As a student studying environmental policy and environmental sustainability, I was very eager to start working for FORRU. I came to Thailand to work at this internship and gain hands on experience in the world of environmental sustainability. After a little over 2 weeks, I am very satisfied. We began the internship at full speed. During our first week we spent everyday out in the field except for one day. Although the field work is often tough manual labor, I personally love it. I love the mix of office work and field work. It’s extremely nice not having to sit in an office indoors all day, plus I get to see a lot of the nature in Thailand which I enjoy. One of the days I was able to help at an education event where we educated other American college students on forest restoration. After we took them on an adventurous hike through the mountains that was actually pretty tough! The rest of the week was spent preparing for our big planting day. We spent two days raking and removing pine needles and other invasive plant species to prepare to plant the trees at planting day. This was hard (but fun) work! It was so satisfying to see the progress we did with removing all the toxic plant species.
All the preparation lead to our big planting day which was last Saturday. I had no idea how popular this event was. There were hundreds of volunteers that came out and helped us plant over 2,000 trees. There were different plots with different species of trees planted in various plantations across the mountain. The goal is to see which tree grows best in which area which will help restore the forest from degrading and slash and burn. I haven’t studied forest restoration so this is very new and exciting to me. It’s also really cool to learn about it in a foreign country with a climate much different than my own. However, even though it’s a different area of the world, this method could be introduced to America forest restoration as well.
Away from the actual work, I have the best co-workers. There’s about 6 other interns, some are Thai students from a university in southern Thailand. They are so much fun and so welcoming to me even though there is a language barrier. It’s fun because they will practice their English with me and I’ll practice my Thai on them. We’ll ask each other what certain words mean in the opposite language. These girls make work so enjoyable. My supervisors are awesome too. They are so laid back and really down to Earth. It makes coming to work fun and not feel like a chore. I am so thankful I am able to spend the summer working at a job I enjoy, where coming to work is desirable, and where my coworkers are considered friends. I’m really thankful for FORRU and cannot wait to see where the rest of summer goes with this job!
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