Crooked Rain

So tomorrow at the crack of dawn we leave for the east for a week to study the effects of dams on the villagers living by them. Judging from the reading, it'll be intense. I'm just glad to be another participant and no longer a u-fac. My sleep will improve and hopefully my mood.

Rained all day. At one point, rain covered my ankles while slogging through a puddle. The briefing was well-done and although I arrived utterly saturated from my umbrella-less walk, I am thoroughly excited about the unit. The rain, I have discovered, leaks through my roof (I live on the top floor), so I have a little piece of the outdoors (a puddle) in my room. I tried to clean it up, but just in case I told Ajaan Ooh -- our professor who looks after apartment-related stuff -- about my room's problem. Dada comes back tomorrow after I leave, so I'd like to leave the room and her stuff in good condition. Hope her stuff is alright. She already thinks I'm disaster-prone, seeing as I shorted out the electricity the first day, and pulled the patio door off its hinges. Whoops.
We have a new girl, Vanessa, who is studying dams' social effects worldwide. She just got in from China this morning and is staying with us until late October. She helped us map out one of the up-coming exchanges, and seems really fascinating. I look forward to picking her brain about China, dams, and her research.

Finally, I gave a mini-lecture today on photography, seeing as the group has been recently talking a lot about sharing knowledge. Well, only two people showed up, but I had fun sharing what amounted to be a twenty-minute summary of last semester's Intro to Photo.

In other news, I finally posted my thoughts from the slaughterhouse visit (was it really only last week?). It's a bit graphic, but... well I just needed to write it. The delay is explained by the experience's intensity.

Sawasdee-ka! See you in a week.