Our coaches gave us our story assignments yesterday. I'm working on a story about Burmese immigrants living in southern Thailand, so I've spent the past two days running around to different rubber tapping farms talking to Burmese families who are working in the industry. Like Mexican immigrants doing hard labor in the U.S., a lot of Burmese come here illegally and work in rubber tapping because it's good money and few Thais want to do the work.

Communicating through an interpreter is really, really challenging, and I feel like I'm getting about 60 percent of the info that I should, especially since most of the people I'm speaking with don't speak Thai all that well, so my translator has to filter through their Burmese accents and then turn their garbled Thai into garbled English for me. But I love my story and I can't wait to go out and work on it again tomorrow.

In other news: The rain continues to fall in even larger quantities (possible? I had no idea). I stepped in the ocean with my shoes on on Tuesday and I'm still waiting for them to dry. Ha.

But it did clear up for a total of 20 minutes today (see photo above - there's a bit of blue in there). Just when I thought Thailand was one big soggy country, the sky got all beautiful and the sun made its way through the clouds.

In other, other news: I absolutely love the coaches we're working with.

XO, Julie


On the right: Two construction works climb down from work just before a storm. The house cost 1.5 million baht, according to my interpreter - about $45,000 - and belongs to the owner of the nearby rubber tapping farm.