CCT Volunteer Kyra DiFrancesco Last Blog Post (FORRU)

My last few weeks at FORRU have been pretty busy. Just days before departing Thailand, we participated in a “baseline monitoring” trip to Tam Pha Thai National Park in Lampang Province. Almost two weeks ago we went to Tam Pha Thai to plant 5,000 trees in the FORRU plots there. It was our job to measure a baseline for the growth of the trees we planted. Each team of two was assigned 500 trees! We didn’t end up finishing, especially since we were delayed with rain. It was a long and exhausting day. After getting back from the baseline monitoring trip, we rushed to wrap up our projects and deliver our final presentations.

Unfortunately, the science experiment we were performing didn’t quite turn out the way we wanted it to. Half of it got contaminated (an almost unavoidable problem when working in the tropics, according to our boss). The other half had results that can’t statistically be considered significant, but we did get somewhat promising results. Even though we didn’t have any scientific breakthroughs, which I didn’t exactly anticipate having in a three-week project, we did set a good precedent for the next set of interns to work on this project. We gathered all the necessary supplies, learned a lot, and wrote a paper so that the next group to take on our project doesn’t have to start from scratch like we did. Overall, I think it was a good learning experience.

On our last day, we delivered presentations to our co-workers on our time with FORRU. We went through our office, field, and lab work. In the office, my biggest project was working on FORRU’s website. On the day of the presentation, I revealed the new publications section of the website. Check it out on forru.org! Our boss thought the data from our experiment looked promising, and that he looked forward to reading our paper. After presentations, we all went to iBerry to celebrate our time with FORRU before saying goodbye. 

CCT Volunteer Dakota Van Deursen Last Blog Post (FORRU)

Wow. I can't believe that it is over. My 10 weeks in Thailand. My 7 weeks with FORRU. It's a little mind-bending, really. It seems like only yesterday that I was walking to my first day of work, but so much has happened since then.

                The last coupld of weeks went by so quickly, but I feel like they were the most productive, rewarding, and educational. Most recently (a few days ago), the TEAN interns at FORRU presented comprehensively on our seven weeks – my presentation (and this post) is most easily broken up into Office Work, Field Work, and Lab Work.

Around the office for the past few weeks, most of the hubbub has centered around the FORRU website. It has been the job of the TEAN interns to revamp the website, giving specific parts of it much-needed facelifts. I worked with Kyra – while she worked on the website-proper, I worked behind the scenes, scanning in recent FORRU publications to be uploaded. Two comic books, two pamphlets, and two seed-care books later, that part was finished!

FORRU’s fieldwork lens has been focused upon Tham Pha Thai National Park: A few weeks ago, we visited and joined the planting of over 5000 trees. Earlier this week, FORRU took an over-night trip to the very same plot, to monitor the growth progress of the trees. Three teams of two went out, each tasked with recording the height, crown width, and diameter of 500 saplings. We…didn’t quite finish. A late arrival, two spats of rain, and a broiler of a day pushed us to nearly 350 per group. Oops. We got some good data, though!

And finally, lab work. Oh, boy. The last two weeks were eye-opening, in terms of the experiment. We went to work every single day to take results and keep it healthy. All that, though, and half of it had still managed to completely fail within five days. Generally unwanted patterns and a disastrous fungal infection rendered our results inconclusive. The other half, though, has been hobbling along. It has been kept on life support for at least the next few weeks, in the care of one of FORRU’s new interns. I have faith that he’ll treat it well, as we did.

                I suppose that is all, then. It feels weird to be leaving Thailand, and the new city I've come to appreciate so much. I'm sure I'll be back as soon as the opportunity arises!

CCT Volunteer Anna Osborn Last Blog Post (FORRU)

One more day of working for Forest Restoration Research Unit and on Saturday I will be departing Chiang Mai. To say these past 10 weeks were fast would be an understatement. It feels like just yesterday I was starting my first day here at FORRU attending an educational event for American college students on the importance of forest restoration. Now, I’m getting ready to give my final presentation on my time spent here the past 7 weeks. Time flew by!! I’m very grateful for my time spent working for this amazing team and organization. As I am preparing my presentation, I am looking back at all the time spent with FORRU and how fortunate I am to have an eventful and unique job this summer. My days with FORRU were spent either in the office doing a variety of tasks, in the field doing laborious jobs and directly working to restore the forests, or attending events to education people of different age groups on the importance of forest restoration. 

I’ve definitely increased my knowledge in the world of environmental sustainability this summer!

My final days working for FORRU were spent finishing up the individual tasks I was assigned, which was working with a professor on her specific project and updating the website, and also traveling to Tham Pha Thai National Park (again) to follow up from our tree planting day a few weeks ago. On Tuesday night we traveled to Tham Pha Thai where we slept over, again, in a log cabin to prepare for our all day event on Wednesday. Although my room in the cabin was crawling with spiders, Common House Geckos, and many ants, it still turned out to be a cool experience. On Wednesday morning we woke up and traveled to the planting site (again, it was an adventurous ride). When we arrived at the plot, we were divided into teams of two. Each team had the task of measuring 500 trees that day. We were provided with a measuring stick and a caliper and had to record the height, thickness of the base of the tree, length of the trees crown, and record how healthy the tree looks to be. This was a very tedious task, but I also recognize how important it is. We do this to record the tree growth and see how much it has changed over time. This also made me realize how much background work is put into planting thousands of trees in the forest.

My last day interning for FORRU will be spent at the Chiang Mai University Nature Center attending an event on forest restoration. I will be sitting in informational sessions and also selling FORRU merchandise. Although I am looking forward to getting back to Michigan and heading back to Michigan State University for my senior year, I can’t help but be nostalgia for my time spent working for FORRU and living in Chiang Mai. It was an amazing experience and I am so thankful I was able to work here this summer. Not only did it enhance my knowledge of forest restoration, but I was able to see so much of Thailand and meet really great people along the way. I was able to visit many cool places that I otherwise would not have known existed if it wasn’t for working with FORRU. I also really appreciate that I was able to gain so much hands on experience, rather than just sitting in an office all day. Finally, FORRU provided me with awesome co-workers, which I have covered in my past blog posts. I am sad my summer in Thailand has come to an end but grateful for the experience and have memories that will last a lifetime!

CCT Volunteer Kyra DiFrancesco 2nd Blog Post (FORRU)

Things at FORRU have really been looking up. At the beginning of my internship, I was worried that we didn’t really have our place on the team. Everyone else had their projects, but my fellow American interns and I were mostly doing data entry. After bringing up my concerns, though, we were able to meet with the founder of FORRU, and as I suspected, there was a lot of work to be done! One of my fellow interns, Anna, is now taking on a project with a professor at CMU, Dakota and I are now working on a seed germination experiment, and all three of us will now be working to update FORRU’s website.

The past week has had a lot of late nights working on getting our seed germination project started. We only have two and a half weeks left, so we need to work fast. It’s been pretty difficult due to the language barrier and lack of materials. FORRU doesn’t have a dedicated lab, so we had to get creative and turned the office kitchen into our own makeshift seed lab. We had to purchase our own tables, venture out to a flower market and use what little Thai we know to buy seeds, go back and forth to too many 7/11s to get miscellaneous supplies, get interdepartmental lab supply loans, and, in a desperate hour, wander into a random lab on campus to borrow a graduated cylinder. This past Monday night we were in our lab until 11pm…blending leaves. It was actually pretty fun, and I’m so glad that we have this opportunity to experiment with FORRU (and hopefully manage to make a scientific breakthrough in three weeks). 

CCT Volunteer Dakota Van Deursen 2nd Blog Post (FORRU)

                My experience with FORRU started off as a whirlwind, and it hasn't died down yet in the slightest. Though I have had less days in the field lately, I have been just as busy helping out around the office, keypunching data, and (most excitingly!) starting up my own laboratory.

                For almost two full weeks from when we left off (Tham Pha Thai), I worked in the office on data entry. Around 20 years ago, someone wrote down a bunch of tree species in a set of books. FORRU now needs them electronically -- and they aren't gonna type themselves!

                Data entry was interspersed with hammering out some tags for the Tham Pha Thai trees. Literally. The TEAN interns spent two whole days on the landing with hammers and alphanumeric stamps, stamping out over 2500 aluminum tags.

                This past weekend, I volunteered at an all-day endeavour: youth camp. FORRU hosted the Chiang Mai Demonstration School for a day of learning, hiking, and conservation. Though really tiring, I had a blast that day, and got to support the FORRU team teaching kids how to conserve, restore, and sustain.

                The last week and a half, though, has been dominated by the most exciting facet yet: our experiment. Once our Thai language classes were over, FORRU's director held a meeting with the TEAN interns to ask us all what we were looking to do -- I was one of two who were selected to bootstrap opening up a laboratory and performing a scientific experiment.

                So far, everything is looking good. After days of running willy-nilly trying to track down all of the supplies necessary for the lab (a converted coffee break room) to function, Kyra and I are preparing to dive head-first into the science.  We hope that, by the end of the next couple of weeks, we have made a lasting impression on FORRU's plantation monitoring techniques.

It's Already Almost Over!

Okay. Almost over is a little over-exaggerated with 18 days left in my project and 3 months of travelling after that. But let's say it’s almost almost over! Because that is certainly what it feels like. Working with FORRU I don’t experience a break like all the other CCT volunteers that I live with but that's totally fine by me! The last weeks are jam packed with super cool stuff! But there are most certainly things I will not relive. For example the first time I rode the pickup truck up to my work site. I was almost certain I would die. I did not and my fear was completely based on the good roads back at home and TV shows like “the most dangerous roads” where this trail, if filmed correctly, would be perfect!

Or the one time we got stuck in the mud having to pull out trucks for local farmers and drone pilots. Written down, this seems like a really odd aggregation of individuals but at that time all I could think about was how to get my feet dry and, again, not die on our way back down. But it’s not the unbelievably cool Automated Forest Restoration conference or the numerous field trips with the most incredible views that stick out to me the most. But rather the people I met along the way.

One of the best days I spent with my fellow Intern / Volunteer / Student, Ibren from the Netherlands. For a science project he needed 1g of plastic cable. Approximately 3000 pieces of said cable. It took us around 5 hours to cut all of it but I guess you can imagine us sitting in a really small lab as happy as only people in Babyfood commercials and organic wheat burgers can be. Listening to great music and just talking with someone who has traveled the world quite a bit was an enlightening experience! 

After the five hours of finger numbing scissor action and a really nice coffee at my new favourite place I didn’t even realise it was time for pickup. But of course all the other people I met and most certainly the ones I have to meet are fascinating. I really didn’t know the world was filled with so many awesome people until I started to travel!

An 18 Year Old German in the Thailand Jungle!

After one month in Thailand I can say I have arrived. Maybe I adapt especially quick. Maybe the circumstances were just right for me to feel accepted and welcome. Maybe it's because I was always interested in Asian culture. Maybe it's a combination of all those and so many more factors that make me comfortably say “for nothing would I trade this unique experience!”. Working with FORRU means being flexible. Very flexible. I didn't know I was that flexible. I also didn't know i would love this job, that before I arrived I had little to no interest in, so much that it would be no problem to sometimes work a 60+ hour week. But I guess that's exactly why I decided to make this journey and leave my family and friends for six months. To learn. Not only about a different culture and a different life and work philosophy. But to learn about myself. Also not only to meet incredible people ranging from people just like me doing a gap year to people working at Oxford on firing tree seeds in to the earth using automated drones. But also to meet myself. But who am I? Not in philosophical terms. This answer would probably exceed the few lines I'm writing here. But rather how do you imagine me? 

Writing this is an 18 year old guy from Germany, though when you read this it’s very likely I have already turned 19. I just finished the German equivalent to high school and I am currently on my gap year. Even though it’s only half a year I spend abroad I like to call it a gap year. 
I decided to travel to Thailand for a multitude of reasons. First of all I wanted to get away from home. And traveling a few kilometers in one direction just wasn’t going to cut it for me. 9000 km minimum! And another big plus for me was the culture. As I already mentioned I have always had a certain affinity with Asian cultures. Not so strong that I would just go there by myself and try to survive. After all I’m still only 18 years old. That's where CCT comes in to play. They were the perfect solution for me! I’m working with the Forest Restoration Research Unit (FORRU) at Chiang Mai University and have a place to stay and eat. So I get to do something really great (helping to find solutions for reforestation! FORRU is even considering using drones to save forests all over the world!). But I’m not alone on the beginning of my journey! And trust me having incredible people around you all the time really helps when leaving home for a long period of time and coming to a place you’ve never even been close to. For an 18 yo guy wanting to travel to Thailand, CCT provides the perfect starting point and in addition to that you also get a life altering volunteer opportunity.

Phillip

A Weekend Outing to Chiang Dao... and the Shambhala Festival!

It was such a wonderful first week at Cultural Canvas Thailand, getting to know the individuals at CCT and visiting partner organizations all around Chiang Mai. As luck and timing would have it, I would spend my first weekend in Northern Thailand camping in Chiang Dao. It was a perfect way to reflect on my first week surrounded by breathtaking nature, creativity in various forms of art & expression, and positivity!

The volunteers at the house packed our bags and got ready to start our journey! Being only 1-1.5 hours away from Chiang Mai, Chiang Dao is easy to get to by bus / red truck or by scooter. Just be prepared to get comfy with your neighbor on the bus with three to a seat: a bonding experience! 

Before we had even arrived, we had heard so many varying accounts of what Shambhala in Your Heart Festival would be like. From what we could gather, it was an eclectic music and art festival that had significant influences from Japanese culture. In arriving, we learned that the origin of Shambhala in Your Heart was when two artists from Japan were inspired to create a festival for a community of musicians, artists, and everyone in between. We met people from all over the world who came to experience the uniqueness of the festival at Doi Luang Youth Camp. 

Throughout the weekend, I was almost always amazed at the overwhelming beauty that was around us. Doi Luang Mountain seemed impossibly close; the hot spring was incredibly relaxing; the stars seemed especially vibrant; even the butterflies seemed more beautiful and colorful. It was easy to lose track of time listening to music accompanied by a range of voices and instruments from acoustic guitar to didgeridoo, practicing yoga, reading in the library, meeting travellers by the campsite or bonfire, and watching artists create.

The feeling of community was so evident and could be seen in the kindness of interactions between friends and strangers alike. Shambhala created an open and creative environment where people could share their thoughts, passions, and talents. The CCT team returned back to Chiang Mai full of inspiration, happiness, and ideas for the weeks ahead. 

By Anna Kim

Overnight Trip to Lampang

Last week I had to stay for one night in Lampang. It's a city two hours away from Chiang Mai. FORRU owns plots there so we had to monitor them. Monitoring means measuring all the trees and valuing their health, shade and weeds. Masters students from Chiang Mai University helped us. 

 

Maybe you are wondering why FORRU has plots in Lampang. Actually SCG (big cement company in Lampang) tried to plant trees in their quarries, but it didn't work. So they asked FORRU for help. I have to say I was really surprised when I saw the trees. I mean the plots are in a quarry so I didn't expect anything. But the trees were so huge and healthy. 

 

This week we were in Lampang again but just for a meeting. SCG want to try to plant more trees and FORRU needs to explain everything. It was interesting to see a meeting between the environment and economy sector.

The other days I had to work in the office because we had to collect and analyze the data from our fieldtrips, and we have had many fieldtrips recently.

Last week my friends and I rented motorbikes so we did a lot of things. Just a few impressions: We visited a Thai Boxing fight and a lake, we watched a really nice movie at Documentary Arts Asia (a kind of cabaret movie) and we orbited Chiang Mai with the bikes. There is a really nice loop road in the mountains, it was amazing!

Plans may be changed (Marie Eberwein)

I told you I want to spend Christmas and New Year in Cambodia. But one day before departure all my travelling plans were canceled by myself. But that is a long story...
Nonetheless I left Chiang Mai and I set out for Southern Thailand. After 20 hours bus ride, 13 hours stay in Bangkok and 2 hours passage I finally arrived in Koh Samui. What can I say? I´m sorry, but this island will never see me again! There are only tourists and young people making party-awful! And it wasn´t possible to find good Thai food and it rained every day! Nevertheless I tried to take time by the forelock. In my hostel I met a nice girl from Sweden. Together we explored Koh Samui. On one day we made a tourist tour and visited the most important places in Koh Samui. For example: Big Buddha, Grandfather Rock, Namuang Waterfall, Tarnim magic Garden, Wat Plai Laem.

On Christmas we rented motorbikes and explored the island by ourselves. It was such amazing trip, because we had so much fun and we could visited places we wanted to see. We saw places outside of tourism. That was great! After that we had a nice Christmas dinner (Pad Thai and Springrolls, the most Thai food we could get). In the evening we went out with other people from our hostel.
Next day we relaxed and gave ourselves a Christmas present: A Thai massage! I have to say it was my first Thai massage and it was so good. It takes getting used to because the masseur touch every part of your body and sometimes your bones creak. But after the massage you feel so good, it was great.
That´s all I could talk about. Finally I have to say I had a lot of fun and I met so many nice people from all over the world. But it feels like I wasn´t in Thailand. A fortiori I´m happy to be back in Chiang Mai.
Because I can´t spend New Year in Cambodia I´ll go with the other volunteers to Pai. I hope it will be great :)

All the best!

Sawasdee Ka!

My name is Marie Eberwein and I`m from Germany. I`m 19 years old and I finished high school before I arrived in Thailand.Having  just arrived three weeks ago, but I already feel home. That isn`t difficult because Thai people are the most hearty and friendly people, I`ve ever met. Everybody smiles and you can only do the same.During Cultural Canvas Program, I`m the volunteer at FORRU. FORRU is an environment organization, which reforest the rain forest around Chiang Mai. That means that I spend a lot of time in forest. We collect seeds, tend this in the nursery, we execute germination experiments, monitor formerly planted sites and even more. I really enjoy working in  forest, because it`s kind of paradise.We also offer educational programs in order to prepare this I have to work in the office, too. Our office is in Chiang Mai University. Therefore most of FORRU staff are students and teachers.

Enough about my work I also had time off. And Chiang Mai is a city with  many sights. Wat Phra That Doi Suthep was only one of the impressing temples I visited, covered by incense sticks. I also went to many waterfalls. It`s so amazing to relax there, breathing in the fresh, cool air and chilling in clear water.

Starting from now I`ll keep you informed about my work and my free time each week.

Thanks for reading!

Marie