Cindy finished her term after working here for 2 years. She is going to be greatly missed. I'll miss her because she was the volunteer in charge of making my adjustment more comfortable. She taught me how to ride a motorbike and then when I got hit by a car, she chaufered me to and from work and other venues. She's bailed me out of situations with the locals with her proficiency in Thai and frankly, I'm worried about not having her to bridge the Thai staff with the foreign volunteers at work.

Cindy leaving also means I'm taking on some of her responsibilities. One of them was volunteer coordination, which I actually took on a while ago, but I didn't have to welcome any new coming volunteers until last week.

Our newest volunteer comes from Finland and she'll actually be working at a different site for our organization in Chiang Kong. I feel kindof bad for her because she was having a hard enough time understanding my English, nevermind everyone else's Thai. Trying to have a conversation with her was almost like pulling teeth, not just because of language barriers, but she's also just a shy person. I sat with her at dinner this one night and I basically had a monologue in front of her for about 45 minutes because she had very few responses to anything I said. She finally explained to me, "Scandanavians are very shy people. If I don't talk a lot, it's not because I'm mad at you." Short and to the point, fine. I accepted it. Then later on that evening I walked her to her guest house and said to her,"Ok! I'm gonna get ready for bed now if you need anything just give me a ca-" then the door slammed in my face. Ok, different culture, different behavior, whatever. I still think she hates me.

Another responsibilty of Cindy's that now belongs to me is dealing with visitors. In the job descpription, it basically suggests that I'm in charge of reserving guest houses for visitors and then giving them a tour of the site and a description of our mission as an NGO. This week, the day after I posted a blog entry about the plethora of swastikas around Mae Sai, three universities students from Germany came to visit the site for three days. Every request from these guys was a demand, not a question. After I gave them a tour of the site, one of them said very firmly and assertively, "Great! Now if you could take us to a remote hill tribe village for maybe just 3 hours." Ya know. Just three hours, like a small errand. It's a work day! Besides, I'm a tour guide for the site, not Northern Thailand.

These guys were so intensely pushy, they managed to get an interview with the founder and director of the organization the second day they were here. Maybe this doesn't sound that amazing but let's put things into perspective for a moment: I didn't get to talk to the director until I had been here for three weeks already and I was walking around the site with crutches. And I work here.


The only plus of Cindy leaving is that I'm moving into her house. It's quite cheaper than the guest house I was living in....and it's a HOUSE. Sure, there's no kitchen at all, but I have my own space to park my bike and there even a porchy-type of thing to sit on when I'm not working. Pictures to come soon.

I'm going to Bangkok and then Cambodia for a week for Song Kran (The New Year)! I leave tomorrow. No blog entries for a while probably.