baby bees and rubber trees

After 10 long weeks of training I took an oath on Monday and swore in as a Peace Corps Volunteer! The completion of training felt like such an ending, when really it is only the beginning of my service here in Thailand. I am now at my site and will not be seeing any other volunteers for a few months. Even though I have been in Thailand for a while now, this feels completely different because I am not surrounded by other Americans everyday. 

After a 12 hour overnight bus ride I got to site around 6am yesterday. For breakfast I ate baby bees. They were actually pretty delicious even though the texture was a bit funky. By 8am I was at work meeting people and getting to know the community. For some reason they insisted that I bring my pet porcupine with me.  He sat next to me all day long.  Thai people think I’m strange enough as is so bringing a porcupine to work just makes me even stranger to them. They kept saying they hope he dies so they can eat him! 

At work I met all of the police and fire volunteers then someone handed me a scary looking knife and I carved a tree until rubber came out. The rest of the day I tried to practice my Thai and avoid falling asleep.  After work I went home and met all of the neighbors. For a few hours I sat outside and talked to the kids while neighbors came by to see me. The whole time there were about 10 kids ranging from 2 to 16 years old hanging out in the yard.

After dinner my host family asked me if I wanted to go watch people do aerobic exercises. When we got there I realized they didn’t want me to watch they wanted me to actually do aerobics because they want me to lose weight. Aerobics was fun and I got my 5 year old host brother to join in.

So far I love my new home and am excited to see what the next two years will bring! The office building in my village has internet so hopefully I will still be able to update my blog weekly.

Last week of training a few volunteers and I found real bread and cheese! First time I have had either in a few months and it was by far the best grilled cheese I have ever had. It must have been well over 100 degrees kneeling next to that fire cooking but was certainly worth the effort.

Singing karaoke at a going away dinner. It's not a real Thai party without karaoke. 

My Sing Buri host family at our last dinner together. This is one of the only times I was able to get a picture of them all together.

Porky.  Looking fly as always.

Fried Food and Wedding Dresses Galore

I don't think a week has gone by yet without something ridiculous happening to me. Last Sunday I was taken on an hour long drive to a photo store. I had my hair, makeup and nails done by transsexuals who all wanted to date me. After that they took my upstairs to a room full of wedding dresses and told me to pick out three. At this point I decided it was time to draw the line. I kept saying "no wedding, no wedding" and everyone was laughing at me. So eventually they just picked out some dresses for me. The first dress I had to wear was this puffy white knee length dress. I feel pretty confident that it was a wedding dress but they kept saying it wasn't. I then had my picture taken with a beach as the background as I was playing a violin and laughing. Then we all had family photos taken with me in my wedding dress. Next dress was a European ball gown with a hoop underneath to make it puff out, then a japanese gown, and finally traditional Thai. I eventually found out that these were family photos and that they were going to replace the ones already on the wall in the living room. Hopefully they decide not to buy the one with me playing the violin in my wedding gown. But it was really nice of them to want to include me in the family photos, even if the entire experience was kind of terrifying.

In other news, this week I think I ate french fries everyday. My family has been concerned about me and to show this they make me lots and lots of french fries. Yesterday for breakfast I ate french fries, deep fried chicken, and mini hot dogs. Today for lunch I ate fried papaya, fried mushroom, and fried corn. Quite the healthy diet I've got going on.

I had my final language test yesterday which was a 30 minute interview all in Thai. It was going pretty well until she asked me what I studied in college. When I told her I studied the brain she asked me what about the brain I studied. The only thing I could think to say was "well if you touched me but I didn't know you were touching me I would study why I don't know that you are touching me." Pretty sure she thought I was a bit strange after that. In my defense explaining neuroscience in Thai is incredibly hard! My pet porcupine also came up which didn't help my image.

In one week I leave for my permanent site!  I will try to update one more time before then. Hope all is well, and I miss everyone! Eat some pizza for me.

Site Visit!

My new home is located in Northern Thailand in an area known as the golden triangle near the borders of Laos and Myanmar. I will be the only Peace Corps Volunteer living there for the next 2 years. My village is in the mountains and right on the other side of it is Laos. There are 2 different hill tribes in my village, plus Northern Thais, Isan Thais, and immigrants from Laos. It is a beautiful place and is very rural.

After a 12 hour overnight bus ride from bangkok to my site, I was picked up by my Thai counterpart and taken to her house. After eating a bit of food she asked me if I was ready to go out. She probably said where we were going in Thai but I didn't understand it. Next thing I know I'm at a funeral. Funerals are very different here. There are groups of people hanging out outisde eating and drinking. Males in one area and females completely separate. Everyone stared when I walked in and I heard shouts of foreigner coming from every direction. Everyone wanted to talk to me and know who I was and what the heck I was doing in their village. The separation of male and female didn't seem to apply to me for some reason. I met lots of key village people and learned to cook some Thai food too. After that I went to a wat and got string tied around my wrists from a monk who chanted over me and poured water on me. From there I was taken to a waterfall, a market, and a windmill.

That night I stayed with a host family. We ate some delicious food and everyone sat on the ground and ate with their hands which was very different from what I have experienced in Central Thailand. The next morning I met two elderly women who weave mats for sitting on the floor. They taught me how to make one and I sat with them for a few hours making the mat. They asked me if I could help them develop a market for selling them because they can not make enough money. Then I walked down the street and met another elderly women sewing traditional hill tribe shirts. I sat with her for a while and spun a bicycle tire attached to a string that spun out the thread for her. After about 10 minutes my arm was killing me but this lady could probably do it for days on end. In the afternoon I met a teacher who is very excited to work with me and was incredibly nice. 

The next day I went to the government building in my village which will be my main base for doing projects out of. When I walked in everyone was so excited and was yelling and could not wait to meet me. I said hello in Thai and everyone dissolved into fits of laughter. After being introduced to everyone they crowded around and whipped out a scale. Everyone is gesturing for me to get on it and at first I am horrified, but after a few seconds I thought the whole situation was hilarious and stepped on the scale with tears in my eyes from laughing so hard. When they saw how much I weighed people were high fiving and laughing even harder. Then they told me I need to diet. It was an incredibly strange experience. I also went to a daycare, health center, and a community group to meet with people and discuss why I am here. In the afternoon back at the government building they dragged me upstairs, handed me pom poms and told me I was going to be a cheerleader. About 8 of us practiced a cheerleading routine for an hour and then at the end after seeing how bad I am they asked me if I can do a Thai sport instead. Apparently there is a big sports day competition next month against other villages and it is very competitive. Every day they stop work an hour early and split into groups to practice the sports they are competing in.

Near my site with my counterpart Pii-Dao.

2 year old who I stayed with! She's incredibly energetic and tons of fun. She took me around the neighborhood to meet everyone and by the end I had 10 kids hanging onto me.

If you're thinking gosh that looks like ants and maggots in a sandwich bag, then your only half right. Those are red ants and ant larvae in a sandwich bag, get with it people. I only ate the ants and was very nervous to do so because I thought they might bite me since they were still alive. The larvae looked a bit too much like maggots for my liking. This is a common food in my Tambon, people love it which I absolutely do not understand.

View in my village. This is what a lot of the area looks like. There are gigantic fields everywhere with mountains/hills in the background. Beautiful.

Cheerleading practice with my coworkers!

This week all of the PCTs organized a one day English/Life Skills camp for our villages. Around 200 10-12 year olds showed up and we had all different kinds of lessons for them ranging from road safety to nutrition to exercise. Each lesson involved fun activities and a few english words to teach them. My group chose to do an obstacle course and water balloon fight. Our goal was to teach the kids about teamwork and to have a bit of fun. By the end of the day I was covered in a mixture of water and sweat and was exhausted. It was a ton of fun. Two resource volunteers came to help us and they said that at site they host or go to other volunteers camps all the time which are usually around 3-4 days long. They are a lot of work to plan but the kids really loved it and I am excited to do more in the future.

Animal hide drying outside of a wat. An elderly man cuts the animal hide into different animal/human shapes and punches holes into the hides to make beautiful puppet shadows. He is trying to find an apprentice but none of the young people are interested.

A woman making pasins at a festival I went to last night. Everyone wore traditional Thai clothing and there was a parade, music, shows, and lots of food!

I saw these 3 Thai men at the festival, my sister told me they were supposed to be Americans....

Baby elephant in the market. When I walked by he reached out and tried to open my bag! Or that's what I think he was doing anyways. I feel really bad for these elephants, the people hold them still by a hook behind the ear.

View from the restaurant where I ate lunch today. Jealous?

Tomorrow I find out where I will be living for the next two years, and then on Thursday I head to site all by myself for 4 days!

Puppies and Porcupines

This week has been crazy. Tuesday night I got home from class and told my host family that I like porcupines. Porcupine is men in Thai which I think is pretty funny. I was just trying to practice my Thai plus I do think they are really adorable and I would maybe like one as a pet down the road when I get to site if it seems practical. My family couldn't understand what I meant so I googled pictures of baby porcupines to show them. The next day I get a text from my host sister telling me she is going to be home late because she is in Bangkok. At 8pm she comes home all excited and drags me out to the car. I can hear a puppy crying in the car and then she shoves a box in my hand that clearly has something alive in it. I open the box to see a little ball of quills hissing at me. Then the puppy is placed in my arms and she tells me to bring him into the house. I figured that the puppy was a friends, but nope, she went to bangkok spur of the moment and came home with a baby porcupine and a puppy. The puppy slept in my bed the first night and peed all over it of course. In the morning when I went to check on the porcupine he was not in his box so I had a puppy and a porcupine lose in my little bedroom. Since then the porcupine has warmed up to me and he is so adorable! He likes to try to snuggle though which is pretty painful for me.

On another note, I taught English as a second language this week. My students consisted of 4 monks, 5 little kids, a group of middle aged people, and several elderly women. The lesson my group had planned involved lots of activities where people get up and move around and eat snacks. The monks walked in right when we were about to start and panic set in. Monks are not allowed to sit near women, touch women, take anything from a women, have fun, or eat after 12 (along with 222 other rules). Our whole lesson had to be thrown out the window and we had to make it much less active. But the students still seemed to like it because they all came back the next day and even brought friends! Teaching turned out to be a lot of fun and I laughed harder trying to lesson plan than I have since coming to Thailand.

I also interviewed a 70 year old man who owns a garden area where he uses solar energy, recyclables for gardening, makes his own gas for cooking, makes organic fertilizer and pesticides, has a healing herb room, and makes homes out of mud and rice. People come to his house and he holds classes teaching people about self sustainable agriculture and the benefits of not burning rice fields after harvest time. It was really interesting and I hope that I can find something like that at site too.

I am doing much better since my accident and am hoping that the doctor will clear me to start biking again tomorrow. Training is now half over and in one week I will find out where I am going to be living for the next two years!

Puppy! I named him Mocha, which is the same thing in Thai and English. They already have a dog named Pepsi so I thought I would keep with the drink theme. 

My baby porcupine! Since in Thai he is a men, I have decided to call him porky/porkster. I tried to name him Mowgli from the jungle book but no one here could pronounce it. He has already grown a noticeable amount in the 4 days I have had him which makes me wonder just how big he is going to get...

Using toilets to grow vegetables. Yumm!

Since I am healing from my little accident I didn't spend the weekend traveling like the last few weeks, but I had an awesome time anyways. Saturday was sports day for all the PCTs (Peace Corps Trainees) but I was unable to participate so I had to sit and watch. After that was a bike maintenance session. I don't have a bike anymore so I once again had to sit and watch. My host sister came and picked me up and a bunch of friends biked over to my house. My meh taught us how to make a Thai kanome (snack). We all had individual personal size pumpkins that we took all the seeds out of then made an egg, coconut sugar, banana leaf mixture and poured it into the hollowed out pumpkins. The pumpkins were  steamed on a gigantic contraption over a fire outside the house. Half an hour later we had delicious pumpkin with a creamy custard filling.

Sunday I woke up in the morning to find my Paw setting up chairs all over the yard and hauling huge boxes of sugar and fish sauce out of the garage. Next thing I know people start popping up left and right while I am sitting outside in my pajamas trying to eat breakfast. I rush inside to get dressed and when I come back down the yard is filled with people and my Paw calls me up to the front and hands me a microphone. I introduce myself in Thai and try to explain where I am from and what I am doing in Thailand. The crowd loved it and I felt like a superstar. Right after my little speech I'm whisked away to Tesco Lotus (basically a huge Walmart). We had pizza for lunch with real cheese! I came home and made chicken cacciatore for dinner. This may not seem like a big deal to you but believe me it was. My family has never had Italian food before and I was very nervous that they would hate it. Thai food is incredibly flavorful and either extremely spicy or sweet. My meh and sister watched me cook the whole time and seemed very confused by what I was making. They all claimed that it was delicious but it is hard to say for sure. I did make a ridiculous amount and only a small portion was left for me to bring to lunch the next dayso I suppose that is a good sign.

My Meh eating italian food for the first time! I know her face looks disgusted but I swear it was delicious!

I was planning on adding a few more pictures but they take a long time to upload and I am being devoured by mosquitoes. 

A Night in a Thai Hospital

For all of you who said you didn't think I would last a month without landing myself in the Hospital, well you were right. Tuesday started off like any other day. I went to language class in the morning then to the post office to mail my niece a present, and then to the market for some fried bananas. On the way back to class for the afternoon I was riding my bike and my front wheel went of the road into a whole. Next thing I know I am flipping over the handlebars and my head smashes onto the pavement. Fortunately, I was wearing a helmet that I had just tightened so it fit perfectly. Unfortunately I was all by myself and couldn't even standup. Within minutes I am surrounded by about 15 Thais and am laid down on a bed and have smelling salts under my nose. Then seconds later Peace Corps arrives and whisks me off to the Hospital. The ER is quite small and my bed is right next to a little boy screaming at the top of his lungs. The doctors stab me in the butt with some needles (which is a first for me) and slather my cuts with iodine. The pediatrician spoke english and could communicate with me so I had him instead of the regular doctor. I ended up spending the day/night in the ICU for observation. None of the nurses spoke english so it was very confusing. They gave me XXL scrubs (probably what they consider American size) and the first time I stand up to go to the bathroom my pants are at my ankles. I think they really enjoyed seeing an American butt. They also spent a long time trying to say my name and cracking up over how strange it sounded. On a positive note, I got a grilled cheese during my hospital stay, and cheese is very rare in Thailand. My host sister and mother came to the hospital right when they found out about my accident and were crying and very concerned about me. My sister ended up staying over night with me and even took the next day off from work to take care of me. It turns out that I had a concussion, sprained neck, bruised pelvis, small abrasions, and possibly a fractured coccyx. My bike was shipped to bangkok for repair (hopefully). I missed a lot of training but was able to go to language class and a little bit of technical training today. I am still very uncomfortable but grateful that I didn't have any other injuries. The Peace Corps has been very helpful arranging transportation and helping me out with everything. The PC doctor calls me a few times a day to check in and ask how I am doing. I did get to learn a lot about Thai hospitals from this visit! Hopefully I won't be returning to one anytime soon...