January 18th: Elderly activity at Sanmeung Temple…Sport Day…Nimman Road

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Today we woke up not really knowing the plan for the day. We went down for breakfast and were told we were going to the temple to do the elderly activity and they were not sure what resources they would have or what their ability would be. Victoria and I decided we would have to wing the activity and come up with different exercises that would work with the population that we had when we got there. I was a little bit anxious about planning this activity on the spot, but I think it was a good experience for me to be culturally stretched and to have to think on my feet. It reminded me of how things go in nursing, you try to plan your shift as much as you can but things change and you have to rethink things and adapt your plans to fit your population and situation. When we got to the temple, we were greeted by some elderly women who were very sweet but did not speak much English. We all exchanged smiles with them and helped them take their blood pressures and get their weights for the morning. After all the people in the group had arrived, I would say there was about 50 of them, the morning started with a pledge to the flag and to Buddha as well as a lap around the temple. They then had about 25 minutes of prayer and song time to Buddha in which I prayed to Jesus that He would open these peoples’ eyes to see the truth! It was crazy to see their dedication to worshiping this idol and it broke my heart. After the prayers, they had all the people that had birthdays in the month of January come up and we sang happy birthday to them. After that, they celebrated the departing of one of their teachers at the temple who was a much beloved teacher and like a daughter to many of the older women. They presented her with a lot of gifts and she went around to each woman and they placed a white string around her wrist and gave her their well wishes. By the end of the ceremony, the woman had tons of white strings around her wrists and lots of money and gifts. Many of the ladies were crying as they presented their gifts and said their goodbyes. It was so cool to see how the Thai people care so deeply about each other and how they take care of each other in times of change or difficulty. We then got to do the activity and after seeing how active the ladies were, we used the planned warm-up and cool down routine we found and improvised some chair exercises and they all loved it! It was a lot of fun getting to see them all participate in the exercises and smile at us as we demonstrated them. Even though we couldn’t understand most of what they were saying, a smile says it all! After the elderly temple and lunch, we had sport day! We split off into the blue and orange team and played a number of relay games in which the orange team won most of the games. ☹ I was on the blue team and we had fun dancing with our buddies and playing the drums! One of my buddies knows how to play the drums so she was playing for most of the time and had blisters on her hands by the end of the day! My favorite game was volleyball and even though we lost against the amazing Thai players, it was fun to improve as a team and get to play the game! We learned some Thai dancing cheers as well which was so much fun! I never really caught on to any of them and they were definitely more provocative than I would have expected, but it was a very fun experience! After sport day, I showered and got ready to go out with my boyfriend and some of his friends who were visiting Chiang Mai for a few days as a post-graduation celebration! Some of the other girls were interested in going out too so we all ate pizza and then took a big red taxi to the shopping area. It was sooo good to get to see Julien and spend some time with him while in Thailand! A once in a life time experience for sure. ? After getting back from shopping, we all packed our stuff to get ready for the flight to the beach the next morning!! We are so excited for Koh Chang!!

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