Yup, it’s been a while. I have to say that the blog has been the best way for me to relay this entire experience of living in Mae Sai; not just for people who read it, but for myself and I think it’s important to update it regularly. But sometimes it’s like going to the gym. Once you get into the habit of doing it every day, it’s great and easy, but once you stop doing it one day it’s so easy to slip out of that routine. And it’s also similar to the gym in the sense that when you finally come back to it after a hiatus, you just think to yourself, “Where do I even start?” And I’d like to say in my defense that a lot of things from work and visitors have been compacted into the last month. I haven’t had a weekend of just hanging out in Mae Sai since late May. And today, Saturday, I’m going to Chiang Rai to write another progress report on the vocational training centre there.

Two volunteers left a few weeks ago and 8 more hours have been thrown onto my teaching schedule every week. We just had a three day long bi annual meeting with every branch of our organization in Mae Salong. Every branch outside the Mae Sai centre said the same thing to me: They want English speaking volunteers to live at their site and they want to know why there aren’t even any lined up in the future. I assured them I’d keep looking, and they asked if the present volunteers could visit the centre in Mae Salong every week to teach staff there. All three of us sort of bit our cheeks and agreed. Finding new volunteers falls under my responsibilities because I’m the “volunteer and visitor coordinator” and I’m supposed to be recruiting long term volunteers, not just for the centre in Mae Sai but for all five branches in the Chiang Rai province. In the past, the organization subsisted off of volunteers from sending organizations, well endowed groups that funded long term volunteers; their plane tickets, food, accommodation and even some money for personal expenses. In the last year, in fact, before I even started working here, all of those sending organizations stopped sending volunteers to Thailand. The reason being that Thailand isn’t considered to be a developing country anymore. So the hunt has been slow going. I’ve read through about 30 applications since being here. And I’ve only passed on 4 applications to the directing team because every other application is less than ten sentences long. When I follow up with them via email and ask them to elaborate on their answers, they’ll respond with another whopping 3 sentences or just drop communication all together.

This volunteer and visitor coordinator position is like a thorn in my side. Coming back to the centre from an 8 hour meeting a few days ago, some random woman from Italy was on site photographing the kids on site. The organization’s got this pretty strict policy about two things with visitors. One: a visitor should never be permitted on the premises without confirmation from someone working on site. Two: visitors, confirmed or not, can not take pictures of the kids. We do, after all, deal with sensitive situations and children at high risk. And yet this sort of thing happens a whole lot. I hate being that person to inform oblivious visitors that they’re breaking important rules. Hate it hate it hate it.

Lastly, this week has been heavy and difficult because my dog back at home had to be put to sleep. Taking care of Cleo for the last 10 years has been anything but easy for anyone who ever had anything to do with her. Having been allergic to everything in our backyard in New Jersey, not to mention cats and humans, and this tumor in this very specific gland in her brain that made her have to pee every hour or so, she had a lot of things working against her general well being. Inconvenient and costly as this all might have been, this never was a reason to let her go. After all, all of these things could be treated somewhat and she wasn’t suffering, not to the extent that it warranted her being put to death. Amongst these problems with her allergies she became a fear biter years ago, always afraid that strangers might hurt her delicate ears.

She has bitten a few people in the face in her day while they have leaned down to pet her. And yes, we’ve tempted fate with this in the forms of other people’s safety and probably lawsuits, though we’ve always warned people about her before they approach her in our house. She finally bit my two year old nephew in the face last week and I guess this was the final straw….she wasn’t a vicious dog, but she was a public danger and with the cancer starting to mature, I think she was spared a lot of suffering. My brother and father took her to the vet to be euthanized in our home town in Englewood, New Jersey this Thursday. They walked her around our old block and then afterwards they took her to McDonalds, where they fed her a Quarter Pounder and Chicken Nuggets. Winston called me to tell me about this on the morning of the last day of meetings in Mae Salong. He said she was so excited to be able to eat chicken nuggets. She couldn’t believe it. I had to excuse myself to go to the restroom for a little bit so I could cry about it before sitting through eight hours of trying to pay attention to 8 hours of discussions in Thai. No one here would really get it. Dogs are rarely part of the family around these parts and besides, most of the staff are my age and have experienced the death of a sibling in the last 5 years. And that's the norm. I guess I haven't assimilated to Thai culture too much. I'm still pretty bummed about my dog.