As school begins...

That last entry was written a bit before it was posted. This one will be more current with what’s been happening here with me. School starts tomorrow! I’m really excited to be starting my co-teaching and filling my days with something other than riding my bike around trying to communicate in Thai! The weather has turned to the rainy season, which means that in the next four or so months Thailand will expect rain frequently if not everyday. It is still fairly hot when the sun is out, but after rain it cools off and let’s everyone relax. One downside to the rain seems to be the drastic increase in the number of bugs I see. Troops of ants, swarms of mosquitoes, bumblebees as big as fat purple grapes and other bugs I have never had the pleasure of meeting. Did you know that ants here will even eat plain rice? I discovered that when I followed a trail of them and looked into my rice bucket to find it invaded by the little buggers. Best of all is that all these insects seem to be quite at home in my abode…the battle will rage on.

This means I have officially moved into my own place and out of my host-family’s house. Yay! My house is a little two-story place that is perfect for one person. I have been attempting to cook my own Thai food (still working on being good at it). I think out of the four or five dishes I have cooked one of them has been really delicious. The others were just okay but edible. Almost everyone here uses electric rice cookers, which makes that really easy. All you do is plug and press. Then, about half hour later you have a pot of rice. Most people here use gas stoves with a single burner, maybe two. My landlord is a teacher from my school and she has helped me out tremendously with getting the house ready, fixing it up and providing nearly all the furniture and other household stuff I needed. As I have heard from other areas of the world, Peace Corps Thailand has been called “Posh Corps” or “Soft Corps” because of the great food, friendly people and relative “second-worldness” of the country. So, my amenities include: washing machine, stove, sink, TV, DVD player, western toilet (as opposed to the challenging “squat toilet”), shower (cold water) and refrigerator. These things are great to have, but don’t let these fool you. They are just things and things don’t necessarily make integrating into another culture any easier. They just make cooking and washing easier : )

The Songkran Festival turned out to be really great. I stayed in my town for the three-day event “playing water” with everyone who came around. The first morning of the festival seven of the local schools participated in a parade. Each school made a float with an animal as their theme. Both of my schools participated, but I walked with my one school that had a gigantic elephant float. The day before the parade I even went and helped decorate it with flowers. The parade started in the next town over and ended about 2 kilometers from the start in a local “healthy park” as everyone here says. It’s a place where there are tennis and basketball courts, a walking path and community events can be held. Planners for the event had set up tents all around and there was a central stage where speeches were given (I even gave a speech in Thai!) and music was played. I may have written about this before, but the traditional idea of the Songkran Festival is a day of purification and rejuvenation through water. Monks, elders and myself were all purified. They sat us in chairs in a long line and everyone from the community walked past pouring scented flower water over hands and necks and saying small prayers for good health and happiness. I think I got the most water because everyone was excited about getting the “foreigner” wet! They also did a welcoming ceremony with me where each person tied a small white string around either one of my hands. First they would brush the white string on your wrist away from you “pulling” any ill feelings out. Then they would brush the string on your wrist towards you wishing happiness and welcome to you. They then tied the string around your wrist. It was really cool and I bet about two hundred people tied strings around my hands. It is then tradition to leave the strings on your wrists for three days before cutting them off. Every time I took a bath I had to wring these massive bracelets of white string out because they were sopping wet. The following two days of Songkran everyone is just riding around in pick-ups, cars, motorbikes or bicycles splashing each other and putting white “cooling” powder on each other’s faces. It’s also a time where many people start drinking when the sun comes up and stop long after the sun goes down. I couldn’t quite bring myself to crack a beer at 6:30 in the morning. I had to wait till at least 8:00 : )