Strange happenings

Sometimes the best moments come when you least expect them. At the moment, there's lots of confusion as to when and where I'll be moving. I'll be moving to host family number three. My days seem endless and my thai friends are all occuppied studying for finals that continue week after week. School ends next week for them. As soon as testing started, I was told I didn't need to go to school.

I spend my days wandering around the town. I walk from one side of town, to the other, back to the first side. By the end of the day, I'm exhausted, redfaced from the heat and my hair is in a state of curling and uncurling sweaty frenzy.

It sounds so silly, but going to a hair salon can make my day. Sometimes I'll pay for it to get washed and blow dried and straightened simply to have something to do. For $1.50 it's not bad entertainment and I always come out feeling better. The women always tell you you're pretty and the airconditioning is a nice perk.

The highpoint of today was dancing with taiwanese and thai people during a rotary party. The chinese karaoke sung by twenty women all wearing pink made me wish I hadn't broken my camera.

Only fifteen minutes ago, one of the young men from bahrain studying at the aviation school handed me a pomegranate juice. I have no idea why. I answered automatically in thai with a kob khun ka.

I don't think I've mentioned these boys before. They're all in their mid to late twenties. They stay at the 4 star hotel every night and they play tennis on Tuesdays. Sometimes they'll run through the lobby of the hotel kicking a soccer ball ( to the dismay of the heavily make-uped receptionists). They've seen me around town for months and still haven't gotten used to me.

The Village Songteaw

A Songteaw is the equivalent of a bus. It's made from a truck with a metal cage and some very rudimentary bench seats placed inside. Nakhon Phanom is too small to have songteaws within the city, but if one is coming from out of town, there are songteaws all the time.
I've said before that I live in a village. If I want to go into town, I walk to the edge of the village and wait alongside the highway for a Songteaw. They come at different times and all time. There's no schedule.
I love taking the songteaw into town. Jostled and bumped against twenty other people, I can sit and view the countryside or talk to a grandmother with black teeth. A little boy might try and share his corn on the cob with me or simply stare at me with open-mouthed awe. I'm the only white person in the truck and probably the first white person he's ever seen.
Sometimes the matrons on the ride with talk about me assuming that I can't understand them, but mostly they just accept me as an anomaly and continue their lives.
It's nice not to be commented upon.

Tradition and Ritual

Today is the third day of the full moon of the third month. That is, according to my host father. It's therefore Buddha's birthday.

.....I had a whole artistic post with philisophical insights included but somewhere between the crazy man and the handsome laughing monk with a gangster tattoo I lost it. So in my loss of words, please permit me to use fragments.

Three walks around the village temple grounds, three wishes at the steps of a wat during reconstruction. Orion scorching the sky with sparse clouds and a full moon. The continual chant of the villagers. Children carrying their flowers, incense and candles with shrieks of delight as the wind continues to blow the flame out. The smell of the incense filling the air.

Life felt so full of promise.

Conversation

Characters:
me- Suzanne, the author of this blog
Ping-Pong- Suzanne's older host brother

Angels:
PingPong: Suzanne, have you ever seen an angel?
Suzanne: No, have you?
PingPong: Yes...Everyday...but holidays
Suzanne: Where do you see the angel?
PingPong: At school
Suzanne: Is she pretty?
PingPong: I'm not telling. (smiles and walks off)

Music:
Characters:
Suzanne-myself
Bong-Suzanne's host brother

Bong: What are you doing?
Suzanne: Writing e-mails to my friends in the U.S.
Bong: Any boyfriends?
Suzanne: Nope
Bong: Are any of your friends drummers?
Suzanne: A few
Bong: Are they any good?
Suzanne: I don't really know.
----some youtube videos later---
Bong: They're like professionals. Much better than me.
Suzanne: I don't really know. I don't play the drums.
Bong: The lead singer, do girls think he's handsome?
Suzanne: Some girls
Bong: Do you want to see some videos of my band?
Suzanne: Okay, who's in your band?
Bong: friends.... Do you see? There's me. Aren't I handsome?
Suzanne: Yes. yes you are.
Bong: Do you like japanese boys?
Suzanne: I don't really know
Bong: Girls like the guitar player in my band. He's japanese.


Recently, there hasn't been much happening. I got a package from a very good friend of mine. It almsot made me cry with joy. Not many people know me like she does. Inside there was Zhena's Gypsy Tea, two dark chocolate candybars, some candy, burt's bees lip balm and a card. Each piece was wrapped in Christmas paper, taped to another section and then wrapped again in Tissue paper. There was so much tape that I couldn't open some of the present without ripping the paper. Also enclosed were some CDs. I love her taste in music. Throughout my exchange, every two months or so I get another mix of music in the mail along with an 8 page letter. The Cd's make up my exchange soundtrack.

Last weekend, a boy from South Carolina came and visited me and Emma in Nakhon Phanom. We took him to the crepe shops, the ice-cream shops. He asked me if I wanted to visit him in the U.S. I have no desire whatsoever to go to the south. It's just that the Pacific Northwest is like utopia. It's calm, cool, collected. There's the ocean, the mountains and the desert. Everything is there. Why leave? Sure I know that I want to travel and live in other countries, but I know I'll always go back to the northwest. It doesn't get much better.

The Ghost Doctor

In Thailand, ghosts are real. They can haunt you. They can come inside you and possess you and destroy you. That's why, there's the ghost doctor.My grandmother until last weekend, was possessed. A ghost inside of her had caused horrible dreams and pain in her back and stomach. She couldn't eat solid food.I came home one day to find a woman with my grandmother. She was blessing an amulet. The amulet was to be kept inside the gloves that my grandmother wears when she sleeps so that the power of buddha would protect her from the demon inside.Two days later, it had reached a critical stage. An intervention was needed.My grandmother went to the Ghost Doctor and was exorcised.The old women in the village held a Bai See Su Kuan ceremony. Monks chanted and the villagers hollered.White strings were tied around my grandmother's wrists and neck.One day later and she's back to normal.Once again she can eat regular rice and sleep well. She still sleeps with the amulet and she won't cut off the white strings.I never thought that I would be able to say that I live with an exorcised woman. But then again, I'm not in kansas anymore.

A visiting friend

I live in the boons. I live in a village where people don't even speak thai. I live in a village where the main restaurant is a noodleshop on the side of the highway and cows and chickens run where they please. I couldn't be happier. Last weekend, I had another exchange student friend come visit me. She's from the United States and lives in Udon Thani, 200 kilometers away. In the U.S. that would be about and hour and a half drive. In thailand, it takes 5 hours by bus. Thai buses stop in every single village. It's the milktruck (not literally).
She arrived at about 1 pm. My host family was shocked to see that she wasn't blond and tall like me. She's short and asian. "Same as thai!" They said excitedly. Every person we met and saw that weekend had to be told that my friend was actually japanese but that she moved to america. Colette (my friend) and I had the hardest time explaining that in the U.S. we have people from every country in the world. It doesn't make them less american. She's a fifth generation american, same as me. It just happens that every person in her family has been of japanese descent.

We click. We didn't drive into town once the entire weekend. My host brother, Colette and I traveled around the village on bicycles. We went to the school, the noodle shop, discovered the bubble tea shack, the crepe shop and the area in the market with punk 20 year olds making waffles over coals in a teracotta pot. I've never had so much fun in my village. Colette and I introduced my brother to The Princess Bride. He understands a little bit of english and the title seemed a little to girly for his tastes. This from the boy collecting cartoon robocat stickers from seven-eleven. WE convinced him to watch it with us with thai subtitles. He's now repeating, "My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die!"

Before my host father would let her visit, he wanted to know, "does she have a good heart?"
"Very good." I replied.
The whole family smiled.
"Suzanne has the best heart though."