Thailand Blog

8/11/2015

Today was such a chill day. Oh man, it was a good one! I went on a run this morning with my friends & it was blazing hot! Today was probably the hottest day since I've been here. Crazy how it can go from monsoon to blazing sun! So we went to the Akha village around 10. We watched them build a GIANT swing. You guys. It was the craziest thing watching them build this. They are so boss. It did not look safe going up but by the end somehow it worked & stood sturdy! So cool. Only guys were climbing up the branches to build it because first of all they don't like women to work unless it's a necessity for money. I think it's weird for them that there's all us girls here to do work! Haha so that's the first reason, but the second reason was because they believe the higher you are the closer you are to God. & for some reason they don't want the women doing that... So idk, sounds sexist to me. Aroon (Akha village leader) explained better but it didn't make much sense cause it was being translated. Even though he does speak very good basic English. Anyways, the swing is for their yearly swing festival. It's a tradition they do every year. Build the swing, celebrate, & eat. We will be joining them tomorrow for their festivities! I think they are getting traditional clothing for us to wear also! I'm excited. They are so sweet, they usually do the festival at the end of August but they wanted us to be here for it so they are doing it earlier. We played around on the swing a bit today as a pre warm up for tomorrow! You guys should have seen the kids faces when they all got home from school & saw it. So much screaming & running! They could play on it for hours. Aroon fed us lunch. Which was so yummy. It's always yummy when we eat at the villages! Except for fishy papaya salad day. Yeah, not that day. We then helped build a volley ball net for them. We used tires to hold the poles then mixed cement to pour in the tires to stabilize it. I'm realizing that tires are used for everything here! Haha finally around 4 we left. We were at Akha for a long time! Next stop was lahu. Short night there doing soccer & aerobics. But those kids never fail to wipe you out no matter how long you're there! Seriously, they are crazy kiddos!