Aug 24

Aug 24

After spending the evening with Paw, I almost forget we don’t speak eachother’s languages. He knows enough English for most of our simple conversations to work out. Mostly he teaches me Thai. I hope he is enjoying teaching me, and I bet he is hoping I enjoy learning! I sure do enjoy the practice, but sometimes its just too many words, and then I cant remember anything. That’s how I feel with intensive Thai class. The first dozen words are great, the next dozen O.K. and after that I just can’t fit any more. It’s like the first ones push the others out of my short term memory’s and they plummet to their death in the foggy land of forgetfulness.

Today I understood someone really speaking Thai for the first time. Not just a phrase repeated a lot, or key words. Our teacher was saying how beef in Thailand is expensive because it comes from New Zealand or Australia, but beef in the US is inexpensive. (I’d say that’s pretty good for four days in the country!). I keep fluctuating between loving our Thai class and thinking its was too insane and my head might explode from the number of words we learn but I can’t recall at all.

At lunch Martha, Philip, Ellen and I had one of those great conversations about the env. movement. I’m really starting to enjoy the frequency of these conversations in my life. One of the things it touched on was that realistically, its too late so stop all consequences of humans on the env. global warming ext. There has already been, and will continue to be extensive damage, but that doesn’t mean we can’t do our best to curb the effects and protect what we can. The Thai have a word, Sanuk, which means roughly fun, joyful, enjoyable, and Sabai, which means relaxed. It’s interesting to think about how to maintain Sabai and Sanuk in the face of such an urgent and overwhelming set of problems. Urgency is important, but I believe that bridging the gap between knowing and caring to action could definitely use some attention to the fun, relaxing, and enjoyable. After all isn’t that sometime were all looking for.

Its also very interesting, Today Ajaan Mark said that in Thai culture, “social harmony” is the most important thing, even more important than truth, or success. It will be interesting to examine what I define as success (a core value of mine, being the American that I am), and see how my time in Thailand affects either the weight of that value, or it’s definition. In a place where success is valued it’s hard for both sides of a conflict, deal ext to come out happy, there is always the next thing to worry about. (its like the fact that most people, who make enough money that their needs are met, say they would be making enough money to be happy if they only had about 20% higher salaries). Success may be a hard to achieve goal but then, no place is ever totally socially harmonious either.

Today Lep and I played badminton in the front yard and we counted score in Thai. It was good practice for my numbers. I’ve got them down, just takes a minute sometimes. After setting the table, but before we ate Rew and I played a game where you hold hands and spin in a circle then let go and leap away at the same time. One person jumps towards the other and than the other person can jump forward and tries to tag them (while their opponent leaps back) you take turns jumping forward and back until oneperson is tagged. Once I was finally able to figure out how to play (lots of tries and pointing and nodding and head shaking), It was quite fun. \

Today “Pi Boon” picked me up from rom rayem (school). Lep was with him. We went to 7 11. I successfully communicated (in thai) that I was cool with going, but I failed at understanding why we were there or what Lep wanted me to do. So I just bought so pocky (yesterday he got some so I knew he liked them, and I like them). We shared the pocky in the car.

My watch says 22:00. I almost instantly translate that into 10:00. I wonder if my 6 months out I will stop translating it and just have an intuitive sense for what time 22:00 is. I hope so!

Thinking fondly of home, my friends, and fam,

Love
Gigi