(personal) Mission: Complete

Other than teaching and building loving relationships with kids and my international family, the main thing I wanted to do on coming to Thailand was work in the rice farms. I was to live in a rural rice farming community in Northeast Thailand and it was a perfect opportunity. Well I get here, and for 2 months am surrounded by rice paddies. I run through them, I walk through them, we drive by them daily. And for 2 months, I begged and pestered and annoyed Lam to take me to the farm and let me try. She would laugh and nod her head, "Yes yes, next week."
Next week.
Next week.
It was worse than waiting for Christmas.

But finally...now in my last week here, while feeling very nostalgic yesterday with the thought of leaving my new home, with 2 days to spare...
"Hannah, we go to farm, here are clothes."

WOOOOHOOOO

I was giddy. I was so excited. So Lam took Will and I, along with some kids in the village and our friends to take pictures, to the farm (might I add, it was like 20 meters away...still can't understand why it took this long to get out there).

We started by pulling the "seedling stalks" out of one section of the farm. It was basically just like weeding...but way more awesome because it's food.
After we had gathered enough, we headed over to the other section of the farm to plant them again, so they could grow more. While we were slugging through the calf deep swampy farm, hot as always, a couple Plaboo Village boys who accompanied us were swimming and jumping in the water. Well I hadn't gotten to swim all summer, so....
Absolutely best decision I've made since coming here was to jump into the rice farm water. Very refreshing.
After I splashed around with the kids for a few minutes, we proceeded to plant the seedlings in rows, 3 stalks at once, and push down with our thumb about an inch into the water/soil/muck so that it would expand and grow. There were little grains of rice on the end of each stalk, I think we were planting sticky rice (which is da best).
I didn't want to go back, but three other Americans who are volunteering at the university about an hour away were visiting Farmer Community School and I don't think they were expecting to be put to work. Everyone enjoyed it though, and I now know that my plan B in life can be to move to Thailand and be a farmer...teach English on the side.