Picture: Elephants!

Picture: Dogs at PIH

These are the dogs that our dorm recently (and unofficially) adopted. I don’t remember the name of the dog to the far left, but the one in the middle is Malagorn (papaya) and the one to the far is right is Mike. We came back from our Sukothai trip and Mike was suddenly living in our dorm. By the next week, there were three more dogs. They have continued to live here at PIH as our adorable “guard dogs.”

The Periscope in Thailand

I am trying to write something for The Periscope, the study-abroad section of my school’s newspaper … suggestions?

RANDOM UNNAMED ARTICLE THUS FAR THING
Yesterday, toward the end of my lunch, I looked down and noticed a strange looking black lump in my food. I looked closer. It was a large black ant. Gingerly, I picked it out with my fork and placed it to the side of my plate. As I was arranging my food for the next bite, I noticed a similar looking lump near one of the prongs of my fork. Another ant. And another. And another. A thorough sifting rewarded me with a handful of well-cooked ants. I had already finished two-thirds of my meal.

Four months ago, if this had happened in America, I would have had my meal taken back without a doubt, utterly repulsed. After a semester in Chiang Mai, Thailand, ants are only one of the many unique things I have eaten during my study aboard experience. Nowadays, it seems ridiculous for me to imagine rejecting edible food when just a few kilometers to the west there are millions of displaced people starving in the jungles of Burma. But that’s just the day-to-day reality of living Thailand. Well, that and rice.

Before leaving, a number of people asked me: “Do you speak Taiwanese?” Um no, I do not, and neither do most people in Thailand.

At times, it can be incredibly confusing to be caught up in such a myriad of different cultures and attitudes. Rice is served with every meal. Traffic drives on the other side of the road. To unilingual American ears, the language is completely foreign and complicated (in Thai, the words “near” and “far” are exactly the same except for the tone). Since my arrival, our dorm has adopted four stray dogs. Toilet paper is virtually non-existent. There are no knives, couches, or trashcans. No matter where you go, there will be at least one wat and one 7-11. As an America, I get to field questions like: “Do people in America only eat hamburgers?” and “What’s the difference between a stove and an oven?”

Commonly, I’ll ask an English speaking Thai person something like, “Should I bring that to you today or tomorrow?” and they will reply, “Yes.”

.. And then clearly something conclusive should go here but I haven’t decided on what.

Mom in Thailand

Recently, I have not felt very inclined to blog. I spoke to my mother on the phone about this a few weeks ago and she reminded me that there are a lot of people at home who are reading my blog and vicariously experiencing Thailand through it. So put that way, it’s pretty selfish for me to ignore blogging just because “I don’t feel like it.”

 

I have gotten comments that my recent blogs aren’t as entertaining as the older ones, which is true. It’s weird to have experienced so much; in a lot of ways, I have a hard time finding the quirks of “Thai-ness” to be funny. In a way, I’ve reached a point where either everything is funny or nothing is. It’s hard to find the middle ground between feeling completely overwhelmed by extreme world problems and being consumed by trivial drama. Nevertheless, I blog on. That being said, my mother is probably the biggest fan of my blog and enjoys emailing me encouragement/praise.

 

Here are a few gems:

 

“I just read your ant blog – how hilarious!!!  Bathing with ants – I guess you get rid of all the small microscopic bugs on your body that way – LOL.”

 

“Reading the pig blog now – what a maturing experience!!”

 

“This sentence is making me laugh.  Re-read it – it sounds like you stayed in Lisu for 6 years: ‘Adjan Otome, who lived in the Lisu village we stayed at for 6 years…’ “

 

In addition to reading my blog, she also emails it out to an extensive list of “adoring fans”

 

“I sent your blogs out – getting comments back about how well you write and how mature you sound.  People are very impressed – I think this has been an amazing experience for you – life altering.”

 

She also lets me know when new members have been added to the mailing list:

 

“And another fan!!”

 

I emailed her once and got this as a reply:

 

“Please don’t interrupt me – I am in the middle of your Tutoring II blog.”

 

And then afterwards: “Katie – that blog was so cute!!!”

Especially as we are getting close to Thanksgiving (tomorrow!), I am really starting to be ready to come home. It’s great to get such wonderful emails, but I think I am starting to miss the “real life” Mom and other members of my family.

Apple Pie in Thailand

My service agency, the Healing Family Foundation, has done a lot for me, especially my supervisor, Mr. Nakayama. I came to Thailand with quite suppressed (but nonetheless grand) delusions of being able to make some lasting and meaningful contribution to the service agency I had been paired with. To put this into Maussian terms, I wanted at least an equal give and take relationship between me and my service agency, although I was ready (and more than willing) to give more than receive.

So what does this have to do with apple pie?

Assignment: Elective C

As previously mentioned, I am a volunteer at the Healing Family Foundation. One of the things I have noticed about this organization is how much physical touch plays a role. Even with globalization, in public Thai society, touch between opposite sexes is pretty rare. Especially compared to America, where it is commonplace to walk down a street and see couples holding hands, hugging, making out, etc. In Thailand, there is a definite sense that engagement between the sexes should be proper, formal, and polite. For example, here at PIH, we are not allowed in the hallways/dorm rooms of people of the opposite sex. Of course, this doesn’t always happen and with more and more influence of the Western media, it seems like the younger generation is less likely to adhere to this.

At the Healing Family Foundation, these rules seem to be less present. Dancing between sexes is common, along with hugging, hand-holding and other simple touching. The playful “butt-slap,” which caught me totally off guard the first time I saw it, is also pretty common. Here in Thailand, the presence of non-sexual touch is one of the really unique aspects of the HFF. It really serves to emphasize the comfortable atmosphere and general “family” feeling that one gets.

Roob Thai Assignment

Roob is Thai for “picture”.

For my ICU class, we had to submit a photo that demonstrates the “juxtapositions, cultural fusions, and intermingling concepts between seeming paradoxes” present in Thailand. This was my submission, from the Lisu village titled “Technology in Traditional Settings” in the “tradition vs. rapid globalization” category.

This picture was taken while we were attending a ceremony to help heal a sick woman. We all went into the house and tied a string around the woman’s neck while she knelt on the floor. Apparently she had come all the way from Bangkok for this ceremony. From what I understood, she was suffering from some kind of extraordinary sore throat. In addition to the string tying and chanting, a pig (not Babe) was sacrificied and then specially prepared and consumed by the visitors. Among all these very traditional patterns (the bamboo leaves, the clothing, the cooking, etc.) was a giant Hitachi Washing Machine box. The Wikipedia tells me that this company is based out of Japan and is currently “one of the leading manufacturers in new technology.” In my baan (house) there was neither a floor nor windows, and yet, there was both a TV and a washing machine. This picture illustrates how globalization has successfully penetrated into some of the most seemingly isolated pockets of civilization.

“That’ll do, Pig” in Thailand

We went on our last Thai Studies field trip this weekend. We stayed at UHDP, a center that specializes in developing low-cost organic/eco-friendly solutions for upland farming. On the evening we arrived, we were given a tour of the facilities. While walking around, our guide pointed out a pig standing sadly in a cage. “That’s lunch tomorrow.” True enough, within in the next 24 hours we watched the villagers kill the pig and then we cleaned the pig, butchered the pig, cooked the pig, and ate the pig.

Although I was quite conscious of the where meat comes from, I had never seen my food go through the “pig” to “pork” process. Normally, like most American suburbians, I think of “pig” as something I can pick up prepackaged from Safeway. I rarely associate what I am eating with the squealing hairy animal. Clearly, if I choose to think about it, I know (and have been taught from a young age) that these are one and the same. It’s kind of amazing how far distanced we have become from our food. While at UHDP, I was amazed to see what an actual pineapple plant looks like. It was weird to watch “Babe” go through his various stages and think that if the majority of people in the world want pork, this is what they have to do.

I wasn’t too thrilled about watching. Some people opted not to. I think some people felt like the event was of unnecessary shock value; I know quite a few people were offended. At the time, I was filled with a mixture of horror and curiosity. Once the pig was dead (and certainly once it was splayed open and its organs had been removed), I had no problem watching. I don’t wish to seem overly graphic or callous, but I feel like if you eat meat, witnessing the process by which it arrives in the grocery store is very important. I am not bothered by blood and once the pig was dead, it was dead. It was a little strange to watch them carve up something that I had seen alive just a short while ago. But that’s life.

Some people in our group have said that they want to continue to go through life imagining that meat comes from a grocery store shelf. For me, it seems much more respectful to the animal to acknowledge where it came from. The process made me feel very human. As someone who is constantly surrounded by technology and artificial environments, it is sometimes very hard to realize that everything I am consuming and viewing (including myself) is a product of nature. In that way, it was oddly refreshing. I wouldn’t be overly excited to do it again, but I felt that it was a good experience overall.

Picture: Burma in Thailand

This is Burma.

Assignment: Teaching Part II

Before leaving for our final Thai Studies trip, Tuti and I once again had the privilege of tutoring a few members of the canteen staff. We started off with feelings (happy, sick, excited, tired, etc.) and then moved on to body parts (head, eyes, nose, arms, legs, etc.). Having had so much fun during our last tutoring session, I was really looking forward to opportunity to “tutor” once again. It’s hard to call what we are doing “tutoring” or “teaching” because it is not a one-sided exchange of information. I think that when I am in class, I generally take the attitude that the teacher is there to teach and the students are there to learn. And although America has a very “discussion oriented” teaching method, I have spent a large portion of my life believing that all learning takes place in a classroom, with notebooks and pencils, and a teacher with a chalkboard. As I have gotten older, I have realized that this is a pretty narrow point of view. Thailand has only proved how important experiential learning, outside of a classroom, can be.

While tutoring, I was not just “teaching.” I was also learning. Thai is difficult to learn on paper; it is a very listening-intensive language. This is especially true for those of us in the Thai 101 class, since we cannot actually write in Thai and therefore, have to make up strange transliterations for sounds that do not exist in the English language. The canteen ladies would find it quite funny to listen to the way Tuti and I would try to pronounce words we had written down. By the same token, we had a wonderful time listening to them try to pronounce awkward English sounds.

Our favorite instance was probably the word “knee.” We spelled it out for them: K-N-E-E. And then they tried to say it back: “ka-nee… ki-nee… kynee.” Where did the “k” come from? According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, it comes from Old English (with possible connections back to Latin and Greek, of course). If I had to guess, I would say that at one time, the “k” was probably pronounced (like the “k” in “knight”) but it has been phased out. But having researched this just now, and having no idea how to explain this in Thai, I went with: “The ‘k’ is silent” or my best attempt in Thai: “Mai pood ‘k’.”  I am starting to realize that teaching and learning go hand and hand. I am trying to learn how to explain and verbalize what I am experiencing so that I can hopefully teach people back at home.