Catherine Sittser, '05
English, Music Major

After a week and a half, Chiagmai begins to feel like home, and we've become experts at bartering for song-taos (taxis in the back of red trucks), which frees us to explore the city independently. After all the tourist events and lectures during the first couple of weeks, however stimulating, it's nice to settle into a semi-routine of service learning in the morning (except for the MIT students who direct up to fifty energetic little bodies of classroom traffic for up to eight hours).

My experience at the Saori Center has been comparatively low-key and informal, though filled with joy and laughter. Not to mention plenty of dancing, such as a techno-aerobic workout today, led by a young man with Down Syndrome who throws his hips and arms around in a contagious funky groove. All of the Thai students who spend their days at Saori are either intellectually or physically disabled, but the beautiful weavings they create would suggest otherwise. Today our group of four -- Genelle Allen, Lars, Olson, Annemarie Webber and myself, joined by the lovely Pamela Parker -- had the privilege of meeting the founder and administrator of Saori, a dynamic, kind Japanese man who laughed easily and took pride in his students as if they were his own children. He provided details about the Non-government organization and showed us pictures of various programs and shows that serve to spread awareness to a Thai society still plagued by religious stigma that ostracizes the disabled. However eager to love and innocent our disabled Thai friends are, Thai Buddhism equates disability with bad karma, a deserved punishment carried over from a bad previous life. A typical morning for us at Saori includes dancing, weaving, painting thread, card-making, playing games, teaching English and laughing, always laughing. Unfortunately I can't describe, only witness, the joy in their faces, the tremendous visions of God's grace manifested in broken bodies and fragile minds that will someday be made whole.

Pam offered to treat us to lunch to debrief, so we feasted for a couple hours on our favorite Thai dishes, such as my beloved curry. That afternoon, a few of us took a song-tao to Payap University to learn traditional Thai dancing. It's all about the fingers and hands. Well trained Thai women can bend their fingers all the way back to their forearms. I'm not the graceful dancer type, so I got to be the man.

Dinner was on our own, but Kyle and Teresa Usrey, Genelle and I lucked out the day before when we found a purse abandoned in a song-tao. Upon rummaging through it, we found $500 (20,000 baht) and decided to treat ourselves to an exquisite feast. Just kidding. A hotel business card directed us to where the owner of the purse might be staying, so we played detective and raced to the hotel. The woman and her husband, a retired Japanese couple, thanked us over and over with misty eyes, offering us money as a reward. We turned that down, but an elegant dinner engagement and a chance to get to know them was too tempting to refuse. They took us to an outdoor Japanese pavilion restaurant where we could select from a huge variety of meats, vegetables, noodles and spices displayed buffet style and then cook it in hot pots in the center of each table. It was possibly the best meal I've ever eaten, both in taste and company. Two other Japanese couples, friends of our hosts, joined us in an energetic evening of exchanging cultures, jokes, e-mails, hugs and laughs.

Whenever I travel, I look most forward to unexpected moments that can't be scheduled on an itinerary; little surprises that create the sweetest memories. Thus far, Thailand has been overflowing with secret gifts such as these.

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