Elephant rides and Crazy Disco Dancing!!

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We hardly have the energy to write this, but staff says we must!!! Today was loooong and hot, but also filled with more happy smiles and crazy dance moves!! We took over 100 seniors from the Klong Toey slums to the city of Ayuttaya, which used to be the capital of Thailand and was filled with lots of beautiful Wats (that's the thai word for temples for those of you not "in the know"). In the mornings our Thai facilitators have been giving us language and culture lessons so it was our chance to put those to the test. When we got to DPF headquarters to meet up with the crowd we were immediately entranced by their loving smiles and truly amazed by their never ending energy. Can any 70 year old you know dance for 1.5 hours??? Lifeworks gave these awesome neon green hawaiian style shirts to everyone so we could be seen for miles and then we loaded up onto these two buses that were unlike anything we had ever seen before!! They are called disco buses and they are these non-air conditioned, brightly painted party buses covered in tacky lights and hot leathery seats. There was dancing and singing galore and now we're all making plans to try and bring these crazy vehicles to the US.
In Ayuttaya we visited 4 temples before lunch. It was so cool getting to see Buddhist religious practices and watch these seniors with nothing committing themselves so deeply to the religion. They were deeply appreciative of the chance to get out of Klong Toey and very few of them had ever been to Ayuttaya so it was such a special spiritual journey for them. Unfortunately the heat was very strong and some people got serious heat stroke. OHHH and of course one of the best parts of our day was getting to ride ELEPHANTS!!!! It was a short ride, but sooooo cool.
And then it was back on the buses for a looong ride home and much much much more crazy dancing. It was truly astonishing how much energy these seniors had, but it was so special to see how much the trip meant to them. Many of them saved up for awhile to give alms to the monks and the buddha.

We're thrilled to be back at our hotel now and looking forward to our few days off!!

Missing you xoxo
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