Greetings! Upon harsh demand from my older sister, I am making a valid attempt to post more often to keep family and friends better updated. I mentioned in my last post that the hill tribe and elephant days were some of the best of my life--and the one after was just as good or better! I went with three friends from the program to Crazy Horse Buttress- a world renowned rock climbing site.
Since none of us had any experience with rope climbing we went with two guides, Muad and Day. They were awesomely helpful, and Muad was pretty funny, too. Not only did they help us to successfully climb all the routes we tried, they taught us to belay one another on the very first climb of the day. It's not that difficult but it's kind of a lot of pressure to have your friend's life in your hands. Here's me belaying for Georgia:
And below:
<(that's me!)
The actual rapelling wasn't as cool as the climbing, but being inside the cave was aewsome. Fun fact: these crazy formations were formed by years and years of acid rain, where the carbon dioxide in the air reacts with the rain to erode the limestone... or something like that.
Even though the day was so hot and humid you couldn't even belay one another without sweating, and there were hundreds of flies constantly buzzing around us, it was an awesome day--and now all of us are yearning for some gear to get out and do some rope climbing on our own. Here's our group at the end of a sweaty, but successful, day:
In other news, today (Wednesday) of this week marks the beginning of Songkran--it's a new year's celebration that also celebrates the importance of water to Thai sustenance and culture. Naturally, the way of celebrating the importance of the water is by throwing buckets of water on everyone and shooting people with super soakers! Since my camera's not waterproof, I won't have pictures, but just imagine riding a motorbike down a busy street hand having people lining the sidewalk with buckets of water to throw on you. Some might find this annoying, but--water fights!??! The Thais really know how to celebrate, in my opinion. Today we are marching in the parade that kicks off the holiday--we are representing CMU in some sweet purple Thai-looking shirts. I'll try to get pictures (especially because I somehow got stuck with a mens XL--it fits really well--not) when it's safe to do so. Anyway, I'm off to go find a super soaker of my own for the parade.
No comments:
Post a Comment