My ridiculously hopeful post

School opened last week in my village.  I remember dreading this day as a child.  I loved summer vacation:  Endless exploration, playing, creating, and imagining all day long.  I certainly had a charmed childhood.  Perfect family, perfect friends, perfect amount of toys and security.  I was lucky.  In fact, my perfect little life is exactly why I decided to move halfway across the world.  I want to create opportunities like the ones I had growing up and still have today. 

However, these dreams of digging ditches, building bridges (both literally and figuratively), community development, impacting poverty and creating educational opportunities are met with only one request: Learning English.  My community desperately wants me to teach English.  To everyone. To the elderly.  To the disabled.  To the kids.  To the government workers.  To the business owners.  To the stray dogs that roam the alleyways (just kidding about the dogs, but it would certainly benefit me if they knew English.  Maybe then they wouldn't chase me and try to bite me when I ride my bike because we could finally understand each other.) It's the first question out of everyone's mouth when they meet me "Can you teach me/my son/my daughter/my cousin/my friend English?"  And then they look at me with eyes full of hope and it rips my heart out of my chest.  Every time.  Then I have to go into my well-rehearsed speech, "Mai bpen kru.  Mai sone paasaa Engrit.  Diichan tam ngaan patana chumchon.  Kahtot ka."  Telling them I'm not an English teacher and that I'm here to work on community development is one of the hardest things I have to do every day.  It's always met with disappointment and disinterest. 

So, I came up with an idea that might be able to satiate both my personal goals and the needs/wants of the community:  Using English to teach life skills while using art as a engagement medium for learning, creativity, and confidence-building.  Plus it will be fun to paint! 

I firmly believe teaching English can be categorized as community development, opportunity building, and educational advancement.  Knowing English means the difference between a job with income potential and one as a rice farmer.  Not that a rice farmer is bad.  In fact, it might be quite good.  Thailand, and the rest of the world, depends heavily upon Thailand's rice production and according to reports made just this week, Thailand expects to maintain its current status as the world's #1 exporter of rice.  (Click here for the Bangkok Post article)  Think about THAT next time you have jasmine rice with dinner because perhaps my neighbors are the people who planted it. (That's a stretch, but sometimes it's fun to think about just how small the world really is, and how inter-connected we all are whether we like it or not.)

But can you imagine that rice farmer's potential if s/he knew English?  Well, I'm trying. And it gives me a lot of hope about how I can actually be of service here, and how one person can make an impact in the world. 

Next week I get to start my "art projects" with the village kids.  I'm really excited, and probably much more excited than even they, are to teach them about the human body, healthy living, recycling, water conservation, taking pride in one's culture, and whatever else I think of over the next two years. 

Some of the "art projects" I've tried out for my "recycling" lesson made from the People and US Weekly magazines my friend Melissa sent:

Paper beads

Woven paper basket

I also made an incredibly horrible and ugly paper flower which will not be showcased in my little art exhibit. 

So wish me luck, because while you might think this sounds easy, I know it won't be:   Because they told me 60 kids are coming to this class and I'm terrified of children in mass quantities.  Because nothing ever goes as planned here.  Because things move at a much slower pace here than they do in the U.S.  Because the statistics of success are against me.  But I'm going to try.  And I'm going to keep trying.

While I cover both my ears

About a month ago on a Tuesday around 4 a.m., I found myself on a two-story tour bus barreling down a Thai highway with 50 of my closest Thai friends. 

Did I mention this was a karaoke tour bus?  I didn't, did I?  Let me just visually set this up for you: Giant tour bus + disco lights + crappy speakers + 3 microphones + Thai pop + one volume level: REALLY REALLY LOUD = Work field trip!  Yep, this was for work.  And work it was.  My patience was tested, my self-control exercised, and my boundaries were in complete disregard.  But that's all part of the plan here, I suppose.  Pushing limits, changing perspective, and actively participating in another culture instead of just having a front row seat... right?

The objective of this trip was to collaborate with other Tambons (villages) in other provinces about eco/ag-tourism (one of my projects here), public health, and education. I'm sure this happened, and I know I participated by being there, but my "take away" messages, of course, were different than the trip intended, and mostly revolved around culture shock, intestinal shock, and general shock. 

Eight hours, five 7/11 stops, three renditions of the Cranberrie's Zombie (by yours truly), and a million Thai songs later, we pulled into our destination of Uthai Thani around noon.  It was your typical work meeting with name tags, packets of information, power point presentations and demonstrations of how to make bio diesel and organic alcohol (otherwise known as banana liquor.) 

Here are my co-workers (and some of their children - as school was out for the "summer") watching the demonstration of how to make banana liquor.  I think these are bottles of liquor on the table.  I'm not sure.  I'm was in the back, but you can't see me because I was dead from heatstroke.  It was 18 million degrees that day and we were in a jungle.  Even the Thai people were sweating.  Serious heat.

After the demonstrations we went back to the government offices for dinner.  Everyone scrambled (no pun intended as you will see in a second) to sit with me.  As much as I would like to think that this is because they really like me and I'm just a hell of a good time, I know that in this situation their behavior is mostly driven by their stomachs. By now, everyone knows I hate fish and Thai food, generally, makes me sick, so my table gets a fried egg whenever mass quantities of Thai food are served so I can have something to eat.  And Thais love fried eggs.  Words cannot describe the love affair Thais have with eggs.  In Thailand, eggs are abundant - in various shapes, colors, textures, temperatures, and pickled flavors.

I wrote a poem about it:

Eggs Are the New Rice

We eat them with rice, We eat them with spice

We eat them in soup, or drenched in sweet, oily goop. 

We think eggs are so nice, We eat them everyday, sometimes even twice

Because, in fact, Eggs are the new rice. 

The next day we headed for the next province, Chachoengsao.  More karaoke, more 7/11s, more Thai food, more eggs, more learning about weaving, public health, and education systems, and, then, dinner.  Then it was time to go to the beach!! 

Lucky for me, dozens of child monks decided to visit the beach that day, too.  So I got to take some pictures of a lifetime.  

Thailand is glorious and beautiful. I'm so glad I'm here... except when I have to eat things like this:

Ahh, Home

After 4 months in Thailand, I finally have a place to unpack my suitcase.  

In typical Thai style (suddenly and without warning), I moved into my new house yesterday. Since I only have one suitcase and one box, a couple of the ladies from work brought a truck to help me out.  When we pulled up, there was a table sitting outside in the sun and on top of it was all the American snacks my family had mailed the previous week.  I had asked if I could go ahead and store it there even though I hadn't moved in so I didn't have to move the box several times.   And in typical, kind Thai style, they had no problem with that.

When I first saw the table I thought they had laid out the food and unpacked the box for me just to be nice.  Upon closer inspection I saw that everything my family had mailed was COVERED in ants - inside and outside the packaging.  The little bastards had eaten their way through the bags.  Because Thais don't really show emotion, especially mad or sad emotions, I had to resist the urge to throw myself on the ground and cry a river.  I had been looking forward to eating this food my first night in my new home for over a week.  So instead, I looked at it, looked at the Thais, and said "I'm eating it anyway." 

I'll be damned if ants are going to ruin my American food.  I have been day dreaming about eating tortilla chips for 4 months and I wasn't going to let this bag go without a fight.  Screw the ants.  I'll eat the ants, too.  Might as well since I've been eating their eggs and I probably need the protein anyway.  I started opening the packages and pouring the food onto the table.  The Thais told me that ants don't like being in the sun, so if we spread the food on the table and put it in the sun, they would leave.  And most of them did.

A box of wheat thins, a box of triscuits, a box of pop tarts, a bag of Tostitos, a bag of pretzels, and a box of little debbie brownies (I realize how this sounds and I'm asking you not to judge unless you have ever lived - for an extended period of time - somewhere without access to your native foods) were spread across the table.  For the next hour I, along with three of my Thai friends, painstakingly removed ants from every single pretzel, wheat thin, triscuit, pop tart, and Tostito chip.  The brownies went to the fridge.

By the time we were finished, I realized that Thai people like wheat thins more than tortilla chips, they HATE triscuits, and that I don't know many people in America who would have put that much detail and time into making another person happy.  It was one of the nicest things anyone has ever done for me.  Truly. 

Then, to top off the day, I slipped and fell down the entire back staircase in my house.  Stairs here are made for Thai feet, which are about half the size of mine.  I have a lot of adjusting to do, but I think with some time, patience, and ant-free tortilla chips everything is going to be just fine. 

Chimming

Yesterday I tried ant eggs.  I closed my eyes, screamed, and then popped one into my mouth and bit down.  Flavorless and liquidy.  And a bit of a let down considering the intentional scene I caused prior to eating it.   Texturally, they are comparable fish roe, but WAY less salty.  On the repulsive scale of 1 to 10, they rank about a 4 for me.  Tolerable, but only if I dont think about what I'm eating.

Sorting the eggs, ants, and some white stuff (the eggs were put into an empty coke bottle)

Ant eggs on a spoon.

And since I survived the initial ant eating experiment, my host sister made me an ant egg omlet.  Because screaming, closing your eyes, and holding your nose equates to loving something, right?



Ant egg omlet.  Arroi mai?

I only took one bite before the thought of hatching ant pupa caused my imagination to run wild and I started having fantasies of ants crawling out of my mouth and nose.  It was like that time I was 5, accidentally swallowed a watermelon seed, and thought a watermelon was going to grow in my stomach.  After much anxiety, I finally came to the internal rationalization that watermelons can't grow without dirt or sunlight, and as long as I didn't eat those two things, I would survive.  As for the ant eggs, I'm proud that I had the courage to try them, but felt okay leaving it at that.