Well, it looks like I'm 22 years old. 21 was so exciting. I couldn't wait to casually saunter into a bar, order a drink and whip out my legitimate ID like it was nobody's business. 21 opened up a whole new world in DC-happy hours, different areas of DC, senior year, the TOMBS (I so miss $7.95 pitchers of Busch light!) all sorts of stuff. 22 is, well, 22. I have a job, bills and a 401K. What the hell happened?
So far, my birthday has been wonderful! I didn't even want to tell people it was my birthday, because I didn't want anyone to make a big deal about it. Everytime I mention something, or show the slightest interest (like "what is that fruit?" at the market), it is delivered to me. I am so spoiled by my hosts and I feel incredibly guilty and I just didn't want any hooplah. After the adorable homemade cards at school on Friday and the sweet students wishing me happy birthday, I started to get more excited about my bday though. Last night, my adorable host brother "Tee" went out and bought Thai desserts and we had a little picnic in the kitchen, binge eating and talking. He is so kind and adorable, I just want to poke him. He is essentially an over-sized teddy bear-a little bit tubby (how can you not be with his mother? she is constantly feeding us!), very shy and a complete mama's boy. During one car trip, my host mother started cooing and applying acne cream to his face in front of the entire van-he is 14! I was appalled, can you imagine a 14 yr old boy in America allowing this? It would of course call into question his "independence" and "masculinity" (snort) and would never ever be allowed, but Tee just let her fuss over him like he was a 5 year old. Anyways I digress. Tee is awesome and I love helping him practice his English. We also share a common love of food-every time I take a bite of anything, he exclaims "Is it very delicious!?" with a little bit of a lisp. Loves it.
So in Thailand on your birthday, it is tradition to wake up early and wait for the Monks to walk around the village and give them food. I decided to go 100% Thai for this one so I set my alarm for 4:30 and went to bed early. 4:30 came all too early and I swear I saw wrinkles on my 22 yr old face in the mirror, but I hauled myself out of bed and Tee and I walked to the middle of the town with instant noodles, juice and water to wait for the monks. Every morning around 5 am the monks walk around the town and people give them food-its how they eat since they aren't allowed to buy anything. I guess the monks slept in this morning, because we sat on the steps of a building for close to 40 minutes, eagerly searching the streets for the sign of a monk (sort of like little kids waiting for the ice cream man...sort of...). Finally-monks! You approach the monks, put your offerings in their silver bowl that they carry around since you are not allowed to touch them, then kneel down and they pray and bless you. I gave food to about 8 monks so I think I'm pretty blessed-up for awhile. Good to know. At 6:30, Tee and I headed back home and back to bed for an hour before getting up and getting ready for my volunteer meeting, before which my family insisted on giving me a birthday present while Tee played "Happy Birthday" on the keyboard. I now have a traditional Thai dress that is absolutely beautiful...the spoiling continues! I hope everyone is ready for the brat I have become. Watch out.
This weekend is "mid-point break" (oooohhhh we're halfway there...ohhh oh! living on a prayer!) so the two other volunteers, Deven and Nhaca, are in Taphanhin for the weekend. We did some planning this morning and generally just chatted about our different experiences. Deven and Nhaca are in very rural areas and are having more of the romanticized, "help the poor villagers" experience that I imagined I would encounter when I decided to do this. The community is much less well off and mostly consists of farming families. Their students often drop out after grade 9 to work, or hardly come to school as they have to work on the family farm or help out at home. It's a different world from my students who prance about with their fancy camera phones, mp3 players and friend me on facebook (hooray limited profile!). They are loving their experience, but every school has its challenges. Their teachers seem even more unreliable than ours-they both teach almost all day since there are always unsupervised classes where teachers just didn't show up. Deven is also teaching 6 yr olds, who can barely write in Thai, nonetheless English and Deven is finding near to impossible to communicate with them not speaking Thai. The whole not speaking the local language but still teaching English idea is a little suspicious to me. I could be 100 times more effective if I spoke even rudimentary Thai. Oh well...lesson learned. I love my cushy little set up complete with A/C, wifi and students whose English is relatively quite good, but I am secretly a little jealous of their "real" experience. The little peace-corps wannabe inside of me is screaming to run off to the jungle and probably misguidedly "help" by imposing my Western ideals and perceptions of what development is upon them My family is great and I am so grateful, but I might as well be in the states some days.
Tonight I make my return to aerobic dancing in honor of the other volunteer's visit. I figure if we all go it will be a huge spectacle anyways and I might as well take advantage of it. I am also in desperate need of exercise after all of the delicious desserts that I have consumed. Our housekeeper made homemade sticky rice with coconut milk and rambutans this afternoon-very delicious. Time to burn some calories! There is also hope of going to Phitsanulok to watch Harry Potter (in English!) tomorrow afternoon since our volunteer meeting took about 1 hour. So excited for that!
I miss you all, thanks for the birthday wishes!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment