My trip to Thailand

     My whole life I have been blessed with the ability to travel the world with my family. Growing up I was fortunate enough to go all over Europe with my entire family. This is primarily how my love for travel was developed. I just love the idea that someone just like you could be living a completely different life somewhere else in a weird language that sounds like gibberish to you but that a whole country understands. Anyways, that is how I was inspired to go on a trip to Thailand the summer after freshman year. I really wanted to go somewhere really different, alone, and somewhere where I could meet new people. I went through the program Global Leadership Adventures (GLA), I think it was around 6,000 dollars including my plane ticket. The trip I went on was their first program ever in Thailand so it was even more exciting to go and be the first group ever to try it out.

The Girl on the Left was from Tokyo, The girl on the Far right was from California, The girl in braids is me (Why did I think two braids were cute? I still don't know )

    My experience in Thailand was amazing and I recommend that everyone go on a trip like this if they can afford it at some point in their life. In Thailand we did this thing they call voluntourism, which is a trip half dedicated to tourism and half to volunteering. Our group volunteered in a women's shelter, a home for kids infected with HIV, and we also painted a mural for an orphanage. 

     We toured Buddhist Temples, where we were able to see monks. I also was able to preform a ritual in a buddhist temple I don't remember what its called but its where you shake a can with sticks and depending on which one you get it will decide whether you will have good luck or bad luck the rest of your life. It sounds stupid but my grandpa got bad luck when he did it and he died sooo... *Phew* Thank god I got good luck, I kind of like being alive. We also went to an elephant habitat, where you could ride elephants, watch a show preformed by elephants, and where you could also make paper out of poop! It was amazing how well trained the elephants were except that it was obvious the men who ran the elephant habitat abused the elephants which was made the whole experience a bit depressing. The animals were so well trained though that on the elephant ride I dropped my camera,  which was really scary because it had all my pictures from the whole trip and I thought the elephant was going to eat it or step on it but it ended up picking it up with its trunk and legit handed it right to me, which is undeniably pretty awesome(If only my dog could do that life would be a lot easier).

Riding the baby elephant because I was too scared to ride the big elephants

 If any of you are having trouble getting your parents to let you go on the trip you should tell them the following, "Mom, this blogger Fiona says its okay. Her mom is the stereotypical overprotective Jewish mother and even her mom let her go. If it wasn't safe kids wouldn't be going to these trips all the time. If you are feeling worried than read all the reviews of the company or ask the company to give you a name of someone who has previously gone on one of their programs so you can speak to their child and see if its safe/worth the money."

Anyways, that doesn't even cover everything I did in Thailand but I hope it helps give you an idea of what summer programs for teens abroad are like. 

The most adorable dog I have ever seen that was just chilling outside the temple our group visited