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)