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.