English Camp, Phang Nga Town

Had an English Camp sprung on me by our supervisor who never tells me what is going on. He'll only talk to Chris, who also lives in my province.

I was on my way home from Thanksgiving weekend when he calls me and says,
"So you're coming, right?"

Completely confused, I reply: "Uhh, what are you talking about?"

But off to the English Camp I went, and so did a Swede English teacher, who didn't know that she was going to an English Camp until she arrived and saw all the children. She wins. We planned the camp as the school principal was giving the opening speech.

An English Camp is basically a day-long (or several days long) event with the basic components of a (an):
1. Opening ceremony
2. Big group activity. Usually an ice breaker or some such that forces the kids to do some activity that pushes them out of their comfort zone and by some miracle this kind of humiliation forces a bond between students. Lesson learned: discomfort leads to comfort?
3. Break
4. Rotation. In essence, a class where a pre-assigned group of students will learn/do/sing/make something. The students will of course, use and enhance their English skills and have one heck of a good time. A rotation can focus on speaking, listening, reading, writing or any two of the above or all of the above. One teacher teaches one rotation and kids will move from rotation to rotation. Rotate, if you will.
5. Rotation.
6. Lunch.
7. Big Group Activity.
8. Rotation.
9. Rotation.
10. Closing ceremony.

This is the basic setup. Some camps have more rotations, less big group activities, some have more breaks, some have less rotations. You get the picture.

For this camp, there were around 240 students, 4 farang trainers [which meant 60 students per teacher. which is A LOT of students] and one building with no walls or desks or chalkboards to do all our activities in. Months ago, this complete lack of organization and planning would have had me tearing my hair out. On the second day of the camp, supervisor Nimit managed to shanghai a Dane who had been staying at a local hotel to come and help out. I just had to laugh. The camp was successful, the trainers and I all enjoyed ourselves and (I believe) no one lost any hair. This job definitely teaches you how to go with the flow.

i'm back!!!

apparently, and for whatever reason, people actually read this blog? and there has been demand for more of my inane insights into my boring existence. i'm flattered, and frankly, a little frightened. people actually read this blog?

so here's a quick summary of what's been happening with me:

october - phuket vegetarian festival, chika's wedding, school break, one day decorating the english room/ERIC center, krabi (ao nang)

november - chris comes to visit two weekends in a row.. which meant two weekends in a row of phuket, a minor cold with some major depression, english competitions, english camp, thanksgiving

and what's ahead:

december - christmas at kelly's, george is coming for a visit -- new year's in phuket and then off to phi phi island for hopefully white sand and turqoise water. george's one wish.

tomorrow is a holiday so i'll get you the extended version of the update complete with pictures (backdated a la chris allen. the cheater). perhaps. no promises. you know i'm lazy.

foooood

you know you've been living in rice country too long when ...

- you eat a peanut butter sandwich and savor every bite

- you sadly daydream about grilled cheese sandwiches and promise to never take them for granted ever again

- you invent new ways to eat noodles (weird green noodles made with egyptian herbs from japan bought at the mini mart next door mixed in with pork and beans? yeah. how's that for international?)

and yet despite all your longings and fantasies for sourdough bread, rye bread, french bread, dinner rolls, garlic bread, mashed potatoes, baked potatoes, scalloped potatoes, PIZZA, you know you've been living in rice country too long when..

- you can totally appreciate a steaming plate of fluffy white rice set in front of you

- you order fried rice in a restaurant

- you voluntarily eat rice for breakfast: as a soup, as a kanom, with last night's leftovers.

ah rice. it's what's for dinner. and breakfast. and lunch. and snack.

so... gin kao reu yang? (have you eaten rice yet?)

Vegetarian Festival

The only way for vegetarians to truly deal with the pain of not eating meat is through self-flagellation and self-mutilation. Hey vegetarians, if I could do it for you, I'd punish you too. What's the point of suffering through global warming if you're not going to eat a hamburger or three? I mean, if we're all going to slowly drown like the polar bears, we might as well enjoy all the Double Whoppers with bacon and cheese while we can.

I guess they're not really thinking about hamburgers though during the vegetarian festival (although I definitely was. the novelty of vegetarian food wore off after day 1). For ten days during the ninth lunar month (sometime during the end of September and the beginning of October), Chinese Thais abstain from eating meat.

Oh but there's so much more to it than that.

During this ten day period there are different ceremonies and rites performed by the Chinese monks. Individuals can choose whether they want to abstain from eating meat for 1 day, 3 days, 7 days or 9 days. (I jokingly asked if I could go without for 1 hour. No one thought that was funny. Hm.) In the stricter code of laws, one following the vegetarian diet is also forbidden from having sex, murdering (but hey, other times that's okay), wearing leather and metal jewelry, and eating with anybody not doing the vegetarian thing.

One type of ceremony is the street procession. During a street procession a Chinese monk will mutilate himself (usually a "him" I saw very few females participating in self-mutilation) using any sharp items he can find. Traditionally, it's sharp metallic picks found in Chinese temples, knives, daggers. All shoved through the cheeks or brow.

I think perhaps in recent days, Chinese monks, whose bodies are taken over by spirits and can supposedly feel no pain while they walk around in a trance and speak as if possessed, have become more creative. I went to watch the street procession in Phuket town with fellow volunteers Chris, John and Sheila and of the more.. whimsical items we saw lodged in people's faces, there was a:

beach umbrella

pair of wire cutters

golf club

fire extinguisher

After this, we hung out on the beach and then headed back in to Phuket town to watch monks walk on fire (or red hot coals anyway). We had catch the last bus to my site so alas, even though we waited for an hour, no firewalking. But fun bus pictures anyway!
In Khok Kloi (my town, if you'll remember. 80% Chinese heritage) one night, monks beat themselves with branches dipped in boiling hot water and whipped themselves with axes. Yes, there was blood. They did a very controlled upward swing with (what looked to me like) very sharp axes, lightly lacerating themselves on their backs. One man was very concentrated on sawing on his tongue (or his lower lip, depending on who you ask) with his axe.

In another ceremony, again in Khok Kloi, monks went around the neighborhoods and blessed houses and families. Families laid out altars with tea and fruit offerings for the monks. Oddly enough, the monks would take the fruit and present it back to the family. This is thought to bring good fortune. And if merely visiting doesn't bring you enough fortune, one monk (speaking in tongues in an odd high pitched voice), gestured winning lottery numbers to my host father. Classic.


Here was the only time I saw women with pins through their faces.

















So why all this, anyway? About 150 years ago, Chinese immigrants fell to an epidemic and they sought a cure by not eating meat and praying to the nine Chinese gods by way of festival. And they've continued this celebration every year since then.

- The End -

exactly what am i eating?

i tutor kids in my house tuesdays and thursdays. and since i don't take money, one of the kids' aunts gifts me with fruit. exotic fruit. last week it was a pomegranate. this week, tiny coconut? not really sure what it is. i took off the pre-cracked bit of shell off the top and encountered a brain-like .... brown substance. pierced through that and hit coconut juice. but seriously. this thing is tiny. is it a coconut?


and the meat inside peels cleanly away from the shell:

anyone seen this before?

i am a spaz

and should be kept away from flammables and sharp objects. i am especially terrible with my gas stove. i leave my gas tank's knob turned on out of sheer forgetfulness. today i put a pot of water on to boil and completely forgot about it. here is what's left of my teapot:

kitty

so there's a cat that's been sneakily sleeping at my house. he tries not to show himself but i see him curled up against my fence napping in its shadow. i hear his collar bell tinkling at night when i'm chatting online and i can imagine him scratching his neck with his hind leg. i see his back end and his tail as he darts out the window in my living room as he hears me walking in. he's gotten bolder today. i was sitting across the street and watching him openly laze on my porch. he stared back and opened his mouth in a wide yawn.

against my better judgment, i decided to feed him. oh, who am i kidding. i have no better judgment. i gave him with bits of omelette and a half plate full of rice (do cats eat eggs and rice?). he was a bit shy about taking it, but hey if he's going to be sneaking into my living room and sleeping there at night, surely taking my food as well isn't going over the line that much further.

i left him with the rice to give him some privacy. we'll see if he actually eats it.

moment of zen

so i was on my back step enjoying my nightly deathgarette, staring up at the moon and reflecting. i thought to myself: i've got a job that challenges me daily, students who enjoy it when i act retarded, a house, enough money to splurge on the occasional purse and weekend trips, and people who care about me (and whether i've eaten yet or not). what have i got to complain about, truly? nothing.

there have been moments in the past few months when i've hated my job and wondered why i'm doing this again. but for the first time today, i was able to envision myself finishing my service and being happy in the process.

the next time i'm feeling frustrated, i'm going to take a deep breath and remember how students applauded for me when it was time for me to give a speech, how good it feels to curl up on my two layered mattresses, and how close Phuket is if i'm truly feeling down.

survey

helloooo. is anyone out there? am i talking to myself here? if you read this, please comment! so i can tailor my random babblings to a specific audience...

prayer

Note: I am agnostic with some leftover Catholic guilt drilled into me as a young girl going to a all-girl's Catholic school and living in an almost completely Catholic country. I occasionally get Catholic-y chain e-mails from my family that have somewhat creepy messages, large pictures of Jesus and promises of salvation if you forward the message to at least 17 people. I ignore them.

Today, however, was an e-mail about St. Theresa. "St. Theresa is known as the Saint of the Little Ways. Meaning she believed in doing the little things in life well and with great love."

And attached was St. Theresa's prayer:

May today there be peace within.
May you trust God that you are exactly where you are meant to be.
May you not forget the infinite possibilities that are born of faith.
May you use those gifts that you have received, and pass on the love that has been given to you.
May you be content knowing you are a child of God. Let this presence settle into your bones, and allow your soul the freedom to sing, dance, praise and love.
It is there for each and every one of us.

At this point in time ("this point" being this stage in my Peace Corps service, my life, this hour of the night), I am filled with frustration, doubt and not a little self-loathing. I am glad to be wide awake at 1:30 in the morning and to find a little kick of inspiration where I least expected to find it. Thank you, St. Theresa. I believe your prayer will get me through this week.

adorable

what do you do when kindergarteners come over? take videos!


i wish i could have taken a video of them watching the video. their giggling made me smile.

currently listening to...

genius.

"you know when i'm down to my socks it's time for business, that's why they call them business socks."

a particularly good weekend

...means that i had no time at all to do laundry. is it weird that i find it satisfying that i was so busy that i now have no clean underwear?

on saturday i went with my co-teacher and her husband to the neighboring village of Ban Don (where i had a good community day last month), Ban Nattai to visit homes/parents of students. this was yet another community that FELT like a community. small streets in between houses, generally a more "neighborly" feel than my street. curiously, i thought a visit to the students' houses would mean talking to the parents about the students' progress in school. not so. my co-teacher had a questionnaire that she filled out by asking the parents questions such as "where do you work? how much do you make?" and the students "do you help around the house? what do you like to do when you're at home?"

In Japan, they did something similar, but homeroom teachers visited the parents of their students. Here, the visit was split up by neighborhood and teachers may have interviewed students they have never met before. It was interesting.

Ban Nattai is a 50% Muslim community so there were kids wearing traditional garb:



they wear regular school uniform at school though. there were lots of cats at Ban Nattai:


this one i wanted to take home with me, but seeing as how i only manage to feed myself dinner about three days out of the week, i figure i probably shouldn't take on another living being. here's kitty playing with my camera strap:

afterwards, i got to see how rubber trees are sapped. the major crop down here in the south is rubber. i learned that 1 kilogram of it is 20baht (or 40. memory is hazy) but either way. jeez. how are people making money??

process: the bark is cut diagonally halfway around the trunk. this allows the sap to leak out and drip down into the coconut cup.
this is done at night when it's cool because otherwise the rubber will harden in the heat.


after that, had lunch with my co-teacher and her husband. went home to sleep away the food coma. got called down to the school at 5 where there is a wedding reception. still waaaay too stuffed to eat, however.

the reception ends at around 7, and pawaw his wife and i do our weekly thing of going to the saturday market. it's a small outdoor market and vendors sell everything from food to CDs to clothes to piercings. a few weeks ago, i saw a girl getting her tongue pierced. right there. in the middle of the stall. in the middle of the market. i prayed that the needle had been sanitized beforehand... and thought of audrey.

spent the night at pawaw's for my weekly homestay. this was something we had agreed upon when i did my site visit back in march. pawaw told me to come and do homestay at his house on the weekends. i wasn't too excited about this at first, but now i look forward to spending time with them and chatting, playing cards with my host brother Nine, and sleeping in my own air-conditioned room with big comfy mattress.

it's really nice to have a set routine. it especially helps when i'm having a slow weekend. i find that i get bored really quickly and it's nice to have the homestay to look forward to because it helps break up my boredom.

good weekend, part II

that post was getting too long.

so. sunday:

a long and tiring hot day that started by rolling out of town at 6:30 in the morning to drive into phuket. attended a man-becoming-a-monk party (the now-monk is part of my extended host family), lots of shopping in the middle, and finally rolled back into town around 6:30 in the evening.

note that i climbed into the car while talking to my mom (another weekly ritual) still groggy not knowing why we were heading into phuket or how long we were going to be there. it's the farang (foreigner) in thailand way. we just let ourselves get thai-napped and hope that we'll come home in one piece.

the monk party was more than just eating. the one other monk party i had been to, there was inappropriate dancing by scantily clad girls (pelvic gyrations! booty shaking! a pyramid with a girl doing both at the top!) and whiskey flowing all around.

this monk party served us food, and then got down to the actual rites of becoming a monk:

there was a procession around the wat (temple) with musicians leading the group. [they played the same beat that myself and the other trainees played at our goodbye party in sing buri. i failed miserably at the gong.] the new-monk followed the musicians and we (the friends/family/random farang taking way too many pictures) followed the new-monk. we clutched his robe as he walked. if you couldn't reach the new-monk's robe, you touched the person behind the new-monk who was holding onto the robe. i'm not sure exactly what this symbolized, perhaps connectedness? supporting each other? but ignorance aside, i participated and got prime spot behind new-monk:


we held on like this and circled the wat three times. after which, the new-monk prayed and became official.

blimey!

not surprisingly, i have a cockroach infestation. surprisingly, i have a cold. so tomorrow i'll be spraying the roaches and hoping the fumes clear up my sinuses.

care package

i'm sitting here surrounded with the reason why americans are fat ... and loving every sweet second of it.

my bff (apparently there are people out there my age who use this. thought i'd give it a whirl) jennifer lui sent me two kinds of licorice, a small fistful of honey sticks, some unidentified bulk bin candy, a package of dove smooth milk chocolate with almonds (hey, thanks for remembering i hate dark chocolate!). mmm. i plan on gorging on it all, attaining a hyper sugar high, possibly mopping my house and then crashing. it's going to be a good evening.

J.Lu also sent two shirts (and thank god. i've been depressed lately trying to find stuff that fit and failing miserably at the local market) and a "grow your own luck" lucky horseshoe. awesome!

it reminds me of the time when my underwear was stolen right off my clothesline in japan (the perv left one face towel swaying in the wind) and jennifer sent me some new victoria's secrets.

thanks jennifer, for brightening my day :).

a week in the life of..

now that i've got a semi-regular schedule, i feel like i can put it up.

MONDAY/TUESDAY
i work at a kindergarten through elementary school. 500 students. my host father is the principal, my host brother Nine is my student (4th grade) and so is my host cousin Book (5th grade). I co-teach grades 4, 5 and 6. my host cousin Bill is in the 3rd grade so will teach him starting next year. my host aunt is a science teacher. during my site visit in march, i spent a lot of time at this school and came in a few times during summer break during my first month at site. it definitely feels like home and i'm comfortable with the students and the teachers even though i still haven't been able to memorize all their names yet.

WEDNESDAY
my community day. your community day is what you make it. i've only had two so far and i've been using it to get to know people and to slowly understand my community.

THURSDAY/FRIDAY
i work at a kindergarten through grade 9 school. a little over 400 students. here, secondary school is called matteyom. our middle school grades 8-9 is their matteyom grades 1-3, from now on abbreviated as m.1-3. I co-teach m.2/1 (matteyom grade 2, class 1) four times over two days, m.3/1, and m.3/2. it's taking me a bit longer to find my rhythm at this school. i get very stressed and exhausted and on friday, i definitely rejoice the weekend. on the positive side, most of the kids are eager to learn. and the teachers like to chill and hang out.

this is the very short and sweet version. i'm feeling challenged by the work i see before me and i hope that i can make a difference.

Community Day

my work in peace corps in the 'teacher collaboration and community outreach' project means that i am actually only a teacher four days out of the week. the other day, as you may have deducted from the job title, i am reaching out to the community.

for a bit of peace corps culture, here are some abbreviations. today i successfully did a bit of ARB, IRB and IRF. IRB, (the only real peace corps abbreviation in this list) is a ubiquitous phrase among PCVs. it stands for Intentional Relationship Building. it basically means what it sounds like: go out and make friends.

1. ARB: Accidental Relationship Building. I went out to lunch and met a foreigner couple and chatted with them for a bit. Random how, on my community day when I'm supposed to be plunging myself into the world of Thai, I meet ex-pats. They were in town looking for a house to rent. We exchanged phone numbers and promises to meet up again.

2. IRB: Intentional Relationship Building at Ban Don. One of the teachers at Wat Trimark had suggested I bike to this village and so I did. .. and fell in love with it. It's a small community, the houses are spread out and there are lots of trees. It felt more intimate than my suburban village, even though I didn't see many people.

Wat Don

I popped into a mini mart determined to IRB and was met with possibly the unfriendliest Thai woman I've encountered. When I started asking questions about the community, she ignored me but fortunately the man who was sitting outside gently told me that maybe it would be better to direct those questions to the village leader.

cozy little house with hammock in front. kind of wish this was my peace corps house.

Capital idea! After meeting a few more sets of unfriendly folk and asking for the the village leader's house, I found my way there and had a very rewarding conversation.

it began with him asking if i had a boyfriend and ended with a "how old are you?" but everything else in between was a lot more intellectually stimulating than conversations that I've had thus far with thai people (due to my lack of thai).

he spoke in rapid fire thai but infinitely more understandable than my host family (who i have a very hard time communicating with). i was able to understand or to at least guess at 70% of what he said. and i was very grateful to him for not being intimidated by someone who so frequently said, "i don't understand."

he talked about his community and how there is a rubber tree plantation and fruit orchard but there's really not much in the way of community projects because so many people leave to go work in bigger cities.

rubber tree plantation

he talked about how many thai holidays there were. this came about because he spoke of husbands and wives who live in separate ends of the country but they'll come home on holidays to make merit at their local temple.

he spoke of how many people there are in america who are from europe but few are from asia. (which is greater insight on his part than a lot of people i've met who look alternately incredulous and suspicious when i tell them i'm from america.)

he spoke of thai economy and how thai people love imports from japan and rarely come up with their own products. and how if there are smart people out there, they take themselves off to other countries to find better jobs. i told him that the philippines has that same problem.

and the best part yet is that he opened my eyes to what i need to be doing. it's so simple that i kind of smack myself for not being on the ball. he asked if i was planning on visiting all the (14) villages in our community. really, the only appropriate answer to that is yes but honestly i hadn't thought of it at all. i haven't even met the village leader of my own village!

he invited me to come back to his village next week and attend the village meeting. i can't wait to go back!

3. IRF - Intentional Relationship Fixing. i've kind of wrecked my reputation a bit at Wat Trimark because i've been really stressed and reserved and heading home right when students leave the school. Decided to pop in and have a chat with a teacher who had been giving me the cold shoulder. Talked to him about my IRB experience (he was the one who suggested I go to that village). and ended up going to a cafe with him and his wife (my co-teacher) after we left school. i think we're doing a little better now.

all in all, a very productive day.

-the end-

happiness CAN be bought

for cheap, even. little doses of happiness that keep you going. for me, a bowl of sour/spicy pig innards soup (30baht) or a slushee and a hot dog (32baht).

today, i watched someone experience their noon-time happiness.

i was sitting with my neighobor in her little mom and pop mini-mart (next to my house) when a leathery looking man with a hard face rolls up on his motorcycle and roughly says, "10 baht."

she gets up, pours him a small cup (perhaps about 3shots) of shite rice whiskey (and i know from hub night experience that it's shite. but passable when mixed with 7-Up) and gets him a cigarette. he drinks the whiskey with a grimace, takes the cigarette and hands my neighbor 1baht.

is the cigarette 1baht, i ask.

no, the cigarette is 3baht. two pieces of candy for 1baht... i belatedly notice him unwrapping a mint... he lights his cigarette, hops back on his motorcycle and bids us a farewell with a slight crack of a smile.

i turn to my neighbor and say: 14baht, happy.

"pa-aw wants you to sleep with his daughter"

i'll know i have a better understanding of thai culture when i understand what that's about and don't think of dirty, sexual things (like your local neighborhood pervy pedophile) whenever people say that to me. i can count more than a handful of times when parents have half-jokingly asked me if their child could sleep with me. it's as if by sleeping together, english will seep from my pores, leak into the bedding and get absorbed by the privileged thai child.

... i wonder if it would be unethical to agree and to demand a per hour fee?

a new round of humiliation

which is fine, because this is my form of namjai. [literally, "water heart," namjai is when you are generous not because you feel obligated to, but because you want to be generous and giving out of the goodness of your heart and you never expect your generosity to be answered in kind.] people here are so generous with their time, their things, their money that i never know how i'm ever going to reciprocate their generosity.

but tonight, i made my host family laugh (and laugh hard) for a good ten minutes and that makes me happy.

here's how it went down:

i was playing an intense game of indoor balloon volleyball with the host family kids. i dove down for a low one and felt like i sat on something but didn't really think about it. there was a scuffle and host cousin #1 Bill was down and then immediately afterwards he was pouty. we sat around him trying to console him.. well, they did. i was sitting there trying to figure out why he was having a tantrum. and i was sitting with my knees bent and feet apart when my host brother Nine points at my crotch and very delicately says, "Christine? what?" i look down and i see what he's seeing:

my underwear.

apparently my shorts had ripped during the game. the rip started down at the crotch and all the way up the back nearly to the waistband. i quickly lock my knees together and turn an "oopsies" face to the rest of the family and they crack up laughing for about ten minutes.
i laughed with them for about seven and then i was like, okay, seriously now. can someone please hand me something to cover up with so i can get up?

host cousin #2 Book was making hand gestures indicating pubic hair and penises. and the gist i got from that was, "good thing you were wearing underwear." [i wonder if he realizes that i don't have a penis? or worse yet, that i DO have one? except it's detachable and i keep it in my purse. these kids! always digging through my shit!]

my host grandmother was the only with any sensitivity at all in all this. she went to fetch me a patung (thai sarong). which caused another round of hilarity when i put it on and then gestured riding a bike (you never ride a bike here in a skirt, let alone in a sarong). i got my pawaw (school principal/host father) to take a picture of me on my bike in the patung.

(with my host cousin, Book)

my paw-aw's camera lens cover is on the fritz and he didn't realize that it wasn't completely open throughout taking pictures at his son's birthday party. he told me to consider the pictures artistic. my shorts pre-rip:



. . . another fun night spent getting laughed at. i imagine there will be many of those to come.

thinking about my ex

i had a conversation with a friend the other day about how absolutely frustrating it is when previous relationships come back to haunt you and mess with your new relationship.

it's happening to me right now. i've been lying in bed, thinking about my ex. and i can't sleep.

there were good times, there were bad. of course, when you're comparing, you tend to remember the good about the past relationship and dwell on the bad with the current relationship. we had an amazing time together, my ex and i. it was three years of frolicking and play. it was rough in the beginning, as some relationships tend to be, but we straightened things out and by the end, parting was such sweet and bitter sorrow. we drank, we laughed, we grew together. those were the days--when i knew what i was about and what my ex was about and we had this incredible understanding and rhythm. we had rhythm.

if you haven't figured out by now (and you should have, if you know me)...

.... i've started dating thailand.

yes, thailand and i are in a relationship. you're surprised. what? when did this happen?! nearly four months now. it was awesome in the beginning in those first few weeks when i had stars in my eyes. but recently it's been going rough. there have been tears and angry accusations and, worst of all, heartbreaking disappointment. it's times like these when i think about my ex, japan, and the good times we had and how sad i was when we parted. i have expectations of thailand. to outshine japan, to be better; but also somehow to be the same, to be what i expect. not to be new and unpredictable. not to be less than what i had built japan up to be in my mind.

japan and i are through. i need to get over japan because we're not together anymore. we're not. we speak occasionally. menial things, really. just to see how things are going. but we're just friends. i need to stop laying in bed thinking about times past because they're just that. times past.

i can't expect thailand to BE japan. that's silly. i know that's silly.

thailand and i need to find our rhythm. get to know each other. go on long dates, perhaps take a long moonlit stroll on the beach hand in hand. and when we go on these dates, i promise i won't be thinking of japan.

lazy saturday

it's not SUPPOSED to be a lazy saturday. i was looking forward to today because i've been busy all week and have had no time to clean the house. but what do i do instead? fiddle on the internet and let blogger suck hours of my life.

so i've been reflecting on my past month at my site (courtesy of Pocket asking for input about our first three months at site). i acknowledge that there were many days of idleness that could have been better spent getting to know my community. so i took things slowly, oh well. i got to know my host family better and got the opportunity to travel a little around my province. work-wise it wasn't the most productive month but growth-wise, i experienced a lot and perhaps even cultured a little patience.

experiences. the things we experience in a new culture can make us question our own beliefs and social norms. some things we just think, umm. why?

such as self-flagellation with a branch dipped in boiling hot water. as a chinese monk's birthday celebration.



i thought i'd throw this video up as i came across it when i was spending my morning creating the silly slideshow on top of this page. [giggling in the background is my host-brother, Nine.] now that i've got this video up and managed to post and rejoin the blogging bandwagon after several months of inactivity, i think i can finally go and be productive.

cleaning, lesson plan idea brainstorming, biking around community. three things i want to accomplish before i go for my weekly homestay-night at my pawaw's (school director's) house.