Everything's coming up roses

The other day as I was cutting up my meat with my spoon, my host family asked me if I ever want to have children of my own.  I tried my best, in Thai, to explain that while I might like to have children one day, I'm already 30 and unmarried, so it is unlikely that I ever will.  Instead, what I actually said was that, yes, I want children and I want to have 30 of them.  (hahahahaha!!!  Yeah. Right.)  As ridiculous as that was, it was received far better than what I did next.

When they passed me the chili powder, I took a pinch and sprinkled it over my food.   

I LOVE spicy food.  Love it.  So I was more than happy to sprinkle some much loved chili pepper over my guai-tiao and was quite excited to show them that even though I am white, I can handle my spice. 

When I used my thumb and index finger (as one normally would when pinching) to get the pepper out of the baggie, my family immediately broke into a tizzy.  They jumped up, ran around, yelled, and eventually grabbed my hand and stuck it in a bowl of water which they obtained during the fiasco.  Thankfully, that seemed to put out the fire I had unintentionally started.  No pun intended.  :)

As I sat there stunned and with my hand in a bowl of water, everyone else seemed to finally calm down.  This little faux pas totally rained on the spicy food parade I thought I was going to have that evening.  And instead of flaunting my tolerance, I was lectured on the dangers of touching chili powder in an environment where sweating is inevitable.  What if I had touched my eyes!  Or skin!  Oops. 

Luckily, I recovered and they trusted me enough to let me help them make flower arrangements, which I totally rocked.  So my parade was back on, and thank goodness!  Because little did I know, the next morning I was actually going to lead one.  More on that later. 

My flowers: (Toby and Tasha, I totally understand if you want me to do all the arrangements for your wedding this year.  Just say the word.  I'm the master flower arranger now!)

Before

During (one petal folded)

Finished product!

 

Where Everybody Knows Your Name... but they can't pronounce it.

Week one at site is over.  12 times I've ridden my bike to and from work and had people call out "SALAH!" the whole way.  I can't believe I've made it this far.  *pauses for applause*  So, before I get too behind in my blogging, let me cover the high points of day one...

A few weeks ago during my final review with Peace Corps (and when I was officially recommended to serve as a volunteer) they asked if I had any questions before they released into the wild.  Yes, actually, I did have a question.  One that seemed like it should have a very obvious answer, but one that was weighing heavily on my mind nonetheless: WHAT DO I DO WHEN I WAKE UP ON THE MORNING OF THE 22ND OF MARCH?!  This was to be my first day at site.  "Um.. go to work?" they said.  That was the obvious answer, I know.  But the underlying questions were much greater.   Do I go into the community yet?  How do I find my way around?  Where will I eat lunch?  Will I understand anything that is going on?  What do I work on?  The questions, to me at least, were endless.  They still are.  I have no idea what awaits me each morning when I wake up and I assume that this feeling will last for the next two years.  *Ahem* The next one year and 51 weeks. 

I had been forewarned that I was going to have to give a speech in Thai on the morning of the 22nd.  This is one of the first things my counterpart told me when we were reintroduced at the counterpart conference.  No pressure, right?  Nice to meet you, too.  If you know me, you know that I like to wing it.  And that's exactly what I did.  That morning I scrawled a few choice Thai words down in my notebook for reference (and just in case).  I believe it's always best to speak from the heart, even if you can't speak the language.  So, in front of all of the important village leaders, I did my best to introduce myself in a language I had only studied for two months.   Then, something beautiful happened. 

When I thought I was done, they put me in a chair in front of the crowd.  There was a floral arrangement on the table next to me and it was covered in strings.  (Below is a picture of it after the ceremony - picture it with strings all over each leaf.)

 
One by one, 53 members of the community took a string from the floral arrangement and approached me.  They swept the piece of string over my wrist both away from me (to brush away all bad luck and feelings) and toward me (to usher in good luck and happiness), said a blessing in Thai, then took my hand, said how glad they were I was here, and wish me much happiness and luck here in Phichai. 

This is one of the most beautiful things that has ever happened to me.  It is a rare experience to have one person, let alone 53, welcome you with open hearts to a new community and give you an individual blessing.  I took this as a good sign and so far it has proven to be just that.  This has been a rough journey for me, as you probably know from my various whining and homesick e-mails and skypes, but I feel like it is going to be a worthwhile journey, nonetheless.

Here I am in my bedroom that night with all my strings feeling very loved and welcomed.  Yep, that's my bed there behind me.  I sleep on some pillows on the floor.  But I like it.  So don't judge.

The rest of the week has gone fairly quickly.  My village has kept me very busy and when I expressed that this has been a particularly hard and sad week for me for a number of reasons especially since I'm kit tung baan, they drew me even closer, told me they loved me, are so glad I'm here, and bought me a pink t-shirt with a kitten on it that says "Please be happy."  So, I have been happy, because, well, what else am I gonna do?

There's Beauty in the Breakdown

On Wednesday afternoon I left for site.  And when I say "left" I mean I was picked up by three people I have only met once, can only communicate with in short Thai/English sentences, and driven about 5 hours north into the wilderness of Thailand (ie: through many rice fields), and away from everyone and everything I know here.  I could tell you that it was no big deal and that I was very excited about my "big adventure," but that would be a total understatement and, really, an outright lie.  There are only two other times in my life when I have been more petrified: once when I was driving just outside of Cincinnati and my dog jumped out of the car and ran across six lanes of traffic, and the other when I was underwater for a considerable amount of time after being pitched out of my raft and into a class five rapid on the Nile River.  But, I digress... Let's just say I was terribly anxious about what was going to happen next.

So, they threw my giant, heavy suitcase in the back of the truck and I said goodbye to the other volunteers.  Since going to sleep is pretty much my solution to every problem, I said a quick prayer to both God and Buddha, passed out in the back seat of the pickup and woke up periodically to burning rice fields, sharp turns, loud music, and my new life.  Ah, Thailand. 

When I arrived at my homestay (more on this later) they fed me, which was really nice.  Jai dii mak mak.  And even though I felt like an empty shell of a person, save the rice in my shell-person belly, I decided I would begin integrating into my new community.  Ugh!!!  The effort!

Our house is a typical Thai home.  It sits on stilts and the cooking is done under the house, which is kind of like a patio/garage/kitchen/basement but open air.  Everyone was in the "kitchen" so after I was done settling in, I went downstairs to see what was going on, and also to make an effort to communicate.  I ended up in the middle of an OTOP project (again, more on this later, or if you are super curious, you can Google it) and found myself helping some Thai ladies make naam priik.  Naam priik translates into "pepper water" but it is really more of a chili paste.  It's delicious and if you are ever in Southeast Asia, I encourage you to try it.  I don't think I really helped all that much, but it was really fun to participate in a second-income generating project on my first evening at site. 

But I wasn't done yet.  After about an hour of likely screwing up someones second income, my host mom asked if I would like to go to the school and watch the students play volleyball.  Of course, I said yes.  Not because I like volleyball, but because I remembered one of the projects my Tambon asked me to help with was the youth council and also because you should never turn down an invitation - you don't know where it will lead!  And - this is the best part - because my bike and helmet hadn't arrived at site yet and it's a Peace Corps policy that I wear a helmet whenever I ride a bike, I was able to make an extra awesome first impression when I rolled up on my borrowed, pink child's bike wearing an over-sized red motorcycle helmet. 

Can you imagine what people must have thought?  I mean, seriously?  What would you have thought if your town never had foreigners and the first time a foreigner came to town, she arrived at the little league soccer game on a child's bike with a motorcycle helmet on her head?  In America, the police would have been called.  In Thailand, they asked if I wanted to join in on the game.

And then there were none

The past few evenings have been spent fighting off an army of tiny Thai gnats that have attempted to take over my bedroom.  There are so many that they cover my bedsheets, bounce off my face, my computer screen, and swarm the curtains.  There is not much I can do, save spraying my entire bed and all of my clothes with bug spray, turn off the ceiling lamp they are so obsessed with, and hope they try to find some other source of light and leave me alone.   Alas, I've woken up twice now only to have to sweep up piles of their little dead bodies.  And it looks like tomorrow morning will be the same.

Much like these little bugs, things in Thailand seem to come in waves.  Whether it is bugs (first it was ants, now it's gnats), food, location, or anything else, it all seems to run its course.  Today was my last day of training and on Monday I swear in as a volunteer.  This should be a big moment in my life and I'm excited to take this next step of my Peace Corps journey.  But, I'm also really nervous because for the second time in 10 weeks my life will change dramatically.

It strikes me as funny that I have already been here 10 weeks.  Some days it feels like I just got off the plane, but on nights when I'm constantly sweeping bugs off of my bed, computer screen, and my face, and drowning in my own sweat and NOT complaining, it feels like I have been here for a lifetime.  I have gotten so used to the creepy crawlies, that, while I still find myself jumping at my own shadow in anticipation of a spider as big as my hand, I am no longer intimidated by the little things in life...you know like ants, and lizards, and... people.

Anyway, I think I'm ready for the next wave Thailand has in store.  By Wednesday I will be in my new home, in my new tambon, with my new host family.  Hopefully, I'll have better stories for this blog (or at least more time to write better stories for this blog).  I plan on applying to write for the PCV Thailand publication "Sticky Rice" (adorable name, huh?)  and am looking forward to being more myself and less of an anxious, exhausted mess.