Sterotypes

There are a lot of stereotypes about farangs in Thailand. Thailand put Americans and Europeans together. Actually they put anyone not from Thailand in one group. But that’s beside the point. And I sort of wonder what stereotypical things I do as an American.

My first host dad noticed how I read a lot. And later mentioned how he always sees foreigners reading books, especially on public transportation.

I haven’t seen any foreigners reading on transportation.

Until yesterday, that is.

I have spent the last five days in the monkey filled town of Lopburi. It was a vacation away from my current vacation from school. I spent it swimming in lakes under a sunset by the moments, playing with monkeys at the temple, eating corndog balls at the King Narai festival, drinking smoothies at Noom’s, sleeping with Meow the cat and creating funny stories with my exchange buds.

So yesterday when it was time to come back home to the city, Sophie and I were going to take the train at 12:30, but since Thailand is never on time, our train was delayed an hour. So Sophie took a van back, I gave Sophie my sweater to take with her because van air conditioning is like the tundra winds on crack. I decided to wait with my friend Lydia (Rhode Island) until the train came. We took turns reading from this silly book of short stories about animals as we sat by some old temple ruins. To be specific we read a story about a particularly sassy fly who eats vomit, and another one about a motherless circus bear. Yeah the book was a little strange.

So I get on the train. And the train is so small, too small. Only about three or four cars and there were so many people that many had to stand- including me. Luckily this was the rapid train so it only stopped every half hour or so. I stood for the first two hours which wasn’t a big deal- I’ve done that so many times before on the bus.

So I’m standing on the train, leaning against a pole, reading a story about a mediatating raven, when these two old ladies over me a seat. Because that’s what old ladies do on trains and buses in Thailand. And so I squeeze myself between this two frail ladies and continue reading. I start speaking to them in Thai and they say “Put Thai die gang mak!”, which literally translates to “Speak Thai can clever very.” And that’s just what old Thai ladies say on trains and buses.

The lady on my right looked like one from an animated film. Ya know the old Gammy who is hunched over, has a sassy mouth and is the tiniest thing ever. Yup, I sat next to one of those.

The lady on my right was kind and spoke really fast and quietly. And since we were sitting on an open train car- I could not understand a word she said. And so I did what all farangs do- smile and nod.

And one point, the lady sitting to my right asked me if these two other foreigners on the train were my parents. I explained that they weren’t my parents and that I came to Thailand on my own.

The couple in question looked like they could have been my parents, I guess. They were both tall, they lady had blondish brown hair like me and they also were speaking in English.

They were also both reading novels.

And I thought to myself. Oooooooooohhhh, that’s how these stereotypes start.

Book: Read and finished Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk by David Sedaris, which was a bit strange but cute. Now I’m on page 151 of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and so far love it. It’s strange though because this is the third book this read that I've read that was originally published in Swedish.

Thai: nung……………………...sit

2/15/13

Today was my last day at school. I will go back sometime around mid May for the new school year.
It was a good day.
I ate my regular PBOT, had a doughnut (it was one of my friends' birthday), studied a little Thai, studied a little Tagalog, finished my art project, and gave the teachers that were leaving the school a letter I wrote to thank them.
I also got locked outside of the art room for a half hour, my Thai teacher had a meeting and couldn't teach me Thai, a Thai teacher told me that I have a big American accent, and my Tagalog teacher told me that he finally had a real, normal conversation in Thai where he understood everything for the first time. He's lived here ten years.
Just another average day.
I finished it up laughing with Sophie and Saeko over our ridiculous Exchange Student eating habits.

Sometimes I've had a hard time going to my school. There are some weeks where I just wanted to come home crying but then this past month has been really good.

Here's the problem. I'm not a very good 'leaver'. Even if I hate a place, even if I feel miserable being there, when I leave it, it turns into the best, most magical place ever. Backwards, I know. I don't think its a great quality but I can't seem to get rid of that characteristic and honestly I don't think I want to. I think it's one of those imperfections that makes me, me.
But luckily I don't have to leave just yet. I have five more months to get even more nostalgic.

Book: Finished Footnotes by Tommy Tune and it was really interesting and a delight to read! I think I was a dancer in a previously life, or at least I pretend to be, so it was fun to read about his time on stage.
Thai: Khon Diow......................................................................by myself, alone

Pig

I have been learning Chinese at school. I love my Chinese classes- but more on that later.
Today I was reviewing food.
My teacher taught me the word pig.
So she asked me:
Ni shi zhu ma?
But I thought she asked:
Ni chi zhu ma?
So I stupidly responded:
Wo shi zhu.
And then she started laughing at me.

So, she asked me if I was a pig.
I thought she asked if I ate pig.
I said I was a pig.

Lost in translation, yet again.
I laugh at myself as well.

Book: tommy tune page 159- an autobiography which is surprisingly good!
Thai: mow.......... Pig

English

As one might have noticed by my past few blog entries, that my English speaking and writing skills are deteriorating. Unfortunately.
I was warned about this before I came to Thailand, but it didn't make much sense to me at the time. Now it does though. Now I understand this very well.
See what happens is that everyone is speaking broken English to you, and therefore you speak broken English back to them so they can understand you. And so sometimes I might go a couple days speaking a mixture of broken Thai and broken English.
This has been going on for the past 6 months.
I think it's pretty safe to say that I am terrible at speaking English.
ALTHOUGH
I now understand English better. A lot of times people will ask me "Is this right?" or "Why is it this way and not that way?" about English. Something I've never been asked and don't really have an answer. At first I really had to think about how to explain why English grammar is the way it is, but I find that I'm actually getting a better idea of the language that I speak. Yeah, I learned grammar at school and have taken English classes but they don't teach grammar the way you would learn it if it was your second language.I'm glad I get to learn about my own language because people often don't think about what language they speak, they just speak it.
And this has brought me to the conclusion that I hate speaking English.
I think English is a beautiful language and I'm very lucky that I know it so well BUT I did not choose to speak it. Everyday I am talking with people for are bilingual or multilingual and yet I can only speak English fluently. Yeah I can speak a little Thai, a little Spanish, a tiny bit Chinese, a bit German and a bit French but I so wish that I could speak these languages fluently or at least conversationally.
And so one day, I hope that I won't need English in my everyday life to function.
It's hard for me to explain exactly why I don't want to speak English but I think it's easier to say that I want to learn other languages.
So I'll start with Thai (obviously), and hopefully my Spanish will improve when I get home because I'm going to try to get my house to only speak in Spanish (they don't know this yet (sorry in advance mom but I guess you'll also be learning Spanish)), Sophie is teaching me a German word a day, my French is improving (I can read it fine but I can't seem to pronounce anything correctly) and I feel like in my Chinese classes I am always making progress.
It'll be tough but I know I can do anything- heck I've made it through six months in Thailand!
Also don't worry my blogs will continue to be in English.

Book: I stopped Adventure of State because I just couldn't stand reading it anymore. But Sophie lent me Eat Pray Love and I just finished it today! It was so amazing and beautifully well written. I definitely think its worth a read!
Thai: Go shower, bathe, etc.,................................am nom

Friends

Exchange is like being born again. You're in a new family, a new culture, you have no friends and you can't speak. Luckily you can feed yourself though. And the hardest thing about exchange for me is friends.
I left the friends I've known forever.
I've come to a new place knowing no one.
I've made amazing friends instantly.
And I will have to leave them at the end of the year, and might not see them for years.
To come back to friends that may have moved on without me or that I've possibly moved on without them.
It's a terrible cycle that may cause emotional trauma and sometimes I think, WHY THE HELL I AM PUTTING MYSELF THROUGH THIS?!

And then I remember why.
It's because these friends I've made, are so incredibly awesome. And because they're awesome, I know that we will be lifelong friends.

And so now I will start a series of blogs about my friends. Because I owe my awesome exchange year all to them.

Book: Page 49 of Adventure of State
Thai: best friend.........................................poo-ang zee

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