Other people will be on this trip?!

SSU 2012 Asia trip participants in uniform (mostly)

It is now starting to become real. There will be other people besides Kathleen and myself on this trip - I have met them.  And they are all a lot younger than me (with one exception and he is still younger).  Even the two other leaders - Jennifer and Madi seem very young.   What if they have to stop the bus so I can go pee?  How will Kathleen and I do sleeping on the floor in a Thai hill tribes village for two nights?

I have sat through a couple of classes with these kids and a lot of them are very bright.  The rest are probably bright too but just quieter.   Today's class was Cultural Anthropology with Lois Mitchell.  The class was about education - what is education? why do we value it? how does it happen? and what should we do about it?  Very interesting, and even though I have a PhD from Oxford ( I am supposed to be educated), I am not sure I have many answers.

Last night we watched a film called Lola.  Lola is a Philippine expression meaning grandmother and is used by most of the people in the film when talking to or about the two senior ladies who are the principle characters - they are Lolas.  The film takes place in Manila and certainly took me back to the time I was in Manila 24 years ago.  It looks the same.  The poverty is crushing and even makes what we saw in Mexico seem well off in comparison.  My main reaction was - that was depressing.

I got my first look at Ringgitts (Malaysia) Pesos (Philippines) and Bahts (Thailand) when we got some spending money.  Very exciting!