Spoiled everyday life

Trip = finished. :-(

Last night I received a slap in the face from reality with a put my college degree to use hostessing shift at work. But before leading "it's Saturday night so I'll put on my best hoodie and bedazzled jeans and gorge myself on beef" customers to their tables, I spent some time yesterday taking my pictures off the cameras (plural because my trusty old pink Olympia bit it a week into the trip, so I had to hunt down a camera shop in Chiang Mai and after shedding a few tears over this unbudgeted for expense, I bought a new camera). I ended up with just under 1000 pictures. Clearly, I have some work to do, labeling etc. The first thing I did was sort them into folders based on location. That was easy enough. However, the next logical task of labeling each individual picture is slightly more daunting, mostly because I don't remember how to spell the majority of the places I went, aside from the Red Fort and Taj Mahal. So it will involve a lot of googling.

Another thing I did yesterday was sort out some pictures to use on my blog. I tried to be selective, and not choose 50 pictures of the same thing. But since being selective is not in my nature, I ended up with 68 pictures to put on my blog. That's kind of a lot. So I guess I'll be doing this in parts. And that's fine. If it's good enough for 50 Shades of Gray and Twilight, it's good enough for me.

ANNNNNND, as long as I'm on the topic of pictures, I'd like to throw it out there that I was without my computer for 5 weeks. So those past blog updates were done via the lackluster Blogger app, which apparently cuts off sides of the photos in order to make them the right size. I don't claim to have any sort of eye for a good photo or steady hand, but I like to think I do slightly better than what I posted (off center Taj, half an elephant, etc).

So here are some pictures from the first part of my trip, the week I spent at Elephant Nature Park. They're not in any order because that takes too much time.

Where I slept, complete with a mosquito net that sort of worked, unless the fan was going, in which case there was about a foot and a half opening in it

 love

I got to eat this three meals a day, for a week. Yea, be jealous. It was buffet style, with usually 13-15 hot dishes, and about 10 salads or so. My words can't describe how delicious it was. Two mornings homemade hot doughnuts were among the breakfast items. All the food was vegetarian, which I'm fine with. My only problem with this food was that in some of the dishes they had meat substitute stuff, which I'm not fine with. 

This kid...who knows? There were several Thai guys who were the "volunteer coordinators" which basically means they told us what to do, helped us with chores, etc. This kid was one of their sons, though I never found out whose kid he is. They all said "no, he's not mine!" Regardless, he was cute and a few mornings "helped" us with our chores. 

On our last night at the park, kids from a local school came to perform traditional Thai dances. I was sitting in the wrong part of the room to get any pictures of them while they were dancing, but I got this when they were done. Thai kids give Korean kids a run for their money as far as being the cutest kids on the planet. 

I LOVE THIS BABY! And this baby clearly wanted out.

One day our chore was to "clean" the elephants' mud pit. Elephants like to clean themselves in the river, then roll around in the mud to keep cool. Counterproductive. But I guess they are slightly particular about their mud. So using hoes, we had to soften up the mud, make the pit bigger, etc. It was...dirty. And opposite the elephants' routine, after working in the mud pit, we went to the river to clean ourselves. It actually wasn't so bad, as long as I didn't think about the fact that if the need arises while in the mud pit, elephants use it as a toilet. 

Lastly and most importantly, I want to give a shout out to this girl, who spent 5 weeks in extremely close quarters with me, and didn't defriend me on Facebook as soon as she arrived home. She's my former roommate, sister from another mister, travel companion, adventure accomplice, partner in crime, the most creative person I've ever met, and the truest friend a girl could have. Thanks for an awesome 5 weeks, Anya!