The start of a study-abroad semester at ISDSI is full of intensive Thai language, academic seminars (sustainability, history, ecology, etc.), and lots of experiential learning opportunities to get out in the field and use the language, start to learn about ecology and sustainability, etc.

Here are a few photo sets of three fun — and important — parts of the first few weeks during our Foundations course:

Rock climbing — This is a great day climbing, learning about working together as a team, and starting to develop the leadership and teamwork skills that will be critical to success on the Expedition Field Courses.

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Retreat at Mok Fa waterfall — Each semester we do a retreat, which includes an open water swim assessment, getting to know each other (students and staff), learning about risk and responsibility, how to manage emergencies in the field, and lots of free time and games.

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Host family farewell — The Foundations course ends with a farewell “kantoke” dinner with our host families and students.  While there is some traditional dancing, in recent years there has been a lot of host families teaching the American students to do Thai dances — which is a lot of fun for all!

Just a quick post about what we’re doing over the summer.  Aside from the relative peace and quiet of not having a semester going, a lot gets done over the summer! One of the reasons we’ve put off doing a summer session (although there is demand for one) is that we need the time to rest and recover, as well as get ready for the coming year.

Field Instructors Am, Pui, Tik and Toto pulling gear and getting ready to spend some long hot days cleaning and repairing gear.

Gear: Our Expedition Field Courses take a lot of gear to run smoothly — backpacks, skin diving gear (fins, masks and snorkels), tents, sleeping bags, etc.  All the gear has to be gone over, pulled for repair if necessary, cleaned, inventoried, and organized.  As anyone with even a small amount of gear knows, chaos is always lurking with a closet or box of gear — so you can imagine the chaos that develops over a couple of semesters outfitting 60 + people!

NGOs: The summer is a great time to visit new organizations we don’t yet know, go back and talk with ones we’ve worked with for years, and find out what opportunities there might be for student internships.  It is getting more difficult to place students with NGOs — lots of people in Chiang Mai want to volunteer, and some NGOs have had bad experiences with folks that don’t speak Thai or are not culturally sensitive.  We’re fortunate that we can place students with NGOs that won’t accept short term volunteers or interns, and we work hard to make sure that we’re not a burden on the organizations our students work with.

Villages: Going out to many of the villages we work with is important — both to see how our friends are doing throughout the year, but also to evaluate the program, see what they feel they would like to change for the upcoming year, and learn if there are any ways we can support them through our courses and students.

Families: Host families are, of course, a big part of learning Thai and becoming culturally competent.  So visiting old families and new ones is a big job.  We’ve got over 30 students for the fall semester, and each family needs to be visited and interviewed.  We also set up and prep our host family orientation, which is run in part by former host families. We’ve also got more families who want to host that students, so being sensitive to sort out who gets to do it this semester is an important part of the job.

Course support:  Course support involves everything from working on the library (sorting through almost 800 books), to pulling old readers out of the files and recycling them.  We also start visiting field sites, working on budgets and logistics, and getting the first block course (Foundations) sorted out and organized.

So while it is sort of quiet — it can be hectic as the summer draws to a close!  We are looking forward to the start of the fall semester, and the usual chaos that brings!

The final course of the spring semester study abroad program at ISDSI is our course on Coastal Ecology and Culture.  This is the capstone of the semester, and brings together leadership skills, cross cultural and language skills, as well as expedition skills so that the students can study the reefs, sea grass, mangroves and local communities in Trang, Southern Thailand.

Here are a few photos taken by our instructor, Pi Ben, to give you a bit of a feel of what the course is like.

The prow of a new longtail boat on Mook island.

Krissy and Nikki paddling in on a double seakayak.

Ben sea kaking, leaving the beach for the crossing to Mook island.

Ben and Karen, leaders of the day, explaining the day's route by sea kayak.

Ben landing on the beach and pulling up his kayak. The ISDSI support boat in the background.

Dinner with a view. Camping on the beach in Trang.

Karen padding into the beach.

A longtail crossing by after a storm.

Karen and Ben, leaders of the day, sorting out the kayaks after a day's paddle.

Riley identifying different types of seagrass during a study of seagrass ecology and dugong feeding behavior.

A real pirate cave -- a great location for a seminar by Bang Hed, a village elder, about mangroves and community. (The pirates have been gone for a long time... at least that's what Bang Hed says...)

Jack and his host family, Baan Iet, Ja Mai, Nong Chock, and Nong Lin.

Pi Noi, usually in the office, but also working the occasional field course, and Pi Toto, field instructor.

The host families of Jao Mai village with their students.

Mid-course seminar with Ajaan Mark. ISDSI field seminar rooms don't have WiFi, but we like them!

Ben watching the sunset over the Andaman Sea.

On Wednesday, we issued gear to the students for the Coastal Ecology and Culture course — masks, fins, snorkels, dry bags, PFDs (life jackets), etc. A key part of the expedition involves studies of coral reefs, sea grasses and mangroves, and sea kayaking through the marine and mangrove ecosystems. Good gear and the ability to access those environments is critical, so we make sure that the students are well equipped.

Snorkels ready for the students. Numbered (to keep track of them) and yellow (so we can spot folks in the water easily). Checking the seals, silicon mouth pieces, etc.

Fins and student uniforms. The new look at ISDSI!

Masks ready to go. We purchase new gear on a regular basis, and work with professional dive supply shops to get top end gear. It lasts longer and fits better, making field studies a lot easier.

Jack (and Riley in the background) checking the seals on their masks.

The students got back from the Forests Course just before spring break for the Thai Songkran holiday.  Here are some photos from the course to give you a taste of what the expedition was like.  Great course, and a great group of community-based instructors and host families.

Students after finishing the ridge hike from Nam Hu village to Huay Hee village.

Taylor with a dried "saba" pod found on one of the forest hikes.

Nam Hu village.

Jump to Caroline’s blog for more great photos from her.

Betsy, Krissy, Kristen and Riley cooling off in the Huay Puling falls.

One of the host mom's spinning cotten before dying and weaving it.

Kristen helping her village mom to prepare food for the pigs.

For a great blog post from a student about the Forests Expedition, jump to Caroline’s blog post, Stories from the Forest.

A new group of students arrives at ISDSI at the end of the week.  In addition to planning meetings, confirming activities and course details, we’re pulling and cleaning gear, sorting equipment, and getting the expedition side of our courses ready.  To do expedition based experiential learning well requires a lot of gear!

Paddles for sea kayaks and canoes.

Carrie cleaning and drying PFDs.

Even more PFDs (we have a LOT of PFDs).

Masks and sea kayak pumps. Seawater wreaks havoc on gear, so we've got to clean and soak it in fresh water.

Aaron soring gear, tents, scientific testing equipment and other things.

Some (but not all) of our gear storage. It is a constant challenge to keep things sorted and organized well.

Drying tents (just before an unseasonal rain!)

One of the most important things we do at ISDSI is to meet and talk with local communities and activists while setting up and preparing a course.  We refer to our courses as “community based” since they are both physically based in a community, as well as intellectually based in a community—we want the community to be the ones helping decide what to teach, what is important, and how it all fits together.  Once we get into the community with the students our role as instructors changes to be facilitators—letting the villagers step up and teach the students, sharing their lives, their wisdom, and their vision for creating a more sustainable world.

Looking across the Mekong river to Laos. (Note how low the water is, and the riverside gardens!)

To do this takes a lot of prep work, going out to villages, talking with folks about their passions, concerns and problems, and working together to find a way to teach American students about it. It isn’t easy, but it is really important. We’ve got to sort out logistics (how many hours to get to that village?), housing (how many people per house?), curriculum and lesson flow (what do we do first? last?), and find dynamic and interesting speakers and topics that are engaging and meaningful for both the local communities and the American students.

We also are constantly evaluating and assessing courses. Are they engaging? Are students learning from them?  Is this the best way to teach this? Are there better or more important places to go? What other topics need to be in the course? What can we drop, and still retain the core lessons?

This spring we’ve decided to work on the Rivers course.  The core of the course is about how local communities are impacted by decisions by the State, and often how the local livelihoods are sacrificed for (often dubious) benefits for urban people far from the rivers. To do this we study two well known rivers in Thailand—the Yom, which is not yet dammed, and the Mun, which has been dammed to the great destruction of local communities and the ecology, with few benefits to show from it.

We’ve always included discussions of the Mekong river in the course—the Mun is an important tributary, and damming the Mun impacts the ecology of the Mekong.  The Mekong also represents a good example of the problems of rivers crossing boundaries, upstream/downstream resource control, etc.  With China already damming the Mekong, and Thailand and Laos talking about damming it themselves, we’ve decided we need to incorporate the Mekong more directly into the course, and refine the links from the communities on the Mun river to what is happening on the Mekong.

So we had to talk with the folks involved in both the Mun and the Mekong, which meant doing a recon to Issan, hours away from Chiang Mai by van, to the Northeast region of Thailand.