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.