"the elephants got out just in time"

I am entirely toooooo sleepy for my own good. All this good weather and smiling people can make me want to nap. I miss the nap. It was such a staple in my college life. This week, we went to the rainforest to ride elephants. Our elephant was most amiable and sooooo big. I was quite surprised. I guess from afar, they seemed much smaller.

We also went to the New Life Center here in Chiang Mai. The New Life Center is a shelter for girls that are either at risk for prostitution or are ex-prostitutes that have been taken/sold from their villages into brothels and then rescued by Thailand Social Services. At the Center, the learn a trade as well as an academic education and they are also protected from brothel owners/ fathers who want to get them back to their detriment. It was a good but really really hard visit. The manager of the Center gave us a tour. We got to meet the girls and she told us their stories. The stories where unimaginable.......families abandoning or selling their girls, the conditions in which the brothel owners kept the girls----having to service 30-40 men a day combined with very little food, sleeping on the floor and being abused. It seemed unbelievable that these girls were standing in front of me, strong and smiling. I can't imagine living through that pain (physical, mental, spiritual, emotional) and not simply dissolving into little disposable pieces in some dark corner and disappearing. It gave me a passion for wanting to work with those girls in the future (I have to get an emotional grip first).
for more infomation on the new life center see: http://www.newlifethailand.org