Peace Corps'd!

2011-05-27T00:20:00.000-07:00

Well. I should say a bit more about the end of my Peace Corps experience.

As I said before, it was somewhat underwhelming. It seemed totally surreal to think about as it approached because I knew that after the end, I'd be doing the exact same thing. And so it was easy to ignore. But at the same time, as that finish line loomed into view, I was struck with a moment of clarity. I realized that my service as a volunteer had been a series of highs and lows (I'm pretty sure I've made that observation before), and that where I was emotionally at the close of my service would probably have a strong impact on how I viewed my service for the rest of my life.

So I sat down and had a good long talk with myself about what it would take for me to end things on a high note. I looked at the reasons for my good feelings in the past, and the reasons for my low feelings. It wasn't too difficult. I got positive feelings from being involved with projects and activities at school, from spending time in my community, basically by doing the things that I felt like I should be doing as a volunteer. Low feelings came about with frustration about school, from feelings of isolation and dissatisfaction with how I spent my time. Not too shocking, not too complex, and not too difficult to plan accordingly.

I talked to one teacher and we set up a sex education unit I had been kicking around in my head. That ended up being one of the most fulfilling parts of my Peace Corps service. Whoop! I accepted a bunch of requests to do activities at other schools, which, while of questionable value to students learning to speak English, do have value in students getting an opportunity to interact with a foreigner (and have fun doing so). I started going to Mae's school once a week. I started trying to exercise more (figuring that an increased level of fitness would improve my emotional state too).

And it worked. I was able to finish my end of service reports and feel good about (most of) what I had to say.

My new challenge is to find ways to feel personally fulfilled without Peace Corps service. I've made lists of ideas for activities for myself and things to do (learning to play guitar, gardening, helping Pa with English stuff, yadda yadda yadda, and for a few days so far (since I made this decision), it's been going pretty well.

Oh yeah, Gam and I got back last week from 2 weeks in Chiang Mai where we took a Thai massage class. It was pretty cool, and now I have souvenirs for EVERYone (in the form of free massages)! So look forward to it, punk.

Oh yeah! I still have a blog!

2011-05-01T09:32:00.000-07:00

Whoa.

I have successfully completed my term as a Peace Corps volunteer. So that's cool. And at the same time, completely underwhelming. As my COS (completion of service) date drew close, it was hard for me to feel much of anything, since I knew that I wouldn't be going anywhere right away, and that, in general, nothing would be changing for me as I remain in the village waiting for Gam's visa to be approved (which will be who knows when). And my feelings haven't really changed.

Looking back on my Peace Corps service DOES elicit a variety of feelings. Regrettably, the majority regard what I DIDN'T do as a Peace Corps volunteer, but I manage that by pointing out to myself that that's probably pretty natural, and it's easy to fixate on one's short-comings rather than one's accomplishments. I am happy to report, however, that the overwhelming feeling is one of confidence that my service in the Peace Corps has been a positive one and that I have NO regrets about spending the past 27 months serving as a volunteer.

Hm. I know for a fact that I have a lot more to say than this, but this is really all I've got for the moment. I'll have to try again after the whiskey has worked its way out of my system. I just felt the need to say something that might be heard, so hopefully I have accomplished that.

Cheeers!
E-rock

That's ill!

2010-08-25T20:49:00.000-07:00

So when the doctor said the word "meningitis," the first thing that went through my head was the Ween song, "Spinal Meningitis Got Me Down," and I worried that I might die. Then he told me that I would be getting a CT scan and Lumbar Puncture (yes, big needle in spine). I can't say I'd recommend either, but my headaches improved considerably after the doctor drained some of my spinal fluid. I'm sure you're asking yourself, "What the hell is an LP like? Does it hurt?" No, it didn't really hurt, I got anesthetized first, but it did feel extremely weird. Unpleasant, and wrong, and mostly just weird. In all, I spent 5 days in the hospital, about 4 days and 23 hours longer than I've ever spent in a hospital since birth. Thanks, Peace Corps for footing the bill!

So yeah, that was my most recent illness, prior to that I spent about a month with one or more stomach ailments. I had pretty much every symptom of gastro-intestinal distress there is, and I visited 3 doctors.

All in all, I've been sick for almost 2 months. And I'll tell ya, I'm SICK of being SICK!

Now, I don't mean this to be a call for pity, though that may be what it sounds like. I don't need your damn pity. I'm feeling better now, and planning on taking it easy for a little while to make sure that I'm really all better. What I would like from everyone out there is more of a "get your rear in gear" mental push to get me back into the swing of things. I've been out of everything for a while, and I'm a little concerned about jumping back in. It seems like jumping rope, where the toughest part is catching the rhythm and starting, and that's where I am right now. The rope definitely hasn't stopped spinning.

On the positive side, I'm probably definitely the skinniest I've ever been, so that's cool. Granted, I'm pretty weak, since I haven't really been able to exercise for a long time, but still...

Ok, I'm gonna do some push ups.
Eli

Speaking of exercise, the Hula Hoop is the current exercise craze here (in my village for sure, and I've seen 'em elsewhere, I'm wondering if it's nation-wide or not). I think it's great fun to see EVERYONE hula-hooping.

Peace.

Whassup?

2010-06-08T04:49:00.000-07:00

So the school year has begun (it's been almost a month already!).

Already, I feel a lot better about my situation at one of my schools.
Last year I had issues with my co-teacher (we never figured out how to co-teach, and I ended up not really doing anything). I've rearranged my schedule so that when I'm at that school I'm working with other teachers, too (though it's only occurred a couple times that those other teachers actually stayed in the room while I taught, but I didn't mind). When I'm teaching my co-teacher's students, I teach my own lesson (focusing on speaking), and she stays in the room. I think she's a lot happier with this setup, too, and I feel a lot more useful. The other day, she took some notes on her own accord while I was teaching, which was way cool, and it occurred to me today that we could and should start coordinating our lessons (I've been prepping my stuff independently, probably a result of my frustration from last year).

Things are going smoothly at Pa's school, and I'm hoping to do some projects with the scout group this year. I should see about getting that ball rolling soon.

The insurgence in Bangkok and the rest of the country seems to be all over (but not before a bunch of fires were set in BKK in a big commercial district. Here are some pictures and a song.
Between living at the temple, restrictions on travel and other stuff, I haven't seen any other volunteers in, yow, over 2 months. I'm going a little Colonel Kurtz here. Social gatherings are on the horizon though, and it will be nice to speak English with other native speakers.

It's starting to rain more frequently, though it still gets plenty hot. Things are turning green, and I need to check when Kru Nuun is going to plant rice.

Um, Peace?

Monk'd!

2010-05-20T03:02:00.000-07:00

On April 29th, I went over to Pa and Mae’s house bright and early. Pa was getting ready for his usual weekend group of students who come over to study English, and the house was full of relatives (she’s the youngest of 12, and with cousins and nephews and nieces, her family tree is rather impressive). They were making food and ornaments for my ordination celebration [gnaan bpuat].

I took a seat with a group of women on the living room floor and began wrapping slices of banana, uncooked sticky rice and peanuts in banana leaves to be cooked later (this is apparently an important treat for ordinations). Eventually I was called away to help Pa teach while he coordinated something else outside.

When I got outside, men were setting up canopies and tables under them, as well as Pa’s karaoke setup. A couple men were splitting poles of bamboo and making a big ornamental bed, and another group was splitting and scooping out a huge pile of coconuts. I entertained kids for a little while. Then kids went home and the back of the house got taken over with out-sized cooking equipment.

By this time (as I may have implied) quite a few more relatives had shown up and preparations really got under way. A whole pig had been acquired for the occasion (and I mean whole) and about a dozen people went to work separating the different cuts of meat, slicing intestines and skin (to be fried for laab), saving blood, and I don’t even know what else. I got to see the kidneys, and a whole liver, and the pig’s face and watch while they cut the flesh off the tail. If you’re curious, a whole pig is 5,500 Thai baht, a bit over $150. It was my job to distribute whiskey to the people working.

Then we had lunch.

They day continued about that way. I continued to make social rounds, sitting with Pa at a table with a group of men talking and drinking. Pause. While sitting at this table, a number of people selling things came by (I guess when they see celebrations when they ride by on their motorcycles, they stop to check things out), like lottery tickets and peanuts. One guy pulled up and showed us a huge mass of honeycomb in a plastic bag full of honey that he had inside a bucket. Negotiations were made and a price of 100 baht a bottle (that’s 3-ish dollars) was decided upon. He started pulling empty whiskey bottles out of a shoulder bag and pouring the honey from a corner of the bag that was cut off, then rubber-banding a piece of plastic over the top. He said he could get about 10 bottles out of the piece of honeycomb he had, and he sold 5 or 6 bottles while he was there. I think the best part was watching people hand him shots of local whiskey (sticky rice moonshine) as he poured the honey. I think he had 3 shots and a cigarette. Then he hoped on his motorcycle and took off. And now I have one of the bottles in my cupboard.

Later in the afternoon I did a bit of prep stuff (studied some of the Pali I would be saying a bit more, that’s the language all the monk chanting stuff is in, so it felt a lot like studying Hebrew for a Bar Mitzvah). We also made epic quantities of Kanom Baat, another traditional ordination treat. We boiled rice in a huge pan until it was very well done, then added all the coconut that had been shredded in the morning and several kilos of raw cane and palm sugar, all the while stirring the concoction with the stems from palm fronds (it was a two-person stirring job, and went in shifts). It comes out like a really thick, sticky pudding. Tasty. We made like 40 trays of it and gave some to everyone who visited the next day.

Then in the evening I took advantage of my last chance to drink whiskey and sing and dance for a while (though I did so in moderation, jing jing).

At 9 the next morning, we went to the temple by Pa and Mae’s house and I had my head and eyebrows shaved. The hair was all collected in a big lotus leaf (though I’m not sure what they did with it). It was pretty cool. All the people who came all took a turn cutting my hair, and then pouring water over me. Then I was dressed all in white and we gave some respect to Buddha.

Then I got loaded in the back of a pickup truck (I sat in a big wooden chair, and Pa and another guy held umbrellas over me) while another pickup truck with big speakers in the back played loud Thai music. All the people who had come with us got in front of the trucks and we proceeded on a tour around the village, with everyone in front dancing and drinking and picking flowers. I think we did that for the better part of two hours. And don’t worry, people brought whiskey to my umbrella bearers, and at some point they traded places with other people so they could dance, too.

When we got back to the house, I took up residence in what became my corner of the living room. The bamboo bed (it was purely ornamental) was covered with all the things that I would be using as a monk (my robes, my baat [the bowl monks use when collecting alms], etc.) and some banana tree-based sculptures were there, too, though I still don’t understand the symbolism behind them (no one I’ve asked has actually known either). I was given lunch (I had to eat alone, that is, not from communal dishes). After everyone ate, we did one of the banana leaf sculpture chanting things and I gave a blessing (the one I’d been practicing) over the microphone.

The party continued outside, but I spent the rest of the day in my corner of the living room, accepting gifts (people give money to help cover the expenses of the celebration) and bestowing blessings. The party continued outside, and people came and went. Mae sat with me for most of the day, and explained to me that staying in my little space was meant to acknowledge the discomfort and suffering and hard work I have inflicted upon my parents. And not that I have been a terrible child or anything, but in having children, parents sacrifice some of their freedom and take on more responsibility. Not being able to go do stuff was to help me practice patience.

So I sat in my corner, and I slept in my corner.

Interesting note, Mae invited 60 or 80 people (mostly family and teachers), but in the ledger Mae kept (tracking expenses and donations and people, she’s all organized like that), there were I think just over 170 donations, and presumably most people who gave something didn’t come alone. So that’s pretty cool. It felt really good to see so many people coming out to support me for whatever reason, whether they just wanted to see a farang with a shaved head giving blessings or because they know me personally and wanted to share the event. I liked it.

The next day (that’s May 1st) around 1 in the afternoon I got loaded into a pickup (I wasn’t supposed to walk) and was taken 50 meters to the temple. I did some “repeat after me” stuff and answered some questions and traded my white clothes for orange robes, and I was a monk! We took a bunch of pictures, then people started leaving, and eventually it was just me and the fam and Jay (he was my kanyom, the kid who hangs out with me and runs errands for me, like buying ice; he volunteered). And then eventually the fam left.

For five days I stayed inside the temple. For the same reasoning as the staying in the corner of the room. I got up at about 5:30 and took a bath, then swept the building I was staying in (the main building with the big Buddha statue). Then I meditated for a while (usually 40-50 minutes) and waited until Gam brought me breakfast. I’d eat and we’d talk for a while. It was interesting, because the interactions had to be “proper,” which meant no touching (avoid my robes brushing against her or something, we kept our distance) and our conversations were reserved. But it was still nice.

Then she’d go home and I’d wash my spare set of robes, then hang out with the Nen for a while. Nen are the boys who live at the temple for whatever reason and act as novice monks. All the Nen at that temple were there to be taken care of and attend the monk school. They were an interesting group. On the one hand, they were perfectly typical 11-13 year olds with all that that implies, but at the same time they observed a set of rules and way of life (to at least some degree).

At around 11:30, Gam brought me lunch and we’d hang out a bit more, then she’d go home and I’d meditate again. After noon, monks aren’t supposed to chew anything (though that wasn’t observed at that temple and they ate dinner together, though I followed the rule, figuring since I was only a monk for 15 days, I could do everything all “riap roi”), so I drank a lot of water and soy milk. I wrote in my journal a bit, and sat and thought a lot. I started getting bored on about my third day and started reading my book (I took Les Miserables, which I’d already started). In the evening I bathed again and meditated one more time. Members of the extended family came to sit in the evenings, and Pa slept in the temple with me.

On the morning of the 6th, my initial confinement was lifted and there was a short ceremony and special breakfast at the wat with all the monks (counting me and the Nen, 9 of us) present. Then my day was exactly the same as the previous days, except that I went for a short walk with the Nen in the afternoon to get some drinks for the monks.

The morning of the 7th I collected alms [bin ta-baat] for the first time. We took off our shoes and walked around the village while one of the Nen went ahead banging a little gong (to let people know we were coming). Then when people came out to the side of the road (or yelled for us to stop if they weren’t quite ready, we’re pretty laid back up here in the North) we’d stop, they’d put the food in our big bowls or in the cart Jay pushed along behind us, and we’d give a blessing. Then we’d keep walking. It was way cool. When we got back to the temple, we ate breakfast, and the rest of the day went pretty much the same as before, though I ate lunch from the leftovers.

On the 8th, I bin ta-baat-ed one more time, then Pa took me to my own village (I’m sure I’ve mentioned before that he lives in a village about 1km from my own) where I moved into MY local wat. And continued doing about the same thing I had been for the past week. The only real difference was that every evening around 7 and every morning around 5:30 we would “Tam Wat.” All the Nen and the monks who were around (I don’t know where the ones who didn’t come were) would get together and do some group chanting. There was a book, and I tried to follow along, and in the slow parts I did alright (it felt like good reading practice), and when I inevitably got lost when they got into the fast chanting towards the end, I’d just close the book and put my hands together. In the evenings, after Tam Wat-ing, Pra Kruu (that’s how the head monk is referred to) showed me new methods of meditating. It was way cool. I especially liked the walking meditations.

Bin ta-baat-ing in my village was cool. I am a more generally recognized face there, and I saw a lot more people I knew. I feel like it was a good means of further integrating myself into the community, and I was proud that I was able to do the two blessings I learned.

One morning we went to a gathering (as I understand it was a general, making merit ceremony) where we were fed (feeding monks is a big deal). At the end, Pra Kruu grabbed the microphone and told everyone that I would teach English to their kids at the temple on Sundays. Whups! Kinda wished he’d run that by me beforehand. But no biggie. It’s pretty clear that no one is super serious about anything here, and I’d like to give it a shot and see if any kids actually show up (and if not, I’m sure Pra Kruu will play English lesson with me). But it was funny.

Then one day (the 15th), I was done. At 1 in the afternoon there was a brief ceremony where I did some more “repeat after me” chanting and reviewed some of the stuff I had learned at the wat (mostly just the meditations) and changed back into regular clothes, then was ferried back home.

Having written this all, this is definitely mostly just a journal entry of what happened. And that’s all I’m going to give you. All the quiet time I spent sitting and thinking without all the distractions I typically impose upon myself, that was for me. But it was nice, and if you get a chance, I’d highly recommend taking a break from everything that you usually do and find a spot and sit quietly and just let your mind wander for a while. Speaking of which, have I told you the difference between meditation and sitting quietly? Meditation (to me) is when you try to unfocus your mind and disassociate from yourself and everything. You actively try not to think. Sitting quietly looks pretty much the same from the outside, except you impose no restrictions on yourself. You give your mind free reign to go where it may, and sometimes you come to a revelation, or solve something that’s been bothering you (or identify what has been bothering you) or come up with an idea for a lesson plan (or what have you), or get side-tracked and think about that movie you watched last week. They’re both awesome.

And now people call me Nan Eli (Nan being the northern way of referring to someone who has been a monk). I’ll post pictures soon. Gam managed to take something like 1,100 photos, though, which is a little intimidating.

SU SU!

Oh, and while I was spending all that peaceful, quiet, introspective time at a Buddhist temple or two, Thailand continued to embroil itself in insurrection. Hm. At least it looks like it MIGHT be wrapping up now…

PEACE (that’s an order, not a request)
Nan Eli

Surreality

2010-04-23T18:03:00.000-07:00

So I understand that the situation in Bangkok has gained more international attention now as violence has escalated, and I thought I'd share a bit about what it's like to be in a nation where there is such civil unrest.

But before I go into my perceptions, I'll give you all the best, un-biased run down of what's up that I can. Feel free to check facts for yourself, I'm no news/politics junkie.

So a few years ago, Prime Minister Thaksin was in charge. He gained the support and love of most of rural Thailand by providing funding for projects in the countryside and (as far as I understand) NOT simply ignoring the country-folk. At the same time, however, he was involved in some shady dealings in the city and got into trouble for something financial. At that point half (I think) of his assets (which are in the billions, USD) were frozen and he fled the country to avoid a jail sentence. He is now living abroad under self-imposed exile, though it sounds like he's found plenty to keep him busy.

As I understand, Thaksin's successor, PM Abhisit was appointed, not elected, and his apparent failure to attend to the needs of the people in the country-side (and that IS the majority of the Thai population) has generated a lot of discontentment and calls for the re-instatement of Thaksin (which I'm pretty darn sure won't be happening) or to have a legit election. Thus we have two factions, the Red Shirts (who support Thaksin) and the Yellow Shirts (who like how things are now). The Red Shirts are basically the common people from the country, and the Yellow Shirts are the city-folk and more affluent.

Over the past few years, there have been clashes (the Red Shirts shut down the international airport in Bangkok for a while shortly before I came here, and there were demonstrations in Bangkok last spring), which have apparently culminated in the current events. What is going on now started out peacefully enough about a month ago(Red Shirt party tried to get enough people in BKK to block traffic in some key areas, peaceful, light rallies). It escalated a bit when a bunch of protesters donated blood to be thrown on the residence of the current PM and some grenades were fired into an army base. At first, the protesters were tolerated, and peaceful dissolution was attempted. Now the Thai government has declared a state of emergency and called for the end of the protesting, granting the police and military permission to use force as needed. Also members of the Yellow Shirt group have joined in, and the violence has increased, from shooting marbles with slingshots to increasing use of explosives. People have died, people have been injured, and the Peace Corps has (quite appropriately) banned all non-essential travel into BKK, and the US State Department has issued a travel advisory to American travellers.

So what's it like for me to be here now? Surreal is an excellent word.

In my village, things are quiet. A fair number of people have their red flags out, red-supporting shirts, and sometimes when I go to the market, people will have their radios on listening to people making speeches and they (the people at the market) will cheer every now and then. And maybe that's because my community is fairly homogenous. I did have an interesting talk with a local Yellow Shirt supporter who criticized the Red Shirts for being too reactionary and not using critical thinking, but I also feel like he keeps his views to himself for the most part, so as to avoid conflict. I've heard several false reports from community members that, "The Red Shirts won! Abhisit is resigining!" but this does not appear to be the case from the news sources I've checked out.

So it's interesting. There are definitely a LOT of layers to everything that is going on, as I feel would be the case in such circumstances anywhere, but because this is Thailand and things can be very subtle and indirect (not that blowing shit up is very subtle and indirect, but the underlying-underlying motives might be), those layers can be tough to perceive (especially for me, with less than perfect Thai and an imperfect understanding of the political situation). I think that within the Red Shirt party, there are a lot of conflicting interests (the people who had only wanted a peaceful demonstration, and the agitators who were hoping and waiting for things to escalate). And then there are all the Red Shirt supporters who stayed at home, some of whom support things openly (with their flags and shirts and loud radios), and some of whom do so quietly, and those who maintain their indifference.

So my plan is to be like my neighbors. I keep my political opinions to myself (though every now and then I get a chance to discuss things with people in private settings and it's interesting to hear their views), and I'll keep checking headlines. There really isn't much more I can do besides hope that things don't get too much more out of hand. I do have a meeting in BKK coming up in about 4 weeks, so if this could all get cleared up before then I'd really appreciate it, OK guys?

So if you see headlines about violence in Thailand, you don't need to say, "Oh my goodness! Eli is in Thailand! I wonder if he's OK?!"
OK?

*heart*
Eli

Did you know?

2010-04-19T18:38:00.000-07:00

Did you know that the Thai word for "orgasm" is the same as (one of) the word(s) for "awesome?" Now I understand why my girlfriend used to say "Orgasm!" when something cool happened. And really, it makes perfect sense. Can you name something more awesome than an orgasm?

Anyhow, that seemed like a better opening than another stupid apology for tardiness in blog posts. Without re-reading all of my blogging to this point in time, I feel like my entries have evolved from descriptions of what I'm doing (though those are still included when cool things go down), and shifted more towards my thoughts, impressions and epiphanies. And I just had me one of them epipha-thingies.

The thing that is so cool and bad-ass about the Peace Corps, at least for this volunteer, is the two year commitment. It would be very difficult to put myself into the circumstances I find myself in any other way, with a reasonable amount of language and cultural instruction, followed by a work placement in a cool rural community. And I get to do this for two years. After about 6 months, I was feeling like, "yeah, I've seen it all." Nothing was making me say, "Oh my goodness! I can't believe things like this are happening!" And that feeling has simply continued to grow. I think that realization became most apparent to me after my family's recent visit (Hey family! Thanks for coming! It was great to see you!). I kept thinking, "Yeah, this is probably cool for them, but it all seems so typical to me," which led to me always wondering if I was doing my part as a host (I'm sure the fam will say "Of course you did, Eli!" but I still have to wonder).

And anyway, my new epiphanimity is that this sense of jaded-ness is actually an amazing thing. If I were only here for 6 months, I never would have got past that, "Holy crap! I'm in Thailand! Everything is so amazing!" state of mind, and yeah, I would have had an awesome time and gone home and told everyone about how cool it was to be a volunteer in Thailand for 6 months, but...

Here I am now at a little over a year in, with about another year (of Peace Corps service, already thinking about possibly staying beyond that) to go, and I'm well past that, "Holy crap!" phase. I feel like I can view things from a fairly Thai point of view, my communication skills continue to improve, I have established myself as some sort of member of the community, and I get to do all of this for a substantial amount of time still.

And that's why Peace Corps is cool.

And now I'll wish everyone a happy Songkran (remember that crazy water-fight New Year's party I talked about last year?) and let you all know that I will be shaving my head an eyebrows and donning orange robes for a few weeks shortly as I become a monk (something pretty much all young men do for a brief period sometime in their 20s). It'll be like that Bar Mitzvah I never had. I'm even learning to chant in a dead language!

PEACE!

What the heck have I been up to?

2010-03-16T19:46:00.000-07:00

The school year has been winding down here, and this is the last week for students, just wrapping up testing and doing celebration stuff now, my 4-6 graders will be taking a trip to the beach near Bangkok next week (though I shan't be going, as I will be busy greeting my family at the airport! Whoop!), and everything school is pretty much over until mid-May.

I have had a conversation with the folks at the Aw-Baw-Daw and explained my conflicting feelings and reached a resolution. That is, the Nayoke (head honcho) had twisted my desire to teach an English class once a week to interested adults in the community once a week into my coming to the Aw-Baw-Daw to teach the staff there three times a week. At first this was OK, but as time went on, I grew frustrated as it became apparent the staff had no real interest in practicing English, and though I enjoyed hanging out with them, my three afternoons a week there were preventing my participation in other activities, and the farang in me made it difficult for me to not do what I had agreed to do. Anyways, I pretty much laid this all out, trying hard to emphasize that I wasn't angry about this, but that it was a situation for me, and ended up with a happy arrangement to come hang out when I'm free, but not to sweat the teaching stuff and the schedule.
Then I went to the sports day with the Aw-Baw-Daw staff and about 50 people from all over the tambon (as well as the other 7 tambons) and had a blast playing relay games and winning more medals than some countries got in the olympics (I'm assuming there were some that got zero, right?).

I have found an outlet for my Dance Dance Revolution prowess in the local aerobic dance group (a group of mostly mee-baans [housewives, though I'm sure most of them do work outside the house, too]). This is similar to the aerobic Issan dance group I stumbled across a while back, but it's even closer to my house, and involves loud techno remixes of techno songs (only in Thailand, eh?) instead of traditional-er music. And they meet every evening. So I'd like to make a more regular appearance there.

I also found out that one of my matayom 1 students (that's equivalent to 7th grade, I was told she is 15 years old) is getting married (well, she actually got married the other day), which threw me for a loop. I got laughed at by some other teachers for being surprised, and at first I thought this meant that they weren't surprised and were totally cool with it, but it just occured to me that laughing at an uncomfortable situation is a very Thai thing to do, so perhaps it's more like that instead of Eli being the silly farang.
Anyhow, the rumor was that her husband is a 24 year old soldier (her being 15 sits slightly better with me than my original thinking that she was 13, though I'm not exactly sure of her [or his] age). When I first mentioned this to some of you folks in the states, it was questioned if this was an arranged marriage (because why else would a kid get married?!), but I'm 99% sure this wasn't the case. I haven't heard anything about arranged marriages here, though men do pay a dowry to the family of the girl. What I do know is that this particular girl had numerous boyfriends (my counterpart was pointing out all the broken-hearted boys at school) and it is my (completely unfounded) assumption that she managed to get pregnant (I couldn't come up with a tactful way to inquire about this), and that marriage was the best way to save face.

So, "Wow."

My frustration with my counterpart at the matayom school kinda peaked, as I realized that this year at that school has essentially been a complete waste of my time, and I have vowed to myself to do things differently.
I have heard other volunteers express complaints about their counterparts expecting the volunteer to do all of the teaching on their own and frequently leaving the room while the volunteer teaches, effectively eliminating the sustainability aspect of the arrangement. I have experienced the opposite, with her expressing no desire for me to teach and more or less ignoring or twisting my advice and suggestions into something very nearly worthless. I feel like there is a lot of greng-jai between us, and maybe this is not really the way she wants things to be, but we have established such a routine of me doing nothing that I really feel bound by it. My decision for next year is that, in my most face-saving way, I am simply going to tell her that I will teach 2 days each week I am there and perpare for those lessons independently, and supply her with copies of my planning. Any additional time I am there, I would like to work with other teachers in the school and prove to them that I am not the incompetent, worthless lump that I feel they perceive me to be.

Hoo. That's a bit of a rant, ain't it? I'm serious about teachers thinking I'm incompetent, though. I think that they think I cannot speak a lick of Thai and hardly attempt to communicate with me, either addressing me with the most basic questions and statements ("It's hot, isn't it?" "Are you hungry?") or not even attempting to speak to a non-native speaker and going along in Thai that I have no hope of following, addressing my counterpart to translate to me instead. And the shock another teacher expressed when she saw me practicing reading and writing Thai and her confusion when I asked how to spell a word (she started trying to explain what it meant, then instead of telling me how to spell it, she wrote it down for me to copy). I dunno. Maybe it's not so much that they have a low opinion of me, but that I have a low opinion of my role at that school and I'm imposing that low opinion on other people. Next year WILL be better.

This weekend I will travel to my friend's site in Issan to celebrate with him as he becomes a monk for a little while (something that all young Thai men do and many volunteers decide to do). I am planning on doing this myself, as well, in October. This will be my first "bpuat pra" (monking) since training, and my first one for a volunteer ever, so I'm looking forward to it.

Anyhow, I'm at school right now (I played some game with kids already and there's no teaching happening today), and I think someone else is waiting for the computer, so I'm gonna wrap this up.

Hey family! C'mon already! Though I'm sorry that the timing is corresponding with the air being really bad (I hope it rains in the next week! Though it hasn't really rained for months now), and it's too bad you're leaving before Song Kran, but it's all good, na? I'm really looking forward to seeing you!

*heart*
Eli

a death in the family

2010-02-15T22:42:00.000-08:00

So I've been to a few funerals since being here, but yesterday my neighbor (a teacher at one of my schools and a house I've eaten dinner at more than a few times) 's mother died. This didn't come as a huge shock as she was 92 and her health had been failing for some time. Anyhow, I am now in the process of developing a better understanding of the Thai funeral and Thai attitudes towards death in general. (People have asked me quite a few times how the Thai funeral compares to an American one, I respond by saying that I've never been to an American funeral, but because America is a melting pot of cultures, religions and whatnot, there isn't exactly a standard)

Anyhow, the first and most striking difference is that at Thai funerals, people don't "grieve." I think I've mentioned before (but I'll do so again) that in Thai, the word "serious" is a bad thing, and if people do their best to be "no serious." This applies to death as well. I'm sure the advanced age of the deceased and that it wasn't terribly shocking helps put people at ease, but even at funerals for relatively young people I've been to, I haven't really seen any great outpouring of bereavement.

I don't, however, want to imply that this funeral was a wild party with karaoke and dancing girls.

When I arrived yesterday evening there were only a handful of people there (yesterday was the first of four days). I greeted my neighbor and was taken into the house to wai the buddha figure and the deceased (there was a photo of her and incense and flowers to "offer" to her, I think the body was in a casket buried under flowers, but I'm not sure). Then I sat outside with some other people who had showed up. And things were pretty mellow. People asked me about what kinds of Thai food I can eat, my girlfriend, my age (pretty typical stuff) and other conversations seemed pretty comparable. The only way to tell that this event was different than others was that (most) people were dressed in black and white (though dark jeans and t-shirts were pretty common). More people arrived, snacks were had, and eventually a group of monks showed up. The monks did a series of chanting prayers, people wai-ing while they chanted, though many conversations continued through it, and nobody shushed the kids who were playing and trying to get me to talk to them. Then people sat and talked for a while, then started going home. When I walked back to my house there was a group of men drinking and gambling.

This morning I went over before school and ate rice soup with a group of people.

Anyway, as far as belief-y type stuff, it's important for the family of the deceased to give lots of things away (make donations) in response to a death. The belief being that everything that they give away, the deceased will have in the afterlife (so the make donations and gifts of food, clothes, refrigerators, gazebo-type things called "sala"s. I'm under the impression that the next few days will be similar, and I've heard that food, drinking and gambling will be more prominent (or maybe that depends on what time I arrive).

All in all, it's pretty interesting stuff, and I really like the choice to essentially honor the deceased's life and try to make them comfortable in the afterlife rather than mourning their death.

PEACE

P.S. Completely unrelated, but I meant to mention it a while ago in a random blog post I never made, but my family here is genuinely afraid that if they close the windows and turn off the air conditioning in the car, they will die of suffocation. I tried explaining that this was not the case, as when it is cold in America and we don't open the windows or have the fan on, we don't die. They said that's because American cars are different from Thai cars. That was while we were driving in their Isuzu. I just thought it was amusing, and slightly annoying on the mornings when it's actually kinda cold here.

My most awesome experience?

2010-02-03T01:43:00.000-08:00

Today I headed to the Aw Baw Daw at 3:30 for what has now become my regular, thrice-weekly English lesson. When I arrived, people were saying something using the word "fei" (I think it was fei mai). This word has many uses, and refers to everything involving fire, light and electricity. At first, from the pantomimes, I thought they were talking about a fireworks display, but it quickly became apparent that they meant something was on fire that wasn't supposed to be. I had been wondering about the presence of the big red tanker truck that was always parked at the ABD, and I became illuminated as three office guys threw on their flip flops and headed out the door, asking if I wanted to come as they went.

So, we hopped in the cab and roared off. And they were probably the most laid back fire crew in the world. As we went, one of the guys kept playing with siren, honking it at girls and pretty much anyone else, and the other two cracked jokes back and forth and asked me how to say some fireman terminology in English.

At first I had been under the impression that a house was on fire, and my head filled with visions of running into a burning building and manning a big hose and I was excited and nervous, since I really wanted to help, but had no idea of what to do or how to do it.

But that didn't really matter. We shortly arrived at the site of the fire about 10 km away. Or rather, we arrived near it. It turned out that it was actually a field that was burning, explaining why there wasn't a great sense of urgency. Fields are regularly burned here (it was fallow), and the only thing that made this special was that apparently it wasn't intentionally set ablaze, and presumably steps to control the fire had not been prepared.

Anyhow, we got to the end of the little side road and started out onto the rice fields, but the guy driving decided the truck wasn't really the right vehicle to navigate the humps between rice paddies (typically gone over by motorcycles, pickups and tractors). So we sat for about 10 or 20 minutes looking at the smoke a few hundred meters away contemplating what to do. They made a few calls and talked to some onlookers to try to figure out if there was another way. They even had a guy scout ahead on his motorcycle to see if the way got better or worse (it got worse). Then we turned around and kept on going down the road to a house that had a private road out to the fields, closer to the fire. They scouted that road, decided it was too narrow, made the decision that a tractor was better equipped to deal with this fire (it could push dirt around and whatnot, and actually get to the fire), then we headed back to the ABD. Honking at pretty girls and joking all the way.

The only disappointing thing about the experience was that they wouldn't let me get up on the back of the truck to wave at my students playing volleyball when we went past my school. Actually, one guy was all for it, but the other two said it was dangerous. They did tell me they'd call me for the next fire, though.

We got back to the office about the time we usually wrap up the English session. I hung out for a few minutes (to see if the whiskey they'd been joking about would turn up) then headed home to tell everyone about my awesome experience.

So yeah. My status update is that things are going really well for me. I'm still doing more outside of my house and spending more time in my community, and I'm feeling really good about it. I wouldn't have gotten to ride in a fire truck if I hadn't started doing this, and I'd probably still feel frustrated and question my presence here.

Whoop whoop! (That's my fire truck whoop.)

One year in and feeling...

2010-01-27T23:42:00.001-08:00

Today is the day that marks the completion of my first year of Peace Corps service in Thailand. That’s twelve months in the Land of Smiles. Fifty-two weeks of volunteer work. Three-hundred-sixty-five days surrounded by a foreign language and culture. Eight-thousand-seven-hundred-sixty hours trying to understand my role here. Five-hundred-twenty-five-thousand-six-hundred minutes of shifting moods and feelings. Thirty-one-million-five-hundred-thirty-six-thousand of the most challenging, rewarding, confusing, boring and exciting seconds of my life.

And I suppose that any of what I’ve done and experienced here alone might not be that monumental in terms of my life experience, but taken as a whole, this has probably been the most extraordinary period of my life to date. And I really like that word, “extraordinary.” Because it doesn’t really FEEL extraordinary anymore. I know I’ve talked before about how nothing here really fazes me anymore, but that’s because being here has changed me, not anything about the things around me changing. And I wouldn’t say that any of the changes have been particularly drastic. I’m a little more patient (though I thought I was pretty patient before), a little more “go-with-the-flow,” and I move a bit slower (though I think that has as much to do with adjusting to the weather and traveling with people with shorter legs than any internal change).

I feel incredibly fortunate that my personality seemed to fit into Thai society really well. I may not always know what’s going on, but I’m comfortable and like the people around me, and I feel like I fit in pretty well. I definitely know that isn’t the case for every volunteer, there are many still trying to adjust to “Thai people,” and I’m glad my experience seems easier than theirs.

I think I’ve been hung-over here as many times as I had in the rest of my life, and I’ve sung lots more karaoke than I ever had before. I’ve taken far more cold showers and pooped without sitting down more than ever before, too. I talk to my neighbors more than I ever did in the states, with minimal communication skills to boot.

But that’s all about my year in summation. I bet you want to hear more about my current state after my first year here. And I guess the best way to tell about that is to recap my time at site since returning from Bangkok.

I arrived back in my town before it was light out. I actually had a pretty comfortable trip back and managed to sleep a bit, so I wasn’t too disoriented, but I was still getting off a bus at quarter to six. I wandered around the market for a little while until my co-teacher/father arrived and took me back to the village. I spent a few hours at his house before I headed back to my own, stopping at my market to get some oranges. I got back to my house, and then… I kinda hit a low spot.

For a few weeks before I had left, there was water from a mystery source pooling on my kitchen floor, and my internet had been down for a long time. I had gotten used to both of these things and hadn’t been terribly concerned about either, but having just come home from a pleasant week in a pretty comfortable setting, they were pretty frustrating. I spent a few hours in my house, trying to adjust to being back at home, but the longer I was there, the more frustrated I felt. Finally, I realized that being in my house was the source of my frustration, so I decided to go for a walk.

I started walking with the mindset that I would walk until I felt better. I began walking with no particular direction, hoping to interact with some of my neighbors and feel like a part of the community a bit. Unfortunately, I couldn’t really find anyone who wanted to try and have a real conversation, and I ended up looking inward, trying to analyze the source of my frustration. Let’s just say that not being able to find someone to talk to made things worse, as it only made me feel less connected to my community. I began to question many things, but in general it was a, “What am I really doing here?” kind of time. For some time I have been rather dissatisfied with the way I spend my free time. I find that much of it is spent inside my house doing my own thing (playing on the internet or watching a movie or reading or listening to music) or at my co-teacher’s house in the next village. Sure I exchange pleasantries with my neighbors, but how much a part of the community am I really? How much do they know me, and how much do I know them? I had made resolutions to be more engaged in the past, but I had never really effected a real, lasting change in my behavior.

It was about this point when my mood bottomed out. My stomach was in knots, I was short of breath, and on the verge of tears. I stopped for a moment and looked around, found myself on a deserted road with houses on one side and rice fields on the other. I considered going home to sulk, and then remembered my intention to keep walking until I felt better, and I certainly hadn’t achieved that yet. So I took some deep breaths, tried to calm down, faced forward and kept walking. And maybe my mood didn’t lift right away, but I got my feelings under control and was able to think rationally.

I had a lot to think about from the Mid-Service Conference, hearing about everyone else’s successes and difficulties. We had a goal setting session and I declared that I wanted to be more involved with my community, to find a balance in how I spent my free time. A balance between being in my house, my co-teacher’s house and engaging with my community. But I was also faced with a fear that no matter what goal I set for myself, as before with any attempt to change my actions, I would simply regress to my current, dissatisfying ways. And that’s when I had my revelation. It’s never too late. Which maybe doesn’t seem like too great a revelation, but when I really thought about it, about what it really means, and means about my Peace Corps service, and what it could mean in terms of life in general, it really did feel like a revelation. As long as I am here and not packing my bags to go home, I can change (or at least TRY to change) anything. And so I did. I made a mental list of things to accomplish the next day, to talk to my landlord about the mystery puddles in my house and broken internet, to visit the Aw-Baw-Daw (local government office) to discuss my idea of working with adults to practice English I’d been kicking around for a while but had avoided doing because I felt either lazy or shy, and visit my village temple. Then I headed back home.

Before I made it to my door, my neighbor from across the road called me over, and before long I was drinking some local whiskey (moonshine made from sticky rice) and finally having that real conversation I’d been looking for.

The next day, I talked to my landlord, visited the Aw-Baw-Daw, and sat at the temple for half an hour or so. I have gone on a number of walks and had conversations with people I had never really talked to before. I have started trying to learn my students names (something I neglected to do at first since it’s hard for me to remember Thai names and I work with some 200 students, and I had resigned myself to not knowing their names as I was somewhat embarrassed to admit I didn’t know them, though I’m sure they knew I didn’t know), and I am now starting to call a handful of students by name and regularly ask students their names, even if I have already asked before. Eventually people started coming around to fix my plumbing and internet. After a handful of fruitless trips to the Aw-Baw-Daw I have started to practice English with a group of grown-ups. I’ve slept in my own house (as opposed to my co-teacher’s) far more than usual, and I spend less time hiding inside my house. In general I’m feeling much better about myself and my position here.

All that’s left now is to keep it up.

Su su! (That’s like the “fight fight!” cheer at a sporting event)

Haldo!

2010-01-16T16:33:00.001-08:00

(Saturday January 16, 2010, Thai Time)

Right now, I mean NOW now, as I am writing this, I am sitting in the Bangkok bus station, waiting to go back to my site. I have a few hours to wait, and I'm pretty due for a post, so I'm going to write this now and type it up when I get back home.

I've been here in Bangkok for almost a week for our Mid-Service Conference. Yeah, that's right. MID-Service. Like middle. In truth, it still hasn't quite been a year (that anniversary won't come for 12 more days), and I have about a year and three months to go after that, so it's not exactly mid, but it's pretty mid. Pretty wild, huh?

As far as official Peace Corps functions have gone, this one was very relaxed. I got in monday morning for our medical appointments (a flu shot and quick chat with the PC medical staff), then a dental exam at the hospital. And that was an experience.

A volunteer from the pervious group (will be going back to the states soon) warned few of us about a female dentist from last year who is very concerned about gingivitis and works quite painfully. When I entered the exam room, I noted that my doctor was a woman, she told me she was going to check me for gingivitis, then began carving up my gums. Not only did she dig painfully, but she carried on a conversation with her assistant, not always watching what she was doing. More than once, she (presumably accidentally) dug her tool into the meat of my gums and dragged it up onto the surface of my teeth. In spite of the pain (my hands remained tightly clenched in my lap for the duration), I had to fight to resist laughing when she explained that the blood whenever I rinsed was "because of gingivitis."

When she was finished with my cleaning and exam (this was the first time I'd ever had the actual dentist do my cleaning), she told me my teeth looked good, then launched into a long lecture on what gingivitis was and what it could do, breaking out big models of teeth to illustrate. She wrapped up by telling me not to eat raw meat at my site, because people eat with their hands where I live and doing so could put me at risk to contract hepatitis. And that was my trip to my Thai dentist, my only real dissappointment being that they did not take x-rays.

On Tuesday I went to the dermatologist and had a mole on my back removed (he showed me the removed chunk when I asked about it, which was way cool), which turned out to be, um, NOT melanoma, but at risk to become bad, so I'm glad it got taken off.
On Wednesday, all of us moved from wherever we had been staying (it was up to us during the medical time) to a hotel to have our meetings. And that was all the official business for the first three days of MSC. It was nice to have some free time (or a lot of free time) to re-connect and relax with other volunteers.

Our actual meetings, when they began, were quite laid back, with lots of opportunities for us to share and discuss our experiences, successes and frustrations from our sites. In the evenings we all continued to get our big city fun (though in more, smaller groups than in the past which I found interesting), and I nerded up and played some of the most enjoyable Dungeons & Dragons I have ever experienced with seven other volunteers.

On the last night, I went with five other volunteers (a pretty small, comfortable group for us) to have Muu Ga Ta, which is an awesome meal. They bring charcoal braziers to your table, with metal things that go on top shaped like a big cake pan with the middle area bulged up into a big dome. You pour broth (or maybe plain water, I'm not entirely sure) in the trough around the edge, and get raw meat and vegetables and noodles and sauce from a big buffet. You put chunks of fat on top of the bulge to flavor the water, grill meat on the rest of the exposed bulge (or boil it) and boil vegetables and noodles and meatballs and tofu in the water, making an awesome soupy meal that can just go on and on and on and on and is fun to eat and prepare. And there was a fat guy in neon green tights on a stage singing happy birthday every five minutes or so. He also sang "Zombie" by the Cranberries (a song I'd never heard before coming to Thailand), replacing all of the lyrics with the words "Happy Birthday." It was amazing.

Then we went back to the hotel and had a couple beverages in our rooms (and rounding up some more volunteers) before going down to the hotel bar and singing karaoke until they closed and asked us to leave. Definitely my best karaoke experience to date, and I've had some pretty good ones.

Then today we wrapped things up and one thing led to another and I found myself here, in the cafeteria at the Bangkok bus station (well, one of the bus stations), waiting for my bus. And I will say that this has been my most enjoyable time in Bangkok. Usually I'm anxious to leave after just a day or two, but this time I don't NEED to leave. Although, I do look forward to getting back to my home and not spending anymore money in Pangkok. Hah. That's my new joke that I just made up, and it's funny because "pang" means expensive.

Hey. It's six o'clock. Being the bus station at six o'clock is awesome. Every day on TV and radio (everywhere in the country, on every station) they play the national anthem (at eight in the morning, too, but it's evening now). Back home that doesn't mean much, but at the bus station, with a large group of people, everyone stands and all activity stops for the duration of the song. It's relatively quiet, and you can hear the song clearly. Then it ends and everything resumes as if there were no interruption. Awesome. Literally. Like awe-inspiring.

Anyhow, this relaxed, low-pressure Peace Corps week has felt like a mandatory mental health break, and I've enjoyed it. I've had some enjoyable new experiences in Bangkok and found a few more places and things I like. I've had a good time re-connecting with other volunteers.
The new Peace Corps group will be arriving here soon and I will be a senior volunteer. And that's a trip. I remember meeting volunteers from group 120 and being really impressed with their language skills and their ability to navigate life in Thailand, and soon that will be me. Yow.
I suppose I could say more on that topic, but I feel like I have more reflecting to do and I think I'll save that for my one year anniversary post.

PEACE!

Hello!

2009-12-20T21:40:00.000-08:00

Where to start?

I had a Youth GIG (Global Initiative Group, that's the Peace Corps sub-group that I joined) meeting in Bangkok on the Saturday after Thanksgiving. Several other meetings were being held, and all of the group that came the year before me was in Bangkok discussing the near future as they would be preparing to complete their volunteer service. So we had a Thanksgiving dinner, too.

About a month(?) in advance, one very on-the-ball (not me) made contact with the important people in the Sizzlers of Thailand and arranged for all of us to have a dinner at a particular Sizzler restaurant, and got a 10,000 baht group discount (woot!). That was followed by visiting a few drinking establishments, then a 5am bus back up north (that was a rough morning).

Then December started. Classes rolled along, though preparations for Sports Day became more and more apparent (other volunteers talked about whole days of classes being canceled for practices). I started making plans for some Christmas activities to do with my kids, and then Nathan arrived.

"Wait, what? Who's Nathan?" That's what you may be asking yourself. Nathan is one of my number one homies in all the world. And he is my first visitor (of many I'm sure, right?) from my old life. It's pretty awesome. We spent a couple of days in Chiang Mai getting him acclimated, then headed to Issan to visit a few volunteers to give him a flavor of Peace Corps life, and for me to see some more volunteers situations (and check out the "deep south of Thailand"). It was a great experience. It was very "same same but different," and we got to try eating rat. By the time we were ready to head to my village, I was feeling a little homesick.

Since we've gotten back here, we've spent some time with my counterpart, walked around my village, gone for a sweet bike ride through the farmland, run with my students and eaten a lot of really good food. It sounds like tonight a couple of people who work at my local government office are going to come over to practice English (which I started doing recently and is a lot of fun), so that should be fun. I figure since Nathan doesn't speak Thai (though he's picking up stuff really well), it will be a good opportunity for them to practice. It was really cool yesterday watching my students talking to him. It made me really proud to see the students having the courage to try talking to a new farang.

And then I decided to do a little update on here. Soon I will have been here for eleven months, and then we will be getting together in January for our mid-service conference right before the one year mark. Yow. Time seems so strange.

Life is pretty strange and awesome, eh?

Loy Katong

2009-11-06T03:17:00.000-08:00

Loy Katong is essentially the Thai Thanksgiving and is celebrated during the full moon in November (if it happens to be a month with two full moons, I guess it happens on the first one). This is when people give thanks to the rivers for the water and way of life they provide.

There are several parts to the celebration, but the big one involves floating lotus-shaped banana leaf constructions with candles and incense on the river, to be done with loved ones ("loy" means float and "katong" is the lotus-craft). Many people make their own katongs, and they range from pretty simple (like the one I made) to ridiculously elaborate.

The other parts of the celebration are the sending off of kom-fei (paper hot air balloons), which looks awesome when everyone does it together and you have a full moon for a back drop; a parade where each village in the area decorates a truck and has a girl (or girls) sit on it who participate in the ensuing beauty contest; and the parade ends at a festival with drinking and singing and dancing and the afore-mentioned beauty contest.

Just thought I'd do a quick little "cultural sharing" post to fulfill that third goal of the Peace Corps mission statement (to share the cultures of other nations with Americans).

E

Laying down the law

2009-11-01T17:45:00.000-08:00

And lay it down thick, I did.

So yesterday, a few neighborhood kids came by. They are kindergarten or first grade students at one of my schools, and they come by to see what the heck I am doing and get me to play with them every now and then (more often lately since they've been on bpit term).

It started out typically enough, with a little banter in our mutually hard to understand Thai, then proceeded to a game of checkers (Thai rules are far superior to American). One girl, however (who wasn't as familiar to me) was being a punk though. At first, she kept stepping on my feet. In the beginning, it was funny and I didn't mind. But then she kept doing it. And I told her to stop. So she started pinching me and pulling my hair. I told her to stop and go away. She kept doing it. I tried to distract everyone by getting out my frisbee, figuring if we all played together, she'd leave me alone. But then she started poking me in the butt (which Thai kids apparently like to do). I told her to stop again, and when she ignored me, I grabbed my toys, walked in my house and shut the door.

They stood outside calling my name for a couple minutes, but I just ignored them. Apparently fearing that I had gone deaf, they opened the door and came inside to yell some more. I walked over, told them to leave, then locked the door.

Then I got out my mandolin (which has sat gathering dust for far too long) and started trying to tune it. And the kids started banging on my window and door yelling my name, asking if I could hear them over and over. Now, tuning the mandolin is hard enough for me, but it was next to impossible with all the interfering noise. And when they didn't stop after about ten minutes, I started to get frustrated. My first inclination was to yell at them, but I quickly decided continuing to ignore was better, but I really didn't want to sit in my fish bowl with them staring and banging and yelling, so by a stroke of strategic brilliance, I went upstairs.

I finally gave up trying to tune the instrument (I don't know if I'm just inept or if the strings warped or something from sitting too long, but as soon as I would think I had it OK and tried to strum, it sounded more like the local dog pack than a purty li'l chord) and just hung out in my room. After a total of twenty or thirty minutes, the kids gave up and went away. Score one for patience.

Now I just hope they have made the connection between my initial decision to go inside and the one girl being naughty and not stopping when I asked her to.

Calm like a bomb.
E

Bpai Tiao!

2009-10-27T21:21:00.001-07:00

Just gonna point out that today officially marks the completion of my first third of my service as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Thailand. If I'd had a bun in the oven when I left the states, it'd be about done by now, what what?

Anyhow, "bpai tiao" is when you go somewhere for fun (as opposed to for seriousness). Sometimes I bpai tiao when I wander around my village, sometimes I bpai tiao when a Thai person says a bunch of stuff to me in Thai, I smile and nod, then am ushered into a car (we call that being "Thai-napped"), and sometimes I bpai tiao when I intentionally decide that I want to travel somewhere and then I do.

During bpit term (the month-ish break between semesters), my fan (that's Thai for "sho'ty") and I did some touring, hitting three points of interest: Ayutthya, Sukothai and Pai.

Ayutthya and Sukothai were pretty amazing. Sukothai was the first official capitol of Thailand when Thailand became Thailand (though they didn't call it Thailand at the Thaim, I mean time), like 700-ish years ago (I think, you might want to wikipedia that, I can't be bothered to fact-check all my claims). The king (or I suppose one of the kings) from that era is responsible for developing the written alphabet. Eventually, a king decided to move the capitol to another big city more centrally located (called Ayutthya) and Sukothai just got old, until it got old enough that people wanted to come see some history and they started to charge money to see it.

Ayutthya was cool to visit for many of the same reasons as Sukothai (old stuff is awesome, and the US doesn't really have anything comparable). In the 1700s, Ayutthya was attacked by the Burmese, and so the ruins are in shabbier shape than those in Sukothai. I don't know a lot of details about this conflict (sorry), but apparently the Burmese were repelled (or shortly thereafter booted out), since Thailand is Thai today. The destruction of Ayutthya prompted the relocation of the capitol to Grungtep (or Bangkok for all you farangs out there).

And now I will take this opportunity to rant for a moment. There is a fairly common practice at tourist attractions to have different (higher) prices for foreign tourists than Thai tourists, like anywhere from 3 to 20 times the Thai price. Usually, the signs announce the entrance fee in English with Arabic numerals, and then in Thai, with Thai numerals, it tells the native entrance fee, so probably many foreign tourists don't realize there is a different price. A small part of me understands this practice, but for the most part, I really don't like it. I think it reflects poorly on the Thai character. It brings the assumption across that all foreigners are rich and that Thai people just want their money. Bah. I have more feelings on the matter, but it's difficult to articulate. In any case, upon becoming a PCV and receiving our Thai ID cards, we were told that by showing those cards, we could expect to pay the Thai price for things, and it has worked at the zoo and national parks, but it did NOT work to see the ruins. Just to let any other volunteers who might read this know. And doing the chicken dance did NOT convince the lady that I was sufficiently Thai, though she did laugh.

After the old stuff, we headed to Pai for a couple days. Pai is a beautiful area in the mountains a few hours north of Chiang Mai, and it made me kinda sad. We stayed at a very nice guest house a few kilometers outside of the town of Pai, which I was quite happy about, as the town of Pai is a perfect example of everything that is wrong with tourism. Fortunately we were not there at the high season (as far as tourism goes) when the population of the area is approximately 90% farang, and it was only 60-70%. Heavens know, when I go visit a foreign country I'd hate to see local people doing anything besides selling me stuff and taking me on ATV tours. There were signs advertising "Go where most tourists don't go!" So everyone who wants to go see "real" Thailand will go there, and then someone will build a 7-11 and a pizza place there, and then they will have to find a new place to take people where "most tourists don't go!" Just a series of rapery until Pai is lame and people don't want to go there, and the tour companies go find a new place to exploit, and then the local people who have centered their economy around catering to tourists have an empty town full of guest houses and farang restaurants (because I hate eating local food when I travel). And I couldn't help but think that probably ten or twenty (or five, I dunno) years ago, Pai was just a quiet farming community until some businessman from Bangkok or Chiang Mai (or a farang businessman is just as likely) happened to wander through and say, "Boy! This would make a great tourist destination!" But our guest house was very nice and we had a great view.

*sigh*

Anyhow, traveling was fun, but it was definitely nice to get back to my site where I'm more than just another farang with money that I need to leave in Thailand.

Eli OUT!

Edit: So, I just clicked the publish button, and I felt kinda bad, like this might sound pretty harsh, and I suppose it is supposed to be a little harsh, but don't let it fool you. I still love this place, and y'all should definitely come visit. I just encourage everyone out there to practice responsible tourism.

Conflicted!

2009-10-07T00:15:00.001-07:00

So I recently figured out why there is a perpetual stream of red ants run the length of my house, up my kitchen counter, around my sink and off to who-knows-where. The answer presented itself in the form of what I had previously thought to be a snarl of leaves of the viney plant growing up the side of my house next to the kitchen window, but upon closer inspection revealed itself to be a nest serving as the terminus for the endless parade of Hymenoptera.

My first thought was, "Swell! Now I can get rid of these guys!" But then I started thinking a bit more. These guys have been around for a decent while now, and while I don't really like them, they bite me very rarely and aren't causing any real problems. Besides, to get rid of them, I would be committing an act of genocide and would surely be attacked in response.

The conclusion that I've reached for now is to let them be and see if I can find someone who really likes kai mot dang (red ant eggs) to come make a meal out of them. That would sit much better with me than simply exterminating them.

Hm. A nice short post about a single topic that isn't just a running narrative. I kinda dig this.

Cheerio!

If blog entries were library books, I'd own this one by now!

2009-09-21T00:03:00.000-07:00

I'd like to say that the reason I haven't posted anything in over a month is because I've been oh so busy. In fact, there have been numerous opportunities, but not much to say until these last couple weeks (and then, opportunities these last couple weeks HAVE been rather scarce). And there came a period where I just didn't feel like writing, and then I started and slowly I dragged this out of myself.

I think I'll start filling y'all in with the sanook sanaan (I'm going to translate that as "party") I attended at one of my schools in honor of myself and another new teacher. I arrived at school around five in the evening and met one of the head monks from the temple next to the school. He was a big jolly guy and greeted me by shaking my hand (which I later learned is- well, not taboo, but un-traditional). At that point, the paw-aw (principal), a few other teachers and a couple older men were the only ones there. They had the new teacher and myself sit in front of a great big centerpiece type thing made out of rolled up banana leaves and flowers (I'm not sure if I have pictures of one or not, but they're pretty common at any sort of Thai ceremony) and a man (not the monk, I think he was a retired monk) recited the long chant to welcome us and bless us and give us good luck. By the time he finished, some more folks had started to show up and people started tying strings on our wrists. By doing so, each person is drawing bad energy out and putting good energy in, and you end up with a massive torque of string wrapped around your arm.

People continued to arrive, and as I understand, they were various important people from the village, though aside from the elected guy, I have no idea who they were. There were also a lot of mee-baans (housewives) in attendance, and several of them thought to mention to me that they had daughters (one actually said, "I have a daughter your age, but she is not beautiful"). The best part of all of this was definitely when Wandii, my counterpart's wife and my mother told me in English, "You are my son, you are part of my family, I love you, I will take care of you." (That's paraphrased, but that was the general spirit of her words). This was especially touching because prior to this I had only heard her say "My name is Wandii, I speak Thai, I don't like to speak English," and a few random words here and there. It made me feel very good.

After a while we were told to take seats at tables and food and whiskey started to flow. The physical education teacher decided he wanted to drink with me and started pouring whiskey pio pio (straight). And didn't stop. I believe I have noted before that drinking with Thai people is dangerous because it is common practice to refill someone's glass for them whenever it is empty, or less than 2/3 full, making it difficult to gauge how much you actually consume (this is anytime, not just with alcohol). I had an idea of what this evening would entail in advance and had decided to allow myself to consume to the point of intoxication. And so I did. I sat at all of the tables, toasted everyone, and eventually sang the Thai song I've been practicing when the karaoke got going hot and heavy. In the end I walked home and regretted my actions in the morning.

MOVING ON!

Shortly after my sanook sanaan the other school I'm teaching at hosted a science exhibition. This was probably one of the coolest things I've seen here. Seriously.

The day began with a lot of that old time religion (it was a wan prat, and this school takes Buddhism pretty seriously) [right now is the Buddhist Lent and every full moon, half moon and new moon is a wan prat, or "monk day," and involves going to temple and making of merit]. On this wan prat, the temple came to the school. Four monks and most of the community came for a morning of prayer and bestowing food and gifts upon the local temples. Naturally, as soon as I arrived my paw-aw (principal) had me come up in front of everyone to sit with him (I'm getting used to this kind of treatment, though I still feel weird about it, but it's kinda fun sometimes). After the chanting and speeches and whatnot were over, the science extravaganza began. Began with some kids from another school in the area doing a sweet dance with drums and cymbals and play-fighting! And then some grown-ups from the area who are into model remote-controlled airplanes showed off their stuff. It was pretty cool, but what really struck me was how excited people were about this. It also made me realize that in my time here at site, I haven't seen any machines in the sky. Would an airplane flying over be a big deal out here? I am pretty sure the majority of my neighbors have never flown. Anyhow, I really appreciated the purity of the audience's wonderment. Not jaded at all.

When that was over, the students spent the rest of the morning going around and looking at projects they had made. A group of my matayom 3 (that's like 9th grade) boys built a 3-person bicycle that people were riding around (of COURSE I went for a ride!). In the field, students were blasting off water rockets they had built from soda bottles. There were a few other stations with pretty typical experiment things, and a math and science fact contest in the cafeteria. And that was it (aside from the snack and drink vendors who showed up). It was simple, it was mellow, and it was fun. The students got to show off some really impressive work they had done (I'm still amazed by the bicycle, and the water rocket launching contraption was super sweet). But most of all, like with the planes, it was the atmosphere that made the day for me.

My next destination was the Youth Conference. I'm pretty sure I have mentioned that I joined the Youth GIG (I'm pretty sure that stands for Global Initiative Group), and our primary responsibility is to host this conference each year. In addition to us, 12 volunteers from all around the country came, each bringing one Thai counterpart (mostly teachers) and two students ages 13-18. The conference was hosted at a little place in the woods (although the "log" cabins were in fact made of concrete) a couple hours outside of Bangkok. The theme of the conference was "Dream, Believe, Achieve," and for 3 days we ran activities designed to get students thinking about their future, setting goals, and thinking about the things they need to do to reach those goals. Which means they built models out of random household items to represent their dreams, played team-building and problem-solving games, did some journaling and debriefing, talked with a panel of Thai professionals and danced silly dances.

I feel like there's a lot more to say about what we actually did at the conference, but to really understand you would have to have been there.

In any case, I feel it was a lot of fun and pretty durn successful. And it's got me thinking about what we'll do next year. There are definitely a lot of things that I think went well that I would like to emulate, and a few spots that I think we could improve upon. But I don't really wanna think too much about that right now. I'll just say that many of the volunteers who were there (myself included) have made comments to the extent that participating in that conference is/has been one of the most fulfilling parts of being a volunteer. This is because it is specific in whom it is targeting and applies to and works directly with those people, and because the benefit is so obvious and visible. A lot of the things that we do as volunteers are questionable as to whether or not they have any real value, and even if there is value, it may be hard to see, or may not show itself for a long time.

The last stop on this whirlwind blog entry will be Doi Tung, the home of the king's now deceased mother. It is located on a small mountain in the north of the province of Chiang Rai. The location is significant because one of the queen mother's (I THINK that's how you refer to her) big projects was to reduce drug trafficking in the Golden Triangle, and she had a lot of projects working with the hill tribes doing things like introducing alternative crops to grow instead of opium. Anyhow, we drove up this mountain and parked. Around the base of the peak (does that make sense? The house was right on the top of the mountain [and by mountain we mean really big hill], and the area just below that is what I'm talking about) is a pretty nice flower garden. I'd love to say more, but I'm really not that critical and couldn't rate it any more specifically than that. I'll post some pictures and you can see for yourself. Then we headed up to the house.

I had no idea what to expect. Pa had used the word "palace" when describing it, and I was kinda dreading something big and gaudy and western-styled. To get up to it, I had to borrow some pants (shorts weren't kosher), then we walked up a long driveway. And I was tremendously relieved. The palace was a big wooden house. We took a tour (the tour was in Thai, but they gave me a pamphlet in English to read with information about the house). The style was a fusion of Thai and Swedish (sounds odd, but the king went to school in Sweden when he was a boy and ma had a place in the mountains), so the aesthetic style was alpine cabin, but the form was more typical of Thai buildings. And all the pine paneling was from recycled packing crates, and on the ceiling of one room, the lights made a scale model of the solar system with everything positioned at the time of the queen mother's birth (astrology is kinda a big deal here). But we weren't allowed to take pictures inside. Then we got to check out the awesome views that she enjoyed and it was time to head home. I would say it was a really good trip, as it bolstered my opinion of the Thai royal family (not that I have any issues with them), as this "palace" could have been as over-the-top as you could imagine, but was actually incredibly modest (a ridiculous house by common standards, but considering royalty had lived there for 10 years, very humble indeed).

And I'm going to call myself caught up for now. There's ALWAYS more that I could say, but I'd say that's enough. I'd like to do some journaling in my personal journal (which I haven't been doing at all), so I think I'll make a date for some forced introspection, say tomorrow evening on the balcony? Great, see you then!

6 Months in the Peace Corps

2009-07-28T02:43:00.000-07:00

As of today, I have been in Thailand for 6 months.

I can definitely say that my experiences are not at all what I expected. Then again, I also tried really hard to come without expectations, so I can't say if that is good or bad.

I don't have anything specific to write about right now, so maybe this is the perfect time to just ramble a bit. It just seems kinda like a momentous occasion, and I really ought to say something.

More than anything, I am impressed by the Thai people. There is a near universal sense of genuinely caring about the well-being of others. Sometimes it can come across as nosy ("Why these fools all up in my business?!"), but it's important to remember that the concern/interest behind the question is legit.
There is also a feeling that everything has value. There is no sense of futility, and nothing is wasted. This means that work is done efficiently and with care. Priorities might get in the way of some projects, like road work but put on hold indefinitely, but others, like planting rice fields and building houses rally the community to roll up their sleeves and help one another.
No cut of meat cannot be turned into dinner (I can't emphasize that enough), and no one is to poor to smile, dance or sing a song.
I'm sure this country has it's share of lazy, ne'er-do-wells, but they just don't stand out here.

On a less positive note, I am becoming more and more disenchanted with the role of English teachers on a continuous basis, especially in the countryside. If one of my students works very hard and learns English well, they can... go to one of the cities and sell crap to tourists? Yes, they could do other, better things, but the likelihood is exceedingly slim. And really, what's wrong with being a farmer? I feel like I'm supposed to think there's something wrong with the way the people in my community live and that I'm here to make everyones' lives better, but I just can't do that. They have been fine for a long, long time without me, and they will continue to be fine after I am gone.
So I have more or less decided to not care if my students learn English or not. Instead, I will spend my required time in the classroom, and try to build my relationships with my co-teachers to develop teacher trainings for non-English teachers. I have posed the idea to my teachers and they sound interested, so now I need to do some brain-storming and planning and keep pushing this. I also have some other ideas, but I think I've talked about these before. And even if I haven't, I want to keep my mind rolling right now.

I am very aware of there being a LOT of things that I WANT to do, and a lot of things that I am NOT doing. But, I need to remember that it's important to take things one step at a time. For example, I have just decided to take a walk around the neighborhood when I'm done writing this. It's something I did a fair amount when I first came here, but I've stopped doing lately. Yes, I've been busy(ish), and after a first meeting, I don't have much to say with my Thai, but, SNAP. It's the effort that counts.

So now I'm antsy to go out for a walk. I will finish with some general thoughts on the Peace Corps.

Does Thailand NEED the Peace Corps? Of course not! Peace Corps is here because Thailand has requested our presence. That is WHY the Peace Corps sends volunteers to countries. Am I going to revolutionize teaching practices and cause a dramatic improvement in student performance in my area? Probably not. It IS possible that I will find one project that will have a positive, lasting effect, and that is my current goal, probably something with a youth group (or maybe agriculturally related). But what I DO know is that when I leave, a few hundred or thousand people will remember a farang who lived with them for a few years. And he didn't come here to find a Thai woman to take care of him, and he made efforts to learn the language, and... I don't know what. That's the part that I think matters. That's the part that I can count on happening. The rest is valid and worthwhile, but whether or not anything actually comes of it is highly questionable.

While I was out of site for the second round of training and everything, we watched the movie "Volunteers" from the 80s, starring John Candy and Tom Hanks who play Peace Corps volunteers in Thailand (though I like to say the ended up in Peace Corps Generic Asia). I don't know that I'd recommend it to anyone who wasn't in the Peace Corps (in Thailand, gah-dai), but it did kind of strike a chord. The project they were sent to their village for was to build a bridge over the river. In the end, they have to blow up the bridge to save the day, and when Tom Hanks apologizes to the villagers, he is informed that nobody cares, because they never really wanted the bridge in the first place! This really emphasizes the need to align your goals. I may come up with the most brilliant project idea ever that will revolutionize and improve everything around me, but if nobody wants what I'm selling, it doesn't matter. And again, who am I to say that my "improvement" will actually make anything better?

We also got the line, "Lying, malignant stink-infested yankee Peace Corps! Ptui!" from the communist contingency in the movie, so that was good, too.

OK. Time for that walk.

PEACE CORPS OUT!
E

Big cities.

2009-07-13T19:45:00.000-07:00

So I've been out for a while, no joke. About 3 weeks. And now I'm back.

I began by heading over to the neighboring province (up in the mountains) to help out with a fellow volunteer's English camp. On the bus ride over, as the bus wound through the mountains, with the grinding of gears and the brief backwards slides when the driver changed gears, I gained some new insight on the practice of slash 'n' burn farming.

When I first visited my site back in March (jeez, I've almost been here for 6 months!), the air was super hazy, and it was explained to me that this was a result of the hill people burning the mountainsides for some free farmland. My initial reaction was, "Man, that sucks. Look at all this smoke. This is bad for the environment, makes the area less beautiful, and it hurts my lungs. Slash 'n' burn is bad."

When I returned to my site a month later to stay, it appeared that the season's burning was finished, as the air was much clearer. At that point, I stopped thinking about the slashing and the burning, as there really wasn't anything to make me think about it. Out of sight, out of mind, no?

And then I took a bus ride through the mountains and witnessed the results first hand.

As I watched a woman holding onto the slope with one hand, surrounded by neat rows of young green shoots, hacking at a stubborn root with a machete, I decided that I could no longer simply say, "Slash and burn is bad." It's just not that simple. Certainly it is not ideal environmentally, but how can you NOT respect and admire the effort, love and tenacity that it takes to clear, plant and harvest a slope that would be difficult to simply walk on, let alone make a living from?

And then I was through the mountains and my thoughts returned to myself. I became more disillusioned with English camps, but I had some good ice cream, so I figure it all balanced out. I've probably said this before, but it seems to me that there are two values to English camps: as a mini-teacher training (where teachers can see some fun activities to maybe use in their class, or course this is completely undermined when they teachers just use the time to hang out and don't observe, which seems to happen as often as not), and to give kids a chance to have FUN speaking English (because they certainly aren't going to learn and retain much from these). It's just frustrating that so much of the focus seems to be on show and ceremony, and knowing the tens of thousands of baht that are spent on these instead of a new computer or something that could have a more practical and long-term benefit. But I'm not going to be able to change that, so I will have to do my best to find ways to add some value to these camps I find myself involved in.

Oh yeah, apparently Michael Jackson died around here, too. It was a weird feeling. He was definitely an important part of my childhood, and I still admire what he did, it's just really too bad things got as weird as they did those last-- 15 years or so? But yes, America, Thailand noticed.

After the camp, my associates and I headed to Khorat for PST2 (the second round of training, still called pre-service training, though we were sworn in a few months ago...). On the way, myself and a number of other volunteers (about a dozen of us) went to check out a national park, intending to camp there for the evening and hike around before 2 weeks of meetings and whatnot.
We made it to the park, but did not end up camping when we found out that campsites were some 20-ish kilometers inside the park, and it was starting to get dark and rainy. So we hitch-hiked a few kilometers back up the road (hitch-hiking is WAY easier here, and feels way less sketchy) and ended up staying the evening at a resort.
The next day we hitch-hiked into the park, checked out a waterfall, became very glad when we saw the campsites (since there was no place to get food or beer which I guess had been expected) then spent the rest of day traveling back to the site of our training. Oh, and everyone got a tiger t-shirt (a sua sua, if you will, the words for tiger and t-shirt being identical except for a difference in tone), except for me, I had a lion shirt (because I'm a rebel) and we entered our first session of training chanting "sua sua sua!" to the tune of "Eye of the Tiger." Because we are awesome.

And then we had training.

Things started out with a second counterpart conference where we went through essentially the same activities as we did at the end of the first round of training, though with a different counterpart. Of course, my counterpart didn't show up (she'd had some recent drama and decided not to come, and I supported and defended her decision), so I got to do a lot of brain-storming and whatnots by myself, but I came out of it with some good ideas for projects (recycling, AIDS, and trying to find a way to get enough water to produce two crops of rice every year, if you have any ideas [besides damming the river], HOLLAH!), and questions about the actual value of teaching English instead of working on community projects. But I'll work it out. I think as far as my work with the schools go, I want to get involved with more teacher trainings and get a youth group going. Anyhow, yeah.

Then the counterparts went home and we got some more language instruction, which was awesome. We also got to go into Khorat (it's a big city, I heard the second biggest in Thailand [no, Chiang Mai is NOT the second biggest, it's just famous and stuff] though I can't say for sure), which was a pain to get to from the hotel we were staying at (we were kinda in the middle of nowhere), a LOT of people got sick (I had a pretty nasty bout of food poisoning), and we took over a local bar called Hank Over (the 'g' and 'k' final consonants are pretty much the same in Thai, and I'm assuming that's where the name came from, or maybe it's actually something more meaningful). Which was awesome. We went over there on the 4th of July after our No-Talent Show at the hotel and danced to American music for a bunch of hours. The place filled up with Thai people watching us, and I went around putting American flag stickers on them (the Thai people, they got a kick out of it). Then an awesome Thai band came out (there are some really good musicians here, but the consensus is that the music itself isn't very good). They played "Happy Birthday America" for us, took requests for the few Thai songs we knew, then went into their set. We stuck around for a bit longer, but we'd been there for a while already and were pretty tired and headed home.
And there really isn't much more to say about training.

When training was all over, about twenty of us headed back to the site of the FIRST round of training to visit the ol' host families. It felt really good see them again and speak slightly better Thai and show them pictures of my new home. I also felt really guilty as they pointed out that I don't call and I tried to explain that I don't like talking on the phone in general, and it's REALLY hard to try talking on the phone just in Thai, but I think I'll be making an effort to drop a line every now and then, tell them what I've eaten and tell them I miss them. It'd be worth the effort.

Then I spent a few days in Bangkok, as the Peace Corps medical staff decided I should see a doctor about my food poisoning. I still don't really like Bangkok, but this was definitely the most enjoyable visit I've had yet. We stayed at a guest house located right next to a BTS (the sky train) station, so it was really easy to get around, and I just feel like I'm getting a slightly better handle on the city. It was just nice to feel a little more in control. There were also some folks from 120 (the PC group who've been here for a year already), and they're fun to hang out with, and they know fun places to go.
And then the doctor told me I'm fine and I headed home.

Did I mention that right before I left site (at the beginning of all this), my computer crashed and I had to format my hard drive? I got a bunch of music from other volunteers, and I still have most of my favorites loaded on my ipod, but it's a little sad that there is a lot of good music I like that I won't be able to hear again until I get back to the states. Ok, you can stop pitying me now. It really isn't a big deal. But this DID prompt me to get a external hard drive in Khorat to back up stuff. When my computer initially crashed my biggest concern was that I would lose all of my pictures, but I managed to get into safe mode and copy those before it stopped letting me load at all. So that was good.

So now I'm back at site. I just did a load of laundry and now I'm just going to chill out for a while. I definitely am taking today to recover from being gone for so long. Do some reading, maybe nap a bit. This evening I'm going to go help my counterpart coach our two champion speech kiddos (the regional competition is sunday!), and then I guess tomorrow is back to normal.

It's kinda reassuring how life just keeps on going, isn't it?

Eli OUT!

Oh wait, my Prathom 1 (first graders) can't say Eli, so they call me Kruu Arai (basically that means Mr. What?)

Kruu Arai OUT!

Moral Stories. Thai-style.

2009-06-13T00:00:00.000-07:00

So, the Prathom 4-6 (~ grades 4-6) and Matayom 1-3 (~ grades 7-9) went to a temple for a few days recently, and I was invited to go along. Naturally, I said, "Yes!" This is what I knew about the trip: The plan was for them to leave Thursday morning, stay Thursday and Friday night at the temple, and go back home on Saturday. The wat was about a 25 minute drive from the school.

Since I was at my other school on Thursday, we made plans for me to get a ride to meet everyone at the wat Thursday evening. Wednesday evening, I found out that my counterpart at the wat-bound school had had her house broken into and her valuables stolen. She was rather distraught and was deciding to skip the trip to get things straightened out. At that point I had to decide whether to bail on the trip, too, since my real opportunity to understand what was going on at the temple had just vanished. I thought about it briefly and came to the conclusion that the opportunity to build relationships with the students and teachers far out-weighed the inevitable confusion I was heading towards. Besides, I'm getting quite used to being confused (the Thai word is ngoong, I learned THAT one pretty early on), and Thai people really appreciate patience and a smile on the part of a confused farang (also something I'm pretty good at). I DID, however, decide to only stay Thursday night and head back home Friday during the day.

So Thursday night came, I ate dinner with my non-wat-bound counterpart, and he took me to the temple. I said hello to the teachers who were outside eating dinner next to a group of soldiers (apparently this trip was a joint venture between the monks and some soldiers, how's THAT for compatibility?), then headed into the hall of the main building where all the students were assembled with my paw-aw (principal). A big monk was telling jokes into a wireless microphone at the front of the room, while another monk sat next to him with a laptop hooked up to a digital projector. The students were seated on a floor that looked as though it had been carpeted with those 18"x18" carpet samples (not that it wasn't classy, it was just piecemeal and not actually attached to the floor). The monk with the mic threw in some farang jokes when I entered (or maybe he'd been telling them already), where he'd say a phrase in English ("How many?") then translate in Thai ("Tao-rai?"), then say something else in Thai and all of the students would laugh uproariously. Wish I'd been able to catch the punchline.

Anyhow, the monks spoke for a while, and I zoned out as I usually do, then my paw-aw asked me to sit on the floor. The monk with the computer opened a word document with the sudas(?) (the prayer chants that the monks do) and everyone began reciting and wai-ing the buddha statue at designated points. I spent the time by choosing a phrase on the screen and trying to read it, then listening to the chant and trying to catch when they got to what I was trying to read. I just watched everyone around me and bowed when they did. There is something hypnotic and relaxing about the chanting. I have been thinking about being ordained for a little while at some point while I'm here, but that's another story.
They did the abridged version of the chant, which I was pretty happy about, not to be irreverent or anything, but it looked like the guy was zipping past tens of pages at a time, and I can only sit mermaid style for so long (not cross-legged, because it's hard to get your forehead to the floor, and then your feet are pointing forward [towards the buddha image], which is mai-dee [not good]).

When that was done, we did some meditation, which I've really enjoyed since that yoga class I took at UofO. Of course, it was kinda hard for me to really zen out and think about nothing, since I do better in silence and they decided to play some music, and I think the monks were taking pictures of me since I kept seeing flashes through my closed eyes, but it was nice to sit quietly for a moment.

Pak! (break!) In my Peace Corps application, under interests, I stated that I enjoy sitting quietly. This IS true, it is one of my favorite activities. This fact made it into a "Getting to know you" activity where everyone was given a grid with a bit of information and we had to determine who the information was about by interviewing the other members in the group. People were somewhat intrigued about the statement that "... and he enjoys sitting quietly." and thought I meant I enjoy meditation. Here I made an important distinction. Meditation is conciously trying to think about nothing. You clear your mind, chant your mantra if you're into that, and focus on your breathing. Sitting quietly is where you sit down and you don't focus on ANYthing. You let your mind go where it will and you let yourself be aware of whatever you want. Job leeo! (The End!)

Anyway, after that, there was some more Thai, then it was time to get ready for bed. I got a sweet spot under the ceiling fan (one of the perks of being a guest) and they gave me a bed roll. I'm sorry to say that I slept rather poorly, it was still pretty hot, and the mosquitoes were rather bothersome, but it wasn't too bad. We were woken up at 4:45. I got up and took a bucket bath and went and drank coffee with the teachers and watched the sky get light (it was pretty damn beautiful). I don't know what the kids did. Around 6-ish the kids all assembled in lines and did some physical activites with the soldiers (some squats, then marching/running, and doing something with a few flags). While the students marched, one of the teachers walked around the temple grounds with me and showed me the buildings and the gardens and a variety of random things. It was pretty cool, and my first real communication since I'd arrived. After that we went back and sat with the rest of the teachers for a while and we all talked quite a bit, they asked me how to say things in English, asked me about Oregon, and all sorts of things.
Then the kids came back and it was time for breakfast (Khao Tom, rice soup, which is REALLY good. I'm trying to figure out how to make a link to my recipes that I've been posting on facebook to share those here). I impressed the teachers by popping a whole chili pepper in my mouth (I do that sometimes, people get a kick out of it), then we continued talking for a while after the kids headed back into the temple. The conversation petered out when I ran out of Thai and they ran out of questions I could answer (funny how that all happened at about the same time, eh?) and I headed back into the big room to see what was up.

When I walked in, they were watching some kind of video that had giant ghosts chasing and squashing people with swords and a chest of some kind who were running from said ghosts. After that, we got a whole SLEW of moral stories. Thai-style.

There was a powerpoint presentation about drunk driving that was a series of photos of a motorcycle accident scene from somewhere in Europe. I kid you not, we saw photos of a body that had been severed in half. Like, torso was ten feet from legs. And intestines were strewn about. Not knowing what else to do, I leaned over to my paw-aw and said I wanted to eat noodles, which, in retrospect was a pretty Thai thing to do (they like to make jokes out of uncomfortable situations to try to lighten things up), so good for me.

After that we saw some karaoke music videos that the monk had altered so that the video for one changed to a funeral and we got to look at some more bodies. Another video showed a bunch of images of hell and briefly showed all the reasons people might go to hell. Then we watched a longer, more graphic video about what hell might be like, with everyone being tortured as ironically (and brutally) as possible, based on the vice that had got them TO hell. We wrapped up with a couple videos about animal cruelty, one in which a man who was into cock-fighting abused his chickens (like making them fight ISN'T abuse?) when they lost and got his come-uppance when one of his birds pecked his eye out. But that wasn't enough. He eventually went insane, thinking he WAS a chicken, and killed himself by bashing his head against a post (a punishment he had used on chickens in the past). Then we watched a couple videos showing animals being slaughtered which reaffiremed my vegitarian ideals, and it was time for lunch!

And after lunch, I got a ride back home.

All in all, I'm really glad I went. It was a very good opportunity to spend some time with the teachers and for them to get to know a bit more about me outside of the school day when everyone is busy with something else, and although I didn't get to interact with the students much, I'm glad that they got to see me there and hopefully this will help them feel I am involved and interested in them.
But I'm also really glad I left when I did, because I don't know how many more of those moral stories and how much more Thai immersion I could handle. Phew!

Jup!
Eli

Untitled.

2009-06-04T01:39:00.000-07:00

So I've been in the classroom(s) for a couple weeks now. I've been doing a lot of observing, trying to get a feel for how my co-teachers teach so I don't step on their toes too much and can try to play to their strengths as I make suggestions (and find ways to support any weaknesses). So I think that's a good thing and will ultimately benefit me, though there have been times when it got a bit boring. But I have learned some things. One of my teachers has a pretty similar style to me, and a lot of classroom experience to boot, so I will definitely be able to learn from him, and I will help him develop his student-centered teaching, designing more projects and playing games and singing songs.
My other teacher also has a lot of experience and does many things well in terms of interacting with students. Unfortunately, there is a minimal amount of spoken English used in class and the majority of the lessons I have seen have involved writing lists of vocabulary. I recently realized that she really wants the students to improve their spelling, so I am now thinking about activities to focus on spelling, but also incorporate more speaking, listening and reading, too. It's nice to have an idea of the direction to go.

Some cool things I have seen in the schools:
At the primary school, THE STUDENTS WASH THEIR OWN LUNCH DISHES.
The secondary students have several minutes of silent meditation each morning before classes begin. What a GREAT way to settle down and focus in!
At the primary school, the morning assembly (which was lining up in front of the flag) now includes marching in place while a small student band (a variety of drums, xylophones, and these cool little keyboards with a hose that the students blow in to make noise, think accordion without the squeeze-box) plays "When The Saints Come Marching In" and the Thai National Anthem. They also do some calisthenics while the band plays. I will definitely need to get some pictures.

Today was the "Wai Kruu" ceremony at my primary school. I think this is basically like Teacher Appreciation Day, but way more formal. All of the students came into the meeting room and sat quietly in neat rows. Many students had little bundles of flowers and incense that went into a great big chalice, and a boy and a girl from each class had a beautiful little flower arrangement (they do those PROPER here) which they took turns bringing up front, knelt in front of the Buddha statue at the front of the room and wai'd (hands in front of face, then forehead to floor) 3 times. Then they bowed to the flag and a picture of the king, wai'd the principal and handed him the arrangements (he handed them back), then they wai'd the rest of the teachers and the arrangements got passed around to each teacher. Then the principal made a long speech (the kids started to get a bit squirrely during this part, but they made it way longer than I can imagine a group of American students lasting), and that was that. I think the whole thing was to pay respect to the teachers and essentially bless the school year.

This last weekend I went to Chiang Mai for the first time. I checked out the zoo, a pretty cool night market and learned that I like Chiang Mai WAY more than Bangkok. It's still a big city (though not NEARLY as big), but it just seems a lot-- saner. I'll definitely be spending some more time there.

When I got back I had an awesome "community day." Each week I spend two days at the primary school, two days at the extended school with the secondary students, and the fifth day is my "community day." There really isn't anything specific that I need to do on these days, just spend some time with the people. SO, I rode the local song taew (a pickup with a covered back and two benches in the back) for the first time and met Uncle Thai, the driver of said local song taew. Then I ate some goit diao (noodle soup) at a restaraunt by the school and talked with the people there (after being gone for a while [I had been at an English Camp before I went to Chiang Mai], it was nice to be around people who recognized me, who wanted to talk to me, and were happy to see me. It was a good homecoming). Then I got some fruit and veggies at the market and told people about where I'd been (people had noticed my absence). On my way home I saw the woman I've played badminton with and asked if she'd like to play. After I took my purchases home, I went back and we played for a while, then I bought a mortar and pestle from her. As I was getting ready to head home, she pointed at a house around the corner where there was loud music playing and told me they were dancing and asked if I'd like to go see.
Of COURSE I said yes.
A few minutes later I was doing aerobic Issan dance with half a dozen grandmothers. It was fabulous. I feel like I did pretty well, and they complimented me (although it's highly possible they were just being nice), but in any case, it was a great experience and helped integrate me into the community a bit more. And I was invited to come dance again, so that's cool. I'll definitely have to go again.

It wasn't THAT hot today, which is very nice. It's also raining right now. That's becoming more and more regular. There are definitely still several day stretches without rain, but we'll also have several days in a row with a solid downpour each day. When it rains really hard, there are a few spots in my house that get puddles, which is kinda a bummer, but oh well. I haven't actually SEEN where the water is coming in, some I'm not sure if this is something that I could potentially fix, or I will just have to live with it. Fortunately I'm outrageously jai yen yen (literally cool-hearted, I translate it as "chill," and here it's a really good thing to be).

Oh man! And the other evening, I was getting ready to go to my neighbors house for dinner when another neighbor came over and told me I had some ripe bananas. She took me around the side of my house where there was a huge bunch of bananas hanging off a tree that had fallen over. She chopped off the bunch (it probably weighed 25 to 30-ish pounds?), and I hauled it around the other side of the house (by this time a bunch of other women had showed up and they warned me not to let the cut end of the stalk touch my shirt or it would stain). They cut up the bunch, made me take more bananas (that's "gluai) than I can possibly eat, then split up the rest of them. It was also pointed out to me that I had a couple of coconuts that were ready to pick, so those are chilling in my fridge (haha! get it? CHILLING? in my FRIDGE?) until I'm ready to break into them.

YO!
Eli

School Daze

2009-05-19T05:52:00.000-07:00

Awwww yeah.

I've been looking forward to school starting for a long time, and now that it's finally here, it's even better than I had hoped for. Granted, I'm not even really teaching yet (I am just going to observe my co-teachers for the first week or two to get a feel for the teaching styles to make the transition to team-teaching smoother and also to get an idea for what I might have to offer), but it's really nice to be back in a classroom, working with kids. Anyhow, lemme tell you about a couple rural-ish Thai schools.

My first school is a primary school, equivalent to an American K-6 school. Students appear to show up between 7:30 and 8:00 and spend about half an hour cleaning the building and grounds (um, awesome?!). When the time for cleaning is over, a song is played to signal students to gather at the flagpole where they line up by grade and gender. They sing the national anthem and raise the flag, then they recite a Buddhist prayer. Classes start at 9:00.

The English teacher (my co-teacher) has his own classroom that the kids come to. Grades 1-3 come twice a week, and 4-6 three times each week. The classroom has no desks or chairs for students (by choice, since my teacher likes to play a lot of games and people don't mind sitting on the floor). Classes last 1 hour.

Lunch is at noon, and it is by FAR the best school lunch ever. Fresh, handmade from scratch excellent Thai food. And it's free for teachers and students. We had som-tam (papaya salad), gai-yang (grilled chicken), some kind of kanom jin (that means chinese snack and refers to a whole variety of soup-y dishes with a particular kind of noodles). The head cook (who is also a teacher and my neighbor and one of my mothers) made me a dish of pad pak (stir-fried vegetables) because she knows I prefer to eat vegetarian. They also had ice cream (not free, but that didn't stop the kids. Or me).

After lunch was my co-teacher's planning time, and since it was the first day of school, there wasn't much for me to help with, so I got called into the 4th grade class where the teacher had left the class unattended (this is apparently a very common practice). So, I hung out taught a song/dance in English, played the Thai version of Duck Duck Goose (which involved a student taking off his shirt, it would get dropped on the "goose," then it had to be thrown at the "goose-er" before they made it to the vacant seat), and had them help me practice my reading and writing Thai.

I wrapped the day up by heading home in a downpour, then going for a sweet bike ride with some neighborhood kids after the rain stopped.

Today I visited my other school, an extended school equivalent to a K-9 program. The morning started almost exactly the same as the other school, with students cleaning and singing at the flag. Classes started at 9:00 again. At this school I will be working with the 7-9 students. Like the day before, I was just observing. It was kinda hard to just watch, but I feel like it will ultimately prove to be a good thing. And I didn't just sit there, I interacted with the kids a bit and talked about what I had seen with my teacher during a break. Then I had another amazing school lunch. We had laab (ground pork salad), muu waan (sweet pork), some kind of soup, and my co-teacher brought some fresh veggies that the kitchen ladies let me stir-fry up.

Wow, all the talk about food demonstrates how well I'm being assimilated here. People are really interested in what you eat, how often you eat, and whether or not it was delicious. I mean, a common greeting is, "Gin khao ru yang?" "Have you eaten rice yet?"

Anyway, after lunch there was one more class. The topic for all three classes was focused on greetings and introductions, scaled for the different levels, the older students asking more questions and giving more information. It was good to see how she used the same material for multiple classes and differentiating along the way. Good stuff. I think I will be able to work well with both of my teachers.

When I was finished at that school, I headed over to my other counterpart's wife's (my main mom here) school. I found her class and said hello (she wasn't exactly expecting me, though my counterpart had mentioned that it would be nice if I could go by there some time). Anyhow, shortly after I showed up, I was told to "teach English," and left alone with the kids. They were pretty young kids, and I had no idea what they already knew, but I decided to see if I could get them to respond to the question, "How are you?" with something BESIDES "I'm fine, thank you, and you?" as EVERY Thai student I've met so far seems to say. So we started working on "I am happy," "I am hungry," "I am sad," "I am thirsty." After a few minutes another teacher came by and dropped off her students. We kept practicing, switching between whole-group and calling on individuals ('cause I gots me some teacher skillz), and before I knew it, there were probably 40-ish students in the room (I think it was at least half the school, possibly most of the school). Did I mention I was flying solo on all this? Anyhow, I whipped out some games (and I did a FABULOUS job explaining them with my extremely mediocre Thai/English [because ideally I shouldn't need to use ANY Thai to teach, but it's a lot easier when trying to explain a game]), songs and dances and really had a fabulous time.

Then it was time to go home. I went home with my mother and we made some dinner (awesome pad pak and a stir-fried sweet radish thing that is fantastic!), talked with the fam for a while then headed home. I fed some more neighborhood kids some M&Ms, joked about turning the kittens living OUTside my house into laab (I think it confuses Thai people with I kid around, since despite the fact that they do it all the time, they seem to be under the impression that farangs are WAY to serious).

And then I wrote this blog entry.

I really hope this was a little illuminating. I feel like it might not be at all, but since I'm pretty firmly opposed to proof-reading my posts, I'm not going to sweat it. Once I really get settled into the school routine I'll talk a bit more about the day-to-day whatnots. Anyhow, you should at least realize that I'm really excited to be in school, and I think that's all I was really trying to say.

Jup jup! (Kiss kiss!)
Eli

A Few Random Awesomes:

2009-05-17T06:19:00.001-07:00

I have now seen a microwave that is used for storage, not re-heating. I think that the few microwaves I have seen here have been purchased in response to families learning that they would be hosting an American and did not exist in the home before said American arrived (because Americans only eat microwavable food). My friend told me during training that her host-mother almost set the house on fire when she apparently used her micro for the first time and put metal inside. The other day I almost laughed out loud when I saw my counterparts wife (one of my many mothers here at site) open the microwave (which I had never seen used) and remove one of several bags of dry goods that were being kept inside.

Today I made up a whole mess of beans (beans 'n' rice style) and took samples around to my neighbors. They didn't need me to provide the rice. Just a general pat on the back for myself. I got my face out there a bit more, hopefully people will like my food, and think I am jai-dee (kind-hearted). I also had a shot of whiskey (sticky rice moonshine) when I stopped by the house where a group of men were drinking, and on my walk one of the neighborhood kids started following me on his bike. We talked a bit while I passed out my food, then I went and got my bike while he rounded up a bunch of other kids. Then we paraded around town until it got dark. A while later a few other kids (who missed the bike ride) came over to my house and ate M&Ms. Thanks, mom!

I feel like I had more to say in this when I was forming it in my mind. Oh well. I can always edit it later, or just write a new one. Who said blog entries had to be long, anyway? It's probably better to mix it up, right?

School day tomorrow! WHOOP!

E

My worst day in Thailand

2009-05-16T21:41:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was my worst day in Thailand to date.

It began with a decision to just lay low, as I managed to tweak my back a couple days before and it kinda hurts when I take a deep breath.
My counterpart did not like that, however, and insisted that I come to his house to practice Muay Thai (Thai Boxing) with his relative who was a trainer who was visiting. I DID want to meet the man and learn a little something, but I had trouble conveying the nature of my pain. I figured I might be OK to learn some basics, but I began to get concerned when they said we had to go pick up some pads and training gear. This was sounding far more rigorous than anything I had wanted.
Also (I'm going out of order here, because I want to list the things that made it a bad day before I get to the punchline), between talking with my counterpart and actually going over, I found out what's up with the cats who keep going in and out of my house when I looked under the desk in the room I don't spend any time in. There are a couple of kittens living there, and the parents are presumably taking care of them. I also found two (very) dead kittens in another corner of the room, which explained the bad smell in my house and the recent increase in the fly population. Disposing of the dead kittens was very unpleasant (did I mention that they were VERY dead? I won't go into details, but I had to fight the gag reflex), but now I am left with the question of WHAT to do with the live ones. I do NOT want to take care of them, and I am not comfortable simply dumping them outside. I think I'll try to show them to my neighbors and see if any of them can do something with them. It really wouldn't bother me if someone ate them, I just don't want to see them go to waste.

Anyway, after I got rid of the dead cats and I was rushing over to practice Muay Thai, worrying about my back, I realized, "Wow. This is probably my worst day in Thailand so far." And I was kinda pissed off. I was mad at the cats who had had kittens in my house and had broken my jar of sugar, I was mad that I was in pain, and I was upset that I wasn't going to be able to take advantage of this opportunity to learn a cool new sport.

But then a motorcycle with a family of four passed me, smiling and waving and saying hello. And then another one did (only with three people). And I smiled. I remembered that, "Holy crap! I'm in the Peace Corps! I'm in Thailand!" I remembered that this is probably the most amazing thing I have ever done, and that all the things that had me in a bad mood were really pretty trivial. Maybe I will have worse days in the future. Maybe I won't. Maybe I will THINK I am having worse days, and I hope I will be able to remember how lucky I really am.

When it came time to do it, I decided to just go ahead and try the boxing. And it didn't hurt. Don't get me wrong, whatever I did still hurts, but it wasn't really a problem for the punching, kicking, knees and elbows, and I am very happy that I was able to take advantage of this opportunity to get some one-on-one instruction. Better watch out, I'm gonna be dangerous!

A while back, we put together a bio book for the PCTH121 (Peace Corps Thailand Group 121) with photos and a bit of information about all of us, and I want to quote my friend Dan. There was a section for us to list our "Experience" (resume style was the intention). He said "Many good, some bad, all of value."

F'real.

Baw Kaw Saw

2009-04-28T01:33:00.000-07:00

So, since moving in, I've done a little of this, a little of that, and a whole lot of nothing at all. And it's been fabulous.

Yesterday I rode the bus (rot bawkawsaw - that means the bus without air conditioning that you don't want to ride for more than a couple hours, and the seats definitely aren't made for farang length legs, but they're AWESOME) kon diao (alone) to the provincial capitol to hang out with the other two volunteers in my province. We walked around a lot, ate pizza and ice cream for lunch (yup! Though I think most Thai pizzas start out frozen, and most non-veg toppings resemble chopped up hot dogs. I was bummed they were out of the veggie pizza which came with peas and corn) and found some oats at a grocery store. I was tempted to buy some peanut butter, but decided not to since, though I LOVE peanut butter and jelly sammiches, I've been doing fine without them, and I'd probably just be bummed when I ran out of it.

I've also been practicing the Thai alphabet with my counterpart's daughter, and I am EXTREMELY proud to say that after 5 days, I pretty much have all the consonants down and am reading and writing a tiny little bit. This was something that I knew I wanted to do, but did not think would be happening for a long time. Mad props to Kruu Na-rak.

I've been trying to walk or bike around at least a bit every day, to get my white face out there, and it's been good. I've played badminton a few times with a couple ladies up the street, and I hit up the market pretty regularly. It's a lot of fun to see peoples' reactions when I speak Thai (especially when they understand me, tone and vowel-length are extremely important, and if you don't speak right you will say "mustache" instead of "massage", or "horse vagina" instead of "snow." Seriously.)

I haven't seen or heard of any parties like the ones I went to during training, which is both a relief and a disappointment. Disappointing because my presence (and dancing) at those parties really helped boost my celebrity status. A relief because after going to one or two of them every week, they got a bit redundant/exhausting. I'll just have to keep my eyes and ears open. Maybe I'll check out the cock-fighting ring by my house.

I've been doing a pretty good job so far keeping my house clean (which impresses my visitors, as does the fact that I shower at least twice a day, a must for Thai people), and I've been enjoying watering my yard in the evenings. I feel like I need to come up with a project for myself, to do something cool and productive, but I'm not stressing over it. I've been spending a lot of time at my counterpart's house, and when I'm home, I've got enough things to do to keep me busy. I am sure that I will need to find more to do to keep myself occupied soon enough, so why rush?

I've been accepted as a member of a youth development committee, so I'll be going to my first meeting on that soon, which is exciting. I just got some more information on that, so I need to read up and make sure I can find some way to contribute. I am also looking forward to school starting up so that I can start doing some more work for the immediate community. They understand that is what I am here for, but I feel a bit weird right now since I'm not apparently doing anything. But I'm not worried, yet. I really haven't had much time to myself for the last 3 months (holy crap, today is my 3 month anniversary!) so I'm enjoying having some time to really kick back and take it easy for a bit and let myself settle into my surroundings before things get kicking again.

And I still need to get those obnoxious speakers.

Ek out!

Epic Post!

2009-04-21T01:20:00.000-07:00

Ka tor kap! (Sorry!)

It's been, like, a month? More? My access to internet has not coincided with an opportune time to write a proper post, and the longer I've waited, the longer this one has gotten. And I've probably forgotten a bunch of cool stuff. But now I'm gonna spend some time on this and try to get it all right.

I've started writing this in a text document (which I should have been doing all along, but I was lazy. Actually, it was a pain to plug in my computer because 3-prong wall sockets don't seem to exist here, and I don't have my own power strip yet, though those aren't hard to find). Anyhow, it is being written over the course of several days, so if there are issues with tense agreement or anything, you'll just have to get over it. That also means that my thoughts may sound particularly unorganized (as opposed to the usual level of unorganization), though I will try to remember to read it over and try to make some sense before I actually throw this up on my blog.

Remember Greng Jai? The untranslatable concept intended to maintain relationships by going to any lengths to avoid conflict (among other things)? I got a great quote from our Cross Cultural trainer. She said, “Greng Jai has nothing at all to do with logic.” Comforting, no? To be honest I'm really not worried about Greng Jai TOO much, since I'm already kinda in the habit of telling people what they want to hear, but there are definitely subtleties to it that I should be careful and aware of. And trying to figure out when I'm being placated. Ugh. Oh. Check this out. Apparently there are some specific words that people will use that indicate when someone is Greng Jai-ing you, but we didn't learn them because we were playing a game (that didn't work) that took longer than expected. Grrr. But you know what? Mai bpen rai.

A couple new thoughts about the difficulties of Thailand. Things that are considered rude in America are no biggie at all here. For example, there is apparently NEVER an inappropriate time to answer your cell phone. Meetings, lectures, weddings, during meals or a massage, or while on stage (seriously), it's all good. Granted, I will definitely be taking advantage of this when I find myself in the many situations where everyone only speaks Thai and I have no idea what's going on, and the choice is between texting a friend and dozing off, but it will take some serious getting used to.

Next is the issue of noise pollution, or rather, the lack of an issue. For example, people here like their karaoke, and they like it LOUD and at all hours. And that's cool with everyone. This is another one that I will probably end up using to my advantage, as I'm planning to spend a fair amount of my moving in allowance on some great big stereo speakers.

It IS, however, considered rude to raise your glass higher than someone older than you during a toast.

It is not rude to say that someone is fat (ooan), either behind their back or to their face. In fact, you can pretty much safely comment on anything that is observable. They are also quick to ask personal questions such as “How old are you?” “How tall are you?” “How much do you weigh?” “How much did that cost?” This was pretty uncomfortable at first, and I still don't like calling people fat, but it's made me wonder WHY we (Americans) are uncomfortable with such topics. The questioning may seem nosy, but it's a quick, easy way to get to know some basic (and possibly important) information about someone.

“Thai Time” is taking some getting used to. Punctuality is something that people don't really worry too much about here, as evidenced by the fact that probably 9 out of 10 wall clocks do not function. Life definitely moves at a slower pace here, and Thai people wonder why Americans are always in a hurry. I have trouble explaining, especially in Thai, but also in English. Americans DO seem to take time a lot more seriously, but are we really accomplishing more? I feel like people spend a lot of time rushing to waste their time, if that makes any sense. My perception is that Thai people simply take their time and don't rush when they do things, while Americans rush through them to get on to the next thing. And these are fierce generalizations (which I am never a fan of making, but am being asked to do so a lot), and this is also not to say that Thai people do everything slowly, nor that Americans do everything sloppily. I think you understand what I am trying to say, so I'm going to move on.

And you need to cover your mouth when using a toothpick, but you can pick your nose in public. Basically, it seems like most things are OK (especially if they are considered fun), as long as they don't disrupt the hierarchy of age and status (which are SUPER important).

A while back we took a field trip to a unique temple. It is unique because it is devoted to caring for people with AIDS. It has an ICU for patients who are doing particularly poorly, rooms for those who need some assistance, and tiny little one room houses for the ones who are able to live mostly independently. The whole place is really for those with deteriorating health so that they can live out their days relatively comfortably and respectably. And when I say respectably, let me tell you how many of them came to be at this wat. There is a huge stigma about HIV/AIDS in Thailand, with all the same reasons for the stigma as anywhere else (only bad people get AIDS, prostitutes and drug-users), but because of the collective-community way that Thai people live, those feelings are magnified countless times, because people are afraid of associating themselves with those people who are perceived to be “bad.” We have learned that 20 years or so ago, when AIDS was on the rise around the world, the Thai government was quick to act, and a lot of money and energy was spent on education, awareness and care for infected people. These efforts were very effective, and Thailand was very successful in reducing the numbers of new infections. Since then, economic downturns have reduced the budget for AIDS care, and education and prevention have been cut back the most. Medicine (anti-retro viral drugs) IS still available to the public, but in order to get it, people must officially register as having AIDS with the government, so some people are understandably hesitant to seek aid.

Anyway, many of the current residents of the wat were abandoned there by their families. Literally. It is apparently not uncommon for people to be found dumped outside the temple. The wat keeps the ashes of all the cremated bodies for families, should they choose to claim them, but that is a rare occurrence. They have created a stack of these bags of ash that consists of the remains of over 10,000 AIDS victims.

The conclusion of our visit to the temple was a cabaret show, performed by the residents of the facility. They practice dance routines as a means of physical therapy, and it was really good to see them apparently having fun and in better health than they had been before coming to the temple. They finished with a Q&A session, and we asked a lot about what WE can do about HIV/AIDS in Thailand. The general consensus (besides donating money, which we did) was to simply treat people with dignity.

Before our trip, I had wanted to do something about HIV/AIDS during my service but I really didn't know what I COULD do. Now I know that I should be able to find a local group for PHAs (People Having AIDS) with whom I can simply go socialize, and maybe assist with any projects that may be working on, though that would secondary in importance. I am also more determined to do some work educating youth (and adults), so I will be seeking out the local health offices and discussing options with them. The Peace Corps provides us with a whole toolkit of information and activities (in English and Thai) specifically for AIDS awareness and education, and I really want to get some good use out of it.

Then we had ice cream!

Not really, but that seemed like a good transition. And I DO eat ice cream as often as possible here. The guys driving around with the great big canisters of fresh coconut ice cream are AWESOME. Did you know that beans, corn, sticky rice and candied pumpkin are all acceptable ice cream toppings here? I've also had corn and bean popsicles (not together in one popsicle, that'd be gross, but they DID have pieces of real corn and beans in them!) Corn is considered a dessert here, and it can be found in the markets in cups done up like a sundae, with chocolate sauce and sprinkles. I meant to get a picture, but I'm guessing you've probably figured out by now that I am not too quick with the camera.

We celebrated our two month anniversary in Thailand by having our Language Proficiency Interviews. Now, I'm REALLY not sure HOW this happened, but I scored pretty damn well. Better, in fact, than several people I KNOW speak much better Thai than I do, so either my interviewer really liked my attitude towards Thai (which he did compliment me on), or he had lower standards than other interviewers, or SOMEthing. I don't know. To be honest, the score really doesn't mean much to me, and it was really more for Peace Corps than it was for us, but it was pretty cool, and it made my language teacher proud, so, I'll pat myself on the back.

Training wrapped up pretty nicely, we had some end of training interviews with some of the core staff (pretty low pressure, at least, I thought so) and took a written exam to make sure we knew enough policy stuff and whatnot. Funny thing, I failed the cross-cultural portion of the exam. Apparently I don't understand Thai culture AT ALL and am bound to make countless cultural faux-pas. OR (as I prefer to think) I felt most confident with that portion of the test and spent the least time on it. When I met with the cross-cultural coordinator to discuss it, I felt that we were giving the same answers to the questions, I simply did it more concisely using more general statements. I was also seriously dinged for using the word “weird” to describe how we (and some projects we may propose) might be perceived by the locals (and I still think it was appropriate), as the word had different connotations to me than the person scoring my test. Sigh. Now I KNOW I'm a failure. I'll try not to lose TOO much sleep over it. (And yes, they ARE still going to let me be a volunteer).

After that, we said goodbye to our host families by having a big ol' Thai style party. All of the families were presented with certificates (did you know Thai people LOVE certificates? Some of the volunteers who have been here for a year like to joke that you can get a certificate for crossing the street safely) and the volunteers did several performances. I was involved in the bamboo dance, which involved hop-scotch style rhythmic hopping over big bamboo poles getting clapped back and forth by other volunteers. There was another Thai dance that involved clapping coconut shells and a lot of energy, a medley of American dances from the '50s to present, and a couple live music performances. All in all it was a lot of fun, and a lot of tears were shed by the end. I am determined to be a good son and go back and visit my family in the next two years.

The very last bit of training was the counterpart conference, for which our counterparts (co-teachers, principals, or staff from the local government offices) came together and we had a bunch of information sessions to prepare us to work together and make sure we were all on the same page. For that time, all us volunteers were back in the hotel where we had started originally, and it was a really good time for a bit of last minute American-style socialization, though this time we all knew better to sit on the stairs. Actually, I (and a couple others) tried to sit on the stairs, for old times sake, but it made us feel really uncomfortable. I guess we're being assimilated pretty darn effectively. Then we got sworn in, and it was off to site.

Today (during Song Kran), I saw a driver stop and pass an open beer and a cigarette to a police officer. It bothered me a little, but mostly I thought it was super sweet. Drunk driving is an issue here, and especially at Song Kran. Have I told you about Song Kran yet? No?! Poor, unattentive me! Song Kran is the Thai New Year (though they change their calendars on January 1, so I don't really know what that's all about), it is officially celebrated on April 13, and it lasts three days. Notice that I said “officially.” Where I am, it lasts about a week, and some people celebrate for the entire month of April. There really aren't any strict rules about it. It is presumed to be the hottest time of the year, so naturally everyone spends the days throwing water at each other. I've heard that the “big party” is in Chiang Mai, where several streets are packed with people for several kilometers in a festival atmosphere, splashing and squirting each other, boozing, and dancing. In smaller towns (like where I am), it's more like groups of (mostly) kids standing on the side of the road with hoses and barrels of water, throwing buckets at passing cars and motorcycles. Occasionally a pickup will go by with people throwing water back at the ones on the side of the road. It is also the time of year for reunions, when the younger generation who have all gone away to school or work come home. So it's a really convenient time for MORE partying! I have heard that there's a lot more to Song Kran than all this, with some mellower activities, and some symbolism behind the water and whatnot, but all I really know is what I've observed.

Song Kran is now officially over and I have in fact learned some things. The Thai name for the thirteenth is Wan Long (which means “Wash Day”), and it is a day for cleaning. You do laundry, take an extra shower or two, clean your house, whatever you've got. It's external cleansing only, though, so food and alcohol are still OK. The fourteenth is Wan Gnao (I'm not sure on the translation), but it is the day for spending time with family. Thai families get pretty big (extended families, that is, nuclear families seem pretty comparable to American ones, though that would imply that the extended families are comparable, too). In any case, the big extended families are much closer (both physically and emotionally) than I am used to. During training, I liked to joke that my village only had one family. And it seemed pretty true. It seemed like everyone I met was related in some way to my family. In the village of about 8000, anyone who asked who my family was knew who I was talking about from my father's first name and a vague gesture in the general direction of the house.

I moved into my house yesterday morning. As I said before, my house is pretty darn sweet. Much bigger than I actually need, adequately furnished, and has enough dishes for (at least) five families (though I AM missing a few key pieces, so go figure). I also have a closet full of women's clothing and a bunch of random stuff/trinkets. I have been spending the last two days going through things and stashing what I won't use in a crawl space and cleaning, and hanging out with a group of neighborhood kids who have become my posse.
Some more about that.
A couple boys showed up at my house yesterday with my pa-aw (principal), one of whom will be a future student of mine. We stood around awkwardly for a few minutes after my pa-aw left, then I ran in the house and grabbed a hackie-sack and showed them how to hack. It was a new game to them, but between football (REAL football, you foolish American) and tukraw (I think I've mentioned tukraw, Thai-style soccer that is a cross between hackie-sack and volleyball), they picked it up pretty quickly. They began to feel a bit more comfortable with me and began asking me questions (none of them were really up for trying to do any English) and learned the limits of my Thai. Over the next little while, the group of boys grew to five, and before I knew it, they were asking if I wanted to eat Goit Diao (noodle soup), and I was following them to the nearby stand. I got a chance to impress them with my capacity for eating spicy (I think I actually like my food spicier than the vast majority of Thai people, so I am pretty amazing to them), and made jokes about having 10 girlfriends. We went back to my house and I showed them my Super Nintendo games on my computer, then went back to work cleaning while they played. I also bought them ice cream. So I'm essentially the AWESOME farang in the neighborhood now.

I also got to meet a bunch of the adults in the area, had some broken conversations and received a gift of green mango, and several offers for dinner and vegetables. I love Thailand.

This morning I took a walk around the area, saw the morning market (I think I need to go a bit earlier next time, or else it's just really small), but I spoke a little bit with a couple vendors, was offered whiskey (at 8:30 AM) and bought some tomatoes. A lady also gave me some chili peppers (she wouldn't take money) when I said, “Pom gin pet dai” [I eat spicy well]. Then I spent some time just wandering around, found the local health station, and put myself on display. I feel like right now, one of the best things I can do for myself is learn my area and let people get a chance to become familiar with me, so I will probably continue to do the same thing in the mornings (because it's still cool) until school starts. I did a little walking around this afternoon, but it's pretty durn hot, and it seems like a better time to do stuff that requires less moving (like FINALLY finishing this epic post).

So there you have it. I have made it back to present, SURELY missing numerous interesting observations, anecdotes and ponderances, but such is life. My house DOES have internet (high speed, what's up Posh Corps?), so presumably I will be able to update at my leisure. And I'll get some photos up soon, too.

Ek.
(That's my newest nickname. It sounds kinda like “egg,” and basically means “number one best.”)

Pom bpen saparot!

2009-03-17T01:16:00.000-07:00

That literally means "I am pineapple," and to a Thai person, it means "I'm the s**t" (I'm gonna not actually type profanity on here for the sake of my future political career or something). Anyhow, that's one of the things I learned during my time away from Peace Corps staff, so it goes to show that I can still learn Thai without my own personal teacher (though, I DID already know the words, but not the significance of the phrase).

Anyhow, before I launch into my laundry list of my fairly awesome bpai tiao (that's a trip for pleasure, and since this was also business, it might not be entirely accurate), I want to take the opportunity to air some of the thoughts of had during my many hours on busses recently.

*Ahem*

Peace Corps Thailand is apparently often referred to as "Posh Corps." And for good reason. Thailand IS a tourist destination, it is reasonably well developed, and outside of Bangkok, civil unrest is esentially unheard of (as far as I know). Aside from the heat and diarrhea (over a squat toilet), the physical hardships are really negligible.
On the other hand, I understand that Thailand can be a very mentally challenging place to live and work. As it was described to us in a cross-cultural session, Thailand is a high-context culture, whereas the US is a low-context culture. That means that in the US, you can usually rely on people to say what they mean, tell you when they have a problem, and tell you what they really think or mean when asked for input. Here, however, there is something called "grang jai," which really doesn't have a good translation, but it generally prompts people to tell you what they think you want to hear (especially if you have any status, which as foreign teachers, we do), not tell you when you are doing something wrong (to avoid confrontation, the hope being that you will notice what other people are or are not doing and correct your behavior). It is also expected that you will always defer to your superior whether you have a better idea, or know that he/she is doing something wrong, or whatever. It's all about saving face. It's a confusing, difficult concept, and it seems like there are always exceptions and contradictions, and I don't know if I will ever understand it or get used to it. I will just have to be careful, persistant, and keep on smiling. And I have to remember that I can't feel frustrated if I don't feel like I'm having a huge impact, because it is likely that I won't necessarily be able to see the results of my efforts.
And then there's also the huge gaps in wealth. It seems like very few people are starving as Thailand produces a LOT of food, but there are still a lot of things people don't have. This was illustrated for me during my site visit where I observed a Sport Day. This was essentially a big tournament for a whole bunch of schools from all over the province. Among other things, I watched a relay race in the track and field events. I thought nothing of the fact that there was no actual track and the students were running in lanes drawn in chalk on the dirt field, but I was surprised at the differences in equipment the 4 teams I watched had. One team had light shirts and running shorts and running shoes. Two teams wore matching polo shirts and tennis shoes. The fourth team did not have matching shirts, and only one member wore shoes, the rest ran barefoot. There is incredible wealth in this country, and there is incredible poverty, and it's not necessarily just an urban/rural division, and I feel like it's not really recognized. There IS a strong sense of community, and good things do happen, but I don't know how well it works out for EVERYone. I think/hope this is something I will be learning about in the years to come.

There were probably other things I wanted to talk about, too, but I want to move on to the fun stuff.

Bangkok. Big and noisy. Lots of farangs. To tell the truth, I kinda missed standing out. I can already tell going back to the US and giving up my celebrity status is going to be tough. I got to see a couple of regions, eat some western food (I had a burrito and a slice of Mediterranean-style pizza) and ended up at a roof-top hookah bar with a bunch of volunteers listening to a Thai band cover American songs (and play some Thai ones) and dancing in an adjacent room with a very loud American DJ. It was much fun, though I really can't imagine wanting to spend a lot of time in Bangkok. I got to hang out with some current volunteers which was good and they helped us navigate a bit, and the next time I go, it will definitely be with someone who can show me the places worth going to.

Anyhow, traveling to site was far cooler than Bangkok. I got to meet some other current volunteers, my Northern neighbors (I'm up north, though to be prudent, I shan't be giving any exact locations in this blog) and see some of their sites. It was a great opportunity to see where a volunteer is at after being in their community for about a year. I got a chance to get comfortable with traveling (first with other volunteers for support, then solo) around the country, I saw my first cock-fight (the volunteer's neighbor hosts them in his back yard, I don't imagine attending them will become a hobby, as it was mostly sick and not particularly interesting, but I DO think it's way cool to be able to say I have been to one, and now I want to read Roots), and I got a Thai massage (which is awesome and I might have to make a hobby out of that).

After a day and a bit with current volunteers, I made my way to my own site where I met one of the teachers I will be working with, the English teacher at a K-6 school in the village I will be living in. The school has 172 students, and as I understand, I will be helping him teach grades 5 and 6 two days a week. I will also be going to a K-9 school and working with the teacher who does grades 7, 8 and 9 twice a week. My other weekday will be devoted to community projects and traveling to the equivalent of the school district office to work on teacher training-type projects. I also got to visit the high school (7-12) where I was originally requested (instead of the K-9 school), but Peace Corps decided they didn't need me, as they already have a volunteer from Japan helping with English, and their English teachers seem very highly qualified already.
I'm going to take a moment here to clarify that my role is NOT to simply be an English teacher, but to collaborate with the English teachers the schools already have to develop methods of teaching to improve students' learning even after I leave.

While at my site I ALSO got to check out my housing options. There were two houses for me to look at, next door to each other (and also very close to several teachers' homes), about half a kilometer from the K-6 school. They were both very nice, but for me, there was no comparison.
The house I chose may very well be one of the nicest houses I've ever lived in (in spite of the squat toilets [yeah, I have a bathroom and a half] and a couple of doorways I need to remember to duck and/or step over something and slightly wonky lights). It is very spacious, has a mix of beautiful wood and concrete/tile construction, is well furnished, has a nice kitchen and maybe best of all, 4 different kinds of fruit growing in the yard. I have a mango (ma-mwong) tree, a baby coconut (ma-prow) tree, several banana (gluai) trees, and a dragon fruit (gao-man-gon) plant. There is space in the back for me to make a compost heap (I need to do some research into how to make it not stink so as not to offend my neighbors) and have a little vegetable garden (suan pak), and there is a concrete parking area that I'm hoping to hit with a skateboard.
And of course, in spite of the fact that I had my camera with me the whole time, I didn't take a single picture. Fear not, though, they will follow.

And then I got on an overnight bus back to Bangkok, then headed back to my current host family for the last few weeks of training. It definitely feels a little strange to come back here now that I'm all keyed up for the real stuff. But, mai bpen rai.

Otay. Enough for now, no?
It sounds like I will actually have internet at my house, so perhaps my posts will be more regular and slightly less massive? I don't know. I must say I'm a little nervous about having the internet in my home, as I really don't want it to become a distraction for me. If I find that is the case, I think I will cancel it. There IS an internet shop located pretty conveniently, though having it in the house would certainly be MORE convenient, and it would vastly improve my abilities to stay informed on the actions of Obama (speaking of which, anything good lately? All I've heard is that people are being stupid and saying the stimulus is already a failure [because the last stimulus {stimulii?} was so much better?]). <-- Nested parentheses make me cool.

PEACE CORPS OUT!
E-Rock McGillicuddy

Elephants and English Camps!

2009-03-07T18:51:00.000-08:00

So, on March 1st, to celebrate my first full month in The Kingdom, I finally got to see my first elephant.
I was biking out to the highway to head into town when I saw a cluster of other volunteers gathered on the side of the road. Thinking I might be able to help fix a flat, I pulled up behind them and looked around. And that's when I saw the elephant, rider perched on a platform high atop his back. The elephant was clearing brush with its trunk and eating the debris. Alongside it, two Thai people were hacking at the growth, though they worked much slower, and far less awesomely. After a few minutes (and a bunch of pictures, which I will post soon), I moved on. Thinking about it, I came to the conclusion that this man rode around the countryside on his elephant and for a small fee allowed folks to take advantage of its AWESOME POWERS.

By the way, the word for elephant is "chong," and the chong is the national animal of Thailand.

So, that afternoon, after training and I was riding back home (via a different route, I like to change things up), I saw the same elephant/rider combo walking down the road towards me. This time I got to play it cool, didn't need to stop my bike or even slow down, hollered a "saa-wat-dii!" to the rider, and passed by the two of them just a couple feet away. Aren't I cool?

So then later in the week we learned about English Camps, which are pretty popular projects for us farangs. It seems like the best way to describe an English Camp is like field day (you remember field day, right? with 3-legged races and 10-minute soccer games and all that stuff?) but with English language activities. Apparently in Thailand, the success of big events is based more on appearances than on actual value (so if you have a good powerpoint, or a cool banner, or T-shirts, you're golden), and they made a banner for us, so it was all good.

The English Camp that we put together had the benefit of approximately 6 hours of planning on our part (according to a current volunteer they usually spend more like a month planning and prepping) and had a very loose theme of "Environment." Our original plan was to have a "Captain Planet" theme, with stations titled: Earth, Wind, Water, Heart, Fire (and Health because we needed 6). We decided, however, that nobody would get the Captain Planet concept, so we switched to "Environment," but kept the station titles. My station was Wind, and so we taught the kids the vocabulary: blow, wind, balloon, airplane and fly. Then we pantomimed blow and wind, played a game to see who could blow up a balloon the biggest with one breath. After that we had the kids make paper airplanes and gave the kids a chance to throw them on the basketball court (the last few rounds we stood on the court and played "Hit the Farang!"). Then we tossed a frisbee around in a circle and quizzed whoever caught the disc on the vocabulary. And then it was time for the kids to move on to the next station and we did it all over again. My partner and I were able to keep our energy up all day, and it was a lot of fun, and I really hope that the kids actually retain at least one or two of the words we tried to teach.
I'll be curious to see what an English Camp that has been properly (and more cohesively) planned out looks like.

Today I'm gonna go hang out with some other volunteers and play some music (did you know I've been practicing the mandolin, and have learned some chords?!), which I'm really looking forward to, and then tonight I'll be attending a wedding (which I imagine will be a lot like the monk celebrations and other parties I've been to).

I'm positive lots of other crazy and awesome things have happened, but of course I can't think of them right now. Oh! I have been allowed to help out a LITTLE bit in the kitchen (I do some chopping for my mee, but I spend most of the time peeking over her shoulder trying to pick up some tricks), and I'm curious to see if I could copy some of her creations.

Oh, and apparently I'm relatively good at Thai (we had a practice test to see how we're progressing and I got a good score). Then again, I really feel like people think I'm better than I really am, so I'll take the compliments, but I still feel horribly inadequate. The hardest part is practicing. Even in the US, where I feel I have a pretty decent grasp of the language, I really never initiate small-talk. I keep hearing that I need to do this to practice Thai and get used to hearing Thai people talk (and work on my guessing skills for getting meaning out of all the words I DON'T know), but, it's tough. I dunno. I know it's something I need to do, and I DO try every now and then, but it's something to keep working on.

OH! And this coming week I will finally learn where my permanent site will be! So, that's exciting. Later in the week I'll be headed into Bangkok for a day, then out to actually see my site (and pick out my housing) which will be very awesome. I love living with my family, but I'm also looking forward to being a bit more independent and in charge of myself.
I know that my Peace Corps experience will be considerably different at site (it will probably be much more remote, and there WON'T be 50 other white folks relatively nearby to see and talk to on a fairly regular basis, and I won't be getting the super-structured language training from someone who also speaks English, and I'll actually be doing my job...), but I'm pretty confident that I will handle it like a champ and continue to enjoy my experiences.

OK. This has prolly gone on long enough.

Saa-wat-dii krap!
Ma-toom

Holy freakin' karaoke!

2009-02-26T00:40:00.000-08:00

So mua wan-nii, pom luuk saan pasa enkri. That is, yesterday I finished with the practice teaching. To celebrate the moment, I and the other three volunteers who were at the school went up to a big room where the two classes we had taught gathered, and we sang and danced for at least an hour. They had a karaoke machine set up and the teachers and students took turns singing us Thai songs, and there was a students vs. volunteers dance-off, and then each student gave us each a flower, and a bunch gave us cards they had made. It was similar to things that have been done for me in the past when I finished practicum/student teaching sessions, but like times twenty. Which was fairly ridiculous. And awesome. We also posed with kids and teachers for a whole slew of pictures, and they gave us these awesome floral print Thai shirts that we're supposed to wear for the Thai New Year on April 13th (which is apparently a nation-wide water fight/huge party, which I am very much looking forward to).

Anyhow, as if that weren't enough, a while after I got home and was trying to get my mee (mom) to let me help with dinner, she informed me that pa and I were going to eat just a little and then go into town, where we would be eating more. Like a good boy, I said "OK," and ate my bowl of rice and fried egg, then hopped in the truck. Twenty minutes later we pulled into the great big lot where the Saturday market is, where there were great big ferris wheel-looking lights, a few hundred tables set up, and a stage with huge speakers. At which point I said, "Oh, I've done this before!"
So I started eating and drinking, and eventually I got pulled up front to dance on the ground in front of the stage, and I eventually realized that the singers this time were actually doing karaoke! Though, I don't think they were just anybody... But I definitely recognized people singing who I had seen shortly before walking around socializing with other attendees.
I found some other volunteers who had been brought along, and it turned out that none of us actually knew WHAT was being celebrated. It was postulated that it MIGHT have something to do with an imminent election, but nobody really knew for sure. I think this lack of understanding actually made it better.

Today we had our "mid-term training evaluations," and I was told that I am "on track" to being invited to shed my trainee status and become a full-fledged volunteer. So that's exciting.

Dag. I feel like I keep on thinking of things I want to mention on here, and then when I have a chance to actually post, I can't remember them. All I can remember is that I'm not remembering. Bah.

Oh, I got a Thai haircut. That's something. It's not THAT different from an American haircut, except that I didn't know how to describe what I wanted (though I DID learn to say that I like my sideburns, "pom chop jahn"). It's shorter on the sides and in back than I'm used to, and not much came off the top, but it's neater than it was, so that's good. I also got my first ever barber-done shave (done with a straight razor), which was pretty cool for the experience, though I don't think I'd bother again. I gave myself a better, less painful shave with my month-old bic (so maybe the ads talking about 3 blades versus 1 DO have a point, though I'm still skeptical about 5 versus 3). Anyhow, haircut? 40 baht (just over $1). Apparently a woman's cut with shampoo, scalp massage and styling is 100 baht (like $3). So, come get your hair cut? I dunno. You wanted to know about that stuff, right?

Peace Corps out!
Ma-Toom

And another because I need a post for the time writing and posting the last one...

2009-02-14T21:53:00.000-08:00

Yeah. The Thais know how to party.

Last night I attended a celebration for a young man (I understand he'd just turned 20) who had just shaved his head and will be spending the next while as a monk. This is a fairly common practice, my brother was a monk for a week when he turned 20, one of the Thai teachers told me he was one for 10 days, and another man I talked to about it had monked it up for a month.

Anyhow, I had no idea what to expect. And it turned out to be rather similar to the festival I attended the weekend before. There was a stage with a band and dancing girls, though this time audience members who wanted to dance did so on the ground in front of the stage (of COURSE I participated). There were tables and chairs set up and wait-staff-type people kept bringing more and more food and bottles of Hong Thong (the drink of choice around here, a molasses whisky that gives GREAT headaches). There was a cabaret show at one point in the evening, and a bunch of bikini-clad, GORGEOUS men took the stage (from a distance, none of us would have known they were men without having been told so beforehand) for a few songs, and it was hard to tell when it ended and the real girls resumed dancing.

This morning, I went back to the site of the party with my brother where I was immediately offered food and whisky (which I declined this time). After a few minutes, everyone started moving into the street and we began a very slow procession towards the wat. Now, it may have been slow, but it certainly wasn't solemn. There were several large speakers being pushed along on a cart hooked up to a band who were walking along playing. In front of them people were dancing and passing around bottles of Hong Thong, and behind people simply walked, many carrying what I assume were things to give to the temple and baskets of beautiful flowers made out of ribbon. The young monk walked right behind the speakers, someone standing behind him carrying a huge orange umbrella.
When we got to the temple, we began to circle the main building three times (the music and dancing and drinking carrying on the whole time) very slowly. Every now and then the new monk (or someone else) would throw handfuls of the ribbon flowers into the crowd. They turned out to have coins inside, and kids scrambled all over to grab them (adults too, but generally the kids worked a bit harder for them). It seemed a little odd to me for a while, as it felt so irreverent to be drinking and making so much noise at the temple, and for kids to be climbing on things and diving under statues chasing the flowers, but I found that I really liked it. I'd already felt that Buddhism is more of a philosophy than a religion, stripped of a lot of the dogma that bothers me in other religions, but it was a whole new experience to see... I don't know what.
Anyhow, after the third trip around, the band wandered away, and the people who wanted to keep dancing followed them, and most of the rest of folks began following the new monk into the temple (they'd settled down a bit by the time they got in the doors). I wanted to go in and see what happened next, but my mom kept shooing me away, though I'm not sure why. I don't think there would have been anything wrong with me going in, I think she just figured I probably wouldn't really want to for some reason.

Yeah. Then I rode my bike around with another volunteer and swung by the houses of some other farangs to visit. On the way to the internet shop, some lady called us over and we stopped and tried to talk for a little bit, and it was cool to just have a random friendly interaction. The feeling of community and openness here is probably one of the things I am enjoying the most. Everyone offers food and drinks everywhere we go (and I need to remember that I should be just as quick to offer when I have the opportunity), and I'm just really enjoying Thai hospitality.

Ok. I'm gonna go enjoy the rest of my Sunday.

2009-02-14T21:31:00.000-08:00

2/11/2009 8:24PM (local time)

Apparently, life doesn't have subtitles.

Whodathunkit, huh?

I have now been in The Kingdom for two weeks, and it feels like so much longer. Not because I'm bored/having a terrible time and time is dragging by, but because I've learned and experienced so much that it seems impossible that it's only been a fortnight.

My host family is very mellow, my sister is at school most of the day (I understand she is preparing for exams for university) and my brother Don works most of the day. He IS a teacher, as I previously stated, but not the kind I thought. It turns out he works at a vocational school training mechanics, mainly in motorcycle repair/maintenance. I've met my younger brother, Sam, though our interactions were pretty minimal. I've definitely had the most luck communicating with Don who seems to have a bit more English than the other siblings, or is at least more willing to try to use it.

On the evening of my one week anniversary in Thailand (though I don't think anybody but me knew that), I went with Don to hang out with some of his friends on a little covered porch-thing outside someone's house and had nidnoy (a little) beer and was given a Thai nickname, "Ma-toom" which means "Fruit," though it must be slang, since when I want to talk about eating fruit, I say "pon-la-mai." Anyway, they were a nice group of guys, one of them is a local chief-type guy, there are some talented musicians and soccer players among their crew, and I ate a snail dipped in a spicy pepper concoction (pet means spicy).

Saturday afternoon, my parents took me into town to check out the great big weekly market. Of course, when they told me that's where we were going, I didn't understand, only getting that we were going into town, and was definitely not mentally prepared to get my shop on. I have plans to go back next weekend to try again, and I will give a better report then.
On Saturday night there was a festival at one of the two local wats to bless the upcoming rice-growing season. It was quite an experience. There were monks chanting and bestowing blessings and receiving donations in one (small) area, and the rest was devoted to carnival games (shooting pop guns at little toys, popping balloons with darts, knocking over cans with a ball, a ring-toss style game played with shower buckets, and a great big inflatable slide), vendors selling trinkets and all sorts of food, a beer garden (I'm not sure whether or not the drinking was sanctioned, but people were doing it) and a great big stage with a band and a bunch of ladies in go-go outfits. After looking around, my father took me to the dancing stage where we went up front and I saw some other volunteers there with their families. After a couple dances, a bunch of people from the audience ran up on stage and danced with the women. A couple songs later, when a new batch of people went on stage, all us asa-samas (volunteers) were herded on stage and ended up staying there for 3 songs or so. And let me tell you, I'm a damn good Thai dancer. That means I can shuffle my feet and wave my arms, and not look too goofy doing it (that's definitely an over-simplification, but you get the idea). Anyway, after our 3 songs we all headed off-stage, but either because I was such an amazing dancer, or because I wasn't moving fast enough, I was grabbed and pulled back onto the stage where I continued to dance with other audience members and the go-go girls (who ranged from young and pretty to middle-aged mothers wearing too much make-up). Every time I tried to leave the stage, and several times after I successfully got off, I was grabbed by either a drunk man or an older woman and returned to the stage. It was really a blast, and by the time I got off and stayed off, I think I had achieved some small level of fame (or infamy) in the village, as I have received occasional comments on my dancing since then.

Monday was a Buddhist holiday, and all us Peace Corps folks went to a wat and observed a much more solemn ceremony, complete with chanting, incense, and a procession that went around the building three times in a clockwise direction ('cause that's how you're supposed to do it). We also got to make donations, which felt good, since the Buddhists apparently do much cooler things with the money they receive than other churches, like building and maintaining schools and whatnot (hm, I might get in trouble with that last comment, so I shan't say anymore). Afterwards we went back to the hotel we'd stayed at initially and learned a traditional Thai dance, the Ramwong (more shuffle steps and arm swaying, but we did it right this time).
Don took me out the other night and showed me their farmland. Out in middle of the rice paddies and sugar cane plots, with a full moon rising and a blood-red sun setting, all I could say was “Bprataa Thai soy maa.” (Thailand is very beautiful)(and that "bp" is pronounced like a 'b', but popped like a 'p' and don't forget to roll your 'r').

These last two days, we have gone into Thai classrooms and had a chance to observe some English lessons. Starting tomorrow, we will actually be teaching English for a couple weeks. I'm pretty psyched.

General things you might be wondering:The food continues to be amazing, though only occasionally very spicy, and I'm eating more eggs than I ever have before (they're a staple right up there with rice, which I had never really realized). They also have delicious sweets and pastries, and my donut consumption has increased dramatically (though that's not saying much since I really didn't eat donuts in the US). And the fruit is exotic and delicious (and since I figured out how to tell my mother that I like to eat fruits and vegetables, plentiful).
Thai people are generally AWESOME, at least in these smaller communities. Smiling at ANYone will pretty much always get you a smile and greeting back. Everyone you visit wants to feed you.

Gift giving is big, and it's an unspoken assumption that if someone gives you a gift, you will return the favor in the future (just keep that in mind if you ever visit).
No, it's not ALL dancing and eating, I'm learning a lot of language (though not nearly fast enough, as I really can't speak with my family and frequently mis-communicate, like telling them “I don't eat Pad Thai” instead of “I haven't eaten yet and would like some Pad Thai.” Whoops!) There are fairly regular frustrations with the bureaucracy of the Peace Corps and the conflicting information we receive. I realize that I am in a very different place, and the things I am familiar with and the people I know and love are far far away. But at the same time, I can see that this is a wonderful place, and more than that, this land has the potential to be a wonderful place for me, as the Thai way of life feels very comfortable and compatible with my own ways and ideals. But there's that language barrier and my roots on the other side of the world to contend with. I am very interested to see what the next couple years hold for me.

(How am I doing with this blog thing? Seriously. I'm very open to feedback. If I'm too long-winded, I wouldn't mind hearing that, though that sounds more like your problem than mine. And if there's anything y'alls want to hear more about, lemme know that too and I will do my best to oblige. As this is a public journal, it's clearly not just for me.)

PIZZA OUT!

Farang! Farang!

2009-02-07T19:17:00.000-08:00

Farang! Farang!

2/3/09 7:45 PM (local time)

I'm trying to think of a clever way to sum up this afternoon, and words are simply failing me. So here's the play-by-play narrative.

We met the local governor today (I'm still not entirely sure how the break down of region, province, city, village works out) which was a pretty big deal, as meeting with any high-ranking official is. All us farangs (that's foreigners) got to wai (hands together, slight bow, bigger bow for him because of his status) and introduce ourselves (in our mangled Thai, of course). There were some speeches in Thai and English, and the we had a coffee break and got to socialize a bit. By the way, the Thais do GREAT pastries, which makes up for Nescafe being the only coffee drink that I've found so far. (On a side note, I heard that there is no official hot drink of Thailand, which was surprising at first, but makes sense considering the climate. They DO have a wide variety of iced drinks, including tea and coffee.)

Anyhow, the whole event was a pretty big deal, but for me, it paled in comparison to what followed.

After coffee and chatting, most of the government posse dispersed, and after a while, the room began refilling with Thai people. These were, of course, our host families (krap-krua), or at least the member(s) who were picking us up. After waiting for the volunteers ahead of me, I met Suria, my new father. We had a chance to speak for a while via one of the Peace Corps staff (he doesn't speak any English, and I really don't speak any Thai). He is about 50 and a council member of the local SAO (I don't recall what that stands for, but it's local government stuff) and has a small farm with a few cattle and chickens, and he grows sugar cane, corn and rice (cash crops). Eventually we loaded my stuff into his truck and he took me home.

My new home is awesome! I have my own room (which I did NOT expect, as I had been specifically told I would be sharing one) which is actually a separate building. I have mixed feelings about the seclusion, but it is and will be nice to have my own private space to decompress in, and I certainly feel welcome. I have one pii-chai (older brother), Don, who is 28 and a teacher. He speaks a (very) little bit of English (though a whole lot more than I speak Thai) which was (and will be) tremendously helpful. I also have a noong-saao (younger sister), Feng. I didn't share many words with her, she had a couple of English phrases, but we failed to have any meaningful exchanges. I'm hoping we can trade some language lessons in the coming weeks. It sounds like I also have a noong-chai (younger brother) who is in the city at school and will be around on the weekends. I think I've figured out that the pii-saao (you figure it out) I was supposed to have is actually my mother (which I was lead to believe I would not have).

I spent a good long while sitting quietly and smiling at people and watching Thai television. At one point, a group of people came by to buy a bunch of huge sacks of khao (rice) and I hung out and greeted them with my farang friend who is living just up the street and had stopped by with his host father on the way to go shopping. It was really nice to have a chance to speak coherently to someone.

I had a super tasty dinner of rice and Thai omelet (fried seasoned scrambled eggs and tomato in this case) and tom yum goon (I think that's right), a vegetable soup with a little bit of ground pork in it (yeah, I'm definitely not a vegetarian any more, though I want to be). There was also some fried or grilled whole fish, but I kinda failed at figuring out how to eat it. Anyhow, it was probably one of the best meals I've had so far (and that's saying something), though I still haven't had anything spicy!

I took my first bucket bath! I'm really glad we talked about the proper way to do that in a session this morning, because I certainly would have made a foul if we hadn't. The toilet (if you're wondering) is not a squat toilet (which I had been told it would be, I guess I can attribute all the misinformation to the fact that the Peace Corps IS a US Government organization), it's a western-style toilet, though it doesn't flush. I'm not sure how it handles solid waste, and fortunately I haven't needed to go, so I figure I'll wait and ask my ajaan (teacher) about it in our session tomorrow. And then I headed to my room. Tomorrow I will take a bunch of pictures, and when I upload this, I'll post them too.

I feel very welcome here, but the language barrier is tremendous. I now have that much more empathy and respect for every person who's had to learn English in America.

And now I have nothing more to say but, “Tomorrow is another day.”

Saawatdii krap!

2009-02-02T04:24:00.000-08:00

So let me tell you about the Land of Smiles. Or rather, let me tell you about the little bit I've seen. It's hot. Not THAT hot, it IS the cool season after all, but having walked on snow about a week ago, it's hot. It's really smoky/hazy from the burning of sugar cane fields (they set fire to them to get rid of the leaves so a machine can go through and harvest the stalks). There's a bustling little downtown loaded with shops and street vendors just a little ways from the hotel where we've been staying. It's amazing how you can feel like you're in the middle of a big city, but if you go in pretty much any direction for more than a few minutes, you're surrounded by farmland.

The Peace Corps has been doing a great job of gradually immersing us in all that is Thai, and I guess that makes sense, since they've had a few years to practice (they will be celebrating their 50th anniversary while I'm over here). We spent the first few days solely on the hotel grounds, surrounded by our American compatriots and the hotel staff. They (the Peace Corps) introduced some culture stuff, we met the staff we'll be working with for the rest of training. Every day since has just been a little bit more. We got our bikes and got to go for some rides around the immediate area and see the fields and houses and a school and the downtown. We started language lessons (which are HARD, but feel awesome!), and have progressed into some of the finer points of cultural concepts. Yesterday we had a big chunk of free time. In the morning I went for a hike with a couple guys and we went up one of the great big hills that poke up all around us to see the area. We had to go find our own lunch, which was pretty challenging, but made me even more determined to learn more language. In the afternoon, I got to lead a few other volunteers downtown to a bike shop, then we wandered around the market where we tried some fried crickets (or grasshoppers, I don't know) and bought some fruit. Tomorrow, they cut the cord and we move in with our host families. What an experience that will be!

I feel like there's so much more I could say here, but I don't want this to simply turn into a play-by-play narration of my life over here. Then again, I've never kept a blog before, maybe that's what I'm supposed to do. Or more likely, there is no "supposed" to for this, and it can (and should) be whatever I want it to be. Meh. I'll figure it out.

Saawatdii krap!
(it's kinda like "aloha" in that it's hello, goodbye, and everything else)

Somewhere over the Pacific...

2009-02-02T04:15:00.000-08:00

Let me preface this by saying that I've had a bit of an adventure getting my computer to talk to me in English when online since arriving here. Google (and all Google related functions) have been displaying in Thai, so logging in hasn't exactly been easy, and I haven't really wanted to invest the time to straighten it out, as there HAS been other things to do. Imagine that. Anyhow, I thought I'd get a couple posts up here while I had easy internet access before I go to stay with my host family tomorrow.

ctrl+v PASTE!

1/27/09, 3:52pm PST

Yesterday was a pretty amazing day.

It started bright and early, although that isn't a great description, since it was still dark out. Hm. I'd never really thought about that until now. Anyhow, I felt mentally prepared, but physically, my body definitely had some nerves going. Anxious stomach, kinda twitchy, sort of an adrenaline rush that lasted for like six hours. I would describe the feeling as “nervous excitement.” Like the long ride up to the top of the first drop on a roller coaster. You know everything is going to be fine, you know you're going to enjoy the experience, but it's impossible to be calm about it.

The flight to San Francisco was pretty uneventful, though the arrival was pretty anti-climactic. Due to a last minute change of plans, I got to hang out in the airport for a few hours eyeballing everyone who walked by, trying to guess whether they were possibly in the Peace Corps and making phone calls and sending text messages to everyone in my phone saying goodbye. It was actually kinda nice, a little time for decompression.

Eventually I met up with some other people in my group, and I almost immediately began to relax. As I met more and more and we got to talking, I was very happy to realize that I had been completely justified in my excitement to meet these people. These are kindred spirits, folks whose lives have brought them to the same experience by completely unique routes, and here we all are, poised to throw ourselves headfirst into the unknown. For the first time since beginning the application process, I am in a crowd who can identify with my feelings, and I with them.

So we had our orientation meeting, discussed anxieties and excitement, risk management, and the logistics of traveling to Thailand. Then they gave us our per diem and we split up to go find food and drinks. And drinks. I followed a guy who knew the area a bit (along with 20 or so other volunteers) and ended up at a pizza place before heading to a really cool jazz bar. I felt pretty good heading back to the hotel around 10, thinking I'd get in a decent night's sleep before heading out in the morning, but for some reason I woke up at 2 in the morning and couldn't really fall back asleep. LAME.

I stopped trying to get back to sleep around 5:30, got myself ready to fly and canceled my phone service. They had us check out by 6:30, then we loaded on a couple buses and headed to the airport. It was pretty funny, prior to this experience, all of my group traveling was overseen by someone (like a teacher). This time, we got to the airport, the Peace Corps employees who had led the orientation handed us our passports and said goodbye, heading for their own flights to their homes. We all stood around for a few minutes wondering what to do, then a few people decided to take some initiative and got our passports passed out and figured out where the right ticket counter was.

As we got our luggage checked, we spread out throughout the concourse and found food. Most of us spent the next couple hours walking up and down the halls, trying to move as much as possible before becoming confined to the plane for the twelve hour flight to Tokyo.

And then it was time to board.

I ended up in a window seat (which is probably definitely better than being in the middle of the middle row), without a seat-mate, which I guess is nice since I have a little more room to spread out, though I think it might've been nice to be next to another volunteer, too. Oh well. And then I decided I should pull out my laptop and write an entry to post on my blog when I get internet access.

I hope my posts aren't too boring! I imagine they will get far cooler once I'm actually in Thailand, but you'll just have to bear with me until then.

Tchuss!

Up, up and away!

2009-01-25T21:21:00.000-08:00

In 12 hours, I will be descending upon San Francisco to meet the other members of my volunteer group. It still doesn't feel real. It feels like the first few days of summer vacation always did, when it hasn't really hit you yet that you don't have to get up and go to school tomorrow. I imagine it'll feel real when I step off the plane in Bangkok and it's 90 degrees. Or maybe I'll just be the amazing stud I've always assumed I was and continue to be completely unfazed by this all. Though I kinda doubt that.

Handle it, son!

Trees, packing and meat!

2009-01-18T19:43:00.000-08:00

Well! I still haven't left the country, but that's coming up soon enough.

In December, our landlord offered to pro-rate our rent for the month of January if we moved out around the middle of the month, which worked well for me as I'd been planning on heading to Portland around then anyway. As the new year approached, however, the subject was still under discussion as my roommates tried to straighten out their plans. Then, on New Years day, the universe made a decision for us. That is, a thirty-six inch ponderosa pine (that's diameter, not height) was blown down by hurricane-force wind gusts. It fell from the neighbors yard onto our roof, knocked almost all of the sheetrock from the walls and ceiling of the room under it, cracked joists and rafters, punched several large holes in the roof and managed to shake the foundation, skewing the front and back doors so they didn't close properly, as well as jarring several other doorways throughout the house. Not content to simply lean against the house, the top twenty feet or so snapped off, falling onto the house of the neighbors on the OTHER side. It was a pretty intense experience for me while I was making some lunch downstairs, and I can only imagine what that was like for Danielle, who was upstairs in her room at the time. Here are some pictures.
I should probably mention that no one was hurt, none of our possessions were damaged, and we'd all been planning on moving out by the end of the month ANYway, so it could have been a whole lot worse. I started working on a narrative of the whole event (it seemed like it'd make a good story), but things got a bit hectic and I didn't get very far. I'd like to take another shot at it once I'm settled in Thailand (which may be a while), and if it ends up being any good, maybe I'll post a copy.

So, instead of hanging around the house for a few more weeks, we decided it would be prudent to move on out ASAP and spent the next several days in a flurry of activity packing and clearing out. Since I really wasn't ready to leave Bend yet, I had to figure out what to do. I probably could have crashed with my brother at his new place, but I don't think there would have been space for all of my stuff, too, and I felt like he really should have an opportunity to settle into his new space without me all up in it. Fortunately, some friends up the street had space for me (and an empty garage for my boxes and boxes), so I headed over there. In any case, who'd rather live in close quarters with a sibling instead of two pretty girls and a cute puppy? I spent the next week and a half trying to tie up loose ends in Bend, playing in the snow, and working hard not to wear out my welcome as a houseguest. Eventually Aaron found time in his work schedule, I reserved a U-Haul, said goodbye, and headed north to Portland.

Now I'm REALLY in the final stages, trying to think of things I still need, eating a little meat every now and then to make sure my stomach is ready for it (I don't want to offend anyone by not eating what they serve me [or seem like a weird American who doesn't eat good food]), and saying goodbye to anyone who'll stand still (which does provoke strange looks from people, maybe I should stick to folks I actually know).

Anyhow, I just thought this blog needed one more post before I actually leave the country, especially when something as exciting as a tree falling on my house happened. The next time I write on here, I'll be all hot and sweaty (because the weather is hot and humid...)!

If I didn't see you before I left, goodbye!

And so it starts.

2008-12-23T14:25:00.000-08:00

A bit over a year ago, I decided to apply to the Peace Corps. It's hard to give a specific reason for WHY I went ahead and wanted to join. There was my recent divorce and the new feelings of freedom and opportunity to do something I never would have before; I had been telling myself that my time was worth more than my money in terms of what I have to donate to charitable causes and the Peace Corps seemed like a fantastic organization to invest some time with; I wanted to rebel against the apathy that I perceive which seems to be prevalent in terms of peoples' world views.

But alone, none of these (or any of the other reasons I could come up with) would really be enough. What it really came down to was that it's more a case of being unable to come up with a good reason NOT to. When this thought occurred to me, it struck as a really good way to make important decisions, and I think that it applies to how I've unconsciously been living my life for some time now.

ANYhow, I filled out the online application (specifically deciding NOT to request a particular placement), wrote my essays, got my recommendations and had my phone interview. And then in October, almost exactly a year after I'd started the whole process, I received my invitation to serve in Thailand. And so I said, "Hells yeah!"

Since then, I've been able to get in touch with a bunch of other volunteers who will be heading to the Land of Smiles with me, as well as a number of folks who are currently posted over there, and it's been a great opportunity to discuss concerns and excitement and get information from folks who know a lot more than I do. And what I have learned has been comforting. I keep hearing that I should sweat the language thing too hard yet (I've listened to a couple Thai language CDs, and I've watched some Thai films) since I will be receiving intensive language training and it would only hinder me if I learned the language wrong now. Apparantly I don't need to worry too much about taking everything I'm going to want, since it will be cheaper and easier to get much of what I will want once I am there. Finally, I have heard many times, "Enjoy your time at home. Drink good beer, spend time with friends and family, and don't worry about the next 27 months. There will be plenty of time for that later." (that's not really a direct quote)

Which brings me to right now. This morning I called the PC office and made my travel arrangements for pre-service orientation, and then I decided I should probably start this blog, since I'd been thinking about doing so for some time.