This strange existence i've chosen

20 - 27/5

Starting off with a side note, this entry isn’t up to par either, but at this point I just needed to get something out. I’m hoping once I get the ball rolling again it will be easier to start writing frequently again. So I don’t like this post, but at this point I just feel like I need to post something… Apologies for the long break.

So it rains a lot. The land is used to it, so the whole world doesn’t turn to mud like it might elsewhere, and when it rains the temperature drops and you usually get a good breeze if you’re near a window, which feels great. But geeze, it rains a lot. It woke me up twice this week (haven’t been sleeping much anyways) and it knocks my power out about once or twice a week. Power’s never gone for very long though. This week we lost power for about an hour in the middle of the afternoon at work, which was actually kind of fun. Last Saturday morning a storm woke me up early and I laid and listened to it for a while and finally got up to take a shower. I was about halfway through when the lightning struck so hard and so close to my house that the place shook. I about jumped through the roof, and the power was gone instantly. So I splashed the soap off and dried off quickly and went to put on some clothes when I realized that the light fixture in my bedroom had essentially exploded when the lightning struck. Part of the fixture was missing, and the bulb was in pieces on my bedroom floor. Apparently it’s not all that uncommon, which is an exciting prospect. They replaced the fixture in the room for the second time (once earlier when the original just stopped working), and there are now two separate lights in my bedroom ceiling, only one of which works – a testament to idea that “if it functions, don’t bother cleaning it,” a slight, but important variation on “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” I’ve noticed it’s a commonly held belief here.

So I live in Thailand now. I’ve been here for a while, and I have a house and a job and some friends and it’s actually a life, not some trip or vacation or project. I think because it feels like a regular life it seems less worth writing about, which is why I haven’t been writing much. But then when I did sit down to start writing, I had so much to write about that it was daunting, so I just kept putting it off. I tried to break everything into categories to organize it in my head, but it ruins the flow of my telling, so I think I’m just going to string a bunch of anecdotes together like I’ve been doing all along. They’re easier and more fun to tell, and I think the same applies to reading them.

I’ve been happy with my life here for a while now. I’m starting to get settled in and it’s calming. And I’ve managed to stay in good spirits despite a string of health small medical issues. Three weeks ago I broke out in an intense rash. It looked like poison ivy, and I assumed it was from eating too many mangoes, but when I went to the local health clinic they said it was from the ground water that I use to bathe and is fairly common. So I called the Peace Corps medical officer and was told to try sponge bathing for a while, in addition to cutting off the mangoes. It helped, but it was not pleasant. The rash went away after a little over a week of covering about a third of my body. Since then I’ve continued bathing with my ground water, but have kept the mangoes to a minimum and have changed soaps just in case. I’ve also cut myself once and burned myself twice while cooking, and managed to develop an intensely uncomfortable hemorrhoid while in Bangkok that lasted about a week. I was embarrassed as hell when I had it, so I lied and told everyone I had diarrhea and just found ways to avoid riding my bike or sitting for too long during that week. In addition, both weekends that I’ve left town have incurred massive hangovers, but those were self-inflicted, and I actually think that the volunteer group hangover breakfasts are some of the best parts of weekends away.

Gripes. All of the health stuff beats you down after a while. Feeding myself and doing chores takes up a large portion of the time that I’m not at work, so I am usually forced to choose. Hence, I don’t write as often as I should. Or do laundry or dishes or eat decent meals. Rarely do people speak Thai here – they speak Isaan, which is really a dialect of Laos - so rarely do I understand an entire conversation. I’m still sleeping with a beach towel as a blanket, even though I was given a blanket, because it’s the only thing that actually covers my whole body. I haven’t left the office as much as I would like, but I’m still studying the information I have on the villages before I go out, so I don’t feel ready yet. I spend a good bit of time thinking about how much more efficient I’d be if I was in a place where I could actually communicate and understand everything that was happening and being said around me. My rental agreement changed three times since I moved in, and I finally put the Peace Corps staff on the phone with my landlady and things are hopefully finally settled, after a month of headaches. In order to get water into my house, I go outside and plug in a pump that automatically starts pumping water through a garden hose into a hole in the wall of my bathroom. The hose is cut off at the end, so there is no nozzle to control the water or turn it on or off without unplugging the pump again. This is my house’s sole source of water, except that I go buy giant bottles of drinking water. There have been two nights in which, without leaving any doors or windows open, the lights in my house have managed to draw in several hundred small moths, that just float around the room and quickly die, shedding their wings to float around and stick to walls and furniture, etc. There were so many of them that I could literally sweep them out the door, about 50 at a time, both alive and dead, while I waited for the next batch to hit the floor. So life is fine. All my complaints don’t really amount to much, and the biggest things are the language and that it just doesn’t feel like there are enough hours in the day. It’s definitely not the Peace Corps experience I was expecting – living in a legitimate house with power and water and working in an office – but the area is in the midst of development and there seem to be a lot of potential projects, so I’m making the most of it.

Still, the thing that seems most daunting is the idea of not accomplishing much with my time here. Although she hasn’t left yet, another volunteer from my group has decided to go home. She got a case of dengue fever and had to go to Bangkok for medical. When she was starting to get well enough to work again, she apparently realized that the last place that she wanted to be was back at her site, so she didn’t go. Also, I was questioning a guy from the group that came a year ago and he was explaining that he doesn’t go to his office anymore. Instead he just stays with his host family and reads all day, everyday. I thought for sure he was exaggerating, so I kept asking about it, and he’s serious. He eats, he reads, he checks his email. The stuff at my site can be annoying, but the thing that messes with my head the most is worrying that I’ll end up hating it here or not finding a project. I don’t think either will be the case, but I doubt either of them did either. I would definitely rather leave that stay here just to read all day.

Highlights. Talking to other volunteers, I realize that I’ve hit the jackpot by working in an office that is closer to my age group and that isn’t very culturally conservative. They’re all pretty cool folks and they’ll invite me to hang out sometimes and it definitely helps with the feeling of normalcy. Right now I spend most of my time in the office translating data about the different villages, because when I went to talk to one of the village headmen a few weeks back, he just told me that everything I was asking was in their community plan and I felt like me being there was pointless. So I’m getting the info first and then I’ll be headed out to the villages to drill everyone on the details. I have gone and visited the 6 schools in the area, and they all just want me to come teach English, which I’m willing to do on a small scale, but refuse to make my primary project. People that speak English in this country almost automatically flee to Bangkok, so there is no sustained development in the communities, and there aren’t many uses of English for sustained development within the communities. But I might teach a little bit to get to know the kids and eventually start a youth leadership group that could help with projects and maybe do a few on their own. I’ve heard of other volunteers doing this with varied degrees of success and I want to try it. Anyways, The way this program works is to spend the first six months doing community assessment, and then hopefully you know enough about the community to make a few suggestions to people there. They pick the ones they like and you run with it. Hopefully this pans out in reality.

I was picked up early one Saturday morning and taken to a small 20’ x 30’ pond in the middle of a rice field that was about 15 feet deep. I was told I was going to get fish. They didn’t say fishing, they said going to get fish (this is in Thai). I just assumed we were fishing and it was a dialect thing, but when we got to the pond there was a big pump sucking the water out of the pond into a nearby field. When the water was down to under a foot, we climbed down into the mud that was left. I sank about 2 and a half feet deep into the mud, and we trudged through with our arms in the mud to our shoulders, feeling for fish that had buried themselves in the mud to hide. When you touched one it would jump out of the mud and swim frantically through what was left of the water, so we waited until it slowed down a bit and then just reached out and grabbed it and threw it into a basket. Grabbing muddy fish with your bare hands has a bit of a learning curve, but it was pretty fun and grandly filthy.

Another Saturday I spent helping give flowers to the village headmen of all 21 villages before going to town at night and having some Korean barbeque (they give you a bunch of meat and a hot surface and you cook everything yourself in the middle of the table, one of my favorite meals) and hanging out. Then the next morning I was taken to a flooded rice field where we trolled for tadpoles all morning in order to eat them in the afternoon. The crazy thing about eating tadpoles is that you have to gut them first or they’ll make sick. “Gut a tadpole?” you ask. Why yes. And you gut a tadpole by holding them upside down and pushing your thumb against their fat bellies until all of their insides pop out their backside, like you might pop a zit. So it’s gross. I was sitting there gutting dozens of these poor tadpoles when I started wondering whether Dexter or Cormac McCarthy would enjoy the task more. That’s when I realized the morbid vain of my entertainment lately.. I’d borrowed the first season of Dexter, a Showtime series about a sociopathic serial killer, and was watching it in between reading Cormac McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men, a book known for it’s violence, and Tuesdays with Morrie, a book about an old professor slowly dying of Lou Gehrig’s disease. I wasn’t feeling particularly grim, and I definitely wasn’t doing it on purpose, but I realized the pattern while I was sitting there killing tadpoles, and I decided to lighten up my entertainment after that, so I’ve been sticking to Chapelle’s Show and Eddie Izzard since then. And the tadpoles weren’t even any good.

I’ve hit a decent pattern with meals, kind of similar to back home. I’ll usually make fried rice or chicken or pork fried basil or fried eggs. Notice the pattern of “fried.” I only have a stovetop, so my options are generally either pan fry or deep-fry. Pan-fried is healthier, so I tend to stick to that. I’ve made a few curries, which have turned out really well, but the coconut cream is expensive, so I don’t do it very often. I try to make a point of making an American meal once a week for my mental health. Grilled cheese or spaghetti or fajitas. All fantastic, but all incredibly expensive and hard to do right. Cheese, as it is known in Thailand, only exists in the form of Kraft Singles. You can occasionally find premade spaghetti sauce, but it’s expensive and just bad, so I go to Bangkok where there is one grocery store that actually sells small cans of Hunts Tomato Sauce so that I can start from scratch. This is also the only place to find tortillas in the country. All prohibitively expensive, but worth it. My next mission is to start out with a chunk of meat and chop it down til it’s the consistency of ground beef, then try to pan fry a burger. A friend tried this with positive results, so I’m excited.

We’ve had two big weekends off since we went to site, one in Bangkok and one in Khon Kaen. Both were like small reunions and everyone drinks too much and spends more money than we have and then spend the next morning laying around in someone’s room or a small restaurant, nursing our hangovers together. This weekend there’s a large group heading to Phitsanolok, a decent-sized city in the center of the country, and there’s a big bowling tournament planned. Doesn’t sound that exciting, but that’s kind of the point. We’re all excited as hell. After that I don’t think I’ll leave site again until our second series of training sessions starting in early July. If I do leave it’ll be with folks from my site, who are apparently apt to have a strong night out too. We’ll see how that pans out.

The office janitor has been giving me lessons on the Isaan, and I’m reading Thai pretty well by now, when I already know the words I’m reading. My counterpart saw my computer and decided to start her own facebook account. We aren’t friends yet. The internet is still awful, and facebook chats usually only end in frustration, but I still try anyways. I found a spider the size of my palm in my living room, which added a little excitement to one afternoon. Yesterday I went running with a couple of neighborhood kids and I might start doing that everyday if they’re down. I just decided that, because I’m out of meat for the week, I’m going to try to make French toast for dinner tonight… awesome. This week’s song is “How Many Times,” by The Ryan Montbleau Band. Sorry for the extended absence, and I’ll do my best to get back in the habit of writing. ตำใจคุณ = Dtam Jai Khun. Haha, I've been practicing typing in Thai. Take care all.

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.

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.

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

scattered recollection of site visit and a few things since

I tilted my head back and let the hookah smoke drift slowly from my nostrils as my eyes caught a neon man flash above me, walking across a Johnnie Walker logo. The taste of hummus and red wine lingered through the apple smoke, and a breeze foiled my smoke ring as it pushed past my fellow trainees and I, while a Thai band pushed relatively gracefully through Alanis Morrisette songs on a rooftop bar in downtown Bangkok.

I stood watching a health center worker clean a wound on man’s shin, about 2 ½ inches in diameter and down to the bone, while the head of the health center stood in front of 15 models of breasts, giving lessons on self exams to check for breast cancer. Meanwhile, all the women over the age of 35 in the surrounding 8 villages were upstairs getting free pap smears. As my stomach started to turn from staring at a man’s open shinbone, I wondered why I was there. This is all free care that we don’t offer our own citizens. They should be coming to us, teaching us. I started to wonder how immensely arrogant I must be to have come here with no specific skills and thinking I can improve their conditions. I visited all 21 villages in my subdistrict the night before, and was already starting to become overwhelmed at the shear size of the place. It’s nicer and more organized than where we’ve been training, and I wasn’t mentally prepared for this.

My already broken Thai was struggling through the cold building in the back of my throat. I could feel my headache growing more intense as I walked through another potential home. We’d learned to make deals and push for more amenities using Thai, but no one could front the funds for furniture I’d be renting. I found a nice house, but there was no way to get furniture. Any furniture. No bed, no fridge, no chair, nothing. We were told to call our project managers when we were in a bind, so I did. I called both of them. A few times. No one answered. My counterpart was getting more and more confused and I was getting frustrated and the headache kept getting worse and I finally just shrugged and said we should go look at the other house again, the one that was too big and that I’d only be able to live in for 5 months.

I took my first big sip of margarita and audibly sighed. Everyone smiled in agreement and we sat and ate fajitas and enchiladas and tacos and chips with guacamole until there was none. Then we ordered another pitcher of margaritas and went and got pizza. We already had tickets to see The Watchmen in Imax, and we savored every bite of everything we couldn’t get for the last 6 weeks, way past the point of being full. Even though everyone responded in English, we ordered everything in Thai, because we could and because we had to prove that we weren’t the farang (foreigners) that come to vacation here and find Thai wives and do all the things the daren’t do back home. We see them everywhere and they don’t make eye contact. There’s something intrinsically guilty in most of the white people we meet here, but we aren’t those people and we’re very proud of that. We’re just a bunch of kids that finally got a day off and are craving a bite of home. It was better than we expected.

When they talked about culture shock and adjusting and working in Thailand, they kept talking about all the highs and lows we’re going to have. When we’re on the top of the world and when we just want to crawl back into bed. I guess I didn’t realize how quickly we’d move from one to the other, but after the past weekend I think I have a sense. Because so much happened since my last post, I thought a few anecdotes would be more interesting and go further towards explaining this feeling than just a point for point. I realized that a lot of the highs were related to doing American things and the lows were from my site visit, but a lot of it was circumstantial, and such is culture shock. Bangkok was a great high because we actually had a full day off in a place with English speakers where we don’t have the same intense cultural restrictions of the more rural areas, and where we have access to recognizable and long dreamt of food options. All the pieces fit and we really needed the time off and it was great. Then the morning I left Bangkok to go to my site, I could fee myself starting to get sick. As I’ve already discovered, being sick takes the stress and the pressure and just makes everything suck. I maintained a smile and was fine, but whenever things started to go wrong here and there, being ill just compounded it, and I felt pretty low during a lot of site visit. Thankfully, I didn’t really show it, except when my headache got really intense during dinner, and a little time has helped me settle and get perspective on everything. Right now I feel a lot better, both mentally and physically, but I wanted to show how quickly the highs and lows come and go here, and so often in relative extremes. I’m not really looking forward to being bipolar for the next two years, but I’ll let you know how that goes.

We got to Bangkok and saw the Peace Corps Thailand HQ, then headed to the hotel and from there were on our own for the night. Naturally, we all went out pretty hard, so when class started the next morning at 8 a good number of folks hadn’t shown up yet or were falling asleep continuously. I was fine through class, but when it was done and I went out and had a big meal and saw Watchmen and got back to the hotel to regroup and preparty, I just passed out (And If you’re planning to see Watchmen, save your money and buy the comic book). But I needed the sleep. I woke up Saturday and could feel that I was starting to get sick. I traveled with the volunteer that will be closest to me to visit the same current volunteer for a night before we went to visit our sites. The girl that we went to visit is dating another volunteer that I met earlier and they both seemed pretty cool. We didn’t get to do or see much at her site though, so we just sat and talked with her. She seemed pretty well integrated into her community, but was still obviously an outsider. It also looked like she was really active with her students outside of class and was making a difference, which was good to see. Still, she was talking about the things she wanted to do as a secondary project, and she sounded a little like us trainees, still waiting to get out there and do things. It made me realize how quickly the year must go and that I can’t procrastinate or hesitate or I could end up a year into service with very little accomplished (since I’m not an English teacher, my work is to do the projects that come secondary for them).

Quick note, after site visit training really starts to speed up. I’ve barely had any free time, and the part of this entry that is above I wrote in small segments over a period of several days. That’s why I won’t date it. A lot has happened since visit, and the highs and lows are not limited to my time away from the pst town. I really realize this because, although I usually don’t get the chance, I am constantly thinking of things I want to put in the blog and how I want to talk about them and describe them etc. I realize that from day to day my outlook and mood are constantly changing and they really paint how I am writing. Sometimes I’ll feel really good or really bad about something that happens, but by the time I get to writing about it it’s been processed and I don’t feel the same, or some over event has colored my perception of the previous one. I wish I was writing more often right now to really be able to convey a sense of how I’m feeling, but there simply isn’t time. We got back last Tuesday and debriefed site visit, then planned a life skills camp for 10 to 12 year-olds and had the camp on Saturday. In the mean time, my language group is preparing to do a 45-minute presentation on Friday about everything we’ve learned about the community we’ve been studying since we’ve been here. Oh, also, we’ll be giving the presentation to the people that live in that community, and we’ll be giving the entire presentation in Thai. Then Saturday is the final language exam to test our proficiency before we go to site. Also, today we went to a farm to learn about organic fertilizers, and on Wednesday we’ll be going on a trip to learn about helping people living with HIV and AIDS in our communities. And the whole time I’m drifting back and forth between feeling melancholy and tired, and feeling motivated and content. I think the frustrating part is never really understanding what’s pushing me back and forth between the two, or when I’ll feel good again. But I know it’s just the stress, and I never move too far in either direction (although I think the type “a” in me is really going to kick in when I get to site). Anyways, just wanted to say I’m really busy and will be, so forgive the weak posting. Back to site visit, but briefly.

So Site Visit. I got there Sunday afternoon and left Tuesday morning. The place is nicer and bigger and with much more dense villages than I expected, but I’ve come to terms with all of it by now and am working on plans of attack. My counterpart speaks English at about the same fluency that I speak Thai, which is great, except that today (Monday) I spoke with my project manager that called him to check in about my housing options and it turns out he’s moved to a different community during the week since my visit. This somehow didn’t come up at all while I was there. I need to find a new counterpart, but there’s no hurry on that, so I’ll worry about it later, when things slow down and I’m at site. The leader of the place where I’ll be working (the SAO, Subdistrict Administrative Organization), is up for election again soon and is apparently not favored, but he seemed nice and I liked his family. I spent a lot of time with the leader of one of the community’s two health stations, and she has a gorgeous house and from the looks and work of the health station, she really has it together. I think I’ll be staying with her for my first two weeks at site while I finish figuring out my housing.

The community itself is distinctly Issan. I guess that doesn’t mean much to many people. It’s flat and characterized by small checkers of dried out rice fields with trees growing spread out between fields. It gets really hot there in the summer and relatively cool in the cool season. They rely on the rainy season to grow rice and the rest of the year the ground is cracked, baron, and bone dry. The people are friendly and lively and are very proud of their sticky rice and fermenting fish and the fact that they all speak a dialect that is more Lao than Thai, even though they can only read and write in Thai. It’s just not the Thailand that people come to visit, but I’m happy about that. Right now I have a few decent housing options, but everything’s so up in the air I’m not going to bother describing them. I just really don’t think I’m going to be able to find furniture or internet or air conditioning or a water heater or western toilet or a sink or anything that I was crossing my fingers for when I went house hunting. The furniture is obviously the most pressing part, like a bed or a stove, but I think even these things I’ll have to buy with the settling in allowance they’re giving me (around US $200). Anyways, I need to sleep. Hopefully I’ll get a chance to post this soon and maybe even write more. I guess you’ll know if that happened. Oh, I also spent yesterday morning working in a cassava field. That was fun. Bye, blog friends. Hope you’re all well.

Issan!!!

11/3

So, I have a few unfinished posts that I’m including in this and then concluding at the end, so beware of another long one… But more importantly, I now know where I’m headed for the next few years. At least location-wise. The shitty thing is that I can’t actually post exactly where I am because the U.S. Government, for whom I am currently working, has decided that it is a bad idea for me to ever give my exact location in a public forum. Something about bird flu pandemics, spies with bad haircuts and Jesus’ second coming; I’m not really sure. But I do think that I can tell you that I’ll be in the middle of Issan, in a province called Maha Sarakham. I feel comfortable telling you this because if you tried to use it to hunt me down (still not completely sure why you would..) then it would still be less useful to you than the phrase, “farang bpai nai?” Part of the reason I decided to include my incomplete posts after all was a now-ironic comment I made about Issan, because there really isn’t much there, at least geographically. This lack of topography has been euphemized to me (as so much of Thailand has) by being told that the flat, featureless land makes for easier biking. This is very convenient though, because the sub district that I’ve been assigned to work in has upwards of 20 separate villages spread out over a relatively large tract of land and connected by red earth roads. I may or may not be working in every village, but I am required to check them all out, so the ten pounds that I’ve lost so far might multiply.

But I’m excited about Issan. I’m glad I’m not somewhere touristy, and the people are known for their energy and culture. There are wisemen in my village and musicians that play native instruments and the very Issan dialect is known for its liveliness and dramatic nature. The people are very proud of their culture and even the volunteers that come out after two years have strong Issan pride. The group that’s in the process of leaving right now made shirts even. From what’s been described to me I feel like it’s akin to Cajuns back home, and I’ll let you know if that’s anywhere near true. They do take a lot of pride in their food, like Cajuns do, which is cool except that it’s a bit more intense. Beyond field mice and bugs and so on, the people in my area have actually formed a coop making and selling fermented fish dipping sauce. It’s called Bpla Ra, and I find it hilarious that my area specializes in this, because prior to finding out my site – literally two hours before – we were having a nutrition session and this sauce was brought up because eating too much apparently causes cancer, and I had eaten it before and officially decided that it was my least favorite thing about Thailand. Now part of my job will be facilitating the production of this pungent rotting fish sauce. Hilarious. My host dad loves the stuff, and I really don’t think it’ll grow on me, but we’ll see. Either way, it’s great because it starts me out with a clear basis for helping the community while I’m getting established and figuring out what else they want or need (the clear basis being that they want my help trying to figure out how to raise their own snake-headed fish for the sauce as opposed to having to buy them in the market). One last note on Issan culture. Of the things that my site listed as priorities for a volunteer, the third most important thing to them, after income generation and program development, was sharing their culture. This translates into the owner of what looks like my best housing option (who is also the assistant to the subdistrict headman) saying that he is willing to build a bathroom onto the house if Peace Corps won’t allow me to stay somewhere where the bathroom is not physically attached (which they won’t), but he really doesn’t want to because he really wants me to experience Thailand. Fantastic.

The overall site seems like a great work environment. There are a lot of very motivated folks already working in the area, and most of them have a little English, which will make my life immensely easier. They’re excited about having a volunteer, they understand what my role should be (do I even?), and they already have goals and have identified places where I might be able to help. With the little information that I have right now, I don’t think I could have reasonably asked for more – or even this much, really. There is one housing option (the one currently with no bathroom) that I’ve been told is the best, and that looks a little run down, but is in what seems like a really cool neighborhood. From what I understand it is an old, closed down store, but it has a living room, a bedroom, and a kitchen, and will likely soon feature a bathroom as well. If the bathroom is being added on now, I might even be lucky enough to put in a few requests before it’s built and get a western style toilet. God, that’d be pure bliss. I feel like I’m probably stuck with the bucket shower, though.

So I like my site. The PC staff made a map on the floor of our giant classroom during a break and put down pieces of paper with the names of different provinces in a semi-accurate depiction of the entire country. This, of course, after dragging us through an entire day of classes while we only wanted to know where we were going. When we were all finally standing around the map, they would call out a person’s name and then a province, and everyone would scour the floor to see the piece of paper with that name on it. Then we would go stand on that piece of paper and know that this unfamiliar place was our home for the next two years. I had anticipated not knowing anything about the site immediately, and therefore basing my first visceral response on who was close to me. But this didn’t happen. When I went and stood on the words “Maha Sarakham,” I almost stopped paying attention to the next few people because I was realizing that where ever anyone else was, this was where I was and that I will be out here by myself most of the time, making a life and hopefully a difference. I almost immediately had Issan pride and liked the place before I knew anything about it, because it was mine. It turns out that my closest friends didn’t end up very close to me, but we’ll still meet up, and we’ve already found the cool places between us all to go meet up. It’s weird how an 8-hour drive doesn’t seem very long in this context. A friend realized that we came here with 52 people, the same as the cards in a deck. We’re down to 51 now, so I feel like someone just played a mean game of 51-card pick-up with our lives. We’re scattered everywhere and I didn’t end up near any of my closer friends, but that just means I get to explore more of the country visiting them. So I’m telling myself. I also lucked out because I ended up with another volunteer ridiculously close to me, and even though I don’t know her very well as of yet, she definitely wasn’t on my list of “being near this person is the same as being alone.” There aren’t really any other volunteers near us for a huge distance (even for PC), but I think we ended up being as geographically close as any two volunteers I’ve heard of that aren’t working together. I’m 15 k from our nearest city and she’s 7 k from it, so at most we’re 22 away from each other, potentially less. If nothing else, it’ll be good to have a drinking buddy nearby when I need a break.

At this point, that’s all I have to say about my site. I’ll be heading there this weekend after two nights in Bangkok and a day working with a current PCV. I’ll obviously let you know how it goes. Now, here are my previous posts and maybe some follow up at the end if I find time. Peace.


8/3/09

It’s Sunday afternoon, and I’m sitting across from the tukraw court in the shade of a papaya tree with the left side of my head windswept into a mohawk, listening to Herman Dune, shooing away flies and bees, snacking on mangos, sweating a little, feeling a little tired and a little hung over, and smelling a little like dead fish.

Thailand is getting bigger and bigger. I’d never been here before January, so when I landed in the airport in the middle of the night and was bussed to a hotel just outside a small town in a relatively rural province, all I knew was of Thailand was the airport terminal, the hotel, and the 7/11 across the street. It seems weird, but with all our time so structured, and being unable to leave the hotel until we got bikes, for the first few days of Thailand, Thailand was just the Ton Palm Hotel and the one mountain I could see from it’s parking lot. When we went looking for beer we ventured into the town and Thailand grew a few miles. Then when I went to homestay it became my house, the place where I have class, the market, and our hub site. I’ve been getting around, seeing things and people and I think I have a feel for the few small villages near me and the town center. Then yesterday my host family drove me a few hours to the next province and I realized how small my grasp is on this country. We drove through small villages in the middle of fields for miles, and on tops of mountains, and I couldn’t help but think that, as far as I know, any one of us could end up at any one of these villages for the next two years of our lives. And tomorrow we all get our site assignments, and the whole country comes to life. It’s not just the south with the beaches and the north with the mountains and Issan with the…? But most of these places will be the homes of my friends and places I’ll go visit and get away to, and one place will even be my home. It’s all just so big and ungraspable right now that I can’t decide if I’m excited or terrified. Something’s going on though.

I went to a party last night because my host dad’s little brother became a monk today. Thai Buddhism is not what I tend to think of as religion. It’s more of a culture than a religion or a philosophy, and it’s present in every aspect of life here…… [This is the point where my host brother came and told me folks were playing tukraw, so I went and played for a few hours, ate, passed out, and woke up to the longest day of PST yet. In this post I didn’t have time, but had wanted to tell you about going to the monk ceremony and everyone was drinking and dancing the night away. I got tired and went to bed early on the floor of the local government office and then was woken up at 5 when the music started up again. I got up at 6:30 and was immediately offered a drink. When I refused I was pushed into a bathroom to shower with no towel or change of clothes, so I showered with the bucket for water for the toilet (which everyone did) and then used my boxers to dry myself. I went to breakfast and finally gave up and started drinking, which soon led to half the village dancing through the streets for two hours being chased by the rolling speaker system of the band. We got to the wat and there was a short ceremony and I met an English speaking monk that I exchanged phone numbers with and have talked to twice since. Then we went back to the government office, had lunch, and passed out for a few hours before I rode back home in the covered back of a pickup, where wind did a real number on my hair as I drifted into sleep and was rudely jolted out every few minutes by potholes. That’s really all that’s worth telling.]


3/3

[I wrote this in a really bad mood and decided not to post it because it felt really negative when I was writing it. When I reread it I think it’s not that bad, so here it is, for better or worse.]

I’ve forgotten the last time I felt clean. When I get frustrated or start daydreaming, that’s where I go to in my head – some place where I just feel completely clean and relaxed again. Sometimes I shower three times a day, but usually just twice. I have the choice of a bucket shower with cold, stagnant water, or a small showerhead that gets just enough pressure to make you think about and miss real showers. The bucket shower’s faster, so I usually lean that way in the mornings, but in the afternoons I do both because some of the water in the pipes of the shower has heated up during the day and is warm, which just feels nice. Either way, you’re bound to break a sweat within 15 minutes of your shower, so the inadequate bathing quickly becomes completely pointless, except that it keeps you from stinking (“stink,” in Thai, is pronounced “men.” The girls find this hysterical for some reason). It’s early March now, and the weather is comparable to mid June in Mississippi, except there’s no air conditioning, so sweating through your shirt is an accepted fact of all our lives, even Thais And this is the “cool season.” I got questions about the picture of the concrete room with the water basins, and that is the bathroom at my house. No sink, so I shave with the same bucket I use to shower, and with a small, broken hand mirror I bought at a 7/11. The small water vat thing is for water for cleaning yourself after using the squat toilet, and the big vat is for baths. Sometimes there’s toilet paper, which is mainly for drying yourself here, but we’re out most of the time. Frogs like the room, and lizards are everywhere here, but they eat mosquitoes and such, so I like them a lot. Mosquitoes do swarm the bathroom, but it’s fine, because you have to wear a traditional Thai towel, or pakaman, while you shower anyways. You where the pakaman because there are holes in the walls and anyone walking by can see you. Only once was I sure no one was home, so I decided to shower naked, and, sure enough, half way through I heard the whole family coming back from a field walking straight towards me. I recovered in time, but haven’t felt daring since. So the mosquitoes don’t bother much, but the killer for me is the spiders. They’ve taken over the corner behind and above the squat toilet, so when if I’m using or getting ready to use the toilet, and lean too far in any direction, I end up in a spider web. The spiders haven’t personally bothered me yet, but they are alive, and their webs are driving me crazy. I haven’t decided if the family just doesn’t see or care or if it’s a form of the Buddhist anti-killing ideal. I’ve been considering finding some Raid and just seeing if they even notice when the bastards disappear. [Update: the fam ended up taking care of it without me having to say anything about a week ago. Made my day.]

They recently put new gravel down on the road that I live on, which was a pain at first, but now that it’s settled it’s fantastic. The ride out in the morning is just enough downhill that it’s pretty sublime, and the direction I take to and from classes usually has me riding into the sunrise in the morning and into the sunset at night. Unlike Memphis, where the sun can strike the pyramid a little after rush hour and blind everyone even thinking about heading west on Auction, the haze here always mutes the sun, so even when you can feel your skin sizzling, your eyes don’t hurt much, and in the morning the sun seems more like a mirage in the distance, casting the mountains’ shadows over the endless fields of rice and cassava.

I’ve been using my black berry as an mp3 player so that I can avoid using earplugs and hear traffic coming up behind me while I bike. This is working out swimmingly, and the battery is lasting for days with all of the other functions turned off, but the cord that plugs the bb into my computer to allow me to change the music I’m listening to is still in storage. So while I’m biking anywhere from an hour to several hours a day, I’m listening to the same 20 or so songs on infinite repeat. At least they’re good songs, and I’ve found that a few of them are great for certain places, like paper planes and electric feel for biking through the city; and born in the usa, visions of Johanna, last call for mary jane, and all my format for country roads. I like listening to Nate trying to sing over passing motorcycles.

My ankle’s healed, and I don’t have any major health stuff currently except just being tired. I did that to myself this time though, because I decided to bike around 55 k and climb a small mountain on Sunday. Sunday’s our only free day and so everyone tries to squeeze all the things we think of during the week into the 10 or so hours of daylight that we claim for ourselves weekly. It wears me out though, and my host family told me I need to just relax next Sunday because I keep coming home too tired to eat. I’ll get my site placement next Monday, so Sunday’s not a good day to lie around getting anxious, but maybe it’ll be nice. [you’ll notice this relaxing Sunday never happened.]

My midterm review went fine, and I haven’t heard back on my midterm language exam, but I’m not worried. The biggest complaints I got were that I don’t take the weekly surveys seriously, which is because I just vocalize any complaints I have, and that I need to budget my time differently so that I’m not always riding my bike so quickly and won’t get into an accident. Of course, anyone who’s ever ridden in a car with me knows that I don’t like going slow regardless of whether I’m late, and it might even surprise you to know that I’m even generally early to sessions here. But while my own review seemed fine, two of the people in my small group received relatively harsh comments directed at our group as a whole. All of us being fairly driven people, we immediately got defensive and pissed, then got over it mostly and got motivated. We’ve become pretty cohesive and everyone’s grown on me a lot. We’re not all best friends, but we work closely and well together and have found a good balance and we have fun. So it’s nice, and since we were come down on we’ve been ridiculous over-achievers, making powerpoint presentations and excel sheets for small presentations that most teams use posterboard paper for. Which brings me to the fact that I really need to go because we’re upping ourselves again by making a video for tomorrow’s presentation, which I need to spend some serious time editing. It was great hearing back from some folks, and I’m going to try to get some captions on those pictures, and maybe even put some more up. Best to you all.

12/3

And a final wrap up before I post. Really just a couple thoughts I had before that I wanted to write down. For instance, I’m tired of being treated like a child. I understand this, of course, because I speak like a child and carry around alphabet books that children use to learn to write and whenever anyone says anything to me I just stare blankly at them until they walk up and grab my wrist and take me to wherever they were talking about. Still… I think the only thing I might hate more than being helpless is being treated like I’m helpless. My remedy for this it to keep focusing on learning Thai and hopefully become less helpless. Maybe then I won’t be treated as such.

The other thing I wanted to write about was the way Buddhism effects life here, but I don’t have time. Maybe next post. I leave for Bangkok tomorrow afternoon, spend Saturday shadowing a current volunteer, and then head to my site for Sunday and Monday, before returning home on Tuesday. Hope the sun shines as bright on the other side of the world today. Take care of yourselves.

Site day

I find out my site this afternoon. I've been working on a blog entry, but it's not complete yet and I want to wait and just make a big post in a few days. For the folks that might actually check regularly, I apologize for the delay and assure you I'll have something soon, and it should be good. I don't have the time right now to reply to folks individual emails, but I really appreciate them and wanted to say so. Take care of yourselves. Best, -Me