The course material is great so far, this week we have two instructors, Irene Santiago from the Philippines and Dr. Tom Woodhouse from England. He is also the author of one of our text books on Conflict Resolution.

One of the days we were assigned a topic that required some intense negotiation based on a real life scenario going on in the world today. Our class was divided into the two side to try and negotiate the best interest of each side, however within the sides there were team members planted to take a position that would not budge on the situation. The group as a whole was not aware of this and the few selected (me being one of them) had to really work hard to keep our positions and persuade the our side to bring forth our position in negotiations. This exercise took a whole afternoon and was exhausting, but an excellent exercise in not only negotiating on the same side/team but then bringing forth our wants to the opposite side. It was definitely a challenge and even though the activity was role playing the tensions were still felt between teams and within teams. It was a great way to see some of our group strengths and weaknesses.

There is a good balance of activities and lectures which I'm finding great for my learning style. I am learning so much outside of the class as well as I get to know my classmates and the challenges they are working on within their country or profession. I had interesting discussions on domestic violence in Kenya and India compared to how it is handled in our society.

This past Saturday we all attended the Thai Rotary District Foundation. Here we met with our host counselors, but in my case my counselor was away so I met with Dr. Apinya Luernshavee, she is the vice dean for the Faculty of Law at Chulalongkorn and the upcoming president for her Rotary club this year. She is from the same Rotary club as my counselor, Isara from the Sathorn Rotary Club. We then learned more about the history of Rotary International and The Rotary Foundation. We were also blessed with hearing Bhichai Rattakul speak he is 86 years old, a past president of Rotary International and the founder of the Rotary Peace Fellowship Program. Bhichai Rattakul presented us with our Rotary Foundation Pins.

After our day with Rotary About 15 of us met and headed Sukhumvit Rd, an area popular with tourists. We all had dinner together and the best part was it was at a Spanish restaurant! I was so happy, as Thai food isn't the greatest for me...although I had a good dessert of bananas in coconut milk the other day.

On sunday I attended Chatuchak market...that was quite the experience...a massive market where you can pretty much buy anything! It was jammed packed with people and hard to maneuver around in. It was also full of interesting smells, not so good. It was definitely worth experiencing but I will not be in any hurry to go back there. (Rocker if you are reading this there were all kinds of crazy knives you like, but sorry can't get them through customs, I will take a picture for you).

I started Thai lessons on Monday, but I'm really not sure how successful I will be with it! It is a challenging language but I'm gonna give it a shot!

I wanted to share a website with you called Playingforchange.com it's a website dedicated to making positive changes through music. There are several great compilations of music on the site. I particularly like the one titled La Tierra Del Olvido (the Land of the Forgotten) as it has over 75 musicians in it from across Colombia and as many of you know Colombia has a special place in my heart.

While in class we were setting up to start a group exercise and some one played One Love from this website. Now I have never been much of a music person but when this started playing people just started singing. It was an amazing moment to be in a room full of different nations and have everyone sing and sing such a powerful song and then just carrying on with class.

I hope you check out the site and enjoy!

I apologize for lack of pictures but can't seem to get pictures loaded to the blog from my iPad....I'm working on it!

I hope all is well back home and not too cold!