Void

Now I will tell the story of how I received a "VOID" stamp in my passport.

It was November 5, 2012 or 2555 in the Thai calendar. It was hot enough day, over 30 at least, with the sun shinning down on the pollution filled city of Bangkok. It was also the day that I had to get my visa renewed. And it was of course a good day because I didn't have to go to school.
What I find interesting is that even though one might have a year long visa, it still needs to be renewed every 90 days. It's also incredibly hard to immigrate here. One of the foreign teachers at my school has lived in Thailand for 12 years and is married to a Thai women but he still has to renew his visa every 90 days and is denied Thai citizenship.
So off to the Bangkok immigration office we went! My host family said that I only needed to bring my passport with me, they had everything else planned out already. As it turns out I only needed my passport, a picture of myself and a form from my school confirming that I attended there.
We arrived at a huge, and I mean HUGE building in the middle of nowhere with a gigantic picture of the King on the side when my host dad told me that we were here. Now in my head I was picturing that the immigration office would look like the DMV. Boy, was I wrong.
My first impression of the building was that it was filled with long, boring white hallways with florescent lights, and then I walked further into the building. About 30 feet inside the building opens up and you fill like you walked into a spaceship just like in the movies! It was incredibly expansive  The white walls turned into windows that all had captions and titles underneath, the floor turned into a window to see below into the food court  and all of a sudden I really did feel like an alien.
We were a little early, it was lunch time so the office we would reopen at one. The problem with that is that there were so many people there! I asked my host dad is we should get in line and he responding with:
"Oh, no, I have a friend."
And that's all I needed to hear.
So one o'clock came around and the doors opened, farangs fleeing inside to be the first one to renew their visa.
We casually walked in after them.
A lady in a government uniform, much like the ones my teachers have to wear every Wednesday, greeted us and asked me to fill out the top half of a form. It might be hard to immigrate into Thailand but it just might be too easy to get a visa- although I'm probably biased coming from the US. I was filling it out at her desk when she all of a sudden handed a hot pink camera to a coworker and started taking pictures of me (and her posing beside me) filling out an immigration form! This raised a few questions in my head.
1. Isn't there a no camera sign right outside the door?
2. Should I be excited about renewing my visa?
3. Don't you work with foreigners everyday?

But that's besides the point, so I finish the form and hand her my passport. She disappears for ten minutes and tells me I can wait out in the main room where all the other farang are. So I go out and sit next to a man who is holding a red passport (I couldn't see the front of it to read the country) who looks like he's in his 20's or 30's. We start a conversation. ( I can't remember all of what he said but I do remember some).
Me: So, where are you from?
Man: Mexico.
Me: Oh that's neat, my dad's from Mexico.
Man: Really? Where?
Me: Torreon.
We continue on to more small talk.
Me: So what brings you to Thailand?
Man: I'm a PhD student here.
Me: What do you study?
Man: I'm studying Thai culture.
Me: Oh wow, that must be fun.
Man: Yeah, I'm researching the underground rock scene in Bangkok.
You meet really cool people at immigration, trust me.

I was called back into the Pink Camera Lady's office and she handed me back me passport along with my photo, paperwork and receipt  I was a little confused as to why I got all my paperwork back but didn't think much of it until I looked in my passport and there was stamp from the Thai immigration office but it also had a huge red VOID stamp slapped across it.
I quickly asked my host dad why I had the mark of death in my passport and he said that we went to the wrong immigration office. See we went to Bangkok Immigration office when we don't live in Bangkok. We live in Nonthaburi. Nonthaburi is right outside of Bangkok but all the public transportation that's in Bangkok runs through Nonthatburi. It's like West Seattle and Seattle.
And so we went off to another immigration office, this one had a parking lot of dry brown dirt that reminding me of fair grounds. It was smaller than my house back home, used a number system like the DMV, and I was the only white person in the joint. It wasn't a spaceship but I got my visa in less that 20 minutes.

Book: Page 18 in Adventure of State
Thai:station........................................suh-tawn-nee

Lucky

Sometimes I just sit and think about how incredibly lucky I am.
I'm half way across the world.
I have friends that live on 6 different continents.
I can speak a little of six different languages.
I have friends who I love and love me.
I have an amazingly supportive family.
I am so lucky to say that I'm apart of Rotary. A organization that changes the world everyday and has changed my life so much. I know that I have changed as a person- for the better and that I owe that all to Rotary.
Rotary gave me the opportunity to be an exchange student and that is priceless.

Book: Page 10 of Adventure of State
Thai: train............................................rot fai

1/31/13

Today was a good day.
It rained for the first time in forever.
I ate bread, apples and mashed potatoes.
Understood my French teacher.
Translated a whole page in Chinese.
My Tagalog teacher is back.
Kids in my class learned American slang today and I had to explain what shawty was.
And I chatted with some people back home that I haven't spoken to in a long time.
Simple yet good.

Book: page 3 of Adventure of State
Thai: dong..................must, have to

Mystery

My host family is a little mysterious. Well, not really but I think it's because they cannot explain some complex things in English.
My host dad apparently lives in the South of Thailand.

Sophie lived with my host family now for about two weeks earlier this year to "teach" my host brother English. So when my host family does things they invite Sophie too which is really nice of them. Therefore Sophie and I are solving this mystery together and are finding out more but very slowly.

Here is what we know:
He lives in the south.
My host parents are still married.
He visits sometimes.
He works in the south.
And that's about it.

So today I was talking to Sophie on the phone when my host mom walks through the front door. My host brother (Toey) follows her and then another man I do not recognize. I figured it was a friend or business man because my host mom often has business meetings with people at the house.
And then she said, "This is Toey father."

I immediately told Sophie that I would call her back.

To be continued...

Book: Finished The Destiny of Natalie X and Other Stories today and it was quite good. MOving on to Adventure of State. Another book from my host family's condo.
Thai: baker..................................lightswitch

Staring

There are many phrases that you are taught as a kid.
Don't talk to strangers.
It's rude to point.
Don't stare.
Or my mothers favorite, don't forget the napkins.

It has come to my attention that Thailand may not use these phrases as often as we do.
Especially about the staring.
Now I live right on the outskirts of Bangkok so there aren't foreigners where I live. For example whenever I see another foreigner in town I try and talk to them because the sightings are so rare. Although us farang (Thai word for foreigner but a better translation would be white or even better not-Thai-and strange- looking) are rarely sighted, we do still exist.
Although I'm not sure all Thai people know this.
For example, whenever I take the Song Tao (truck with a cage in the back, purposes as a bus) there is always one person that will stare at me or look extremely confused as to why I exist.Sometimes this happens on the bus but not so much anymore, maybe I don't notice it.
When I first came here it felt awkward and embarrassing but I'm way past being embarrassed by anything at this point. One time I stared back at the person, just to mess with them, they just kept on looking at me.
This fact just makes me laugh.
I've met one other farang on the bus before and it turned out he is a teacher at the school next to mine and has lived here for ten years.

Farang are always on the river boats though.
That's why I take the bus instead of the boats.

Book: Only read about 20 pages today so hopefully I'll finish The Destiny of Natalie X and Other Stories tomorrow.
Thai: doo.......look/watch

Eggs

It began Saturday evening, when my host mom picked me up at Tesco after I came home from a fun day spent with Saeko, Sophie and Waldir (Mexico). Normally I sit and read while I wait for my host mom to pick me up outside with her car, but this time she met me inside. She said she needed to buy some eggs for a donation she was going to give. We split up in the store, I go and look for a laundry brush (I have to wash half my clothes by hand) and she goes off to get eggs. We met up about two minutes later by the produce. I assumed she was going to get about two to four dozen eggs. But oh no.
The cart is half full with eggs.
HALF FULL.

We arrived home with a car full of surprisingly unbroken eggs- I was nervous the whole ride home because Thai driving laws are.....lax. My host sister then informs me that on Sunday we are going to 2 temples and so that my host mom can give away the eggs. Well, I assumed she was giving away the eggs because 1. there were so many eggs, 2. my host mom said "donation" and, 3. we were going to the temples in the morning aka "give monks food time because they can only eat in the morning".
Well, as it turned out I assumed wrong.
(I'm sort of used to being wrong about my assumptions while living in Thailand because everyday something surprises you here.)

I woke up Sunday morning and quickly got ready because my host mom told me we were leaving at eight. So I stride into the kitchen to grab and apple for breakfast and to my surprise my host mom is in the kitchen boiling all the eggs!
"Chu-ah die mai ka?"- Can I help you?
"Die, die."- Yes. (Or literally: Can, can).
 "Count 100 eggs in here and 100 in here," she continued, pointing at a box and a woven basket.

And that's when I realized that my host mom had just bought and boiled 200 EGGS.

At 9:30 we all finally piled in the car and started making our journey to a temple outside the city. That's when I asked my host sister about The Eggs. She explained to me that my host mom prayed to Buddha and promised him that if her prayer came true she would bring him 100 boiled eggs. And my host mom's prayer came true so that is why we have The Eggs.
And all I could think at that moment was "Buddha is a statue."
So I asked what happened to The Eggs, if they went to the monks, or poor people in the community or whatever. I again assumed wrong. She explained that you bring your promised gift (most commonly eggs but you can bring fruit, flowers, firecrackers and other things too) to the temple, wai to it and do other traditional things at the temple and then after you're done you can take your gift back home.
And so that's what we did.
Oh, but I had one more assumption to be proved wrong. So we had 200 eggs and we were going to two temples. 100 eggs per temple right? Nope. We used the same eggs twice.

And thus that is the story of how there came to be 200 hard boiled eggs in my house.

Book: Finished Childhood's End, The Casual Vacancy, Water for Elephants, An Abundance of Katherines, and I am The Cheese. Now I am on The Destiny of Natalie X and Other Stories which is a collection of short stories. The reason I came upon this book is because my host family owns a condo and they bought a furnished room which had books in it that were in English so they said I could have them. I'll probably finish it tomorrow since it's really short.
Thai: song roi kai...............................................200 eggs

Well, I haven't blogged in a while but I've decided to blog everyday I am home until the end of February.

Holidays

Like the western world, this season is the holiday season in Thailand. Except well, the holidays are different.
Starting with the 27th of November. This day is Loy Krathong day, which literally means float banana leaf basket candle holder thingy. Yes, literally. This holiday is to "make merit". Basically to say sorry for everything bad you have done in the past- repent your sins, and to wish for luck next year. You celebrate this holiday by making/buying a krathong and candles and giving them to the river or you can also release floating lanterns into the air. I did both! My family took me to the river temple by my house where my released out lit Krathongs into the river and then we went to the roof top of the condo and watched some fireworks. The fireworks were indeed pretty but nothing like the firework shows in the US. Fireworks aren't a big deal here because they are so regularly used so the shows aren't as elaborate. I really enjoyed Loy Krathong because it's just so darn beautiful. There are lights in the water, lights in the sky and lights on houses. And not cold, florescent blue lights, they are warm candle lights. It's not like anything in the US and I think next year I will try to celebrate it in the US.

The next holiday is on December 5 at 7:13ish. Why is the time so specific? Because it's the King's Birthday of course! Yes, for this day my host parents took my to the huge celebration in the middle of Bangkok. This is was not completely prepared for. See the King's favorite color is yellow, just like mine actually. So everyone- EVERYONE wears yellow on this day. Sadly though, I didn't bring anything yellow with me to Thailand. But it was ok because there were other farang that weren't wearing yellow there too. I'm just glad I didn't wear red, because that is the color of the protest group against the King. Everyone gathers in the center of a huge field and has yellow candles. You light them around 7:10 and wait until 7:13 where everyone  raises their candle up into the sky, sings the King's song and fireworks are lit for the the King. People also light floating lanterns too in honor of the King. It was so amazing to see so many people, so many people all gather for the love of one man. Just one man. They love, honor and respect their King so much. The King, or at the least the idea of the King, brings so many people together and that is so powerful to witness.

Besides the Thai holidays. It's been a struggle to get through these past few weeks. Every mall or busy area will have some sort of "Christmas" decoration. The Christmas decorations remind me of those you would find in a nursing home or sold at a gas station. Some of the displaces are huge and look expensive but aren't what any westerner would call pretty....
But the best way to celebrate these holidays I find, is to spent them with other exchange students. Not only do they know what you're going through but together you can figure out the best unconventional ways to celebrate.

Book: Page 40 or so of Childhood's End, so far it's good. A lot of Sci-fy but I like it.
Thai: loo ku gai...........................................................................................shuttlecock