I fed one of the babies today. This little guy was taken from his mother when he was about a year old. Babies will stay on mother’s milk for about three years. As a result he is malnourished. The owner can’t care for him properly and has agreed to let the Surin Project give him free food and care. He gets four bottles of rice mush with milk powder every morning. Have you ever seen anything so adorable?!
It was a quick trip out to the sugar cane field to cut today’s food for the elephants. The mahouts came with us and brought their machetes. We let them cut the sugar cane…they seemed to know what they were doing. 🙂 Within minutes they had cut enough food to fill the truck. That’s where we came in. Load the truck.
Today is a long day for the elephants off their chains. We do a 5-6 mile walk with the elephants that ends in a swim… for everybody. This was incredible. The elephants LOVE the water and when we go in with them we can bath them. Basically, we give the elephants a good scrub with our hands. An elephant massage, really. After the long walk we were all enjoying the river.
Finally, before dinner we hit the local market. They sell EVERYTHING! From fruit and vegetables to donuts and pig’s heads, clothes to tools. Feeling a bit parched, I ordered a soda. It was given to me in a bag with a straw. Not the can or bottle in a bag, mind you. No. The gentleman opened the bottle and poured it over ice into the bag and put a straw in it. I browsed around, not looking for anything in particular as I sipped my bag of soda.
A Fool Wanders, A Wise Man Travels 
I am loving this!!! You will HAVE to share some information with me about where this is, how you sign up, costs etc., etc. I am incredibly interested in doing it myself! I am jealous that you are bonding with the elephants! It must be amazing!
It is amazing! The organization is http://www.surinproject.org. It’s certainly not expensive for the program…you just need to get here. 🙂
I’m hoping this response posts properly. I’ve been having trouble logging to the WordPress site and am relying only on the mobile app.
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Sounds great! Thank you 🙂 I will check out that website as soon as I have a free moment. This teaching stuff is pretty intense! I’ll be glad to see the weekend!