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
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
Monday, March 23, 2009
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.
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.
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
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.
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.
Sunday, March 8, 2009
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
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Half Way
Not half way to the end of training, but halfway to our language exam, which feels like the end. I did my site interview today, which will have a big part in determining where I end up for the next two years. I asked to have a role in business development or social entrepreneurship, but we shall see. I didn't give a preference for rural or urban, I just said I wanted to be close to a mode of transportation like a train or bus station, so I could possibly end up anywhere. The biggest anxiety now is ending up on the other side of the country from the people I've grown closest to, but there's not much I can do.
We got a text update that there are more protests in Bangkok this week, this time by the opposition to the folks that took over the airport back in November. I asked about it all, but don't really understand it. We are all supposed to have a night in Bangkok in two weeks before we go out to visit our sites for the first time, and for a lot of us this is the light at the end of the tunnel. We're all worried that the protests will last and cancel our trip, which is selfish, but we need a night off. Kind of desperately. Once again, not much I can do except cross my fingers and hope.
Last night I had penang curry and a rough version of edamame, which was a fantastic break from fish. Language is going well, but tones are becoming more of an apparent problem, such as the use of tones. for instance, spelled with english phonetics the best that I can, the words dog, horse, doctor, mom, come, cat, and hand, are, in Thai, mah, mah, maw, meh, ma, mao, and muh. We starting to learn the thai alphabet, which is helping, but it's still a little rough.
Tomorrow I get my midterm review, where they tell me if i'm on track to get sworn in in 6 weeks, so I'll let you all know how that goes. In the mean time, I'm going to try to post pictures here in a sec, and here is my most recent entry:
23/2
Hi blog friends. I had to reread my last post to see when I last wrote and what to catch you all up on. Friday we had a former PCV from Thailand group 32 (I’m group 121. Group 32 served from 70-72) who has a consulting firm in Bangkok focusing on developmental entrepreneurship. For me, this was the best class or speaker that we’ve had so far, because he actually talked about potential projects and ideas and approaches with tangible results. So much of what we’ve been doing has been focused on learning about our communities when we get there, that it’s easy to lose focus and motivation for the real projects. I really needed this class, and it was even great outside of this context.
Saturday was PST sports day, and we broke into teams and played each other in soccer, tukraw, and bocce ball. Then we played a bunch of local officials and tied them, which I was personally impressed with. Downside of the day was that I ended up getting pretty badly scraped knees and an ankle, which has since become infected. More to come on that. So the sports ended around 2, but me and my friend Bekah missed the bus back to our bikes because we found a massage place in the wat next door to where we were playing. The massages were a half hour, and the bus wasn’t supposed to come for a half hour, but it came early and we were still lying in stupors in the shade of the wat as our friends rode away. It ended up working out really well though, because we got a ride back in one of the buses that the staff use, which is air conditioned (as opposed to the open, seated back of a giant truck that everyone else rode back on). I’ve started to realize that air conditioning isn’t as scarce here as the trainers have made it for us, but that doesn’t make it any less fantastic when we chance across it. When we made it back we met some folks at a bar and a few of us sat there for the next few hours drinking, stumbling into some pretty serious conversation, and learning a lot about each other. I biked home just before dark and then played tukraw for a while before dinner and bed.
Sunday I woke up early and did laundry before heading to meet up with around 15 volunteers at the waterfall again. We brought guitars this time and rented mats and bought beer and were talked at by a drunk police officer trying to feed us whiskey and looked for constellations in the forest canopy and helped write songs and it was nice. I had to leave before most people because it’s over an hour bike ride home and I had to help cook, except that when I got there to help cook they told me to go play tukraw after 20 minutes, so I did. Played for over two hours and was exhausted, so, like last Sunday, I had a small dinner and went to bed.
Today was Monday, and we had class in town so I got to see everyone again. I almost felt spoiled on it after three days in a row. I’ve taken to writing haikus during class. They’re mostly bad and just about the class and being bored or frustrated, but they keep me from dozing or distracting other folks, so they’re effective. And sometimes even decent. The day dipped when the nurse asked to take a look at how my ankle was heeling and said it looked a little infected, and then the doctor came in and confirmed. They cleaned it and rebandaged it for me, but sure enough, within about two hours it started to pound. It hurts to walk on, but what’s worse is the pain playing on the melancholy and bringing me down an extra notch. I’m making a point now of resting up and it’s helping, but I know I’ll have to consciously avoid being lethargic in the coming days.
Tonight’s dinner was four different kinds of whole fish, and egg and veggie dish, and a soup based on some unrecognizable plant stuffed with pork. The meals are getting a little more intense, and I’m rolling with it, but a lot of the time I’m trying a little bit of everything and then settling down on something more tame. Two of the fish tonight were small enough that they were being eaten whole, but unlike the first go with little whole fish, these were about twice the size and had bones that were big enough to choke on… So there was no such thing as a pop it, chew it, chase it with some whiskey. You actually had to chew for a while and make sure that all the bones were chewed up thoroughly or picked out. The fish themselves aren’t really bothering me so much lately as having to pick the damn bones out of everything. I long for a boneless, skinless chicken breast. Also this week: more bees’ nest, deep fried small shrimp cakes with shells and heads still on, fried frog skins, and two dishes that weren’t in my dictionary. The frog skins are eaten like chips dipped in hot sauce, and they’re not my favorite. The rest isn’t bad.
I don't get much internet, but when I do I can upload any emails and read them later when I have time. It'd be great to get updates about lives and news and so on. take care, all.
We got a text update that there are more protests in Bangkok this week, this time by the opposition to the folks that took over the airport back in November. I asked about it all, but don't really understand it. We are all supposed to have a night in Bangkok in two weeks before we go out to visit our sites for the first time, and for a lot of us this is the light at the end of the tunnel. We're all worried that the protests will last and cancel our trip, which is selfish, but we need a night off. Kind of desperately. Once again, not much I can do except cross my fingers and hope.
Last night I had penang curry and a rough version of edamame, which was a fantastic break from fish. Language is going well, but tones are becoming more of an apparent problem, such as the use of tones. for instance, spelled with english phonetics the best that I can, the words dog, horse, doctor, mom, come, cat, and hand, are, in Thai, mah, mah, maw, meh, ma, mao, and muh. We starting to learn the thai alphabet, which is helping, but it's still a little rough.
Tomorrow I get my midterm review, where they tell me if i'm on track to get sworn in in 6 weeks, so I'll let you all know how that goes. In the mean time, I'm going to try to post pictures here in a sec, and here is my most recent entry:
23/2
Hi blog friends. I had to reread my last post to see when I last wrote and what to catch you all up on. Friday we had a former PCV from Thailand group 32 (I’m group 121. Group 32 served from 70-72) who has a consulting firm in Bangkok focusing on developmental entrepreneurship. For me, this was the best class or speaker that we’ve had so far, because he actually talked about potential projects and ideas and approaches with tangible results. So much of what we’ve been doing has been focused on learning about our communities when we get there, that it’s easy to lose focus and motivation for the real projects. I really needed this class, and it was even great outside of this context.
Saturday was PST sports day, and we broke into teams and played each other in soccer, tukraw, and bocce ball. Then we played a bunch of local officials and tied them, which I was personally impressed with. Downside of the day was that I ended up getting pretty badly scraped knees and an ankle, which has since become infected. More to come on that. So the sports ended around 2, but me and my friend Bekah missed the bus back to our bikes because we found a massage place in the wat next door to where we were playing. The massages were a half hour, and the bus wasn’t supposed to come for a half hour, but it came early and we were still lying in stupors in the shade of the wat as our friends rode away. It ended up working out really well though, because we got a ride back in one of the buses that the staff use, which is air conditioned (as opposed to the open, seated back of a giant truck that everyone else rode back on). I’ve started to realize that air conditioning isn’t as scarce here as the trainers have made it for us, but that doesn’t make it any less fantastic when we chance across it. When we made it back we met some folks at a bar and a few of us sat there for the next few hours drinking, stumbling into some pretty serious conversation, and learning a lot about each other. I biked home just before dark and then played tukraw for a while before dinner and bed.
Sunday I woke up early and did laundry before heading to meet up with around 15 volunteers at the waterfall again. We brought guitars this time and rented mats and bought beer and were talked at by a drunk police officer trying to feed us whiskey and looked for constellations in the forest canopy and helped write songs and it was nice. I had to leave before most people because it’s over an hour bike ride home and I had to help cook, except that when I got there to help cook they told me to go play tukraw after 20 minutes, so I did. Played for over two hours and was exhausted, so, like last Sunday, I had a small dinner and went to bed.
Today was Monday, and we had class in town so I got to see everyone again. I almost felt spoiled on it after three days in a row. I’ve taken to writing haikus during class. They’re mostly bad and just about the class and being bored or frustrated, but they keep me from dozing or distracting other folks, so they’re effective. And sometimes even decent. The day dipped when the nurse asked to take a look at how my ankle was heeling and said it looked a little infected, and then the doctor came in and confirmed. They cleaned it and rebandaged it for me, but sure enough, within about two hours it started to pound. It hurts to walk on, but what’s worse is the pain playing on the melancholy and bringing me down an extra notch. I’m making a point now of resting up and it’s helping, but I know I’ll have to consciously avoid being lethargic in the coming days.
Tonight’s dinner was four different kinds of whole fish, and egg and veggie dish, and a soup based on some unrecognizable plant stuffed with pork. The meals are getting a little more intense, and I’m rolling with it, but a lot of the time I’m trying a little bit of everything and then settling down on something more tame. Two of the fish tonight were small enough that they were being eaten whole, but unlike the first go with little whole fish, these were about twice the size and had bones that were big enough to choke on… So there was no such thing as a pop it, chew it, chase it with some whiskey. You actually had to chew for a while and make sure that all the bones were chewed up thoroughly or picked out. The fish themselves aren’t really bothering me so much lately as having to pick the damn bones out of everything. I long for a boneless, skinless chicken breast. Also this week: more bees’ nest, deep fried small shrimp cakes with shells and heads still on, fried frog skins, and two dishes that weren’t in my dictionary. The frog skins are eaten like chips dipped in hot sauce, and they’re not my favorite. The rest isn’t bad.
I don't get much internet, but when I do I can upload any emails and read them later when I have time. It'd be great to get updates about lives and news and so on. take care, all.
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Head down, power through.
13/2/09
Trying to post less often and more generally. Today was Friday the 13th, and a black cat came and mewed at me for about five minutes while I was taking my clothes down from drying, but with no immediately recognizable consequences. We wanted to go find the village medium today but couldn’t figure out where he or she was stationed. For a while now I have been and will be in class from 8 am until noon, and then again from 1:30 until 5, with 15 minute breaks at 10 and 3. Mornings are almost always spent in a local government building in a small classroom off the side of the main meeting room, studying language. Afternoons are technical training, at this point focusing on assessing the needs and assets of communities as well as teaching English and using it as a tool to build relationships. After class I bike home and shower, then do some homework and go to dinner, then to bed. Roosters and TVs and voices still wake me up at 4 every morning, but I’m nothing if not a resilient sleeper, so I still hold out until around 6:30 or 7. The last few days we ended our class sessions by teaching 1 and a half hour English lessons to employees at the office where we work. The first lesson was bad because we were trying to teach them how to say “hello” and “my name is..” before we said off hand “I’m cold,” and one of them looked at us and told us to “turn off the air conditioner” in English. So today we made the lesson harder and more worth everyone’s while. My Thai is steadily improving, much to the satisfaction of the folks that feed me and put me up. When I went to the hotel Monday night I realized that I actually missed the food I was getting with my host family. Since then I’ve decided that my host mom is an excellent cook, whatever random thing ends up on the table (frogs again tonight). I’ve also started to realize that food here seems bland unless it’s spicy. I never really loved hot sauce back home, but I’ve found myself putting a ton of homemade pepper sauce on just about every bite, and I love it. I missed American food for the first time two days ago when we were learning the words for hamburger and tacos. I unfortunately started thinking of chicken supreme chalupas at Taco Bell, and had an instant craving. I literally haven’t had a craving for TBell for 6 months, and it was the first thing that thought of and missed about American food. I then moved on to Huey’s and so on, but it all wore off quickly enough, and I like the food here a majority of the time.
Most of my classes at this point are done in a group of four volunteers. Two of them are decent folks, but not really my kind of people. The other one is the one that lives out in the boonies with me, and we’ve bonded a lot by bitching about life and by her putting up with my constant smart-ass comments. I miss the rest of the volunteers now that I see them less, and weekends and Mondays are real highlights because I get to see everyone, even if it’s mostly for class. It’s already become routine for small groups of us to sneak off during lunches or after class and have a few beers together whenever the opportunity presents itself. It’s like having a 45-minute vacation where we can just sit and drink and speak English and gossip about the other volunteers and generally be absurd for a bit before we drop back under the veil of cultural and linguistic solitude.
I’m covered in bug bites. My legs still aren’t used to all my bike riding. Music is reemerging as my favorite past time. I never got a dresser or closet, so my clothes are still sitting in piles next to my bed. My flashlight has already died. It’s hot, but still not comparable to an August in Memphis. Pointing is rude here and I’m trying to stop doing it. I’ve completely quit biting my nails again because the dirt I’m getting under them is a great way to get worms. I pulled a bug out of a bowl of noodles and continued eating unphased until it registered about five seconds later how much different my reaction would have been stateside. At this point I’m hoping for a site in the Northeast, because it has the highest concentration of other volunteers. I’ll find out my site in about a month. I’m not homesick. A group of us are going for our first Thai massages tomorrow, legitimate. Internet is hard to come by and I’d love updates. I’m off to sleep.
15/2
Today I took in my first deep breath of Thai air. I think I’ve been unconsciously avoiding it because I didn’t want to take in all the air pollution, even in the countryside. I was riding by myself just after lunch and it was very green and picturesque and I couldn’t help myself. I was right about the pollution.
I also spent five minutes following a truck full of sugar cane on a gravel road. The road was too narrow to pass, so I stayed far enough back to keep my eyes mostly clean from the dust blown up by the tires but close enough to soak up the smell of the cane mixing with the exhaust fumes. When the cane is burned for harvest, the hazy sky grows thicker with black snow that eventually litters the sidewalks and finds its way into the empty coffee cups set up for our breaks. They weren’t burning today.
Woke up this morning, showered, tried to help pick tamarinds for a few minutes, helped load and unload wood off a trailer on the back of a tractor for a few hours, watched as the seventy-year-old and the sixteen-year-old in my family smoked the bees out of a nest, cut the nest out of a tree, wiped off the bees that were too young to fly, and then put it in a bowl and proceeded to eat the nest. They broke the honey out of part, broke off parts of the hive where the bees were still larva, dipped them in honey and ate them. I’d actually been privy to this meal before, but only after cooking it for a bit. The larva were still alive and a few baby bees even broke free from the comb and walked around the bowl while we picked around them and just kept eating. I didn’t eat a lot of it, but it was good – definitely the freshest honey I’ve ever had.
A little bit later I biked out to see some friends at a restaurant and then we all went to a local waterfall. The last waterfall I was at was in Belize, and this really can’t compare, but the company was good. I also think I put in a little over 40 k on the bike today from the trip. Then I went home, helped cook for a little bit, and played tukraw (updated spelling) for a few hours before dinner. At the end of all this I was too exhausted to eat much, and now I’m lying here too exhausted to sleep and listening to Todd Snyder. Long, eventful day, and I wish the same for all of you.
18/2
Long day today and I found a few minutes to get to a computer and post what I've written lately. I've found a way to use my own computer instead of the crappy one at the internet cafe, so this should run more smoothly from now on, whenever I can find time. We biked around one of the villages in our area today interviewing people to find out more about the lifestyles and important people and places in the community. A little awkward and a lot sweaty, but it's forcing us to use a lot more Thai, which is good. Had a little melancholy for a few days and am starting to need some alone time away from the world but am not getting it. Somehow life goes on, somehow. Now that I'm getting life figured out, I should have pictures in my next post, but God knows when. Best to you all. -Me
Trying to post less often and more generally. Today was Friday the 13th, and a black cat came and mewed at me for about five minutes while I was taking my clothes down from drying, but with no immediately recognizable consequences. We wanted to go find the village medium today but couldn’t figure out where he or she was stationed. For a while now I have been and will be in class from 8 am until noon, and then again from 1:30 until 5, with 15 minute breaks at 10 and 3. Mornings are almost always spent in a local government building in a small classroom off the side of the main meeting room, studying language. Afternoons are technical training, at this point focusing on assessing the needs and assets of communities as well as teaching English and using it as a tool to build relationships. After class I bike home and shower, then do some homework and go to dinner, then to bed. Roosters and TVs and voices still wake me up at 4 every morning, but I’m nothing if not a resilient sleeper, so I still hold out until around 6:30 or 7. The last few days we ended our class sessions by teaching 1 and a half hour English lessons to employees at the office where we work. The first lesson was bad because we were trying to teach them how to say “hello” and “my name is..” before we said off hand “I’m cold,” and one of them looked at us and told us to “turn off the air conditioner” in English. So today we made the lesson harder and more worth everyone’s while. My Thai is steadily improving, much to the satisfaction of the folks that feed me and put me up. When I went to the hotel Monday night I realized that I actually missed the food I was getting with my host family. Since then I’ve decided that my host mom is an excellent cook, whatever random thing ends up on the table (frogs again tonight). I’ve also started to realize that food here seems bland unless it’s spicy. I never really loved hot sauce back home, but I’ve found myself putting a ton of homemade pepper sauce on just about every bite, and I love it. I missed American food for the first time two days ago when we were learning the words for hamburger and tacos. I unfortunately started thinking of chicken supreme chalupas at Taco Bell, and had an instant craving. I literally haven’t had a craving for TBell for 6 months, and it was the first thing that thought of and missed about American food. I then moved on to Huey’s and so on, but it all wore off quickly enough, and I like the food here a majority of the time.
Most of my classes at this point are done in a group of four volunteers. Two of them are decent folks, but not really my kind of people. The other one is the one that lives out in the boonies with me, and we’ve bonded a lot by bitching about life and by her putting up with my constant smart-ass comments. I miss the rest of the volunteers now that I see them less, and weekends and Mondays are real highlights because I get to see everyone, even if it’s mostly for class. It’s already become routine for small groups of us to sneak off during lunches or after class and have a few beers together whenever the opportunity presents itself. It’s like having a 45-minute vacation where we can just sit and drink and speak English and gossip about the other volunteers and generally be absurd for a bit before we drop back under the veil of cultural and linguistic solitude.
I’m covered in bug bites. My legs still aren’t used to all my bike riding. Music is reemerging as my favorite past time. I never got a dresser or closet, so my clothes are still sitting in piles next to my bed. My flashlight has already died. It’s hot, but still not comparable to an August in Memphis. Pointing is rude here and I’m trying to stop doing it. I’ve completely quit biting my nails again because the dirt I’m getting under them is a great way to get worms. I pulled a bug out of a bowl of noodles and continued eating unphased until it registered about five seconds later how much different my reaction would have been stateside. At this point I’m hoping for a site in the Northeast, because it has the highest concentration of other volunteers. I’ll find out my site in about a month. I’m not homesick. A group of us are going for our first Thai massages tomorrow, legitimate. Internet is hard to come by and I’d love updates. I’m off to sleep.
15/2
Today I took in my first deep breath of Thai air. I think I’ve been unconsciously avoiding it because I didn’t want to take in all the air pollution, even in the countryside. I was riding by myself just after lunch and it was very green and picturesque and I couldn’t help myself. I was right about the pollution.
I also spent five minutes following a truck full of sugar cane on a gravel road. The road was too narrow to pass, so I stayed far enough back to keep my eyes mostly clean from the dust blown up by the tires but close enough to soak up the smell of the cane mixing with the exhaust fumes. When the cane is burned for harvest, the hazy sky grows thicker with black snow that eventually litters the sidewalks and finds its way into the empty coffee cups set up for our breaks. They weren’t burning today.
Woke up this morning, showered, tried to help pick tamarinds for a few minutes, helped load and unload wood off a trailer on the back of a tractor for a few hours, watched as the seventy-year-old and the sixteen-year-old in my family smoked the bees out of a nest, cut the nest out of a tree, wiped off the bees that were too young to fly, and then put it in a bowl and proceeded to eat the nest. They broke the honey out of part, broke off parts of the hive where the bees were still larva, dipped them in honey and ate them. I’d actually been privy to this meal before, but only after cooking it for a bit. The larva were still alive and a few baby bees even broke free from the comb and walked around the bowl while we picked around them and just kept eating. I didn’t eat a lot of it, but it was good – definitely the freshest honey I’ve ever had.
A little bit later I biked out to see some friends at a restaurant and then we all went to a local waterfall. The last waterfall I was at was in Belize, and this really can’t compare, but the company was good. I also think I put in a little over 40 k on the bike today from the trip. Then I went home, helped cook for a little bit, and played tukraw (updated spelling) for a few hours before dinner. At the end of all this I was too exhausted to eat much, and now I’m lying here too exhausted to sleep and listening to Todd Snyder. Long, eventful day, and I wish the same for all of you.
18/2
Long day today and I found a few minutes to get to a computer and post what I've written lately. I've found a way to use my own computer instead of the crappy one at the internet cafe, so this should run more smoothly from now on, whenever I can find time. We biked around one of the villages in our area today interviewing people to find out more about the lifestyles and important people and places in the community. A little awkward and a lot sweaty, but it's forcing us to use a lot more Thai, which is good. Had a little melancholy for a few days and am starting to need some alone time away from the world but am not getting it. Somehow life goes on, somehow. Now that I'm getting life figured out, I should have pictures in my next post, but God knows when. Best to you all. -Me
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