I am feeling so relaxed after an exhausting week of teaching! Thursdays are really long just because I teach 8:30-2:30 and then have an adult English class from 4:30-5:30. Currently it is 2 pm on Saturday the 18th and I have been in Taphan Hin since Friday afternoon. Nhaca and I took the train from Bangkratum to Taphan Hin, a small city where Crystal and Stacy, the other two LE volunteers teach in a high school. Taphan Hin is friendly, bustling, and has the best café yen (iced coffee) I’ve had in my life. We stay at Supa’s gorgeous Adobe house and eat and eat and eat. Yesterday we went to use the wi-fi at Supa’s friend’s cell-phone store for about two hours and it was glorious, although we got many many strange looks. American girls on fancy macbooks attracted many customers.
Whenever we meet someone (or are introduced to so-and-so’s cousin’s grandmother’s monk friend) the first question asked after our names is always “do you have a boyfriend?” Then the following conversation ensued always is “well, you should meet this thai boy I know!” MY host mom MaReam is especially a fan of setting me up with boys, but she is an even bigger fan of setting up Fun and Film with one of my American friends…Supa says that this is because many Thais seek financial security and view all Americans as insanely wealthy even though clearly we are all not rich!
Sorry about the tangent. Anyone, I love love love going to Taphan Hin because the small city has aerobic dancing by the river EVERY night at 6pm. All the women show up in 80’s spandex and do ridiculous hip thrusts and fist pumps to American/British techno. Of course I love making a complete fool of myself. It doesn’t matter at all because I am still a spectacle wherever I go and have gotten used to stares and honks, etc. Aerobic dancing is such a tough workout. After that we went to the tennis and basketball courts to watch (I mean “be” watched) and got to go inside a Thai gym! I can’t believe how many more resources for athleticism Taphan Hin has. Many people have businesses and work in Bangkok and other places so they have more leisure time for working out. After that I enjoyed a creamy coconut smoothie and while sitting in an outdoor restaurant with the whole gang, spotted an elephant! Being led down the street by pan-handlers, an adorable baby elephant waved his trunk to my excitement. I feel bad now that I supported this street industry that strips baby elephants of their mothers, but at the time all I could do was think ELEPHANT ELEPHANT ELEPHANT.
Nhaca and I ran to the street, paid 20 baat (about $.66 ) to feed the cute thing. It made lots of noise and slobbered all over my hand! It was so cute-only about 5 feet long and maybe 4 feet tall. It was my most touristy moment thusfar to shriek over an elephant, but I couldn’t help myself.Then we went back to Supa’s house and gorged on tons of fried seaweed, jackfruit, pineapple, peanut brittle, and noi-na (one of my favorite fruits). Nhaca and Daniel chatted until about 3am but I got up at 6 to run. It was incredibly refreshing to run alone because it is such a personal retreat for me and I love the solitude. Then I took a shower and talked to Supa about Buddhist views on death on the porch. It was very interesting and she has so much to share—Supa is a woman of self-growth and lots of hardship and she is a leadership and inspirational figure to many women in Taphan Hin. She made it to America, owns her own business, and is comfortable with herself. She is the biggest personality I know—the most loud, ridiculous, hoot I have ever met!
This morning (Saturday) Crystal and Stacy arrived and we did some work for LE such as plotting out the next scheme of our failed service program. We decided to ditch the whole high school-middle school letter writing scheme because it isn’t beneficial for their students to dumb down for my students who don’t really know how to hold a pencil. It is also not a sustainable program once we leave. The new plan of action is to put together a comprehensive resource booklet of all of our contacts and information so next year’s volunteers can make a service program that will actually benefit the community. I am going to interview community members so we can better identify needs. Access to higher education and connecting students to college students is important, but because college is not an option for so many, we need to make the program simpler and more in tune to increasing ACCESS to education and extra English. After a huge breakfast, we went to Stacy’s amazing host house. She has maids, a driver, and a lap pool. Definitely different from Bangkratum. I swam laps, then had a huge lunch.
Currently working on my laptop with more wi-fi and enjoying some coconut sticky rice with rambutan (heavenly). I don’t want to eat for the rest of the day, but in Thailand that isn’t an option. Luckily I am going to aerobic dancing at 6!
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