Homestay in Mae Chem

     For our second week out here, all 23 of us (plus our Thai language teacher, our Thai culture teacher, a program coordinator, and 6 Thai students from the University to help out with translating, etc) traveled up to a Northern Thai rural village in Mae Chem.. the village we stayed in was the Baan Yang Luang village.  It was a 3 hour drive to get all the way up there, but for basically two thirds of the drive, we had beautiful mountain views because we had to travel over the tallest mountain in Thailand (blanking on its name) to get out there.  Once we got there, we met our host families pretty quickly.  We each stayed with one or two of the kids who are studying in the program, and stayed at one of the houses in the village.  I stayed with a girl named Gina who came to this program from Warren Wilson College, and a Thai girl who came with us from the University named Meeko.  We were placed in a house with a mother named Maeh Pon (in Thailnd, everyone only goes by their first names because Thai last names are ridiculously long, and it's too much of a hassle to learn them).  But in the villages, to be polite we call the mothers Maeh (meaning Mother in Thai) and then their first name (in this case Pon).  So more about Maeh Pon... she was probably one of the most stern looking people I have ever met.  Throughout the entire week we probably saw 10 smiles out of her total.  We basically thought she didn't like us.. actually though little did we know that she actually loved out company.  On the day that we left Maeh Pon gave kept giving us big squeeze-y hugs and as we were leaving me and Gina saw her wipe tears away from her eyes as we were pulling out of the village.  Just goes to show you that even though we did have a Thai girl in the house with us to help translate (which was super helpful because neither me or Gina could get by with Maeh Pon on the basic Thai that we had learned), there was still such a cultural gap between us that we didn't even realize that she enjoyed our company. 

Gina, Maeh Pon, and Myself

     That all being said about this cultural gap, I actually felt like I got myself into experiencing more culture shock while in the village.  But I guess that really came from living with only one person that I knew, in a house of a family who spoke only a couple words of English while we could speak only a couple specific sentences of Thai, plus a handful of random vocab words.  Our house was on the middle spectrum of the houses that other people on our trip stayed in.  The houses ranged from extremely nice modern houses (that of the Mae Chem district leader, and the village leader) to houses that were basically lean-to's with a couple walls built in to create rooms.  Some houses had western style, flush toilets, while some houses (mine included) had a squatting toilet that you had to flush by using a bucket of water (try it sometime, its an experience...).  The house I stayed in was quite nice though, and had beautiful blue tiled floor in the main room, as well as another room with a wood floor (where Meeko stayed).  The room Gina and I stayed in was basically only big enough to fit a double bed mattress, with a little extra room to stash our bags.  In the back was Maeh Pon's room, where 3 beds were pushed together for her, he daughter, and her grandson slept (I think).  ...Actually we couldn't really decipher who exactly lived in the house because people were in and out all the time.  

     Every morning, the roosters started crowing at about 5am.. I mostly slept through this.  At about 8 or so, we would wake up to shower, and eat breakfast before headed to Thai Culture class from 9-10am, followed by Thai Language class from 10am-12pm in the temple.  Breakfast was always interesting.  What's funny, is that they don't distinguish between breakfast food, and any other meal food.  We had fried chicken for breakfast one morning, and soup, fish (pictured to the left...not quite like you would see it cooked in the U.S., eh?), veggies, omelets (which we would also sometimes eat for dinner), and of course, every meal always had rice.  

     After class was over, we had lunch, and then generally spent the day being bussed around on Sung Tao's seeing Wat's, markets, plantations, learning how to cook Northern Thai food, viewing brass hairpin making, and cotton weavers.  Or staying around the village learning how to do leaf weaving (with palm tree leaves), cotton weaving, and fresh water crab paste making (much to my surprise there are millions of crabs living in the mud in the rice paddies).

One of the Wat's we visited (blanking on the name)

A gigantic plantation we visited, covered many hilltops

Tim and I doing palm tree leaf weaving

cotton weaving

learning to cook traditional northern thai food

walking through the rice paddies to find crabs in the mud

     On Wednesday morning, we all participated in a ceremony for the Monks and gave them food as an offering.  I didn't really know what was going on the entire time... and neither did any of the other people on our program seeing that the entire ceremony, and all the chanting was in Thai.  We sat on the floor of the Temple praying for about an hour an a half from 6:30-8am.  All in all, it was a really cool experience to watch and see what is sacred to the people in the Village.  Later on in the evening, we also participated in a robe offering ceremony to the Monks, called Pa Phaa.  For the ceremony, we dressed in traditional northern thai clothing, and danced up and down the road in the village to the sound of a steady gong beat, carrying a mach tree (with money offerings attached for the Monks).

dressed in traditional Thai skirts (group shot with Gina, Maeh Pon, and Meeko)

the boys carrying the money tree and everyone dancing

     To sum it up... I really miss Mae Chem a lottt, it was such an awesome experience to live in a traditional northern Thai village.. don't be decieved by their traditions though.. they still know how to have a good time.  Maeh Pon rolled large tobacco and tammarand cigars (basically) rolled in banana leaves everyday for herself (the tammarand apparently helps with the headache you can get from tobacco), and we definitely had a good taste of the Rice Whiskey and Moonshine they make out there... it was hard to avoid seeing that some families were basically feeding it to the kids staying with them (some kids would come to class in the morning after being given a shot of whiskey with breakfast).  That all is a story for another time though I suppose (oh ho ho).  After this experience though, I'm so geared up a lot to be more excited for the homestays to come.

(credit to Tyler Stout, from our program)

Elephants!!!

Not much to say here.. I just wanted to throw up a few pictures of our trip to the Elephant camp we went to to do elephant rides, and bamboo rafting! 

and we also played with this monkey!!!!!

culture shock?

     So l've previously explained a brief overview of the first week being in Chiang Mai, but I wanted to talk a little bit more about the culture shock (or maybe lack there of so far) of being in an eastern country, where I am actually experiencing being the minority for the first time in my life. 
    When I first got into Chiang Mai, and moved into my dorm room, my roommates were not even in the room because we arrived on a holiday weekend where all students, and employees have a 4 day weekend.  The holiday was Mother's day--which is actually the Her Majesty the Queen's birthday weekend.  This was kind of the first thing I experienced as something very different from the western world.  The Thai's respect the Royal family in such an intense way--there are billboards everywhere of His Majesty the King, Her Majesty the Queen, and the Royal Princess.  Not only that, there are posters in most stores, as well as on the streets of all of their pictures.  This being said, right away I kind of knew this experience of living in a country that was never colonized by the western world would be a really cool experience.
     But basically for the first weekend I never really felt any kind of culture shock, because everyone that I was around (including the people I came in contact with at the university) spoke English.  Even when we went out to eat, and went out to the city at night to checkout some night life, we went to Furong (as the Thai call us--it means Foreign in Thai) places, where not many Thai people hangout.
    Sunday morning (the 15th)  came around though and one of my roommates came back from her long weekend.  Her name is Numpu, and she speaks close to zero English, and we used a translator to introduce ourselves and to make small talk to start to get to know each other a little bit.  A lot of the way we have been making contact with each other the last couple of weeks is with very broken sentences, and with hand motions. She is one of the sweetest girls i have ever met though-- when I was unpacking a little bit more the day I met her, she said something to me in Thai, and then motioned for me to move my mattress to the empty bedframe that was closest to her bed (there are 4 bed frames in our room, but only 3 mattresses).  When I took a nap later that day, she had been napping and got up a little bit after I had layed down.  After a few minutes while I was still falling asleep, she got up to move her fan so that it was blowing on me.  She even invited me to stay at her house for a night next weekend.  She's so sweet!!  Orientation week was nuts though, so I havent really had much time to hangout with her at all, and then this past week after orientation week we spent at a homestay in a rural village in Mae Chem (I'll talk more about this later).  So it's been hard to get to know her more while I've been settling in, but I did get to spend a night with her and her friends, which was nuts because it was basically them trying their best to speak what they know of English, and then speaking back and forth in Thai to figure out another way to say something.. Its pretty silly to not know whats going on, but to laugh along with everyone else anyway!

     More on how sweet Numpu is though--it's not only here.  Every Thai I've met while here so far in Thailand has been so welcoming and so nice.  They actually love Furong's, and love to see what we're doing, and to try and hangout with us.  Adding to that, what I didn't know about Thailand was that it is known as the "Land of the Smiles."  Everyone in Thailand is always smiling, and the reason they will associate Furong's with sometimes being rude is because we don't just smile at most everyone we see (even on the streets).  When I flash a smile at anyone living in my dorm, I see their face light up while they throw a huge smile back my way.

     Basically though, in short, I don't really feel like I've been experiencing major culture shock, but I think a lot of that is coming from still feeling like I'm in a little bit of a bubble with all of the kids who also came here from St. Lawrence, and even just being around all of the other kids in our group because we haven't yet had very much of a chance to branch out of this group with all of us having been booked solid with orientation business, and even just getting to know each other before we try harder to make more Thai friends and branch out a little more.  Even with the Thai friends I have made so far, its been a large group of the people in our program, going out with them and having them order drinks and food, and explaining directions, etc.  Also, the Thai people I've befriended so far are actually 4th year english majors who have participated in helping the kids out in the program for the last few years, so they all speak English very very well.

   This all being said, culture shock will set in eventually, I can feel it, and I'm very much excited about it.  But I'm in Thailand!!!!! Before I became interested in this abroad program, I really never thought I'd be traveling to South East Asia any time soon.  Here I am!

first week in Chiang Mai -- overview

     After leaving New York on wednesday, August 11th, 3 different planes, and an overnight in a hotel in Bangkok, I arrived in Chiang Mai, Thailand on friday, August 13th.  The first plane we took was just under 14 hours in flight time. That being said, that plane was remarkably nice, and even for being almost in the back on the plane, in the least important class on the plane, the service was amazing.  We had our own personal screens in the back of the seat in front of us, where I had the option of playing video games, watching new release movies, and watching our flight path into the first stop of Seoul, South Korea.  Even with how nice of a flight experience this was, 14 hours is never a short period of time, and I was so ready to get off the plane when we landed.  This was not even close to the end of my travel time for the day though.  Once in the airport in South Korea, we had only an hour until we hopped on another (not as nice plane) to Bangkok, Thailand (a 5 hour flight).  My other peers I was traveling with and I all thought that it would be a breeze after being in a plane for 14 hours--we were all wrong.  On this flight, everyone was quite antsy to just get to Thailand already. 
     Finally, we arrived in Thailand, but we'd have to stay at a hotel in Bangkok before catching the short flight up the Chiang Mai the next day.  The hotel was remarkable, and one of the nicest hotel I've stayed it--and for such an inexpensive price!

     That was the first experience I had in Thailand of experiencing the extremely favorable exchange rate for the American dollar.  The next day, we hopped out plane up to Chiang Mai, and our abroad experience was really beginning.

     Now, we had the weekend to explore the city a little bit before we had to get into orientation week.  We explored the night scene a little bit, and spent a day walking around the city going to a few different Wats (Temples).

     Once monday came around, basically our entire group had arrived in Chiang Mai--the 10 or so kids from St. Lawrence, and then one or 2 kids from a handful of other schools, and we all add up to 23.  Apparently this is one of the biggest groups that has been on the program, which is really cool because we have so many different characters and personalities.
     Orientation week was really tiring.  We had a lot of meetings, and a lot of shuffling around the city in our big group.  We were basically booked solid from the 16th-20th.  Added into orientation week was Thai Language class everyday so that we could start to get a grasp on words and phrases that we would need right away around the city.  However this changes, and when all of our other classes start tomorrow (the 30th), we only have Thai Language 2 days a week for 2 hours per class.

     This post was a basic overview of what I had done in the first week of Chiang Mai, but in the next post I want to post a little bit more about the roommate experience with Thai roommates, and living in a city where I am now the minority, and many people I come in contact with have no idea what I'm saying to them, as well as visa-vera.