23/4
“I don’t know if you can see the changes that have come over me, these last few days I’ve been afraid that I might drift away. So I’ve been telling old stories, singing old songs, that makes me think back to where I came from and that’s the reason why I seem so far away today.”
So I’m doing this in reverse today. The song of the day comes first and is “Caledonia” by Paolo Nutini. I decided this a lot earlier today and have decided to stick with it despite a few mood swings. A ton has happened since the last real post, including me buying all of the things for my house and moving in and having the landlord take the mattress and tv and both fans and put them in the second bedroom that I was planning on using as an office and then lock the door and tell me I can’t use the room or any of the things in it. I asked why and their response was just that I couldn’t use them. At that point I could only scream or shut down, so I shut down. I bought a fan and a mattress and I’ve started work, and I’m cleaning my house and I’m figuring out how to cook thai food for myself. Last night I went out and watched the neighbors hunt these large lizards that make loud calls in the night. The first night the lizards were everywhere and I could hear them calling all night, but having grown up around so many dogs I was used to sleeping through noise and actually found it strangely comforting. They did a good job of catching the lizards though, because tonight I can only hear crickets and an occasional bird.
The house is in good condition, but it hasn’t been lived in for a while. While the owners did a good job of cleaning it, they’re all short and can’t see how disgusting the tops of the furniture are. Yesterday I spent 45 minutes scrubbing the top of kitchen cupboard until the fact that it was in the same room as my food stopped making me sick. Today I took the oven outside and hosed it down for about an hour. I had a brush and a piece of steel wool that ended up so covered in ancient grease that I had to throw them out, and I eventually ended up scraping layers of dirt, rust and grease off with my pocket knife. It’s still not ideal, but I’m okay with it for the time being. The standard of cleanliness that I’m aiming for here is “not completely gross.” Tomorrow I’m hoping to get the wardrobe to a state where I’m willing to put my clothes in it.
Sorry I’m kind of rushing through this all. I have a lot that’s worth saying right now but I promised myself I’d watch a little Eddie Izzard tonight and it’s already getting late. That said, I’ll do my best to hit everything a little bit.
In the office I’ve been getting through all the paperwork that the Peace Corps wants us to do when we first get to site, along with trying to reconnect to the outside world now that I have more internet access. Only a little bit more, however, as the connection is inordinately slow. Actually, slow isn’t really it. It runs at a decent speed when it runs, considering. The thing is that the connection turns off and resets about every 15 seconds. I thought it just didn’t like my mac, but then I saw it happening on the other computers in the office too. Fun. This afternoon I went out and made a map of the road from the highway to my house for part of my paperwork. It’s 7k of paved but potholed road that winds through 5 separate villages and countless rice fields. I also visited a couple village headmen, learned about how silk worms are fed and kept, and saw a huge fishpond. I was traveling around with one of the area’s development officers, who is going to be serving as my counterpart. She’s younger and more communicative than the nayoke, and she also speaks less English, which I prefer because it lets me practice more Thai and because the broken English is starting to get old (and rude: nayoke points and says, “give me,” or “you go kitchen now.”). It’s also nice because she’s not running for office so I’m not worried about intentions or politics, although one of her side conversations definitely became an impassioned discussion about local politics. Unfortunately, she was speaking Issan, so while I could tell the subject matter, I couldn’t figure out which side she’s on.
Food wise, I went shopping yesterday and have a full fridge, but I’d much rather spend my time cleaning than making a meal, so I haven’t really tried much. Today for lunch I made pork fried rice, American style, and had enough left over for dinner, which worked out perfectly. People keep showing up to my house and forcing me to make rice in the rice cooker and then leaving so that I’ll eat alone. It’s incredibly annoying since I don’t always want rice. Like breakfast this morning, for example. The nayoke’s wife was knocking on my door at 7 and when I let her in she walked straight to the damn rice cooker and asked why it wasn’t going yet and started doing it for me. She actually stayed to make sure I ate it too. Last night they left after I made the rice, and I wasn’t hungry yet and never felt like making anything to go with it, so I just warmed it up a few hours later and stirred in one of the 10 precious butter servings (like the ones that go on a single bread roll at a restaurant) that I’d found in the market. Having white rice with just butter was good for three reasons: first it tastes good, second is that it’s how I always ate it growing up so it’s a little sentimental, and last is the fact that if any Thai person saw me doing it they’d freak out. It made me happy and it fed me and it was easy. I’ve already bought curry paste though, so the second I actually have some time I’m gonna try to do some real cooking.
I guess to finish this up, the last few days I also grew pretty homesick. When thing after thing didn’t go the way I wanted or expected it to, I started going back to all the things I left to come here. I even started to regret it. I missed the place and the people and the way I could interact with the people I was closest too back home. I thought that after spending so much intense time during training with the other people in my group that I would be missing them, but when I got to site and was finally alone in my room by myself, my mind went right back to where I was three months ago and I wanted that back. I made the mistake of looking through old pictures too, and that just drove it in harder. Then a few things happened. One of my closest friends from home called at just the right time and I had an outlet and an old familiar voice for a while, which helped calm me down a bit. My old fraternity adviser called me in the middle of the day the next day and we talked for a bit too (and he might have been a little drunk?). Then I found out that the person that I was missing the most was no longer going to be coming to see me this year. In my mess of homesickness I’d started to hold up this visit as the light at the end of a tunnel, and then it was gone. I sat there trying not to cry in the middle of my office and I started reading anything and everything to take my mind off of it. I was mulling it over a few hours later, and I realized there was no light at the end of the tunnel to look forward too, so I had to turn my full attention to the here and now. The folks back home are moving and moving on and the home that I’m missing is hardly there anymore, and I’m here and I have to make the most of it. Have to make the decision worth it. And so the light at the end of the tunnel was gone, but the tunnel itself fell soon thereafter, and I’m feeling a lot less homesick and a little more prepared to face tomorrow than I was for today. I still miss everyone like crazy, and would trade anything to have that visit, but my head’s on a little straighter now and at least I feel good about that.
This is kind of a scatter-brained entry, but that suits how I feel right now, so I’m ok with it. I owe you all one after this entry, and I’ll make sure the next entry is just fantastic. Big thanks to the folks who have called and emailed, it means the world to me right now. Now I’m off to conquer countries with the cunning use of flags. Goodnight, blogfriends, and dtam jai kun.
Love,
me.
Thursday, April 23, 2009
Monday, April 20, 2009
and... site.
12/4
So where to begin… Have you ever been in a language class in high school or college and you feel like you just hit the wall and you can’t process anymore so you just shut down for a bit and wait til it’s over so you can go? I’m living in that language class. I’m staying with the nayok in my village right now, who is the head of the local government, and I can’t get a moment alone. Sleeping seems to be my only retreat, so I’m doing it more than I need. Right now they think I’m taking a nap, but I’ll be foiled the second anyone decides to look in my room through the windows on every wall (three sides have windows looking in to the rest of the house, the other side looks out to where everyone eats). Pretty much, I’m getting overwhelmed and need to shut down and escape for a bit, but it’s just not possible. A lot of people don’t have houses yet, so they are staying with host families, but most of the people that I’ve been in contact with over the last few days are busy moving into their houses and a house seems to be the light of privacy at the end of this tunnel. I just keep thinking that if I hold on til I have a house it’ll all be just fine, so I’m trying hard right now not to just take the first house they show me to be able to get out. I’m so unsure of everything I’m saying at all points that when I start to speak or think in English, I feel like I’m doing it wrong. So that’s where I’m starting from. I just needed to get that out, and now I guess I should go back to my last entry and catch you up.
But talk about a rollercoaster… So many things have happened that I started writing them down so that I would remember them when I finally got time on the computer, and now I feel like there’s just way too much to write about in the time I’ll be able to get. I’m not processing most of it yet, but just trying to endure and not misstep. This will probably lead to some obnoxiously long blog entries in a while when I have more time. I’ve also realized that most of my writing so far has been anecdotal about my experiences here and that taking a bit to talk about the culture would go a long way towards helping understand how things are affecting me. So I’ll be sure to do that when I get a chance. But now I’ll go back to the counterpart conference.
So the Nayok and his son both left on the morning of the last day, which, coincidentally, was the most important day. This was the point where we were supposed to work together to form a plan for our first 6 months at site so that we would have similar expectations going in. The person that I was left trying to work with spent most of the conference with the biggest frown in the land of smiles. Don’t worry though; it wasn’t too hard working with him because he decided not to show up to the meeting where we wrote the plan. So I spent a few hours making a collaborative six-month plan by myself, then getting one of the translators to write it in Thai on another sheet of paper so I could take it and show it to someone in my community who gave a damn. I apparently have two weeks to mail in a comprehensive plan in Thai and English or the Royal Thai Government won’t pay for my housing. This exercise was frustrating enough that when it was done I was in too much of a stupor to communicate with anyone in any way for about an hour.
That night at the hotel was the last time group 121 will be together til July. So I took way too many pictures and drank a bit and played guitar and enjoyed everyone’s company while I could. At this point I have over 10 gigs of pictures on my computer that I haven’t even looked at yet. I keep hearing I’ll have a lot of free time at site, so I’ll go through them all whenever that happens. :-P
The next morning was swearing in. I’d like to not use the word surreal, but I can’t think of anything better. I woke up a little late and showered and threw on a shirt and tie and went and sat in the same room where we started training and waited for the ambassador to show up so we could start the ceremony. A few people got up and gave short, unmoving speeches, a few of which were in Thai, then we all got up and swore the oath together (same oath that Obama swore, except ours said PCV at the end instead of president). And, like Obama’s oath, ours was slightly botched because of the way the ambassador read it. So a few folks, including myself, didn’t actually say their name during the oath. He’s probably friends with John Roberts. Anyways, extremely anticlimactic. It felt like a group of kids reciting the national anthem together in an oversized classroom full of Thai spectators. Then two volunteers got up and gave a long speech in Thai and after that I had about half an hour to talk and take pictures and drink coffee and eat the awful little sandwich snacks from the back of the room before I was told to have my bags outside the hotel in 10 minutes. So I said a few quick goodbyes and the next thing I knew I was in the back seat of an extended cab pickup on my way to Issan.
Thankfully, there’s another volunteer posted in the same district that I’m in (about 25k away), so we ended up driving to site together. We spent most of the trip talking about the random hobbies were going to take up to pass the time when we have time to pass. The drive was only about 4 hours and when we got to the district’s center my nayok picked me up and took me the last bit to his house where I’m currently staying and will be for another 10 days or so (until I find a house). It’s about 8k or 9k down the highway from my subdistrict to the district center, which is a decent-sized town for Thailand. But once you turn off the highway into my subdistrict, it’s another 6-7k of bad roads that maze through at least 5 villages and even more rice fields before you get to the government office where I’ll be working.
So the first night was slow and we had dinner and “chatted” for a while and I got to go to bed in a relatively large bed (I fit on it diagonally) and they even gave me a rack in the corner of the room to hang my things. I’m living with the nayok and his wife and two kids, the 28-year-old that came to the conference and a teenage daughter. The nayok and his son both have strong English vocabularies, but never practice so they aren’t comfortable speaking in full sentences very often. But now they’re practicing, constantly. And it’s nice because it’s a two-way street where we are teaching each other the languages. What I don’t like is that it doesn’t end. Literally minutes after waking up I’m getting quizzed on vocab. I took a book out to read and didn’t get a paragraph in before I was getting quizzed, despite the fact that my nose was physically in the f’ing book. I took my computer out to write this blog entry yesterday afternoon and didn’t have time to put a single sentence down, even though I actually had earphones in my ears. It’s nice, and it’s really helpful, but it’s wearing me thin. They don’t understand this because this is a culture that values the community and has no sense of the individual (finally needing a big culture note). Everything here is community and family based. There is little idea of personal property and even less of privacy. They shutter when they hear that my family is just my dad and that he lives by himself in Baton Rouge. They don’t understand why I’ve left my family or why I would want to live alone instead of with a host family or why I’m hiding in my room right now to write (a while has passed) or why I don’t want to continue on in the family business (family business?). I tried to explain to them that in America, dtam jai dtua ang, “you follow your own heart”, but they always give you that puzzled look (and they do understand what I’m saying).
While we’re at it, more fun cultural notes. Whenever I meet someone new I get the same exact questions, whether it’s a monk or a village leader or a punk teenager, and they generally go in this order with about 20 seconds of awkward pause between each: Where are you from? Have you eaten yet? Do you eat sticky rice (a regional favorite)? Can you eat spicy food? Are you married yet? How old are you? Where are you staying? Do you have a girlfriend yet? Do you like Thai girls? Are Thai girls pretty? Why are you here? How many people are in your family? What is their occupation? Do you drink whiskey? Does America have [insert fruit name here]? What’s your name? How long have you been here? …If it’s any sort of conversation I’ll get asked at least 80% of these questions and roughly in this order. Hopefully this gives you a small sense of how life here works. It’s also fun how the Thai wording for most of these questions is incredibly direct. More to say on all this in a later tangent, I’m sure.
So my first morning at site I went to a Songkran ceremony for the retired folks in the community. Songkran is pretty much the biggest festival here and it’s a big water fight and a everything is closed. It’s like a three day 4th of July with water guns and hoses instead of fireworks. Kids started setting up ambush sites today so that whenever someone drove by on a motorcycle (which seriously outnumber cars) they would all jump out and soak the poor soul. I guess it’s all expected and everyone has important stuff safe in plastic bags, but it’s still kind of intense to see someone driving by on a motorcycle suddenly get smacked with a bucket of water and not even get mad. So my first morning I went to the old folks festival which was definitely the retirement home version of songkran. We took buckets of water and blessed them and then walked around and poured them over the old people’s hands and then they would splash the water on themselves or on you, but in a kind of blessing type way. It’s like in a Catholic church where someone walks around with the canter of holy water and splashes a little bit on everyone, except that you have the option of seeking benevolent revenge. This is also the point where I realized the prominence of this intense red, narcotic chewing tobacco with the old ladies here. At first I saw a lot of the women’s hands were stained red because I was looking at their hands while I was pouring the water. You could see the years written across these people’s hands and I really wished I’d had my camera. But I assumed the red was from some sort of dye or something, then I saw their teeth were the same color and then I saw them with these huge wads of chew in their mouths. It’s just gross. They talk with mouths full of the stuff and it stains all hell out of their teeth and I can barely stand to look at them a lot of the time. I’ve heard the stuff is more than just tobacco and has some kind of drug in it, too. But these women are all retired and the government is giving them money and they’re all very satisfied staying high and turning red and living out their time in the village that’s always been their home. I digress.
So I was soaking wet by the time the ceremony was over, at which point a bunch of the area’s leaders stuck around and had lunch. Naturally, there was beer and whiskey, which I explained that I did drink, but only rarely. But then they brought out a big cooler full of homemade rice wine, and I had to try some of it. Like a lot of things here, it tasted a little like coconut milk and was a little too sweet, but figuring out how to brew this stuff is definitely a goal of mine now. Anyways, after dinner I went back inside the SAO and was going to sit to try to translate a form I was given about the area, but then someone signaled me to come out into the main room and I saw that a bunch of the SAO workers were still hanging around eating and drinking on a straw mat in the middle of the floor of the office. So I sat down with them for a bit and talked and they’re all just a little bit older than me, but fun people, and more willing than most to actually have a two way conversation rather than talk at me. So I ended up just hanging out with them the whole afternoon drinking and snacking and eventually someone brought out a guitar and I played the few songs I could remember. It was great. Even the girls from the office were drinking with us, which is fairly uncommon in this country, but is encouraging about gender rolls here. Also, I slowed down after a bit and have a fairly high tolerance still and probably weigh about 80 lb. more than any of them, so when the nayok called me to go home before dark, I was the only one not completely stinking drunk. This was hilarious at first, then everyone got on their motorcycles and proceeded to drive home. So it looks like maybe designating a driver is an early goal I can try to set as far as awareness.
In the interest of finishing this soon, the next bit will be especially brief. So I went home and had dinner and got more language lessons. The next day I walked a square block and met the village headman and then went to a cremation ceremony and then took a nap. All points before, after, and occasionally during these activities were spent in ongoing language lessons. Sooo much Thai. Today I was taken to the market and to see the volunteer in the next village over, which isn’t as close as I’d hoped, but is still freakin close. She has a gorgeous two-story house with an upstairs porch and a fridge and a sink and I’m infinitely jealous right now. It’ll be a lot to manage eventually, but it’s still nice. And I got to hang out with her and talk for a little over an hour before we had to go. It was good to see we’re both in the same state where we need English to feel competent about ourselves again. I’ve been so exhausted that when I’ve gotten to talk to other volunteers on the phone I’ve barely had enough energy to carry on a conversation, but seeing another person face to face that was going through the same things was infinitely reassuring and we chatted until the nayok’s son, who was nice enough to take me out there, said it was time to go. Afterwards we went to the market which is pretty standard for Thailand, except that a small fridge in the corner of one of the booths had a golden treasure that I never thought I’d have the pleasure of seeing in this country: Boneless chicken breasts. I could barely contain my glee. So I bought them and fulfilled the expectation of cooking farang (foreigner) food for the house tonight, and cooking and eating relatively familiar food tonight was great, even though it compelled the son to explain to me during dinner that Thai people don’t like bland food…
So let’s call it caught up. At this point music is my best link to the English language, and it’s becoming an even more integral part of my life/sanity. That being said, today needs a few songs of the day. The Mountain Goats’ “Quitto” and “Cotton,” Bright Eyes’ “You will,” and Death Cab’s “Transatlanticism.” I wanted to change the Atlantic part of the song to Pacific, but then it looks too much like trans-pacifism. Not sure what that means but it made me laugh. Anyways, folks, dtam jai kun. I’m doing my best and I’ll keep you all updated.
13/4
So I realized after writing yesterday how much better I felt and how much more able I was to get back out there and speak Thai, etc.. I guess sitting and writing everything out was more therapeutic than I realized, so I’m trying to make a point of forcing it into my schedule. Also, so much happened today that I want to write some of it down because I feel like I’ve already forgotten too much.
Woke up at 6:30 this morning and went straight away to the local wat, where we made merit and prayed for upwards of an hour and then there was a portion where the nayok got up and spoke for about ten minutes and he used all the key words that threw up those red flags in my brain telling me he was talking about me. He then made me get up in front of everyone there (prolly 150 folks) and talk about myself in Thai for about 5 minutes. Then he helped run a Q and A which, again, mostly consisted of whether or not I’m married or have a girlfriend. Then we prayed some more and talked to a monk for a bit when the event ended, then we went back home for breakfast. After about a half hour of breakfast we left the house and didn’t make it back again for 10 hours. During this time I went to around 4 ceremonies similar to the one from the morning, and had to speak at all but one, same format. I also saw a beauty pangent, took part in a small parade and two giant, water-slinging, alcoholic, mass parades, and won two beers and a liter of sprite in a bet about what hole a scared mouse would run into when it was released from a basket. During the Songkran festival here, splashing people with water and covering them with baby powder is seen as some munificent act where you say thank you after you’ve gotten soaked. So from around 10 in the morning til around 7 at night, I stayed soaking wet and covered in baby powder. Ridiculous, fun as hell, and outright exhausting. The fact that I’m being ferried around by the biggest local politician means that I literally hit up every event that happened worth going to today in any one of 21 villages. They came home for a bit before dinner and then were headed out for more and gave me the option of staying in, which I definitely took, so here I am.
Oh yeah, the country also exploded today. From what I’ve been able to muster, several tens of thousands of people were protesting in Bangkok today when the police began using violence to break it up. Shots were fired. Four days after swearing in as a volunteer, we’re all put on Emergency Action Plan alert to be ready to consolidate and to restrict travel. I can’t travel for a month anyways, but it’s still intense to be hit with that this early on. What’s maybe more intense is the drastic separation between what’s happening at my site and what’s happening a few hours south. It’s hardly the same country. I asked the nayok’s son and he said that the political parties battling in Bangkok don’t even exist in our area, or anywhere in the surrounding district. Today, as we were driving, I saw that the kids’ ambushes had turned into full on roadblocks where they would stop traffic to make sure everyone got completely drenched before they could go. I saw someone actually pull a bike out in front of a motorcycle so that the motorcycle would have to stop so that the other kids could pull the driver’s helmet off and throw a bucket of water at her. At the same time, the red shirts were conducting roadblocks in Bangkok in an attempt to overthrow the government. People were getting shot at Victory Monument, while the kids here ran around with squirt guns spraying the sides of cars. Don’t worry about me, I’m fine here. I saw a little bit of the news today on Thai TV and it’s such a strange dichotomy, but it’s only one of many here. So, wrap up. I’m wet, but I’m doing fine, and I’m certainly not in any danger. I’m adjusting better now. I’m still waiting on my house and I’m ready for the holiday to end so I can finally really get to work. I’ve just been listening to the Mountain Goats on repeat tonight, so I think the song of the day just needs to revert back to the first two from yesterday. Looking to raise that ice cold glass of water.” Or maybe beer. Or rice wine. Dtam Jai Kun. If anyone’s bored and wants to shoot me an email… well, then please do. Take care all, -Me
17/4
It’s hot out. I spent the morning helping plant a lemon grass looking plant around three quarters of a giant dirt hole about 20 ft deep and the size of two city blocks. We ran out of plants. I think when it rains the hole is supposed to fill up with water and be a pool/reservoir type thing, but right now the water’s only about 4 inches deep in about a third of it. So there was lunch there (ant egg soup) and some other activities and then I came home and showered and tried to take a nap with a giant fan blowing down on me, but it’s just too hot. I’m sitting outside in the shade with a strong warm breeze blowing by me so I’m only sweating a little bit. This is probably the closest I’ve coming to really missing air conditioning. A good bit has happened in the last few days, so I’ll try to get to it before I get Thai napped (What we call it when someone walks up to you telling you you’re going with them, but you never really understand where to or why or for how long).
So starting from my last blog entry… When I was at one of the parades that day I ran into the woman at whose house I stayed when I came to visit site a number of weeks back. I had been under the impression that I was going to be staying with her instead of the nayoke when I came, and apparently she had been too. So I worked out with her that I would go hang out the next day and sleep over there that night, then go back to living with the nayoke. So I woke up a little late the next day and packed a bag and when I was ready I went out to where everyone was eating breakfast. [and I just got thai napped to go to a noodle shop where we ate this noodle soup that’s common in Thailand, except that halfway through it was explained to me that this soup had blood in it. I explained that I didn’t like eating blood, but was asked if I could taste and when I said “no,” they said it was good for me, so I acquiesced and finished the damn bowl. Anyways] So I came outside to eat and something was mentioned about a wat and I was almost immediately handed a phone and I think it was the woman I was supposed to spend the day with. She asked what I was doing today, and I said I didn’t know. Now, speaking a foreign language constantly can be trying, but trying to have a conversation over the phone, without body language or hand signals, is just frustrating as hell. A habit I’ve developed from this is to repeat everything I think they’ve said back to them to make sure it’s correct. A few times this ended up with people thinking I was asking them the questions and the conversation would digress even further until I just say “Sorry, I have to go. Bye” (this, of course, in Thai). But this time, when I repeated the question “what are you doing today,” back at her, the family heard and started feeding me answers about the wat. Relieved at the way out of the conversation, I told her I was going to the wat. She then said something about the next day and I told her I didn’t know and then agreed to something about going to visit her. I honestly don’t know what happened and wasn’t sure who I was talking to til I pieced it together later. So it’s now a few days later and I haven’t seen or heard from her. Then my morning took another fun turn before I ever made it to the wat.
I’d noticed that mama nayoke had had red eyes at some point in the morning, and I asked her if she was tired and she said she was and so I figured she’d been out late the night before at the party I didn’t go to (which they had been) and that she just needed to sleep. Then a little while after my phone conversation she started tearing up and explaining to me that the nayoke was up for reelection in four months and that there was someone running strong against him. I guess the other guy has a lot more money and the night before must have held some less than pleasant revelations for them. I don’t really know what happened, but it compelled them to start talking about the election to me a lot and I had a lot of trouble conveying to them that I’m not allowed to have any political affiliation in Thailand, even in a small, local race. I thought she understood it the first time, but then about 20 minutes later I overheard them talking about how I was going to help. At this point I went and got my dictionary and looked up a bunch of words my political background should have compelled me to already know, and I told them that if I helped any candidate in any election and Peace Corps found out, I would be on a plane to America faster than they could eat a bowl full of sticky rice. This whole conversation made me more aware of the fact that the election in four months was already heating up. I think that my original counterpart had kept me away from the nayoke and with the woman from the health center to keep me out of it, and now I’m kind of in it. It definitely put me in a hurry to find a house. At this point I’ve been going with the nayoke and his family to a lot of events, just like most of the other community development volunteers I’ve talked to, but now I need to try and walk the wire of building relationships and meeting people while living with the nayoke, while not appearing to support him politically. It’s obnoxious. Anyways, I’m definitely finding out when the election is and telling them I have a meeting in Bangkok that day.
So I went to the wat and poured more water on old people’s hands and was forced to play musical chairs with a bunch of grandmas. I then went to another wat where there was a big stage and a band and a few hundred drunk people, soaking wet and covered in baby powder (mind you, this about 11am). So I had to go up and speak on the stage during a band break and then was taken down to dance in the crowd and was mobbed with water and people wiping baby powder on my face. We got out after 10 minutes, and went and ate and then went home. At this point they finally asked if I wanted to go look at the house that kept coming up when we talked about a rental house. Of course I wanted to go.
So the house is nicer than I expected. It’s across the street from the office where I’ll be working, which makes for an easy commute, but there’s really only one other house near it, so I won’t be in a community, which is something I really wanted. There are other housing options, but this one is the only one that has any furniture at all. So the house is in about an acre of fenced land along with another, bigger house. It’s one of the few places in the area that actually has grass, which I really like. I’ve been trying to figure out how all the ground in the villages has avoided growing even weeds. It’s just hard, red earth and trees and a few bushes. But this place has grass and a lime tree and a few mango and coconut trees inside the big, concrete fence. Across the street is the office and another medium-sized building with a huge parking lot and a big picture of the king on the front of it. I have no idea what it is, but it’s about 30 feet off the main road and is surprisingly easy to miss. There are rice fields on one side and behind the house, and then the giant hole where we planted the grass this morning is on the other side. Past the giant hole is a wat and then the nearest village starts. The house itself is one story with two small bedrooms, a living room, a kitchen, and a bathroom. The bathroom amounts to a big, tiled room with a squat toilet and two trashcans full of water – one for bathing and one for flushing the toilet. It uses well water instead of “city” water, which I’ve heard can be iffy, but I can’t check because the water isn’t actually hooked up to the house yet. There’s a small pump about 60 feet away from the house with a pvc pipe running over the ground to the house and then through a hole in the wall of the bathroom where I guess the pipe will eventually lead to. Right now it’s just laying on the ground beside the hole, but that’s supposed to change. I am currently under the impression that this will be my sole source of water. But there are a lot of upsides to the house. The house next door has a Thai-style washing machine that I can use when I need, and there is a fridge coming and there’s a gas stove with two heating surfaces. The stove is pretty well rusted through, but it’s supposed to work. There’s a small tv in the living room that gets four Thai channels and is surrounded by Buddha figurines and pictures of the king that I’m not allowed to touch. There’s also a bed with an actual bed frame that’s the same size as the one I’m sleeping on now, which means if I sleep diagonally I’ll be able to fit on it! But here’s the crowning jewel: AC. [at this point I was once again whisked away, and I’ll tell you about it in a bit.] So I settled on a price that was a little too high, but I forgot that everything here is negotiable and didn’t try to bargain from the start, so I started out at too high of a price and then tried getting them to add in the electric bill so that Peace Corps would pay for the whole bit and I wouldn’t have to. All in all, my monthly rent, including everything, is a little under US $90. Or that was the understanding I thought we’d come to at the time. We agreed that I’d move in on the 21st, in 1 week, and I went home and ate dinner and spent the evening in high spirits.
The next day was the last day of songkran, so we went pretty hard. I piled in a pickup with two of the nayoke’s sons and one of their girlfriends, and then about 8 kids loaded in the back of the truck with two giant tubs of water. Remember the roadblocks that were set up to splash the motorcyclists? Well we pulled up like a Panzer tank at a DUI traffic stop and let loose. Once we powered through the villages we got onto the highway and drove to the next decent-sized town and hit all the road blocks there. Those kids were better prepared since there were a number of trucks/water tanks on the road, and everyone in the back got drenched and powdered. We were constantly making hits on other trucks and motorcycles that we passed too, and I couldn’t help but think of all the awful things my friends and I would have done to people in high school if America’d had Songkran. We were just so much more creative and driven and devious (and possibly bored) than anyone here seems to be. I didn’t get to do any of the splashing because the damn Peace Corps won’t let me ride in the back of a truck, but I still think I had the most fun. We stopped at a big temple that I’d visited during site visit and took pictures and burned incense and then went to a small lake where the kids floated in the waves in inner tubes, fully clothed, while the older type folks ate hot papaya salad and what was described to me as “burned fish.”
This breaks me into one of my favorite tangents of the moment, which is broken English. I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned this before, or recently, but broken English is hilarious. A lot of the time I don’t take the time to stop and appreciate it because I’m trying to figure out what they’re trying to say. Lately though, I’ve decided to indulge myself. When I misspeak it’s a great joke that everyone gets to enjoy at my expense while I’m left still trying to express myself. So, in the least bitter way I can muster, I’ve started returning the favor. Beyond the fact that people are constantly wearing English shirts that they don’t understand – favorite recents are an older woman with a shirt that had a picture of a mechanical bull and said “ride me,” and one that had the complete lyrics to a Macy Gray song written across the front of it – the pronunciation and usage are also generally pretty bad. Most of the time I take the mispronunciations and use them as quiet solace for difficulties I’m having learning a language myself, but the usage just cracks me up on the spot. Like when I’m told to take a sip of bread (which they think is our version of rice – it’s hard for them to understand not eating the same thing for every meal) or when they call free time “free style.” Best ever though: the Thai words for “wear,” like to wear clothes, and “with,” like coffee with milk, are the same. This made my morning a few days ago when we were eating breakfast and I was asked, “Would you like wear pepper?” I stared for a second and then broke out laughing. Another fantastically therapeutic part of the language, is once you’ve felt out the people around you and realize that they don’t know any English cuss words. I start cussing under my breath when I get frustrated and they don’t know the difference between that and me counting to 12. That definitely came in handy tonight..
Anyways. So yesterday I was given the day off and used it to bike to the local town about 15 k away. I met up with the other volunteer who lives near there and caught her just as she was finishing up at an internet café. When she finished she had a few minutes left, so I hopped on for a while and was going to post my earlier entries, but found out that they didn’t save to my jump drive right. So we walked around and got a feel for the place and looked in every shop and priced things for when I have to buy for my house. Then we ate lunch and I headed home. I found out that the nayoke’s son that speaks the most English will be moving to Vietnam in a month to work as an engineer, so I decided to utilize this resource as much as possible and spent most of the rest of the day talking to him and learning as many words as possible, while I taught him about articles and was surprised how hard it is to remember the actual rules about when to say “the” or when to say “a” or “an.” When my brain couldn’t handle anymore I grabbed a book and told him I needed a break to read. I’ve been reading Grapes of Wrath and it’s really good so far, but I just can’t see it being better than East of Eden. The beginning has been an especially interesting read considering my surroundings. It seems like 1930’s America isn’t a far stretch from Thailand today, except there’s no motorcycles or electricity.
So the big part of today that I’ve left off so far is a small mess that was made about my house. In the morning I started getting questions about how much I was paying for rent, and when it sounded like a lot they made me go back to the house (which was literally 100 ft away) and walk through it again with one of the SAO workers. When it seemed fine, we went back and had lunch. Then, as I was going back home from lunch, a bunch of people said they were going to go and look at the house again. I felt like I didn’t want to be present for bothering the poor folks again and make them hate me, so I went home and showered and tried to take a short nap. When I got up everyone was sitting around in front of the house, and when I went out to see what was going on, the son told me the there was a “little mistake” about my house. So this isn’t pleasant news. I asked what and from what I could gather, either there was someone that lived in the house that didn’t know that their mom was about to rent it to me, or the woman that was about to rent it to me wasn’t solid on our deal, or she wasn’t sure about me yet and wasn’t sure if she wanted to rent to me. Or any or all of the above. Anyways, at that point I just left them to talk and game and started writing this. It’s almost 11 now, though, so I’m going to be brief with the rest of it.
So we went back later and talked to the woman and apparently if I use my air conditioner too much it’ll make for a really expensive electric bill and they told me that if I want to use the AC, I need to pay an extra 1000 baht per month. Well I’m paying 3200 right now, and the Peace Corps gives us a limit of 3700, so that’s just not an option. Plus it’s bullshit, and I told them so. Thankfully, no one had a clue what I was saying through my smile. So instead I told them I couldn’t afford it and then they said ok, I just couldn’t use the ac. But they still wanted me to pay the same amount as before. I told them that not being able to use the ac was the same as not having ac, so I wasn’t going to pay the same price. They either didn’t understand me or pretended not to or were embarrassed because I was being too American and too direct so they just dismissed it. I finally got a pen and paper and figured out exactly how much I was giving them as a flat rate for the electric bill and told them that I might use the air, and if the bill broke the flat rate then I’d pay for it out of pocket. Then I think I cussed some more and asked in Thai if that would be ok and they nodded and I called it a night. Then after dinner tonight my family explained to me that the mattress that was in the house when I walked through, that I was told I would have, isn’t going to be there so I need to buy another one. I can afford it, but it’s a full third of my moving in allowance, and moreover it’s bullshit. But in four days I’ll be in the house and they can’t take anything else out of it cuz I’m changing the lock on the front door. I maybe shouldn’t write when I’m this frustrated, but I don’t get much time and this one isn’t wearing off. So, I’m gonna Jai Yin Yin (settle down) and you’re gonna Dtam Jai Kun (follow your heart) and today’s song is Dylan’s “Desolation Row.” It popped up when I searched for “home” on my iTunes search bar. Once you get past sweet home Alabama and all the songs about being home for Christmas, it makes a pretty decent playlist. Take care all, and I’ll obviously let you know how it all develops.
21/4
So I’ve begun the move in and it has even more surprises and I had to call a friend in the five free minutes I’ve had today just to have an outlet to yell about it. But I’m finally out on my own. Work is a mixed bag and is all a lot of paperwork right now, but I don’t have much time to write and want to get this out, so I’ll update you all more when I get a chance. Once again, Dtam Jai Kun.
So where to begin… Have you ever been in a language class in high school or college and you feel like you just hit the wall and you can’t process anymore so you just shut down for a bit and wait til it’s over so you can go? I’m living in that language class. I’m staying with the nayok in my village right now, who is the head of the local government, and I can’t get a moment alone. Sleeping seems to be my only retreat, so I’m doing it more than I need. Right now they think I’m taking a nap, but I’ll be foiled the second anyone decides to look in my room through the windows on every wall (three sides have windows looking in to the rest of the house, the other side looks out to where everyone eats). Pretty much, I’m getting overwhelmed and need to shut down and escape for a bit, but it’s just not possible. A lot of people don’t have houses yet, so they are staying with host families, but most of the people that I’ve been in contact with over the last few days are busy moving into their houses and a house seems to be the light of privacy at the end of this tunnel. I just keep thinking that if I hold on til I have a house it’ll all be just fine, so I’m trying hard right now not to just take the first house they show me to be able to get out. I’m so unsure of everything I’m saying at all points that when I start to speak or think in English, I feel like I’m doing it wrong. So that’s where I’m starting from. I just needed to get that out, and now I guess I should go back to my last entry and catch you up.
But talk about a rollercoaster… So many things have happened that I started writing them down so that I would remember them when I finally got time on the computer, and now I feel like there’s just way too much to write about in the time I’ll be able to get. I’m not processing most of it yet, but just trying to endure and not misstep. This will probably lead to some obnoxiously long blog entries in a while when I have more time. I’ve also realized that most of my writing so far has been anecdotal about my experiences here and that taking a bit to talk about the culture would go a long way towards helping understand how things are affecting me. So I’ll be sure to do that when I get a chance. But now I’ll go back to the counterpart conference.
So the Nayok and his son both left on the morning of the last day, which, coincidentally, was the most important day. This was the point where we were supposed to work together to form a plan for our first 6 months at site so that we would have similar expectations going in. The person that I was left trying to work with spent most of the conference with the biggest frown in the land of smiles. Don’t worry though; it wasn’t too hard working with him because he decided not to show up to the meeting where we wrote the plan. So I spent a few hours making a collaborative six-month plan by myself, then getting one of the translators to write it in Thai on another sheet of paper so I could take it and show it to someone in my community who gave a damn. I apparently have two weeks to mail in a comprehensive plan in Thai and English or the Royal Thai Government won’t pay for my housing. This exercise was frustrating enough that when it was done I was in too much of a stupor to communicate with anyone in any way for about an hour.
That night at the hotel was the last time group 121 will be together til July. So I took way too many pictures and drank a bit and played guitar and enjoyed everyone’s company while I could. At this point I have over 10 gigs of pictures on my computer that I haven’t even looked at yet. I keep hearing I’ll have a lot of free time at site, so I’ll go through them all whenever that happens. :-P
The next morning was swearing in. I’d like to not use the word surreal, but I can’t think of anything better. I woke up a little late and showered and threw on a shirt and tie and went and sat in the same room where we started training and waited for the ambassador to show up so we could start the ceremony. A few people got up and gave short, unmoving speeches, a few of which were in Thai, then we all got up and swore the oath together (same oath that Obama swore, except ours said PCV at the end instead of president). And, like Obama’s oath, ours was slightly botched because of the way the ambassador read it. So a few folks, including myself, didn’t actually say their name during the oath. He’s probably friends with John Roberts. Anyways, extremely anticlimactic. It felt like a group of kids reciting the national anthem together in an oversized classroom full of Thai spectators. Then two volunteers got up and gave a long speech in Thai and after that I had about half an hour to talk and take pictures and drink coffee and eat the awful little sandwich snacks from the back of the room before I was told to have my bags outside the hotel in 10 minutes. So I said a few quick goodbyes and the next thing I knew I was in the back seat of an extended cab pickup on my way to Issan.
Thankfully, there’s another volunteer posted in the same district that I’m in (about 25k away), so we ended up driving to site together. We spent most of the trip talking about the random hobbies were going to take up to pass the time when we have time to pass. The drive was only about 4 hours and when we got to the district’s center my nayok picked me up and took me the last bit to his house where I’m currently staying and will be for another 10 days or so (until I find a house). It’s about 8k or 9k down the highway from my subdistrict to the district center, which is a decent-sized town for Thailand. But once you turn off the highway into my subdistrict, it’s another 6-7k of bad roads that maze through at least 5 villages and even more rice fields before you get to the government office where I’ll be working.
So the first night was slow and we had dinner and “chatted” for a while and I got to go to bed in a relatively large bed (I fit on it diagonally) and they even gave me a rack in the corner of the room to hang my things. I’m living with the nayok and his wife and two kids, the 28-year-old that came to the conference and a teenage daughter. The nayok and his son both have strong English vocabularies, but never practice so they aren’t comfortable speaking in full sentences very often. But now they’re practicing, constantly. And it’s nice because it’s a two-way street where we are teaching each other the languages. What I don’t like is that it doesn’t end. Literally minutes after waking up I’m getting quizzed on vocab. I took a book out to read and didn’t get a paragraph in before I was getting quizzed, despite the fact that my nose was physically in the f’ing book. I took my computer out to write this blog entry yesterday afternoon and didn’t have time to put a single sentence down, even though I actually had earphones in my ears. It’s nice, and it’s really helpful, but it’s wearing me thin. They don’t understand this because this is a culture that values the community and has no sense of the individual (finally needing a big culture note). Everything here is community and family based. There is little idea of personal property and even less of privacy. They shutter when they hear that my family is just my dad and that he lives by himself in Baton Rouge. They don’t understand why I’ve left my family or why I would want to live alone instead of with a host family or why I’m hiding in my room right now to write (a while has passed) or why I don’t want to continue on in the family business (family business?). I tried to explain to them that in America, dtam jai dtua ang, “you follow your own heart”, but they always give you that puzzled look (and they do understand what I’m saying).
While we’re at it, more fun cultural notes. Whenever I meet someone new I get the same exact questions, whether it’s a monk or a village leader or a punk teenager, and they generally go in this order with about 20 seconds of awkward pause between each: Where are you from? Have you eaten yet? Do you eat sticky rice (a regional favorite)? Can you eat spicy food? Are you married yet? How old are you? Where are you staying? Do you have a girlfriend yet? Do you like Thai girls? Are Thai girls pretty? Why are you here? How many people are in your family? What is their occupation? Do you drink whiskey? Does America have [insert fruit name here]? What’s your name? How long have you been here? …If it’s any sort of conversation I’ll get asked at least 80% of these questions and roughly in this order. Hopefully this gives you a small sense of how life here works. It’s also fun how the Thai wording for most of these questions is incredibly direct. More to say on all this in a later tangent, I’m sure.
So my first morning at site I went to a Songkran ceremony for the retired folks in the community. Songkran is pretty much the biggest festival here and it’s a big water fight and a everything is closed. It’s like a three day 4th of July with water guns and hoses instead of fireworks. Kids started setting up ambush sites today so that whenever someone drove by on a motorcycle (which seriously outnumber cars) they would all jump out and soak the poor soul. I guess it’s all expected and everyone has important stuff safe in plastic bags, but it’s still kind of intense to see someone driving by on a motorcycle suddenly get smacked with a bucket of water and not even get mad. So my first morning I went to the old folks festival which was definitely the retirement home version of songkran. We took buckets of water and blessed them and then walked around and poured them over the old people’s hands and then they would splash the water on themselves or on you, but in a kind of blessing type way. It’s like in a Catholic church where someone walks around with the canter of holy water and splashes a little bit on everyone, except that you have the option of seeking benevolent revenge. This is also the point where I realized the prominence of this intense red, narcotic chewing tobacco with the old ladies here. At first I saw a lot of the women’s hands were stained red because I was looking at their hands while I was pouring the water. You could see the years written across these people’s hands and I really wished I’d had my camera. But I assumed the red was from some sort of dye or something, then I saw their teeth were the same color and then I saw them with these huge wads of chew in their mouths. It’s just gross. They talk with mouths full of the stuff and it stains all hell out of their teeth and I can barely stand to look at them a lot of the time. I’ve heard the stuff is more than just tobacco and has some kind of drug in it, too. But these women are all retired and the government is giving them money and they’re all very satisfied staying high and turning red and living out their time in the village that’s always been their home. I digress.
So I was soaking wet by the time the ceremony was over, at which point a bunch of the area’s leaders stuck around and had lunch. Naturally, there was beer and whiskey, which I explained that I did drink, but only rarely. But then they brought out a big cooler full of homemade rice wine, and I had to try some of it. Like a lot of things here, it tasted a little like coconut milk and was a little too sweet, but figuring out how to brew this stuff is definitely a goal of mine now. Anyways, after dinner I went back inside the SAO and was going to sit to try to translate a form I was given about the area, but then someone signaled me to come out into the main room and I saw that a bunch of the SAO workers were still hanging around eating and drinking on a straw mat in the middle of the floor of the office. So I sat down with them for a bit and talked and they’re all just a little bit older than me, but fun people, and more willing than most to actually have a two way conversation rather than talk at me. So I ended up just hanging out with them the whole afternoon drinking and snacking and eventually someone brought out a guitar and I played the few songs I could remember. It was great. Even the girls from the office were drinking with us, which is fairly uncommon in this country, but is encouraging about gender rolls here. Also, I slowed down after a bit and have a fairly high tolerance still and probably weigh about 80 lb. more than any of them, so when the nayok called me to go home before dark, I was the only one not completely stinking drunk. This was hilarious at first, then everyone got on their motorcycles and proceeded to drive home. So it looks like maybe designating a driver is an early goal I can try to set as far as awareness.
In the interest of finishing this soon, the next bit will be especially brief. So I went home and had dinner and got more language lessons. The next day I walked a square block and met the village headman and then went to a cremation ceremony and then took a nap. All points before, after, and occasionally during these activities were spent in ongoing language lessons. Sooo much Thai. Today I was taken to the market and to see the volunteer in the next village over, which isn’t as close as I’d hoped, but is still freakin close. She has a gorgeous two-story house with an upstairs porch and a fridge and a sink and I’m infinitely jealous right now. It’ll be a lot to manage eventually, but it’s still nice. And I got to hang out with her and talk for a little over an hour before we had to go. It was good to see we’re both in the same state where we need English to feel competent about ourselves again. I’ve been so exhausted that when I’ve gotten to talk to other volunteers on the phone I’ve barely had enough energy to carry on a conversation, but seeing another person face to face that was going through the same things was infinitely reassuring and we chatted until the nayok’s son, who was nice enough to take me out there, said it was time to go. Afterwards we went to the market which is pretty standard for Thailand, except that a small fridge in the corner of one of the booths had a golden treasure that I never thought I’d have the pleasure of seeing in this country: Boneless chicken breasts. I could barely contain my glee. So I bought them and fulfilled the expectation of cooking farang (foreigner) food for the house tonight, and cooking and eating relatively familiar food tonight was great, even though it compelled the son to explain to me during dinner that Thai people don’t like bland food…
So let’s call it caught up. At this point music is my best link to the English language, and it’s becoming an even more integral part of my life/sanity. That being said, today needs a few songs of the day. The Mountain Goats’ “Quitto” and “Cotton,” Bright Eyes’ “You will,” and Death Cab’s “Transatlanticism.” I wanted to change the Atlantic part of the song to Pacific, but then it looks too much like trans-pacifism. Not sure what that means but it made me laugh. Anyways, folks, dtam jai kun. I’m doing my best and I’ll keep you all updated.
13/4
So I realized after writing yesterday how much better I felt and how much more able I was to get back out there and speak Thai, etc.. I guess sitting and writing everything out was more therapeutic than I realized, so I’m trying to make a point of forcing it into my schedule. Also, so much happened today that I want to write some of it down because I feel like I’ve already forgotten too much.
Woke up at 6:30 this morning and went straight away to the local wat, where we made merit and prayed for upwards of an hour and then there was a portion where the nayok got up and spoke for about ten minutes and he used all the key words that threw up those red flags in my brain telling me he was talking about me. He then made me get up in front of everyone there (prolly 150 folks) and talk about myself in Thai for about 5 minutes. Then he helped run a Q and A which, again, mostly consisted of whether or not I’m married or have a girlfriend. Then we prayed some more and talked to a monk for a bit when the event ended, then we went back home for breakfast. After about a half hour of breakfast we left the house and didn’t make it back again for 10 hours. During this time I went to around 4 ceremonies similar to the one from the morning, and had to speak at all but one, same format. I also saw a beauty pangent, took part in a small parade and two giant, water-slinging, alcoholic, mass parades, and won two beers and a liter of sprite in a bet about what hole a scared mouse would run into when it was released from a basket. During the Songkran festival here, splashing people with water and covering them with baby powder is seen as some munificent act where you say thank you after you’ve gotten soaked. So from around 10 in the morning til around 7 at night, I stayed soaking wet and covered in baby powder. Ridiculous, fun as hell, and outright exhausting. The fact that I’m being ferried around by the biggest local politician means that I literally hit up every event that happened worth going to today in any one of 21 villages. They came home for a bit before dinner and then were headed out for more and gave me the option of staying in, which I definitely took, so here I am.
Oh yeah, the country also exploded today. From what I’ve been able to muster, several tens of thousands of people were protesting in Bangkok today when the police began using violence to break it up. Shots were fired. Four days after swearing in as a volunteer, we’re all put on Emergency Action Plan alert to be ready to consolidate and to restrict travel. I can’t travel for a month anyways, but it’s still intense to be hit with that this early on. What’s maybe more intense is the drastic separation between what’s happening at my site and what’s happening a few hours south. It’s hardly the same country. I asked the nayok’s son and he said that the political parties battling in Bangkok don’t even exist in our area, or anywhere in the surrounding district. Today, as we were driving, I saw that the kids’ ambushes had turned into full on roadblocks where they would stop traffic to make sure everyone got completely drenched before they could go. I saw someone actually pull a bike out in front of a motorcycle so that the motorcycle would have to stop so that the other kids could pull the driver’s helmet off and throw a bucket of water at her. At the same time, the red shirts were conducting roadblocks in Bangkok in an attempt to overthrow the government. People were getting shot at Victory Monument, while the kids here ran around with squirt guns spraying the sides of cars. Don’t worry about me, I’m fine here. I saw a little bit of the news today on Thai TV and it’s such a strange dichotomy, but it’s only one of many here. So, wrap up. I’m wet, but I’m doing fine, and I’m certainly not in any danger. I’m adjusting better now. I’m still waiting on my house and I’m ready for the holiday to end so I can finally really get to work. I’ve just been listening to the Mountain Goats on repeat tonight, so I think the song of the day just needs to revert back to the first two from yesterday. Looking to raise that ice cold glass of water.” Or maybe beer. Or rice wine. Dtam Jai Kun. If anyone’s bored and wants to shoot me an email… well, then please do. Take care all, -Me
17/4
It’s hot out. I spent the morning helping plant a lemon grass looking plant around three quarters of a giant dirt hole about 20 ft deep and the size of two city blocks. We ran out of plants. I think when it rains the hole is supposed to fill up with water and be a pool/reservoir type thing, but right now the water’s only about 4 inches deep in about a third of it. So there was lunch there (ant egg soup) and some other activities and then I came home and showered and tried to take a nap with a giant fan blowing down on me, but it’s just too hot. I’m sitting outside in the shade with a strong warm breeze blowing by me so I’m only sweating a little bit. This is probably the closest I’ve coming to really missing air conditioning. A good bit has happened in the last few days, so I’ll try to get to it before I get Thai napped (What we call it when someone walks up to you telling you you’re going with them, but you never really understand where to or why or for how long).
So starting from my last blog entry… When I was at one of the parades that day I ran into the woman at whose house I stayed when I came to visit site a number of weeks back. I had been under the impression that I was going to be staying with her instead of the nayoke when I came, and apparently she had been too. So I worked out with her that I would go hang out the next day and sleep over there that night, then go back to living with the nayoke. So I woke up a little late the next day and packed a bag and when I was ready I went out to where everyone was eating breakfast. [and I just got thai napped to go to a noodle shop where we ate this noodle soup that’s common in Thailand, except that halfway through it was explained to me that this soup had blood in it. I explained that I didn’t like eating blood, but was asked if I could taste and when I said “no,” they said it was good for me, so I acquiesced and finished the damn bowl. Anyways] So I came outside to eat and something was mentioned about a wat and I was almost immediately handed a phone and I think it was the woman I was supposed to spend the day with. She asked what I was doing today, and I said I didn’t know. Now, speaking a foreign language constantly can be trying, but trying to have a conversation over the phone, without body language or hand signals, is just frustrating as hell. A habit I’ve developed from this is to repeat everything I think they’ve said back to them to make sure it’s correct. A few times this ended up with people thinking I was asking them the questions and the conversation would digress even further until I just say “Sorry, I have to go. Bye” (this, of course, in Thai). But this time, when I repeated the question “what are you doing today,” back at her, the family heard and started feeding me answers about the wat. Relieved at the way out of the conversation, I told her I was going to the wat. She then said something about the next day and I told her I didn’t know and then agreed to something about going to visit her. I honestly don’t know what happened and wasn’t sure who I was talking to til I pieced it together later. So it’s now a few days later and I haven’t seen or heard from her. Then my morning took another fun turn before I ever made it to the wat.
I’d noticed that mama nayoke had had red eyes at some point in the morning, and I asked her if she was tired and she said she was and so I figured she’d been out late the night before at the party I didn’t go to (which they had been) and that she just needed to sleep. Then a little while after my phone conversation she started tearing up and explaining to me that the nayoke was up for reelection in four months and that there was someone running strong against him. I guess the other guy has a lot more money and the night before must have held some less than pleasant revelations for them. I don’t really know what happened, but it compelled them to start talking about the election to me a lot and I had a lot of trouble conveying to them that I’m not allowed to have any political affiliation in Thailand, even in a small, local race. I thought she understood it the first time, but then about 20 minutes later I overheard them talking about how I was going to help. At this point I went and got my dictionary and looked up a bunch of words my political background should have compelled me to already know, and I told them that if I helped any candidate in any election and Peace Corps found out, I would be on a plane to America faster than they could eat a bowl full of sticky rice. This whole conversation made me more aware of the fact that the election in four months was already heating up. I think that my original counterpart had kept me away from the nayoke and with the woman from the health center to keep me out of it, and now I’m kind of in it. It definitely put me in a hurry to find a house. At this point I’ve been going with the nayoke and his family to a lot of events, just like most of the other community development volunteers I’ve talked to, but now I need to try and walk the wire of building relationships and meeting people while living with the nayoke, while not appearing to support him politically. It’s obnoxious. Anyways, I’m definitely finding out when the election is and telling them I have a meeting in Bangkok that day.
So I went to the wat and poured more water on old people’s hands and was forced to play musical chairs with a bunch of grandmas. I then went to another wat where there was a big stage and a band and a few hundred drunk people, soaking wet and covered in baby powder (mind you, this about 11am). So I had to go up and speak on the stage during a band break and then was taken down to dance in the crowd and was mobbed with water and people wiping baby powder on my face. We got out after 10 minutes, and went and ate and then went home. At this point they finally asked if I wanted to go look at the house that kept coming up when we talked about a rental house. Of course I wanted to go.
So the house is nicer than I expected. It’s across the street from the office where I’ll be working, which makes for an easy commute, but there’s really only one other house near it, so I won’t be in a community, which is something I really wanted. There are other housing options, but this one is the only one that has any furniture at all. So the house is in about an acre of fenced land along with another, bigger house. It’s one of the few places in the area that actually has grass, which I really like. I’ve been trying to figure out how all the ground in the villages has avoided growing even weeds. It’s just hard, red earth and trees and a few bushes. But this place has grass and a lime tree and a few mango and coconut trees inside the big, concrete fence. Across the street is the office and another medium-sized building with a huge parking lot and a big picture of the king on the front of it. I have no idea what it is, but it’s about 30 feet off the main road and is surprisingly easy to miss. There are rice fields on one side and behind the house, and then the giant hole where we planted the grass this morning is on the other side. Past the giant hole is a wat and then the nearest village starts. The house itself is one story with two small bedrooms, a living room, a kitchen, and a bathroom. The bathroom amounts to a big, tiled room with a squat toilet and two trashcans full of water – one for bathing and one for flushing the toilet. It uses well water instead of “city” water, which I’ve heard can be iffy, but I can’t check because the water isn’t actually hooked up to the house yet. There’s a small pump about 60 feet away from the house with a pvc pipe running over the ground to the house and then through a hole in the wall of the bathroom where I guess the pipe will eventually lead to. Right now it’s just laying on the ground beside the hole, but that’s supposed to change. I am currently under the impression that this will be my sole source of water. But there are a lot of upsides to the house. The house next door has a Thai-style washing machine that I can use when I need, and there is a fridge coming and there’s a gas stove with two heating surfaces. The stove is pretty well rusted through, but it’s supposed to work. There’s a small tv in the living room that gets four Thai channels and is surrounded by Buddha figurines and pictures of the king that I’m not allowed to touch. There’s also a bed with an actual bed frame that’s the same size as the one I’m sleeping on now, which means if I sleep diagonally I’ll be able to fit on it! But here’s the crowning jewel: AC. [at this point I was once again whisked away, and I’ll tell you about it in a bit.] So I settled on a price that was a little too high, but I forgot that everything here is negotiable and didn’t try to bargain from the start, so I started out at too high of a price and then tried getting them to add in the electric bill so that Peace Corps would pay for the whole bit and I wouldn’t have to. All in all, my monthly rent, including everything, is a little under US $90. Or that was the understanding I thought we’d come to at the time. We agreed that I’d move in on the 21st, in 1 week, and I went home and ate dinner and spent the evening in high spirits.
The next day was the last day of songkran, so we went pretty hard. I piled in a pickup with two of the nayoke’s sons and one of their girlfriends, and then about 8 kids loaded in the back of the truck with two giant tubs of water. Remember the roadblocks that were set up to splash the motorcyclists? Well we pulled up like a Panzer tank at a DUI traffic stop and let loose. Once we powered through the villages we got onto the highway and drove to the next decent-sized town and hit all the road blocks there. Those kids were better prepared since there were a number of trucks/water tanks on the road, and everyone in the back got drenched and powdered. We were constantly making hits on other trucks and motorcycles that we passed too, and I couldn’t help but think of all the awful things my friends and I would have done to people in high school if America’d had Songkran. We were just so much more creative and driven and devious (and possibly bored) than anyone here seems to be. I didn’t get to do any of the splashing because the damn Peace Corps won’t let me ride in the back of a truck, but I still think I had the most fun. We stopped at a big temple that I’d visited during site visit and took pictures and burned incense and then went to a small lake where the kids floated in the waves in inner tubes, fully clothed, while the older type folks ate hot papaya salad and what was described to me as “burned fish.”
This breaks me into one of my favorite tangents of the moment, which is broken English. I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned this before, or recently, but broken English is hilarious. A lot of the time I don’t take the time to stop and appreciate it because I’m trying to figure out what they’re trying to say. Lately though, I’ve decided to indulge myself. When I misspeak it’s a great joke that everyone gets to enjoy at my expense while I’m left still trying to express myself. So, in the least bitter way I can muster, I’ve started returning the favor. Beyond the fact that people are constantly wearing English shirts that they don’t understand – favorite recents are an older woman with a shirt that had a picture of a mechanical bull and said “ride me,” and one that had the complete lyrics to a Macy Gray song written across the front of it – the pronunciation and usage are also generally pretty bad. Most of the time I take the mispronunciations and use them as quiet solace for difficulties I’m having learning a language myself, but the usage just cracks me up on the spot. Like when I’m told to take a sip of bread (which they think is our version of rice – it’s hard for them to understand not eating the same thing for every meal) or when they call free time “free style.” Best ever though: the Thai words for “wear,” like to wear clothes, and “with,” like coffee with milk, are the same. This made my morning a few days ago when we were eating breakfast and I was asked, “Would you like wear pepper?” I stared for a second and then broke out laughing. Another fantastically therapeutic part of the language, is once you’ve felt out the people around you and realize that they don’t know any English cuss words. I start cussing under my breath when I get frustrated and they don’t know the difference between that and me counting to 12. That definitely came in handy tonight..
Anyways. So yesterday I was given the day off and used it to bike to the local town about 15 k away. I met up with the other volunteer who lives near there and caught her just as she was finishing up at an internet café. When she finished she had a few minutes left, so I hopped on for a while and was going to post my earlier entries, but found out that they didn’t save to my jump drive right. So we walked around and got a feel for the place and looked in every shop and priced things for when I have to buy for my house. Then we ate lunch and I headed home. I found out that the nayoke’s son that speaks the most English will be moving to Vietnam in a month to work as an engineer, so I decided to utilize this resource as much as possible and spent most of the rest of the day talking to him and learning as many words as possible, while I taught him about articles and was surprised how hard it is to remember the actual rules about when to say “the” or when to say “a” or “an.” When my brain couldn’t handle anymore I grabbed a book and told him I needed a break to read. I’ve been reading Grapes of Wrath and it’s really good so far, but I just can’t see it being better than East of Eden. The beginning has been an especially interesting read considering my surroundings. It seems like 1930’s America isn’t a far stretch from Thailand today, except there’s no motorcycles or electricity.
So the big part of today that I’ve left off so far is a small mess that was made about my house. In the morning I started getting questions about how much I was paying for rent, and when it sounded like a lot they made me go back to the house (which was literally 100 ft away) and walk through it again with one of the SAO workers. When it seemed fine, we went back and had lunch. Then, as I was going back home from lunch, a bunch of people said they were going to go and look at the house again. I felt like I didn’t want to be present for bothering the poor folks again and make them hate me, so I went home and showered and tried to take a short nap. When I got up everyone was sitting around in front of the house, and when I went out to see what was going on, the son told me the there was a “little mistake” about my house. So this isn’t pleasant news. I asked what and from what I could gather, either there was someone that lived in the house that didn’t know that their mom was about to rent it to me, or the woman that was about to rent it to me wasn’t solid on our deal, or she wasn’t sure about me yet and wasn’t sure if she wanted to rent to me. Or any or all of the above. Anyways, at that point I just left them to talk and game and started writing this. It’s almost 11 now, though, so I’m going to be brief with the rest of it.
So we went back later and talked to the woman and apparently if I use my air conditioner too much it’ll make for a really expensive electric bill and they told me that if I want to use the AC, I need to pay an extra 1000 baht per month. Well I’m paying 3200 right now, and the Peace Corps gives us a limit of 3700, so that’s just not an option. Plus it’s bullshit, and I told them so. Thankfully, no one had a clue what I was saying through my smile. So instead I told them I couldn’t afford it and then they said ok, I just couldn’t use the ac. But they still wanted me to pay the same amount as before. I told them that not being able to use the ac was the same as not having ac, so I wasn’t going to pay the same price. They either didn’t understand me or pretended not to or were embarrassed because I was being too American and too direct so they just dismissed it. I finally got a pen and paper and figured out exactly how much I was giving them as a flat rate for the electric bill and told them that I might use the air, and if the bill broke the flat rate then I’d pay for it out of pocket. Then I think I cussed some more and asked in Thai if that would be ok and they nodded and I called it a night. Then after dinner tonight my family explained to me that the mattress that was in the house when I walked through, that I was told I would have, isn’t going to be there so I need to buy another one. I can afford it, but it’s a full third of my moving in allowance, and moreover it’s bullshit. But in four days I’ll be in the house and they can’t take anything else out of it cuz I’m changing the lock on the front door. I maybe shouldn’t write when I’m this frustrated, but I don’t get much time and this one isn’t wearing off. So, I’m gonna Jai Yin Yin (settle down) and you’re gonna Dtam Jai Kun (follow your heart) and today’s song is Dylan’s “Desolation Row.” It popped up when I searched for “home” on my iTunes search bar. Once you get past sweet home Alabama and all the songs about being home for Christmas, it makes a pretty decent playlist. Take care all, and I’ll obviously let you know how it all develops.
21/4
So I’ve begun the move in and it has even more surprises and I had to call a friend in the five free minutes I’ve had today just to have an outlet to yell about it. But I’m finally out on my own. Work is a mixed bag and is all a lot of paperwork right now, but I don’t have much time to write and want to get this out, so I’ll update you all more when I get a chance. Once again, Dtam Jai Kun.
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
Alive and Issan Bound
31/3
So I’m not really as busy right now, but the combination of apathy and my newly received 1st season of 30 Rock have really put a damper on my writing. It’s been raining a good bit the last few days and my host dad says it’ll last another three. The Thai folks really like the rain because it makes it cooler and also makes it easier to harvest the cassava, but jeeze can it make biking miserable. Right now the wind is blowing through open windows in my giant room and there’s a light rain on the tin roof. There are a lot of leaves on the floor that have blown in through the window, and when it rained hard a few nights ago there were a few drops that blew in and landed on me in my bed. Whether it’s the heat or the rain, the weather is such a force here. There’s this constant power around us, pushing us around, reminding us that we’re only human and keeping us in perspective. In the second story of an un-insulated wooden house, I can feel the wind push over me while I lay in bed, and it sooths the frustrations of training and steals the narcissism of volunteerism and all that’s left is calm, like sand settling on the bottom of an ocean. It’s all very Buddhist, I think. But my self-importance is never gone for long, and so I’ll get back to talking about my life as of late.
So we did our presentation in Thai and had a powerpoint and it went well until the head of our subdistrict got up and started quizzing us all on the community leaders’ names while they were all in the room and then it got awkward for a bit, but we just smiled and acted like we didn’t really understand what she was saying, even though it was being translated to us, and eventually she just got impatient and made everyone introduce themselves and it blew over and was finally finished. It was sad leaving there for the last time, but I promised I would go back and look at a computer they had that wasn’t working. I don’t know if I’ll get a chance to, and I doubt I could do much anyways, so I probably won’t.
I had my language proficiency interview on Saturday and got my score yesterday, and I did better than I needed to, but scored the same as most people. I should have focused on the test a little more, but the folks planning our training decided to put the biggest project in training the day before the language test, so I’m not going to go blaming myself too much. But ever since those two things were done, I’ve been hard pressed to feel motivated because we’re practically finished. Most of our time now is spent preparing for our thank you party for our host families, and it’s really hard to take the work that we have left with any seriousness. There’s an interview tomorrow with my technical trainer and then another interview the next day with my country director. [got tired and decided to pick this up later, but didn’t]
4/4
Tonight is the last night at homestay and I haven’t packed yet. I’m leaving at 9 in the morning, but when I said I needed some time to pack my possessions, my dad said the morning was plenty of time. I’m still not sure if her realizes that I don’t wake up at 4 with everyone else. Or at least get up. But today was a pretty good day, even though it was hectic. I went and bought gifts for all the folks at my homestay, which just feels nice, and the kids seemed pretty excited about the water guns I got them for sang kran (the three day festival coming up in a week or two during the hottest part of the year where the whole country erupts into a giant water and baby powder fight). Tonight I went to another monkhood party with crazy dancers, except I think half of these dancers were “men” and they were all wearing disco style shoes with 6-inch high heels. I was the only American at this one, and I’ve found a comfort zone in these situations where I listen and usually understand a bit, but don’t generally talk much. Today was also our last class sessions during PST and our elections for the Volunteer Action Committee, in which two PCVs from each technical group are elected to represent any grievances or ideas or expectations, etc. to the PC staff, particularly the country director. I thought I’d be good at the position and ran relatively hard and ended up winning, which I’m really excited about. More to come on those duties later
My interviews were both surprisingly positive. I’d heard from last year’s group that they would bring up random things that people reported that were never brought up until the end, but that didn’t really happen. They told the four people in my language group that our humor was too irreverent, and then they gave me feedback on body language. I’m not sure what their real point was other than to tell us we weren’t Thai, because nearly everyone received some sort of negative feedback in that area, and it ran the entire gamut. A lot of people were told to “smile more,” some were told (like me) that they “look unfriendly,” and then other people were told that they looked too happy and staff was worried about how they were going to lose it if they ever weren’t happy. It seems they just wanted to give us some negative feedback of that nature whether it was valid or not. So they hit me with being too serious and appearing unfriendly and then said I was doing great and that I’ll probably make a good volunteer. Once the interviews were done we spent most of the time practicing a Thai dance that a few of us are doing at our thank you party tomorrow. It’s pretty exciting stuff. I’ve also been practicing a short thank you speech that I’m doing tomorrow with one other person to represent the 8 folks living in our subdistrict. I also got a little caught up in getting things for the fam and campaigning a bit.
Last night my family had a special dinner for me with barbequed pork and some crazy good sauces. I think I’ve mentioned it before, and it’s one of the things I learned to cook, so I’m looking forward to trying to make it at site. We finally also broke out barbequed beetles, which were surprisingly good, but I still didn’t want to eat many. I bought some Johnny Walker black and brought out the last of my Baileys, and it was a good time. Then after dinner I spent about an hour playing with bottle caps with my host brothers before going to bed.
I’ve grown especially fond of everyone, and am so tired I’m about to crash, but I’m going to make a point of talking about it all in my next entry (or my next next entry). Good night and good rest.
Oh, wait. I’ve been meaning to do this for a while and this is the first time I remembered. Every time I write a blog entry from now on I’m going to try to include a song of the day. I like this idea because it forces me to listen to more music, and because I like sharing my music. Also, if you have the song it might help convey my state of mind. Today’s song is “You, Me, and the Bourgeoisie,” by the submarines. I feel good now, but over the week I got stressed out and it was good to ask “who am I to break down?”
Also, new favorite Thai phrase/sign off: Dtam Jai Kun. “follow your heart.” It’s great, because it’s not just for big things here. If someone asks you where we should all go for lunch and you don’t feel like picking or don’t want to force your opinion on them (b/c they will go where you say), then just say “dtam jai kun.” So versatile and a little poignant. I like it. So, blog friends, Dtam jai kun. –Me
7/4
And so I leave for site in two days. Weird mix between comforting and overwhelming. Our counterpart conference started yesterday, where people from the village come to try to reach an understanding on our expectations for the first few months and to have access to a translator for a few days. The two chief administrators from the local gov in my area came for me because the person that was supposed to be my counterpart moved. One of them brought their son, too, which is nice because he’s about my age and speaks a little limited English and seems like a nice, sharp guy. Downside of this (of course there’s a downside) is that one of these admins (the one whose son came) is up for reelection in July and isn’t favored to win. The other one was described to me by my project manager as particularly unmotivated, and gets bored and leaves for hours at a time during the conference. The other person that was active in bringing me there was the counterpart that has already moved, so I’m currently fretting a little bit that, come August, there won’t be anyone left in my office that actually wants me there. That seems too far off to really worry much about, but I can’t seem to dismiss it completely.
But right now we’ve moved back into the hotel, and it’s a fast few days of heavy drinking at night and then trying to plan the next six months of our lives during the day while the pc staff continually beats our counterparts over the head with the idea that learning and adjusting to a new culture isn’t easy and that we should be excused our few eccentricities, breakdowns, etc.. We swear in in two days, but that seems a really long way out right now, and is really just the short ceremony before we’re finally allowed to litter the country with our idealism and hot heads and bachelors’ degrees. The conference is helpful at times and frustrating at others, and I feel like they had too many things to do in too little time and decided that, rather than leave anything out, they’d make us do everything in about half the amount of time it should require. But I’ve learned a lot about my community and a few of the expectations they have of me, which start out with learning and cultural exchange and transition into organizational structure for occupational groups and eventually peak with me defying the laws of supply and demand to make people buy their rice at a higher price. God knows I’ll try.
Past groups have always done the counterpart conference in Bangkok over the period of a week and then had a big swearing in ceremony at a resort style hotel, then got a week off in Bangkok to recuperate before heading to site. Some combo of our failing economy and weaksauce excuse for an ex-president means that we can’t even afford to hold our swearing in in the nicer of the two hotels in this small town after our three-day conference.
Missing everybody back home more than usual and I’ll be writing you all in a few weeks when my life is scheduled to slow down. Song of the day: “Young Folks” by Peter Bjorn and John. Apologies for being sluggish with my posting. Dtam Jai Kun
So I’m not really as busy right now, but the combination of apathy and my newly received 1st season of 30 Rock have really put a damper on my writing. It’s been raining a good bit the last few days and my host dad says it’ll last another three. The Thai folks really like the rain because it makes it cooler and also makes it easier to harvest the cassava, but jeeze can it make biking miserable. Right now the wind is blowing through open windows in my giant room and there’s a light rain on the tin roof. There are a lot of leaves on the floor that have blown in through the window, and when it rained hard a few nights ago there were a few drops that blew in and landed on me in my bed. Whether it’s the heat or the rain, the weather is such a force here. There’s this constant power around us, pushing us around, reminding us that we’re only human and keeping us in perspective. In the second story of an un-insulated wooden house, I can feel the wind push over me while I lay in bed, and it sooths the frustrations of training and steals the narcissism of volunteerism and all that’s left is calm, like sand settling on the bottom of an ocean. It’s all very Buddhist, I think. But my self-importance is never gone for long, and so I’ll get back to talking about my life as of late.
So we did our presentation in Thai and had a powerpoint and it went well until the head of our subdistrict got up and started quizzing us all on the community leaders’ names while they were all in the room and then it got awkward for a bit, but we just smiled and acted like we didn’t really understand what she was saying, even though it was being translated to us, and eventually she just got impatient and made everyone introduce themselves and it blew over and was finally finished. It was sad leaving there for the last time, but I promised I would go back and look at a computer they had that wasn’t working. I don’t know if I’ll get a chance to, and I doubt I could do much anyways, so I probably won’t.
I had my language proficiency interview on Saturday and got my score yesterday, and I did better than I needed to, but scored the same as most people. I should have focused on the test a little more, but the folks planning our training decided to put the biggest project in training the day before the language test, so I’m not going to go blaming myself too much. But ever since those two things were done, I’ve been hard pressed to feel motivated because we’re practically finished. Most of our time now is spent preparing for our thank you party for our host families, and it’s really hard to take the work that we have left with any seriousness. There’s an interview tomorrow with my technical trainer and then another interview the next day with my country director. [got tired and decided to pick this up later, but didn’t]
4/4
Tonight is the last night at homestay and I haven’t packed yet. I’m leaving at 9 in the morning, but when I said I needed some time to pack my possessions, my dad said the morning was plenty of time. I’m still not sure if her realizes that I don’t wake up at 4 with everyone else. Or at least get up. But today was a pretty good day, even though it was hectic. I went and bought gifts for all the folks at my homestay, which just feels nice, and the kids seemed pretty excited about the water guns I got them for sang kran (the three day festival coming up in a week or two during the hottest part of the year where the whole country erupts into a giant water and baby powder fight). Tonight I went to another monkhood party with crazy dancers, except I think half of these dancers were “men” and they were all wearing disco style shoes with 6-inch high heels. I was the only American at this one, and I’ve found a comfort zone in these situations where I listen and usually understand a bit, but don’t generally talk much. Today was also our last class sessions during PST and our elections for the Volunteer Action Committee, in which two PCVs from each technical group are elected to represent any grievances or ideas or expectations, etc. to the PC staff, particularly the country director. I thought I’d be good at the position and ran relatively hard and ended up winning, which I’m really excited about. More to come on those duties later
My interviews were both surprisingly positive. I’d heard from last year’s group that they would bring up random things that people reported that were never brought up until the end, but that didn’t really happen. They told the four people in my language group that our humor was too irreverent, and then they gave me feedback on body language. I’m not sure what their real point was other than to tell us we weren’t Thai, because nearly everyone received some sort of negative feedback in that area, and it ran the entire gamut. A lot of people were told to “smile more,” some were told (like me) that they “look unfriendly,” and then other people were told that they looked too happy and staff was worried about how they were going to lose it if they ever weren’t happy. It seems they just wanted to give us some negative feedback of that nature whether it was valid or not. So they hit me with being too serious and appearing unfriendly and then said I was doing great and that I’ll probably make a good volunteer. Once the interviews were done we spent most of the time practicing a Thai dance that a few of us are doing at our thank you party tomorrow. It’s pretty exciting stuff. I’ve also been practicing a short thank you speech that I’m doing tomorrow with one other person to represent the 8 folks living in our subdistrict. I also got a little caught up in getting things for the fam and campaigning a bit.
Last night my family had a special dinner for me with barbequed pork and some crazy good sauces. I think I’ve mentioned it before, and it’s one of the things I learned to cook, so I’m looking forward to trying to make it at site. We finally also broke out barbequed beetles, which were surprisingly good, but I still didn’t want to eat many. I bought some Johnny Walker black and brought out the last of my Baileys, and it was a good time. Then after dinner I spent about an hour playing with bottle caps with my host brothers before going to bed.
I’ve grown especially fond of everyone, and am so tired I’m about to crash, but I’m going to make a point of talking about it all in my next entry (or my next next entry). Good night and good rest.
Oh, wait. I’ve been meaning to do this for a while and this is the first time I remembered. Every time I write a blog entry from now on I’m going to try to include a song of the day. I like this idea because it forces me to listen to more music, and because I like sharing my music. Also, if you have the song it might help convey my state of mind. Today’s song is “You, Me, and the Bourgeoisie,” by the submarines. I feel good now, but over the week I got stressed out and it was good to ask “who am I to break down?”
Also, new favorite Thai phrase/sign off: Dtam Jai Kun. “follow your heart.” It’s great, because it’s not just for big things here. If someone asks you where we should all go for lunch and you don’t feel like picking or don’t want to force your opinion on them (b/c they will go where you say), then just say “dtam jai kun.” So versatile and a little poignant. I like it. So, blog friends, Dtam jai kun. –Me
7/4
And so I leave for site in two days. Weird mix between comforting and overwhelming. Our counterpart conference started yesterday, where people from the village come to try to reach an understanding on our expectations for the first few months and to have access to a translator for a few days. The two chief administrators from the local gov in my area came for me because the person that was supposed to be my counterpart moved. One of them brought their son, too, which is nice because he’s about my age and speaks a little limited English and seems like a nice, sharp guy. Downside of this (of course there’s a downside) is that one of these admins (the one whose son came) is up for reelection in July and isn’t favored to win. The other one was described to me by my project manager as particularly unmotivated, and gets bored and leaves for hours at a time during the conference. The other person that was active in bringing me there was the counterpart that has already moved, so I’m currently fretting a little bit that, come August, there won’t be anyone left in my office that actually wants me there. That seems too far off to really worry much about, but I can’t seem to dismiss it completely.
But right now we’ve moved back into the hotel, and it’s a fast few days of heavy drinking at night and then trying to plan the next six months of our lives during the day while the pc staff continually beats our counterparts over the head with the idea that learning and adjusting to a new culture isn’t easy and that we should be excused our few eccentricities, breakdowns, etc.. We swear in in two days, but that seems a really long way out right now, and is really just the short ceremony before we’re finally allowed to litter the country with our idealism and hot heads and bachelors’ degrees. The conference is helpful at times and frustrating at others, and I feel like they had too many things to do in too little time and decided that, rather than leave anything out, they’d make us do everything in about half the amount of time it should require. But I’ve learned a lot about my community and a few of the expectations they have of me, which start out with learning and cultural exchange and transition into organizational structure for occupational groups and eventually peak with me defying the laws of supply and demand to make people buy their rice at a higher price. God knows I’ll try.
Past groups have always done the counterpart conference in Bangkok over the period of a week and then had a big swearing in ceremony at a resort style hotel, then got a week off in Bangkok to recuperate before heading to site. Some combo of our failing economy and weaksauce excuse for an ex-president means that we can’t even afford to hold our swearing in in the nicer of the two hotels in this small town after our three-day conference.
Missing everybody back home more than usual and I’ll be writing you all in a few weeks when my life is scheduled to slow down. Song of the day: “Young Folks” by Peter Bjorn and John. Apologies for being sluggish with my posting. Dtam Jai Kun
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