"Guys! Guys! Everyone's WHITE!!"

 - us, going through passport control in Chicago. 

Shortly after this was chorused, we realized everyone also spoke English and thus we sounded like horrible, horrible people - particularly Ian, who added "I LOVE white people!" to the end of his wonderings. 

I'm back in Cedar Rapids at this point, am almost over jet-lag, and am generally adjusting just fine to being back in the states.  It really is wonderful to see all of my sorority sisters and other friends around campus.  It is still strange and novel to wander around a college campus instead of a city block; to smell fresh air, with a hint of various blossoms, rather than tropical heat and car exhaust.  I'm always cold, which is very strange to this Minnesota girl.  Makes North Carolina a more welcome idea in my life.  :) I actually had to borrow a pair of flats from a friend here to keep my toes from freezing off. 

Some culture-shock-ish moments to report:

1. My second or third night back in the states, I went with a friend to the store.  I didn't break down while pondering carbohydrates, as I was warned I might.  Rather I was confused as to why all the swimsuits were so numerous.  After all that season was over, most of the suits should be sold already; soon it would be too cold to swim.  Then I remembered that although, that was how the seasons felt to me, it is indeed the start of summer here, not the end of it. Whitney and I had a good laugh about that thought process, when I shared it.

2. My phone fascinates me. I LOVE sending text messages and calling people.  Friday evening I just sat and stared at it for a while, trying to think of people to message or call. Text messages don't always come out right the first time around though.  Gonna need to redevelop some of that muscle memory. 

3. I am getting over this, but for the first week or so being back, I had a very low "people quota" meaning, I could only deal with seeing so many people per day.  I want to say last Thursday, I had lunch and coffee with two people and that was about all the socializing I could deal with.  I knew that I should go see other friends, but I just couldn't, so I spent the evening as a hermit with one or two other people I was staying with, watching movies.  This is so so weird for me.  I normally love people and being around others. It's kind of a bummer I was a hermit during the week before finals and now want to socialize when everyone has tests. Oh well. Only two more days of tests, and then it's all social until graduation.  

Countdowns:

5 days until I see my family!

6 days until graduation

8 days until I officially have a place to live...

49 days until Teach for America

“I want one of those, and one of those, and that!”

- Ajaan Bob’s imagining of Rama IV

On Sunday, Bob took me to a Royal Palace and the city and ruins of Ayutthaya.  This was possibly the most memorable day trip of the lot.  We started by taking the Bangkok subway, which uses these really cool one-trip token things.  They're plastic and have a computer chip inside that records where you are going and how much you paid and controls the gate that lets you in and out of the subway.  The tokens probably are not actually that interesting, but I thought they were cool. We rode the subway to the train station (sa-ta-nee rot fai), where we got 12 baht, 3rd class tickets to the palace.  

3rd class train is quite the experience, let me tell you. It’s basically open-air, because all of the windows were open before we left the station. Each set of benches is slightly smaller than a car’s backseat, but most of the time you cram three people onto them anyway.  I sat next to a mother with two kids, one about 4 the other not yet walking. Vendors push around all the bodies in the seats and in the isles, hawking everything from rice, juice, water to nylon hammocks.  Two of the men sitting by Bob, across the isle from me, bought four or five hammocks from the vendor.  They thought it was the sweetest deal ever.  The mother sharing my seat bought her four-year-old some rice.  And she promptly got train-sick while eating it. As the train began to fill, people ran out of seats and began crowing in the isles.  This did not deter the vendors traveling up and down the train. One man standing near me had a fish the size of someone’s face in a bag of water, as though it were a goldfish he were taking home from the petstore. When we were a station away from our stop Bob and I got up and made our way to the door of the car. This was necessary because none of the station stops were very long. I ended up standing in the space between two cars, watching the ground fly past below, thinking it wasn’t so different from riding the accordion of a two-car bus. 

The palace we went to see is located in the country about a two-hour train ride from Bangkok. It was built by Ramas IV and V in the late 1800s and early 1900s.  The idea behind the palace was to build one of everything that Rama IV saw on a European tour.  No joke.  They had a French palace, and English manor, a Chinese palace, gothic cathedral turned buddhist wat, among other buildings and parks. It was crazy.  All of the buildings had very vibrant colors as well - the french house was yellow, the english one was purple, chinese red, observatory yellow and red stripes... very interesting and rather strange to see them all crammed into the same place instead of hundreds of miles apart. 

Once we had exhausted the palace, Bob and I took a boat up the river (the traditional means of travel around Thailand, especially around Bangkok) to Ayutthaya.  

After the kingdom of Sukkhothai fell out of power, the kindom of Ayutthaya became dominant in Siam.  The capital city once held at least one million people and was a great center of trade between India, Europe, China and the rest of Southeast Asia. In 1776 it was ransacked and destroyed by the Burmese, who came in, burned everything they could, stole and melted all the Buddha images, and killed as many as they could - including monks.  This is especially strange to me, since the Burmese are Theravada Buddhists, as are the Thais/Siamese.  Seems you might kill different kinds of Buddhists, but your own sect?  I don't know. 

This destruction had a different result than the destruction of Sukkhothai.  Sukkhothai was destroyed and then left as ruins.  Other cities became important, diminishing new construction, so the ruins in Sukkhothai are all that is left in Sukkhothai.  Ayutthaya on the other hand, has been rebuilt around the ruins.  You have to drive thru a growing urban center to get from one ruined wat or palace to another.  Also, some of the ruined temples have rebuilt active wats inside them.  I'm not certain how I feel about this difference or exactly how it affected my experience viewing the ruins.  I didn't always feel that the ruins were as impressive as at Angkor or Sukkhothai, but at the same time, it was really interesting to see a ruined jedi at one end of a soccerfield, or a gleaming new white wat situated in the center of a walled-in group of ruins.