Aujourd'hui

Today was one of those days that I got home and just wanted to share with someone. Share the ups and downs of what happened, what I learned, what I rolled my eyes at, what I laughed at, etc. So I’m going to do something I’ve done little in my time here and just… share my day. I have met so many interesting people here, heard so many neat stories, and because my journal and blog focus more on the emotional background that colors my life, many of these stories will be lost before I have a chance to share them when I get home. When people ask me questions, I already feel that my responses are vapid and loose, not at all representative of the experience I’ve had.

So. Today. Well, I woke up and immediately was skyped by Sami, so I rolled over, put in my contacts, and rubbed my eyes for a chitchat. It was awesome to chat with him, if only for a little bit (although it was extended because it was pouring so hard I decided not to take my morning trek to the market), and he asked me questions about what I’d learned about Thai culture. This ties in to the sheepishness I have noted earlier in my blog, because frankly, I know too little. However, recently I’ve been asking more questions, and even if the answers are short and incomplete—at least I’ve got something to keep building on.

After attempting to wait out the rain until realizing it wasn’t going to stop and I had to get to the Youth Outreach Center by ten, I hopped on my bike. My new one, rented by the lovely people I’m also renting a room from, doesn’t work as well as my old one. It takes a few tries to start in the morning, and once started you never know how quick the engine will catch, leaving me either slowly chugging along or rapidly jerking forward, hopefully not into traffic, dogs, buildings, or other people. It has taken me a while to get back into riding the bike, and I avoid it as much as possible. The longer I spend in Thailand the more crazy driving I see and the less comfortable I feel putting myself at the mercy of other reckless drivers, no matter how cautious a driver I may be.

Sputtering my way into Youth Outreach I see everyone else already there, Kim strolling towards the road for her first ciggy break of the day. Kim has a sweet way of saying, “Are you okay?” instead of the usual, “How are you?” which leaves me feeling like she can see into the depths of my soul and realizes that, unbeknownst to me, I’m really not okay and I actually need some help. However, the surprise double-check always drops fast and I return to the normal state of things, left instead with an overwhelming urge to give her a hug and respond, “of course, and are you?”

Realizing I have time to drop my laundry off at WEDA (Women’s Empowerment Development Association; a branch of FED that, well, works to empower women, uhduh) as Myat Thu is still playing games in Burmese with the kids, I hope back on my bike and head over. Arriving at WEDA I see Malik, a whisper of a woman whose ability to bear children awes me, and Aung Kyi, who is leaning through the window and wrapping a round-faced boy in a hug. Aung Kyi translates to Malik that I’d like my clothes washed, and when she wants to know if I would like them ironed, I respond that I’d like them any way, as long as they’re dry (something it may take some magic to manage, given the lack of dryers and sunny days here). I’ve been going commando for about a week now and have worn the same shorts three days in a row. The most pressing reason for laundry however, is not my lack of underwear or fashionista dignity but rather that the shorts are quite… uncomfortably snug (a bit more so than when I first arrived, I must admit… my bag and I have gained the same amount of weight in Thailand… and I happened to buy 4 books and lots of gifts on my travels, so you can do the guesstimating).

As a matter of fact, my shorts played a prominent role at dinner last night when Miléna and I were at a really nice restaurant, witnessing a somewhat cliché marriage proposal over our cocktails. Rolling our eyes at engagements and marriages, which recently seem to be hopping all around us two single girls, we expressed our confusion and dismay: marriage? Wtf is that besides really f’ing scary? LIFE! AUGHM! Oh, so my shorts. Well… I decided to unbutton them at the table and then forgot about it and got up to go to the bathroom, walking right past the happy couple and their equally happy friends, catching my pants just in time not to expose my bare bum while still trying to hide the fact that I’d unbuttoned them in the first place before we’d even been served our meal. As Miss Stephany Lin says, I’m a very classy girl, but it wasn’t my classiness (ahem, and not lack thereof…) or even the contrast between me and those couples that got me thinking about my own, er… relative immaturity. Engagement is serious shit, and while I think, “how will I ever be mature enough to be prepared for something like that?” I have to express one thought that has been on my mind-- I don’t think that anyone ever really is. Sometimes you do what’s expected, sometimes you do what feels right, sometimes you run away from anything hinting at commitment, but always life is hard and relationships, growing, and just plain living is always going to be a struggle. Maintaining happiness is no easy feat and marriage, or even just a successful relationship, doesn’t cause all your individual problems to melt away. Life is always going to happen before you're "ready", and isn't that the beauty of the thing?

Okay, relationships. They’re what everyone’s always talking about and I spend a good amount of my time thinking about, so… yawn. That was yesterday. So, today. Well, we helped the students make sketchbooks about their lives, which will eventually be consolidated and sent to the UK to go up in an exhibit. Today was a practice run, and we all drew four pictures: family, favorite food, favorite animal, and house. When I displayed my drawing as an example the kids were a bit confused at what a moose was, not only because my drawing was a bit shit, but because Myat Thu wasn’t quite sure how to translate “deer”… “large car-crushing mammal?”. Yet again, the issue of very different "homes". However, while my moose may have been lost on the kids, Miléna's glass of red wine sure wasn't, as a handful of them copied it for their own drawings.

Waiting for lunch (which sat on the table nearby, taunting both us and a mewwing cat), I got chatting with Inga about her dissertation. She’s doing her field work now, gathering ideas for what she will write on. She said she began with an interest in the significance of place (hence her working with migrants at FED), but now is interested in how material objects are used to show class status, among other things. She’s got time before she narrows her ideas and in an attempt to get closer to the food I cut our conversation short and wandered over to her boyfriend Mike. He is also a PhD candidate at Cornell, but in linguistics(ish stuff). He is a very interesting person to talk to, and today I learned from this Native American about boundary disputes between the US and Canada along Lake Michigan which can still affect Native Americans living on the string of islands off of Northern Michigan’s coast today.

Finishing our big but flavorless portions of fried rice (as I prodded around my stomach, growing more certain with each poke that the massage lady must have cracked a rib yesterday) we antsily awaited our ride to Thap Lamu. Sandra, Emmanuel, Miléna and I traveled to Thap Lamu this afternoon, with Aung Kyi, Lady, and of course, the requisite madman driver. Sandra and Emmanuel had never done a community visit and I had forgotten that I had even been to Thap Lamu (though only briefly). Giggling our way down the winding road leading out of Khao Lak (beautifully scenic, overlooking huge rainforests nearby and the beach, dotted with post-tsunami resort construction, further down below), we arrived at Thap Lamu in record time, miraculously all in one piece and not too terribly bruised.

Emmanuel and Sandra loved seeing the kids at Thap Lamu learning center, and we were coincidentally treated to a dance by a handful of the girls in the class. I have video of the dance, but since I can’t post it on facebook, ask me for it and I’ll let you see it if you get a passing score on my Bambi----Humbert Humbert scale of creepiness. After watching the dance routine we moved outside to watch Aung Kyi take temperatures, bandage infected wounds, and write a referall for one unfortunate boy to see a surgeon (bad burn scars on his leg somehow hindered his growth and he needs surgery to correct his walking, Sandra deduced). After the children left, a few adults and younger children came to see Aung Kyi with various ailments. As we sat and watched, Emmanuel snapped gorgeous pictures that were immediately and wirelessly uploaded to his ipad (which he graciously allowed many sweaty fingers to smudge as pictures of familiar faces flashed by awe-struck eyes). But soon the number of individuals seeking medical advice (or perhaps just some painkillers) had ballooned, and we realized we’d be sitting for another hour or so. Aung Kyi amazes me, always happy and laughing—so good with every person he helps and never betraying any impatience or weariness. Sandra also impressed me and, growing agitated with the pace of things, helped Aung Kyi record each individual’s ailment. Commenting that seeing what actually goes on is at times too strong a reminder of all the deficiencies that befall FED, Sandra shared with us that, having run out of hypertension meds, Aung Kyi gave a man with high blood pressure some anti- motion sickness pills. Well why not? Just because it hasn’t been tried doesn’t mean it won’t work!

This issue of actually seeing what goes on being a hindrance to the morale of us Westerners is one that I have been stumbling over a lot recently. However, it is too large a topic to address now, and when I’m done compiling/re-writing a number of posts on it I will share my thoughts on this conundrum. So, for the time being I will cease sharing (although I must say it's too bad I'm ending before commenting on my evening-- it was quite entertaining despite the fact that all of it, save a ten minute skype sesh with Tali and Sasha, has passed in solitude) and close my computer in favor of my new novel and the sound of relentless rain and the Vegetarian Festival fireworks outside.

...jiggity jig?

So… pretty much anytime I need to do something involving moving and deciding between many options with varying amounts of money I’m guaranteed to have trouble. Buuut rather than bore you with all the details of more Alyssa can’t-think-straight-I-so-anxiety-ridden blaaarghhh, let’s just say that the five hundred (semi-unnecessary) baht that I’m spending to stay at a nice AC’ed guesthouse in Khao Lak was completely worth it. Not because I get AC, free breakfast, and wi-fi but because I made two friends. Seriously—paying fifteen dollars to spend time with two people whose company was enjoyable and with whom the conversation was interesting is hands down, without a doubt, totally worth it. Hell, I often pay fifteen bucks to go out to dinner with people whose company I don’t even enjoy that much (and for many I do as well, of course). Subsequently, parts of our conversation along with my housing angst of this afternoon brought to mind the blog post I drafted a few days ago about home and the importance of place. I have realized that I am most anxious when I am uprooted (it make sense, shelter’s pretty vital; I think I would have thrived in the jungle as homo erectus. no one, I mean no one, gets between me and a place to sleep). I like the freedom of choice that I have right now, but the past few months have been the most anxious of my recent life. My life overall will in no way cease to be in flux when I return home, but there is something tangibly essential about feeling rooted to something or someone, somewhere.

Reading Said’s Reflections on Exile that Teeny posted on her blog got me thinking a lot about home and helped me sort through my recent thoughts on home and how I define it. This theme permeates nearly every entry I’ve written in some way or another and some posts may even outwardly contradict each other because the concept is, and my feelings on it are, so complex and often divergent.

Currently, my thoughts on this have been necessary to sorting out going home, why I chose to go home early, whether or not this is a good idea, etc etc. To be honest, I decided I was going to return to the states in October very early in my stay here (like, in the Hong Kong airport to be exact) and I spent considerable time making sure it wasn’t this line of thinking that colored my entire time here—skewed with the expectation of going home early I wondered if it led me to see the changed flight ticket as a done deal, when really there was nothing locking me in. I’ll never know if the reasons I give are just excuses, keeping me from seeing the “truth” behind my actions, but I think I’m being pretty honest with myself here so I’m going to take my carefully thought out (and less carefully emotionally salient) reasons as legitimate and worthy.

Okay, so, my reasons… I’m going home to see the leaves. To smell crisp fall air, to hike a frost-tipped mountain and come home to a burning woodstove and hot cider donuts. Yes, goddammit, those are my reasons. I love fall. I cannot pick a favorite season because my life is not complete without all of them, but this very central need for seasons has me questioning: why exactly do I need them? Am I less of a traveler, a universal 'accepter', a morpher because I am so connected to my “home” in Lake Placid, NY?

Hugo, quoted in Said, speaks beautifully to some of what I’ve been pondering— “the man who still finds his homeland sweet is a tender beginner; he to whom every soil is as his native one is already strong; but he is perfect to whom the entire world is as a foreign land. The tender soul has fixed his love on one spot in the world; the strong man has extended his love to all places; the perfect man has extinguished his.”

Harumph, so what’s wrong with being a beginner? Well, in some ways nothing. But it becomes problematic when you are trying to assimilate into a different culture. Our connections to home often lead us to place a higher value on home than somewhere else—I have a deeper love for trees of pine than those of palm, for example. And that misconnect leads to us not truly understanding another place the same way as those who live there do. In the case of me volunteering at FED that’s deeply problematic for my relationship with the Burmese migrants I hope to know there. Place and home is obviously a very big issue for them already, as the majority of them feel out of place in Thailand and wish to return to Myanmar. With regards to how concepts of home, and the value we attribute to it, interferes with one’s ability to actually better the lives of those one wishes to help, being a beginner with a soft spot for the place of one’s upbringing is not necessarily a good thing. It can, most simply, lead one to see other places, cultures, and habits with a biased (and often condescending) viewpoint. However, I would argue that being a foreigner everywhere is not a good thing either.

Regardless of how I judge these differences, personal feelings of attributing significance to place and the mere existence of “homeland” (as defined, created, and emotionally fulfilled by us) are not going away any time soon. Therefore, how do you live with them? Is it something worth trying to change personally? And on a larger scale—how can you use them to understand situations like those of Palestine and Israel? Of Burmese migrants in Thailand?

However, regarding home and the very personal ties I have to it, I can’t help but feel that these ties are, for the most part, a good thing. While bonding with my new Canadian friends tonight over our mutual love of skiing I shared the story of Nini Win asking me what snow felt like. That experience was such a strong one for me, and her questions struck me squarely on the forehead. Did she really just ask, “What does snow feel like?”!?!? I literally choked back tears before answering, not for some sappy sentiment that “oh, she’s never seen snow and maybe never will, boohoo” but because it was something that was so absolutely fundamental to my existence; I was struck not so much by the childish awe that someone else had not experienced something I was born into (almost quite literally), but by the possibility that there is something in her life that is equally fundamental to her existence, and I didn’t even have a guess at what it was. Furthermore, I could only conjecture in negatives—she grew up in heat, so that meant no cold and no turtlenecks. It didn’t mean the existence of palm trees and Water Festivals, it meant the lack of seasons and changes in daylight hours.

Being traveled is a wonderful thing, but it does affect how I think about others who are less traveled. They cannot imagine snow, nor can they imagine life without coconuts always within an arm’s reach. As someone who has come to know what it’s like to live in Thailand, perhaps I’m a bit more understanding of the way of life here. But if I continue to look at it in terms of comparisons (most problematic of which being me/us vs. ‘them’), I am not improving any situation, nor am I allowing myself to truly be here. It’s not so much about being a stranger in every land as it is about being home in every land. But then, can that feeling come without a cost to one’s sentimental feelings towards one’s first home? Can one person’s home really exist in multiple culturally disparate places? And then… how do I define home, how do I use it to consider who I am and what it is I’m doing here?

While all I’m doing is posing questions, I plan on answering some of them in the future before I leave, through considering all of the obstacles I’ve faced at FED, and ways I hope other volunteers can overcome them. Furthermore, these thoughts dominate my continual ponderings of why I am here, what my motivations are for the next step, what my time here has meant, etc. and these thoughts deserve thoughtful mulling before I leave Thailand.

Old scams, or new friends?

For someone who means no harm to anyone, I sure do spend a lot of time thinking that the world is out to get me. When good fortune smiles upon me I glare at, as if I’m expecting it to open its mouth and spit in my eye.

Today, walking back to the car after stopping in 7/11 to buy some sausages for Mickey, a woman smiled warmly at Sandra and I as she biked by. “Do you know her?” Sandra asked me, like a good New Yorker. “No”, I laughed, “but I was going to ask you the same thing”. While Sandra and I both smiled in response to the woman, it took me much longer to crack a grin. In Bangkok I was absolutely overwhelmed by the tuk-tuk drivers, taxi drivers, food stall vendors… it goes on and on. Everyone is trying to sell you something, always approaching you with, “hellooo, where you go?” which led me to not only believe that I hated the Thai language, but also that smiling in response to someone else’s smile will only bring you pain and feelings of disappointment in your fellow humans.

More than a little horrified at myself for having lost an ability for pleasantries, I now find myself wondering how long it will take me to shake the hardened skin that has kept me glowering since Bangkok. Yes, the tuk-tuk drivers were so unremittingly obnoxious that they drove me to, on more than one occasion, respond to their requests with snide retorts, the most polite of which being, “don’t you think I’d ask for a ride if I needed one?”. And yes, I was scammed so many times that once, at the end of my rope as I stormed back onto the ferry I did not want to be on (longest scam story ever), I flipped some salaciously-mouthed dockhands the bird. No, I’m not proud of these moments, but they are moments from which I absolutely learned unforgettable lessons. The first of which being: travel is hard. Really, really freakin hard. Second—it will get better with time, because these lessons are not easily forgotten. Third—so, I’m, uh… an anxious person. And traveling brings out my most degoutant devil. But even that is something I can improve upon (I mean, from where I was, there’s quite frankly nowhere to go but up). Learning to breathe, even when $86 has just unfairly left your hands, is a very, very good thing. Accepting, relaxing, and just plain dealing is so important and is without a doubt the greatest lesson I took away from my three weeks of travel.

Being immersed in a dirty and overwhelming city can leave one dwelling on the overly abundant negative aspects of humanity, and coming back to FED I couldn’t help thinking about all of the things wrong with the Thai government and how its people act as a result of its unsavory ineptitude. And while I have numerous jaw-dropping stories about all sorts of unfortunate things to share when I return home, for now it’s worthwhile to think about all of the wonderful things I have witnessed here—and all of the wonderful people that have made them happen.

Now I sit, perfectly contented in a bed spacious enough for me to sleep comfortably with my computer next to my head and half my belongings sprawled around me, listening to the waves crash on the beach meters away, crunching on some late-night coconut crackers, and marveling at the generosity of my fellow humans. As I mentioned earlier, Sandra is hosting me while I find a place to stay, letting me get my feet back under me here and saving me a bundle of money while I keep her company in the face of the clumbering rat-eating lizards upstairs and the big cobras outside in the can’t-find-your-nose dark nights. And if that weren’t enough, she has offered to look into getting me an unbelievable deal renting the beach house next-door, gotten me a well-paying job where I get to learn all about American flags, not to mention treated me to many dinners and countless interesting conversations. Wait, now why am I leaving so soon?

To close I’ll share one story (not my own) that illustrates the good-naturedness of Thais, bringing long-awaited recognition to the title of my blog. On the Thai New Year in April the Thais celebrate the Water Festival. On our drive home Sandra shared stories of her experience at the Water Festival. It is a day where everyone fills up huge tubs of water, carries around water guns, water balloons, etc… and wreaks havoc on their neighbors. Water is splashed at all passers-by, friends and strangers alike. Sandra said some were particularly ruthless, keeping a hunk of ice in their water tub, though she saw nothing but smiles and laughter, something that surprised her as she witnessed the combination of dousing freezing water and alcohol consumption. This holiday reminds me of the genuine congenial attitude that is really quite ubiquitous in Thai culture. It is a reminder to smile back (for chrissakes) when a smile is directed at you, and to be open to people wanting to start a conversation with you—give them a chance to practice their English and keep in mind that they’re coming from a much different place. This sort of open-ness won’t leave you disappointed.