Interesting weekend

So a few things happened this weekend. First, my gold mine team discovered that this issue we are trying to depict in our human rights report is a lot bigger then we originally thought. There has only been one other report written about the negative impacts of mining practices in Thailand, and they were sued for a lot of money. And a lot of the information we were getting about the levels of water contamination were apparently stolen by a government worker, since the government was not giving the community information about their water. This means that we cannot directly cite these sources. All in all, we found out that the project is too big for us to finish in the time allotted, and we will probably have to continue working on the report until we leave Thailand. Kind of a bummer, since I like to complete things, but also a good thing, since this report will be a lot more thorough and therefore effective in making the government compensate for the water contamination.

This weekend was also our first real hang out with all of our Ajaans and Interns, including all of our Thai professors and the director of the program. The Ajaans paid for us to get Thai massages yesterday afternoon, and then we all went bowling as a huge group. We all ate a lot and drank a lot of beer at the bowling alley, and then most people left, but the Ajaans and a few of my friends stayed later to bowl more. At the end of the night I was on a team with my friend Tany, Ajaan Dave (the director of the program) and Ajaan John (Thai teacher). All of our Ajaans were pretty drunk, which was really funny.. and I got six strikes during the night!! All of us seemed to get better the more beer we drank, which doesn't really make sense. After leaving the bowling alley, we went to our usual bar, where I sang "I will survive" with Ajaan John and his band and played the tambourine for awhile. It was an amazing night!!!