Ketchup, catsup, catch-up.

Welly, welly, welly...
When I last left everyone, I was about to go off to my first home-stay in a neighborhood just outside of Khon Kaen city. That was almost two weeks ago now, so I’ll catch you up on what’s been going on in my life since then. My first homestay family lived in a tight-knit neighborhood about ten minutes from the city center in a small house. They had an eleven-year old girl named Yuri who was my buddy for the week. The Mae (“mother”) worked selling things at the local market, and the Paew (“dad”) I didn’t often see. I assume he worked nights and slept in while Yuri and I were at school. For that week, the kids and us students would go to school together, and we’d have lectures or Thai class while they had regular classes. After school every day, we’d return home with them and play or just hang around. A group of us CIEE students lived near each other and would meet up at the local park and sit eating som tom (spicy green papaya salad – yum!) while the kids played with one another.



This whole experience was very eye-opening to the differences and similarities of Thai life and the one I’m used to. I guess most obviously is the bathroom situations. The toilets here aren’t ones you sit on – you have to squat. Also, there’s rarely toilet paper. Instead you a splashy bowl of water to clean yourself with, or a small spraying hose. The shower situation is also a little different. There’s no specific place to shower, but instead a drain on the floor somewhere and a large bucket of reserve water. You take a smaller basin, fill it with water from the bucket, and dump it on you. That’s your shower. Generally Thais shower at least twice a day, which is incredibly refreshing considering the heat and humidity of this season.

We left for the university on Friday, August 31, toured the city and settled back into life. Khon Kaen is a city of about one million inhabitants, with a happening market scene. The night market is a bustling hub of commerce, where you can buy anything from sponges to sautéed grasshoppers (delicious!) to clothing. You have to barter for some goods, something we farangs aren’t used to. I still get a kick every time I get a shirt or tuk-tuk ride for twenty Baht less than advertised. There’s also a huge lake on the outskirts, where the government offers state-sponsored jazzercise classes every evening from five to seven.

The evening we got back, we took part in a string tying-ceremony. It is an Isaan (northeastern Thailand) Buddhist ceremony that welcomes new or returning members to the community. With our host families and roommates standing behind us, we held onto a part of long string and a Buddhist priest or monk, dressed all in white, prayed over us. Then we tied pieces of strings to the members of the community and each other, as a gesture of welcoming into the community. It’s a touching ceremony.

After a weekend, we went out to another homestay, this one focusing on a unit about urban issues. We stayed at a slum of squatter on state railroad land, and then at a landfill community of squatters. More on the landfill community later, but I have much to say about the slums now. The community my small group stayed in was comprised of about 60 households, squatting on a narrow strip of railroad land. The economic and cultural conditions allow in Thailand, for a culture in which both sides – the squatters and the government land-owners – find it in their best interests to compromise on the land rights of the squatters. While these slum communities are in danger of losing their homes, that danger is not often taken to that drastic conclusion.

My slum family was comprised of the Yaie (grandma), Maae (mother), Paew (dad), and nongsao (little sister) named Miaow. Yaie cooked and kept house while Maae and Paew sold mangoes, sweetened sticky rice, and fruit at the bus station. Miaow, at ten, was my constant companion. She loved going around to see her friends and playing hand games. Everyone in the community is incredibly close – both geographically and emotionally – so the rest of the CIEE students and I would play with the kids when we weren’t working. The kids were all pretty young, and would rally for the attention of the farangs. Some found out that we were climbable, and thus we became jungle gyms. At one point, they found fake money and we played gambling rock-paper-scissors.

Another plus of being so close together was the constant proximity to a good meal. In Isaan, you share your food, family-style, and eat often with just your hands. There’s lots of fried eggs, roast fish and chicken (for the non-vegetarians, sorry to say I missed out on that), and some stir-fry; but no matter the food, you can count on the fact that there will be far too much of it. Our bellies are distencded – in the good, delicious way.

The two-day stay culminated in a community exchange, where we exchanged questions and conversation with the community members. Our touched upon their history, their daily lives, and what their thoughts were. In the end it was touching, seeing how much they enjoyed having us there and taking care of us, likewise our own feelings of gratitude for the hospitality. I know I definitely would love to go back and visit Mittrapak community.

More coming on future experiences.

I’m having a blast here. It’s all very intense, and I’m mostly extremely busy, but it is the happy type of busy. I hope you can get an idea of what is going on in my life now, and I’d love to hear from you! You’re all in my thoughts when my thoughts can get a moment to catch their breath.