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!
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