Sunday, June 10, 2007
Somewhere over the pacific (5:36pm Bangkok time)

Today was Greg’s birthday and I was the first one to wish him happy birthday as we woke up late, a bit sore from the show still. Our Host family had prepared breakfast for us and we all sang happy birthday and ate breakfast our on the front patio. Their neighbours were moving so they were over for a visit; and just in time too. We had some Swensons ice cream cake. They gave him a tshirt and a wooden frog. (later I got one too). I finished packing and although my bag was substantially overweight, I went with it anyway. We said our thanks and goodbyes and our host dad drove us to our final banquet at a 5 star hotel downtown. I brought all of my luggage along, but Greg didn’t because he is staying in Thailand and traveling to Phuket for 15 more days. I’m happy to finally be going home though. The hotel we arrived at is quite fancy indeed. We had a few final wrap up sessions and our banquet commenced at 8:oopm. The dress code was all white. I borrowed some white Thai pants form my host mom and wore my white shirt that I wore when I was in Honour choir so so many years ago. Come to think of it, that shirt has seen a lot of action. Graduations, weddings, funerals, and closing banquets of all sorts. During the banquet I sat at table #4 with Kaori (and later Jeff), Yuri, Simi, Jorge, Luis, and Kelly. It was all good. We had a very fine meal, free beer, and many activities including the old “Most likely to…” survey. I was voted most likely to become a teacher. This wouldn’t be the first time either, I was also voted this in my high school grad class. We had a confession session; hilighted with Peter saying that the Haka we had been performing all semester was actually learned from the internet and he hadn’t actually done it before UWP. There was the appreciation book as well; I finally got into it. I was appreciated (along with a few other people) by Renee for being such a great help with computers to a lot of people for the semester. After Andrew had read another touching speech, we all received our certificates and we officially graduated to become Up With People Alumni. Joern gave his final words and we were finished. Afterward I we had a dance party of sorts until we all parted ways at 3am. In the absolutely pouring rain I loaded the bus bound for Bangkok airport for our 6:50AM flight for Tokyo Narita.

There are over 80 photos, so I've embedded them here in a slideshow.