At this point some of you may be wondering exactly what I am supposed to be doing here, something that I often wonder myself. As a CBOD volunteer I am working in community development. This means that I am working through the local government office, similar to town hall in the states. While technically I work out of the government office, I am supposed to spend most of my time the first few months, and really the whole first year going out and meeting people. This means visiting schools, health stations, community volunteers, youth groups, community groups, and the chiefs of the villages. Sometimes I spend the whole day at the government office talking to the people here, practicing my Thai, doing research online, or making lesson plans for English. Other days I go out and interview the village chiefs about their community. Today I spent the morning at a health center, asking the doctor questions about health problems in the community, programs they have, what they excel in, and what they could improve. Yesterday I spent the morning at the office developing the questions for the health center and then the afternoon and evening at a wedding. Going to things like monk ordinations, weddings, and funerals are actually a part of my work and are an excellent way to meet people and have more and more people know who I am and why I am here. In the last three months I have gone to two weddings, 3 monk ordinations, and 3 funerals. When I ride my bike around I hear people yelling my name all the time and always bump into people I know at the market. Most of the time I have no idea who the person is or how they know my name but I just smile and pretend I know exactly who they are. In order to make myself feel slightly useful during these months of going out and meeting people I have started teaching English two days a week to kids in the community and also have planned my first project which is coming up next week.

On a different note here is my story of humiliation for the week. Friday was elder appreciation day which means a couple of hundred elders from the village came and had a party. They danced, sang karaoke, and then I had the honor of pouring water on their heads and they all got to dump water right back on me. At lunch someone asked me if I thought there were any handsome men at the event and I responded by saying "they’re old why are you asking me that". But of course it doesn’t end there, they then say a specific persons name and ask me if I think he is handsome. I didn’t understand the question and responded with Yes. Horrible idea. Next thing I know I am up on stage in front of hundreds of people and they are announcing that I think one of the village chiefs is handsome. Then of course he comes on stage stands right next to me and all the elderly people start yelling and clapping. I can’t even imagine what shade of red my face was at that point.

I have a few pictures of me teaching English and pouring water on elderly people to show that I really do work once in a while but unfortunately I left my camera cord at home and I won’t have internet again until next week so I will just have to post this without them.