A lot to say, but said briefly

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.