a reflection on the rotary international convention

First off, I just want to say that the RI Convention was one of the coolest experiences of my life, and I’d like to tell you guys a little bit about it.

This year the RI Convention was in Bangkok. Over 35,000 people came from over 64 countries! I was talking to this guy from Alberta who said that each convention has a different “culture”. What he meant by this was that, last year (when the convention was in Louisiana) there were a ton of Americans and Europeans (because the convention was “close to home.”) This year, since it was in Thailand (this is the really cool part) there were a ton of people from Australia, India, Pakistan, and Nepal. (A lot of people dressed up in their traditional outfits, but my favorites were the Africans. Their dresses were so beautiful and so colorful, and some of them even had “Rotary-themed” dresses. Some of the adults even collect pins, too! There was this guy from Pakistan who looked like a knight in shining armor, he had so many pins.)

But anyways, for four days I could go anywhere in the city and there would be wonderful volunteers and foreigners willing to help me. In the actual arena, where the convention was held, it was even friendlier. Everyone was taking pictures with everyone. Someone from Benin would come up to you and be like, “Hey, can I take a picture? Where are you from? How did you get so many pins? Here’s my card.” And then just like that you’d have a friend in Benin.

And the funny thing is, there were 64 countries there. Some of them were fighting, some of them were having problems with each other, and there were probably even a couple of wars going on. But you start to realize that, on a person to person level, there can be peace. These people would talk with each other, shake hands, exchange cards, and share ideas. Their governments might hate one another, but on a person-to-person level there was no war. There was this huge sense of community, of brotherhood almost, and if you asked someone about their projects, their club, their life, they would unhesitatingly tell you everything.

That’s what it was, four days of the most intense community. I could talk to anyone; I could start up conversation with anyone. There was nothing holding me back. I made connections and probably got two hundred business cards. If a booth interested me, I asked about it. I learned about how clubs and programs are trying to clean water, provide electricity, bring hospitals to people who don’t have them, etc, etc. I got interested in programs like Not For Sale and Mercy Ships. If someone was from a country I wanted to go to, I asked them about it. I got lists of places to stay, who to talk to, what clubs to contact. People gave me life advice. Really good life advice. Advice from people who have traveled the world and made a difference. My real dad always told me the secret to life is networking, and if you believe that to be true, then the RI Convention is the place to do it.

I also realized how small the world is. One day, out of 35,000 people, I managed to randomly bump into a woman from my club. My exact club! She knew who I was and gave me a hug. That same day, a woman came up to me and said “Oh, Cowboy Country!? I love Cowboy Country!” She was from France, and she 1) had sent her daughter to cowboy country several years ago, 2) knew my friend, and 3) has a girl currently in our district. That was really cool. But the best experience was when this woman came up to me and asked, “Where are you from?” I told her, and she looked at me with a smile and said, “I chose you.”

Okay, how crazy is that? One of the Rotarians who helped choose me for exchange, who saw opportunity in me, who gave me a chance, was the same one to run into me at the RI Convention. Mind blown.

It was the craziest four days of my life. I made friends who I will probably be talking to for many years to come. I got to take part in Bangkok’s biggest smile. 2,012 Rotarians made a giant smiley face, and I promise you it was the biggest smile in the whole building, city, and probably even the whole country and, at that exact moment, it was the biggest smile in the whole world.

Basically what I’m saying is that, this RI Convention was really cool and really inspiring. I met people from all over the world. I got inspired. And I know that, if I have the chance, I will definitely sign up for Sydney 2014. It was definitely the highlight of my exchange. It was a once-in-a-lifetime experience (until I go to the next one, haha.) And I feel like, had I known what the RI Convention was, even if I hadn’t wanted to go to Thailand, I would have gone to Thailand just for the Convention. Maybe that’s bad. And luckily I really love Thailand. But the RI Convention was the best part of my exchange. I already miss the community, the sense of trying-to-make-the-world-better, the sense of having the whole entire world represented in one room. It was cool, and to that Rotarian who chose me, I just want to say, thank you.

henna: 1, maike: 0

While the past couple of weeks have been devoted to seeing my grandparents, traveling through Thailand, and partaking in a giant water fight festival, I am going to dedicate the first part of this post to something else, and I am going to break this to you in the gentlest way possible.

My hair is red.

Not even red. It’s like dark brown with red/purple/green-yellow tints. To be fair, the cover of the henna packet said “chestnut” and had a picture of a hair color that was very similar to mine (if a bit more strawberry blonde.) But this is  definitely not chestnut, and whoever made the packet is a fraud!

My friend Chantal has been cajoling me into this for some time. Using guilt-trips such as “it’s my last month here” and “I’ll get a nice color” and “I’ve done this a million times before” and “we can do it together!” So last night, in Chantal’s bathroom sink, we both dyed our hair. And while this was a very good bonding experience, we somehow managed to ruin two pairs of (Chantal’s) clothes and turn the bathroom into a disaster area.

“It doesn’t stain skin!” Chantal promised. Thirty minutes later, we were still trying to  scrub out the henna. If you happen to see me riding the Skytrain, fear not! I do not have a contagious skin disease! And those are not the faded bruises from an abusive relationship! It is in fact, henna.

It also managed to dye half of my chin hair brown. Again, not sure how this happened, but if you see me on the Skytrain, don’t run away! I don’t usually have a five o’ clock shadow!

Chantal, however, is decidedly the worse for wear, having lost two pairs of clothes. (Granted, she is a hipster and says that the shirts look “cooler” with henna stains.) The henna also reacted with her rings, turning her skin black where her rings used to be. And – adding insult to injury – her hair is not orange (as expected) but purple.

Meanwhile, my host family mourned the loss of my hair color like the loss of a family pet. I have gone from being the “cute, blonde foreigner” to “more Thai and like a woman” (host mom’s words, not mine)

However, the humor was not lost on the situation, and my host mom has spent a lot of time laughing at/with me.

I have come to terms with my new hair color and will embrace it for as long as it lasts. (Despite this post, it’s not too bad and I actually kind of like it. But I actually – dare I say this – miss standing out! I blend in too much with dark hair.) However, my host mom plans on taking me to a hair salon tomorrow to try and dye my hair back to normal. This sounds like a total disaster, and I only see three possible outcomes.

1) platinum blonde hair

2) keeping the henna

3) black hair

I will keep you updated.

rats in the ceiling, and crash course ukulele

One week into summer! And while I have spent a lot of time complaining about school, I miss it, because during breaks there is not much to do. (There’s no flooding this time around, so I won’t be living in a zoo.) Things I’ve accomplished so far: reading The Fellowship of the Ring, learning how to nap on the floor, and taking crash course ukulele. My host mom, Khun Mae, has also decided to teach me eating etiquette. This subject was broached when she asked me, all innocence, how people in America eat food. I went on for a couple of minutes with a very in-depth history of the fork, knife and spoon. At the end, Khun Mae said (by now thoroughly un-impressed), “Huh. Well…when I look at you eating, I see that you are very…not skilled.” which is the nice, Thai translation of what my mom back home would say. (Something along the lines of “quit chewing your cud” or “did you grow up in a barnyard?”)

So I have learned many things, such as:

Sit up straight.

Bring the food to your face, not your face to the food.

Don’t shovel.

During one of these lessons, while I was sitting up so straight my back hurt and the food somehow managed to fall off my spoon before it ever reached my mouth, there was a great commotion upstairs. The sound of huge, massive claws scrabbling against the hardwood floor in blind terror. It sounded like our dog, Lion, who as I mentioned before is fittingly named and no small beast.

“What’s that!?” I asked.

“Noo,” Khun Mae said, which I thought I heard incorrectly, because noo is the Thai word for mouse.

“Mice?” I asked in shock, and then Khun Mae thought for a moment and shook her head.

“Rats,” she corrected.

So it goes.

As I also mentioned before, two days ago I took a crash course in ukulele. This involved Youtube videos, Skyping with my dad, and help from the host sister in my third family. Why all the rush? On Wednesday Khun Mae bought a ukulele and enthusiastically asked if I could learn how to play for family night (the following night.) And at family night, I did give a performance! Khun Mae sang and I played. Afterwards, Nong Boat asked to play a song on the ukulele but, as soon as he saw all of the Rotarians, he burst into tears and wouldn’t go on stage.

I really enjoy Rotary meetings. I am 100% sure that there is drama hidden in our Rotary club. There are probably people who hate each other, because that seems to be the case with any large group. But whenever we get together, it just feels like a big extended family. Everyone is so nice and friendly, and I feel like I can talk to anyone. Mr. Pornchai, one of the Rotarians, always teases me and we get in “fights”. The female Rotarians always ask me how I’m doing and some Rotarians even give me the “rock on” hand sign whenever they see me. Some of the happiest times I’ve had in Thailand have been, not with youth exchange students or at school, but with Rotarians.

At family night I sang a lot of karaoke with my second and third host moms (I’m switching families in a couple of weeks.) I used to have this really huge fear of karaoke. People would actually have to pay me to go onstage. But it’s a really big culture thing, especially among Rotarians, and I’m getting more comfortable with it. I also got persuaded to dance, and my third host mom helped teach me.

All in all, super fun! And I think I really love the ukulele. Tuning it is a major hassle (unless you have dads to help you via Skype or host sisters to help you with their iPhone apps) but it’s very relaxing to play.

And right this very very second, my grandparents are en route from Tokyo Narita to Bangkok!!!

brotherly love

Last Saturday, all of the exchange students met up at the 3350 District Conference. It wasn’t that great – apparently this was the first year exchange students were “included” in the program – and Rotary decided that we would all give some short 5 minute performances.

Amazingly enough, getting thirty exchange students to work together on a performance is stressful. I am the only exchange student still in school, and I happily used that as an excuse to get out of performing. However, everyone else was sleepy, hungry, tightly strung, and about ready to snap at any moment with the pressure.

Uplifting and empowering comments included:

• “I hate happy people.”
• “Couldn’t I say that about you, too!? I could say that you are stupid and lazy and so American.“
• “I don’t !@&^#!&^@ care anymore!”
• “Your voice is so loud and annoying!”
• “I hate people!”

It was a great reunion. Just kidding. But the thing about family is, well. Family is dysfunctional. And us exchange students are dysfunctional. So we’re family. (The day after the conference, Facebook was filled with posts such as “hey I’m so sorry if I said I hated you yesterday” and the like. To be fair, everyone was in a terrible mood at district conference.)

It was during this time that I had an epiphany.

School here takes up a large majority of my life.

I spend most of my time in school.

None of the exchange students are in school.

The exchange students spend all of their time hanging out.

They’re sick of each other.

Therefore, I don’t spend enough time with the other exchange students to hate any of them or be bothered by their drama. This was exciting, and made me feel slightly better about the fact that I actually have to go to school.

But, the performances were performed. There were Thai dances, and sword dances and Japanese dances, and the can-can, and really just a bunch of dancing. And then when it was all over, the exchange students could breathe a sigh of relief. And then everyone went home early.

I was a little bummed out about district conference. I hadn’t seen everyone together since the zoo and I felt like too much time was wasted in a bad mood. However, I did get to have really good conversations with three different people.

My friend Jasmine told me about how she wants to settle down in Thailand, and  come here for university. This was very interesting to me. A lot of the exchange students here didn’t choose Thailand, Rotary put them here by force, and a lot of them just want to go home. I chose Thailand, but it is hard to imagine myself settling down here. Jasmine was the first person I talked to who was like, “Yeah…this is where I want to be.”

I also talked with Luis and David about politics (actually, I mostly listened to Luis talk about his dictator and David talk about his anti-military stance but hey, it was interesting.)

Me: So who is most affected by the dictator?

Luis: The middle class, like me.

Me: So what are you going to do in the future?

Luis: Well, our dictator is dying of cancer. I used to want to leave the country and escape, but I think that is not the brave thing to do. I want to stay and rebuild my country.

This just really made me think. If the United States went downhill really fast, really quickly, would I take advantage of my situation and get out? Or would I stay and try to change things? Food for thought.

Luis and I also had a bonding moment because he, too, has built a mobile library during his exchange! And we read the same books! Seriously this was so exciting you don’t even know. So someday soon, we’re going to go to an English bookstore together. And also trade off books.

So I guess district conference wasn’t all bad. I had some good conversations. And I get to avoid any future exchange student drama, because I’m not attending the southern bus trip.

Anyways, today I was supposed to be studying. Ha. Ha. Ha. I have my physics final tomorrow. Ha. Ha. Ha. But on the bright side, finals end on Friday! And then I am officially a senior! This is such a weird idea to me.

I have no idea what I’m going to do during summer. So much…time! For two months! No homework! I can choose my clothes…and go places…and see people…if I wanted, I could take a scuba diving course…or improve my Thai…and apparently Evan has an electric violin with him. In Thailand. That he doesn’t use. He offered it to me. I hope he was serious. I want.

 

the roti man

Today is going to be a good day.

The first hint comes during lunchtime, when an international call comes through my lovely-but-semi-annoying secondhand phone. This is a once-in-a-lifetime thing, kind of like Halley’s Comet or the new millennium, because no international calls EVER reach my phone.

So when I look down at my ringing phone and see my real-honest-to-goodness home phone number, I get this happy fluttery feeling inside of me. Phones, along with food, iPods, computers, earrings, jewelry, make-up, bangs, and Lipton ice tea, are strictly not allowed inside the classroom. So I hide behind the lockers and talk with my parents about snow, rugby, and Colorado’s long-sleeves-jackets-optional February.

The conversation lasts a good twenty minutes before being cut short by Thai class. Thai class passes quickly, because history has just been made: I got an international call on my phone. This is worthy of a front page CNN article (on a slow news day).

Another exciting thing about my day: I learn how to apply gory make-up. (The “no make-up rule” is broken in preparation for next year’s school musical, which is going to require a lot of gory make-up. We’re doing the Addams Family.) Surprisingly, it only takes cotton balls, glue, eye shadow, lipstick and iodine to give my hand a horrific burn/fatal zombie bite. (The pictures on my phone have become a slideshow of the zombiepocalypse: there’s a picture of the grisly wound on my hand, a picture of my Thai friend sleeping with her eyes open, and me in a mask at the hospital. On that note, there are also a lot of pictures of strange men on my phone, because my phone is secondhand.)

But it gets better. Leaving the school, I hear something I haven’t heard for a long time: the sound of a violin. It’s such a beautiful sound, and it echoes off the walls and through the parking lot. I can’t describe how wonderful it is to hear something live, because there’s this whole added dimension. The streetcorner violinist isn’t playing anything special, just a handful of passionate notes on an endless loop. But the music has depth. It’s alive, and the music follows me even when I turn the corner.

Not only that, but shortly afterwards, I find myself reunited with another long-lost love.

As I walk down the street, weaving between shopkeepers and mannequins and fellow students, I make eye contact with a guy. I recognize the tools of his trade almost instantly. A large, circular stovetop. A box of fluorescent yellow butter. A tub of oil. My heartbeat quickens. I lower my head, calculating. I have a five baht coin in my pocket. No, it will definitely cost more than five baht. If I follow my original plan of going to the ATM, I can withdraw five hundred baht. But there’s no way he has change for a five hundred baht bill. Thus begins a two-minute-long logistical struggle in my head. I can go walk to 7-11, buy something cheap, and break the 500 baht bill. (If you are in need of breaking a 500 baht or 1000 baht bill, 7-11 is the most reliable and easy-to-find option.) But 7-11 is in the opposite direction, and I only have fifteen minutes before my host mom arrives.

I lose the logistical battle, and am resigned to my fate.

While withdrawing money from the ATM, I glance inside my purse. Wedged in the very deepest darkest pocket is an overlooked 20 baht bill.

This is perhaps the crowning moment of my day, the second most exciting thing to happen in my life.

I have 25 baht!

I walk back to the man with a spring in my step. One quick question – “do you have roti?” – is enough to fill me with joy.

Roti is probably my favorite thing in the whole world. I love roti. I would probably trade my exchange student diploma for roti. I love roti. I really love roti. I really REALLY love roti. It’s like a crepe. Except about a million times better. If I was a poet, I would dedicate an entire collection of poems to roti. Roti kind of has a cult following with exchange students. And anyone cool. And without roti, Mama noodles, or Fisherman’s Friends cough drops, my exchange would not quite be the same.

The roti man talks to me in a mixture of Thai and English. He is very friendly, and smiles often, though his voice is so quiet I can barely hear him above the sound of buses and honking horns.

He asks where I’m from, and I tell him America. He chops up a fresh banana and mixes it with something that is presumably delicious. He pours oil on the stovetop, then he reaches for a coil of yellow-green dough, and stretches it paper-thin.

He tells me about how it took him six months to learn the Thai alphabet. Go gai, ko kai, ko kuat…

He spreads the dough over the stove and the oil sizzles. There goes the banana mixture – gloop gloop gloop – right in the middle of the dough.

He takes out a newspaper, points to some words. I nod. Then he folds the roti over, lets it cook.

“People tell me, I come from India, because my skin is so dark,” he says, “But I come from Myanmar. I am Burmese.”

He lifts the roti with a spatula and sets it on a paper plate, then pours on frosting and sugar and cuts it all into nine neat, square little pieces. Then he carefully puts it in a plastic bag and hands it over.

“25 baht,” he says. I have 25 baht, exactly. I thank him and continue on my way.

Something about that conversation with the roti man keeps me smiling. I break my five hundred baht bill at 7-11, and toss a little bit of change into the violinist’s case.

“Thank you,” he says, never lifting his eyes. I bet he’s hearing symphonies inside his head.

It’s hot out, and nothing special happened today. I didn’t go to the mall with friends, or laugh until my sides hurt. I got a headache from all that schoolwork. My hand is stained yellow with iodine. And yet, today is a good day. I can’t stop smiling. And it’s not just the roti.

thoughts from the pink house on soi 2

I live in a real neighborhood again. That was the first thing I realized when I switched host families. There are still fences around every house, and locks on every gate, but it is more like the sort of neighborhood I’m used to. There is a park down the street, where people go running in the early morning and evening when it’s cool, and where little kids go and play on the metal swingset or learn to ride their tricycles. People play badminton in front of their houses and catch up on news with the neighbors they meet down the street. It’s a very friendly place, and when you walk by, the dogs only howl if they want to play. There are  flowers on the trees, clean white ones and bright purple and pink ones, and the trees are tall with broad leaves. It’s the perfect place to raise little kids, which is good for my host family because they have a three-year-old bundle of energy named Boat.

I was a little nervous, coming to live with Boat. At Rotary meetings and social gatherings, he is very serious and brooding. The few times I’ve been around him at these events, he burst into tears over various things including, but not limited to, balloons, people and food.

Luckily for me, Boat is not like this at home. You would think he would be a little intimidated by the strange foreigner in his house, but not in the slightest. When I get home, I can hear him shouting “P’MAIKAEW! P’MAIKAEW!” from across the house. (P is something you say in front of someone’s name if they are older than you. For example, I would call my older host sister “P’Big”. Since Boat is younger than me, I call him “Nong Boat.”) He likes to color and do homework and play at the park. He’s pretty much a genius, and if he was any less Asian, he would look like Dewey from Malcolm in the Middle. He speaks Thai more clearly and fluently than any three-year-old or exchange student I’ve ever met, as well as a bit of Chinese and English. He goes to an English-Thai school and I think his parents’ biggest hope is that he will grow up to be bilingual. Boat is always asking me what Thai words are called in English, although after seven or eight at night he tends to get sick of trying to learn English. “I am Thai,” he says in exasperation (in Thai, not English), “And I speak Thai. People who are English, speak English. People who are Thai, speak Thai. I am Thai!”

Last week I went to the neighborhood pool with Boat. The woman who works there has a daughter his age. Boat screamed when he saw his friend, and gave her flowers. They splashed their arms in the water and sang the “Loi Krathong” song. Sometimes, I wish I was  three years old again.

I have two older brothers, P’Benz and P’Bank. Benz is eighteen and in his final year of high school, while Bank is studying to become an architect. I haven’t had that much time to talk to them. My host family has two houses right next to each other, one where Bank and Benz live, and one where my host parents, grandparents, Boat, and I live. The kitchen is in Bank and Benz’s house, but the rest of my time is spent in the other house. I’ve only seen my older host brothers twice since I got here, during dinner, when they slip downstairs to eat and then slip back upstairs from wherever they came.

We also have a dog, named Lion. There has never been a more fitting name for a dog. He’s a huge golden retriever, and when his tail hits the ground you can feel the windows shake. His breathing sounds like a growl, and when you try to pet his head it’s about as soft and fluffy as Ironman’s mask. But he’s a friendly dog, and slow, so that if he starts to lunge towards you (to “play”) you have time to dodge him.

This house is a very beautiful one, and there are many wooden bridges and even a koi pond, where the fish are bright and colorful. There is even a river next to my house, though I can barely see it from my balcony, and it’s hidden behind a stone wall that divides our neighorhood from the outside world.

I have no idea where I live in relation to anything. I live farther away than my host family told me, though not quite as far as my first host family. To get home from school, we have to drive over the Rama 2 bridge, and then turn off and drive past another bridge, which is next to a dump, where the broken glass sprinkled over the trash looks like diamonds, past a Big C with a roof like DIA, through streets and over rivers, past a mosque, down more streets, and finally to our little village.

My favorite part is the mosque. At night, when we drive by, I can hear the Muslim call to prayer which is both piercing and mesmerizing. When we drive by, I do not feel like I am in Thailand, but in a strange desert place that I have dreamed of but never seen. I have been able to experience Catholicism in Thailand as well as Buddhism, but Islam is the one religion that I haven’t seen that much of, and it is interesting for me to live in an area with a high concentration of Muslim people.

There are also markets nearby, where we went to buy food for the Chinese New Year. It was an indoor market, with chipped turquoise tiled floors and a corrugated tin roof overhead. There were huge, scarred watermelons and bunches of bananas dangling from the ceiling, spiky durians and bright pink dragonfruit, and a ton of fruits I haven’t even seen before, with star-like tentacles and furry skins and strange colors. There were frosted pastries for the New Year, ducks and chicken and all sorts of meat, and everything red and gold.

(I won’t go into the New Year that much. My family wasn’t really into it, and we just went to my host dad’s office, and afterwards to a wedding reception in Ayutthaya. My favorite part was the firecrackers, which are loud and sound like gunshots and made me jump out of my skin when they woke me up in the morning.)

In other news, I made it through midterms (Maike: 1, midterms: 0, unless we’re talking about a pass-fail basis, in which case it is Maike: 10, midterms: 1) and now only have to worry about science fair and getting my visa renewed so that I don’t get kicked out of the country.

I have expanded my library, although unfortunately had to leave some books with my first host family. (You would not believe how heavy books can be.) I have also made friends with the librarian in the English section of my school’s library. Even though I am lacking an ID card or student number, we have made a deal where I check out 2-3 books at a time for about three weeks. Then I bring them back and get more. Here are the books I have read so far on my exchange: The Book of Awesome, Speak, Pollyanna, The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes, Sherlock Holmes Collection, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Small Acts of Resistance: How Courage, Tenacity and Ingenuity Can Change the World, The Good Soldiers, A Short History of Nearly Everything, Cryptonomicon, The Witch of Portobello, 101 Places Not To See Before You Die, Moonlight on the Avenue of Faith (my favorite by far, I only had it for three weeks and read it seven or eight times), Viruses and the Nature of Life (a 45-year-old book by Wendell Stanley, which was amusing because I bet virology has changed a ton since then), The Phantom of the Opera, Land of my Childhood: Stories from South Asia, The Joy Luck Club, and Anne of Green Gables, which was a really good read and made me want to read more until I realized that it would take four books for Anne and Gilbert to get married. Pfft, what a waste of time.

The halfway mark in my exchange slipped quietly by, and I didn’t even realize it until I looked it up the other day and realized it had already passed. I’m not sure how I feel about that yet.

My things are still largely unpacked from my move, even though Boat “helped” me unpack my clothes the other day. It makes me feel like I am perpetually in motion.

my day in videos

Today pretty much summed up my exchange. Sure, I had no idea what was going on, but gee, it sure was exciting.

At eight in the morning I found myself at a Chinese shrine, which is pretty much the same as a Chinese temple, only smaller. It’s been a couple of months now, and I’ve been to both Thai temples and Chinese temples. Thai temples are really cool. But the Chinese temples are always crazy. Maybe it’s because of the timing (I always end up going to Chinese temples on festivals) but there are always dragons, drums, and dancing.

I have no idea what the occasion was for, but some of the Rotarians from my club went to the event, and I tagged along. The event included, but was not limited to: 1) some crazy dancing, and dragons with firecrackers spitting out of their mouths, 2) free food, 3) a marching band with cowboy hats, 4) symbolic forehead stamps (mine looked like a head injury), 5) a parade through the adjacent neighborhood.

I took some pictures (and some videos!) which led to an adventure I like to call “videos and WordPress.” Unfortunately, for some reason, WordPress does not allow video files to be uploaded directly onto a post (unless you want to pay an extra $50 for the “software”). So this involved me going to create a Youtube account, which seems pointless because I have no time or knack for videos. The ones I take are on my camera and just little snapshots of life here, so you can tell it exists. Anyways, I now have a Youtube account, just so I can post videos on here.

I have more videos actually. I took some in Nakhonsawan and then a couple videos of big rainstorms here. I’ll put them on my account eventually, but it takes forever to upload.

EDIT: This is from my friend, Tayud.

“I had a chance to took a look at the story you posted. I believe the festival you attended at the Chinese Temple is the new year protection festival. In Thai we call this festival Sa Doh Kroh (เสดาะเคราะห์). It is when the people go pay respect to the gods for luck and protection and ensure that they well recieve good fortune in the new year. They also ask the Gods for the protections over the bad issues that will harm the people with Pe Chong or the people who are born according to the Chinese Zodiac Calendar to be enemies with the Dragon Year that is according to the calendar comes in the year of 2012 and starts precisely on the Chinese New Year.”

Thanks, Tayud! (:

chiang mai bus trip pictures

korat zoo pictures

and i’m still terrible at good-byes

You would think that, being a Rotary Youth Exchange student, I would be accustomed to good-byes.

I’m not.

Six weeks ago, I left on a journey of uncertainty. I thought I would be back in Bangkok within two weeks. I lived in a zoo. I went on a bus trip. Two weeks became three. And I eventually settled in a little, quaint city named Nakhonsawan. I got a new host family, a new school, and a new Rotary club.

When I first arrived in Nakhonsawan, I wasn’t sure how long I was going to stay. One week? Five? I left my clothes in my suitcase, where they remained for the duration of my stay. And yet my room still felt like home – the shelves were filled with books, my sketchpads were on the bed.

Today, I packed up my things. When I left Bangkok six weeks ago, I had a bulky blue duffel bag and my purse. Somehow, over the past few weeks I accumulated seven more bags of various skirts, books, and tennis shoes (my host mother in nakhonsawan said ruefully about the shoes: “why you only go jogging one time?” me: “TWO times!”) that I had acquired on my adventures. Today, I packed everything, made my bed, and said good-bye to my house in Nakhonsawan. I wasn’t there long – not even four weeks – but it felt like home, and my host family was family.

My Bangkok family drove to Nakhonsawan to pick me up. My two host families had lunch together, sharing stories about flooding and (probably) the craziness that involves life with an exchange student.

Then it was good-bye.

I’m really terrible at good-byes, honestly, and no matter how many times I change families over the next year, I’m not going to be used to it. How do you say “thanks for last minute taking me in and treating me like one of your own?” I still haven’t figured out a way to express that. And then we were on the road (Daniel included, he hitched a ride with us). The normally three hour drive turned into nine (thanks to flooding, dinner, and dropping off Daniel.)

Coming back was, and is, pretty surreal. The past six weeks have been full of long walks and deep talks. It’s been pretty mellow, to say the least. And suddenly I am back in this huge city, this blaringly loud city, with tons of traffic and people and movement, and I am uncomfortably aware of how far the exchange students live from each other. I’m on my own again.

And another thing. I never realized how big the malls here are – after spending all of my days at Big C with Daniel and Chantal. The first thing I said, upon reaching Bangkok, was: “Wow! Look, Daniel! That mall is bigger than Big C and Fairyland combined!” And the malls have Christmas trees! That was also a jarring reminder that it’s December and I’m on the other side of the world.

To end the story (I’m tired, and want to cut to the point) I made it home. (So did Daniel.) My host family acquired another dog while I was gone (his name is Jeng, and he is older, fatter, slower, and more comedic than Chopper for all of the above reasons). My room smells like it did my first night in Thailand, so that made me pretty nostalgic.

Four months is a really long time.