Hello everyone! Our first blog entry as we have only just been able to get on the internet, we are currently sat in an office in the elephant research centre!
We arrived on thursday of the week before last, very tired, jet lagged etc. After a night in a guest house in bangkok (where emma flushed her watch down the toilet) we met the rest of the group and set off for Surin. It was a long bus journey followed by a nice air conditioned ride ( the back of a truck) and arrived at the villlage at about six in the morning. We met the people who we are staying with, who speak hardly any english but are very nice. We had that day off to chill out for a bit, we wandered round the centre and saw the elephants for the first time, which was cool but a bit weird! people stared at us more than the elephants which was very unnerving. The next day we went trekking on the elephants down to a river, where we swam with them and washed them! Our elephant is called Dang More and our mahout (the owner) is called Quan. He only knows the word 'sleep' and finds it funny to say 'dang more sleep, emma lucy sleep.'
We've been on lots more rides since then, and more swimming, but theres been a fair amount of work- cutting the sugar cane for the elephants in the heat of the day is difficult, and mucking them out isnt the most pleasant of experiences but it's all good, because every meal we have feels earned.
Today we watched Elephant Polo! and we've been to a thai funeral, a thai wedding, and camping by the river...one of the highlights has also been going to the shopping mall in Surin and getting pizza as we are quite fed up with rice and noodles by this point. The no shower situation fazed us at first too but as with anything, we've got used to the factwe're filthy constantly and theres a basin and bucket we use which is amusing to say the least!
Pretty much everyone on the project is really nice, there are group dynamics, as with everywhere really, but we get on very well as a whole and made some brilliant friends who we are already planning to meet up with in New Zealand!
We'll try and update soon and add some pictures, but the internet here is pretty unreliable so it will most likely be in Bangkok on Friday when we leave the village.
Hope everyone enjoys reading this, we miss you all and hope everything is going well back in the UK!

Lots of love, Lucy and Emma xxxxxxxxxxx