Plans.

School ends for me at the end of next month. I'll have summer break for three months. Next month is pretty much finals and celebrations. The entire population of girls is going on a girlscout campout and we are all chipping in to pay for that right now. The month after will be extremely busy for me. My mother is coming to visit me. I'm looking at hotels in Bangkok right now. Unfortunately, her arrival times are pretty bad for me. Unless my host family is okay with coming down to bangkok, a ten hour drive, to meet her with me at one in the morning....I'm going to have to arrange for a tour company owned by friends of friends to meet her at the airport. I also need to have her budget so that I can reserve a bungalow on an island and figure out where we can go and things we can see. She hasn't returned my e-mails in awhile, so I'm thinking public humiliation is my secret tool. Oh yes, my passive aggressive side is returning. Anyway, I need to know a little bit more so that I can make a plan. I'm big on plans, and lists, always have been. I think it's a family thing. My dad and sister both make lists all the time. We like to prioritze, what can I say?
So, my mother should call me, so I can ask her some questions. After she comes to visit, I am going directly on a trip with rotary. I'm going to PHUKET!! I even get to go to Ko phi phi where The Beach was filmed. If Bob Macdonald is reading, I will see the waterfall. I am actually going to that island.
After ALL of that is done, I'll be switching host families. My current host family wants me to stay with them. Tonight at dinner, my host dad looked at my shirt and asked if I wanted to get it changed. Let me explain, every student has their name and grade level embroidered on their uniform shirt. Currently, my shirt has the name my first host family gave me with their surname. My host father wants to change it. When asked why, he said, "because she's my child."
Almost.
It's nice to know I'm loved.

And so it goes...

And so it goes, that sometimes, we have to stop pretending. We have to stop pretending if we're happy or if we're sad. We have to stop pretending if we're bad or if we're good. If we're smart or stupid. We have to stop pretending that we have anything in common and accept our differences. Sometimes, I have to stop pretending that I'm not afraid to stop pretending. We all hide behind our masks of somekind, be it religion or sacrifice, be it drugs or clothes, we all wear our masks. Being in Thailand, has been like peeling away mask after mask until I'm bare. I feel fresh and rejuvenated. I feel finally myself. Yet, I'm afraid. I'm afraid that when I leave this country, those masks will reappear. I fear that what was known about me before this wonderful experience will haunt me. That those thoughts and images will follow me when I return.

We all change as we get older. I find myself metamorphasizing. I have to say, I like this new self.

Next year, I will return to Corvallis. Situations have changed. My two younger siblings will be older and taller. My three year old sister will be using "acceptable" in her vocabulary. My dad, of all people, has gotten a dog. I'll be able to use the car and I have a job waiting for me at the lab where I once worked. Many of my good friends will have left for college and many of them will have stayed behind. Corvallis is Pleasantville after all, few ever leave.
I still have six months here, but I feel that time is slipping by me and that it's of the utmost importance that I try and make things as comfortable for me as possible in my hometown before I return. Rotary once told me, that coming back will be the hardest part of my exchange. I have no doubt about that.

P.S. First thing I want to eat...probably a burrito from La Roca. I'll leave my dad in charge of that.

The L word.

If I haven't mentioned before, part of the Rotary Youth Exchange is that each student has at least two host families. I have three. Currently, I am staying with my second family. They are incredibly kind and adore me. I love staying with them and I go to bed smiling almost every night.
This week, my host mother and host grandmother are in Bangkok visiting family and the hospital. I was orginally going to go with them but plans changed. I spent the weekend inKhon kaen for a friend's birthday and then I came right back to Nakhon Phanom.
I'm staying with my host dad and brother and with any other family, it would be a little uncomfortable. It isn't with them. We laugh so much.
Last night, we were in the car and my host father asked me if I really had to change host families. I said I wasn't sure and would need to talk to Rotary. The rest of the night, he and my host brother continued to talk about me staying with them until I left for the U.S.
If I hadn't already met my third host family, I'm sure I would have said yes. I met my third hsot family a few months ago and they are all so excited to host me. I'll have two younger sisters and a little brother. My third host mother is knitting me a sweater and every time I see her, she insists on sending me home with food, bags and bags of food.
I told my host second host father that I would switch to my thrid host family in april, but if I didn't like it, I would move back in with them. I never thought I'd have my host family get so attached to me. I wanted them to, but I never thought it possible. My host parents say they love me. It's weird to think that someday I'll have to leave them and I don't know if I'll ever see them again.

Before I go

So I'll be traveling, yet again. Early tomorrow morning I'm getting on a bus and leaving for Khon Kaen. My canadian friend there has a birthday and I'll get to see a few of my other good friends on exchange.

There's an exercise park near my school and the past few days I've been walking around it with my host dad. The other day he taught me all the rude words for foreigners. I know the word for chinese, arab, european, indian and african. Have I mentioned that skin color matters a lot in this country? It made me laugh a little to myself because of how he said them.
He saw an arab man and started talking to himself under his breath. That's when he started to teach me all the words.
I'm pretty sure they're not words I'd say in polite company. Last night, after we finished our walk, we picked up my host brother for dinner. My brother has been sick for awhile, mainly because of a fish bone he got stuck in his throat. The medicine the doctors gave him makes him sleepy. We went to dinner and after dinner Emma and I went to a rotary meeting.

When we got to the hotel, we were fifteen minutes late and the first people there. The bellhop opened up the room for us and gave us some water. After about five minutes, a man came in, asked us if we could speak thai and then told us the meeting had been cancelled.

This happens all the time. We show up for the meetings and nobody is there. Instead of calling my host father back to pick us up, we went to get some DEEP FRIED ICE CREAM in the hotel restaurant. It's horrible for you but amazing. Our Rotary counselor was there and he insisted on paying for us. And that was our night. Exciting, I know.

My village

Population: 10,000
It sounds like a lot for a village but you're wrong. My village is small. It's country, it's quiet. The houses are squished together, similar to thai lifestyle. Farmers, teachers, motorcycle repairmen, they all live here. In Thailand, one's little plot of land can be miles away from one's house. It's different from the U.S. or most other places in the West.
We like our space. Westerners do. If we farm, we surround ourselves with solitude. Farmers are often like hermits.
In Thailand, the thought of being so alone is utterly foreign. Thai people ride their motorcycles and bicycles and tractors for miles and miles away from their house to get to their farms. They all clump together in a village.

And so, the houses sit a meter apart. Ramshackles houses, teak lofts, each the same an each different. My house sits back from the rest. Down a long windy road past the half acre banana farm and the community cow grazing feild. It's roof is red.
I love my house.
I have my own bedroom and feel incredibly spoiled. My grandmother and brother sleep in the living room.
We all sleep on mats.
Cooking is done in the back shed. It's also where I wash my clothes by hand in buckets and where my grandmother chews her betel wood. She doesn't chew it very often, neither her gums nor her teeth are black.

I used to think I couldn't live without music. Now, music is rare and normally for special occasions. The silence has become comforting. Mainly, because it isn't silence at all. I finally stopped to listen to my surroundings.
I can hear children playing in the village elementary school next door. There are birds in the coconut trees and wind makes the leaves of the banana stalks whistle.

The house is set up just so. In the morning light fills the living room and enters the kitchen. In the evening the setting sun shines right inside the kitchen. It's taste lingering long after it has set.

I sleep with my window open. It's a habit I brought from the U.S. The fresh air does me good and the sounds of the night help me go to sleep. There's a schedule. Crickets and frogs are in the early evening and I hope to be asleep before the dogs begin their howling at two or three am.

It's strange how westernization works in different ways. I read once about madatory workouts during the day in Japan led by the radio. In thailand it's slightly less mechanized.

Every morning a truck drives through the town blasting orders and jokes out of loudspeakers for an hour. Six am sharp and the whole town is awake.
"Children, tell your parents. It's time to get up now. Wake up wake up. Eat breakfast. Eat breakfast!What are you going to have today? rice? Chinese donuts? Eat healthy! Don't forget! Go now! Go eat!"

Thai is the second language of most people here. They understand it but the older people have forgotten how to speak it. They speak Puthai. It's an indigenous language found only in this province. They speak it in Ban Klang (my village) and in Renu Nakhon another small town nearby.

I've picked up a few phrases but I'm sticking to my guns. I'm learning thai. I'm learning more than I did in my last host family but it's still difficult when your family doesn't speak it with each other.

It'd be the same as being an exchange student to the U.S. and your host family speaks spanish at home but english to you.It's only a little confusing.

het peu? (what are you doing? in puthai)

SMILE!! you just read my blog and you're on hidden camera. Cheers!