Mae Hong Son - again!

Hello friends and family,

First, thanks to everyone who sent birthday wishes and cards! It was a great day and even better due to the mail that has continued to appear for me every time I go into ISDSI - always a wonderful sight! We finished our official studies last week with a final seminar and Thai test (ak!) and all but two of my fellow students have left Chiang Mai, on to their next pursuits.

After a lot of deliberation, planning, and re-planning, I've changed my plane ticket to July 1 and am coming home early instead of spending the whole summer here as I originally thought. Life at home is to precious to miss out on right now, and I am now feeling that this is the right decision. So this time in Mae Hong Son is going to cap off my experience in Thailand, and even though I have already spent some time in the village, Huay Hee, I am anticipating learning so much more.

I will be spending about a week living in a Karen mountain village and working on a video project about traditional weaving. Any of you who have worked in Buffalo and seen the beautiful bags, shirts, and skirts that the Karen wear will understand why it is so fascinating! I am able to use my school's equipment and connections, so it has been much easier to set up than if I tried to do it on my own.

This experience will be a good reflection setting for understanding my time in Thailand. This whole time we have been talking about resource access and looking at the price local communities pay in large development schemes like dams or commercial activity like trawler fishing. One of the reasons, besides weaving, that I am interested in living in Huay Hee is that I think the Karen lifestyle has a lot to teach. They may be, according to student surveys from I believe several years ago, an example of a community with an ecological footprint of below one world. If you are not familiar with that term, it means that their level of resource use would allow everyone to have enough of the earth's resources, theoretically. Also, community and family life are cultural values and tangibly different than even Thai society, which to a westerner looks close knit.

I am just starting to read Deep Economy by Bill McKibben, which is about a return to community based economy instead of this endless model of growth. This fits with so many themes of this past semester, though I am still trying to work out an understanding of place and other questions I have mentioned in previous posts (I think!). Other friends and I have been talking about how to implement these concerns about sustainability and more when we come home - even as college students who have flown around the world to learn we have a long way to go to reconcile our ideals with our practice. I will look forward to sharing these questions and thoughts with you and also reconnecting with your lives in Virginia in two weeks, or wherever we meet next. Thanks for your encouragement as always!

With love,
Melissa

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