Sawadeeka (hello) from Thailand! Sabai Dee Ma (how are you)? Seanster here reporting to you live from Thailand, over 10,000 miles away from my home base, Philadelphia. The purpose of this blog is to share all of my experiences here in Thailand with my friends and family back home, all of whom I miss a lot and think about everyday. Also, I was hoping that this blog would help me get better at keeping in touch, something I'm normally pretty terrible at. Plus, blogging is kind of fun (wow, something I never thought I'd say...) So far, I am having an incredible time here learning about the Thai people and their culture, and also about myself. Finally had some free time to get the ball rolling on this blog so here it goes! Bare with me, this is clearly my first time blogging so it's definitely a little rough around the edges.
Time is strange. I have zero sense of time here. Our days are pretty long- lots of activities crammed into a short amount of time. Our typical day starts at 9am and extends until around 5pm, with Thai language class, lectures on Development and Globalization and Introduction to Social Research Methods, or group activities. But at the same time, the last few weeks have literally flown by. I can't believe I have already been here for almost a month. When September 15th rolls around, that will mean that the program is already 1/4 over. Dang, time flies when you're having fun. I also never know what day it is here, because we don't have weekends off or anything like that. But we do get personal days factored into our schedule every two weeks or so. All the kids on the program are great- there's only 26 of us, and we do pretty much everything together, so it's kind of hard not to get really close. It's cool because there is such a mix of people here, in terms of where they come from and also just types of personalities. It's nice to get out of the Penn bubble and really experience the world. Sound's cliche but I believe that this step away from my reality at home is going to be really good for me and help me understand what kind of person I want to be. Wow this got deep pretty fast. I'm going to go ahead and change the subject now. Moving on...
It's crazy how accustomed I have already become to the Thai way of doing things. I can't get enough of it. I feel like there is something new to learn everywhere I turn. For example, Thai manners and etiquette are very different from what we are used to back in the States. When you enter a room, you must always take off your shoes. Women typically wear conservative clothing, which means skirts or pants that go down to at least their knees, as well as shirts with sleeves that cover their collarbone. One part of the program that I find really cool is that we get paired up with a Thai roommate at our university, Khon Kaen University. My roommate is adorable. Her name is Darry, and she is a Biology major. She's pretty quiet and doesn't know much English, which at first I was kind of worried about. But in the end it's definitely been a good thing because it forces me to practice the little Thai I do know. She always laughs when I try to speak, it's hysterical. I would laugh at myself too if I was her. We made up a pretty cool roommate handshake that we do in the morning when we wake up and also when we go to bed. A little weird yes, but I love it.
I love the food here. I would go as far as to say that I think I have had the best fruit of my life here. Every morning, I walk over to the fruit stand that is right next to our university with some of my friends on the program. I typically wake up to a coconut, or a "Mah Prowuu" as they say here in Thailand. It's a really refreshing breakfast. The fruit lady cuts open the top of the coconut and sticks a straw into the top, allowing you to drink the fresh coconut water. After that, I usually carve out the meat of the coconut with a spoon. It doesn't sound very filling but it really is. I've also tried guava, or "Farang," a bunch of times, mango, "Mah Muang," pineapple, "Sa Boot," and lots of bananas, "Gluoy." Other types of food I have tried are sticky rice or "Cow Neow," lots of regular white rice, and the best pad thai I've ever had from some local food stands around campus. My all time favorite I would have to say is the green papaya salad, known as "Som Tom" here. It's a little bit spicy ("ped") because often times they add a bunch of peppers onto your plate without you realizing it. My first experience with Som Tom ended with my mouth literally on fire and searching for milk without any success. Despite that experience, som tom weirdly keeps me coming back for more. Love me some Thai food. I'm getting hungry just thinking about the deliciousness. I love that being a vegetarian isn't an issue here. Thai people are really accommodating to vegetarians because there their diet is so heavily centered around rice, noodles, and vegetables. I hope that throughout my stay here I will pick up on some Thai culinary skills and maybe even be able to cook an entire Thai meal when I return to the US in December. That would make chef mama burke rull proud.
Another thing I love about this country is everyone is constantly smiling here. They genuinely appreciate it when us "Farangs" (tourists in Thai) try to speak their language and communicate with the Thai people. This is so refreshing, as opposed to in a lot of places in Europe that I have traveled to where most tourists are kind of seen as a nuisance. Oddly enough, Thais love when tourists take pictures of them, so I've been working on my photography skills a little bit too. I'm going to try to put up an album when I get home. I wanted to put up pictures while I've been here to keep friends back home up to date but I think I ended up leaving the chord that connects my camera to my laptop at home. In the meantime, I'm just going to steal pictures from other people on the program and give them photocreds. If it ain't broke, don't fix it, right?
Not gonna lie it took me quite some time to get adjusted to the time difference here. It is an 11 hour difference from home. Some of the people on my group who are from California and other states on the west coast have a 14 hour time difference. I honestly don't know how they survived the first few days. I'm a huge sleeper so maybe that's why it took me a little longer than usual. Slowly but surely I've been getting the hang of sleeping here though.
Everything in Thailand is dirt cheap. My lunch here is about 30baht, which is the equivalent of about 1 US dollar at home. If I ever end up broke in my future, I plan to come back to Thailand with my family and live like a queen here. I know that when I return to the US in December I'm going to have such a warped view on the cost of things. Everything is going to appear to be ridiculously expensive, just because I have gotten so accustomed to this currency rate. I think that the baht is awesome and that the whole world should use baht. It sort of feels like monopoly money, I can't get over it.
I miss a lot of my favorite TV shows. Mainly 30Rock and The Office but some others too. I've been watching a good amount of Friday Night Lights though because I brought the entire series with me. It makes me think of my older sister and best friend, Kelly. She's the one who introduced me to the series, along with her boyfriend Matt. They both love that show. Clear eyes, full hearts, can't lose. A bunch of the kids on the program have been watching Game of Thrones every night, which is definitely a show I've been thinking about getting into. I also want to start watching Homeland while I'm here if we get enough free time. And Breaking Bad. One of my good friends on the program brought all of the Harry Potter movies here so we already decided we are going to watch all of them through, multiple times. "Not me, not hermione, you 'arry. You."
I can't wait to travel while I'm here. We actually have our first break coming up, it's between September 11th-14th. We aren't sure where we want to go yet, but a group of us have expressed interest in heading to Chiang Mai to see some elephants. Apparently there are elephants in Chiang Mai that can produce artwork with their noses. How crazy is that? I think on our next break which is just a 2 day one in October sometime I'm going to try to explore more of Bangkok. Although we spent 2 nights in Bangkok at the very beginning of the program, we weren't really able to see much of it besides the area around our hotel. I want to go back and see the royal palace where the king and queen live, as well as get a better sense of the city. Our long break is in November, between the 6th and the 10th. I'm really excited for that one. I think the plan is to head to the islands in the Southern part of Thailand like Koh Phangan, Phuket, Koh Phi Phi, and others. Apparently there is this really cool floating experience near Koh Phi Phi where you grab onto these ropes alongside the shore while you float down a river that pull you into different bars. That would be so cool to do. Also, since it's so cheap here, it would be pretty easy to find a nice 4 star hotel to stay at for the equivalent of about 30 dollars a night. Does not feel like real life. Another thing I want to do during this long break is go to a Half Moon Party that will be on November 7th on the island of Koh Phangan. Apparently the Half Moon and Full Moon parties are huge parties in the jungle or on the beach and are supposed to be a really great time. Also, my 21st birthday is on November 8th, so it would be pretty perfect to celebrate my birthday there. That would definitely be a birthday for the record books.
Wow, I can't believe I have already written so much. I'm gonna take a break here and offer a little section for those of you reading who would like the "SparkNotes" version of my time here in Thailand so far and not the novel that I somehow just produced. Sorry for the weird path that my stream of consciousness took throughout this whole debacle. Anyway, here's more of a quick summary of my travels type of thing. I have compiled a list of a few key phrases that stand out to me the most and kind of summarize a lot of what I have encountered here in Thailand. Alright so here it is...
"Mai Pben Rai": basically the "Hakuna Matata" of Thailand. This is a phrase that is used a lot here, it basically means "no worries." I gotta admit I overuse this phrase quite a bit. I feel like it has sort of become the motto of our entire group. I've taken it on as my personal motto too. When you think about it, life in general is just one big Mai Pben Rai moment. We can't take ourselves so seriously all the time, or else everything that makes life worth living and fun just fades away. Basically what I'm saying is mai pben rai is the new kid on the block. Later Yolo.
"Jai Yen Yen": this means calm down or relax. Our Thai professors say this to us all the time when we freak out in class over not understanding vocabulary or simple sentence structure. For those of us that are somewhat mentally challenged when it comes to understanding and speaking Thai (myself) we tend to be told this phrase a lot. I bought a Thai dictionary though so hopefully that'll help my Thai improve. Only time will tell. You know you love me. Xoxo, gossip girl. Wow I am a weird person sorry for that word vomit. I told you, life here just doesn't feel like real life. Just roll with it!
"Kob Kun Ka": this means thank you. I tend to say this all the time out of impulse, even when I'm trying to say hello to people and not thank you. About a week ago a group of us went to the KKU (our university) night market and I bumped into a girl while I was buying some dried mango from one of the stands. I immediately said "kob kun ka" without even thinking and then proceeded to walk away. Did I already mention that my Thai needs some work?
"Ka Toad": this is what I should have said, it means I'm sorry or excuse me. Gotta remember that one for next time.
Ok that's all I've got for now folks. Later jobin! I will see you later or I will see you another time. Latras on the menjays! I love you(all), man. For those of you who didn't catch any of those references, shame on you.
Peace, Love, and Pad Thai.
Seanie
