“We don’t generally know what day of the week we were born on.”

- us to our Thai teacher

We’re learning days of the week and other calendar information right now.  I can now tell all interested Thais when my birthday is. Pretty cool.  

Apparently in Thailand the newspaper horoscopes go by day of the week rather than astrological sign. So rather than being an Aries, Cancer, or Pisces, to read your horoscope in the daily paper you need to know which day of the week you were born on. Magazine horoscopes go by sign, because they’re published monthly... or something.  

Right after she teaches us the days of the week, Ajaan Jang asks us “Wan gud wan aray?” - On what day of the week were you born?  We’re like “Jigga wha? Making that shit up...” and then said random days. Drex was happy we just answered the question rather than being honest and saying we didn’t know. He tried to stress that a lot before our midterm - “You don’t actually need to know how to say all the different dishes of food,” he would tell us. “Just learn one or two you can say right away, without thinking about it. That’s all you need to do in order to pass.”

This story came from a few weeks ago, but in the flurry of Emily getting sick, I forgot to post it.  

Emily and Holly are teaching Burmese orphan refugee children English for their volunteer project.  The whole group of children are rather unwieldy and petulant.  Something about being starved of attention and suffering huge trauma before the age of 5 will do that to children.  Even in the midst of all this rambunctiousness, a few particularly bad kids stand out.  The first I heard about was Oo-Oo.  They’re pretty sure his name isn’t Oo-Oo, but he wouldn’t tell them his real name.  And he thought misbehaving was just the funniest thing ever. But apparently he’s coming around; he saved Emily from small(er) child tickle-tackle attacks the last time they went to school. 

Along with Oo-Oo another stand-out is Rock Throw Kid. The gist of the story is that one child likes to throw rocks at other children. He also hits them and runs around class a lot. (Recently he did something bad enough to warrant a visit from the principal, who carried him off by his ear.) One day, when much rock throwing occurred Em and Holly came back and discussed for a while what a problem child Rock Throw Kid was. The conversation ended like this:

Emily: “As much as I give rock throw kid a hard time for acting out, he did get kicked out of his country.” 

Holly: “Yeah, but so did head rock kid.”

*giggling*

Emily “And that is one thing that we've learned - social injustice does not beget social injustice.”

*more giggling*

I think our next installment will have to be Holly’s Song-Taow Chronicles. She has some great stories. All the exciting things happen to her.  Included will also be Andy and Chris’s Great Tuk-Tuk Adventure.  

“If you stand in the same place for too long, the sticky comes off on your feet.” “...Eew. It does!”

Laos, Day 2... And return to Chiang Mai

On our second day in Laos the whole group of us nine students decided to trek to the waterfall and possibly on a cave tour as a group. We decided to meet for breakfast and head out as soon as possible afterwards. That was as far as our planning got. We had no idea where the waterfall was or if we could walk or if we had to take a taxi. We didn't even really know how to get a boat/cave tour. Oh yeah, and we're in Laos so we don't speak the language at all. Fun.

We set out, swimsuits on under our clothes, and walk the 15 minutes from our hotel to the main "downtown" of Luang Prabang. We're starting to squabble about whether to just ask a taxi or try to get a tour company to help us when one of the taxi drivers stops to talk to us.

Now, the taxis in Laos are a bit different than those in Chiang Mai. In Chiang Mai you have a handful of regular taxis, but mostly people get around using song-taows - covered pickup trucks with benches in the back (also called rot-dang or "red machine", because song-taows are almost exclusively red) - or tuk-tuks (covered three-wheeled motorbikes with a bench on the back). In Luang Prabang the most common sight was the love child of song-taows and tuk-tuks, which we christened the song-tuk. This name makes no sense if you look at the Thai etymology, but it's definitely fun to say.

So, back to the song-tuk driver. We try to explain to him in a mix of broken Thai and English that we need to get 9 people to the waterfall, and we want to know how much and how long this will take us. It took about 15 minutes for us to get the whole deal worked out, but eventually everyone is satisfied that the driver is going to take us to the waterfall and bring us back, and he'll do it for a reasonable price. Sweet. Then we take a closer look at the back of the song-tuk and worry a little about it both fitting us all and getting 9 Americans (who are fairly larger than Lao and Thai people) all the way to the top of the mountain. Hmm... but no time for nay-sayers! We're going to the waterfall. :) This is why I love traveling with this group.

It takes us over an hour to get up to the park where the waterfall is located, and our song-tuk gets a flat tire when we're about 15 minutes from the park. But the drive up is gorgeous. Laos is very green and has these beautiful mountains that while not as young and rugged as the Rockies are also not yet as old and rounded as the Appalachians. They're teenaged mountains and are a fabulous mix of points and outcrops, but still completely green. Gorgeous. And some farms have a rice crop in the field right now, which is not the case in Chiang Mai, so we all spent the ride up taking a ton of pictures. I kept trying to take pictures of the villages and towns we drove through to the point that people started telling me to stop. But I couldn't. I'll post some of the best when I have some time.

Once we get to the park, we find out we still need to purchase tickets for the waterfall itself, and the ticket people are very cranky because we only have baht rather than kip (last time I listen when Drexler says we don't need to change money). We're also pretty sure that they over charged us. But it was still worth every penny.

The waterfall we visited has about a bajillion levels as the water makes it's way down the mountain to the rice paddies and eventually the Mekong. I started by walking up to the base of the main falls. You aren't allowed to swim in this part of the falls anymore - although they have lots of postcards with people swimming, so I think you could in the past. Once we were done climbing around on the rocks and taking pictures, most of our group wandered back down the hiking trail a ways, until we reached a quiet pool where we decided to swim. Our pool was not posted as a swimming or no swimming area, and we took the lack of signage to mean that it was allowed, just not publicized. We quickly found out why it wasn't publicized, too. There were lot and lots of rocks at unpredictable intervals. The were mostly rounded but you could still scrape shins and elbows on them if you weren't careful. Also, the decaying leaves and sand made a very squishy and sticky bottom of the pool, and as we found out - if you stood in one place for too long the bottom would coat your feet with the sticky slime. Fun! Despite this, swimming was still a blast. And very refreshing (read - freezing cold). 

That night we went to see a performance of traditional Lao dance.  They performed a portion of the Ramayana - think Beowulf, or Illiad/Odessy, or King Arthur and then make it Asian and Buddhist, and then you kind of have a cultural understanding of the Ramayana. It tells the story of two lovers who go through a bunch of rebirths and perils in order to be together. He goes to war and she gets kidnapped but remains chaste.  The part of the story we saw involved the Princess being tempted by two separate men - one of whom wanted to kill her handmaids too - and not only did she refuse them and remain chaste, she also saved her handmaids.  Pretty badass for a pouty princess. 

After the dance, we went out to dinner and had delicious pizza. Drex also wanted us to try Mekong Whiskey.  I still like girlier drinks better. Drex and I also had the "what are you going to do with your life" talk. His daughter just graduated with a masters in journalism and he seems to think that would be great for me to do. I still think I'm gonna end up teaching girls in Pakistan or working with some group in Africa.  I don't really have active plans for either, I just feel like it's an eventuality at this point.  I also told Drex that I'm still thinking about grad/law school at some point. His response was something about how all of that could still lead to journalism. Apparently he really thinks I should grow up to be Samantha Power. 

After dinner we spent some time at the market, looking around mostly, and then headed back to the hotel.  As this is going on I'm hearing the first stories about a ghostly visit that two of our party supposedly had at the hotel the night before. 

It was pretty freaky stuff.  Vera couldn't sleep on one side of her bed, because the ghost would push her until she moved. She and Michelle both saw someone that was not either of them in the room that night. Then my roommate tells me she wants to sleep in the haunted room with Becca, leaving me alone for the night. 

So we're all in a bit of a creepy mood when we get back to the hotel, at which point Becca finds her key missing. Did the ghost steal it? Vera and Michelle were going to stay with Becca, rather than in the haunted room - was this the ghost's way of trying to dissuade them from leaving? This is what everyone was thinking, but, priorities, we get the hotel to unlock Becca's room and check to see all of her things are still there... Everything's there, but it's been moved... Definitely the ghost.  

Or as it turned out two creepy men, who turned the key in the next morning.  Becca had moved out of her room and into mine and Catherine's the evening before, once we were certain the desk clerk hadn't just misplaced the key.  Ghost or no ghost, no one was okay with her sleeping in that room when someone, or something, else had the key. 

The next morning we left and flew back to Chiang Mai.  Nothing too exciting happened. We had the same flight attendant as we did on the flight to Laos. That was kinda crazy. 

And that was my adventure in Laos. 

“I just ate a baby animal?!” - Laos Day 1

Friday we left for Laos.  We were only staying the weekend, and this was definitely the lightest I have ever packed. Ever. I was pretty proud of myself. I even used everything that I brought - including the deck of cards, which was probably the biggest stretch. Before we left for the Chiang Mai Airport on Friday morning, I spent 60 baht on all-organic (read all citronella) bug spray, because, well, I forgot to start my malaria meds on time... oops. I was a day late.  And really, only 12 hours late. So not horrible, and better than one member of our group who just decided not to take his. I am being a good kid though and taking them for the full week after the day we got back, and I'm even making sure to take them at the same time everyday.  I take meds the way Emily takes care of her diabetes - "Why do I feel funny? Oh yeah. I haven't taken drugs (or in her case insulin) yet today."

But anyway. Laos. Or Lao People's Democratic Republic as the country is apparently called. 

We cancelled class for Friday and took off for the airport at 11.  As we're all gathering downstairs with our overnight bags, Ajaan John turns up with a HUGE bunch of bananas.  He was out walking and decided we might all like to have some food for the airport.  Luckily for him security, while frequent at the Chiang Mai Airport (we went thru three times), was not very strict, so he was able to bring them through to the waiting area, and may have even brought some on the plane. 

While we were waiting to board our flight, I started editing the English language booklets for my NGO. I had tried to do this once before, but got intimidated by this opening paragraph "Students at the age of curiosity: experimenting with off-class sex education.  At the conjuncture age, high school students have much to learn and cope with changes in relation to the environment."  Jigga wha!? (and yes I have been channeling Amelia lately.)  I still don't know what to do with that, so at the airport I started in on the other booklet, and got through about half of it during our weekend trip. It was interesting though, because I did a lot more editing of "quotes" than I have ever done before.  I figure people know how to speak, someone just doesn't quite know how to translate their articulate comments from Thai so that they are equally articulate in English.  I'm just taking it that next step. 

So not only did we go through security three times at the airport, not only was our boarding delayed for almost an hour (no clue why).  The whole Lao Airlines experience was pretty different than other plane rides I've taken.  When it was finally time for us to board, we exit the gate, but there is no plane in sight. Instead we get on busses that are built like a cross between tour busses and subway cars. After about 15 seconds on the bus, we've gone around the corner of the airport building and are stopping in front of the smallest, most brightly colored airplane I have ever seen.  The Lao Airlines logo is very tropical and once you climb the stairs into the back of the plane, the upholstry is even more neon and flowery.  I was impressed. It was dreadful. Once we're airborne they conduct the fastest meal service I have ever experienced - it seems even more harried than the 45 minute flight from CR to Chicago, despite it being an hour long flight. It is also the shortest safety presentation - basically they told us how to fasted our seatbelts, that there were four exits and to read the safety card for all other information.  (On the way home, the woman sitting next to me says something like "that's basically their way of saying 'don't bother. if we go down in this plane you're screwed anyway.")

Our hotel in Laos was beautiful.  Lots of dark wood, everywhere; comfy beds and soft pillows (a nice change from Thailand; dressers (not that we needed them for two days); complimentary drinking water; and a GORGEOUS rooftop garden. I think Emily and I declared "This roof garden kicks Mountain View's garden's ass!" You could see all the mountains surrounding Luang Prabang and there were hammocks to sit and read in. Sweet!  Emily still got bored of the roof pretty quick and decided we should go walking around the town. 

While Luang Prabang is a fairly large city as far as Laos goes, and is possibly the most popular tourist spot (due to having two rivers - both called Mekong - caves and a waterfall in or close to the town) it is tiny compared to Chiang Mai, and even Cedar Rapids. It's probably closer to the size of Mahtomedi or White Bear Lake, Minnesota - where I grew up. We wandered around the two wats (or vats in Lao, but still said like a "w") next to our hotel. At the first vat, we saw a guy jogging around the chedi. Em and I joked how he was gaining merit while getting his exercise - multi-tasking, Buddhist style! I bought postcards for 8 baht at the market between the two wats. A lot of people here in Chiang Mai like to charge 20 B. It makes me sad. After the vats we just wandered around the city for a while up and down the two streets by our hotel - which were not, in fact, the most interesting, but we didn't want to get lost. Our wanderings also included a quest for Lao music we had heard from our roof, and occasionally caught snippets of while elsewhere on the street. Turned out it was coming from another vat at the end of the block. 

Things that struck us while we walked were, in no particular order: fewer street animals, less western looking structures, the cobbled street and sidewalk, less smog, more small children and young mothers, fewer motorized vehicles and those that existed were more likely to be motor bikes than trucks (including the "song-tuks" as we christened them - the size of song-taows, but pulled by a three-wheeled motor bike (like tuk-tuks) rather than a truck), and bikes were more popular than anything, lots of wood or coal fires, rather than electric things, fewer lights on patios or at vender stands. 

The vats we walked around and others we passed all had what we think were Mara images.  Emily and I couldn't figure out why they would want to build Mara statues, since Mara represents all the worldly vices that the Buddha had to ignore to reach enlightenment and then worked to subdue.  One of the poses of the Buddha is actually called "Subduing Mara." Mara is usually represented by a woman with uber long hair that she's wielding like a whip. These statues were definitely women with whip-like hair, but she didn't look as crazed as Mara usually does. So... I'm not sure if they were or not [Edit - Monday - So apparently they are not Mara images but instead are the Rice Goddess - Mae Phosop (meaning Mother Rice) who is very, very important in Northern Thai and Lao folklore and traditional religion.  Not Mara; Mae (said Mah) Phosop (said Pohso).]

Along with vat vs. wat there are other subtle differences between Thai and Lao.  They're similar enough that whenever people were talking, I felt like I should be able to understand at least something, but I didn't. Here are some English-Thai-Lao comparisons:

Thank you (very much) : Kop khun (mak) kha : Kop jai (lai lai)

Dollar : Baht : Kip

Hello : Sawadee kha : Sa bai dee

How are you : Sa bai dee : I actually don't know this Lao, but notice that "Hello" in Lao is the same as "How are you" in Thai.

The last great adventure of our first day in Laos was going out to dinner at a French/Lao restaurant.  They mostly just served French food, some of it with a Lao twist.  I had the most delicious pumpkin soup, ever. Oh I wish that could be in my life more often. Two of the other people I was traveling with decided to order meats they had never had before - quail for Nikki and lamb for Gen. As we're about halfway through out main dishes and sampling each other's food, Gen asks "What's the difference between lamb and sheep anyway? Is it male and female?" "No. Sheep is the adult and lamb is the baby," I respond. Gen's eye's get wide and her jaw drops as she gets this petrified look on her face.  As we start to ask her if she's okay she says "I just ate a baby animal?!" and starts apologizing to her lamb. Nikki, Holly and I try to calm her down, explaining that lambs live good lives and it's not a baby, persay, just a younger sheep. But she pushes her plate away a little and starts to cry. "I just feel so bad. I'm so guilty I ate a baby."  

My telling of the story is most likely no where near as funny as it was in real life, but as it happened Holly and I were in silent stitches. I have never seen anyone get so upset over food before, and I watched my younger brother freak out over a feed-lot and give up burgers for a month. Gen is such a sweetie. :)

Introspection and a Rant

Today I apparently reached a boiling point of sorts.  

It started a few weeks ago, when we got into a debate about Buddhism during our Human Rights class. A sub-group couldn't accept that a religion founded by a prince leaving his wife and child could have as its goal the end of suffering or have anything to add to the study and protection of human rights. This sub-group also took great issue with the buddhist ideal of unattachment.  All of their comments in class went something like this "Maybe it's because I haven't really studied Buddhism in-depth, but I don't understand how (x precept of Buddhism) can be a good thing."  So, those of us (such as myself) who have studied Buddhism, would try to jump in and explain the concept at hand.  Granted we generally did so via trying to relate it to something similar in western culture or Christianity, but even when we didn't, our thoughts, suggestions and interpretations were shot down as invalid. We were wrong every time we tried to defend eastern thought as not less than western thought, just different. Everything had to be value judgements, and our comfort zone had to be ascribed the higher value. 

It was infuriating. My roommate (the other person who attempted to explain Buddhist thought) and I vented for a while after class, and the next day I let it go.  Whatever, people are entitled to opinions, and westerners (particularly Americans) are famous for believing they are always right and therefore better. And I figured I wasn't completely innocent on that count either. 

That next weekend, we went to visit an NGO that works to provide women living in the Burmese refugee camps with a means of income, allowing them to provide for their families while living in Thailand. Like many of the NGOs we're hearing from, most of what they do is technically not allowed by the Thai government, and these women are taking a risk in talking with us.  As with about half of the NGOs, it's run by people who are farang, just as we are.  In this case, the women running the organization are Filipino.  English is their third language.  But to many of my compatriots this does not mean that we should put out any extra effort to understand the complexities of the work the NGO does, or try to work within and accept the language barrier we are functioning through. Rather than showing any understanding, a few people spend the entire walk back from the NGO, opining about how the group doesn't do enough (no shit, the Thai and Burmese governments won't let them), or that the women presenting to us didn't satisfactorily answer a particular question (which she did answer, just not as directly as a native english speaker would have).

Again, I didn't argue much.  It didn't seem like a battle that could be won, so why fight it? But it did start me simmering a little.

This last week, things really started to "overcook my grits." (Come on! Anyone get the reference?) On Monday, Kacie and I met with an Ajaan at Maw Chaw who Drex describes as "a force of nature," which she is.  Ajaan Nok is wildly intelligent and gender/social change oriented and wanted to find a way to hook Kacie and I up with English majors with similar interests to help us with our gender-related independent studies. Ajaan Nok suggested that we attend some presentations of five majors final English capstone projects that were occurring later that week (Wed. - Fri.).  The idea behind the projects is that all the senior english majors due this massive research project as one of their final classes, and then they create some kind of public presentation, whether that's a poster presentation at the Faculty of Humanities presentation day, or something else, they don't care. So this year, 4 students put on dramatic presentations relating to their research and it ended up being all 11 of us that went to each presentation rather than just Kacie and I, which was fine, in general. 

The first of these presentations was on Wednesday afternoon.  It consisted of a series of Bob Dylan songs performed by a group of CMU English students. The English major doing the project played guitar and enlisted friends to sing and play bass, keyboard and drums. Before each song, the researching student would introduce it, telling the title, the album it was originally released on, the year, at a little about the American context of the song. Then they would perform, and after the song the student would explain more about the original meaning of the song in American society and culture and then compare that to contemporary Thailand. After the Dylan performance, there was another on "Black Music" (his - the thai student's - words, not mine).  This one really didn't make a whole lot of sense and didn't seem well researched or considered at all. I was frustrated though on the way home, because not only did people tear apart the second performance, they also ravaged the Dylan one as well.  This continued all week, and grew to include the third and fourth performances (Pocahontas and Phantom of the Opera) as well. 

There is a time and a place for being critical and discussing gaps in a presentation or an argument, but I truly feel this was not it. 

Yes, racial discrimination in Thailand is different than it was in the United States.  There is not the history of slavery and does not appear to be the complete hatred that was pervasive in U.S. culture. But there is segregation to the extreme with hill-tribe people not being allowed to leave villages to work or gain an education and there is a sense that they constitute a different race, a separate people not worthy of full citizenship or rights in Thai society.  These differences do not mean that the situation is any less serious than racism in the United States; it is still a huge problem to overcome and a valid comparison to make.  

Yes, the "black music" presentation kind of missed the boat. A lot. But do we need to continue harping on it for two weeks? Pocahontas as well - yeah it was a disney remake and not a true representation of the Pocahontas story, but how many Americans know the true story? Yeah, not a whole lot. Why should you expect Thais to?

And Phantom was fucking fantastic. Yes, most of the singers were untrained, but let's see you do any better when you perform a condensed Thai opera, okay? Then you can judge. 

Today in our Thai culture class, it was happening again. We had a Thai ajaan come to speak about gender in Thailand. She started her talk by saying that she wouldn't have time to talk about men as much, so her talk was going to focus on women.  Being someone who tries to give simplified talks, I saw this merely as an attempt at full disclosure - saying "Hey - this is usually something I would teach in a semester, and I'm gonna try and boil it down to two hours." This was apparently, though, just another thing to criticize. As was her points about the way children's literature reinforces stereotypical gender roles. Really, the whole argument came down to a complete misunderstanding and disrespect for feminism and feminist thought, but it also was another chance to criticize the Thais and call them stupid. Trying to avoid conflict (as is my m.o.) I head for the song-taow - headphones in hand.  I stop to talk to two other students, who are also fuming (but I think about different issues).  As a result of this momentary hold up, I can't get into the song-taow, get the music playing and turned up loud enough in time to miss hearing all the ranting going on as everyone hops in and sits down... and... I snap. 

Comment: How can you be like "this is a talk on gender" and then say that you're going to completely ignore one gender?!

Me: Okay.  That's not fair - that's just what you call it - even in America - it's "gender studies" when perhaps it really means "women's studies." And while that might be a valid criticism, it's not a reason to write off her whole fucking talk --

Comment: I don't know if that's what we were trying to do --

Me: It's not just this time - there are other instances too.  All the student presentations?  I'm so fucking sick and tired of us all being so critical and condescending of every Thai presentation we go to.  We're supposed to be here to learn about another culture. This is not fucking America, this is their second language, cut them some slack. Be fucking respectful. 

Then I checked out... I really, really did not want to fight, no matter how much those sound like fighting words. I did want to be heard and listened to, just once, which probably didn't happen... but oh well. I wasn't really a bastion of reason when I let that one loose. 

When we got back, I was the last one to get out of the song-taow and I paced around outside for a couple of minutes so that I didn't have to see anyone. Luckily for me it was also my roommate's music lesson day, so she hadn't come back with us, leaving me the room to myself.  I spent the rest of the afternoon alone, and even made someone knock on my door three times before I would open it.  You know I'm pissed when I'm feeling that misanthropic. 

The whole point of this is not to rant about my group, or to badmouth anyone or our trip.  It was an interesting experience for me to work on writing this and discover just how much emphasis I put on respecting others and being curious about the culture around me, and to realize that others to not necessarily place the same kind of emphasis on these things.  I truly feel like a guest and as though I have a job to learn about my hosts (the people of Thailand).  I can't and shouldn't just carry on as I always have.  I need to learn their language, or at least be making an effort to while I'm here - not just expecting to be able to get by with English. And it frustrates me when others feel they can simply decide that Thai is "an ugly language" that they shouldn't need to study - the vendors understand pointing and grunts, why isn't that enough?  In my mind, it simply isn't. It's disrespectful and unacceptable. We are guests and we are students. Be respectful, understanding, open to learning something. 

Any thoughts from the peanut gallery?  Am I completely crazy?  If you think so, you can tell me, I'm used to it. And, I'm curious.  These are my e-two cents. Fire away. 

Week of 2/1-2/7

Here are some highlights of the last week or so:

Last Sunday (2/1)... yeah, that's over a week ago... we went to cooking school and learned how to make (among other things) curry, pad thai, and a banana with coconut milk desert. The day started with a visit to the market, where our teacher taught us about the different kinds of rice, various coconut products, and different forms of flavoring common in Thai foods.

Then we drove out to the farm where the cooking school is. There we learned about traditional Thai family farms and the ways they plant crops to encourage soil health and plant health - like planting stinky plants next to others to keep the bugs away. Their green beans are HUGE here - like as long as your arm. For real. It's intense.

Last Monday (2/2) all nine of us trekked out to the UN Irish Pub to watch the Superbowl be replayed. Those of us interested in the game already knew the outcome, but decided to go see it anyway. And we decided to mess with all the other people (at least some of whom didn't know the end) and cheer for the losing team. It was so much fun. Andy, Emily, and I in particular had a lot of fun being loud and raucous.

Best quote of the night came during the booth review for the last Steelers touchdown:
"Oh, come on! His toes are down; he's just being graceful! He's a fucking ballerina, that's all!"

Hilarious.

Also on Monday, a new language teacher started - Ajaan Jang. She's very high energy and is a ton of fun. She sometimes tells us stories about past years of Coe students, such as last year one student kept telling her to turn toward the water buffalo during his midterm. She said she tried really hard, but after the third or fourth water buffalo turn she just burst out laughing. What he meant was turn right - or liaow kwaa, not liaow kway. We also take a 20 minute break about two-thirds of the way through class, which is excellent. Two hours is a LONG class.

On Tuesday (2/3) Catherine got sick. Usually getting the stomache flu is not a huge deal, but since Catherine's pancreas doesn't work (she has diabetes) she can't be left alone while ill. Since I was one of the people that she gave 'betes training to over christmas break, and since Patricia is the one with all the tropical disease knowledge from her years working in Paraguay, the two of us camped out with Cate, making sure she tested her sugar and ate icing and such - did you know you can absorb sugar through your gums? I didn't until Christmas. It was actually scary for a while because her blood sugar refused to climb above the 60s (for reference 180-200 is good, 300 is high, and 40 is coma). Then we discovered the icing Cate was eating didn't actually have sugar in it. Oops. Thanks for that info Google. So I left her to rest with Patricia and took a drunk Becca for a walk to the 7-11 to purchase sugary things for Catherine, and bread-like things for her. There we discovered the group's new fave candy - Chokie-Chokie. It's basically a milk-chocolate fudgey-substance in a tube and is delicious. And two or three tubes absorbed via the gums made Catherine's blood sugar sky-rocket up over 200 so she could sleep.

Wednesday in Human Rights class we reverted to third grade and needing to raise our hands to talk rather than having a conversation like adults, and some people still didn't talk. Ugh. Hopefully we can un-revert this week. Probably one of the most interesting discussions we did manage to have was whether the "vacation mentality" would really enable people to make decisions to do things that they would be opposed to doing at home, as one of our authors discussing child prostitution suggested. Nathan and Ian were very sure that this would not happen, while Becca was convinced that it could. Thoughts? This also lead into later discussions regarding if humans are inherently good, inherently evil/bad/not good, or inherently stupid.

Thursday the program took us out to eat at Drexler's favorite Italian place in town, right across from CMU. It was pretty delicious, about as good as you can get anywhere (and a lot better than Gen, Nikki, John and I had gotten the day before!). Coe alumn, Brad, who is teaching English at CMU this year came with us too. I remember thinking we had a lot of good discussions, but I don't remember what about anymore. Drexler and Patricia talked about living abroad, Holly, Emily, Kacie, Nikki and Gen told ghost stories, I talked to John about Teach for America for a while, but I don't really remember what I spent most of my time talking about. Andy, Chris and Brad had boy talk at one end of the table. :)

Since it was the first Friday of the month, there was a craft market going on in one corner of the campus, and after class Patricia, Holly, Emily and I tried to wander to it, but it took a very long time and we got a little lost. Walking back was much faster. That night Andy, Chris, Gen, Nikki, Kacie, Emily, Holly and I went to a British Pub by the guesthouse for bar food and drinks. When everyone else went to play pool, Gen and I had a really great talk back at the table. I really enjoyed getting to connect with someone new on the trip. And Gen is such a sweetie!

When we left the pub, Gen, Kacie and I decided to go check up on Paul, the saxophonist and co-owner of the jazz bar. Gen is his secret admirer, so at least a couple people from our group go every few nights. The jazz is decent (it really depends on the ensemble playing), but Paul is very good. This night, the combo was short a bassist and drummer. So one guy jumped up to the drum set for a song or two, and when he wasn't playing, Paul would occasionally tap a cymbal or something to accompany a solo or whatever. For the last song of the first set, Paul said they wanted to try something "experimental." I wouldn't say it was that experimental, but it was PHENOMENAL - I mean one of those times when music just reaches all the way to your soul, and you not only hear it with your ears, but feel it in your chest, in your pulse, creeping around your subconscious. A-mazing. I hadn't had that happen in a while, and this piece especially grabbed me.

Saturday (2/7) we went to an elephant show. To be honest, I almost didn't go. First off, we have our Thai language midterms this week, I wanted to get started on editing my NGO's english publications, and I need to read a lot faster/a lot more for my independent study on Thai conceptions of gender and sexuality. And secondly, these sorts of things always feel somewhat like animal exploitation to me, and I kind of wish there wasn't a market for it. I'm fine with safaris and going to see the animals in their own habitat or something replicating their natural environment, where they're wild and untrained. But animal shows kind of bother me. And this was our second one. In the end though, I went and it was fun to coo over baby elephants and marvel at elephant antics with everyone. I did skip riding the elephant though. It just felt like too much money to sit on an old-style throne on the back of an elephant that had just been forced to paint pictures and kick soccer balls in front of me. Instead, Patricia and I wandered around the camp, until we hit the village where all the mankoots (elephant handlers) and their families live. Then we turned around so as to not intrude.

Also on Saturday, I discovered one of the computers in the guesthouse has a slot that fits my camera's memory card!!! Excitement! So I'm working on uploading all of my pictures before we leave for Laos this weekend.

Today I watched the Superbowl, surrounded by foreigners, served by Thais.

Some days, being here is so disconcerting. I go about my day, and minus the heat, could almost forget that I am not at home, or even on my side of the planet. Then something, anything, jolts me, and I remember that I am rich, privileged, and spending my time wasting money on ideas and traveling halfway around the world, just because I can. Oh. Yeah. There's reality, welcoming me back via smack in the face. And we can sit around and tell ourselves that tourism is a viable and necessary part of the economy, but this has only grown to be because there are people who have such flourishing excesses as to make it a possibility.

Political scientists call this guilt I'm feeling "the white man's burden." Other travelers refer to it as culture shock. I'm just sitting here wondering what to do about it and how to reconcile it, in awe of the knowledge that I haven't even seen anything actually horrible yet (and probably won't during this entire trip).

I spent my weekend learning how to cook Thai food and (consequently) stuffing myself full of more food than I could ever want to eat in one sitting. It seems we find ourselves at a local bar almost every night of the week, blowing 3-5 meals worth of baht on a round of cocktails. And when we're not at the bar, we're at the market again eating more and buying more stuff than we really need or can use.

Then, we get up the next morning and go to Thai culture class, or Human Rights class, or to an NGO visit, and hear about people dying of AIDS for lack of retro-virals, or even simple anti-biotics to cure an opportunistic infection. About people being killed or chased out of their homeland by their own government. About how they have no rights or protections when they resettle afterward. We come back from class or the visit and read about people massacred by their government for being educated, wearing glasses, living in a city, playing an instrument, or writing a poem. And above all we hear about how neighboring countries and, more often, Western countries (who, honestly, are the ones with the resources) fail to care and fail to act. And some days it makes me a little sick.

I don't know if Asian culture has it completely right with the community over the individual (versus Western culture that places the individual over the community), but I feel like, at some point, you have to at least consider the disparity and do something to try to rectify it, at least partially. Like the Japanese idea that the CEO can't make so much more than the lowest paid employee. People shouldn't need to turn to child prostitution as a way to provide for their family. People shouldn't need to spend just as much money on water per day as they do on food, just because their government can't afford proper sewage treatment facilities. Someone's country of birth shouldn't so wholly determine if their basic needs are met. Should it?