn't spend too much time there though, it was hard to see them looking like they were in pain.  We headed over to the babies, much happier! One baby was having trouble eating and stomach issues and looked super sickly :-( But there were two toddlers  and then a mom and baby who were just adorable! We bought some bananas and they were practically crawling over the railings to eat them, it was pretty cute!

Nick and Allison's coordinator was kinda over it after while though so she took us to get some food. Wouldn't you know it, we ran into another OEG person! Sarah, who lives in Lampang, was out to lunch with people from her school! What a small little world we live in.
We went back to our guesthouse, took a break and then got ready to go to the Saturday walking street.  It was pretty big and fun to stroll through Lampang.  Again, we ran into one of the OEG coordinators! Crazy!
The next day Nick and Allison's coordinator took us to the Chae Son National Park in Lampang.  It is famous for it's hot springs and waterfalls so we were pretty excited.  The tourist attraction of the hot springs is to boil an egg, so Khru Pot stopped, bought a bunch of eggs and we were off! The hot springs smelled like sulphur and rotten eggs but it was still really cool.  Walking over the rock, you could feel hot hot it was, which was 80 degrees Celsius! Crazy! I tried one of the finished eggs...it was not good. But, at least I tried it!

Boiling some eggs!

 Dipping our feet in to get some of the healing powers!

Then we decided to hike to the nearest waterfall! Everything is in km though and we are stupid Americans and don't know what that means so we were like oh shouldn't be too far right?? Wrong. It was super far and uphill the WHOLE way! It was super beautiful, but we were not really prepared for such a rigorous hike...oh well! It was an experience!

On the way back to Lampang we were exhausted and all slept the whole way back! Loooong day.  

School is going well, I have my good and bad classes.  I will leave one class saying, YES, this is what I was born to do, I LOVE this! Then, the next class will be awful and I am like, why did I come here, I can't teach, this is awful!!! Lol, but talking to other OEG people makes me feel better because they have extremely similar experiences.  Right now, since the school is a World Class Standard School, it is preparing for the World Class Standard competitions.  So guess who gets to tutor everyone? Mel is helping three girls who are going to be singing various songs, and I got roped into more speech writing! These two adorable 3rd graders! Nonglak comes up to me, with them, and says they are competing to say the speech, you write it, they will memorize, which ever is better will win and go to the competition.  I am like OMG SH! They are right there! Have some compassion woman! But, that's Thailand! 

This weekend some of our friends are coming to Phrae, we are excited! Well, got to teach some monsters...Miss you all!