Some photos from our fundraiser dinner, held on Friday, March 7. We raised over $7,000 for projects in Northern Thailand. Thank you for everyone who made it a success!
Category Archives: Before You Go
What We Don’t Talk About When We Don’t Talk About Service
Before we leave we want you to read two articles.
What we don’t talk about when we don’t talk about service by Adam Davis provides some good questions to ask yourself about why you do service and what you get out of it. Throughout the experience we will be questioning who is benefiting? And how are they benefiting? It will be important that we ask ourselves this in a variety of places, with different people, and with different types of service. You will be writing in your journal about this and we will have at least one group discussion on this topic.
4 Traditions of Philanthropy
This reading by Elizabeth Lynn and Susan Wisely offers a broad theoretical framework for considering service. Service can benefit a person or community in a variety of ways. Some are more sustainable than others. This reading enables us to identify the type of work being done and provides some indications about ways to move forward. We will be writing about this in our journals and discussing it at each service site.
May Term FAQ’s for Family and Friends
Family and friends of May Term Thailand participants have asked us many questions about this trip. Questions such as what we’re going to do, how we’re going to stay safe and healthy, and why we’re going to Thailand are some of what is asked of me. These are very important questions for friends and family, knowing that we’re going so far away to a country that is so different. So to answer some of these questions, I have compiled a little FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) post here. If you have any further questions, please feel free to comment on this post, and I can answer those questions as well.
What is the purpose of this course? Why do we do this?
Thai Phrasebooks
The Thai language is a unique language, only spoken in Thailand and not closely related to any other language with the exception of Lao. It has some unique grammar, 5 tones, and a very unique alphabet, making it a very difficult language to learn for Westerners. What gets me are the tones. You can say they same sound in 5 different tones, and they can mean 5 completely different things. And tones are subtle to us Westerners. A subtle raising of the tone to emphasize a point in English can alter the entire meaning of a sentence in Thai.
Thailand Travel Guide Books
Before you go this summer, do yourself a favor and get a guidebook. And peruse it before you go. They have lots of suggestions and recommendations, and if they are from a good guidebook, they are typically spot on. And the sections on culture, history, arts, etiquette, geography, weather, etc. are invaluable.
There are a ton of guidebooks, from a variety of publishers, including Fodors, Rough Guide, Moon, and a host of smaller publishers. I am partial to Lonely Planet. The audience that they write for seems to be spot on with the type of travel I enjoy (going on a budget, exploring on our own, independent of tourguides and tour companies, going to out-of-the-way places where typical tourists are scarce, using local transportation, etc). Fodors seems to be targeting a more upscale traveller, and Rough Guides seems to target the backpacker crowd. Lonely Planet seems to be in a nice medium. (By the way, these websites have a LOT of good information for travellers, so they are definitely worth perusing.)
Service Learning in Thailand 