Live Free or Thai Hard

Jan 24

-Pretty sure I have a mosquito bite on my taint and I don't even understand how that can happen let alone how it happened to me when I've slept in shorts every night since I've been at my house

-Also had a loverly visitor in my shower today.  Half way through I heard a gop and freaked the eff out when I saw a fry peeking out from being the mirror in the shower/bathroom.  oooh which reminds me about oops poops(my other blog that I haven't started yet that is only pictures of bathrooms).  Anyway pictures of that to come soon. 

Jan 26

I feel like even if I were crying, sweating, peeing, drooling, and snoting out of every orifice, I still should not be as gross and wet as I am at this moment.  It actually feels like I'm currently peeing my pants but it's just sweat. I'm seriously debating on whether or not I'm impressed with my body or utterly disgusted by myself. And once again I want to point out that this is the COOL season.  

Today i met the poo yai baan or the village chief.

I'm not sure I'm okay with a schedule that means that sleeping in on Saturday means getting up at 7 am.

Jan 27

I have noticed a couple of things lately that I don't understand:

1) every night at dinner we eat dinner and periodically throughout dinner(mostly after people are done but it's not required) people leave the dinner circle that we've formed on the ground and go over to the side fruit table and pour themselves a glass of water, in the one glass set out there, and then come back to the circle to eat. sometimes they bring the cup back but not usually.  Also they all drink out of the same cup yet they give me a different one(I assume they think I don't want to share the cup).  Anyway getting too wrapped up in details, I guess I just don't understand why they only have one cup and why it can't stay at the 'table' with us.  After any single person finishes then they can go over to the fruit bench and start eating fruit/drinking water and eventually when grandma finishes eating(because she eats like a horse, an adorable lovable sweet little horse) some of the fruit makes it to the main circle but by that time its mostly just handing it to grandma because everyone else who wants some is already out of the circle and eating the fruit.

I don't remember what the other things are.

Yesterday I went to a festival to celebrate the Thailand kicking Myanmar's butt a couple hundred years ago. They put on this play that had an epic battle on elephants.  I will try to post it on here.  Anyway to learn most about the Don Chedi festival and a little bit more about the history of the battle you can go here:

 http://www.thaifestivalblogs.com/festivals-of-thailand/don-chedi-memorial-fair.html

Also at the festival I ate bugs. Not sure what kinda. I think they were worms.  they kinda looked like larvae, but they tasted really good.  Also a little over a week ago I ate something that I thought was a cockroach but then I asked my Ahjaan and she said they didn't eat cockroaches here so we're still unclear as to what exactly it is.  Hold up.  I've got the internet at my fingertips. So I tried Non Pai which is a bamboo worm and I ate a whole bag of Non Mai which is a wood worm. Also the cockroach looking thing is a Maeng Da apparently.  Thank goodness for this website:

http://importfood.com/thai_insects.html

otherwise I'd have no idea what I was eating.

Jan 28

yesterday(i think) I went down our driveway with my bpaa(aunt) because she told me to and I didn't know what else to do and I ended up seeing my mom climbing the tree at the end of the driveway barefoot with a machete tied to the end of a long thing of bamboo. She was about 10 feet up a tree and with this tool she was cutting herbs off the tree that were about 25 feet up.  She's a badass but anyway thats not the actual story. So while up there the neighbor family's grandma came down our road to say hi and get some of the herbs too and she came up to me(like most grandmas do) and squeezed my arm a bit and pointed out how I was light and she was dark and then proceeded to simply hug my arm and not really let go.  I have gotten used to this because my yii does it all the time, but then this grandma went further to put her arm around my shoulder and put her head kinda on my shoulder.  I made the mistake of then putting my arm around her and she's not the tallest individual so suddenly her head was on my boob. again not even really the point of the story because as awkward as that was it gets worse. 

She then starts rubbing my back in a very sweet grandma way but continues to go lower and runs her hand over my butt.  Now I find this a little weird but she's a grandma and there is absolutely no sexuality to it and none else seems to think its weird so as weird as I feel I just laugh it off.  Also meanwhile the grandma, my meh and my bpaa are all having a full on conversation in thai about me. So then the neighbor grandma starts talking about my body and again gives my butt a grazing over and now she is looking at it and it seems that she is talking about it(but again, I have no idea).  She then proceeds to lightly tap my butt twice and they all laugh and continue to talk about my body and or butt or whatever while choosing not to even try to inform me in any way as to what they were saying.  So yeah, thai culture is a little different.  Apparently grandmas can slap my ass.

Also today after class I had a beer and it was fantastic.  However, it did get Molly in trouble. Not because we had a beer but because she was 15 minutes late home from school and her mom had already called all the other home stay families in the neighborhood and was waiting for her when she got home. So Molly's home stay mom is awesome and lovely and super helpful AND technically we are supposed to be home at 6 pm BUT we got home at 6:15 and the entire neighborhood had been called.  Honestly I left molly's house to go to mine and when I got home my mom said, 'hey you hungry?' because they had started dinner early. Not only was she not worried but they started dinner without me.  I feel like thats a good indication that I'm starting to actually become part of the family.

I actually had a conversation with my family today.  Yii went to Don Chedi, the festival that we all went to last night and bought a bunch of pasim's and two new shirts and a travel mug thing.  She asked to see my skirt that I bought last night at don chedi and then we joked about her trading me one of her pasins for my skirt. I said she looked very pretty when she held up my skirt to her. I also told them molly's mom was mad at her for coming home late and she looked really scary and they laughed and laughed at laughed. Then later they asked me if I was gonna shower and I said yet and they asked if I will shower tomorrow morning and I said no I don't like to wake up. I like to sleep and then they again joked that molly's mom probably makes her wake up and shower early in the morning. So basically today I learned that we can always make friends by making fun of people, even if we don't really know the language. Yay for making fun and friends!

Jan 29

Forgot to tell you I ate a cola popsicle that had a core of strawberry taffy.  I can't say I'd recommend it.

I have no idea what day it is.

Today I went to the Aww Baw Taw(I cant remember what it stand for in Thai yet) or SAO(Subdistrict Administrative Office) and introduced myself to the Nayok(equivalent of mayor) and Balat(chief administrative officer) and some of the other officials.  It went super well and it was really fun to speak Thai with them.  It was totally awkward at some moments but not nearly as much as I thought.  I think the worst was when I asked the Nayok if she had any children and she said no she wasn't married and everyone kinda awkwardly laughed when I said oooh. Oh well. The nayok also wasn't supposed to have a party or anything waiting for us but she totally took us into the official meeting room and everyone who was in the office came in and introduced themselves and were were given iced tea and mango with sticky rice and coconut milk and rice with coconut milk and black beans(it sounds weird but it was super good). She apparently spent all morning cooking for us and some other event she's going to. It was awesome. She was super sweet and lovely.

Jan 30

Today I learned:

- the type of plane (boeing 787) that we took to thailand had been grounded indefinitely by the FAA for battery issues. We had a two hour delay for 'a leak'.

- meh rosie uses roasted tamarind in tom yum soup and geng som(orange curry)

- the pu-yai-ban(village chief) also has a bird farm(we think its a quail farm based on limited language and charades) and sells insurance.

- My tambon, Tambon Wang Nam Sap (which is a sub-district of Si Prachan) has 7000 people. Each Tambon is divided into villages and my village has about 800. This is a rough guesstimate but I think my tambon is probably about 3 square miles.

- Our province has a support group for people with AIDS and it has about 100 members. 

- birth control is free here.  both condoms and the pill. they also offer the morning after pill but you have to pay for that(not sure how much)

- when you ask whether they have STD/STI testing, instead of asking specifically you just ask if they have AIDS testing because apparently that implies all of them.  I'm still not sure exactly what STD/STIs they actually test for.

- i keep forgetting my moms name because I just call her my mom but I asked tonight and her name is brateep

Jan 31

Things I learned today:

-I ate coagulated chicken blood today. I was surprising and kinda just tasted like tofu and really soaked up the broth of the noodle soup that it was in. I also learned how they make coagulated chicken blood. So basically you whip it (as my teacher says, just like eggs) and then it gets think and I think you shape it and then cool it.

-There's semon flavored chips

-There's a milk flavored taffy candy called Cougar. It will obviously be part of aurelia and my Twin Peaks Creamery. 

-I will probably have a problem sleeping in the rainy season because I just had my first experience with rain here and only then did it occur to me that most of the roofs are sheet metal or some kind of really loud metal. That said it does make me feel at home.

Feb 3

So it's been a while

a couple things

1) mom requested I write about the chicken blood so here goes:

I was doing some IRB(Intentional Relationship Building) with my group Andy, Mamie, Sasha and Aajaan Thanchanok and we decided to stop and get some lunch. We stopped at this place near Andys house that had noodles. So I order guiao-dtiao gap gai which is noodles with chicken and sit down at the table that they were nice enough to wipe down for us and put out glasses(That doesn't usually happen, but it's not uncommon for us because we are Farang). So anyway I sit down and Mamie, who was the next to order, comes and asks me if I got it with blood or without. I didn't really understand so I said "blood…like…blood?" she started cracking up and nodding yes and pointing to her vein and now I'm really confused because it seems to me that I might have inadvertently ordered blood soup. Which I would probably intentionally order because its crazy but I would have to work myself up to it.  So then I turn to my ahjaan and I ask her, 'so its gonna have like blood in it? like actual blood?" this is clearly so far out of my thought process that I'm really not understanding.  When my Ahjaan confirms there will be actual blood in my soup I turn to the obvious next question, "who's blood am I eating?" I mean we were right next door to a school and a wat that curiously had a funeral the day before.  I mean after accidentally ordering blood in my soup I didn't really want to assume anything else.  She assured me it was only chicken blood. Again, with every answer I seem to have more questions. So my food arrive and it looked like this:

insert picture here(I'm gonna bet a lot of money that I forget to do this) I didn't!!!

So the broth is dark but there's no obvious appearance of blood, right? I thought they must be mistake there wasn't actually blood in the soup but this tofu was really dark so they must've marinated the tofu in chicken blood.  The craziest thing about this I think was how much better that made me feel.  Why the eff would blood marinated tofu better be than blood in your soup? Either way at this point its a wash because those lovely things that looked like blood marinated tofu and really just soaked up the lovely broth were actually coagulated blood. I really just couldn't let this go so I asked my ahjaan how blood can magically become cubes.  She had absolutely no idea. She did, however, speak thai and ask the cook. The cook explained that 'its exactly like eggs[obviously], you just whip it til it gets thick[at this point I'm just imagining peaks of foamy blood. also wondering if she uses her electric mixer for baking and for blood only to realize she doesn't have an electric mixer and debating whether or not she even has a whisk]' so yeah I pretty much checked out after that but it was weird and now I really want to make it.  I also really want to bring it back to portland and market it as a 'meat alternative'. I'm a terrible person but I think I'm soooo funny.

also new things I learned:

-in thai the word for five is haa so thais text 5555 when they want to say hahahaha.  so smart these thais.

-ducks say gap gap in thai

more questions:

I don't really understand our bathroom situation.  There are a communal pair of flip flops outside the bathroom.  Initially I thought they were someones shower sandals, which made sense to me having lived in a dorm and whatnot. I realized however that every time anyone goes into the bathroom they wear these. I know what you're thinking: no this is not the bathroom with the squat toilet. This bathroom has a fully western toilet complete with water tank behind it.  So I ask you, why would you have a room in which none goes barefoot, everyone goes in alone and everyone wears the same pair of shoes? Wouldn't it be the same thing to just have everyone go in barefoot?

Feb 5

So I'm getting to that point that everything seems pretty normal and I forget that it's kinda crazy that I'm here in Thailand.  I know this will happen periodically over the course of the next two years but this is the first one. Today was just an ordinary day, which means I will tell you about it because you don't really know what my ordinary day(at this point) looks like.

So I usually set three alarms because I hate waking up.  I have one set for 5:40(that's obviously the one that is totally ignored) and then one set for 6:05(which is my actual alarm) and then one thats set for 6:30 (this is the 'oh eff, instead of hitting sleep on the 6:05 alarm I must've turned it off' alarm). Also, the first week I was here I really tried to get up with my mom and aunt around 5 but then I realized that 1) I had absolutely no reason to get up that early and 2) it was pretty awkward and weird to be up that early not doing anything except wishing I were asleep.  So anyway, yeah, I wake up and quickly take down my mosquito net and tie it up and out of the way and make my bed and depending on the day either pack or get dressed in my riap roy clothing(9 times out of 10 this means a skirt and collared shirt). I pack it when I can't bike in the skirt or if its super hot and I know I'm gonna sweat a lot on the bike ride. Also keep in mind it's probably about 75 degrees at this point. So then I go into the kitchen when there is usually the leftovers from dinner the night before on the table under a mosquito guard and rice in the rice cooker(debatably also from the night before) most mornings my mom or my aunt cooks an egg or two to have with breakfast.  Also without fail every morning my aunt brings out a loaf of bread and the jam that I gave my family as a gift and tells me I can have that.  I have tried to explain that its for them and that I don't eat bread for every meal but as thai's who do have rice as a staple food they don't really understand.

So yeah I eat dinner for breakfast(not as awesome as breakfast for dinner) and at about 7:10 I get escorted by either my mom, my aunt or my brother to the main road.  I only started getting escorted after a full week of the family dog and the neighbor dog barking and chasing after me in a VERY aggressive manner. So yeah, now I have an escort. So then I go to my friend Mollys house and pick her up and we have a little bike carpool gang and we go to pick up Bridgette and Mamie and Sasha.  Sometimes Jill comes too but most of the time she leaves before us. So then we split up because half of us are Youth in Development Trainees(YinD) and the other half are Teachers Doing Something that I only know the acronym for(TCCS).  So I go to language class with Mamie and Sasha and our friend Andy meets us.  We learn some language for 4 hours which usually if we are at our friend Chuans house means at about 10 AM she brings us iced coffee which is incredibly sweet and delicious and more like a frappachino then coffee and sometimes if we're lucky we get fruit too. So we do that til noon.

Then, right when it's the hottest part of the day, we usually bike to whatever we are doing in the afternoon. Most of the time that means biking for about 30 minutes to the main hub learning site and meeting up with the rest of the YinD group. There are 23 of us in total. We usually eat something in the market that is right next to the building that we have class. There are a couple of good stalls there. They don't have menus, you just tell them what you want and they tell you whether or not they have the things you want.  Most of the time they do.  Also often they get your order wrong or more likely I said something I didn't mean to, so basically I just eat what they give me and its usually great. 

So in the afternoon we learn something about youth. Todays afternoon sessions were the Stages of Youth Development and Life Skills Training. Last weeks were all about going into the community and interviewing different types of people like the mayor, administrators, doctors, health officials, teachers and youth(which I think I talked about already). So yeah then school ends at about 5 and Mamie and Sasha and I usually bike home together. Again about a 30 minute bike ride, which is much more pleasurable in the evening.  On my way home I usually stop to check in on Molly and her family because I ride right past her house anyway. Oh and now I have to because I need an escort to get past the dogs(I forgot about that). 

So i get home at between 5:45 and 6. My family is usually waiting for me and asks if I'm hungry and usually tries to get me to drink water and eat fruit. I rarely say no. Most of the time this is downstairs (which is outside because our house is on stilts) or actually outside at the picnic table. I'm usually sweating profusely from every orifice of my body at this point too so if appropriate I will try to splash water on my face but sometimes thats just not appropriate because we have guests who want to watch me eat or pretend to have a conversation despite the fact that I don't know enough thai and they don't know any english so yeah basically just watch me eat. So then at about 6:30 or 7 the TV goes on and we gather on the floor of the living room to eat dinner and watch our Thai soaps.  I have strong feelings about my Thai soaps.  I don't know what channel my favorite one in on but for the last week and a half we've been watching the one on channel 7 and it's really not nearly as good. So after soaps my mom always reminds me that I need to shower, not that I need reminding but I do get pretty lazy so it helps to have her say it so I get off my butt and go take a shower. Showers here are different. There is a ceramic tub thats filled with water, ours is about 4x3x4. There is a bowl resting on the side of it and usually a frog and/or a gecko and/or a cricket in the bathroom with you. You learn to love your shower buddys because there are also a buttload of mosquitos in the bathroom with you because the cement walls have small little windows to let out the moisture. So then you are standing in the middle of the bathroom and you pour bowl after bowl of water over your body until you are all wet. For those of you that have not been to a country that has these kinds of showers, I did not skip a step. I am taking a shower in the middle of the bathroom. There is no other shower area. I am dumping water all over the floor and it splashes on the toilet and everything.  [little interlude: so I hate sitting on a wet toilet seat because even if I was the one who just cleaned the toilet and I know that its just a little bit of moisture from cleaning it I can't help but have that feeling that I'm sitting on someones pee. So basically I just wanted to let you know that I have to deal with this almost every time I go to the bathroom at my house.] So yeah then I soap up and I splash water all over the room again and hopefully get enough on me so that I don't have any suds on me when I walk out. After shower I spray my whole room with bug spray and take down my mosquito net and set it up again and sit on my bed under my mosquito net with my fan going and do homework/check email and what not until about 9:30 and then I get tired and get ready for bed. Then I do it all again tomorrow.

I know it's a pretty lively life I live. Not everybody could handle it.  

Things I learned in the last couple of days

- Yii does not mean grandma. It means two. But thats also weird because I know the word for two is song. Anyway yaai is grandma. Sorry for the misinformation.

- I have noticed, in the limited number of news papers that I've read, that thai newspapers seem to allow more opinion and interpretation of the facts as opposed to simply reporting the facts.

- I learned a really great energizer that almost made me tear up. It's called 'touch someone who' or 'reach out and touch someone' and its a really good self esteem booster.  

- I relearned how much fun riding your bike with loud music on is.

- milk here doesn't keep well. the juice box milks cannot be saved in the fridge. 

- it is hot as balls and it's winter.  I seriously don't understand how these people do things all year round

- Rain is really fricking loud when the roof is tin. Okay not really something I learned today. Maybe, thais must sleep really well because when it rains it feels like there's a noise parade going on inside your room while you are trying to go to sleep, or for people who didn't go to reed it feels like there are 200 people banging pots and pans as loud as they can with whatever other objects will make as much noise as possible against said pots and pans.

Feb 6

Things I learned

- I miss the rain

- The biggest challenge here is to get cold.

- Its really hot

- Its was actually 33 degrees C or 91 farenheit but I feel like today was the hottest day ever. 

- I rode my bike about 12 miles today and I felt like I was gonna faint.

- I couldn't really eat today because it was too hot.

- I was slightly cooler than dying of heat when I was showering. Also on a related note I thought I would find the showering here to be even more annoying because you have to throw buckets of water on yourself and its not heated water and whatnot but it has now become my favorite time of the day and sometimes I even take TWO.

- Its 10 pm and its 88 degrees

- oh yeah did I mention THIS IS THE FRICKING COLD SEASON

So yeah basically today I learned I'm probably gonna die here because I will never ever ever get used to being this uncomfortable all day long. Ya know, either that or my body will adapt.