In Thai, the word for river is Mae Nahm, which translates to “mother water.” Each river, then, is known first as mother, then as its specific name. This phrasing is no coincidence or happenstance of homonyms. Thai’s have one tone for mother and rivers are revered as that type of provider
I have always considered “experiential education” to be most effectively implemented in nature’s classroom, learning about ecology, geology, and scientific inquiry through direct engagement with one’s surroundings. For me, history, as an academic subject, has never seemed as conducive to experiential education as science–how can one have direct experience with something that by definition has already occurred? Science is all around us, history is in the past. After traveling through Vietnam, however, I quickly realized how wrong that assumption was.
