Rachel Boss '07, writes about her academic and service learning program in Thailand.

I spent the spring semester of my junior year studying at Payap University in Chiang Mai, Thailand through the International Partnership for Service-Learning (IPSL). Although I made the decision to go to Thailand rather last minute (until the day before my application was due, I was still considering the IPSL programs in India and the Philippines), I couldn’t have asked for more well-rounded international experience. Although the program at Payap was recently overhauled, the former directors went to great lengths to introduce the students in the Thai Studies program to all aspects of Thai society. I suppose I chose to go to Thailand because Far Eastern cultures have always struck me as somehow particularly foreign. Thus, the most rewarding part of living in northern Thailand for four months was being immersed in a fairly traditional, Buddhist society that is steeped in customs of reverence and mindfulness – especially among older Thais. On the other hand, it was dizzying to bear witness to the extent to which Western culture is seeping into Southeast Asia through mass communication and economic globalization. It was continually challenging to on the one hand be visiting ethnic minority villages in which a reverence for the mundane persists, and on the other hand be living among the bustle of the most popular tourist destinations in northern Thailand.

Since it was an IPSL program, in addition to my academic classes, I also volunteered at an NGO called the Healing Family Foundation. HFF is home to a dozen or so intellectually disabled adults who would otherwise have very little opportunity to work as ‘productive members of society’. At the Foundation, these individuals weave tapestries, scarves, and other products using the Saori style of weaving that originated in Japan. Saori is unique, because the weaver doesn’t have to follow an intricate pattern, as with traditional weaving. In fact, the artists at HFF are encouraged to be imaginative and inventive when they work. When I would ask (in terrible, broken Thai) what someone was working on, more often than not, the artist would describe the abstract landscape of the cloth: this is a bird, these are mountains, here is a rainbow, etc. As far as my volunteer experience is concerned, I often felt that I wasn’t helping as much as I imagined I would be. I helped set up the looms and attempted to create a photo blog for the agency, but sometimes I felt that I was in the way. The best days were the ones when I gave little English lessons to the artists, because then we got to sing and be silly. On several occasions, one or more of the artists would show me how to weave and let me work on their projects a little. At first I found the idea of stepping in and working on their weaving troubling, but when I talked to my service-learning professor about this, he helped me see that work as vital too. He pointed out that because of their work at HFF, they have a unique skill that makes them valuable and useful, and that being able to share it with someone – especially by stepping into the role of teacher – is probably one of the most gratifying parts of their work.

I could go on forever about the ways in which my time in Thailand profoundly affected my outlook on the world. But I won’t. Let me just say this: it was probably the most worthwhile experience of my college career.