Sunday Lazy Sunday

Today's the end of the lazies for me. I got to sleep in and fart around all day, but the party ends tomorrow. And even as far as lazing around goes, that can be taken with a grain of salt, with all the reading packets I get to slog through.

The next unit we're dealing with focuses on farming, a topic I didn't know much about until this past week. Now that I'm learning about the whole so-called "agri-business" industry, it's simultaneously fascinating and terrifying. I'll see how the whole rice-farming thing plays out in the fields next week. We're going to Surin province, about 4 hours away from here in Khon Kaen. During the trip, we'll be talking with five or six diverse groups of people -- from the government to the farmers to a conservation group. Should be a broad mix of people and opinions that from whom I'm looking forward to hearing.

For this unit, I and seven other students will be serving as Unit Facilitators. I was having trouble remembering exactly the name of the titles, for CIEE loves these management/jargony words. So many of our work groups are called things such as "Process Facilitators", or "Unit Production Teams" it gets pretty ridiculous. In fact, we call the actual groups "Action Working Groups." In addition to being a unit fac for this unit, I'm in the "Unit Production Team" for the fifth and last unit: Movements and Trends.

Being a Unit Facilitator means we as a group are responsible for making sure the group runs smoothly, everyone's voices get heard, and there's consensus. This is referred to as group process and is vital in everything we do here. Fine in theory, laudable when it works, but let's be real for a minute -- there are thirty-three of us students. Achieving consensus is difficult at best. This evening, the previous group of unit facs and our upcoming group had a meeting at an adorable cafe down the road called Peacetime. They relayed some information regarding what worked and what didn't when they facilitated. What they had to say was pretty daunting; it seems pretty stressful to be in charge, but not have any power to be a dictator.

Ah well, probably a good life skill to learn.

After dinner, we checked out one of the local milk bar. Eating pancakes and strawberry milk -- yum!