June 23
So in pre service training in the mental health section they showed us this graph of the ups and downs many peace corp volunteers go through. According to this graph there's a pretty deep down swing right about now. I'm not sure if it's because we've seen this graph or because it really is some kind of psychological breaking point of PCVs but it seems in the last week or two that everyone's hit a bit of a wall. In times like these it's really easy to focus on all the frustrating thing like, for instance, how you've told everyone you want to rent a one bedroom house and you want to live alone and yet they continue to bring you to apartments or to rooms to rent within other houses, but I digress. It's times like these that we, as PCVs, bond through our complaints and that is a valuable bonding experience. There was a period of time in the beginning where everything was awesome and everything was new and exciting. The other day I send my friend a text saying, 'I miss when just waking up in realizing I was in thailand was exciting. Now I'm just bored and hungry and annoyed at a festival and I'm not even a VIP'. Oh how things have changed.
But the thing is, THIS is actually why we came here. THIS is what we want even though its hard. THIS is when we can start actually working. We've become normal(or at least as much as we can), we aren't really special anymore. Most people don't get super excited to talk to me anymore and most days that sucks. It means that I don't talk to a lot of people. My Thai friends or family either assume I understand enough of the conversation or it doesn't occur to them that I can't because they aren't actually speaking to me. Often times that feels really shitty and isolating and it's really really difficult not to want to withdraw into my room or the internet or my new addiction of Candy Crush(seriously don't even start, I've been on one level for like 3 days and I play it every 20 minutes when my free version gives me a new life). It's hard for a multitude of reasons but the hardest challenge for me personally (and I believe for many volunteers) is that being social and interacting with people is a huge part of who I am and what makes me happy and why I came here. Anyone who knows me well knows that my friends are my family(and my family my friends). I'm more dependent on my friends than I think most people know, and honestly, even more than I've realized until recently. It's not as thought its a specific friend that I need but I need friendship, and I've realized that although I have many people that I might call puan(friend in thai) here I have no one at site that resembles anything like the friends I have at home or in PC. And it's a lot to ask for at site let alone three months in. But when I have a rough day and all my usual coping mechanisms are unavailable (read I can't hang out with friends and/or drink a beer and/or have a dance party and/or do all of those things all at the same time) it makes it very difficult. I mean I can't even make a sarcastic joke about how sad it is because no one would understand it. So yeah, I mean I guess the point is this is that I miss you guys and its rough out here without you and I'm happy I'm doing it and I'm excited about what this will mean and what I will be able to do but shit I want a beer and friends and a dance party. oh yeah and my own place to live - that one I'm working on though.
June 26
Today was a good day. There was all sorts of silliness and laughing. I did all sorts of things like ride bikes with 100 other people to get exercise, saw a beautiful house that the principal said I could rent for free(turns out its actually the infirmary-so thats a no go.), went to aerobics(best therapy ever - between the super techno hits from a year ago and the old women killing the shit out of it while I'm sweating and stumbling over my own legs its enough to make the day in and of itself). Also I had an awesome conversation about abortion this morning with the nurses at the animai and about why it's illegal here and went over some of the arguments for and against abortion in america. And this was all because I was super into Wendy Davis and the filibuster. Also trying to explain what a filibuster is in Thai is not an easy thing to do only in a small part because I am not exactly sure what the point of a filibuster is. I get running out the clock on voting, but one of them asked a very fitting question of won't they just vote next time? What is the point of a filibuster? Is it supposed to change peoples minds? Also, why are their so many rules?
because I've had had more rough days that good ones lately I'm trying to think of why today was so good, but I'm not sure. When I think back on the day there are a couple moments that come back.
First is when my sister Ghet came into work about 5 minutes after me and walked upstairs to the room that has my desk and immediately sits down and says, 'Rosie! You didn't eat breakfast this morning. Why not? Are you feeling okay? Are you hot? Are you sick? Maybe you should go home.' I explained I just wasn't very hungry this morning. Also the best part is Ghet doesn't eat breakfast.
Walking into the local hospital and having my favorite nurse there who i haven't seen in almost a month because we kept missing each other. Realizing she likes me as much as I like her because when she saw me she let out a little squeal and ran over and said I missed you rosie and squeezed my arm-the thai equivalent of a hug. I still went in for the hug and she awkwardly hugged me.
Having the conversation about abortion and why it's illegal and what the arguments for and against legalizing abortion are. Also apparently it's legal sometimes- but not really. [Every thing I've seen written says it's illegal and Peace Corps said its illegal, so I'm not sure if it's actually not illegal in certain cases or if its 'not illegal']. Also the conversation(which they found much more enjoyable) of why the pretty woman was wearing a pretty dress with sneakers and the ensuing confusion of what a filibuster was and whether it did anything.
Seeing the beautiful infirmary that's on school grounds and would totally be my dream house if it were 1) a house 2) not on school grounds.
Having my wrong nayok tell me about an event 30 minutes before the event and actually already knowing about it.
Showing up to said event thinking that I wouldn't be able to participate in the bike ride because I was supposed to teach english to my youth group. When I got to the school and talked to my various students they all asked me if I was teaching today. I told them it was up to them, if they wanted me to teach I would teach. They explained that I could teach if I wanted to but there wouldn't be very many people there because everyone was gonna ride bikes. I really wanted to ride bikes so that was a total win.
We all rode bikes and it was super fun and awesome. about 100 people rode bikes from home and or the tessabaan and we biked about 5 kilometers. There was everyone from the awesome other rong nayok to my favorite 3 yr old at the nursery school(on the back of his mom's bike). I've got an awesome video if you aren't easily nauseous.
VIDEO OF BIKING ---(I can't find it now, because it's been forever and a month and I've taken so many picture and videos and I'm bad at keeping up with stuff so noone has seen any of them.)
Arriving back to the school we started at and having a full aerobics class. Most of the time there are about 30 people. today there were about 100. Taylor swift, maroon 5, lady gaga, all sorts of other pop songs that I don't know and their techno versions. Also lots of complicated side stepping with a lot of people who don't have rhythm. Also me having to stop every two second either because I screwed up the rhythm or steps or because I was so hot that I felt like i was gonna die.
Eating dinner with everyone but being totally on my own. Today was the first day that I went to an event and was totally on my own. I arrived alone and left alone and never felt like I needed a crutch. Usually when I have Get I always keep an eye out for where she is and what she's doing in case I should be doing something, but today, because she wasn't there, I simply mingled and it was lovely and I realized I am totally a part of this community and everyone knows me and asked me if I'd found a rental house yet or if I'm still teaching english or why I'm only teaching english to people between the age of 12 and 20.(i get that questions at least once a day- and its because it's a trick and I really wanted a youth group, but it turned into an english group). Also the soldiers were there and they're always fun. Actually it was my favorite three groups of people - old people, students and soldiers.
I got home and Get immediately apologized because they had already started eating because they thought I was going to eat at the event. I explained that I had and it was fine(also, I don't know why today was any different, but she almost always starts eating before me- although before she started she usually yells in the direction of my room, 'rosie, gin kaao' - but then she starts whether or not she hears back)
anyway it was a good day.
Today I learned:
-there are only two volumes on thai stereos: off and deaf.
-the little human that I thought was a girl who wanted to be a boy is in fact a boy who wants to be a girl.
June 27
Today I got woken up at 6:00 (I've been sleeping later and later so I now wake up at 7:30 to get to work at 8ish) by my aunt coming into my room and telling me to wake up. I immediately looked at my clock and was confused because I usually don't get a wakeup call and at the time I wasn't sure but I didn't think that was my mom's voice, I actually thought it was my other aunt. Anyway, my yaai's been sick and had a fever the last few days so once I was a little awake but still dressing and in my room I convinced myself that yaai had died in the night (totally a possibility bc she's 90 but not likely because she's gonna outlive us all). I mentally prepare myself for whatever this could mean only to leave my room and immediately be yelled at in Thai about the fact that I'm gonna move away and I'm moving to a bad neighborhood and people are gonna choke me and either my eyes are gonna pop out or they really like my bug eyes- I don't know, I'd been awake for less than 5 minutes and then this 60 yr old woman was hitting me and yelling and acting out people touching me and choking.
June 30
So as times goes on here I feel as though more and more I'm isolating myself. More and more I choose not to make the effort to understand the rapid conversations going on around me, instead choosing to be lazy and take the easy way out of pretending I'm distracted or taking pictures or the total cop out of playing on my iPod. The more I do this the more I realize I'm doing it an the worse I feel about it. That said, I'm tired of having to try all the time and I do want some time to be on my own without having to even kinda think about whats going on around me. The more I do things that I actually want to do despite the fact that it might be awkward or 'weird' to them, the more I realize that we are all happier. however, its not always easy to see that. Yesterday, for instance, I went to tesco lotus(the big grocery store- think asian target). Now I wouldn't have thought to go to tesco on my own but I went because my neighbor aunt was going as asked my sister if she wanted to go and she invited me-tesco is definitely a bpai tiao and usually a large group activity. In this case it was me, Ghet, Pii Saao(translates as older sister, but Saao is actually her nickname too- that one took me a while)-my aunt, pii neut, petangue(bocce ball), chem(salty), daat and miu. Now this is my little kid crew. They're my buddies and they're awesome. So little side story on the way to tesco I realized half way there that three of the four adults were in the actual cab of the truck and all the children-all under the age of 12 were in the bed of the truck with the one other adult. This would have been dangerous at any time, obviously but it was also saturday night so it was dark and people were probably drunk. [funny realization- immediately after i wrote that I realized that I'm not sure if more people drink on saturday than other days. I have no idea what the drinking schedule is here 1) because I don't drink and 2) because I'm pretty sure people drink all the time. So I might be totally wrong about saturday being more dangerous. but the important thing is slowly but surely I'm realizing when I'm making assumptions-which is always.] Anyway so I went to tesco and got myself all the stuff to make a salad- or all they stuff they had to make a salad- which was tomatoes, carrots and cucumber. They also had what they called white cabbage that looked a lot like really bad lettuce, but I will leave trying that to a later date. I figured I could find something ranch like -because if they have salad dressing I figured that would be the only kind they had. They did not in fact have ranch dressing. So my options were creamy caesar dressing and creamy dressing. Knowing what a stickler I am for caesar dressings and knowing how bad they can be I went with creamy. It was not the best purchase I've made in my life. But it was a great experience to show my family that I can in fact make food-I'm pretty sure they thought I was lying. And teach them that you can eat carrots raw and have them try to tell me that I should put water in the creamy dressing because it didn't look right. This coming from people who's definition of salad dressing is mayonnaise. [Totally random but I just thought of Patty Mayonnaise from Doug and now all I want is to watch a bunch of Doug. Do Do Do Do Do Do Do Do Do Do Do Pasdlkfsdaafgn chka chkaaa] But yeah eating a salad gave us something to talk about too.
I keep going back to my friends blog post about identity and integration and what with my self-isolation because of laziness and my recent judgement of other people for what I think is spending too much time away from site(and debatably still integrating better that I have) and knowing that I'm being way harder on myself than i should I've come to the conclusion that I've gotta lighten up and be stupid and silly more. If that means making a salad that I would rather throw away than eat were I in america than that's what it means. Or today even I went on a bike ride and I literally stopped and talked to everyone that said hi. The bike ride was REALLY long, and I didn't go that far. But I also didn't talk that much to anyone. Most people were people I already knew or kids from the school and they would get excited that they saw me on a sunday and say hi from their yard or whatever and then be totally at a loss for words when I stopped to chat. And so we would have a pretty awkward five minutes where I asked them what they were doing today and debated internally if I should ask whether they have eaten yet or what they ate or if I should ask what I actually wanted to know. Or if I should suggest some kinda of activity that we do together or if I should stop being creepy and just be on my way. so yeah, this is part of what got me in this isolationist mood. But the fact is regret is a four letter word and when I first got to thailand and to site I was all about not saying no and seizing the moment and always being up for anything and if something wasn't happening finding something that was. I've gotta get back into that mode- and I think living in my own house will help that because I won't want to stay at home alone all day on the weekends. Anyway, its just a good thing to remember all the time - I feel like because I'm here and doing this I'm reminded not to waste any moment because I only have two years - but I wish I could/would remember that no matter what. There really is no reason not to have the most fun you can at any given moment.
On a totally unrelated note, I got a totally random song stuck in my head that I actually did manage to related to the above because I was bored enough in the shower and I was humming it randomly. So the song is called in the bleak mid winter and its about jesus(which I'm not so about, but it works here)
in the bleak mid winter
frosty winds may blow
earth stood hard as iron
water like a stone
snow lay fallen
snow on snow
snow on snow
in the bleak mid winter
long long ago
what can I give him
poor as I am
if I were a shepherd
I would give a lamb
if I were a wise man
I would do my part
what can I give him
give him my heart
so yea. I used to sing this with my family on our singing nights and we've only had one of those in the last 5 years or so and I'm pretty sure we didn't sing this. I don't know how it came out of the recesses of my brain but it was a good reminder that when you're tired and poor and you have nothing left to give you still have heart and you can always cheer someone up and often times, at least for me, thats enough for both of you.
Also I've been thinking a lot about this other article i read about how learning a language is harder when you see people from home. Apparently the idea is that because you are seeing the familiar faces your brain assumes its still at home so its in less of a transition mode and as such it is harder for it to learn and adapt to the new surroundings. So yeah, now I can blame Facebook for the fact that I'm not fluent in thai.
Also, I kinda feel like I should maybe talk a little bit about thai culture at some point, but every time I think I understand something I get blind sided by a scenario that doesn't make sense. Like for instance I met this child - i think I wrote about him/her. He/she is a five year old and I was so impressed because I thought it was a girl who had total support and was dressing as a boy- but it turns out its a super feminine boy or a gateui or a lady boy. Which is less cool, only because I thought it was awesome the acceptance and support that the little girl was getting from such a young age. Anyway, I'm gonna maybe try to work on that- it is actually one of my official goals to- so we'll see if I do it.
July 1
Today I have been in a a fantastic mood. resembling old the first weeks of being here. I think part of it was because I laughed a lot today and that always helps everything and second because I'm really excited to go on 'vacation' aka more training but with all the other PCVs later this week.
anyway, nothing much happened today and usually those are the most annoying frustrating days because it illuminates exactly how little seems to be getting done. But today after a full day of 'work' (which was mostly me finding new music that I dont have enough space to download on my computer, reading every news article I could get and chatting on fb, oh and kinda sort writing an outline of a lesson plan for the 5 hours of teaching i have this week) I went and had a little chat with my sister and we joked around a bit and immediately i felt better. It truly is the best medicine. It's no wonder so many of us are so sarcastic because what else would we do with our sad lives besides make fun of them so at least we can have the joy of laughing at them. but seriously though. today all the moments that i usually complain about in my head and dread when i'm really tired I just turned into a joke or something silly and not only was it less awkward but it made everything so much more fun because then everyone could be absurd.
So recently I've been going to the school everyday after work and just hanging out form about 4:45 til 6 or 6:30. There's usually some little kids waiting for their parents or some older kids watching them and then there's usually a group of kids playing soccer or volleyball or just hanging out at the table. Some of them are kids in my english group and some are just neighborhood kids. thai kids are awesome and they have really cute little habits. First I've been coming for the last couple weeks but the boys rarely talk to me. Even the boys who know me from english club won't usually talk directly to me(except as a teacher when I'm teaching). The girls from english club are more comfortable with me now and actually today one group of girls even confided to me that they thought a certain boy was handsome, but even that came as a statement from the group, not from an individual(very thai). Anyway so these teenage boys don't talk to me usually and most of them don't come to the english club either because they don't go to that school or because the principal didn't deem them good enough to be one of the 30 students that got to learn english with the farang(Next time I'm gonna ask for the 30 worst students or as the thai teachers would say the stupid children- I'm pretty sure that's not gonna work, but I'm gonna give it a try.) Anyway so I'm watching them and the girls who are playing asks me to play and I explain I'm not very good and I'm not sure. And then some of the other boys ask the girl why I'm not playing. But when finally the boy who literally has never spoken a word to me turns to me and says, 'Kruu Rosie, tammai mai len?'. I realize that I had to play despite the fact that I am one of the least coordinated people in the world and never seemed to grow out of that whole scared of the ball tendency that most people grow out of (hence why you have never really seen me play sports). So I get my ass out there and play volleyball terribly. I don't call the ball and when I do I miss it and all of this is totally unintentional- I'm genuinely trying and making a total ass out of myself. And laughing at myself the whole time. It was great in part because the people who were playing were being totally supportive and people on both teams were calling out to make sure that I would get a turn to hit the ball. It was totally adorable(if not slightly patronizing-but mostly adorable). Theses super macho 16 year old boys were making sure their really awkward gangly teacher would get play time and enjoy playing with them. It was a great moment also because some of the girls that don't usually play started taking an interest and some of the littler kids also started playing and it was supportive all around. It was just a really cute moment that I'm really happy about.
Also, that reminded me of something that happened the other day. I was at an event and there was a woman with her baby and there was a young teenager girl and a young teenage boy ogling it. It was such a foreign sight that there was a moment of confusion or surprise or even maybe concern. Now this is another instance that I realize my preconceived notions because the thing i was so surprised and confused by was the fact that a teenager boy, I'm guessing about 14, would be interested in a baby. From my memory and maybe this is just me but I feel like if a boy had played with a baby that wasn't his sibling that would be 'weird'- or god forbid 'gay'- but honestly that isn't even where my brain went. it wasn't that it was a feminine thing to do or a gay thing to do but it was for some reason wrong in my brain. It was a really interesting realization because I still have no idea why but there was this element of concern- maybe that there would be some abuse or something, I don't know. But anyway the point is the culture here is so family oriented that everyone takes care of their nongs or youngers. At the school, for instance, the mateom students or middle school students are often delegated as teachers assistants and during elective hour often organize what little organization the groups have because the teachers often don't show up. I don't know. The more I'm here the more I think that we have things wrong. Sometimes people ask me why we do things the way that we do and I genuinely try to figure it out and I can't. Like why don't we have a staple food? That would make things so much easier. or why don't we live with our parents until we get married? my autopilot answer is because everyone would go crazy, but there's a harmony in the social hierarchy here of respecting one's elders and not abusing your authority as an elder(ya know, minus the teachers and some parents beating their children- that for another day though). It amazing what you can get used to and once you have its amazing to try to remember how you used to think.
July 2
Some days you have all the ideas and you do them all fast enough that no one tells you you can't. AND it actually works.
So lately there have been some things that have made me think a lot about how I'm making progress with some of my student and how I'm really bonding with them and we're starting to become friends and building relationships that are gonna be awesome and I'm getting really excited. While this is happening I've been hearing about other PCVs who's students have died. Now death always comes with sadness and grief but some of the stories that I've heard make we want to just sit down and cry- or at least teach my students not to swim in a river when the current is going fast or not to ride a moto without a helmet or any other various things. But the most recent one just leaves me so in awe that I can't even figure out what to do. So apparently a child at another PCVs school was fairly regularly physically abused by her parents, regularly enough that the local hospital staff and teachers and friends knew about it. Apparently it was known that they would drink lao(homemade liquor) and eat drugs and beat her. Now despite the fact that all these people knew, no one did anything. It unclear the reasons why nothing happened and I'm not in a position to say who's to blame here and at this point despite the fact that I desperately want someone to blame that doesn't change the fact that this girl is now dead.
So in thinking about this I've been trying to talk to my students and tell them that if they ever have any problems to please tell me. I want to be more that just a teacher- and I actually don't want to be a teacher at all (and I've told them this) instead I want to be a friend. I will teach them english if they want me to and we can play and hang out and do whatever they wanna do. But today I realized that my hippy dippy high school did something amazing and I wanted to do it to. Every week we would sit around in a circle and go around and talk about how we were and how we felt. We would talk about different topics that were hard to talk about like bullying or sex or whatever big gossip was going around. So today I started something. Today I explained to everyone that before class everyday we are gonna go around and say how we feel- in english or thai. The point is more to check in a see how everyone is. I explained to all of them the motive behind why I started this and the fact that I was worried about my students and that if they had a problem I wanted to know about it. So I started today by saying I felt sad because this girl died and I was worried that maybe the students here had problems and didn't have anyone to talk to. Most everyone else said that they were feeling good or enjoyed the class(today we did it at the end of class because I wanted it to be a wind down). But one girl went a little further saying she was good but not really good, which was at least more descriptive. I feel like this could be the beginning of a real life skills class. It's funny after 6-9 months of spitting out the Peace Corps verbiage of what my job is here, I realize I've taken this class and it was in fact called Life Skills and had some native american inspiration but the topics and the outcome were very similar. And now I have so many more ideas. I don't think this expresses how excited I am about this and I'm not sure if it's gonna crash and burn but I'm pretty set on sticking with it and I hope they start to talk about things a little more.
July 3rd
the girl who i was worried about at wat wii wek who always acted kinda weird around the other kids and very timid around me. today when i taught about feelings and at the end of class before they left i went around and asked how everyone was feeling individually so they could tell me and I told them I would do it every week. In my older class i explained why but this class is younger and i felt just doing it was weird enough and i shouldn't explain why. so student after student told me they felt happy. and then she came and I specifically with her I tried especially hard to have it be open and inviting and safe so when i asked her how she was feeling she said scared. and I got down a little lower and asked why she was scared but it a nice gentle voice. she seemed nervous and I didn't want to push it so I said, don't worry you don't have to tell me, but if you want to you can any time. And later when she was leaving she smiled at me and waved goodbye as opposed to her usual wei and sawadii ka(something that she rarely does because its less formal and respectful). As hard as this was today felt like the most successful day since I've come here.
and now I'm leaving for almost three weeks.
it comes in fits and starts.
July 23
It would be silly of me to even try to explain everything that happened in the last 20 days but there were a lot of things done, lessons learned, things lost and found, adventures, and it is with a great number of feelings that I come back to site ready to get down to the nitty gritty of my actual peace corps service.
Reconnect does a lot of things. It reminds you that despite the fact that you speak a different language a lot of the time and the fact you have to upgrade your filter so most of the thoughts that go through your mind you don't say out loud(half because they aren't appropriate and half because its not worth trying to figure out how to say things like your favorite part of camping was looking for heffalumps-thats just not gonna work).
But as much as a lot of today was the dread and the uncertainty of what coming back to site after 3 weeks of pretty much the exact opposite of everything related to site(friends, english, drinking, freedom to eat, drink and do what I want when I want, etc), I arrived to site and immediately realized how great it was to be back. I was rushed out of the rot dtuu that I took from bangkok and told all of the waiting rot dtuu drivers that I did not in fact want to go to Koh Chang but instead I wanted to go home and my friend was going to pick me up. I went inside to call my sister and watched as the rot dtuu sped away. I put all my stuff down and reached into my pocket for my phone and of course it wasn't there. It was sitting on the seat in the rot dtuu because I had just used it to text someone. But within 30 minutes I was home sitting with my yaai, my paw and my meh with all of them laughing at me and not really saying anything- just like old times. I was really surprised to see how excited I was to see them and in their own special ways how excited they were to see me. My dad said, 'you've been gone for a lot of days'. I'm still not sure how to respond to that, but hey he said something.
July 24
So reconnect. learned all the things and figured everything out and had all these plans. I had my awesome counterpart pii Satit and he is super excited about what peace corps taught us(despite the fact that he was hungover for most of the sessions because he raged it with the other counterparts). But today reminded me that reconnect or peace corp trainings are so far from the real life service that its hard for me to even really understand what I'm supposed to take from it. I do feel like I learned some stuff and that stuff was even really useful stuff - if I were able to teach it in english to student who understand english or if I could speak thai well enough to teach it in thai. Today I was trying to plan something with Satit about a life skills activity to do with the 5th and 6th graders. I told him the activity that I wanted to do and he said, okay, I will read it before class and kinda shoed me out of the room.
I'm bored of that
I'm been thinking about adapting a lot lately. Specifically how easy it is to change if the change is easy or pleasurable even if it means totally changing your routine. For instance, coming here, I was so excited about it and everything was so new that it was all so exciting that I didn't even really realize how many changes I was making in my daily routine until it was too late kinda. There was so much change in the first couple months between the hotel and then moving to Suphan Buri host family and then going to site visit and then going back to the hotel and then host family and then finally being sent off to live with some other random host family. And now, after almost four months I'm really starting to feel at home here and I'm supposed to move out this weekend. Now at no point during that period of time did I really have control over much - in part because I was trying to be polite and not inconvenience anyone but also because I wanted to experience everything as organically as possible. So it's funny now that after these last week or so having pretty much complete control over everything I do(minus the fact that I was traveling with 4 other PCVs) it was really interesting to get back to site and realize that there is a happy medium and at this point in time it's not rude for me to explain that I don't want to live in my families house because I want privacy and I like to be alone as opposed to their suggestions that I think my meh's food isn't delicious(may or may not be true), or that my room, aka my life, smells like mold(also may or may not be true).
July 25
just got a barrage of awesome comments from my roong nayok:
- I think you are terrible…in a month
- if you my daughter i stick both of you
- your heart run away with you
All of these were in a conversation about me finding a house - which she's now given me two days to choose. There are plusses and minus to all of the choices and it's really hard to figure out what I need or what I want. AHHHHHH decisions decisions. I'm gonna go on a bike ride.
so recap of today:
got to nursery school - most of the kids stared at me like they've never seen me before…even the one that usually attacks me
the teachers proceed to said the following in such rapid succession that it was obvious that they weren't really trying to elicit any responses. i like your new hair color. did you cut your hair yourself? You look like a boy with your haircut. You look skinny. Why are you skinny? How much do you weigh now? Are you hungry?
after about an hour the kids started to remember who I was and the one who hangs on my started hanging, the one who hits started hitting, the one who's scared of me was scared(but still didn't cry) and the one who kinds thinks I'm his mom started calling me mom again. It felt good to be home. Also I met a new one who thinks I might be the devil. She's adorable and terrified of me. Her fear is less worrisome because it seems more skeptical and unsure as opposed to the other girl who had terror in her eyes when she first saw me.
Anyway then i ate really good kaao dtom - which is literally translated as boiled rice - but its like rice with extra water in it. The water to rice ratio varies pretty extensively and I've had this dish a couple times and most of them were either at the wat (where I didn't really understand that you just put everything in it) or at my meh in Suphan's house when I was sick so she intentionally made it super bland. anyway the point is that it can be awesomely tasty. and I really never thought I would eat three bowls of kaao dtom--but there's a first for everything.
So then I was in the office in the afternoon waiting for the local village headman to come take me to look one last time at the housing possibilities, which was supposed to happen at 1 pm. Around 3 pm my lovely wrong nayok comes over to tell me that Gamnan Santat cannot in fact come today because he got bit by a centipede last night and has been resting in the local hospital all day and she can't drive so I have to figure out which house I want by tomorrow. (The logic's impeccable, I know.) I explain that I have three options but I don't know a lot about all of the options. Here's the breakdown:
Option 1:
Pii Tak (a former coworker who has since left the tessabaan and as such is not in the best standing with the wrong nayok despite the fact that the wrong nayok would never say this aloud) lives with her family and started building a rental house at the beginning of this month(right before I left for my training). I have no idea the state its in but I like the family a lot and there are kids and adults and everyone is loud and happy and awesome and I would pretty much be living at their house but have my own house. She doesn't want to accept rent so I'm going to give her 2500 or 3000.
Option 2:
A large estate that is gorgeous with many different kinds of beautiful fruit trees, two rice fields, a duck, a cow, a couple geese, three bedrooms, three bathrooms, one with a bathtub, a fountain, a huge two room kitchen, two porches, a perfect little bbq nook outside. Every saturday night one of the daughters of the family that owns the house will stay there with me because she works in my area early in the morning on sunday. This house had no neighbors. rent is unclear but I think would be 3000.
Option 3:
A new one bedroom house that has water and power that I have seen the outside of and looks like the thai equivalent of a cookie cutter condo. When I did see it, we did not have the key so we could not look inside. I am now assured that it has everything, including a bed, a cabinet, a stove, and a refrigerator along with power and water. I don't know any of the neighbors although they are very close and I have very little to no privacy. The rent is 2500.
Option 4:
staying where I am. Given weird stuff with creepy older brother and the fact that my parents don't really talk to me and the fact that my room smells like ass and it's not just because I usually smell like ass---its also my room. Yesterday I moved my desk to clean because I haven't been here in three weeks and in the course of three weeks there was mold coming out of all of the edges of the desk. also I've been back for 2 nights and I have 7 bites that I'm pretty sure I'm minority allergic to. also my pillow is moldy. so yeah, needless to say I'm not staying here. [also this family and home stay is totally awesome, this is just a list of my gripes - there's a lot i love about it too]
So long story short(ish). I decided. I went through all sorts of iterations but I finally decided that I'm gonna go with option 1 of living in the house that isn't finished yet but right next door and in the family compound of the awesome family. In part because I felt slightly disappointed when I thought about choosing the other two. This one had the cultural integration with the privacy and the safety net of always having a family to invite me to all the things. Also, it was obvious when I stopped by today because I slowly biked up after realizing I probably should've called first(and then had the thought -which i have multiple times a day- how thai I'm becoming). But the mom came up to me smiling and immediately starting chattering on about the house and how it wasn't finished and when it would be finished and where i had been and if it had rained there and the flooding that had happened here.
***also side note: shits been flooded for the last two days. I've ridden through puddles where my feet never get out of the water. School was closed for two days and today they opened it and most of the morning was cleaning the grounds and the couple classrooms that aren't raised up. I'm crossing my fingers its not like this for the next couple months.****
anyway the mom was super talkative and wanted to chat about everything and she was super cute and it made me think about my current situation and family. It occurred to me while writing this post that they were probably grang jai'd into hosting me.
Okay culture lesson
Grang Jai
I think the literal translation if you look in a dictionary is generosity, but that doesn't quite encompass it(and I couldn't find it in my dictionary so that might not even be true). Here are some examples of ways that its used:
I was grang jai'd into buying it. - in this sentence it's kinda like guilted to save a person's face(or to not humiliate or call someone out on something).
I was told a story of a guy, lets call him Maa, who collects wood carved penii, because they are a sign of strength and power here. Pon, Maa's friend, knowing that he collects these penii asked him if he was interested in a very large one that Pon's friend was selling. Maa, in order to be polite said, sure he was interested in it. Pon ended up buying said 3 ft long penis and told Maa that he bought it for him, as in Maa was supposed to pay him back. So then Maa said he was grang jai'd into buying it. - in this sentence it's kinda like guilted to save a person's face(or to not humiliate or call someone out on something).
I think this is the same 'grang jai' reason that I'm not allowed to look at any rental house twice, because if I look a second time it means I'm interested and I will buy it.
Also whenever people ask me why I'm moving out I say because I am used to living in my own place and grang jai. I assume this usage to mean that I don't want to overstay my welcome or abuse generosity.
Also you can describe people as grang jai. This often means they come bearing gifts, which is expected in thai culture, but my friend keith's family told him he was already a thai because he had grang jai and was polite.
July 26
So sometimes leaving site is great because it reminds you how crazy site is when you get back. or maybe not site per say, but the crazy things you and or your body does while at site.
So yesterday as I was doing aerobics with my sister/aunt, I realized that I was developing a blister in the space between the ball of my foot and my big toe because my bare feet were sweating so much.
So lets just break down that sentence, 'yesterday when i was doing aerobics' ----> really???? I mean given yesterday i got tricked into it because my nephew asked if I wanted to play with leeches and of course I said yes. The fact is we went to look for leeches, unsuccessfully, and then my sisters went to the free aerobics class- I didn't want to look lazy. But ya know what's even crazier - I voluntarily went today. I don't know guys. I keep thinking as much as I've changed and whatnot I'm really the same person…but exercise just for the sake of exercise..thats, like, against my religion or something.
Okay moving on, 'developing a blister in the space between the ball of my foot and my big toe'. That space doesn't even touch anything. like ever. put on a sock. it doesn't even really touch that.
***just a note - mid sentence i wiped my eye and I have yet another minor stye - this is my 3rd - just goes to show***
Any way so this weird part of your body that nothing really ever touches. not only had something touched it, but its touched it and rubbed it long enough for my body to start defensive measures against said rubbing by filling up hardened skin with pus. (Another note to self/everyone: it will be a miracle if anyone ever wants to sleep with me after reading this blog.)
And finally 'because my bare feet were sweating so much'. I bet no one reading this has ever even seen their feet sweat. Sure you've felt your damp socks after a run or something(ha! I've never gone running!) but have you ever actually seen your feet get wet because of sweat. like droplets of sweat on your feet- coming from your feet. I don't know maybe this is just me, but I had no idea the sweat capability of my feet. Sure I knew that every once in a while my shoes smelled and I usually blamed in on Aurelia or some boy in the room, but maybe secretly knew that my shoes were a little sweat. but yesterday (and today) I had a dangerously slippery tile floor underneath me because of my foot sweat. I mean I could try to blame in on all my other sweat but my clothes were soaked by the end so they absorbed most of the body sweat. so yeah I guess I kinda gotta give props to my feet. I'm impressed. kudos?!?!? also try to not kill me or give me more blisters.
July 27
Just over heard a conversation my sister was having on the phone. It went something like this:
i think its better if I don't go because you already have friends…
Yeah, and there are a lot of people on the weekend and pictures with a lot of people and pictures aren't beautiful. its better when theres only two or three…
we can go sometime later…
during the week sometime…
then there will only be us and we can take beautiful pictures.
So I had become very comfortable with the fact that every bpai tiao usually came with about a half hour photo shoot portion of it. Just to document that you were there in front of all the views and signs and whatnot. And I'm not ashamed to say that on my recent camping trip me and the other four farangs realized half way through our final traipse around the park grounds that we had unintentionally adopted this practice. This conversation however illuminated that this is a pre planed activity. I had always assumed it was a consequence of the bpai tiao but it had never occurred to me that it might be the motivation for the bpai tiao or even possibly thought about before hand to make sure you had the correct makeup and outfit on. When we had the photo shoot in Koh chang with my family there were three different costume changes.
July 28
Last night I had dreams of died easter eggs that were actually salted duck eggs.
Scotlands national animal is a unicorn.
Today I found a magical place that sells 2 lb rounds of gouda, 1lb tubs of cream cheese, pork uterus, pork boiled stomach, pork lung, pork small and large intestines, pork skin(uncut and cut), max pork hump, max pork rump, max strip loin, fuji and gala apples and has an entire wall of different types of mushrooms that I didn't know existed. I'm so excited to have a party. Its gonna have a lot of beer, cheese, mushrooms and parts of pork that I didn't know you could eat. Also, side note. this place is called macro and they only sell things is costco sizes - hence the need for a party.
…
then again, I could totally eat two pounds of gouda before it went bad. maybe that will be my house warming present to myself. That and a fridge.
July 30
Today I've hit a wall. I've hit so many walls today. it seems everything i do involves an insurmountable wall.
The other night I was reading 'The Last Lecture' and there was this great quote that I laughed at at the time. It was "…the brick walls are there for the people who don't want it badly enough, They're there to stop the other people." I laughed at the time because it was something that should've come out of my mouth, Or not really out of my mouth because I'd never really put words to it before, but many of the things I've done in my life were only finished out of pure stubbornness. I remember having many conversations with Paul during college and deciding that maybe this wasn't right for us, all this misery and frustration. and for what? a good education? we could get that elsewhere. we were smart people. (and yeah the irony is oozing..how hard and frustrating it is to be sitting on a porch in portland with our pabst and cigarettes and talk of how frustrating and annoying our $40,000 a year education is). But in the end we'd decide that fuck it we made it this far and we're gonna power through, not necessarily because it's worth it(although it was), but 1) because we said we would and 2) because in all reality what the hell else we're we gonna do.
So yeah, I don't know if I want it more than anyone else, but I'm damn sure I'm one of the most stubborn people I know and I will fight you on that one. Day's are that bad, even when they are. And when they get really bad and I want to throw papers everywhere(and yeah that's REALLY bad here), I say screw it and go play with some kids.
All this said, this is a readjustment period. I just moved into a new house - which is only an interim house because my actual rental house isn't finished yet. But it means I have to learn a new family schedule and I don't feel as though I left my other family in the best standings, but because it's thai culture I'm just inferring because my sister Get hasn't been as talkative. So I could just be over reacting…but I'm pretty sure I'm not. Also, I'm getting used to a new family dynamic, which I actually think is going to be awesome once I have my own house, because it's very hands off but there are people around all the time. To me it will eventually be the best of both worlds.
Also this reentry is really hard. A lot of the frustration today was about the fact that I was trying to make a weekly schedule. So in order to make that I looked at what I told Peace Corps and the Thai Governement I would do in the next two years. That infamous Two Year Plan. Well, first thing, it's total shit. But besides that I have these goals and the few that I can actually start working on right now are so open ended that its hard to quantify/qualify the success of a goal. For instance, one of them is teach english. So I do that. Does that mean that goal is complete? No, obviously not. The activities listed under teaching english are my two english groups at the school, teaching english at the tessabaan(which hasn't happened since the first month because people don't have/make time), and some other things. The outcome indicator is to increase conversational english by 60%. So that's how I succeed. I'm not sure if this is obvious to anyone who's not here when you read that but not only is that success rate probably impossible, there's no way to test that here. I'm not a language testing professional and their speaking is totally different from their reading or writing, and I'm working myself up again so I'm just gonna stop.
but basically the frustration comes from going back to thinking like an american. I sent a text to my friend mamie today saying it was a really frustrating day and she asked what happened? and my response kinda sums up the day,
'oh nothing really. I just tried to actually do some things and tried to figure out what the plan was or how i could actually do what i was sent here to do. let me tell you…HUGE mistake.'
The answer to all of it was just jai yen yen. either that or Pii Satit, when I was trying to lesson plan with him for tomorrow, just showed me the things he was buying on Hay Day(a iPhone game about owning a farm) - that one actually had me laugh out loud though- so that was good at least.
June 30
so they say that in peace corps you should write on your blog on good days and write in your journal on bad days. My good days are my busy days so you guys get more of my bad days and then you get me starting to tell you how good my day is and then getting distracted by some other awesomeness or passing out in front of my computer. so today I won't do that. but today was pretty swell.
Aug 3
So I've been in a bit of a rut. And like the broken record i always feel that I am I think its because once again everything just getting a little too 'normal' around here. Noone thinks I'm exciting anymore which usually mean that I don't really talk to anyone. BUT I did move into a new house and no its not my own new rental house because that one has yet to be finished, but it is an awesome house with a huge family thats always doing things and talking to me or at me or to each other at least so theres always something to do/listen to. Its lovely. Today I did lots of things:
-woke up
-ate breakfast
-decided I wasn't gonna do my laundry today-despite the fact that I wasn't sure I had anything that didn't smell like moldy sweat to wear tomorrow
-went downstairs and played internet - AT HOME(YAY YAY YAY!!!!!)
-around 10 I got in a car thinking we were going to buy kanoms.
-we dropped grandma off at her friends house- maybe a minute drive away.(took more time to get the kids in the car)
-drove to aunts house- another 1 minute drive
-everyone gets out of the car
-aunt starts moping the floor
-half the people I come with leave - telling me to just sit and hang out and play internet(there is no internet)
-I begin to realize I have no idea whats going on
-pots and pans come out
-I think I know whats going on
-I get told that I will have to drink the coconut water of 5 coconuts
-I'm in heaven
-Turns out I don't get to drink it all
-Turns out I still have no idea whats going on
-we put some colorful things in a blender and make colorful water
-then we pretty much make playdough
-we make a lot of different colored play dough -even out of the pumpkin and taro
-then we make really small balls of play dough
-the we boil the balls and they turn into big tapioca bowls
-from the kitchen comes naam gati or sweet coconut milk and I finally realize whats happening
- we are making the kanoms that I thought we were purchasing and now we're done
-after eating lunch and two bowls of naam gati sai play dough I head home
-i realize its saturday and wonder why my mom and workers are working on my house
-i go over to investigate and end up helping make cement-after pleading with them to help
-then I get told that I'm tired and I should go take a nap
-i decide to do my mounds and mounds of laundry after all
-three hours later its done and hanging nicely in back of the house(under a cover, so I don't have to worry about rain, yay!) and will do so for the next 3 days until its dry.
-About two hours into laundry someone says something about a funeral and I start to worry because I don't have any black or white clothing to wear to a funeral because all those articles are currently soaking wet in the back yard.
-my new sister tells me we aren't eating dinner here were eating dinner over there and points in a direction
-I'm now starting to worry I'm going to be totally disrespectful but showing up to this funeral in pink pants because that is the most appropriate article of clothing I have that is clean.
-I ask when we're leaving for the funeral
-someone says tomorrow
-I'm utterly confused, once again
-We go back to our aunts house for dinner(thats where my sister was pointing…obviously)
-we make Steak pork, tuna salad, pork salad, blue crab, and omlettes and its delicious.
-also now I'm home and I think I'm getting sick. But today was totally worth it.
I'm really happy to be here. Thailand, and this home. I stressed so much about things and I'm glad I did because I know that I've made the right decision now. I will explain more about how lovely and huge and confusing this family is but now I'm gonna watch something and pass out so that I can try to outrun(or out sleep) whatever is sneaking in my sinuses and throat.
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