A Last Night in Bangkok

Sawadee ka!

Almost ten weeks ago I wrote a post called one night in Bangkok. Last Saturday, I spent my second night there this summer, waiting for my 6:00 A.M. flight in the morning. Out of curiosity I read back through that first post. Coincidentally, maybe, I was sitting once again on my tiny balcony listening to the crickets and breathing the heavy evening air, even more humid after the afternoon rainstorm.

I’d just gotten back from wandering the streets near the hotel for a few hours, seeking out my final bag of saparote (pineapple) and moo satay (grilled pork in peanut sauce) and rotee (a crepe-like dessert from India). These all came from local streetside vendors, which I love more than any fancy—or as the Thais say, “high-so”—restaurant. It felt like the only way to conclude the summer here; any visit to a tourist site or other location would have seemed too un-Thai. And having left Chiang Mai and said many goodbyes (to all the people at right, plus twenty), I was already missing it enough to want to cling to whatever moments of Thailand I had left.

Quite a lot was going on in the last couple weeks of our summer, and every time I would sit down to write a blog post I either had to leave soon or couldn’t decide what to focus on. So to summarize as a sort of farewell post:

Major Events and Memorable Happenings

- Taught English and Thai to some women and children at a camp for migrant Myanmar workers and their families, located just down the road from the Zone. We mostly played with some of the little girls, who were shy but beautiful just like the women. And it was an eye-opening experience for all of us to a reality of life for many people in the world that we usually only hear about.

- Spent several afternoons at coffee shops with some of our friends (at left) as they were preparing for midterms at Payap; I learned everything I never knew about linguistics and the English language in the process of trying to help them.

- Attended the 50th Asian Mission Forum and met nearly two hundred wonderful people from all around Southeast Asia. We spent four days at a hotel downtown, going to classes (including one taught by ACU’s very own Dr. John Willis), enjoying a traditional Thai dinner and cultural show (where we learned some Thai dances; at right), and hearing some amazing stories about things going on all across SE Asia.

- Consumed large amounts of guay teoh (noodles) and saparote (pineapple) in anticipation of the lack thereof back in the U.S.

- Took hundreds of pictures as part of saying goodbye to everyone, a long and emotional process that lasted a couple days.

- Ended our summer appropriately just as we started it: with major flooding, this time even more substantial.

- Watched a stunning sunset over the Pacific from the window seat of an airplane while flying out of Tokyo (at left).



Important Lessons and Interesting or Otherwise Significant Observations

-Remember all that delicious Thai food I spoke of so fondly all summer? Well, my midsection remembers it just as fondly and has a five-pound souvenir to prove it.

- Having now flown across the Pacific yet again, 10 hours is an eternity when you can't sleep and the best movie option is Beastly.

- Thailand is beautiful, suuay makk. The Thai people are even more so, all incredibly hospitable, friendly, and jai dee (in Thai, literally “good hearts”).

- The things I'll miss most aren't all the tourist sites or elephant rides; rather, my friend Pii Oi the fruit vendor (at right), playing games at the Zone and sitting with friends at the restaurant next door, eating together before Cell Group, talking with my English students about life and such when we’re supposed to be studying idioms; the list goes on.

- Welcome and inclusion are highly undervalued but incredibly powerful. Even taking 30 seconds to translate a piece of a conversation for a foreigner can mean a great deal.

- English is still a difficult language to learn, and we should be careful about how it's exported. Granted, a common language is necessary, but we should be aware of the fact that we happen to have landed in the language of power—and be critical about and responsible in how we use that power. Going anywhere with English often gives you the upper hand without you even trying to take it, and we should try to occupy that position with understanding and equality in mind.

- Treat the foreigner as you want to be treated. Better yet, as the Thais would treat her. Hospitality and friendship are profound.

- When in another culture the best position is an open, vulnerable one. You'll learn more that way. And you'll realize how much more you have to learn too.

- Realizing how much there is to learn and recognizing the potential in the relationships that you’ve created, ten weeks feels so insufficient a time to spend in another place. We felt on the brink of forming even stronger bonds with many of the students and the church members—and then we had to leave. Saying goodbye at our last Cell Group (above) was difficult. Especially after they gave me, Mark, and Fish as a farewell gift our favorite dish, sticky rice with mango (right).

- That being said, let’s of course not avoid short-term missions entirely, but let’s be wary about their implications. They can very easily verge on colonial—we go in, have an experience that benefits us, and then leave. Part of a mission trip will and should be about the missionaries. In Thailand, I believe far more was ultimately done for us than we did for anyone there; it was incredible and I think made us want to do even more for other people. So while there’s nothing wrong with that at all, I only say all this to suggest we carefully consider our motivations and our impact in going somewhere to “serve.”

- And finally: when taken seriously, the way of Christ spurs people to love and create community that I just haven't run into often. If you want to convince a questioning, logical skeptic like myself, then don’t necessarily answer her questions. Invite her into love and community like we were this summer, and while questions will still be important to consider, they will no longer take precedence. Though far from perfect, the lives and the relationships that can result from living inspired by the gospels are profound. I can offer few explanations for the church here and what we've experienced this summer except that the faith purported to stand behind them is real.

Korp kun makk ka for all for your love, support, and prayers. Should you ever get a chance, I’d highly recommend a visit to Thailand. And please take me with you if you go!

Bizarre Food of this Week

In keeping with the spirit of this blog, which has described my encounters with everything from boiled pig's blood and fermented bean paste to chicken feet and crickets, this week's featured cuisine is:

McDonald's hamburger and fries.

Yes, I caved. Only because it was convenient; it was not intentionally sought out, I promise. But oh, did it taste good.

I'm so ashamed.

English in the Hills

Today is a cooler day in Chiang Mai, and I’ve spent the afternoon napping and sitting at one of the picnic tables on the Payap campus, smelling the bougainvillea and plumeria trees. We counted today and realized that we only have about 9 days left in Thailand. But whatever profound thoughts or realizations I might have gained from the summer will probably come more in retrospect—maybe on, say, a 17-hour plane ride home. So for now, here’s just more of what we’ve been up to and why we probably won’t feel ready in 9 days to get on an airplane.

On Friday we woke up at the ungodly hour of 5:00 so that we could be well-caffeined and in the cars by 6:00 to head up into the mountains to a village called Bakaew, where we spent the day teaching an English Day Camp for some of the students at the school. The drive to Bakaew was beautiful, even if it was along some unbelievably winding, steep, and half-paved roads while we sat scrunched together in the back of the car. But some of the sights along the way were fantastic--I think we happened to spend the summer in the most beautiful parts of Thailand, by the way (see above).

For nearly all of the 500 some students at the school, ranging from kindergarten to 12th grade, English will be their third language; Thai is their second already, since they all come from a variety of hill tribes surrounding Bakaew, including the Hmong. Several of the students were even dressed in their more traditional outfits.

We started the day with some big group activities, then headed to various stations for the groups of students to rotate through. Our students were mostly middle-school-aged, and all acted like middle-schoolers do when they meet adults: shy. Couple that with the fact that we were a big, loud group of farongs speaking English, and I think we all understood why they were hesitant to even look at us.

The station I taught at was with Greg and Taylor, and we’d decided to teach body parts. We went well-equipped with Simon Says, the Hokey Pokey, Mad Libs, and a pin-the-different-pieces-of-the-face-on-the-face game. The Hokey Pokey produced some good laughs—mostly at us and not with us—and Simon Says proved incredibly easy for them because, not speaking any English, all they had to listen for was whether or not we’d said “Simon Says.” So never play a non-English speaker at that game and expect to win.

Another suggestion: if you’re ever going through parts of the body, and you’re a female, and without thinking you try to teach the word “chest” to a group of middle school boys, and see them giggling, you realize just how much you can understand even without a common linguistic base. But the real success, at least in most groups, seemed to be the face game, which produced some hilarious and very “naa kleeat” (ugly) Picasso-looking faces.

The main reason for us being there was just to get them excited about and interested in learning English. Evidently, our groups have been going up every year for almost 10 years, and this school has always scored higher on tests than others in the area. Maybe it’s the day camp—likely it’s just good teachers.

Either way, it’s a day for everyone to have fun and to meet people who, at the surface, have nothing in common. But neither language nor culture stopped us from being invited to games of tag and duck-duck-goose with the children, and by the end of the day we’d made several friends who waied us and waved at us as we were leaving. The day, as far as we could tell, was a success.

Oh, and in a gesture procuring the awed applause of his friends, one little boy even blew me a kiss as we were leaving.

We Teach English Many Time Last Weeks

Well, a favorite phrase in Thailand is “sabai sabai,” which means “just take it easy and relax.” I’m afraid I’ve been a bit sabai sabai with my blog lately. Hence, another long post to compensate.

Actually, it’s more that we’ve been a lot busier than in the beginning of the summer, and the blog has sort of been subsumed in the daily life of Chiang Mai. So here is a bit of an update of what’s been going on here lately.

I would venture to say that everything is going infinitely better even than when we first arrived because we’ve really adjusted to life here and have been able to make it more like home—at least for a little while, of course. The language is still a daunting challenge for all of us, but then again English is quite the struggle for most Thais. So we’ve all figured out how to better communicate with people in a mix of broken English and the occasional Thai phrase, since we’ve picked up quite a few in our last eight weeks of semi-immersion. Also, as a warning to our friends and family back home: we’ve become more accustomed to speaking simplified English even among ourselves, so be prepared for a lack of conjugated verbs and strings of very simple sentences. Expect phrases like this: “Yesterday, I buy some pineapple from the store.” Since there are no conjugations in Thai, saying things like “I bought” or “We taught,” produces in people who are just beginning to learn English those same blank stares we give when people ask us anything in Thai.

Speaking of English, we’ve been teaching quite a bit more lately, and as an English major, I think it’s fascinating. I’ve gotten to work with a range of English levels and have probably learned as much about English as my students have. Two of the students, Shell and Nam Fon (“rain”), speak very, very basic English. Let me say that again: very basic English. Similar to my level of Thai. So we’ve conjugated the verb “to be” as a starting point, then gone through things like basic greetings and adjectives, which they can use with "to be" and actually say quite a few things. Feeling accomplished is always a good sense when learning a language. But without a Thai-English dictionary and with only my charade skills at my disposal, it’s actually quite a challenge explaining what words like “embarrassed” or “lonely" mean. Or when I said, "Fantastic job today," they thought I said "Atlantic," and an inside joke was born. We’ve all laughed a lot and been very patient, and become friends who communicate mostly by laughing and smiling.

Then there are those like the three Chinese students who come to study vocabulary for the TOEFL exam. Melody, Celina, and Lohm usually come twice a week, and we go through a workbook that I’ve copied for them (see the previous post about the copy shop for more information about that). Yesterday we studied idioms. Strangely, I found that in defining idioms you often use other idioms, which produces the same blank stares and smiles. For instance: explain "that'll teach you" without using phrases like "serves you right," or "what a drag" without defining it as "that sucks." Other idioms elicited some good laughs; after all, imagine not speaking English and hearing that we say “a little birdy told me” when we know someone’s secret, and “gesundheit” when someone sneezes. And I never did figure out how to explain “knock on wood.”

As much as we're teaching English, we're also of course learning a lot more Thai and learning 1) how it feels to not be in the dominant language group, which is a good perspective; and 2) how to communicate without language. So we can go like we did last Saturday and just spend an afternoon with children at an orphanage, which was fun for everyone I think. A little girl named Nuna held my hand nearly the entire time and became my friend for the day. If I may digress on a tangent for a moment: at one point, she led me into their bedroom area and through where the children eat—the rooms were dark and stuffy, and the beds were so close together you could hardly move. Thankfully they're currently building a new facility, but I can’t imagine even one kid getting sick without all the others being sick, and with one hundred little kids and only about 15 adults, it was no wonder all the kids were just wanting to hold our hands and be close to us.

Anyway, we taught them the hokie pokie, and they (mostly the little girls) showed us some Thai dances and what we’d call “playground rhymes.” Then I pulled out my camera and all they wanted to do was take pictures with us, which was fun. But then it was time to leave, so with all the kids following us we got in the car and left--just like that, probably to never go back again. And we’re not the first to have done that, and I doubt we’ll be the last. So if you’ll allow me on a soapbox for just a minute, I think we all should be careful about how we approach things like missions and volunteering and understand that we’re creating relationships wherever we go—and be very aware and very cautious about how those interactions affect the other person, not just the rich farongs who have gone to have a new experience or whatnot.

With all that being said, everything is going very well and we're looking forward to our last couple weeks here. I want to thank all of you again who have supported our work out here and let you know that it has really been a blessing in many ways for many people. We're looking forward to getting home soon! Miss you all and love you all more.

Bizarre Food of the Week

First it was congealed pig blood. Then it was a chicken foot. Last night:

silkworms and cricket. Mai aroi. Not so delicious.



















before

after

"You're Not Tourists Here"

We’ve known that this whole time—we’re not here to be tourists. That’s what we told all our sponsors while we were fundraising, that’s what we tell our students when they ask why we’ve come to Thailand, and I think that’s what we tell ourselves even as we’re climbing up a mountain to a famous temple, going to movies and eating out with our students, or spending a day riding elephants through the mountains outside of Chiang Rai. By the way, riding an elephant might be one of the most “suhtyaaht” (awesome) experiences in the world. I can’t help throwing in a picture from our weekend of us on an elephant (which even as a two-ton animal you can't see in the photo, which makes the picture sadly anti-climactic):

So we’re here to build relationships, work with the church, teach English, organize events to involve the university students, etc., etc. So we’re told. And for the most part, I think we’ve done that as best we can all summer, though we’re always learning more and finding ways to do things more effectively. Lately, especially, having seen most of the tourist attractions here and become accustomed to life in Chiang Mai and met more and more people, it’s been a lot easier to really focus on things like teaching and encouraging relationships.

But there’s a different point I’d like to make about this tourist vs. intern conundrum, and it’s one that a church member articulated over dinner one night during our weekend away in Chiang Rai. A few of our friends from the Pepperdine group were leaving the next day to spend time on the beach in Phuket before going back to the states, and one of them said that he was really going to miss Chiang Mai. To this our friend Oi, one of the church members, said, “That’s because in Phuket you’re just tourists; here, you’re family.”

That sounds cheesy—like a low-budget advertisement for a family-style restaurant or something. But at the moment, over a bowl of traditional Northeastern Thai soup that she’d bought specifically to share with us, it wasn’t.

And it still doesn’t feel trite or cliched or oversimplified or tag-lined. If anything, I think it’s been the most compelling—and surprising—aspect of our summer here. We were given the warmest welcome both by the Thais and the church when we arrived, and since then we’ve been more and more included, more and more a part of things. More loved, even.

What I find most remarkable is that they really have no reason to befriend us: we can’t order our own food except by pointing, we can’t drive anywhere, we can’t speak Thai even to the people who try their hardest to speak English to us, we’re completely oblivious to our swelling noise levels and the positioning of our feet (which should stay on the ground pointed away from people), and I’ve spit out an entire chicken foot while sitting next to a judge at a table with ten government workers.

Part of it, I know, is that many want to learn English and create connections that will get them to America one day. There’s also a fascination with “farong culture,” which we’ve tried to avoid encouraging and inadvertently promoting over Thai culture. And we’ve also experienced a willingness among Thais to bend over backwards for farongs, which I think goes beyond even the friendliest hospitality into a misguided glorification of the “farong visitor.” I don’t, however, want to discount the sincere friendliness and genuine hospitality among the Thais. It’s certainly not just because we’re Americans.

That spirit is even more evident within the church community. They invite us to their homes for dinner, or throw a birthday party for a young Thai man whose family never celebrated with him for the last twenty-four years (the picture above and at right). I could go on and on with examples.

The point: I’ve taught English classes, we’ve tried to include and invite as many people as we can, and we’ve tried to serve in many different ways. But we’ve been served much, much more than we’ve served. We’ve learned more than we’ve taught. We have ended up being neither tourists nor interns, but something else entirely that we never would have expected.

Happy Fifth of July

This morning I started working on another blog post. Then we went to lunch and everything changed. The initial post is still in progress and should be coming shortly, but in the meantime there transpired an event that takes precedence--one that makes the hamburger I ate last night for Fourth of July taste even better in my memory than it already did.

Today, I ate a chicken foot.

It was consumed totally in ignorance, mind you, being the deceptively fried and breaded chicken foot that it was. Actually, it wasn't even consumed.

Because there's nothing to eat on a chicken foot. Because chickens don't have any meat on their feet. Claws aren't made of meat. They're made of, well, claw.

I began to question the true nature of this "piece of meat" when the tip poked at my tongue and the sensation was immediately different than just a sharp bone. Then, with what was I'm sure a face or growing surprise and shock, I followed the claw with my tongue all the way up the two "toes" to the joint.

And then I realized what was happening.

And, disregarding all cultural norms and throwing all cultural sensitivity to the wind, I spit it out because I literally couldn't chew it. Because, let me remind you, it was a freakin' CLAW disguised in breading as decent, edible meat.

Now, imagine my even greater surprise when everyone else's plates did not have any uneaten or spit-out chicken claws. These are people whom I'd watched take pieces from the same plate as I had.

I've taken everything else here really well, I promise. So call me ethnocentric or insensitive or disrespectful or simply influenced by patriotism and love of America from last night. But this time, I'd like to think they're just great at hiding chicken feet in their napkins and under their plates.

Then again, hiding it proved just as much a feat as eating it would be, so I must commend them either way.

We Eat. And We Eat Some More.

(pictures aren't working, so please see Facebook for a visual accompaniment to this post).

Have you ever seen a real live dismembered pig’s head for sale? Well, now I have. I’ve also seen skinned, headless, but otherwise whole chickens arranged in neat lines with their wirey feet pointing straight up at overhead fans, which are spinning frantically in an effort to disperse the pungent smell of fresh meat and entrails carefully laid out along entire market aisles.

Yes, yesterday we visited the local market for the first time. And it’s not your everyday street vendors selling fried bananas or fresh watermelon outside the corner 711. It’s actually an adventure: a spectacular array of just about every fruit, vegetable, grain, spice, and faunal body part could you think of eating. But I left not with a pig’s head or chicken foot; only with 1.5 kilos of my new favorite fruit, some mangosteen (“mancoot” in Thai), which I bargained for and bought from a smiling Thai woman. Fun story, by the way: said fruit apparently got its English name when a farong incorrectly called it a “mango,” and the Thai vendor replied with “mango, su teen!” which loosely translated means, “What the hell kind of mango is that?” So the story goes.

But all this is only background for my real story. Our trip to the market transpired after five of the Chinese students, three of whom are returning to China next week, wanted to cook a Chinese meal for us. It was one of the highlights of the summer so far.

We started with a trip to the market, which got a bit complicated because the girls were trying to decide what all to cook. One of them, Playao, loves to cook and grew up working with her family’s restaurant, so she organized most of the evening. They took awhile at the market because, remember, these are the Toy Story aliens who move en masse and do everything in unison.

They cooked at least five different dishes, leaving pots and pans all over the back patio of the Zone and sending me and a few others on urgent 711 runs to buy extra cooking oil and such. I was also assigned to the rice cooker, which seems simple enough: throw the rice and water in, turn it on, and it does the rest for you. But who knew you’re supposed to wash rice before you cook it? Who knew you’re not supposed to open the lid while it’s cooking? Not me. Luckily, everyone was watching me closely, and somehow it turned out all right. Bethany, if you’re reading, I have found the miraculous answer to cooking rice successfully.

Quick tangent: we had a gorgeous sunset last night after it had rained all day. This is a view of Doi Sutep just down the street from the Zone.

Dinner was inside because a plague of harmless but irritating moth-like bugs had descended on the world, so we somehow fit fifteen people in the tiny inside kitchen area. The food was delicious, especially what Playao called “Grandmother’s Potatoes.” And beyond that, it was a just a great evening with all of them. Their English has improved so much even since we’ve been here, and we’ve become good friends with all of them. Everyone has been officially invited to everyone else’s homes in China or America, whoever gets to the other country first.

So there’s a semi-typical day. Today we hung around outside the English department building at Payap, which we’ve been doing more lately. It’s a good spot because most of the students really want to learn English and are more inclined to talk to you. A few of them gave me a brief Thai grammar lesson and then taught me the entire Thai alphabet—all 44 characters, of which I remember one—and we talked about school and travel and such. We've invited a lot of these students to come visit us and hang out at the Zone, but many of them are busy with school and just hesitant to really start coming around. Which is understandable, so we just try to go to them. We've been meeting a lot more people lately and trying to stick around while they overcome their reservations about speaking English. Most of them speak really well and just don't think they do.

Anyway, tomorrow we’re cooking farong food for our cell group, completing the week of delicious, eclectic cuisine and almost constant spending time with people and meeting new ones.

Still miss you and all and love you all. See you soon!

Stolen Pictures and a Weekend at a Pizza Shop (Minus the Pizza)

It's 1:30 a.m., and I don't feel like uploading pictures to Facebook, so I'm stealing pictures from other people's blogs and albums that might not be visible to some of you on Facebook and calling it my own original blog post.

Beyond letting the pictures speak for themselves, a brief summary of our weekend goes as follows:

Friday afternoon I left with a couple other interns and several people from church here to drive about three hours to Phayao, a city north-ish of Chiang Mai. We were going to help a group of missionaries from A&M with a pizza shop they're opening in just a couple weeks. The drive took us past rice paddies with foggy mountains in the distance and farmers bent over their fields.

After stopping to help a couple headed to Phayao with us whose car had for no reason spun out on a curve in the mountains (they were both just fine) we made it to Phayao (there's a huge lake smack in the middle of the city, by the way), had dinner, went to bed, and woke up earlier than most of us would have liked to for a day of cleaning every bit of dust left from construction out from every corner of a whole building. Fingers were turning blue from Windex, lungs were suffocating from dust leaking between our face masks, feet were pruning from standing in soapy water used to clean the floor, and everyone was having a fantastic time even if we weren't eating any pizza. The shop looks great and is getting close to ready for its opening day.

On the drive back to Chiang Mai we stopped to visit the family of one of the women here, Oi, and they served us traditional Northern Thai food, and lots of it. I even tried boiled pork blood, which is placed in a bag and then boiled until it congeals into a gelatinous blackish lump. I can't tell you how it tastes, only that I ate it; I took only enough to legitimize that claim and not gag, not taste anything.

The weekend was great, as were all the other moments seen in the pictures here (which are not laid out rationally or in any kind of aesthetically pleasing manner, I know, but oh well):






Heading to Phayao, with Oi, Ahn, and Ying (left to right)

Stopping for coffee, of course

The whole group at Phayao, matching Brick Oven Pizza shirts to celebrate being finished.













And Berm ("Bum") with his chihuahuas. See a previous post for more explanation. Hah--now I've got you interested and you have to read my blog if you haven't been...

blessings.

Just Smile

Cultural observation: Thais tend to resolve most things by smiling. Luckily, smiling is something I can do well; I’ve had to do more smiling in the past four weeks than possibly ever in my life. This trick comes in especially handy during two very common everyday occurrences: 1) when someone is speaking to you in Thai and you have the glazed, deer-in-headlights, I-don’t-understand-a-word-you’re-saying look, and 2) when you’ve done something stupid and are trying to get out of an embarrassing moment.

To illustrate, let me narrate embarrassing moments #36, #37, and #38. Yes, there have been at least 35 other moments you haven’t heard about (averaging over 10 each week, a new record), but for the sake of time and convenience I’m skipping straight through the three most recent.

#36

I’m trying to copy an entire TOEFL practice book for two of our Chinese students at the copy shop next door. There are apparently no copyright infringement or unauthorized reproduction laws in Thailand, by the way, which I love. Anyway, the first person speaks no English, so with the expert charade skills and “Tinglish” I’ve developed over the past three weeks, I get the second person to understand that I want two copies, front to back, with a bound cover. I’ve been told this will cost about 70 baht per book.

I wait at the table outside, reading through my Lonely Planet Thai phrase book. The worker, who has learned as much English in the last twenty minutes as I have Thai, signals to me that the books are ready. The copies look great; very professional and good quality. Then he pulls out the calculator—the tested and proven method to communicate prices with foreigners—and it reads 1,780 baht. I do a quick calculation in my head: almost $60. I’m incredulous. And angry. He’s ripping off a dumb farong, and I don’t even have that many baht on me. So I charade-say that I’m going to get more money and will be right back, since I feel I have no other choice but to pay up.

(Embarrassing Moment #36 ½:) Back at the Zone, I ask two Thais how much a copy should cost. They debate for awhile, and decide it should be about 40 baht per kilo. I’ve never measured copies by kilo, I think to myself, and I wonder how one would go about doing that. I decide to ask, and after much confusion realize they think I’m asking about “coffee.” The miscommunication, a common theme of the day, is resolved, and one of them goes with me back to the copy shop.

At the shop, my friend asks the man how much it is, and he shows her the same calculator, which at a different angle out of the sun’s glare now reads 178.0 baht. I realize my blunder immediately and ask my friend to explain to this honest, hard-working man what happened. I pay him 200 baht, he gives me the correct change, and with many smiles and several iterations of “kop kun mahk ka” (thank you very much), I leave the copy shop with two very nice TOEFL books. I turn around one more time to smile again. He smiles back. We’re cool.

The next day, when I need another copy, I go to the other copy shop down the street to avoid doing anything else stupid.

#37

So I’ve been trying to learn some Thai words. I’ve even invested in an 8 baht notebook to write down some of these great new phrases and vocabulary. I also try to forego any reservations I might have about being annoying and not hesitate to ask anyone who speaks Thai to teach me a word here and there and listen to me say it several times until I get it right. Either they’re very good at hiding their exasperation, or they’re actually excited to teach a farong some Thai words.

Anyway, the other day we were riding back from the waterfall adventure with a couple from church, and they decide to teach me and Fish a few Thai words. They teach us one phrase: “c(h)oat aroi,” meaning “damn good” (that c(h) means you pronounce it like “coat” but with a little bit of a throaty “h” sound). But they explain that while it is slang, it’s really not like cursing; it’s more just expressing extreme emotion and is fairly common.

So they say, at least. The next day happens to be Sunday, and we’ve all come back from Sunday lunch after church. A few of us are sitting on the back patio eating various fruits I’ve never seen before, most of which are delicious, including: durian, the fruit that smells like a toilet but has such an intriguing, complex taste you kind of want to eat more; mangosteen, which has a beautiful bright pink pulp and a delicious white fruit inside; sala, which is just okay and not worth the effort to peel; and a few others.

The context of embarrassing moment #37: I’m eating my third mangosteen and saying how good it is. I am the only non-Thai person present at the moment, so I try to speak all five words of “Tinglish” that I know. One of them is “aroi,” delicious. And this fruit is very delicious, so I decided to use my new vocabulary. I preface it, saying, “I’ve heard you can say ‘c(h)oat aroi.”

They all laugh kind of an awkward laugh. Then one says, “Yeah, I mean you could, but it’s kind of bad.” Then I realize that, sitting among this particular group, is an older man who is a judge at the courthouse, owns three houses in Thailand, and is currently working on a paper about the EU system of government to present to the Thai government as it tries to re-envision its own systems. Brief deer-in-headlights look again, though for a different reason: all of these man’s qualities are reasons why I should have not chosen this moment to practice my new vocabulary.

So I throw in several smiles—I think I even “wai” him, putting my hands together in the form of a respectful greeting, then realize there’s absolutely no sense in greeting this man now. Frantically, I add a few “kawh tohd ka”s (sorrys), and more smiles. He’s been smiling a chuckling, amused smile this whole time.

The next day when we visit the courthouse, we happen to see him and he is very friendly. So I believe all has been set right again.

#38

We've gone to get Thai massages. After two women wash our feet--which are disgusting and calloused unlike Asian feet, which inexplicably somehow always look smooth and clean--we go into a dressing room to change into our massage clothes.

This outfit consists of a loose-fitting cotton shirt, which we don easily enough. The only other article is a pair of pants, the waist of which would fit a 400-lbs fat American. There is no drawstring or elastic, only two strings that presumably can be used to secure these pants.

After the most creative efforts to tie the pants, we somehow get them to stay up well enough to brave walking out of the dressing room. All the extra fabric that makes these pants the versatile one-size-fits-all pair that they are, has been gathered to one side and tied with a ginormous knot. We look like we weigh 400 lbs.

Halfway through our massages, the masseuses ask us to flip from our backs onto our stomachs. This rolling motion disturbs the delicate knot we’ve concocted, and we’re suddenly swimming in ten yards of untied cotton, wearing only our underwear (luckily we’ve left it on). The masseuses find this quite amusing and show us the proper way to subdue the troublesome pants, smiling all the while.

We’re smiling too, and after we’ve finished we tip the masseuses rather handsomely.


Moral of these stories: I don’t know. Just smile. Especially when a green caterpillar is crawling up your nose (Baffling Moment #43).

Mission Accomplished

I have conquered the chopstick.

Okay, enough excitement for one post.

Define "Hang Out," Please

So you may have noticed that I have changed the name of my blog. It is now more alliterative and interesting. It is also more cheesy, but I don’t care. So welcome to the new and improved summer blog. Happy reading.

You also may have noticed that we seem to be doing very little “work” here in Thailand. That’s the impression I get when skimming back through my blog posts and scrolling through the pictures I’ve posted to Facebook. You may be wondering what we’re doing out here besides teaching a few English classes, eating, hanging out, and climbing waterfalls (see picture at right).

Okay fine, so we’re pretty much just eating, hanging out, and climbing waterfalls. And teaching some English. But that's exactly what we should be doing, and I promise I won't just be using subtle rhetorical tricks and clever word choices to make a summer of having fun seem like “ministry.”

When we eat all the delectable Thai food I’ve talked about, we’re usually eating with Thai and Chinese students we’ve met at Payap University or with members of the Payap Church. Many of them also join us for dinner on Thursday nights when all the church members get together for Cell Group (picture at left). When we spend entire afternoons hanging out and playing games and going to local coffee shops, then evenings wandering the city and seeing movies, we’re with these same students and church members. Many of these students start coming around because they want to get to know a bunch of “farongs” and practice their English; then, we try to encourage them to continue coming and get to know the church members so that when we leave they won’t leave too.

We’re here to have relationships with the Thais. Most of them are college-aged students, so these relationships look a lot like “just hanging out.” Everyone who works here long-term says that without us being here, very few new people would ever end up coming around to begin with. We try to welcome them and invite them to be a part of the community here, so we take group trips to spend a day at a waterfall or have dinner downtown. The rest can develop from there if they want it to. Just look at how youth ministers spend their summers; I rest my case.

And now for the cast of characters:

Tum (“Tuhm”) is studying linguistics at Payap, and he and I study advanced English from a TOEFL book three times a week. I also get a ten-minute mini-linguistics lesson because I find it fascinating and because Tum is incredibly intelligent, even if a tad awkward. He’s studying linguistics so that he can develop a written language for the hill tribe he comes from. Which is suutnyaaht, awesome.

Palm (“Pahm”) is a Payap student who wants to learn English, graduate, and one day start his own business modeled after philanthropic ones like TOMS Shoes because he grew up poor, is paying his own way through college, and wants to help other people like himself. He doesn’t have many friends, at least that we can tell, and he’s already become a regular part of our group and comes around nearly every day. He also really likes rabbits and brought his pet rabbit, Moo Grawbp (Crispy Pork) to visit us one day. That’s (mostly) why he wears Playboy glasses, he says—they have a rabbit on them. Right...

Sea Game (by the way, these are all nicknames because their given names are all exceptionally long; but don’t ask me how they come up with ones like this one) is a high school student who wants to learn English so that he can pass the TOEFL test and study in America. He’s a great teacher when it comes to learning Thai.

Iris, Ivy, Faith, Michelle, and Piiyao are Chinese students studying abroad in Thailand for the year (picture below). Remember the little aliens from Toy Story who all look similar and respond to things in unison? Well, just envision them as 19-year-old Chinese girls, and you’ve met this group. I study English with them, and Fish is continuing some Bible studies that they’d already started, and they teach us some Chinese. Ivy wants to be a tour guide, so we let her practice by showing us around, and Piiyao wants to become a professor in China. They’re all going back to China in a few weeks, and we’ll miss them.

We also spend a lot of time getting to know the church members. Ball (“Bon,” don’t ask), the other intern here, is a self-proclaimed soccer “superstar” and likes to teach us various slang Thai phrases. Berm (“Bum”) was the first member of the church here and is now an art teacher who breeds chihuahuas on the side. Then there’s Ying and Ahn and Ohn and Uhn and several others whose names sound the same except for a slight difference in vowel sound or intonation. And they’re all wonderful, even when you call them the wrong name.

Hope that gives a somewhat better idea of what we're up to all summer. Miss you all and love you all! Now off to coffee...

Eight Weeks and...Not Really Counting

Well, I landed in Chiang Mai two weeks ago today. This is causing the weird feeling you sometimes get when traveling that you’ve been in a place forever and not just 14 days. But I also realized, while waiting out the afternoon rain at a local coffee shop and making new friends with a little Pomeranian who apparently lives there, that already we only have about eight weeks left in Thailand. Which really isn't very long. Coincidentally, maybe, today I also finally noticed that other feeling you get when moving somewhere new: you're actually kind of living there and not just visiting.

A few reasons for that feeling (this will be another long post):

Yesterday I gave my first real “English lesson,” informal though it was. A group of five Chinese students who study at Payap University have been visiting the Zone for several months now and have worked very hard on their English (two of them are in the picture on the left). They came to Thailand with six years of practice reading and writing English—and no practice whatsoever with speaking. I helped one of them with a fairly difficult vocabulary and sentence-writing homework assignment, and I was very impressed with her near-perfect grammar. But it’s still difficult for us to understand one another, which is a large part of our purpose in being here as interns: give anyone who’s interested a place to practice their English just by hanging out with native English-speakers.

So far, it’s actually been pretty easy building some of these relationships with Thai and Chinese students: they want to be friends with foreigners and practice their English in hopes of finding better jobs in the future, and as clueless “farongs” learning about Thailand we need all the help we can get.

Speaking of teaching English, it looks like I’ll be able to teach some sort of weekly, casual “advanced English” class each to students who are already fairly fluent in English and want to improve their vocabulary, knowledge of idioms, and so on. I have a TOEFL book we’ll work through at their own pace, and I doubt there will be many people coming. Both those things, I think, will work well. By the way, flipping through the TOEFL workbook I’m amazed that anyone learns English and that so many people work so hard to do so. I was having trouble with some of the exercises, like:

Rearrange the letters in bold at the end of the sentence to make a word with the same meaning as the italicized word: "The transformation is accelerated by adding salt to the solution." satheden.

Difficult, no? So my sincere admiration and applause to all ESL students.

Speaking of language, I am bound and determined to leave this country knowing how to say more than just “hello,” “how are you?” “thank you,” “nice to meet you,” "pineapple," and "sticky rice." And "pad thai," which doesn't even count. I figure if I’m here teaching English, then it’s only fair that I try my best to learn some Thai. So, today I spent an hour drinking my iced mocha and listening to audio lessons in Thai, writing down the words and pronunciations of the native Thai speaker as best I could. I felt quite accomplished. And of course when I went back to hang out with our Thai friends at the Zone, I remembered close to nothing. But if they can learn English, I can learn Thai. Mark, the long-term intern here, also tried teaching me a few letters and words in the Thai alphabet. Ideally, this will help me order at restaurants and get a somewhat better bearing while living here. Realistically, I’ll probably leave Thailand able to spell my name and “pad thai.”

Speaking of leaving here, I would kind of rather not. It’s been wonderful meeting so many friendly, hospitable Thais and getting to know them better. I've said it before, but the food is delicious. Even the fish balls, which contrary to what it might sound like are actually just meatballs made of fish meat. I’m still mustering the courage to pop a few fried insects. In the meantime, I’ll eat my weight in pad thai.

Speaking of eating my weight, I decided it was time to start running again, so I took an evening jog around Payap’s campus. I toured the campus for the first time just yesterday (finally, I know), and it’s beautiful. Flowers and trees are everywhere--it kind of feels like being in a jungle--and the campus is linked by half-grown-over bridges crossing the ponds where the lily pads are blooming. In the evening, crickets and cicadas and frogs and a million other creatures buzz and chirp and make a thousand other noises that provided a much better rhythm for running than songs on an iPod.

Speaking of...well it's off topic but here's a picture of our group:

But I could go on for a long time about all this; in fact, I already have. So until next time, I miss you all and love you more!

Mai Pen Lai: Life in Thailand

After talking with my mom on the phone last night, I realized that even hundreds of pictures on Facebook can’t really capture Thailand and all we’ve been up to here so far. So, I’d like to attempt a description based on my first ten days in Thailand. Warning: this will be a long post.

I’ve mentioned already that I understand essentially no Thai. One phrase I do understand, though, is “mai pen lai,” and I would say it describes most of Thailand well. Translated, it can mean “you’re welcome,” “no worries,” “never mind,” or “take it easy.” People here must take that to heart because they’re easy-going, carefree, and entirely unhurried. They’re also friendly, polite, and seem to smile about everything. One woman who comes to our church is shy and speaks little English, but instead of just keeping quiet when people try to talk to her, she breaks out giggling. It works out well for her--everyone, American of Thai, starts laughing along with her. Another woman who runs a small fruit stand near the Zone (Payap Christian Zone, where we live and work) speaks as much English as I speak Thai, but she greets me every afternoon with a big smile and fresh saparoht (pineapple) already cut for me. I return the smile and give her 10 baht. I’d say we have a very good relationship.

Friendly though they may be, Thais are also crazy drivers. There are essentially no street laws beyond stopping at traffic lights, and I’m surprised more motorcyclists don’t die each day. But mai pen lai: most people ride these tiny motorbikes and don’t seem at all concerned with the size of the cars they consistently cut off and weave in and out between. This free-for-all mentality is kind of how most things seem to work in Thailand. You want plastic surgery, stop in a clinic at the spanking new mall, assuming whatever risk there might be. I haven’t seen anyone yet with a disfigured face, so apparently this approach is working well enough.

So we’re all learning to chill out, having found there isn’t much you can do about finding a giant insect cooked into your pad thai, driving through four feet of flood water to get home, or sleeping with no sheets and minimal clothing with the AC cranked way up and still waking up sweaty before you've even started another sticky day. Mai pen lai.

Tuesday through Friday, those sticky days generally consist of:

7:30 — Roll out of bed at 7:30, dress in the coolest clothes I can find, and patter barefoot downstairs to put on my shoes (always left outside, so our floors are spotlessly clean) and walk down the street to buy breakfast either at our corner 7-11 or one of the street vendors.

8:30 — Begin nearly four hours of “spiritual equipping time,” where we read through a book about spiritual disciplines, spend 45 minutes in quiet time, then come back together a read a chapter of John. For me, these four hours generally consist of pondering what new Thai dish to try for lunch and injecting myself with coffee to stay awake. Don’t tell anyone, but “quiet time” often is very quiet—dreamily so, if you know what I mean.

12:30 — Eat lunch somewhere, then enjoy a couple hours of free time where I generally sit outside on our patio drinking Thai iced tea, reading or writing, listening to the birds and the trickle of water in the gutter running behind the Zone, and watching the trees rustle like the clothes we've hung outside to dry while the afternoon clouds roll in. Or I might walk over to one of the coffee shops near us or explore the winding market streets in the neighborhood.

3:00 — Return to the Zone and hang out with anyone who might happen to stop in and want to hang out. Most of these people are regulars who either go to church here or have been hanging around for months, although we’ve had several new people drop in this last week since the school semester has started up again. There’s a group of Chinese girls and several Thais who come in and out, and we hang out and play games and enjoy the AC and talk, helping them practice English while they teach us a little Thai.

6:00 — Eat dinner somewhere (we eat a lot) and start finding things to do all evening . This might mean grabbing pizza at the mall and going to see a movie at the big theater (before every movie they play a song written by the king, Bhumibol, during which everyone stands), cooking with everyone and having our Cell Group meeting if it’s Thursday, or grabbing dinner at a nearby hole-in-the-wall restaurant and coming back to play volleyball or cheer our Thai friends on at a soccer game or put in a movie, etc.

Mondays are our days off, so some of our new Thai friends have shown us around the city, taken us shopping at local markets, or gone hiking with us up in the nearby mountains. By the way, the mountains here are wonderful; it’s like being in the jungle.

Sundays we have church in the morning, a big lunch in the afternoon (sounds like Sundays at home, no?), and then walk around the night market in the evening or gather at a local coffee shop.

Of course there’s quite a bit more going on besides this, but hopefully that gives you somewhat of an idea what we’re up to here. If you’re asking how this is “mission” work, we’re building relationships where we can learn from the Thais and they can learn from us—all very casual, mutual, and friendly. Mai pen lai. I think we’ve all learned quite a bit already.

First-Week Highlights

Sawadee ka! So I’ve been in Thailand less than a week, and already way too much has happened to fit in a single blog post. I apologize for falling behind. We’re just having too much fun, I guess. So to summarize:

1. Major events and memorable happenings
a. Stumbled onto a major Buddhist festival at the largest and oldest temple (“wat”) in the old part of Chiang Mai
b. Played volleyball at 11 p.m. when it was still 85 degrees and humid enough to soak our clothes before even getting to the court
c. Visited the Agape Home orphanage outside the city where three of our friends from ACU are spending the summer working with AIDS orphans
d. Swam in a huge mountain lake in Sri Lanna National Park, where we also spent a night and morning on house boats on the lake
e. Consumed two full helpings of homemade Mexican stack--aroi! (delicious)
f. Drove through a legitimate flood: the water was covering the hood of the car and pooling at our feet. Rainy season has begun in Thailand.
g. Attended my first church service in Thai and English
h. Almost fell asleep during a Thai massage while the masseuses laughed at us farongs (white people)

2. Important lessons and interesting or otherwise significant observations
a. Sticky rice and mango is the second best thing after pad thai. The end.
b. Well, not really the end. When eating pad thai, watch out for full-sized insects, cooked unintentionally (I assume) into the dish, who are missing one or both of their wings. Then, don’t think about where the other wing might have gone.
c. Accenting a word even somewhat incorrectly changes what you’re saying. Thais find this phenomenon quite amusing.
d. Texans have nothing on the Thais when it comes to friendliness and hospitality. (And, yes, even when it comes to pad thai versus TexMex.)
e. There are mosquitoes, and lots of them. And they will bite you. And because Asians are apparently not attractive to mosquitoes, the damned insects will bite you even more to compensate.
f. Thailand might be the most beautiful country on earth, hands down.
g. Curly hair gets curlier in humidity, and what we consider cool clothing in the states may as well be winter bundling here.
h. The Arabica coffee grown just outside Chiang Mai in the hills is way better than Starbucks. Aroi.
i. If mission work means hanging out with fun people and meeting even more each day, then no wonder the Bible department is so big at ACU.

For pictures, look at my Facebook. If you’re not my friend, ask and it shall be given unto you. Miss you all and love you even more.

One Night in Bangkok

I’m not sure what day it is. I believe it’s very early morning on Tuesday in Bangkok. That makes it about 2 p.m. in Denver, which probably explains why I’m wide awake even after sleeping only about six hours in the last 45.

So now, having taken perhaps the most needed shower of my life, I'm sitting crossed-legged on the tiny, tiled patio in the room where I’m spending the night in Bangkok until my flight leaves tomorrow. Earlier, when I stepped outside the impressive new terminal of the Suvarnabmuni ("Su-van-a-pum," go figure) airport, the heavy tropical air met me at the doorway and hung in my hair and recurled my unwashed curls all the way to the hotel. The air condition in the van and the room was welcome.

Now, I don’t want to go back inside. The air condition feels so sterile and, in a very cool, refreshing way, strangely stuffy. Outside, I’ve never smelled air like this before. I suppose it could just be the smell of pollution, but the tropical air is heavy and muggy; the crickets are chirping, just audible above the hum of the air conditioner; the occasional insect buzzes between the palm trees while they rock back and forth in the breeze; and the city lights make the clouds glow like giant rolling sheets of mist. Motorcycles are passing by in the street just beyond where the hotel is tucked away from the highway, and Thai music is pulsing from one of the neighboring apartment rooms. It's almost a drugging effect, all of this. I would like to sit here for a very long time.

But about the trip. The Pacific Ocean, as it turns out, is rather expansive. That translates into a very long flight. But I did sit next to two very friendly girls from Singapore on the way from LA to Tokyo--they’d just spent a few weeks studying in Oklahoma City. A thrilling study abroad experience, I guess.

We landed in Tokyo, and the Narita airport is either nothing too exciting or I was half asleep. Our flight left in the evening for Bangkok, and I watched from my window seat as twilight fell over Japan, the cities lighting up all along the islands that are surrounded by this great wall of ocean on both sides. The water literally looked like it was having to be held back.

On the way to Bangkok, I sat next to a woman from Thailand who has lived in Oklahoma for years. Apparently Oklahoma is a popular place nowadays...who knew. She was telling me all about Thailand and teaching me a few Thai phrases. But since landing in Bangkok, people’s faces seem to get this amused smile each time I say hello or thank you, so I wonder what I’m actually saying.

Strange feeling #1: landing in the airport, tired, taller than just about everyone, and clearly a tourist with a confused, half-awake stare that, I assume, had a lot to do with why everyone was being so overly helpful.
Strange feeling #2: actually considering asking the three-year-old Thai children for help when I overheard them speaking Thai fluently.
Strange feeling #3: chasing down the terminal after a well-intentioned shuttle driver from another hotel very quickly whisked my suitcase away. He was smiling and apologetic every time he walked by while I waited for the right shuttle. I assured him it was quite all right.

Oh, and it's started thundering now--long, rolling swells through the sky like a soundtrack to the lightning show in the distance. Yes, I think I love this.

And Away We Go

Before I say anything about Thailand, today is my sister's 15th birthday, and I would like to wish her a wonderful day. I would also offer a word of warning to all registered drivers planning to commute anywhere in the Denver area this summer.

That being said, Facebook has just informed me that three of the interns who I'll be traveling with this summer have already made it to Chiang Mai, and another is set to leave tomorrow. Facebook will also inform you that I'm leaving on Sunday--in about 31 hours, actually. Next time you hear from me, I'll be about 14 hours ahead of you and probably a bit jet lagged, but hopefully doing fine otherwise and ready to spend the summer in Thailand.

I've had no idea what to expect or how to prepare for ten weeks in Chiang Mai. Apparently we're in the tropics, so after much prompting from individuals concerned with my well-being this summer, I'm stocked with enough bug spray to ward off a jungle, enough medicine to ward off the most irksome of intestinal concerns and general health issues, and the most lightweight clothes I've been able to find. So the challenge really is packing these "necessary" supplies into a suitcase and backpack. Which is, of course, a more fitting activity for more like 8 hours before I leave.

But prepared or not, I would mostly like to thank everyone again for all the support you've already given us. I can't begin to thank all of you who encouraged us in this process, donated money to fund our trip, and prayed so sincerely. I was asked the other day how it made me feel that so many people have given so generously and been so supportive, and quite honestly I'm not entirely sure. The word that comes to mind is humbling. I suppose there is a sense of responsibility as well. Really, though, all I know to say is thank you. Khop kun mak ka.

And thank you to my family who is 1) letting me spend the summer away from home and 2) trying not to worry too much, or at least not showing it. I love you, and I promise to be very careful.

I'll be posting more as soon as I recover from jet lag--and excitement--and gain a basic orientation with the places and people in Chiang Mai. These posts will, I hope, become substantially more interesting in just a few days.

Until then, blessings.

Juliana

Before Things Get Too Exciting...

To my Colorado followers, hey guys! To my Texas followers, hi y'all! To my Thai followers, สวัสดิ์ ค่ะ เพื่อน ๆ (sawatdi ka pheuan!) To anyone else, hello friends!

If you're viewing this blog, you've likely heard about my plans for the upcoming summer. I'll be serving as one of five interns through Abilene Christian University's World Wide Witness program; we will be working in the city with missionary families whose primary focus is outreach to university students and growth in the two churches they've planted in the city. As interns, our hope is to form strong friendships with new students and existing members in the congregations. It's an exciting opportunity for all of us!

In the meantime, though, we'll be focusing on all the really neat things to do with travel...visas, plane tickets, bank accounts, and the like. Not to mention: assuring our mothers we're competent to travel overseas alone; learning basic phrases in a language whose phoenetics are entirely foreign; and eating as much TexMex and burgers as possible before ten weeks of different--but equally, if not more delicious--cuisine. And going to school, of course.

For those of you who have supported my efforts in any way, be it financially or prayerfully, I thank you very much and ask simply for your continued encouragement. This blog is specifically for you to see exactly (or at least as far as technology and internet connections will allow) what your support is helping us accomplish this summer.

Hopefully, future posts to this blog will be much more exciting and have significantly more to do with Thailand. Don't hold your breath just yet, though--I still have four months in Texas. Until then, sawatdi ka.

Namaste,
Juliana

"However many holy words you read, however many you speak, what good will they do you if you do not act on them?" - Buddha