So. I think it’s time for an update. It is my first day off in two weeks, and I’m sitting at my living room table on an uncharacteristically cool morning (75 baby!!) while my host mom watches me type intently. I told her I’m doing homework because I don’t know how to say I’m writing or how to explain a blog. “Tamganban?” she asks me “Tamganban” (homework) I repeat, because that’s my most effective way of answering a question lately (there are a lot of ways to say ‘yes’ and I’m not always sure which one to use).
On January 2nd, I met all 58 other PCVs for Thailand group 131 in LA and we spent about 50 hours straight together at staging and through the 28 hour trip to get to Thailand. It was an instant bond of a lot of like-minded people. I had a lot of interesting conversations with a lot of different people, found out that my veggie meals had been cancelled somehow, and ate a bagel in the Seoul airport at 6 am because I was too tired to find vegetarian noodles. I was exhausted, starving, but happy when we finally got to Bangkok. The thought of being thrown into so much time spent with near strangers had stressed me out beyond a lot of other things, but they all made it so much more fun—and I had someone to watch my stuff while I peed in the airport.
PC Thailand put us up in a hotel for the first 10 days of training to get the initial safety and security sessions, along with initial language and culture training out of the way before we moved to our homestays. I can safely say that that 10 days felt like an eternity. Not because it was particularly boring or tedious (although it could be at times), but because we existed in a vacuum. My fellow Trainees and I only hung out with each other, all day every day, often going to dinner in groups of 10 or more. It felt like we had known each other for months by the end of the 10 days and time outside of training didn’t really exist. With the exception of biking day—a full 8-hour day where we biked 10k and then spent hours in the heat learning bike maintenance—our first 10 days were as easy as they possibly could have made it. We were fed breakfast and lunch every day, and despite the all-day sessions, after 5pm our time was our own to swim at the hotel pool, eat dinner, and explore the city on our own. On the 16th, we moved from our sheltered training intensive to our homestays about 30 minutes away where training began in earnest. I tried to put my expectations aside, but I couldn’t help but be apprehensive. We as trainees had spent every waking moment together, and now I was going to spend my free time with a family I didn’t know, whose language I barely speak.
Right before our host parents were announced, the program manager (Kun Katherine) said—“If you find yourself lying in bed tonight thinking ‘what am I doing here?’ remember that it will get easier and you can do hard things.” I thought that was kind of silly, because we’ve all been here for 10 days already and I couldn’t imagine a little thing like moving to a homestay making me question all this. BUT she was right. The first night was overwhelming and hard. All the Thai I had completely slipped my mind, and I ate in silence (after watching my host mom’s dismayed face when I told her I was a vegetarian) while I waited for bedtime to come around. Around 7:30 my host mom told me to shower and go to bed, and I happily obliged—I was very ready to give myself time to process alone.
I did indeed lie in bed that first night thinking “what the hell did I get myself into? Is this what the next 2 years is going to look like?” I also gave myself and this experience the benefit of the doubt though, and tried to embrace the 8k bike commute the next morning, back in the evening, and another quiet dinner with my host mom and grandpa. It has worked so far. I already feel so much better for having slept, seen my friends, and started sessions about my actual job for the next two years. I have smiled and nodded more than I ever thought possible, and I have watched my host mom apprehensively feed me vegetables and rice every night, still baffled at the concept of no meat. My Thai ajan (teacher) has suggested that I cook with her to show her that I can eat pretty much anything with the meat taken out, and I plan to do that as soon as possible. She was quite pleased that I did laundry the first night, texted a picture to the other host moms in my tambon (subdistrict), and told my training manager that I was very hardworking. She likes to introduce her tall, very pale, farang daughter to people, and I’m already used to people comparing heights with me and pointing out the differences in our skin tones. It’s all just as surreal here as it was in the hotel, just in new and different ways.
Time still exists in a vacuum here, and as I spent my lunch in a market eating noodles and fruit, I had one of the millions of realizations that this is where I live. This is my job. This is not a visit, or another short term program, this is my life now. While I drink ovaltine with breakfast and commute through beautiful rice paddies at sunrise and sunset, I have the same realizations. When I have to stop for a breather during my commute because I’m out of shape and it’s garbage burning day, I have a slightly less awestruck, slightly grumpier version of the same realization. I think it’s going to take a lot of time and energy to properly process everything that has happened because it is so hard to believe that it all could have happened in 19 days.
The dissonance from my life before this is also mildly jarring. When I talk about living in Brooklyn, it all feels like a crazy dream. How can I have gone from living in one of the biggest, busiest cities in the world to living in a small town in Southern Thailand and biking through farms to work every day? Even knowing what was getting myself into, I never pictured myseld in a bathroom whispering “toilet spider“ to myself at 5 am as I tried to brush the spider off the toilet with a rag, failed, and just used it anyway. A friend sent me a picture taken in one of my favorite bars in my neighborhood and the complete and utter distance I felt from everything in my life in New York was so odd to experience. I miss New York, but the further away I get from it, the more I realize how suffocating it was at times. I know I’ve only been here for 19 days but it is so. Hard. For me to imagine myself back in the city now. It is realizations like that that make me think that I have made the right decision. I have been pleasantly surprised at the emphasis on participatory development and that the Peace Corps tells us pretty constantly that we’re here to help and work for/with communities and people—not to do them a favor or to push our own ideas on them. I have also been pleasantly surprised at how much everyone else values that concept.
Are there hard parts? Definitely. I would love to not eat breakfast out of obligation every morning, and I still haven’t figured out how I’m supposed to brush my teeth when I’m not showering. I don’t looove the long, hot bike ride and sitting in my own sweat all day, and I lost the cash allowance they gave us for January (whoops). I have been eaten alive, and my Thai Ajan has reminded me to wear bug spray because the mosquitoes carry Dengue. Learning Thai for 4 hours every morning is a struggle, and remembering what I learned is even more so. Every time I am introduced to a new friend, my host mom spends at least a few minutes explaining that I don’t eat meat, and everyone is collectively baffled. One of the hardest parts of this second day off has been filling the time. But all of these negatives seem so minor compared to everything I’ve loved about this absurd new job that I have.
Song for this week: Into the Wild by LP
Quote for this week: “Get proximate, stay hopeful, change the narrative, and be willing to do uncomfortable (hard) things.” – Bryan Stevenson
Additional quote: “Boy, we as a group might not smell great.”—Liz Lemon (this one is dedicated to our collective bike commute)