Thanksgiving in Thailand....

Lots to tell, lots to tell...should I be apologizing in advance for the length of my emails? No, I guess not-it's not like you have to read all of it if I don't hold your attention, I'm not going to know the difference, plus I'm totally prematurely ejaculating all of my good stories now via email when they would be so much better at home in person, so maybe it's better if you don't read all of these emails and then you won't have to go to the trouble of pretending to be interested when I repeat everything six or seven times at home like a little old man.

Oh I'm sorry, did I offend you with my usage of the term ejaculate? Little known fun-fact, brought to you by your favorite expatriate pervert (which will be a larger theme of this email...I'd like to blame dear Mom-Mom Helen, my father's mother, for that subscription to Cosmo she got me when i was 11, not only setting the wheels in motion for an inescapable future life of dirty thoughts but also guaranteeing my identity back then as the girl that gave sex vocab lessons to all my friends on the playground).... The term ejaculate, in Victorian language, means something like to give voice to a thought, a verbal pondering, if you will.... I remember junior year of high school, the word ejaculate was on the first page of Wuthering Heights, one of my favorite books of all time, and it grabbed my interest because whoaa I didn't think we would be reading books like that in honors English. Turns out we weren't-the word has another meaning....but I still like to believe the Victorians were intentionally using double meanings to express their deep-rooted sexual frustration...all those layers of clothing, how could they not be jonesing to get naked every second?

Okay so I guess that's where I'll start. The monks. Many of you are probably loosely familiar with the image of a monk-bald, orange cloak, down with the chanting, lives in a monastery. They are so common here, it's like pigeons in New York City. Prior to my arrival, in my limited knowledge of Buddhist culture, I thought that ALL monks were the real-deal devout, the original followers of the Buddha, the last of the people alive today truly able to make a catch-all comfort sacrifice, that swear off all earthly attachments, comforts, etc. Not quite. Just like there are twisted Catholic priests, so too are there corrupt monks. Two times that I've ridden the van to Bangkok, there has been a monk sitting in the seat in front of me chatting away like he's Joan Riverson on a cell phone. A CELL PHONE?! What would the Buddha think?

A major rule here is that women are not supposed to ever come into physical contact with monks...not supposed to touch them, not supposed to hand anything to them, supposed to give our seat up for them on a bus or subway if it's crowded. Wellll guess what, if he gets to bend the rules, so do I. During the last van ride, in my annoyance with the whole facade of a life devoid of material possessions, it took every shred of my restraint not to ever so gently touch the monk on the shoulder. I'm lying, there was no restraint, it was only my fear of the consequences, I totally would have done it if there were no witnesses. Don't misunderstand me, Idon't find any nobility in grand declarations of sacrifice, i can understand the logic in having a cell phone...but i do take issue with pretense, especially when i know how the monk-life appears to the rest of the world. While its doubtless that some monks really do live and die by the cloak, turns out some of them are also human. The most recent goal that I've added to to the list of things i have to do before i leave here...is lift up the cloak of a monk on the street to see if he's wearing underwear or easy-breezin. I just have to know..and then I have to run. I'll keep you posted.

The problem that i have with emailing you fine folks is also a problem that i sometimes have in my relationship with running. If i go too long without doing it, i get neurotic and i start putting the pressure on the next run to be this Homerian epic of a journey to make up for my absence, when in reality i should stop inventing rules for myself and just chill out...so because i havent written in a little while, i feel like this needs to be the new york marathon of catch-up emails but it's hard to know exactly what to tell you about. i could write you all an email every single day and still leave out what i feel are important details of the experience itself, so rest assured that there will be many a thailand story-telling session once i get home. Youll all actually probably stop returning my calls. Its fine, i know where you live...

Okay so speaking of running...i have amassed quite a running crowd at Nong Pan Park. I run there in the afternoons Monday through Thursday. We'll file this one under "Changes Thailand is forcing upon me."After i graduated high school and stopped running competitively, it became a solo activity. ive never really cared for running partners because again with the neuroses-i feel like i cant go my own pace, im either running too fast because i think i have something to prove or too slow so as not to seem rude, and dont even get me started on people that like to chat. Cardiovascular activity is not for conversation! If you can "chat," youre not running fast enough! And if YOU can chat AND i CANT, then that means youre in better shape than i am and i hate you! So my general stance on running=silent me activity. Well, not so much here in the land of Thai, where the population does not pick up on cues, subtle or otherwise, so i have no choice but to roll with it. And by roll with it i mean run with it. And by it, i mean the crowd of 3 or 4 middle-aged Thai men (one of whom is the phys. ed teacher at my school and speaks only one English phrase to me-STRONG LEGSSSSS) that wait for me to get to the park everyday so we can run together.

The first day that i realized they were waiting for me, it annoyed me a little but once the endorphins kicked in and i looked around me at what was happening, i could feel the laughter rising up in my chest. Only in Thailand. Today was my first day at the park since last Wednesday, and you know what? My heart was actually really happy to see those crazy men. Ohhh Thailand you are making me soft.

Okay now let me counter that idea of my softness. I think ive written to you before about the biggest value of the Thai culture...the idea of "saving face," never getting upset or losing your cool in a situation. I cant remember the last time i heard someone yell or saw someone get angry. Its actually really refreshing to be so removed from negativity...but not a transition ive been able to make entirely. A few nights ago, liz and i were watching some american show she had downloaded on her itunes, and one of the characters got really upset over something, and without any prior conversation, she just shook her head and smiled and said, "Ahhh i love people who lose face." Ahhh yes me too, almost as much as I love new friends who can read my mind. So I've been here for about six weeks, and i have lost face in public three times...three completely justifiable times. Okay maybe two justifiable and one questionable-decide for yourselves.

1) Two weekends ago, i went to this gorgeous national park called Khao Yai...there is a picture attached of me holding a scorpion. How did that scorpion come to be a part of the adventure? Okay this is another perverted insight but spare me, this level of vulgarity exists in each one of you and you love me because i bring it out. So we travelled through the jungle in a group of about six, and we had this fantastic energetic Thai Rambo as our guide. You could tell that he wanted his life to be half devoted to nature and half devoted to performance...this was how he handled the excursion and it was great. At one point, he dropped to the ground, searched for a stick, and began probing this hole in the dirt. He did this for about ten minutes, becoming increasingly frustrated and refusing to answer any questions about what he was looking for. Finally, he threw the stick away and said, Forget it, we find new hole. After i admonished myself (again with the Cosmo upbringing) for drawing too close of a parallel between him searching this hole for some mystery creature and the stereotype of the man searching for the elusive female g-spot, the first thought that my brain registered was, Typical. Blame the hole. Maybe YOU just weren't doing it right, Rambo.

Later, however, he evidently did do it right, and coaxed a scorpion out of the ground...and I volunteered to hold it. I made a deal with myself thatI would do (with the exception of prostitutes) absolutely everything that i could do while i was here, so i can go ahead and cross scorpion contact off the list. Ohh right so losing face....While the trek through the jungle was pretty solitary, the end of the journey brought us to a waterfall that was really crowded, set up as a tourist attraction, with a hundred or a hundred and fifty steps leading down to the base of the falls. In life, i like to do things as quickly as i can-run, walk, read, speak....but when it comes to steps, im an old lady, and i am unashamed of this.

So there are two lanes oftraffic on this unquestionably unsafe shoddy superflight of stairs, and i am taking my sweet time. This little 9 or 10 year old Thai douchebag behind me, however, NEEDED to see this waterfall before me, and had no qualms about pushing through or past me, bumping into my legs a few times. YOU CANT PASS SOMEONE ON A TWO LANE TRAFFIC FLIGHT OF STEPS, PARTICULARLY NOT ON THE DESCENT. My personal safety trumps my commitment to cultural assimilation, so after getting jostled by this kid for the third time, i turned around and said (with a volume i intended to account for any language barrier) "STOP PUSHING ME, IM NOT KIDDING, JUST STOP." Cue horrified stares from Thai audience... cue the replacement of my guilt with indifference when this kid whipped out a bucket of KFC to munch on while he enjoyed the majesty of the waterfall. I am not making this up. We were in the middle of nowhere, i dont know where this kid could have procured fried chicken...a deal with the devil (and you know who that is) is the only reasonable possibility-had i not realigned myself to a more Thai state of mind, he may have ruined my day. As it stands, he is still on my list of people to kick in the face if ever im granted three face-kicking wishes.

2) Last weekend, before travelling to a beach town called Hua Hin, i stayed with Liz in Monkeytown for a night. (I hope when you imagine this place now, you get that old school disco song Funkytown stuck in your head like i do-please replace the lyrical destination with Monkeytown and thennn commence giggling-jul, do you remember rollerskating in your basement on wisteria to this song?!) So one ofthe Thai snacks that i have absolutely fallen in love with (although i cant watch them prepare it because it involves bare fingers in this disgusting goop) is coconut meat, dipped in some kind of sugar flour paste, and then wrapped in a banana leaf and cooked on a grill over hot coals. It is positively delicious, and the vendors sell it to you in bunches of 6 or 10-the banana leaves themselves are long, and the meat is just in the middle, so unwrapping it is a bit of a process...confectionary christmas everytime i indulge.

Anyway, im really protective of the food for which i feel great affection, so i was walking down the street with liz to my left and my bundle of banana leaf yum to my right, when this giant monkey bounded down the mountain and tried to pull one of the banana leaves out of my hand. My digestive maternal instincts kicked in, and I recoiled from his grubby little simian claw. I brandished the leaf as a weapon, pulled back, and hit the monkey in the head while yelling,"NO! BAD!" He ran away, and Liz and i walked in silence for a minute before she fell into hysterics, saying, "Dude, you just hit a monkeywith a banana leaf and yelled at it like it was going to understand you." Please dont forward my confession to PETA-this was not one of my finer moments...but the coconut meat made it into my stomach unscathed and tasted like an evolutionary victory.

3) This past weekend, Liz and I took the train from Monkeytown to HuaHin (picture of us at our guesthouse attached)...the train ride was supposed to be an hour, so we figured, eh, we'll ride third class, no big deal-it was a choice between 13 baht for third class or 310 baht for first class. One hour, how bad could it be, right? We'll file this one under "You should have known better." The train pulled up,and everyone that had been waiting started sprinting to the car...aside from the runners, this was the most speed I had ever seen Thai people exhibit. Liz looked at me and said, We're probably not going to get a seat....understatement.

We get onto the train and manage to shuffle through the door, only to find ourselves standing in the aisle (there were seats on either side but not an empty one to be found)...Take a moment to really visualize this. Imagine a subway train fifty years ago, with no handrails or poles to hold onto, so that if you are unfortunate enough to be ass-out of a seat, everytime the train starts or stops (and this happened about thirty times, bringing us to our final destination two hours later) you are lurched forward and then back in a crowd of people like a nightmare moshpit in a concert you cant escape. Oh but don't worry, the train itself was temperature controlled...the windows were open and overhead, rusty fans threatening to fall down and decapitate me circulated air that smelled like pork. So i took a few deep breaths, channeled my inner ability to roll with it, and braced myself the best that i could. It got better. For the duration of the death ride, food vendors shoved their way up and down the aisle, selling things like meat on a stick ,soda, water, cookies, pad thai...you probably think I'm kidding. I thought it was a joke. I was expecting Ashton Kutcher to jump out of the bathroom (which i was lucky to be approximately two feet away from-YES!!) and tell me that i was being punked. Nope..this is third class in Thailand.

So when did i lose face? Nestled behind me were two teenage boys...apparently the obnoxiousness of this age demographic is universal. I wanted to kill them. They kept pushing up against me and blaming it on the motion of the train, looking innocent when i gave them dirty looks. After the third assault, I snapped. I turned around and, again with the loud voice, said, "IF YOU TOUCH ME AGAIN, WE'RE GOING TO HAVE A PROBLEM. STOP. JUST STOP!" Message received: crazy American girl close to the edge. They didnt touch me again for the rest of the ride. I may have lost face but i saved my corporal dignity.

This past Sunday, I decided to spend some time in Bangkok by myself. Liz wanted to get a massage…and you all know how I feel about Thai massage…so I decided to take myself on a little movie date. Sidenote, Mis fun-fact-I will forever be slightly obsessed with Buffy the Vampire Slayer. A few times a month, I have Buffy dreams, where I'm, well, you know, Buffy, and I'm fighting evil while wearing phenomenal shoes. Are any of you keyed in to the Twilight phenomenon? A lot of my students are reading these books in Thai…a series of four, I think, written over the last few months and released in America, but experiencing huge popularity (I'm not sure why, the writing is average at best, but the story…vampire and mortal love, ohhh be still my heart) so they've been translated into other languages. So Twilight the movie was playing (in ENGLISH!) at this gorgeous movie theater in Bangkok…I get there and, acknowledging the momentous occasion that was my first date with myself, I decided to splurge on the giant bucket of popcorn-you know, the one you get if you're on a date with someone morbidly obese.

I was the first one in the theater…by myself…so I set my backpack on the chair next to me like I was waiting for someone and commenced munching on the popcorn. (In my own defense, it was kettle-corn, the flavor for which I have a huge soft spot…the soft spot now being my abs, which are currently covered with a blanket of unused kettle corn calories). Twenty minutes into the movie (which was as awful as I expected but totally satisfied the twisted high school movie/vampire loving side of me), I realized that my knuckles were scraping the bottom of the bucket. Ohhh gluttony, you are the sweetest sin indeed. But I paid the price. I spent most of the night awake with the worst stomach-ache I can remember ever having. I'll go ahead and spell out the irony that is my life. I came to Thailand convinced that the absence of American standards for food preparation meant I would immediately contract parasites or some sort of ailment that would keep me doubled over in pain or unable to leave the toilet for days. Instead, it was my overindulgence in AMERICAN FOOD while I watched an AMERICAN MOVIE that made me sick. Well done, Ajarn Melissa. Well done.

On that note, I am now going to go teach my favorite class-M5-the equivalent of high school juniors in America. Right now, we're working on popular fairy tales and the idea of morals/lessons. I taught them all performance vocabulary (skit, scene, dialogue, costume, narrator, character) and this week, in groups, they're putting together their own interpretations of Disney fairy tales. It should be hilarious. Teaching is the best part of my life here, hands down, but I hope you take my accounts of the cultural differences/difficulties for their entertainment value and not as indications of misery, because I feel more like myself than I ever thought I would or could so far from home. It's just a lot funnier to write/read about these things than try to express the meaningful ways that this experience is changing me and my outlook on life, although those moments are a bigger part of my time here than all the little funny somethings I include in these emails. I'll try to work a little more sunshine into future messages.

I hope you all ate way too much on Thanksgiving. Liz and I celebrated with fried rice, bamboo shoots, and a bottle of Chang, our beer of choice. Do I even need to say it…okay yeah I'll say it… In the midst of this holiday season of gratitude and love, I hope you all know how grateful I am for each and every one of you. Email me some life updates of your own please-don't assume that I'm so cool and cultured and busy and Orient-oriented that nothing you could have to say could compare…just the opposite—send me some face-losing stories, give me some gossip, I can only write in my journal and read so many books for so long before I start to feel a little too deep and insightful. Keep me grounded please-love and miss you!

My dirty little mistress...

Sawadee kaaaaa!



Life observation number 65748754: Adjusting to life in a new place is a lot like getting into a relationship. A bit of imaginary dialogue for you to illustrate my point...


Thailand: Oh baby baby, it was love at first sight for me-why can't you love me the same way?

Me: Well, Thailand, I've been hurt before...really bad break-up with New York City. I'm willing to try, but deep down, I'm just not sure I'm ready.

Thailand: You have to learn to trust me...I promise, baby, every mosquito that bites you is NOT carrying malaria, every new food that you try from my ambigously hygienic street vendors is NOT harboring some incurable life-sucking parasite...if you want this to work, you have to give me a chance.


English major moment for you...sorry to those of you rolling your eyes, but the observation stands. I really did come here wanting to fall in love with the place, to make memories so cool and special that 80 years from now, I'll be giggling and poking my legions ofgrandchildren with my sweet emerald cane saying things like,"Woooheeee see this scar on my leg? Grandma Daffodil got this riding a motorbike through the streets of Petchaburri, trying to outrun a band of wild monkeys!" And at the sight of the first cockroach, I lost that feeling, I retreated, I put up my boundaries, deciding to keep this place at arm's length...but alas, this charming country has broken down my defenses and weaseled its way into my heart. If getting used to life in Thailand is like getting into a relationship,I'm pretty sure yesterday would have been our first kiss.


Yesterday was my first Thai festival...Loy Krathong. Held on a full moon in November every year, the festival is to honor the goddess of the river, and so everyone in school makes a krathong, plus people sell them on the streets-I made my own (with the help of a student...the art of banana leaf origami is going to take some work), and at the end of the school day, two students also gave me gorgeous krathongs they had made for me-really sweet moment ...a krathong is a little float made of banana leaves, flowers, candles, and joss sticks (incense), and you take your krathong to the river and light the candle and incense...The idea behind the krathong being placed in the river is that as it floats away, it takes with it your sorrow, and in exchange for the offering, the goddess grants you a wish. They're very big on wishing in this country-every day feels like my birthday.


So yesterday evening, my coordinator, Miss Sompit picked up Emily and me and took us to Nong Pan Park, the park where I run everyday, that had been converted into the festival grounds. Carnival rides, crazy amounts of food, a Miss Loy Krathong beauty pageant...it was quite a sight-it was also the first formal event in the community that allowed me to see my students outside of their school uniform, in regular clothes, and vice versa, and it was awesome.


There is a group of five or six boys in one of my classes that are a little bit obnoxious but in that lovable way...probably the way mos tof Jim's teachers felt about him in high school, actually, so even though sometimes they make me mad in class, their English is really good and I think they're hilarious, so I loved hanging out with them...they and Miss Sompit got a whole bunch of food for our table,and I had myself the Thailand equivalent of a Thanksgiving meal, throwing my intestinal caution to the wind, making a little wish to the goddess to protect my digestive tract, and in I dug...and here we are twelve hours later...and I'm okay!


Some of the highlights of my meal....crab-fried rice with vegetables, som tam (spicy shredded papaya, cabbage and peanut salad, veryyy good), crepes with vanilla, chocolate, and taro (taro is a root that is used a lot of different ways here, interesting dessert flavor), green curried fish balls with eggplant, Thai pancakes (little hamburger bun looking things made with coconut milk, egg batter, and scallions, would remind you of scallion pancakes from Cape Orient ifyou've ever had the pleasure...), and fruit smoothies to drink. A festival feast, for sure, and I loved every minute of it.


Another Wednesday highlight came in the form of my first club meeting. All the teachers have "clubs" here, every Wednesday, last period. The first week of school, students learn what club each teacher is doing and they choose the one they want to join... (someone does a stop global warming club, someone else does a board game club, Miss Sompit does an American movie club, you get the idea)...the point is to have one fun period where the students learn about something new and hang-out with a teacher in an informal-ish way. So I decided to do music and poetry, and this week was our first official meeting...and it....was....AWESOME.


The English level of the kids that signed up for my club is amazing, I think we are going to have a really good time together..I didn't plan anything too structured for the first meeting because I wanted to get an idea of what the kids wanted from me, so I copied one poem for them (Jack Prelutsky, Be Glad Your Nose is On Your Face...google this, it's funny) and two songs (The Beatles, Oh-bla-di and The Beach Boys, Don't Worry Baby)-we read the poem together, talked about some vocab, and they seemed to enjoy it, but by the end, we had all decided to just focus on music-okay so sidenote, despite my significant lack of vocal grace, singing is one of my favorite things in life-some of my best high school memories are those early license days, driving around with friends, blasting music, singing until our ears were ringing and our lungs were on fire...these Thai kids absolutely LOVE to sing-they are auditorily shameless on a level to which I can TOTALLY relate...it took them twenty seconds to feel warmed up to me and then they were singing off the lyrics sheet, so I joined in and we had a very kumbayaa campfire moment-the whole experience warmed my heart in a way that i didnt think Thailand could do. I'm softening.


So for the rest of the time that we have our club meetings, I think we will try to do two genres of music a month...rock, pop, punk, country, hip-hop, R&B, techno, whatever else comes up...they seemed to love this idea, they know most of the big names in music history, and I encouraged them to bring in Thai music every week too, so I can learn as well as teach. The best thing about using music as a bridge between languages is the fact that melody, tempo, rhythm all work together to evoke meaning, so even if you cannot understand lyrics perfectly, you can still develop a feeling from a song...this is something I think we will focus on every week. Suggestions for music are always welcome from you guys!!! Feel free to email me songs, Iwould love your input. This is my first little taste of getting to teach something I truly love and find interesting (because let me tell you...teaching English grammar, not so much) and I can already tellt hat it is going to be a great experience.


So that's my Thailand life so far. Maybe by next week, we will have used the l-word. As always, I am thinking of and missing each of you-Hope your lives are better than good.

More life updates via photos..

Thanks to me, you fools aren't going to forget how devastatingly good-looking I am.

A few pictures for your viewing pleasure from Loy Krathong!

One is my coordinator and I sitting at our table at the festival...she is the craziest driver I've ever met, and when I told her that, she giggled like she thought it was a compliment, so either she is like me and prides herself on her terror-inducing wheel maneuvers or she had no idea what I was saying...she's good people though.

Another is me with the group of boys that I play basketball with at the park sometimes after I run...my moves are getting pretty sweet-I'll be dunking in no time. My favorite favorite is the boy in the yellow next to me, who talked to me about his girl problems at the festival while we were walking around looking for coconut ice cream-needless to say, I LOVE LOVE LOVE this aspect of being a teacher...when kids open up to me about their lives. I hope eventually most of my students get comfortable enough to do this.

Two of the others...one of the coolest festival features was the huge presence of these paper lanterns in the skies...mini hot-air balloon type deals that (here we are with wishes again, you fools all should have woken up in Thailand by now...) carry your wishes into the sky to be granted. With the full moon and a clear evening, these lanterns carrying people's wishes were truly a beautiful event.

Some of my favorite younger students! I don't know their Thai names, because kids here pick English words or easy Thai words as nicknames for their English teachers-the first two girls are Nan and Pair, and the other girl with just me is Eung (kind of a hard one to say, for an English speaker, it gets a little stuck in the back of my throat, but I'm working on it.) Some of the other more hilarious nicknames that my students have chosen are Gun (that shit would NOT fly in an American school), Atom, Dream, Ice, and Book1 and Book2 (they both reallly wanted to be book).

Another is me with the krathong that I made (with the heavy-handed help of a student.)

Close Encounters with the primate kingdom...

My problem before with emailing pictures/uploading the blog is that the internet connection at my school is incredibly slow and sometimes can't handle the whole picture thang, AND on top of that, the internet is only "supposed" to be plugged in from 11 to 2 so the kids don't skip class all day to play games online...but during those hours I am teaching and eating lunch. As this "rule" is super-inconvenient for me and my highly important task of keeping yall entertained slash making sure no one forgets about me, I have decided to take certain liberties, including but not limited to plugging the internet in when I have a free period and my lesson plans are done-I'm like an internet sentinel-no one's going to play games on my watch. So here we are-welcome to you reaping the benefits of my mutiny.

Here is something I'm slowly realizing about the Thai culture...(more insights to come at the end of the email, let's just get our feet wet for now). Okay so this is supposed to be the land of smiles, and yes, truth, these people are incredibly friendly and happy. They know the word on the global street about their culture where foreigners are concerned, however, and so they manipulate you with their reputation of amiability, like charging me twice as much for a bowl of noodles because I'm a foreigner and then smiling their way through my price argument, pretending not to know what I'm saying, or this whole internet rule thing. How can you argue with someone when you're on the wrong side of the language barrier and they are giving you the world's most earnest, good-natured grin? It really intimidated me at first.

Today I jumped on a train of thought that totally changed my attitude...a mental squaring of the shoulders, a posture correction, if you will. In contemplating the proximity of Thanksgiving, I started thinking..I'm a descendant of the Plymouth Rock freakshows-They took home the gold in the Manipulation Olympics, charming their way into the pants of the Native Americans (quite literally getting into their pants, bringing STDs to their population-sweet frat boy legacy-no offense, Jim), manipulating them out of their land and recipes, all the way to the dinner table. This year when you gobble your weight in turkey and sweet potatoes (and mom, you better put the sweet potatoes in front of my seat where they belong), please reflect on the fact that the reason I am cutting the corners on this internet rule is because of the Pilgrim example. If I catch any shit for being online, I'll come out swinging with my five years of orthodontia. It isn't like they're going to send me home.

This weekend I travelled to Phetchaburri, a town about four hours away from me where my orientation room-mate Liz is teaching English in a nursing college. Phetchaburri is one of the oldest towns in Thailand, situated between mountains, home to one of my favorite sights so far-The Temple on the Hill-an old temple built on top of a mountain, about an hour or two's hike (we did not explore it this weekend, more on why later). Prior to my encounter, my favorite Phetchaburri feature was the monkey population. Liz called me a few days ago to tell me that a monkey had tried to steal her purse while she was walking through town. This, of course, elicited in me not sympathy but pure excitement.

Mis, what's the deal with your primateo bsession? Glad you asked!

From the earliest I can remember until I was old enough to truly know the difference between plausible fact and fiction, my loving father had me convinced that I was not a human baby but a monkey that he and my mother "traded for a bunch of bananas and then shaved to look like a human." A Jungle Book christening. And yes, the quotes are appropriate for the sheer number of times that exact phrase was spoken in my childhood. When I misbehaved, he threatened to return me to the forest. Don't report him for child abuse, I still turned out okay, but in my heart of hearts, I have always felt connected to our closest evolutionary link. Further proof (and I am not making this shit up, ask to see my hand the next time we are together)-about two years ago,I was having a routine dermatologist check-up. The doc scanned my palms and motioned to the nurse to take a look...Nothing seemed out of the ordinary to me, until he compared my right palm to my left, and then my right palm to both of his.

"Do you see how you have one line that goes straight across your palm, horizontally? We typically only see this in people with Down's Syndrome... and in primates...It's called a simian crease." Google this for a laugh. Now, I obviously don't have Down's Syndrome, so what am I left to deduce? That particular dermatologist appointment set me back a ways in the whole fact/fiction discernment thing.

Anyway, this is significant because this weekend I got to test my bond with my jungle kin. Liz's warnings about the temperament of these monkeys (I believe she used the word terrifying) did nothing to dissuade me from my image of myself as the monkey whisperer. I was sure that by the end of the day, I would have them sitting on my shoulder and braiding my hair. I woke up feeling like it was Christmas morning. Setting her best judgment aside like only a real friend would do, Liz vowed to take pictures of my encounter and then take me to the hospital to get my rabies shots, as she maternally promised would be the outcome of my little charade. With deaf ears, I bought peanuts from the market and we walked to the mountain situated next to one of the main roads-the monkey hangout and the scene of the purse-snatching debacle. I spotted a few monkeys hanging out, and Icould feel the giddiness rising up from my Rainbows all the way to my monkey ears. I threw a peanut to one and he caught it!!! Just like a little person, he reached his hand up and caught it!!! I squealed with delight and did it again-then I found a mama with her baby HANGING AROUND HER BELLY!!! I was in heaven!....then a few more monkeys came, and I kept throwing my peanuts. Then I started to panic a little....which quickly progressed to a lot....terror, to use Liz's words. In a matter of 55 seconds, a huge swarm of monkeys had descended from the mountain and were not observing the food-chain rules of human intimidation. They advanced on me more quickly than I could toss the peanuts, and realizing that my peanut supply was not going to feed this horde, I threw the rest on the ground and ran for my life like a little monkey-girl with her tail between her legs. Liz was right.

I have attached a few pictures of the whole monkey shebang. Unfortunately, the threat of life-loss prevented my esteemed photographer from capturing the opposable thumb stampede, so use your imaginations but be sure it was even more frightening in real life. One picture is my initial monkey meeting...so promising. Another shows how patiently he waits for me to toss the peanut. The best picture is the one that tells the story...I tentatively throw the peanut, score, but look closely! You can see at least three other monkeys in the background plotting my corporal overthrow. The last picture was one that I managed to snag once our safety was no longer in question. Seeing this was probably the best moment of my entire weekend...Mom, when I get home, I think maybe you're going to have to try to carry me around like that for a few days. The mama and baby followed us a little farther than the rest of the pack, so I gave them some of my secret peanut stash.

I could write to you about the architecturally and historically amazing King's Beach House that I saw this weekend, or the only church in Thailand that we visited, but these monkeys were the best part and I'm not ashamed to admit it-I'll tell you all about the historically significant things when I get home.

This post's shoutout goes to the professorial love of my academic life, Dr. Helmling, who reminded me, in response to a little of my homesick email bitching and moaning, that the word "travel" shares a root with "travail," and that travel is SUPPOSED to be arduous. This is the professor that I most strongly credit with the improvement of my writing in college...interestingly enough, with similar words ofwisdom. "Writing is supposed to be hard. If it's not a pain in the ass then you're not doing it right." My favorite people in life are the ones who realize right away how well I respond to a little suck-it-up tough love. The scholarly advice that he bestowed that turned me into a better writer (and consequently, a more interesting/interested human being) is this...always look for the contrast. When you explain how things are alike, when you compare, you homogenize, you make them the same, and we get nothing from it. When you search for the contrast, you begin to develop an argument--it is that difference from which other people stand to gain something, whether agreement or disagreement-contrast is always the way to go. These words have been bouncing around in my mind these last few weeks in Thailand as I try to understand the differences between this culture and ours. This weekend illuminated one of the largest that I've found so far.

Liz and I had planned to go to the beach this weekend...Cha-am is a cute beach about an hour from her, easy bus-ride, very relaxing-we were just going to lay low for two days and I could not have been more psyched. Liz's living situation is a little different from mine, however, and I've gotta be honest...I'll take the roaches over what I encountered this weekend ANY DAY. Liz lives by herself on the campus of her college, in a dorm-room that we both call the Ritz because it is beautiful and has two beds (I am officially her weekend roommate)...so the other Thai teachers that live on campus have taken it upon themselves to look out for her. Sounds dreamy, right? Wrong.

She has not spent one day, one meal, one waking HOUR by herself since arriving in Phetchaburri. So when her teacher friends asked her what she was doing this weekend and she made the mistake of telling them, they usurped our plans and Thai-manipulated us into their own agenda, sweeping us up into a web of hospitality but in actuality, totally peeing all over our plans for relaxation. I'm not going to go into details about the weekend because I don't want to spend too much time bitching in these emails...it makes it seem like I'm not enjoying myself when in reality, I am truly beginning to feel okay here...but just like contrast is more interesting to explain, it is a lot easier to entertain with my complaints, I guess.

The key moment that I want to highlight came when the five of us were driving to the beach...I was pretty pumped to be away and heading to a location that would be both relaxing and comforting in a homey sort of way, and I tried to talk to P'Nook (one of the teachers) about it, saying that I was really excited for Cha-Am and then asking if she was. (Her English is great). She just kind of shrugged and giggled, not in a rude way at all, just matter of factly, and said, You are always excited? She was right. I am a person that feels excited on a daily basis. I get excited for meals, I get excited to run, I get excited to read emails from you people. I get excited to teach! Today on the ride home, I started thinking about how that sentence really captures the biggest contrast I've noticed between the Thai culture and me. They never seem passionate about anything.

Disclaimer here, I know that everything I'm saying radiates cultural bias, but I'm admitting that I'm aware of it...the mental clarity that all of my reflective moments have yielded have not come without the realization that the life I'm living sort of places me at the center of my own existence, but isn't that more or less how we all live? We make our judgments based on the experience we're having in our own head, so although what I'm saying right now may make me seem culturally insensitive or naive or too pro-American, I realize all of those things, but these thoughts still exist, and these emails are my (relatively) unfiltered way of explaining my experiences to you, so on we go.

Generally, the people I've met here seem incredibly content with their lives....but they never get excited about anything. Nothing causes them to raise their voice or squeal with excitement or shriek with laughter. It's like they're all cruising around in neutral. I know that this is a direct reflection of the Buddhist emphasis on moderation and emotional control...a major Thai value is the idea of a cool heart-never getting upset or raising your voice....but the corollary to never reacting to anything negative is that they don't really tune into responding to the positive either. I don't need to make a list of the things that are wrong with the American culture-everyone reading this is probably aware, it's almost a cliche these days to list our faults....our lives are cluttered with materialism, we work too much, money money money blah blah blah....and so yes, being here in Thailand is a refreshing break from all of that-It's nice to see people existing separate from those sort of concerns, not just existing but thriving...it's an awareness that I hope I carry with me everyday of my American life once I get home.

I am incredibly grateful, however, for the way in which our culture values passion and eschews moderation...moderately...though our attitudes toward moderation certainly breed more harm than good, I have benefited greatly from this perspective in the person I have grown to be. I love that I have the freedom to decide sometimes to step outside the limits...to eat too much or drink too much, go to bed too late, wake up too early....love so hard that it feels like I swung all the way around the swing-set and my insides are outside.....cry so hard over a movie or real life that my tear ducts dry up and my head hurts for hours. I've seen no evidence that people in Thailand do any of these things to such a degree. Written out, these conditions seem like extremes that no one should look forward to, much less love, but nothing else makes me feel so alive, so for all the responsibility you have had, America, in allowing me to feel good about occasionally crossing those lines of moderation, I thank you. I know that this argument wouldn't register with the population here, as you can't miss something you don't understand, can't recognize a contrast with which you cannot identify, and I am glad for the contentment of the people that I meet here, but for me? I don't want to cruise around on neutral and I don't want my heart to be cool. With that, I miss miss missssssss you guys and I am incredibly EXCITED to see you all again,so please keep your hearts WARM in my absence!

Life update via photos...

To make sure you dont forget what I look like, or you don't start to confuse me with the monkeys in the previous pics, some pictures for you and a little commentary for each...

-The Angelina Jolie-looking one-i'll post an explanation for this later, im copying and pasting this right from an email and it will take me a minute to describe-stay tuned

-the bird pic-this one is just for you jim, but ill explain it to the rest of you...some of the most meaningful advice jim ever gave me was,"Don't forget to look up, girl," and so here, in my Thailand life, I have made it a regular habit. As it happened, I looked up while visiting a temple about an hour away from here, and snapped a picture in the perfect instant that a bird had crossed the center of the scene. Little brother, i miss you. -

-pup pic-i took this while walking to the grocery store the other day, it was too much of a photo opp to pass up...these are some of the dogs i see hanging around my 'hood all the time-it looks like theybnwere waiting for me to capture them on film, so i did...they could also have been waiting there like that for me to perform role as the thai version of the creepy central park pigeon feeder lady, as i am steadily losing ten to twenty baht a day feeding the homeless dog population here. its funny, well not really funny but ironic...i rarely give money to homeless people but i dont think twice about giving these puppies a little treat, so i guess word is out on the canine street and ive accumulated a little following

-my lady love liz and i, this weekend, in cha-am beach, after we put her thai teacher lady friends to bed and went out on our own....we stopped at this gorgeous hotel (that i wish we had been staying in, but noooo, the thai ladies wanted to economize and we had to stay in another roach villa euphemized as a guest house) with a restaurant that had semi-outside seating right on the beach and we each had a beer and dessert....gross combination in theory but my fat cells were really jonesing for exercise-fried bananas, coconut ice cream, and chang beer, unbelievably appealing combination, second onlyto the pf changs banana spring rolls that we hold in such high regard-notice how my plate was long gone while liz was still working....dessert INHALATION, check....my appetite may be in temporary retirement but she comes out of hibernation given the chance

-liz and i woke up at 530 saturday morning to watch the sun rise over the beach-reason number 4575454654 why i love her, she is totally down to do nerd things like that....if im only going to be here for a few months, i want to see as many thai sunrises as i can, so this was my first one and it was beautiful-a little cloudy, which kind of subdued the whole dramatic effect of the sun's appearance, but still, overall, a great moment to have shared with a new friend...i took a million pictures, so ill let you see the slideshow when im home, but this one is my favorite for obvious reasons....ive said it before and ill say it again im sure, thailand has realllly tuned me in to my nerdy soft lovey side so i hope youre all prepared to be loved to death when i get back.

Losing the M-card...

Okay SO I think I finally have everyone on this list that wants toread about my life...if I'm just now adding you and you would like some update emails, email me back and let me know...it feels a little presumptuous flooding everyone's inbox with updates about my life whenI'm not sure how interested you are in the first place, so holler back and I'll catch you up...Amy, I owe you a special special email, I will write soon, how's little Melissa doing?

I would also like to give a very public shout-out to Diane Rogers, for the sweet-ass care package she sent me and for helping me break my personal record of home-baked chocolate chip cookie consumption. I opened the package in private at my desk at school and no, I did not offer any to anyone else. I did not even mention their existence because I did not want to share. No, this does not make me a bad person. If anyone was wondering if two dozen chocolate chip cookies can be consumed in less than a day, I am here to tell you with great authority that yes, it can be done.

So..highlights in my Thai life..…I did it. I had my first time and the morning after, I woke up feeling kind of weird…I was a little nervous beforehand and okay, I'll be honest-once it got started, Icouldn't wait for it to be over. Everyone said that I would love it, but after it was finished, I felt let down. For something that was supposed to rock both my mind and body, there were times I found myself so unfocused, unsatisfied, and uncomfortable that I laughed out loud. Icouldn't help but think, this is what I've heard so much about? Maybe my maiden voyage would have been better with a different captain….

I'm talking about my first Thai massage.

After my first week of teaching, and after the second day IN A ROW of a Thai bird bombing Avian flu droppings ON MY HEAD, I figured it was time to pop my professional massage cherry, and what better place to do that than the home of what some refer to as the greatest massage tradition of all time? Spending the weekend in Bangkok with some orientation friends, I decided to go for it.

Liz (orientation room mate slash the universe's flesh-and-blood apology to yours truly for all the unforgivable random room mate luck in the past) and I scoped a few different locales and decided on a no-name massage place down the street from our hostel, where 200 baht promised to get us an hour of rub-down delight. Seduced by the tranquil garden surrounding the outside of the building, a floral contrast to the Bangkok chaos crowding the rest of the street, we ditched our shoes at the door and slipped into some terry-cloth sandals. I prayed to the goddess of foot-fungus protection that the person in the sandals before me didn't have anything contagious and ahead we ventured.

Two pretty Thai girls led us to the large, quiet second floor, where taupe-covered mattresses lay on the hardwood, each little massage haven separated only by gauzy curtains. I was grateful that Liz would be right next to me, as the idea of putting my body in a stranger's hands, in a foreign country no less, was a little unnerving, probably in large part due to the suspicions instilled in me by the great Diane Rogers. I stripped down and donned the snazzy pajamas waiting for me on the mattress (giving them a quick sniff test to make sure they were clean...again, thanks Mom) and then began the first of a long series of awkward inner monologue questions. How should I be waiting for this girl when she came back to service me? Was it too forward if Iwas already laying down? Would I seem too eager? Would I too strongly resemble a deer in headlights if I was standing up? I settled for Indian-style, sitting down, but my anxiety only rose as I contemplated how long an hour would be. After an eternity of mental wandering, homegirl with the magic hands returned, and so began my first time...and my first fit of giggles.

Of my many issues in life, the one that (arguably) causes the most consistent discomfort is that I never grew out of that grade-school stage where inappropriate laughter overtakes you simply by virtue of its poor timing. My masseuse told me to lay down on my back, and the way that I felt reminded me so much of the feeling I get at the lady-doctor when he tells me to put my feet in the stirrups that I had to put my arm over my face and bite the inside of my wrist to get ahold of myself, and even then, it was a huge struggle. The next struggle was my debate over whether or not I was supposed to close my eyes. How was it possible that I had this many questions during an activity that most people find immensely relaxing? I am evidently a creature separate from the normal majority, but no one reading this finds that surprising I'm sure.

So she started with a foot-rub and veryyy veryyy slowly worked her way up my legs. I decided on closed eyes, as it was too creepy to watch a stranger, someone I knew I would never see again, someone whose name was a total mystery to me, rub each one of my muscles...and I'm not a prude, either-I like to think that I'm above-average in appreciation of the sensory pleasures of life, but maybe I'm too analytical to separate myself from the strangeness of the impersonal masseuse/massagee relationship.

Anyway, she neared the tops of my thighs and I thought with a quick flash of panic, I did NOT pay extra for her to go any farther, and THEN she pushed her hand really deeply into the space where my thigh meets my groin, and I became intensely aware of the blood flow speeding up or slowing down or something..I'm pretty sure there's an artery there, and I thought, Well, this is it-This is how they make their money-I'm going to pass out right now and she's going to steal the baht from my wallet and therein lies the manner in which Thai masseuses earn their living. I think I pissed her off when I foiled her plan...I remained conscious during this little artery chopping trick, conscious enough to reach up into my bag and slip my wallet under my back. Take that, sneaky opportunist!

After that she was a little rougher with me. She did the same thing with my arms, albeit in an expedited fashion, and thennn I guess the real show began. Like a monkey, she crawled around my legs and put them into some kind of pretzel bend, placing her foot in my crotch like I was a Twister Board and she had just landed on the most difficult spin. She flipped me over and worked out my back, using my arms as leverage to twist my whole body. Interesting but again, not the coolest feeling my body has ever had and not relaxing in the slightest. By the time it was over, I was itching to leave...not literally itching, again, pretty sure the pajamas were clean, but I had had enough to know that professional massages are just not for me. I could have spent those two-hundred baht on a quality meal and walked away with a much happier bodily sensation. Live and learn.

All things considered, I'm glad I did it. Now, if I'm ever at a party surrounded by pretentious people discussing the fine art of Thai massage, I can chime in that I've had one, and that I got way more out of riding an elephant. And call me old-fashioned, but my new life rule is, no one puts their hands all over my body (or their foot in my crotch) unless there's a good chance I'll get taken out to dinner afterward.

On that note, I have to go get ready to teach, but I miss miss miss each one of you...thanks for everyone that has emailed me to see how my life is going, your emails make my days, and if you haven't emailed me yet, guess what, you've got one week or you're getting crossed off the souvenir list. Amy, you're exempt because you're carrying my child. I LOVE YOU GUYS!

First Impressions...

So I have been here in Phanom Sarakham for five days, long enough to establish a routine that I can tell you about here. I wake up every morning between 5:30 and 6:00...I do some crunches, yoga, all that good soul-cleansing jazz-mentally prepare myself for the day-and then I eat a bowl of cereal and a piece of fruit. I get dressed, brush my teef, and head out the door for the trek that is my walk to school. (Sidenote-one of the perks of teaching in a tropical country is that no one expects me to look that good-I ask you to approach the pictures I show you with the same reduced judgment..I'm clean and all, and my clothes are nice, but I don't worry about makeup or anything intense with my hair because the heat and humidity=massive perspiration, which makes any kind of effort in that regard pretty pointless, which is sweeeet by me).


The walk to my school takes about thirty minutes, and they are the most eventful thirty minutes that a pedestrian could ever hope to have. You know in the movie Dodgeball where Patches O'Houlihan makes the guys run in and out of traffic and he says,"If you can dodge a car, you can dodge a ball?" Well, by those standards, I will be an Olympic level dodgeball competitor by the time my stint in this great country comes to a close. The preferred form of transportation here is motorbike (even my crazy Thai coordinator has one, and yes, I have ridden on the back ONCE all the while praying to whatever being is in charge of keeping people safe on motorbikes that if I could just live through that experience I would never do it again-i escaped with a burn on my leg and considered myself lucky...) Cars also flood the street..so my walk to school takes place down the main road of our town....there are no lanes and traffic goes in both directions...it is a relatively undeveloped street, so potholes and cracks abound, and if I were to take a break from paying extreme attention like i sometimes do in my american life, i would certainly end up roadkill. This is not even the most interesting element of the journey.


Amid all the engine chaos, this street is home to a huge market set up every morning from 4 am til about 9am. Every kind of fruit and vegetable is set up for sale, in addition to every kind of seafood and meat from all parts of every kind of animal a carnivore could think to ingest. I can't wait to show you the pictures I've taken of the stand with the two giant pigs' heads for sale every morning. I'm not sure the FDA would approve. I know that i am slowly adjusting, however, because the first morning or two that I smelled the variety of smells i was nauseated but now they are starting to smell a little more appealing. Despite the pandemonium around me, the thirty minute walk is a great way to start my day...by the time I get to school, I am wide awake and ready to kick ass, and teaching English to these kids requires a high level of kickass.


I will be honest...this morning was a bit of a breakdown morning for me. The adjustment to life in a country like this one was not as easy as little miss sunshine over here thought it would be...I was in such a happy, relaxed, comfortable place at home before i left, and i just assumed that the mood would follow me around the world. That was not the case...but the point of being happy, when you are, isnt just to bask in the glow of your yellow chi or whatever, but to remember what it took to get to that point, because im finding that happiness doesnt always come easy-if it did, maybe life wouldnt be so rewarding...sometimes it's work to get to the happy place, and it means deliberately paying attention to the right things and tuning out the rest, so i am moving toward there steadily.


I have been feeling really homesick, combined with the reality of living standards in a non-western, tropical country (the MISfit this morning was caused by waking up and putting my foot down next to a cockroach the size of a baseball glove...i was ready to pack my shit up and sleep at the airport in bangkok until i could get a flight home...but that would have been a MIStake....god the negative possibilities with my name are endless) so what that makes for is a previously unprecedented necessity for rolling with it, and I've always prided myself on my ability to do just that, so here we go, this is me rolling with it.


This morning after i calmed down, i told myself that i would come to school and really evaluate the way that I felt all day, to see which i would hate more...myself for leaving now or everyday of the next four months living in a roach villa. Today I realized ...I absolutely love the shit out of teaching. It helps that the students have taken a liking to me, definitely, but today was especially great. So this week, all of my classes have mostly been just me getting to know the kids. The school is a public school but it is very prestigious, so kids need to apply... the English program itself is a government program, which means that it gets government funding AND parents pay tuition for their kids to be in the English program, so theclassrooms that I teach in are all air-conditioned and fully stocked with supplies.



I teach M1,M2,M3,M4,M5,andM6 level kids...the M stands for Matayom, the Thai word that roughly translates to grade. Ages range from about 12 to 18...while it is overwhelming to design that many lesson plans every week, I love the challenge of having to tailor my approach to teaching English according to each skill level. While it seems as though the older kids should be better, there is a pretty uiniversal change that occurs in the willingness of an adolescent to look sillyin front of their friends, so kids become more self-conscious aroundthe age of 15, I would say, which means that the most fun class is probably M1 or M2...those kids are young enough to just want to please me, and they are incredibly smart and cooperative. The older kids are a little more difficult to control, but I've already mastercrafted my evil eye-In my first class with each level, we had a discussion about the word respect...what it means in Thai culture (the kids understood when I compared it to the wai, or head bow with hands clasped, that they give their teachers every time they pass....and yeahhh im one of those teachers, how sweet is that?! Wai me!)


All in all, I LOVELOVELOVE every single one of my classes...they almost cancel out the roaches in my house....almost. But it really does feel like i was made for this sort of thing-they love my energy, my crazy gestures, my loud voice. It is a dream job, I guess, although it would be a little more dreamy if I could transport it to my half of the world...but something to work toward when I get home. For now, my job is making me really happy and everything else will fall into place.



One funny little something...So i dyed my hair brown before i came here hoping to be more inconspicuous, less privy to induction into a Thai prostitution ring. Well, last week at my orientation in Bangkok, we had a huge dinner in the hotel restaurant with all of our school coordinators, plus some other guests they brought from the school...total, I would say there were probably about 150 people there. During dinner, the orientation coordinator Phil asked me if i would give a speech on behalf of the orientation group,thanking the coordinators....with no time to prepare-maybe five minutes. I know i talk a big game and all about being wordy and awesome but this was a daunting task....BUT it was actually great-public speaking is all about mind over matter, same as being at the front of a classroom. If you can hide your shaking and overcome that poop feeling in your stomach then no one will know youre nervous.


So after i gave my speech and could actually eat again, this coordinator from another school ran over to me and asked me if i would take a picture with him because he wanted to tell all his friends and family in malaysia that he met lindsey lohan-no joke. Then, yesterdayI had my first club meeting (all the teachers get to have a club at school for one period on wednesday...mine is music and poetry and itis going to be SWEET-jim,i might want your input slash itunes for some of the music stuff) and because it was the first meeting, we all just hung out and talked. The English level of these kids is astounding. They said they like me because Im funny and I look like Lindsey Lohan...So I said uh-oh,I better not act like her or ill get sent back to america, and i pantomimed lifting up my dress, and they thought that was the funniest thing in the world. These kids are going to be awesome when im done with them, and i dont just mean in English.