Certificate of Incompetance

In Thailand, by day I am an adult. I go to training classes, conduct interviews, and network . I discuss nuanced development topics with other adults. I forage for my own lunch and pay for it with my Peace Corps salary. I moonlight as a child.

Yesterday morning I was greeted with bad news. The "handsome" host brother I have yet to meet is in the hospital in BKK. My host parents would be leaving for the capital within the hour.

After I was assured in Thainglish that he would make a full recovery from the moto-cy accident and was not in a coma (nothing feels more calloused than acting out comatose), I started to wonder child-like things like,  "How will I find food for dinner?" and  "What am I going to do all night with no one to entertain me?"

Peace Corps presents a strange dichotomy. Volunteers simultaneously take on the responsible role of development worker- requiring maturity, responsibility, and technical training- and of host child to a family that understands your language and cultural proficiency is that of a four-year-old. Taking the boldest step of my life thus far- joining the Peace Corps- has left me feeling juvenile and naive.

It is exhausting having my competency stripped away, exhausting and humbling. I guess it's good to not feel feel like the shit all the time. I'm sure my sister, Claire, will want to thank my the nation of Thailand for wiping the "perpetual smug look" off my face. And someday soon, I do hope to progress, at least to metaphorical puberty.



By the way, my host brother is doing well and I did eventually find food to eat.

Culture Shock: Part I

As a joyous holiday season comes to a close (here I owe a quick and cheesy thank you to all of my friends and family, you made this a perfect Christmas), I’m looking forward to a New Year’s Eve that yields a few memories than last year’s  hazy debauchery. I’m also packing today, and trying not to panic about leaving (on a side note, I’m also nervously biting off what little is left of my fingernails). Per usual, I draw comfort from graphs, data, and schematics.

Before I left for Slutty...I mean Study Abroad, a Student Orientation Leader showed us a graph that was supposed to explain Culture Shock. She assured us that most people’s emotions would follow a similar trajectory.

Two months in to Study Abroad, a friend, Caitlin and I were making travel arrangements back to Lima after sandboarding on the Southern Coast for a weekend. We were also discussing how, “we must be above culture shock because we’re totally adjusted to Peru” (see Step 1). In a novel, they would call this foreshadowing, because within the hour we were mugged in a church (see Step 2).

After being thrown into Culture Shock, I think we both made it through the following steps and are pretty sure it was the best six months of our lives so far (right, Caitlin?).

The culture shock diagram turned out to be pretty real. And now it’s a comfort , because I know almost certainly, I will feel all nine of the steps more intensely than I even understand right now. So this post will serve as a Part 1 in a nine part series I will write on my journey through culture shock. Actually, let’s be real, it will probably only have four or five parts, because there’s no way I’ll be motivated to keep a blog that long.