First weekend, meeting host family

Aug X “The deposit day”
Today is the day we pay up front. National Insurance. We get our deposit back if we ever make it back to the U.S.

breakfast was amazing. Rice and prawns. We had some of the granola I brought from home.

I think I’ll start taking the battery out of the EPC to save it, since it runs 5% even when its “0ff” (Thanks for the info Cal!)

Aug 23 (second day in Thailand, and first real day with host family)

My family! I really like all of them. It did quite start out how I expected, but there are so many wonderful things that I didin’t expect. I was picked up from school by a man called “Pi La”, since my family was visiting the hospital. What I could make out was someone (uncle?) had a head ache.

Customs at the airport was a man and a woman standing next to the door.

The two young representatives of the program greeted our flock with lays (which was a bit touristy) and open back bus/cab rides through the streets which was awesome! There are gigantic billboards amid crumbling ancient walls, tin houses, canals.

Our school is like, a house, in a garden. Its so small! Our main classroom is wall-less, there are four tiny (10 person max) “language rooms”, theres gardens and a small sports area, a tiny “library” (aka sitting room) and, tellingly, a rock climing wall.. It made me a tiny bit sad to realize there won’t be other Thai students here. But its also like being apprentices or something.

We were given a one hour crash course on Thai customs and language. Enough to learn the taboos, and about three words, and about toilets. I’d say most of the time was spent on toilets. We were recommended to completely remove our pants to use the toilet. Then we were picked up by our families.

Well… I was picked up by Pi La. One girl walked away with a giant bundle of flowers!

The language barrier. OMG. Omg omg omg. I WISH they spoke Spanish here. My brain has figured out that English just wont work, so it has reverted to Spanish. I’m –thinking- in Spanish. Which is frustrating since Spanish is even more useless than English is! The first meal I had out with Pi La was in a great little café off a boulevard but worried me a bit because of the language thing. He spoke some English but it was hard to think of what to say, and I kept saying things that were too complicated. I’m used to being the one with the small vocab, and you never know how much the other person knows so most of the time I feel like I;m not understood or I’m sounding condescending. We met with his student from last year, who is currently teaching at a ISDSI like program, and we went to a huge modern mall and bought me a cell phone. Apparently its mandatory for every Thai person everywhere to have a cell with them at all times. The only thing that made it different from a US mall was the Japanese-fan students in costumes of animals singing on a small stage, and a huge market full of fruit and entire fried fish and noodle stands on the bottom floor.

Eventually, after going to an open market out to dinner ext. we got home. The house is spacous and beautiful, open to the air, mountains, banana trees, and grasshoppers. (By the way Thailand is exactly 12 hours different than Michigan time.)

I have two brothers, Rew,12, (sounds like Leo) and Life,6, sounds like (Lep). They are the best. Rew ran right away, and then ran back with a note book. You don’t need language to tic-tac-toe! We drew animals, chattered, looked at atlases for a few hours. Paw (don’t remember his real name yet) was nice, but it was hard to communicate. Mae (mum) K speaks sentence engligh but she has been gone almost all the time so far.
[phew! Just caught myself starting to put my feet on the coffee table!!]

Anyway, I went to bed a bit worried/stressed. I was positive the hardest thing would be dealing with the lack of attention. However, after today I see that things are warming up nicely and i’m feeling better about it.

I showered (three a day is totally reasonable here, it’s like being in a steamy bathroom everywhere.) and came down for b-fast with the family. Spend the whole day hanging out with the boys. I brought out the juggling balls. We played hide and go seek. We made paper airplanes, colored them with patterns and stood on front porch/patio and threw them out across the lawn, many times. We folded little “cars”, lay on our stomachs, and puff-air powered them in races. It was sooo fun! They are charming, patient, and easy to do things with even when you can only get a few words across. Sometimes Rew will pretend shoot me, (he made a origami hand gun, for a game of zombies, in which he was the zombie – but i didn’t feel comfortable shooting my host parents son)

Almost all communication is through English. i mean. That;s since as all communication is a few key words here and there… I guess my point is. Langage barrier reality! Woah! Tor and Tov you are so lucky to be able to talk to your families! I act so differently than I did/would in latin America. Much more shy, less polite, and generally more confused than optimistic and cheerful and thankful as I feel more comfortable being.

Today was so wonderful. In the afternoon Paw drove us to the fish market. [Pet fish!] Rew and Life would tap my shoulder and drag me all around the Market. There were huge cememt tanks with giant pond carp to tiny Nemos in wiggling anemones. There were tanks made with garden scenes in stone, complete with underwater rivers of white pebbles with little ceramic dolphins. Oh, and there were Sharks for sale! Two foot long super scary sharks in waist high cemet tanks. We took off our shoes and walked on a beautiful deck/board walk beside the biggeswt tanks. Life would “U U” me (might mean look? Seams to substituted as hey and my name) and point at various object and jabber in thai. I love how the boys engage me constantly, I’ve never been around a kids that are so comfortable around me. We tumb war, pretend to be zombies, poke eachother when the others not looking.

I want to connect more with Paw so I sand or walk next to him. I can’t think of anything to say, so I just stand there a smile a lot. Once in a while he will point at a random object, say the English word, and then the Thai word, and I’ll repeat the Thai word a bunch and smile really big (kind of like an idiot) and then forget the word two minuets later.

They love the airobie. Life(Lep) walks around with it on his neck. Mom or dad please send two (different colored) arobie Frisbees to me here. We played badmitton on the front driveway (overlooking roof tops and moutian tops). Mae, leaning over the second story balcony, laughed and cheered when Life and I played. It filled me up with a stomach ache of happiness. Paw had seen me taking pictures and thoughtfully took some of me and the boys. Life tried to take a picture of Rew, who tisted and twisted away. In the tussle, the six year old fell and scrapped his knee(barly bled). He cried like a siren. After what felt like an eventually for me, who was sitting by him, not sure what to do, he eventually limped inside and his parents wandred over and cleaned it for him. “shhh shhh shh” his mom says sternly. Paw rubs in a ointment that Life acts like stings terribly. He talks to him in a voice that seems to be talking about how life is overreacting, and then there was this amazing moment. Life was on his back, cradling his knee, and Paw sitting, leaning by him. And paw starts smiling/ laughing and joking with him.. While this is happening, life keeps swinging his feet up, right under his father’s nose. Paw flinches and sort of glances at me each time. (it is offensive to point your feet at anyone in thai culture.) I felt very culturally, in the loop. Life(Lep) scoots across the room like his leg is a unmovable v of steal, scooting up the steps, butt first, one by one.

Rew and I go for a jog/walk/tag/puddle-jumping trip down a countyside road to the “stadium” which is 700 years old. It a public park, pool, fields, tennis and badmitten courts. He buys us two small coconuts which the vender pops open with a machete. We punch straws through the thin crust of meat (like straws throught the film over bubble tea) and sip cold coconut juice on a park bench. I could have died of happy. I can’t even remember the word for delicious so I just give up on trying to communicate and sit with him, poking holes in our coconut and sipping juice.

Did I mention the park is flanked by low, blue mountains?

Paw and Life meet us there. Life has the aerobie on his head like a crown. We start to toss it around. Paw comes over with racquets, and beckons me. It feels like a mix of getting picked in gym class and getting a hug. We play bad mitten volleys. For the first half dozen volleys I’m balls aweful and each miss is really embarrassing for some reason and then we get it. We had a volley that I think lasted the full length of my life and the history of the universe, and then many, long exciting volleys after that. I realize I’ve stopped speaking any language. I just make emotional “oooh! And ah, Ah, Wheyt,” noises instead. By the end I feel exactly like how I would feel if I took a shower and put my clothes on without drying. Life gets the birdie stuck in a tree and Paw climbs the tennis court fence to get it down. The birdie is made with real, white feathers.

When we drive home, Rew dangles the arerobie out the window and pretends to drop it. Paw asks how much it cost (first Rew does) but he tanslates (it takes abou two minutes for me to figure out what they are saying). I tell them 10-15 dollars and try to compute that into bhat. This is a bit of a downer to the car. Please send Frisbees!

P.S. oh yeah. One of the dishes at dinner was a crunchy mixture of greens and tiny, entire, shrimp heads.