Owens Abroad Adventure: February 2014

WOW! I am officially in love... with THAILAND! What an amazing place! I just spent the last week in northern Thailand: Chiang Mai region, with three colleagues and 40 seventh graders for our annual Week Without Walls service learning experience. It was incredible.

I highly recommend checking out Chiang Mai if you ever make it to Thailand. Now I have yet to go down south in Thailand, to see the beautiful beaches and teal blue green waters, but I know for a fact that I would not hesitate a second to go back to Chiang Mai and spend a good amount of time there.

We worked with a program called Into the Wild, which is run by a former ASD teacher. He was wonderful with the kids, and has been operating out of the Chiang Mai region for some time, so he had local connections and really helped us out tremendously. We also worked through the Chiang Mai Rock Climbing Adventures, which is a stand up organization that does so so much more than climbing. It is well known throughout Asia and operates to the highest level of safety and professionalism. AND all of the instructors are fantastic with the students....

We hit the ground running with activities as soon as we got there. We had been raising money for a local nursery school in a small village outside of CM. We painted there entire complex and cooked with them, played with the kids and were able to purchase brand new playground equipment. The ASD students were fantastic and worked hard and sincerely enjoyed spending time with the little Thai kids.

We also got to experience a few things that pushed the students outside of their comfort zones. We went ziplining through the rainforest. The operation was called Flight of the Gibbon and the experience was top notch. There were over thirty platforms and all different kids of ziplines. It really takes some guts to jump off a platform over 200+ ft up and cruise an 800 m zipline in under 30 seconds (fast). The views were absolutely awesome while doing so as well. One of the ziplines is attached to your back and so you get a running start and jump off the platform Superman style. Of course I enjoyed every second of it. Some points were a little crazy, but it is interesting being the "supervising adult," because you really cannot show any other emotion other than excitement. There were a few instances where I was seriously anxious, but I just had to be sure to keep smiling and encourage my group that "this is SO awesome"(which it was)!!!

We did some amazing trekking throughout the hills and bamboo forests using only a compass and rough directions for a 10k hike. The kids complained the entire time and I sounded like a drill Sargent constantly telling them to move faster and pick up the pace. I sincerely thought that they were going to hate this part, and some of them did, but the majority of them realized that the whole point of the activity is to really push themselves, and emotionally tell themselves to keep going even when physically it seems impossible. It just makes me so happy as an educator and proud of these kids when they can come to that conclusion on their own.

Rock climbing was by far the highlight of the trip for me. It really pushed me physically and that is what I was looking forward to. We did some caving and saw some beautiful stalactites and stalagmites, along with some bats. We did an easy rappel first and then climbed up into a giant cave. Here we had to zipline across to the other side of the cave and then get transferred to an abseil line (rappel with no feet- just straight down). The scary part (even though 100% safe) is that while they are transferring your harness you are just hanging there. you grab onto a rope and hold yourself up while they get you from one line to the abseil. Oh and your about 135 feet up, with nothing between you and the rocks far far below. It was insane. My heart rate was through the ROOF! Again, I loved it, but I also had to make sure that the only emotion I was displaying was calm and excited. Not "Holy CRAP!" You control yourself down the abseil and by the time I reached the ground, I wanted to go right back up and do it again. Of course, I am somewhat of an adrenaline junkie. The other amazing part was the actual rock climbing. The way you have to strategically think about where each hand and foot placement is and where your center of gravity is located is challenging, but very rewarding. I am definitely going to look into doing more climbing. I ended up doing two 25 - 30 m climbs. It was really fun, but we ran short on daylight in the end.

We had wonderful food, and were able to spend some time in the night market in Chiang Mai. We saw beautiful and intricate Buddist temples and really had a fantastic trip. I will absolutely be going back, sans children. Enjoy some pics.