1. Nice song

2. I know I should be updating more often, especially since paying for the server space caused me to overdraw my bank account. That alone is reason to use this.

3. Spring break was amazing! I spent it in Juarez, Mexico building a house. We road tripped out there, which was a blast and I got to be shotgun, which meant that I traded picking the music for being able to sleep. The sunrise while returning from Mexico was totally worth it.

Some highlights:

Driving out there was great fun and gave us a chance to really get to know people. Ryan drove the minivan and I was his shotgun, while the other two vans were 15 passenger ones. We had walkie talkies, and at first we were Minivan Ramrod and then Minivan Halen.

There were 2 teams, each building a house. The family that we built for was 2 grandparents, a single mother and her 3 children. My team was so much fun! We had tons of cool freshmen come this year, and it was great working with them. I still love roofing and like doing stucco a bit less now. Having Matt, Charles, and Zach on the same site was loads of fun. We worked with Pete, who has built some ridiculous number of houses since he started working at Casas. He was in charge of my site when I went 2 years ago. It was so great to be able to build a house for this family.

Staying in Juarez was great. A lot of us put our sleeping bags up on the balcony and slept under the stars, which provided a great sunrise as well.

On our last night in El Paso, we ate at Cattleman’s, this really cool ranch and steakhouse. We walked around the grounds and got to see buffalo, llamas, and lots of other fun stuff, including peacocks. It’s way out in the country too, so it had a great sunset and view of El Paso way off in the distance.

We spent the next night in San Antonio. Everyone went to see the Alamo and then went their own ways for dinner. Dinner on the Riverwalk was great. Ryan and I ate at this great little restaurant right on the water that had a jazz band. It was a lot of fun.

Out next night was in New Orleans. We went to see the park that we’ll be fixing up for Eggs in the Easy. Bourbon Street is still gross. We had dinner at Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. That’s about all for New Orleans, I think.

There’ll be more pictures soon!

Marcy and I have had some pretty cool ideas lately, and I think one is about to take off! We’re going to start a little in-reach thing we like to call Meagan and Marcy’s Market, or vice-versa on the names, thanks to Cher’s genius naming skills. We’ll be taking the beloved freshies of GT CCF to Wal-Mart or Kroger, or to wherever they need to run errands on Fridays around 2 p.m. I’m pretty excited. We’ll see how it goes on Friday.

Next Wednesday is the Globalscope Thailand dinner, during which we will be eating Thai food and showing videos and talking to everyone that’s interested about Globalscope Thailand and our wonderful friends there. Guess who’s doing the cooking? Yeah, that’s right. We’ll see how that goes. I think I’m giving my testimony as well.

And with much excitement: Kristin comes back to the states this week! (It would be more exciting if I was flying to Thailand to see her there, but what can you do?)

So there’s that…

Hockey is my new favorite thing in the entire world. I love the Thrashers and have (in two game) become a pretty good fan, if I do say so myself. We had really, really good seats at the last game, when we played the Buffalo Sabres. We lost, but that was after overtime and penalty shots. It was an amazing game. I’m going again for the Florida game, and I’m pretty excited already.

We had amazing seats for the Sabres game!

P.S. I have auburn hair now, but it has started to lighten up. I’m not even sure if you can tell in this picture.

CCF went on a retreat to Gatlinburg, Tennessee. This was my 2nd time there in 1 week because I drove up there the weekend before to film an announcement video about the retreat. By that I mean that we left Atlanta at 2 a.m. got to Gatlinburg around 6 a.m. filmed some stuff, drove back, took the wrong route and ended up in my hometown (go figure, I was driving), my mom bought us lunch, and then we ended up back in Atlanta around 2:30 p.m. No, I didn’t sleep during that. Anyway, the retreat was so much fun because it involves lots of mullets, ridiculous facial hair, high school letter jackets, cigar smoking, but most importantly, all of the other CCFs and SNOW! Yes, that’s right, kids! All of Team Thailand was together and there was SNOW! Could a weekend get any better than that? No, sir.

Snow!

More snow!

I bought a (Product) Red shirt today. You should too. What else have I been up to? I’ve been applying for internships, spending time at CCF and tons of other things. I’m planning on going to Juarez, Mexico for spring break to build houses with Casas por Cristo. You should come with me. It’ll be really great. You know what’s really cool? It’s that Kristy and I have gotten to hang out and do things like go watch future doctors that also play instruments have a jazz concert at Emory University and then go to the Sundial bar at the Westin hotel. Good fun.

Alright, now that that’s done, hopefully I’ll be updating more often.

]]> http://meaganclem.com/2007/02/24/i-guess-theres-a-lot-to-say/feed/ http://meaganclem.com/2007/01/09/ok-ok-ill-update-already/ http://meaganclem.com/2007/01/09/ok-ok-ill-update-already/#comments Tue, 09 Jan 2007 14:59:54 +0000 Meagan http://meaganclem.com/2007/01/09/ok-ok-ill-update-already/ I’m back at school, and I’ve been experimenting with the design of this site. More later…

We took the train to Ko Samui. The beach was amazing and our little bungalows were right on the water. We biked around the island one day and got to go kayaking too.
As Steph and I were leaving Ko Samui to head to Phuket to fly to Malaysia, I tripped and fell on the pier. You’d think that it’d be fine, but I sliced a huge chunk off of my toe and have been to 4 hospitals since.
Malaysia was amazing! I love Kuala Lumpur! It was a really nice and chill city. We saw the Petronus Towers and fell in love with the food in Little India. We also visited our first Mosque.
Steph and I are fanatics about tea, which explains why we would spend 7 hours in a freezing cold bus on horribly windy roads to spend an hour and a half having afternoon tea at a real tea plantation in the Cameron Highlands of Malaysia. That’s right, a real plantation. It was better than Disney World.
Back to Bangkok, and the new airport is amazing, even if their overpriced taxi policy stinks.
Jesse and I left for our volunteer club trip to what we thought was Chiang Mai by train. It was actually just in the Chiang Mai province - a 16 hour 3rd class train ride follwoed by 6+ hours in the back of a big truck that held about 45 people. Nice…
The volunteer trip was wonderful! We stayed with a family in a small hill tribe village (which turned out the be Christian!) and a lot of them did not speak Thai. We built a room for the school. It’s really adorable with the children and flowers we painted on the side. We made a ton of new friends. Jesse harvested rice one day, and I learned to weave a purse (really hard). 
Instead of going straight back to Bangkok, we split up the trip home by staying in Chiang Mai for 2 nights with Steph and her mom. We rode elephants and got to play with a baby elephant at the elephant nursery! 
Next was Sukothai, an ancient capital of Thailand. We stayed in a traditional teak house, which was really cool. We rode our bikes around the ruins and then bought little kratongs for the Loi Kratong festival (for the full moon). A kratong is a small little boat (or float) made of banana leaves and flower that holds a candle and incense. The lake at Sukothai was full of little lights from the boats; it was gorgeous. We also bought a little hot air ballon made of paper. We lit the paper underneath, and as it filled up with air it floated into the sky. They stay lit for a long time. It was great! I bought another teapot…
After another long bus ride we arrived back in Rangsit to celebrate Loi Kratong again, but this time it was at Thammasat with all of our friends.
I had minor surgery on my toe yesterday. It was awful. I’m in pain. They cut off part of my toenail and part of my toe which nad not healed correctly. They gave me two shots in my toe to numb it. I have never had a shot hurt, but that was horrible. Jesse let me squeeze his hand (and cry). Apparently I’m allergic to vicodine. I found that one out this morning around 4 am, when, for the second time, I got really, really sick from it. It’s scary; my body goes all numb, shaky, and tingly and my arms start cramping, my hands tighten and cramp and I can’t loosen them and I was burning up and shivering. I have to go back to Bumrungrad Hospital today for a check up. Atleast it’s a nice hospital. I get service immediately and they are very attentive and the place is just really nice. If I ever get hurt again I’m flying right back to Thailand.

5 and a half weeks left - that’s pretty crazy! Thank you to everyone for all of your prayers and kind words to me about my grandmother. It really means more than you know.

Now I have to look into reapplying to Tech…

If you commented on this article and now it’s gone, I’m sorry. It’s because my site was spammed.

Today at 7:30 pm I am taking the sleeper train to Surat Thani. It’s like an 11 hour trip.
When we get there tomorrow morning we will take a bus to the pier and then a ferry to Ko Samui! We will be sleeping in adorable little bungalows on the beach! Steph and I will be there until sometime on Sunday, when we will be leaving for Phuket for 1 night. We are only going to Phuket because we have a flight out of Phuket on Monday (the around noon. We’re flying to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and will be staying in this cute joint for 4 nights. On Friday the 20th, Steph is heading to Singapore to meet a friend and I’ll be heading back to Bangkok (to the brand new airport) to get ready really fast for my trip to Chiang Mai. Just for kicks, the airport’s name is Suvarnabhumi, and it’s pronounced “Suwanapum.” Nice, huh? On Sunday the 22nd, Jesse and I will be taking another really long train trip up to a small village in the Chiang Mai province in northern Thailand for an 11 day trip with the Thammasat and SIIT volunteer club. We’ll be doing construction and other cultural activities. I’m not exactly sure what those are yet, but they talked about picking rice and helping make silk. It should be awesome. After that, I’ll be meeting up with Stephanie and her mom in Chiang Mai to ride some elephants and then it’s off to Suhkothai to explore the ruins and celebrate the Loy Kratong festival. We will be getting back the first week of November.

Yes, it’s rather chaotic. The only problem is that my little camera seems to be broken. This is the one with the largest memory card and it’s small enough to have on me while we do construction. The lens won’t open. If it doesn’t get fixed (fix itself) it could be a huge problem.

Anyway, please pray that we will have a safe and awesome vacation! I love you all!