You Speak With Art

For the first time since arriving in Thailand, I had some free time in which I could actually travel. The unit facilitators and myself, along with a few other people, decided to travel to Nong Khai, where some other people from the program had traveled before.

When I told Tom that I was going to Nong Khai, he asked excitedly if I was going to Laos. Nong Khai's claim to fame is that it is a good spot to cross the border into Laos. I said no, I wasn't going to Laos (because I didn't want to deal with the hassle of visa stuff). Tom was like "Why?" because literally the only reason to go to Nong Khai is to cross the border. 

This shows how exciting any trip away from our small area in Khon Kaen is. 

Highlights of the trip include: eating farang food such as pizza, pasta and grilled cheese. Getting to rent and ride BIKES! and biking to an amazing sculpture park. All of the sculptures were breath taking, mysteriously ancient looking (despite being made in the '70s) and often very large. I loved spotting Buddhist scenes that I recognized, and seeing other strange juxtapositions, such as a Buddha riding a peacock. 

Near the entrance of the park was a small temple. Since we were eating ice cream at the time we decided to go there last. From inside we could hear the reverberations of large gongs.

Inside, we bowed to the Buddha images, and then began to ascend the stairs. We were following these two ladies who rang each gong they came across three times. We were following them slowly though, so at the top, they were gone. No one was there except for this little man at a table

"Hello!" he said cheerfully. "Are you from America? From Texas?" his English was perfect.

He launched into telling us the history of the wat, how they came there in 1975 from Laos. Then he said he was a palm reader. We each shyly sat down and he grasped our palms in his thin careful fingers, peered at the creases with his large magnifying glass and began to speak.

His voice was so soft and calming. A reassurance.

To me he said:

You speak with art

You can sing a song... You can be a song composer

and sell your songs for money

Have you completed doctorate degree?

That will not be difficult for you

You can do the big job

You can speak in front of many people

You can speak for parliament

Then, the most amazing part:

Have you had an operation? No?

An accident then?

Death has been kind with you,

And has given you life beyond your natural life.

Diabetes?

I was so touched by his words. Without even knowing me, he was able to divine truths into my past and my present, and maybe my future? I'm doubtful, but if he was right about who I am now, maybe he's right about the future.

Despite being a religion major, I am skeptical about most divine-ish type things. But having this experience with the little man in a wat in Nong Khai might have changed some of that.

Because of being in Thailand, I was able to enjoy the sun and enjoy the breezyness of biking like never before. In difficult travel situations I was not flustered. I let the adventure take me where it willed, and it led me to this man, reading my palm.

With my diabetes framed as a gift, an extension of my natural life, I feel so blessed with the time that I have had here and now.

The urgency with which I've been feeling my homesickness is falling away, and I'm more comfortable living in this dual reality. I have a home in Portland, but I have a home here too. I can be home wherever I am, because I have myself, and I have my history etched into my palms.

Facilitating

1. I've officially been here a month!!

2. Since last time I've blogged, the my laptop fan has broken again. Without it I managed to write a pretty good paper about Buddhism and the king in Thailand.

3. Also, since the last time I've blogged I've been super busy with planning unit one facilitation! My team of unit facilitators (u'facs) and I have been working later and later every night planning sessions around the readings and homestays of unit one. (also the theme of unit one is food!)  Facilitation has been really challenging so far and I'm learning so much about how I work within a group leadership role.

Here is a picture of our first successful session, entitled RAD or Reading Activities Discussion. Look how focused and engaged everyone is! So much so that they don't notice Buddy being proud of our work! RAD is rad!

Yeah! Plan that debate!

I think a lot of the success of that first session was that this is the first unit, and the students are all ready for something different, and I think we're all ready to have the classes be student lead for once. But I think that everyone is generally into the topic of food. In the discussions that I saw and led, everyone was interested in and passionate about food issues. 

The big themes of this unit seem to be the issue of production of lots of food to feed billions of people vs. fixing the problem of distribution. The world produces enough food right now to feed everyone, but people are still hungry, because of disparities in class and country status. Also, interestingly, developing countries have a higher rate of organic farming than first world countries. Thailand, and especially the places we'll be going for our homestay, really value organic farming.

For the next 6 days we'll be mostly living in Yasothon province, where at least the villages we'll be in have completely shifted over to organic farming, and have organized a green market there as well. We'll also be talking to contract fish farmers and a village in Roi Et province called Ban Dong Dip that is currently switching to organic farming. I'm really excited to learn all I can from these villages, and put a face to the food issues that I've been interested in for years!

Snack Time, All The Time

Here's the other article I wrote for the newsletter. Secret's out. 

It's almost always cheaper to buy the Thai-made snacks,
 but american snacks just taste so familiar!

During our long days of orientation our time would be punctuated regularly with elaborate snacks; plastic wrapped tiny cakes and instant coffee set out neatly on trays. Even though most of our day was spent sitting and I really didn’t need the extra calories, the snacks tided me over emotionally, and I was grateful to the program for providing it. I grew accustomed to snack time, but I figured that after orientation the snacks would cease.

False. From what I’ve observed, snacks are a big part of everyday life in Thailand. Between my roommate and I, snacks serve as tokens of appreciation. I got her M&Ms before a big exam, and she bought me wafer cookies as an apology for my being denied entry at the gym. At my homestay in the Theparak 1 slum village, the gift of a small bag of potato shapes was brought to us from the little market next door run by an aunt, and my host sisters and I snacked and chatted as the sky darkened. When we went to work with our host meh, she nourished us with bits of fruit and boxes of sesame milk.

Snacks are cheap, and they are everywhere. They’re packaged neatly, and almost always come in small portions.

Snacks also serve as a bridge for me between my American home and my new Thai home. While I’ve found some Thai favorites in terms of snacks, I’m also able to buy Thai versions of American classics when I feel a little homesick. For all of us farangs, the novelty of getting Thai iced tea, tropical fruits and grilled chicken on a stick from vendors on the street doesn’t seem to wear off. Snacks provide a common language and a social currency for all of us, American or Thai, to communicate our mutual appreciation for little treats throughout the day. 

What?

Here is one of the articles I wrote for the first newsletter of the semester! Sneak Peek!

The Wat (the name of which I haven't found out) that is near Ubonrat Dam.

The Thai word for temple is wat with a rising tone so that it sounds like a question. When we repeated the word one by one in Thai class, it sounded like a chorus of inquisition… “What? What? What?”

That stream of confusion and of a desire to know more sums up exactly how I feel when we are taken to visit various wats. What do these paintings mean? What significance does each different statue of the Buddha have? What kind of devotion does it take to embellish every square inch of the 9 stories of Wat Nong Wang in vibrant gold and red?

As a religion major, I’ve been intellectually prepared to learn about Buddhism, but none of my book learning could have prepared me for the overwhelming scale and beauty of coming face to face with the real thing. The experience of walking into a cool and fragrant wat is powerful and transcendent, rendering me speechless.

But the experience is also participatory, and rooted in the every day. At the Khon Kaen city shrine, residents come to wish for good luck on exams or in their work by offering flowers, incense and by promising to repay the spirits when their wish comes true. Often, this repayment comes in the form of a movie screening at the shrine, for entertainment (humans can come watch too). One of our ajaans said that the wishes must be being granted, because there is often two or three screenings in a night.

And at the top of the temple at Ubonrat Dam you can divine your fortune based on the single numbered stick you’re able to shake out of a tube. My fortune read that I was a dragon in my past life, which is pretty cool.

Even with little knowledge about Thai Buddhism, the atmosphere of the wats create a serene space, where my only worry is whether or not I’m doing the graab (three bows of respect) correctly.

Triumphs!

Here is the first sign I read in Thai. It is fairly self explanatory but I'm still proud of reading it. It says 3 toppings for 20 baht.

Today we had our photography work shop, where we had to go create a photo essay of a single person. I didn't have the best quality photos, and definitely not the best angles, but I'm happy with how these turned out. This woman was adorable, and her grilled bananas were probably the one of the tastiest things I've had here.

Also, the guy who hosted the photography work shop was Nic Dunlop, a pretty well known photography who works primarily in Asia. We also watched the amazing documentary he produced about Burma / Myanmar called Burma Solider. It's so good that it's on HBO... Pretty cool if you ask me. 

From looking at his photography work and just in general, I really want to learn more about Burma now, especially the language. The letters are pretty cool looking, and there's less of them compared to Thai.

Thailand Moment #3

My gum is melting...? Don't worry, once you start chewing it it's okay.

Not much of a moment but it's definitely something I didn't expect to have happen.

Visions of Home

Before college I had really only lived in one place, and only had a small number of hard earned friends. When I moved to Walla Walla, my geographic and social circle widened slightly. By virtue of my carving out a space for myself there, I am very attached to these places. I am a homebody at heart, and enjoy routines and familiarity. 

Since coming to Thailand and being forced to drastically widen my geographic and social circles, I feel like I’ve adjusted rather well. Nothing has particularly shocked me or upset me beyond repair.

However, I’ve noticed myself being deceptively drawn back into the comforting world of my home. I day dream about my friends and family, and often find myself transported to familiar places in my mind throughout the day... I see myself walking to Safeway, on Ankeny field at Whitman, in downtown Portland or walking around near my house. These images are almost constant, and have lulled me into a feeling that home really isn’t all that far away... that accessing these people and places would only mean a trip around the corner. 

Sadly, that is not the case. It’s brought to the fore just how far away I am at least once a day. Yesterday I tried to buy running shoes on zappos, but nope. They don’t ship to Thailand. I got a craving for a piece of toast... nope, I don’t have access to a toaster. Though I’ve found so many new traditions here that I love, like my daily coconut and cup of Thai iced tea, I’m also far away from some of the things I define myself by. I even found myself reverting to my old student self the other day, opting to watch TV instead of doing reading for class. 
I want to be a different person here, but my attachments to home come involuntarily... I have no control over when I will be struck with vivid images of Portland or Walla Walla.

I think it’s my body and my mind trying to compensate for a cultural shift that I haven’t quite yet registered consciously. 

Do I surrender to this, or should I try to fight it?

I guess all I can do is keep going through the motions of my life here. In Buddhism, one shows their faith through actions, and through repetition. Maybe my visions of home will continue, but through my actions I can carve out my own living space here in Thailand, the images of which may follow me home to the states.

Thailand Moment #2

Coconuts for breakfast... Every Day. It's pretty amazing. 
I remember buying coconut water in the US once, and it was really gross, so I thought I hated coconut water. Turns out the problem is that I was in America. The water fresh from the coconut is possibly the best thing ever. And when you finish the water, there's the tasty insides to scrape out as well! Yum.
Also, it blows my mind that a coconut costs as much as a single apple.

Thailand Moment #1

On the first day after being handed over to my program, before I knew anyone, and before I really knew anything about purchasing food in Thailand on my own, the group was given an hour of free time for lunch. That wouldn't be the first time we would be surprised and relieved to have just one hour of unstructured time. I was still in the not-ever-hungry phase of jet lag, but sought out lunch with the rest of the group.

Just down the street from our hotel was a Pad Thai stand. Having spent my summer being mystified and interested in the process of making Pad Thai, I was beyond excited to see The Real Deal. He had nothing but a giant wok and some noodles, and he was ready to go. Pad Thai with Egg was only 20 baht. AKA about 66 cents. It was tiny and tasty and perfect.

Maybe I built up the Pad Thai experience a little too much in my mind, but it has become one of the defining features of Thailand for me, and the image of this man making Pad Thai before my eyes has been stuck clearly in my mind as a picture of a real Thai meal. It's not just what Americans think is Thai food. It's actually everywhere here. 

Falling for Fall

Today I was hit with an intense longing for fall.
I was sitting in the air conditioned KKU library, reading a (pretty engaging) account of Thai history. It started to rain, and as other KKU students entered, they were wearing rain coats and sweatshirts. Outside the sky was gray, and all of a sudden I felt so at home and so comforted. The feeling of being just a little cold is a rare one here. It almost felt like I was at home in walla walla, reading a book at the patisserie and drinking one of their spicy chais.
As I went outside I was immediately sticky, and struck by the humidity. I was still comforted by seeing Thais wearing flannel shirts, but not as comforted by the increasing frizziness of my hair.
I am so glad that I am here during the rainy season.

PS I definitely ordered some bomb fried rice, all in Thai!