Project Planning

We're in the throws of project planning now. Yesterday was a brainstorm/idea-bubbling session. A real long one. We basically came up with a lot of ideas that interested us, that fit with our vision, and then pain-stakingly whittled them down to about ten ideas to go through the project steering committee and staff. I was having a hard time finding anything really to latch onto. I suppose the many, many days of nine to ten-hour days of meetings is taking its toll on my interest level.

When I went home last night, I focused on putting together a photo-essay Kelsey commissioned for the newsletter. Originally it was supposed to deal with us as group members and our personal experience here in Thailand, but it morphed into a visual representation/illustration of our vision -- the same vision I posted two days ago. Sitting there in my room, listening to some Radiohead and editing, I found some peace that I'd been lacking. I'll try to post the fruits of my labor soon.

Coming out of that, I felt excellent. The fact that I then heard we didn't need to be anywhere until 12:30 the next afternoon helped too to lift my mood.

Today we came into the classroom where the staff presented the elligible projects to us. They weren't exactly what we had submitted. Much of them were linked to ENGAGE, the loose network of CIEE Thailand allumni, and had to do with networking. I suppose that's a little more realistic to try to accomplish in the short three weeks we're allotted for project time than other proposals. We then were told to latch onto our primary project. Whether we wanted to then dedicate ourselves to more than one project would be up to us individually.

The one I'm working on now is having to do with the scavengers that we studied back in early September at the landfill. The landfill was such a powerful unit, because many of our projects focus on it. This one has to do with linking the scavengers to international and national organizations. There's talk of organizing someone from Thailand to go to a conference on this in Bogota, Columbia next spring. A woman from India who has set up a network like this wants to make Khon Kaen the pilot city for an urban scavenger organization in Thailand. This is the beginning of an idea with huge potential, so it's pretty exciting.

I'm hoping to take this issue back when I return to the States. I know it's effecting my internship-search. Everything's pretty nebulous on our end right now, but soon that will fall into place.

Tonight is "Thanksgiving" for us. The Sofitel, the four-star hotel downtown, hosts a Thanksgiving buffet for all the ex-pat Americans. We've gotten CIEE to pay for our meal, but the catch is we have to do it a few days ahead of time -- I suppose to beat the rush. So happy (super-early) Thanksgiving! Hail the Giant Pumpkin!