Of Crazy Arrival-ness and a New Life

Well its been a crazy few days. What with the flight, Bangkok, the food, a long car ride, a crazy language that sounds like jibberish at best, and new *ahem* attire rules, its really hard to keep everything straight. It's kind of like an out-of-body experience. It hasn't really settled totally that I'm here for a whole year yet. I keep expecting to turn a corner and see my parents or Maddy or someone familiar and to realize that it's just a vacation. A very taxing vacation.

So basically, I flew in on Friday night/early Saturday morning, was collected by my family, and taken to their tiny town house. The next morning I had dried shredded pork (Gift told me that it was snake, and I died a little inside. She was kidding, of course) and then we went and ate breakfast on a boat, after passing some slums. During breakfast, (right after Khun Mae [mom] chucked something overboard) I unknowingly took a bite of something that looked a lot like grilled chicken off of what I assumed to be an "American" platter. I thought I was going to die. I really did. The fire in my mouth was like the one in California, but in my mouth. My family laughed and laughed at me as I chugged a coke and franticly dug around my other dish for noodles and these weird crunchy things. At some point, I wanted to throw up, but somehow refrained. Then I found out that the fire-chicken was actually “not very spicy” and then I proceeded to watch my host brother dump a bunch of red flakes and some very dangerous looking peppers on his noodles. It looked like the devil was on his plate. We determined that I don’t do spicy. At all. After, we drove about an hour (traffic here is nuts) to Bangkok, where we proceeded to walk around about 4 or 5 large malls. Huge, in fact. Gift told me that one of them was the most luxurious in all of Thailand. I, of course, looked like a dirty hippy at this point, and when she said that, I was taken with a sudden urge to shout, "I showered this morning! I swear! I can't help that I sweated all my makeup off by standing outside for a few minutes!" Ah, well. What's new I suppose. At any rate, these malls were INSANE. There was so much of everything everywhere... It didn't take long until I wanted to hide in a hole with my Culture Shock, Jet Lag, and dirtiness. I think the strangest incident of the day though, had to be passing these little kids, sometimes with their moms, sometimes not, basically sitting on the skywalks between the malls, looking for pity money. There was even this guy with no feet. We walked around his stubs. Oh, and I met one of Gift's friends (we're the same age) who did the Thai voice-over for Harry Potter in the 5th movie. And Lion King too. My mouth, like, fell on the floor when I found out but apparently in Thailand, this is no big deal.

The next day (Sunday) I woke up late, and ended up rushing around, as we were going to leave Bangkok for Kantralak. We ate breakfast (tried dried fish skin. sick.) and then we dropped one host brother off at Bangkok U and then proceeded to drive 7 or so hours home. During which I mostly started out the window marveling at the difference in cows, and wondering when we were going to die (tangent: these people are crazy drivers! No one wears seatbelts, and they basically use their horns to navigate, driving all over the road). When we got to Kantralak, it was nothing like what I was expecting. I still can't even put my finger on it, but my family lives at the motel my Khun pa owns, which basically means that I get to have my own little room/bath across from the garage. It's a pretty sweet setup. Another huge difference here, is that apparently I can't wear shorts and tank tops outside of the motel. It's about 85° degrees here every day, and shorts and tank tops happen to be all that I basically brought. Grrr. No wonder the maid, Pu Ching, was laughing to herself as she hung up my tank tops.

Yesterday, we pretty much hung around the motel all day. At about 4-ish we went to go visit my counselor, who turned out not to be my counselor (which will work to my advantage, because he spoke, like, no english). We got the misunderstanding sorted out, however, and went to go meet my new counselor, Khun Kim, who knows english, and is very nice. After, on the drive home, Gift told me that I was the only exchange student at my school of 3,000 students..."Which is a good thing, because then you'll learn Thai more. Last year there were 3 exchange students, and they spoke english way too much, which was not good." This, however did not help me, and my urge to burst into tears overroad my excitement at driving past an elephant walking down the street. I am the only exchange student in all of Kanthaluk, where most people don't speak a word of english. That was a pretty low point in my day yesterday. An hour later, they dragged my misery-laden ass to a family celebration; it was Khum Mae's mother's brother's birthday. So, basically her uncle. Pretty impressive, and still more impressive, was that he was actually a fully functioning individual. The whole family was there, and it didn't take me long to shake off my "I'm all alooonnneee!" mood, as they were all very welcoming, even though none of them spoke english. There were also monks at this party, praying "for luck", as my brother Pa King told me. He dragged me inside and dumped me, where I proceeded to spend the better part of an hour watching monks pray and clumsily pressing my forehead to the ground. Surprisingly, I did feel better afterwards. Later that evening, Khun pa took Gift and I to his resturant, where we sang karaoke and where my rendition of "My Heart Will Go On" got me 200 baht (about $6) in tips.

All-in-all, there have been grand moments here in Thailand so far (trying to learn the Thai alphabet with my host mom), and really low moments (learning I have to wash my underwear in the sink). And while I try to keep it positive, sometimes all I want to do is cry and scream "Get me outta here!". Ah, well. For better or for worse, I'm staying put.

Until Later---
"Anchelee" (My new Thai nick-name. Lol. I think it makes me sound like a seashell.)

P.s. I really want to thank Rotary for entrusting this mission to me, Richard and Robin DeRock, for being amazing, and everyone and anyone for all their support!