1st week of homestay

Hi all. I know, a long time without a post. I've been living with a family for a week and I have a night in the hotel tonight, which has been great because of the english speaking company. We went to a temple tonight for a blessing ceremony, and then did a play on american culture for our thai folks and the thai folks did the same for us. I helped with a skit on keg parties and took a lot of pictures. I was wrong about posting more pictures, because it turns out that posting pictures takes a bit more time than just writing and posting. I do have a lot of pictures though, and I'll be posting them when I can. This will not be soon though. This is just a series of me writing every night before I go to bed - a wierd, public diary. It's pretty much all I can muster though, because if I don't make a point of writing every night, then I won't write. Hopefully my life will get less interesting soon and I won't feel like writing as much. til then, best wishes and I do enjoy hearing back. Peace. (corps).


2/4

So I am far overdue for a post… which is fine, because I’m even further overdue on giving this blog address to more than two or three people. Hope the rest of you aren’t offended. I got into the country last Wed or Thurs (I honestly don’t remember, it seems like an eternity). It’s 9pm on what is probably Wednesday (again, not sure) and I am sitting in my bed in the 40’x40’ wide-open, virtually unused second floor of a house about 5 miles from the village where we’ve been training. I have a thin mattress on the floor in a corner, where a poster of the king and several pictures of the family’s dead relatives are watching closely over me while I finish up some homework, get my first Belle & Sebastian fix in a while, and try to catch the little no-see-um’s that the light of my computer has managed to draw through my mosquito net. It’s my second night here, and today was my first squat toilet, cold bucket shower, food described as pet, “spicy.” I haven’t found anything so hot yet that I can’t handle it, and I even accidentally over-peppered the hell out of some soup a few days ago, but the cold bucket is rough. Walking into the bathroom that I’ll be using for the next 10 weeks for the first time was my first real “oh, shit” moment.

My home stay folks are nice enough. The guy that’s actually in charge of me is named Lek (phonetic spelling), but he’s actually put me up with his grandparents, which live across the street from him. There’s a tukow field in front of my house, which is like a small volleyball field with a short net where they kick a cantaloupe-sized wooden ball back and forth like a hackie sack. I haven’t gotten to play yet, but I’m excited. The old couple that I live with are nice, but they, like virtually all Thai people that aren’t involved in the program, can’t figure out that I’m not functional at the language I’ve been learning for about 4 days now. The old man (he’s 68, she’s 72) talks to me constantly, and when I smile back blankly he waves his hand at me like any old people might, and walks away. The old lady doesn’t talk much, but is nice, and I am currently under the impression that she’ll be waking me up at 6 in the morning to go to temple with her. We’ll see. Lek is the village leader, and I saw him reading about 10 pages of some announcement into a big speaker system that I’m assuming reaches the whole town. It feels propagandistic, but really, I have no clue what he’s saying. He’s nice though, and we eat at his house with his wife, nephew, brother, sister-in-law, and a few rando’s that seem to show up consistently. Tonight a drunk guy came to dinner and talked at me for over an hour, apparently completely undeterred by me knowing nothing of what he was saying. I’m 70% sure he challenged me to a drinking contest, and know for sure that he told me he loves me. Good people.

I’m learning Thai pretty quickly, I think especially because Lek fills the awkward language barrier whenever I’m around by pointing at everything and telling me how to say it. I probably learned about 30 good words that way yesterday, which put me a little ahead of most of the other trainees. 30 words is a lot when most of us know about 70-100 words total. The tones are the hardest part by far. There are sets of as many as 5 different words that English phonetics would spell the exact same way as each other, but that are differentiated by subtle tone differences. Really confusing right now, but I feel like I’ll be able to grasp it.

Before the move yesterday, we were living in a hotel as a large group. The hotel wasn’t good for learning Thai, but my sanity was a big fan of it. It was also good to make friends quickly before we headed out to our home stays, so that we’d have a support network for the soon-to-arrive culture shock. I was given a new bike, with even newer titanium pedals, after I somehow managed to crack enough sets of the plastic pedals that came with the bike. I also got shots for hep A, hep B, Japanese Encephalitis, and Rabies, along with a safety kit that included pills intended to help us fight bird flu. We had the internet there, and I started to write a lot of posts for the blog, but never finished them for varying reason, and so never posted them, sorry. I guess now that I don’t have internet or people to distract me, I can actually get a complete update out. A majority of the folks near my age made a point of gathering on the stairwell leading to the lobby every night, smoking and drinking 24 ohknce (or close to) bottles of beer, while a few folks played guitar, a few played games, and the rest of us just chatted (chatted, I learned tonight, is coo-eye doe-eye, god know how it’s really spelled). We eventually got in trouble for this, but not for being as loud as we were, or staying up as late as we did, but instead because we were drinking out of the bottles instead of pouring the beer into glasses, and for sitting on the steps, which is a place that is just for feet in Thai culture, both things they neglected to ever tell us until they were awkwardly chastising us for them on the last full day in the hotel.

The focuses of the program that I’m in are very dependent on the village where I get based, so right now we’re having a lot of classes on the theory of development, which can get dull, but includes some very useful stuff. I occasionally resort back to my origami and doodles, like I did when I got bored in college, but I’m soaking up the good stuff and not being too obnoxious in the mean time. A lot of the work we have feels cheesy, and since a lot of it goes through the extra step of translation from our Thai staff, it feels even cheesier, but I also think that it’s effective, because we all seem to be making progress. Honestly, I can’t wait until the project becomes more concrete, but I’ll occupy the interim by learning the language and trying foods before I ask what they are. Hope you’re all well, and let me know if you think I left anything out or want to know more about anything in particular. I’m off to bed, I might have a long morning ahead of me.



2/5

In bed again and it’s not even 9:30. The rooster starts crowing around four though, so I guess this is a good approach. There’s a stream of ants coming from across the room and making a 30 foot journey across the room I’m in to disappear again in a crack in the floor that’s underneath my bed. I tried to stop up one of their wholes and was unsuccessful, so right now I’m just hoping my mosquito net is tucked in well enough to keep me from getting swarmed in my sleep, that would just suck. I hit a point this morning in the middle of my language class where I started getting restless as hell and frustrated. We were going over numbers again and it was boring me to death and half the shit we did today felt completely pointless. They brought in a current volunteer to talk to us, but his situation is so atypical that I feel like it was of very little use to those of us that aren’t asian, won’t be placed in a big city, won’t have the perfect American contact fall into our laps, won’t ever leave the city we’re in, even for vacation, and won’t lose touch with all our fellow volunteers during service. Probably less than 10 % of us will fit into any of those categories, not to mention all of them, so it was dumb to me. I’ve been hanging out with a few folks from the language class I was in earlier, but they are all teachers, so we’re separated now. Still the closest friends I’ve made though, and we do meals and such together. There’s one girl that also got stuck way out in the southwest with me, and she’s pretty cool, so we’ve been joking and helping each other through. I’m not sure if it would be better to have old friends, or new ones that are going through the same thing to keep me sane. I guess I don’t really have the option, so it’s a moot point, but I do miss everyone. I’m sweating a little in bed right now, but it’ll get really cold around 2 and I’ll wake up and pull an extra blanket on from the foot of my mattress. The cold nights surprised me and made my first night particularly miserable, but I think it was one of those nights where the occasion made sleeping unlikely in the first place. We’ve only been here a week, but it feels like much longer..

2/6

The grandkids came over tonight and they’re making a racket downstairs right now. I’m starting to realize how little these folks sleep, because they seem to be up after me and up again before me every day, and I’m not really getting much sleep. So, today: I made the mistake last night of over emphasizing that I wasn’t afraid of pet, or “hot.” Their immediate response to this was that my breakfast this morning was also pet. Which is nice for dinner, but is a little rough on an empty stomach in the morning. Of course, I was no longer worried about my stomach when I rolled my bike out to leave and realized I had a flat tire. I replaced the tube in my tire pretty quickly, and possibly would have been off on time still but for the fact that the tire pump that the pc gave me was completely worthless. After I wasted about 15 to 20 trying to use it, I wondered out and found my host dad, who took me to a motorcycle workshop literally two houses down. They pumped it up and I got back on the road in no time at all. I also completely booked it and made what was a 40 minute journey back tonight into a 23 minute ride to class. I changed clothes (as a rule, we all bike out in comfy clothes and then change into business casual) and walked into class still sweating. I called ahead, so they knew I was coming, but I was still in a sour mood for a few hours. Today we learned how to say where we are, where we are going, and some assorted foods. We also learned the words “and” and “all,” which are useful. Of course, I’m still completely clueless around the homestay family. So, you might know how I get in sour moods sometimes. Our language teacher is probably a few years younger than us and is an obvious over achiever, and is trying to be strict with me about not speaking English. So, from then on my responses were in Spanish or German, which she didn’t like because it wasn’t Thai and because she had no clue at all what I was saying. It was in good fun, and we ended up learning a lot in spite of ourselves

In the afternoon we toured a couple of school administration buildings and heard a lot of boring speeches that were translated for us. I biked back and saw some guys playing kuto (the wooden ball hackey sack game), so instead of jumping off and heading straight for the shower like I’ve been doing, I went straight and played with them for a few hours. We were only playing 2 vs 2, but it was a lot of fun and a bit more challenging than I expected. Since the game is played like volleyball, but only with the feet and head, I quickly realized I had the distinct advantage of being the only one whose head rises easily over the net, so I took full advantage of that and ended up doing pretty well. Afterwards we walked a few houses down to a place that had a store in the bottom and bought some scotch ☺ We drank for a little bit, but then my host folks came back and it was time for dinner. I love how this culture is so passive about some things and so blunt about others. Instead of going to dinner when they came back, the kids told me I stunk and it was agreed upon that I needed a shower before dinner. Hilarious. So I showered and headed over and had a good meal again. Always pretty standard with a few options of meat and veg in bowls in the middle, and a bowl of rice to yourself to eat everything with. Tonight we had duck, frog, chicken, and some kind of veg that’s similar to lettuce. Last night was chicken, pork, and a bunch of tiny, whole shrimp. And by whole, I mean they still had whiskers and shells and everything and you just ate the entirety of it. They tasted good, but I couldn’t talk myself into eating many of them. But tonight was nice, and I got to play some tuko, drink some whiskey, and try to explain the difference between brandy and scotch to a culture that puts it all with 3-to-1 soda water anyways and doesn’t have a clue what I’m talking about. Also, some punk today was telling me that Jack Daniels was a well Whiskey. So, ups and downs again today, both in relative extremes, and now I’m off to sleep in my giant room alone. Good night.

2/7


Another long day. But every day will be long, and at least this one was good. Or, good over all. I woke up this morning and met my group of three other students and one tutor for an exercise in mapping the community we live in for spots that might be important to our eventual projects. Fun part was that I got a flat on the way there again and got to blow another 20+ minutes fixing it. Then we went and visited everyone’s homestay (mine is probably the least cozy) and everyone got to see that I wasn’t exaggerating about how far I have to travel down the gravel road to get to my house. Afterwards I came back and found everyone playing tuko again, and this time the beer and the little bit of practice combined to give me a devastating header. One of the grandkids of my fam and I teamed up to win 7 games in a row (the last three games against three opponents) before I had to leave to take a shower and go to dinner. After dinner I brought out my camera again, which was a big hit, and also made the mistake of bringing out my laptop, which my host dad tried to take at the end of the night. I think it was for safer keeping, but I politely explained (I think) that I needed it for homework, to which he responded that I don’t have school tomorrow, to which I pretended not to understand and just opened it and started typing randomly until he gave up and let me have it :-P So a less eventful and good stress-relieving day. Hope you all had the same!

2/8

It hit me today how my current life has literally no relation to who I was less than two weeks ago. Nothing is the same except the intermittent contact I have with a very few people. Completely different surroundings and culture and attitudes and everything. I missed the superbowl and learned how to kick a wooden ball over a net. I had a few inch and a half long little fish for dinner tonight (not all I had) that I accidentally pointed out in the market today as the least appealing thing I had seen. I have a picture of them, and I had literally just shooed the flies away. They were cooked and crunchy, and you just eat the whole thing like a chip. It made me long for sardines. I never thought a western toilet with toilet paper would be a commodity. I jump at the chance to use either. I know this is common, and I’m not complaining, just noting the huge change. I’ve also used a bike more in the last week than I probably have since I moved to Mississippi at the age of 9. I feel like I’ve been eating more and losing weight, but I have yet to decide whether this is because the food is better or because I have a bug of some sort. TBD. Anyways, it just hit me today that everything is so different and that this is my life now and how far away my old life seems. Some better, some worse, but none of it contiguous past two weeks.

Today was a day off, and a bunch of our homestay parents organized (or we think they did, maybe it was coincidence) a train ride for all of us to go to a big dam near our town. It was a long, pretty train ride. Not really breath-taking landscape in these parts, but still nice to look at. We took some pictures in front of the dam, went to a small museum about the area that had two tour guides that were girls likely under the age of 13. We got some lunch in the local market, where I mistakenly pointed at the fish section when my host dad was talking about something, and then we rode home.

The sunshine took it out of most of us and I tried to sleep in the train but couldn’t find that sweet spot. When I got home I wondered around the town with the four kids from my fam (three of which arrived two nights ago). I saw the roadside stand where my hostmom is a vendor, and just kind of checked out a bunch of stuff. When we got back I helped move a bunch of big speakers onto a trailer, and then said I had to do some homework so that I could take a nap and get some alone time. Literally 5 minutes later the oldest host kid (16 y/o) came up and told me some folks had come from another town to play us in tuko. I guess we did really well last night and people had heard about it, but the guys that showed up tonight were not fucking around. I mean holy cow. One guy in particular would jump and kick the ball with crazy top spin from any angle and just slam it into the opposing team. It was a great learning experience, and I started trying to get the same kicks and spins in, overall I just got destroyed. The other volunteer that lives near me got a ride over to my house to play and to get dinner, but when she saw how intense the game was and realized that her jeans were less than ideal, she decided to just watch. She’s also just now coming out of being a vegetarian, like quite a lot of my group, and was not up for most of the stuff we had for dinner. I felt bad for her, but I also was glad because I was afraid that I was the only one that thought my meals were intense. A little whiskey with dinner, which is a standard ever since they realized I’m willing to drink a little with them, and then off to bed, which is just more alone time and actually doing my homework/ writing this.

One last thing, it was announced yesterday that the first person dropped out of our group. Norma was a 76 year old that really wanted to do this, and braved quite a bit, but eventually realized that it was all too much for her. Everyone kind of picked her out at the beginning because she seemed very old, but I was rooting for her the whole time and am sad to see her go. Props to Norma Jean for making it as far as she did. Now I have an extra early morning tomorrow, so I’m off to bed. Should have internet tomorrow and will get out this massive update. Hopefully. Best wishes, Me.