Somerset Berkley Regional High School student Micaela Rennick, a senior, had never flown alone or been out of the United States. But on Sunday, July 9, Micaela flew to Chiang mai, Thailand for a service trip.

“It was such a positive experience,” Micaela said. “The entire time I was just in awe of everything we were doing. It made me appreciate everything more.”

Micaela had been fundraising money for her Thailand service trip for a year and a half. Because both of her brothers are in college, she wanted to raise all of the money herself, but she said that she would not have wanted it any other way because it gave her a greater appreciation of her trip.

The Thailand service trip is put on by the organization Global Leadership Adventures (GLA), whose purpose is to act as a Peace Corps for teens.

There were 27 teens that attended the Thailand service trip. Their ages ranged anywhere from an incoming freshman to a graduated senior. While most of the teens were from the United States, one was from Brazil. The people that accompanied Micaela on the trip were from all over the country: from Massachusetts to Georgia to Washington State.

The teens were accompanied by an international staff – most of whom had been to other countries and work for GLA. The international staff included three mentors who were there to share experiences with the students and provide support. The program also included a local staff that set up most of the program in Thailand and acted as translators.

The GLA program participants stayed in a resort in Chiang mai and had to be transported to many of their activities in vans. “It was a kind of resort, but not the kind you would see in the United States,” Micaela said.

The service trip lasted two weeks. The first week was the adventure part of the program while the second week was spent volunteering in schools in Chiang mai.

In the first week, the GLA program participants visited Buddhist temples in Thailand, went to a Thai cooking class, saw local Thai villages, and visited an elephant sanctuary.

The Buddhist temples were gold and had murals in them as well as a giant Buddha statue. While Micaela was allowed to go in most of the temples, she was restricted from going into a few because females are viewed as impure in the Thai culture.

Each time the teens entered a temple, they had to remove their shoes because feet are viewed as dirty by the Thai people. They also paid their respects to Buddha while in the temple.

To reach one of the temples, the students had to walk up 306 steps. In this temple, the students had the opportunity to talk with a Buddhist monk, who would give the students a white bracelet to show that they were pure. They even had the opportunity to have their fortune told.

The point of the program is cultural immersion; not to be tourists. “Buddhism takes on the culture of the place it’s practiced,” Micaela said. “Thailand’s a very conservative place, so we had to dress very conservatively: our pants had to be below our knees and you had to wear loose-fitting shirts.”

The teens also had the opportunity to go to a Thai cooking class.

They were brought around a local market and introduced to all different types of Thai food. Micaela is a vegan and was surprised at how easily it was to make her Thai meal comply with her dietary restrictions.

The teens also had the opportunity to visit local Thai villages.

One of Micaela’s favorite parts of the service trip was visiting the Ahaka Village. The Ahaka Village is a poorer community in Thailand. The teens were given a tour of the village by a local woman.

“I loved it because it really made me think,” Micaela said. “They use everything from the forest and they’re very proud of it. They really sustain themselves from the land and they treat their animals with such respect. Everything lives so freely.”

Micaela said that although families in the village sleep in the same room and the houses only have dirt floors, the community is united as one and the animals roam freely.

The woman that showed the teens around the village told a story about how she had a dog that she was very close to for 14 years. After her dog passed away, the woman’s uncle asked if his family could have the dog for food because they were going hungry. The woman gave her uncle’s family the dog.

However, the woman told the teens that she thinks the American factory farming system is far sadder and more horrific than eating a dog because the animals’ lives in the factory farming system are short and the animals are unhappy.

In contrast, the Ahaka Village will not kill any animal to eat it. They will let it live a long and happy life. Micaela said she had never seen animals so happy before. “It just made me think about how I use things and if I’m using everything to its full potential and not to be wasteful.”

The students were also able to visit an elephant sanctuary, called My Elephant at Thai Elephant Home.

In contrast to the way elephants are normally treated in Thai tourist attractions (the elephants are chained up and have seats for tourists on their backs), the elephants at the sanctuary are treated very kindly.

The teens rode right on the elephants’ backs (without seats), fed them bananas and sugarcane, covered the elephants in mud because it is good for their skin, and played with them.

“They really love their elephants there,” Micaela said.

In the second half of the week, the teens were able to act as exchange students in a Thai high school and volunteered to teach English in schools in Chiang mai.

The GLA program participants went to a wealthier high school where they acted as exchange students. During lunch, the Thai high school students that the GLA program participants were shadowing brought them to stations where they were able to try traditional Thai food.

The teens in the GLA program were actually split up to teach at two different schools in Chiang mai. GLA tries to pick different schools to teach at each time so that many different schools can have the opportunity to be taught by native English speakers.

There were 80 students in the school that Micaela was assigned to. The school was composed of both boys and girls, ages six to 12. Most of the students were actually foreigners whose parents had come to Thailand from Burma, looking for work. However, even though the students’ ethnicities are not Thai, they have grown up in Thailand and speak Thai fluently.

Most of the students are part of the working-class poor and therefore did not speak English very well.

The school was not set up like a traditional American school: it was not inside of one building but rather in lots of tiny shacks. Micaela said that there were no doors on some of the buildings.

The students were seated two at a desk – which were more like wooden tables – and had a playground with equipment that was rusted and covered in worn-down paint.

“One thing that impressed me about this school is that the kids have so much respect and they’re very responsible,” Micaela said. Because the Thai people are very ceremonial, the students led their own call-and-repeat ceremony every morning and helped the lunch staff clean all the dishes.

The GLA program participants were instructed to speak to the Thai students only in English. Micaela taught two hour and a half classes for four days. The teens would have basic conversations in English, sing songs with the children, do flashcards with English words on them, and play games.

“We had to use our hands and try to speak slowly and loudly and clearly,” Micaela said.

On the fifth day, the teens directed an English camp in which they taught five 50-minute sessions.

Micaela’s favorite activity on the trip was teaching at the school because she wants to teach English abroad for a career. She said she got an appreciation for the student-teacher relationship and realized how exhausting teaching got very quickly.

“It was exhausting but rewarding,” Micaela said. “Seeing their smiles made it so worth it.”

Not only did Micaela learn a lot from the Thai people, but also from the other people who accompanied her on the trip: “They’re incredible people and have incredible stories. When you take your time to listen instead of waiting for your turn to speak, you learn things.”

Micaela said what stood out to her the most about the Thai culture was what she thinks the United States should incorporate into its own culture: “They’re so respectful and reverent and live life to its fullest extent,” Micaela said.

Micaela said her experience in Thailand helped her to both get out of her comfort zone as well as be more in tune with the needs of others.

Micaela said that “when you get outside of your own culture, that’s when you actually see what you have and how beautiful people are and how beautiful the world is.”