Pretty Much Thai.

So I met more friends this week at Pom's place! I feel like I can definitely understand Thai a lot easier--the problem is communicating my understanding. Which is probably why most of the children who are not officially my students are unwilling to speak English with me--they simply can't. The education they receive in school isn't enough for them to speak with native speakers, and it's difficult. Which also explains why my students are chatterboxes in Thai but the minute I ask them to speak in English, they clam up and refuse to make eye contact with me even though I'm. Standing. Right. In Front. Of them.

But it doesn't make them any less cute, as proven below:


Hello, M3/3--you guyz r adorbz.



And I love you too, M3/4.

I mentioned previously that my nickname was Chompu, which means 'rose apple'. After chatting with them again, they've given me an official Thai name: Siprai. Which means 'beautiful'. Liu Siprai would be my Thai name, Chompu my Thai nickname, LuuLuu my Thai teacher name...

You know you're officially a part of the Thai community when you've got a Thai name, a Thai nickname, a Thai teacher name, and you go to the local Thai vegetarian restaurant twice a day.

I guess I'm pretty much Thai now.

Chompu.

I've never liked paying for doing laundry. It's like throwing away money just because I was lazy. Laziness < money. It's how I felt when I was studying in China--I handwashed clothes every day before I showered and went to bed. It was a routine that I proudly stood by, and I enjoyed it. I planned on doing the same thing in Thailand, but after an entire day of teaching, I really never feel like doing anything except settle down in a tanktop, shorts, with a glass of something cool (no guava lemonade, unfortunately), and either a book, my kindle, or my laptop.

However, after being in Thailand, paying for laundry isn't that big of a deal. Pom, Not, Foam, and Pit are so welcoming. Laundry takes about an hour. I put my laundry in, and I sit down with them, and we start teaching each other languages. Foam is in fourth grade--she's learning English and Chinese on top of her normal Thai lessons. Her pronunciation is great, but she's unwilling to chat with me in English, but that's okay--she's stuck with me for 9 more months ;) The family teaches me Thai, and I teach them English (with the occasional Chinese!) They always have friends and family dropping by their place, so I meet a lot more Thai people that way.

We were discussing different foods (in our broken languages!), and N, L, and I were given nicknames. My nickname is Chompu (rose apple). L is Malee (jasmine). N is Naagao (intelligent). They offered to take us to a market about 30 minutes away from our town, and they did.

Before that, a group of us went to Mae La Mao, and I went ATVing, rafting, and jetskiing for the first time, all in one day. Money and time well-spent! However, during our trip from Mae La Mao to Mae Sot, I've discovered my distaste for the idea of marriage and having children. I don't mind being the fun aunt, but when it comes down to it, I don't want to get married or have children. If my biological clock begins to tick, I want to adopt. There are plenty of children who need love--I can't be selfish and say that I want my "own" children.

Mae Sot was great, the couple of hours we spent there. The food is amazing. I haven't had samosa in such a long time, so the trip there was definitely a highlight after an hour car ride with two babies demanding attention and screaming into my eardrums.

Something drastically changed my livelihood in Thailand, and I now have no significant ties in America. I had talked to G as the exchange was happening, and I was upset. Not only because everything was different but because I felt that I was alone in Thailand. There are friends here that are barely acquaintances, and I didn't feel comfortable crying into the shoulder of any one of them. I discovered today that the one thing I can count on in Thailand is my group of friends. The ones back home and the ones that I've connected with in Thailand. Even the ones I thought were mere acquaintances were patient with me and were willing to listen to me talk and tell me that it's not shameful to cry, that I'm not a ****ty person, and that they were there.

So thank you, Grace, Micha, Christine, Micah, Shannon, Sam S., Ashley M., and Dan, for helping me through a time where I thought I wouldn't have anyone. I couldn't be more grateful than I am now.

Hopefully the next entry will be a lot happier. Chompu out! :)

Food, and More Food, and Neck Injuries -- Oh My!

I'll get to my neck injury in a bit.

My original plan for Chiang Mai this weekend went a little something like this (copied and pasted from my facebook status):

Tomorrow: Muay Thai training, temple exploring, vegetarian lunch buffet, volunteering at the local orphanage, used-bookstore browsing, night bazaar!
Sunday: cooking class all day, fishies, nightlife with the TP farang teachers!
Monday: morning exploration, head back to Tak.

The main things I wanted to do on this trip was muay thai training and volunteering at the local orphanage. Neither of those things happened. We were up at 6am to go training at the local muay thai gym. The minute L and I decided that we were going to do it (why the hell not?), we heard rain. We opened the door to our guesthouse and saw a downpour of rain. Well, that was it. Running out into the rain to grab a tuk-tuk then go running around the lake? Definitely wasn't what we were planning on. So we went straight back to bed. I thought 'ah, well, I have 9 more months here--I will be making many more trips back here! No big deal! As long as I can volunteer later today!'

Now let me explain why the volunteering didn't happen. Since muay thai didn't happen, our schedules were a bit up in the air. N and I were supposed to meet L at a local cafe--we got lost for at least 45 minutes. We decided that we were going to visit Doi Suthep later that day, so we were going to visit Wat Pra Singh which is another temple in the area. Everyone wanted to get a Thai massage at the Women's Prison, but they closed at 4pm, so that was the priority.

N and I have never gotten massages before (we fear being touched that intimately by a stranger), but we decided that we're in Thailand, so we may as well try it. I was matched up with the sweetest woman. She was Chinese-Thai (like I'm Chinese-American) and we just chatted in Chinese. I felt immediately at home with someone who can speak Chinese with me (I've taken Chinese for granted!), so the Thai massage was actually quite pleasant. We got a cup of tea afterward. It's hard to imagine these really cute women as convicts who could have possibly done anything illegal.

Don't we look spiffy in our massage outfit? (Apparently, we had our pants on backwards. Oops!) The program at the Women's Prison is for women to train to integrate themselves back into society. So the money that they make by massaging people (180 baht an hour) is put aside for them when they are set to be released. The women who are allowed to do this are women who are set to be released within six months. I think this is awesome! I'm glad I got to experience this. :)

We were going to go to the orphanage, but getting massages can make one quite hungry, so we headed to Kuhn Churn--which is popular for their vegetarian lunch buffets. However, we got there just as the buffet ended, but we thought 'what the hey! Let's eat anyway!'--and then we ordered a lot of food. My favorite part of that meal, however, was the guava lemonade. My favorite drink and my favorite fruit together? It was heaven. Literally. I wish I had more before I left! But that's okay--I'm going to be back in Chiang Mai soon! Anyway, by the time we were done eating, it was 4-4:30pm, and they wanted to go to Doi Suthept. I thought 'well, I'll have time Monday morning to volunteer!' so we went. It was lovely--but too touristy for a sacred temple. That's how I've been feeling the past couple of weeks. Places that should be sacred and explored by those who are serious about Buddhism are being exploited by those who want to make a living. Which would be fine if it was just a cultural monument, but I wasn't fond of having to wave off vendors selling me cheap whatchamacallits when I'm at a temple.

I did manage to go used-bookstore-browsing, and it was great. It was nothing like the used bookstores back in IC (here's lookin' at The Haunted Bookshop!), but it was still quite pleasant, and I bought three books, as I have almost finished Neil Gaiman's Collection of Short Stories called 'Fragile Things', and John Griswold's 'A Democracy of Ghosts'. I bought Neil Gaiman's 'American Gods', Vikram Chandra's 'Love and Longing in Bombay', and Gaile Parkin's 'Baking Cakes in Kigali'. Obviously, not very English novels, but that's okay, as I've acquired a taste for international literature (written in English).

Sunday was the all-day cooking class that we took. That very morning, I woke up fine, and after a nice, warmish shower, my neck felt like it had a crick in it. After that, it was all downhill from there. I couldn't sit in a soeng thaow without holding my neck like I'm sure Nearly Headless Nick did when he was first nearly beheaded. But the teachers were all understanding--Tom, our main teacher, even took me to the pharmacy on his motorbike to get me something for the pain. I also owe AX a huge thank you for everything he's done for me this past weekend (cotton candy, ibuprofen, Tiger Balm)--and also for brightening the lives of those of us who work together in Tak because we see each other every goddamn day anyway. lol. And look at me up there. Don't I just look so happy to be cooking? (Because I am! I wish I had a kitchen!)

If you want pictures of the food I made, they'll be uploaded onto facebook asap. That's the list of things I chose to learn to cook that day, and let me just say that the food was delicious! We actually made green curry FROM SCRATCH. I have decided that I must invest in a mortar as it's the Asian thing to do and to have. Obviously.

My neck bothered me all throughout the day and the night and when I woke up (not having done the fish spa--which is literally just sticking your legs into a tank of fish, and having them eat the dead skin off of your legs and feet. I heard it was amazing. Unfortunately, the fish spa we wanted to go to was closed every time we were there, and so I cannot say otherwise.) Since my neck bothered me Monday morning, I went to an acupuncture place near our guesthouse that also said "Chinese medicine" on the sign. When I walked in, I felt like I was back in LA in one of those Chinese clinics and felt immediately at home. Dr. Sudhisak was very kind to me--he spoke to me in Chinese and fit me in his really tight morning schedule, since I told him that I was heading back to Tak early afternoon. I've never done acupuncture before, as needles scare me, but the pain was definitely worth braving the needles. It was an interesting sensation as he was tapping the needles into my pressure points because I didn't feel a thing until he got to my hand (because I could actually see it), and then they sent electric pulses into three of the needles and put a heat lamp right over my neck. It was probably the most comfortable half hour the entire weekend I was in Chiang Mai. I fell asleep several times, and when they removed the needles and heat lamp, I felt like I was being forced out of bed on a winter's morning to go to school. He prescribed me a week's worth of Chinese herbal painkillers. Another thing, before I forget to mention, he knows the principal of a language school that teaches Thai, English, and Chinese. He wants to hire me to be a teacher there, in Chiang Mai (though he has to discuss with the other teachers/directors in the school), but he said that he would get back to me.

Dear Dad, thank you for forcing me to learn Chinese. You're the best.

My neck is still sore, but it feels a lot better (still can't straighten my neck though), and I'm hoping it'll feel at least 85% by tomorrow morning, as I've got 5 classes to teach, and 3 of them are at least 3 classes behind the rest of Mattayom 3.

Oh, the life of a teacher.

Enjoy this group cooking class picture as I drift off to fuzzy kittens and gelatos.