Week 5; Crazy people working and a Buddhist holiday

Kicking off the week with a little socializing, thanks to my professor, Ron Heck, I was able to meet up with a former UH Alumni, Mee-chai, who is teaching at Bangkok University. It was nice to talk to a local who I also had a lot in common with and could joke about Dr Heck's antics. After meeting close to UNESCO, Mee-chai was nice enough to take me out of the city to one of his father's favorite restaurants on the main river that flows through the city. Unfortunately, Mee-chai will be moving to New York soon, but hopefully we can get some Muy Thai boxing in before then.

Meechai and some good Thai food 

Continuing this work week with creating materials for the upcoming Policy Formulation workshop, the week was always going to be tough due to the Buddhist holiday on Friday, taking away some very much needed time (though I wont complain about the 3 day weekend).
The week taught me many things, funnily enough, not much in the way of educational policy, rather it was some pretty good lessons in working in an office environment and working with others. Let me tell you, communication, a big thing. When I next receive an instruction to do something, I will suck every last piece of pertinent information about said task out of that person. Tell me everything you know and want, EVERYTHING NOW. Sigh, I guess these lessons are just a process of getting used to this new office environment, rather than the teacher one I am used to (where I made a majority of my own decisions). In the end, thanks to the amazing efforts of other interns, research assistants and other higher staff who stayed for a majority of the weekend, everything was ready for the weekend.

Crazy people doing their thing

In addition to creating Prezi's, powerpoints and reading materials, a few of us also readied for running the simulation model with the participants (in the role of guides/facilitators, etc). Given assigned roles, (Minister of Finance here) we will use the EPPSim (filled with real data from an annonymous country) to fiddle with and try to hit specific targets based on our roles. For instance, as Minister of Finance, I need to ensure that we dont go over the allocated budget for education, etc. Anyway, I readied my suggestions and ran the projection and I am pretty sure I would be an awesome Finance Minister, but everyone would hate me.

Koh Chang 

As mentioned prior, it was a three day weekend, where everyone and their mother seems to get out of Bangkok. Which is exactly what I did. So, with a few other lady interns who had had it for the week, we went to the second largest island in Thailand; Koh Chang.
I admit, it was pretty touristy (many hotels and huts) , however, there was much that seemed remote and under developed about it (elephants being fence-lessly housed next to the main road). A lovely Kiwi and I found a set of huts on a rocky beach in one of the most southern towns, Lonely Beach, (one of the most remote obviously) which was known for being more backpacker and hippy than touristy. After a long day of traveling, (a bus, ferry, and a truck), we finally arrived and had a late late lunch and watched a stormy sunset.  We then met up with the other gals and enjoyed more drinks and dining.
Saturday, our only full day, was spent I admit pretty lazily. After exploring the main fishing village, where the town is essentially built on a pier (hotels, shops, restaurants, the lighthouse,everything), we found the most perfect, near deserted beach you can imagine, deck chairs and bar included. As it included views of the southern islands, we were happy to swim, drink pina coladas, eat, sun and repeat.

Our perfect beach in the south, looking towards the Southern Isles.

If Saturday was relaxing, then Sunday turned to be quite the adventure in trying to get home. After a nice breakfast in White Sand beach, we needed to find a truck taxi. We had given ourselves 3 hours to make it to the ferry , cross to the mainland and make it to the 2pm bus. Once in a taxi, it ended up stopping 2 kms later, after it turned out there was a 5km line of cars that needed to get onto the ferry. After sitting around, we decided to try our luck and walk down the road through the Thai jungle. After 3kms or so of furious walking, it started to pour rain, typical Thai style. While taking shelter, we found out from a police officer, who was looking at the long line of cars, that we still had 2kms to go. We also found out that he was willing to let us hop on his motorcycle and take us both to the ferry, by-passing all the cars. Not taking away from Saturday's beach, riding on that small motorcycle on the opposite side of the road, through lush humid jungle (fresh with rain), was the highlight of the trip. We were lucky enough to just walk onto a ferry and made our bus with 30 mins to spare.

So, that was my week, it was a long one, but was definitely the most eventful I have had yet. When I returned on Sunday night, I definitely felt like I had turned a corner with my stay here, like I was a little more settled and more of a local, which of course I am not, but it felt like I was more than a bumbling tourist (seen more so after I was able to direct my taxi driver in Thai). I of course think of Andrew every day and am so proud with how hard he works and wish I could help him with little stuff, like laundry.

My First weekend away...

Weeks 3 and 4; Settling in

Celebration with beers!

Well, although I officially finished school on the 10th of May,  I felt like I have still been as busy as ever. The last 2 weeks at work have really picked up. On top of some general preparation, I am also responsible for creating the materials for a few presentations our head of EPR will be giving at the Workshop on policy formulation (spoken about in earlier posts). Asked to write on the policy cycle, finally! Ron Heck, you would be proud, I policy cycled the heck (good play, huh?) out of that presentation. I almost felt like I gave too much on the Prezi, and will have to severely edit it. So, overall, have found that all my educational policy classes have been used and drawn upon in my first 3 weeks at UNESCO, at least it feels like I know what I am talking about.

Look David (my adviser!) working hard!

Also worked on more, was the Education Policy Simulation Model workshops came to a close. We got to work with some real data that the Cambodian government has given UNESCO in order to come up with a report on current needs and future issues. Although the data set is not complete yet (will be receiving the last installment this coming week), we still got to see how we adapt the model to specific country demographics and education systems. I happily admit, learning a whole new set of formulas (e.g to asses promotion, dropout and repeating rates) is not fun. It is definitely not like the Statistics course I had just finished. Working with the excel based program means a lot of understanding and applying formulas that at this time, I cant just keep in my head. Hopefully tho, that will change over the next few weeks, as my supervisor gets ready for maternity leave and I will need to use those good ole analytic reporting skills (that I did feel that I did mastered in Stats).  

Super-hyper mall of Thailand, at least that's what I would
have named it. 

Socially, I celebrated the end of the semester (I did well ,thank you) with a mani, pedi, shopping and a beer. After one weekend of keeping it very slow going, this weekend, I decided I needed to get out of my 5 block radius and start behaving like I live in Thailand! After seeing a movie (did you know you have to stand up at the beginning of movies when they play the king's anthem?), I finally had a Thai massage. Let me ask you, when you think 'massage', don't you feel good, happy thoughts? Well, you certainly haven't had a 'Thai' massage by an old war horse of a massager who pushes her elbows between your spinal discs. It felt like an intimate hard core yoga session, yikes huh? So, I have decided that I will still shop around for a cultural massage that is my favorite. In between exploring some crazy-large malls and markets , I also visited the Jim Thompson House.

In the garden of Jim Thompson.

An American who feel in love with Thailand and started the silk trade for exporting around the world. First of all, what a wonderful place. Holy cow, that's living! Everything in the compound is at least 200 years old, buildings had been moved from various parts of the country and erected exactly as they were. Thompson loved Thailand culture so much, he kept to all religious Thai customs of creating a home. After he made his home/compound, he then started to collect some amazingly old Thai/Asian artwork. Everything from dismembered Buddhas to scrolls of historical scenes. It was such a lovely place and I highly recommend going.

This week will see all of our team's preparation come to a head when everything is due to the printers on Tuesday and I will be using the three day weekend well by going to the island of Ko Chang!
On another note, Andrew and I had the anniversary of our first year of marriage. It sucks being so far away apart on such a day, and even worse when we dont even get to talk because my husband works 17 hour days. But they say that absence make the heart grow fonder, and it appears to be true.

Two weeks In

Hello all,

Does anyone have any idea of how they do this?? 

A little more happening this week, although I don't know what I was expecting. What, just rock up to UNESCO and start out by doing high tech education data analysis? Cause boom, that's what happened y'all. Due to a workshop we are conducting at the end of the month, which sees national advisers and such coming to learn about education policy formulation, my boss, GC (North Korean, very friendly, saucy jokes) wants to pass on the knowledge of the UNESCO developed Educational Profile System Simulation Model (EPSSim) which is basically an Excel data set that has its own algorithms and categories set up inside, everything from population growth, to GDP figures to education expenditure. You plug in the numbers and then interpret the data. It was the best thing ever (dont judge) and I am sure my Statistics Professor, Ron Heck would have been super proud as I took to it like a duck to water (or feel like I did). I also started to sketch up some new designs for the ESP website and we will start looking at implementing some of the changes once we have the tech guys with us.

On the way to work in the morning.

As to outside of work, sorry guys, no entertaining stories yet. I am still in the process of finishing my school work from UH and have even dedicated my lunch times to getting the last 2 pieces of the semester done. A final statistics test on Friday the 10th marks the end of school. So I am planning on getting a 2 hr massage from a swanky massage bar (thank you groupon) and finally taking in some culture on the Saturday after!
Actually , scratch that, I have done something!, I joined a yoga studio that is on the way to work and I have an ambitious plan to go every morning before work (I know, I know)., but so far its happened three out of five. So, I think I am on a good roll.
Til next week guys,
p.s.
Shout out to my husband who has worked a 90 hour week and never complains (he might be a robot, or he would probably want me calling him a machine).