Abroad Trip Day 19 - Last Day in Chiang Mai!

I feel like our trip is over. We still have 5 days left, but it's the 5 days in Bangkok at the end of our trip, so it's the end of our trip...

Today was a first of 3 presentations days. We all gave a 5-10 minute presentation on ethnographic observations we made and cultural interpretations of those observations. I discussed how the early socialization of children into linguistically and visually distinct and strictly defined gender roles reproduces the gender hierarchy of men over women in Thai society. I love being a Womens Studies and Sociology major. Topics ranged from public displays of affection to clothing to differences in behavior in age groups to driving habits. Considering we were in presentations from 9-4 with an hour and half break for lunch, we had a lot of fun listening to each others interpretations.

For dinner, we had a class group dinner at "traditional" Lanna dinner. Lanna is the ancient kingdom of Northern Thailand. Tourist attraction hardcore. they fed us regional foods (but the spice was toned down for us Farang), and danced and performed traditional music in traditional costumes with traditional instruments. Most of it was tacky, but it was fun. I'll have a lot of pictures from other people after we share.

Tomorrow, we leave at 5am for a flight to Bangkok, where we will have 2 more presentation days of readings we've done through the course.

Day 19 - The Day I Got Lost!

Today, we went to listen to a couple lectures. We went to listen to the folk at the Nansen Dialogue Center at another hotel across town. After, we went to the shopping center for lunch in the food court. They have a lunch line type thing, rather than various restaurants like they do in US malls. It was very good though. I had cooked peas, rice and a turkey patty. Sounds bland, but it was delicious.

After lunch, we walked to the Political Science Faculty of the University of Sarajevo. The university system is different here. Rather than 1 organized university with departments, the university has faculties, which cover one general area, with departments within that. Sort of like different colleges within the university, but each faculty offers all three levels of degrees. The Political Science faculty covers Political Science, Sociology, Social Work, and Journalism, plus all the subfields such as International Relations, Business Journalisms, Peace Studies, etc.

Then we were supposed to walk back to the hotel. Easier said than done. I knew how to get to the river, but that's about it. We followed Paddy for a while, but then we misheard him and thought he told us to go up the hill. But he said go down the main road to the square and then go up the hill. Ergo, we walked up and down that fricken hill for what felt like a very long time. It was only like 45 minutes, and the route Paddy told us was 35 minutes, but still! It was fun though. I don't know if it was a bad neighborhood or anything. My usual indicators of poverty don't really apply to Sarajevo. Everything has graffiti, and there is structural damage in downtown as well, so I have no idea whether or not I was more at risk. There were some kids begging by the University, but they seemed well-fed and had decent clothing, so I don't think they needed money desperately.

Anyway, we went to the brewery for dinner as a group. The brewery, during the war, was the only source of fresh water for the whole city. It's a big city, and the whole population had one source of drinkable water. They have a restaurant that is very nice there. I had chicken curry (which was NOT spicy whatsoever, but still good) with tomato soup as a starter. It certainly made me appreciate the no-smoking laws in MN, though. I still reek of smoke!

Anyway, tomorrow Duska and Boris are taking us on a tour of the city, and then we're going to a court session which is presided over by an American judge, Patty Wehlan. The whole Bosnian government is overseen by the international community, so the judges are all foreign. Weird, eh?