A Smattering of Really Random Inconsequential Things I Did and Ate This Week

So... it's summer vacation here. Well, for Gift and at the moment, for me as well. Which, means one thing: boredom. I'm starting to figure out that just because I up and move halfway around the world , doesn’t mean that I’m going to be any less bored than I was at home. Seriously. The only difference here is that I sweat when while downloading music. (Yikes. I suddenly have this picture in my mind that I will actually turn into Bridget Jones, but a smaller, more pathetic version, because they would have thrown me in jail for illegally downloading Enrique Iglasias songs. Sigh. Then I wouldn’t be singing 'Like A Virgin' to my cell mates, but instead a very horrid rendition of 'The Ping Pong Song'….)

Anyhoo, I have been so bored in fact, that I have read enough Harry Potter Fan Fiction (HPFF, as we die-hards fondly call it) to fill all the World Encyclopedias and then some. I really don’t think I’ve ever read this much in my entire life. And it’s not even credible. I spend so much time looking at my computer screen, that when I finally close my eyes to go to sleep late, late, LATE into the night, it’s just as bright behind my eyelids as it was looking at the actual monitor. It’s really starting to effect me. I don’t even connect with any of the characters or the storylines anymore. I just read a chapter. Click. Read another chapter. Click. Get pissed because the author hasn’t updated and angrily click away to find another equally mind-numbing story. The only good ones, I have found, are written by British People (on my second day here, we were talking about nationalities, and I made a comment about “The British People” which caused the host family to burst into a fit of giggles…) so it’s logical that I am starting to talk like one. I catch myself muttering things like “blimey” and “bleeding” and “sodding” as I walk back and forth between the kitchen and my room, and I really won’t be surprised, when, in a few days, I’ll plunk down to watch a few minutes of P’king’s Thai TV series, and turn to him and gush, “Gosh. Isn’t he a dish?” DISH?? What kind of complement IS that?? “Wow, yeah, that dish is great, but I much prefer the bowl over there… Oh, you’re a fork sort of person?” Blimey. (Gah. There I go again. I wasn’t even planning that one. It just sort of typed itself out.) I finally realized on Tuesday though, just how truly pathetic it is that I mope about, reading these silly stories. I got so bored that I started reading the reviews of the chapters when I noticed that one of the reviewers wrote something to the effect of, “I laughed out loud at that part, and risked waking my sleeping daughter in the next room…” AAAAHHHH. Next thing you know, I’ll be 80 years old, sneaking away from BINGO night, to hide from my caretaker in my handicap bathroom so that I can catch up on a few precious “chappies” of the new Sirius/OC story. Sigh. I really need to find a new hobby.

So, the next day, I found some super-deep philosophical blogs (which I still can’t really wrap my mind around) and I downloaded a few podcasts from ‘This Week In Science’ (this show greatly satisfies the inner-geek I never knew I had, it’s just that cool), hoping to counteract my stupid unproductively, with deep, meaningful unproductively. Do I still feel unproductive? Oh, 100%. But do I feel a little bit smarter? Yes, even though no one will be able to understand me and/or care when I rush outside and tell them that 90% of all U.S. money has traces of cocaine on it. So, in hindsight actually, maybe I’m better off reading HPFF…

At any rate, I decided to move on to other things. Well, kinda (now I just go to bed at 11:30pm, instead of 12:00, reading HPFF). After taking a bunch of personality quizzes (I am a Bette Davis, and a Class Clown, among other things) I got bored once again, and so, I am now creating the Best Dance Mix Known To Man, for my one-woman dance party tonight (my floors are particularly brilliant for sliding with socks on). Yeah, when you have nothing better to do, just dance. My new motto.

Onto other things, like, what everybody else does with all this free time. Wait. Gift does the same thing, except she plays games like 'Diner Dash' and 'Bake This As Fast As You Can'... P’king sits about all day, tending to something with the motel, I’m assuming, but all I ever see him doing is illegally downloading shows, movies, and music. Which, is, like all day. Did I mention he’s my hero? He is going to burn all 5 seasons of Lost for me, although I’d rather they be all 5 seasons of Alias. (Hmmm, that’s next. Must learn how to say, “Will you please burn this amazing show for me?”...) And the host parents, well, they work. So, they're doing work-related activites while we sit around and rot our brains in cyberspace... It's a pretty good (but slightly boring after hours and hours) deal.

Moving on, while I was eating a few days ago, my host mom mentioned that I could have milk for breakfast. Uh oh, I thought (secretly, of course), while I outwardly beamed and cheered. The milk here… Ahhh. I never want to drink milkshakes again! It tastes as if they milked a snake and dumped some shoddy flavoring in, to mask the nastiness. I did however drink something that looked a lot like milk the other day, in a small container. It was delicious. I asked Gift what it was and she mentioned something about "...being in English". I read the top. It said, “Fermented Milk”. I choked. Bullocks. I really shouldn't be surprised though. I mean, I like buttermilk so... Bring on the fermentation!

Later, we went to the supermarket. I chose some shirts to buy, and then the next moment, we were walking around large boxes filled with ice and dead fish. Practically at eye level. Just hanging out in the middle of the isle. The fin of one of the poor dead souls was hanging over the side. I fled, and hid amongst the chopped up chicken remains, that were also just suspiciously sitting there. Not packaged. On a brighter note, I did find some pound cake. Upon further inspection though, the pound cake here looks about as convincing as a fake Chanel bag made by a blind person would.

So. After dinner one night, I was sitting there drinking my warm soy milk, and eating my pound cake, while Khun Mae chowed down on something that was green and looked suspiciously like something my mom grows in the living room. I was absent-mindedly humming along with one of P’king’s TV shows and drinking the soy , when my host mom suddenly said, “in Thailand….You sing… While eat… Get…Old…Husband….” I choked down my drink, because apparently, that's what I do around here. “WHAT?? Are you saying I have to marry an old guy??” She laughed and laughed and laughed, “So, like a month from now, you’re going to sell me to some 90 year-old??” She continued to laugh hysterically before saying, “Pud lin!” (I’m kidding!) Even so, the rest of the meal it was suspiciously quiet on my side of the table.

Speaking of eating etiquette, we use only forks and spoons. I know, what happened to the knives, right?? The good ‘ol handy knife?? Obviously, I underappreciated it while in the U.S., because now I’m stuck trying to saw my food in half with my dull spoon. (While they all laugh away… Obviously.) It’s especially hard with the noodles. I tried spinning them around my fork, while still in the broth, but my host mom shook her head and showed me how to lift some noodles up, saw them off with my spoon, put them in my spoon and then eat them. It takes me just as long to catch some noodles with my fork, as it does to saw them off. I’m not even going to mention trying to eat them, because I rearly succeed. By the end of lunch, I sadly still had a bowl full of noodles, but this time, they were all sawed into little pieces. I would take a meaningful spoonful and just end up slurping broth. Sigh. Somewhere in the middle they told me that the soup we ate was Vietnamese. Ha. Haha. No wonder it was edible.

Also, while I was eating said Vietnamese food, I was secretly hacking the bits of meat off of the cartalidge, all under the broth, you see, as to be discreet. Khun Mae immediately figured it out though and made motions like I should eat the whole thing. “But, I am. I am just hacking the meat away from this cartilage here, because I hate the crunching noise it makes and how it tastes when I bite down on it.” She didn’t understand me, and continued to make the motions. I sighed. And ate the whole bloody thing. They laughed when they saw the pained look on my face. I just tried not to think about eating a small child.

Before I went to bed on like Wednesday (maybe), Khun Mae motioned to the mashed-up-spicyness-of-death that she puts on her rice, (and frequently places on mine) and said, “Before…You go… You eat.” I laughed. “No way! You would have to cut my mouth out! I love my mouth!” She laughed.

Last night, I got the shock of my life. Khun Mae told me that it was actually Thursday. Which I did not believe at all. You see, I had been looking at the September calander and therefore thought that the 24th was next Thursday. I also, it seems, forgot to program my computer to the right time zone, so that also didn't help at all. Yeah, it was a HUGE mind-blowing experience when I was finally forced to realize that Saturday (tomorrow) is my Rotary meeting, and that I'm actually starting school on Monday. So, it was a long borning week of nothing, but I'm kinda sad it's ending so soon. I mean, next week has the potential to be as boring because I won't be able to understand anything, but at least this week, I wasn't being oogled at (in a really weird way) because of what I look like.

And last, but not least. Gift told me that students who come to Thailand generally loose weight. Hallelujah!! Now, stop feeding me that delicious fried chicken that you buy from that suspicious looking woman at that, *cough*, not necessarily sanitary booth at that late night market thing!!

Dancing the night away,
Anchelee

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!