Last day

We made our way back to Bangkok last night and had one final thai dinner together (tonight’s final meal is Italian).  The whole group sang “Happy Birthday” to Lauren as she celebrated her 22nd birthday yesterday.  Hopefully the students enjoyed their last night in Bangkok, I am sure they did.

It is now 7:30 am on Sunday morning here (6:30 pm Saturday evening in St. Paul, MN).  We will post another blog as we ready to leave for the airport this evening (7:00 am Sunday morning in St. Paul, MN) letting you all know we are on schedule.  As of right now we arrive at MSP at 3:45 pm Monday afternoon on  a flight from Dallas, TX (AA #668).

Here are some thoughts from Drew Thao and Emila Spalding:

There is so much to see and talk about that could fill the pages of a book, but in this entry we rode elephants. We were just in Koh Chang, the island of the elephants, exploring yet another part of Thailand. Our hotel is on the edge of the beach where it had white sand and the beautiful turquoise water. It was breath taking and I could not believe I was in such a beautiful place. I was so excited to ride the elephants the next day and couldn’t believe that we were finally going to do it. The elephants, of course, were huge, friendly giants. The elephant I had is a female of thirty seven years old. They had these little benches on the back of them that held two people. My partner and I climbed onto the third elephant and right away, it took off. We rode the elephant, moving left to right as she took a step. Then we were going to go into the water and I was scared to get splashed at, at first, but watching all the other elephants with people on their backs also going in, made me relax. It was a great sight and I wanted to stay longer. One of the elephants from the behind mine reached its trunk up to sniff me. I was scared, but I knew it was just curious and I touched it. It was awesome! I got a great picture of it too. Nearing the end of our ride, my elephant driver hopped off of our elephant to take pictures of us on it, I was so worried that it would just start walking but she didn’t and we got great pictures. The ride ended and I got to feed a mother elephant who just had a baby elephant that was only a month old. We learned that the pregnancy of an elephant takes two years! Amazing. However we had to keep our distance because the mother knocked down three women the day before and that’s just mother instincts. It was an amazing time, followed by the beauty of a waterfall that my fellow students swam in. It was yet another great day.

~ Drew Thao

Hello to all. First off just need to say a quick “Happy Birthday, and I love you!” to my mom, it’ll probably even be her birthday at home too by the time this is read.  I can’t thank all my family and friends enough for being supportive of me running away for this amazing adventure right before leaving for the semester.  AMAZING is really the only way to describe this whole trip.  I can hardly believe it’s almost over.  We have done so many amazing things in the past few weeks and I’m sure you’ve been reading about them all from all of our perspectives, which is great since we’ve all had a wide variety of experiences on this trip.  I can confidently say that we will all be coming home a little bit different than when we left, we’ve learned so much about not only Thailand but ourselves and the people we’ve spent the past 23 days straight with.  I know we’ve all made new friends and I truly hope some of those last, and regardless I hope that we’ve all been able to learn from each other’s experiences and the viewpoints that were brought along with them.  Hopefully we’ve learned to embrace some parts of the Thai lifestyle as well, I know many of us have taken to saying “Same Same” as the Thai do when something doesn’t quite go how we planned or we’re just not sure about something. We’ll see if that relaxed outlook on life carries over to our western way of life.  As far as recent experiences go we all were fortunate to have a free day on Koh Chang yesterday and many of us took that opportunity to do some adventuring. There were people snorkeling, boat riding, fishing and just plain old relaxing.  I personally went on a full day snorkeling trip with some of the other girls and it was an experience I will not soon forget.  The water was so clear you could see everything in front of you, all different types of fish and coral and other aquatic wildlife.  We spent one island stop just relaxing on this beautiful white sand beach; not something you can do every day.  Then again, not much we’ve done over the past month is something you can do every day, and that’s what makes a trip like this so great.

~Emilia Spalding