Apartment Life

9-29 2009

Today was a basic unit in my life since moving into the apartments. I got up, was huntrey, got ready for school and bagan our road side journey down the busy streamts, and then the supper highway to get to school. I stooped and bought breakfast from the roadside stand. It was lots of rice, a bit of Tom Yum soup (lots o muscles yum, and fish balls, not so fum) and also a fried egg. This was supplemented with buns and a pulled pork sandwitch from “7” (eleven). Thai class was its usual wmotinol roller coasted with a few high moments being talking about different kinds of iwld animals and a low part being when pongsowet would just repeat the same sentence, faster and faster, when it was apparent that no one besides Angela understood. There was also a moment when Mike was trying to understand theuse of thee word boy. “ofen” in a sentence and Ajaan (clearly frustrated with our not understanding repeatedly) quipped “you don’t understand often”. I was schoked and angry at this, but I took a moment to remember that in Thai culture it is much more O.K. to state things that are abvious, even if those things aren’t very nice. It reminded me of the my host family teaching me the word fat, and shamelessly and repeatedly calling people in the family fat. After Thai, I ate lunch with Binney and family which was lovely as always, and lSeminar was very interesting. We talked about the “Green Revolution” and why it came about, tis pros and cons, ext. I like how in our agroecology course we always look at both the pros and cons of every issue. So often, in the environmental circles I’m part of things (ext. GMOs Genetically modified Organisms) are always attacked as terrible horrible things. This approach is neigher as valied nor as effective as examining the good and bad, and aknoleging where the “Ifs” lie. Like “if” we could make a crop that was more efficient and drought resisent, it could be env beneficial by cutting back on the expansion of agriculture into wild areas that lie in airable places, and “if” a genetically modified strain of a plant were to escape it could “contaminate” native strains and create a new kind of super invasive plant – and/o bring down genetic variation.

After School Cody, Emma and I chilled out for a bit in our room, goofed around, talked, and cooled off , (in our bras …not Rip Roy) while getting a start on the HUGE amount of homework we have each day. We did a work out, including runningthe stiars, abs ext. which was quite sweaty. And showered. We went out to a cheap and DELISIOUC sushi place for dinner, just across from our apartment. I had the BEST tempura udon, it was so sweet and flavorful. Then we went to the gocery store in the basement of the mall and bought some breakfast and snack food, and came back and workedon finishing the reading. Although I had read all through Emma and Cody’s naps, they caught up with me! Darn social studies people and their super reading skills! Near the end Erin made us some wonderful pear-sprite, other wise known as throat warming- candy drinks, and we had a grea evening laughing and joking until (not too long later) we were all too exhausted to continue and had to head to bed.

Nearly all my time, is take up eating, sleeping, showering, excersizing, homeowrking, walking, or schooling. I barely have time to finish my school work, and not nearly as much time as I would like to study Thai language or journal and reflect. There are bits of time the girls and I hang out, but they are usually double tasking , and I just need that time to decompress and –live- a bit. By the end of the day I am so exhausted there I sno way I could go down to the bars in the evening, and socialize with the locals or other students there. Oh, how many good things and how little time….Wishing there were about twice as many hours in a day (only those assigning homework didn’t realize this)

Gigi