Happy Camper

American Women's Club English Camp Jan.2013

I've always had a somewhat uneasy relationship with kids. I think they're adorable and all, but but there's something about their tiny hands and un-jaded attitudes that puts me ill-at-ease. So it came as a great surprise to me that I love teaching English Camps. Teaching camps is my favorite part of Peace Corps that isn't going on vacation. When I visit a different site for two to three days to teach kids about the environment, sexual health or ASEAN I am in my element.

For those of you who don't know, I twice played the part of Leper #2 in my church's production of Jesus Christ Superstar. This was less cringe-worthy than you might think, because although my voice is nothing to write home about, our small Lutheran Church attracted a handful  of really talented people. At age-fifteen I sang the hell out of my solo, "See my eyes I can hardly see...See my stand I can hardly walk." And at age twenty-one, while most things religious in nature now give my anxiety, I still harbor warm feelings towards this Andrew Lloyd Weber Masterpiece.

 The point of this Superstar non sequitur, is that in one of the more moving scenes, Jesus sings a song that I relate to as a volunteer. Please laugh along with me, as I make this grandiose comparison. Before the crucifixion as he prays in Gethsemane, Jesus sings the following lines:

"Then I was inspired, now I'm sad an tired...Tried for [one] year, seems like thirty, seems like thirty..."

Okay, that it is it. That is the one relatable moment in the life of Jesus Christ. Also, I changed the word, three to one, because I've only been here one year. But the sentiment holds. I arrived in Thailand with a BS in agriculture and boundless enthusiasm. My development classes taught me that the odds were stacked against me, but I knew I would be an awesome volunteer. So I tried really hard, and continue to try really hard. And it's tiring, and I don't feel so inspired. 

Which brings me back to English Camps. At English Camps I get to be the volunteer I want to be the rest of my days in rural Thailand. I get to show up in another province and give all my energy and love to a bunch of really deserving kids. At Camp I am so cool, in December fourth graders literally got up out of their seats and cheered when I taught them origami, this is Dead Poets Society-kind-of shit (minus Robin Williams, who is horrible). I leave all my exhaustion and recycling project-failure back at my own site and get to be the kind of American goodwill ambassador Peace Corps can be proud of, and I can be proud of. 

It's a cliche but these camps rejuvenate me. I head back to Nakhon Ratchasima at the end of the weekend ready to take on my own Peace Corps assignment.  I hold my head a little higher and try once more to drum up interest in project to reduce Dengue Fever. 

Then I fall back into my old ways. My attempts at projects feel futile, I pass by the community kids without engaging them, I turn down another invite to have dinner at my Lao-speaking neighbor's house. I fall back and sit back while listening to Gethsemane on repeat, waiting until the next English Camp and my chance to shine. 

PC Volunteers at Camp

Thai'm

"If I had a minute for every hour I wasted, I'd be doing fine on time."
             -Jack Johnson

I haven't blogged in a while because Peace Corps gives me low-grade depression...and well, depression isn't funny. So I've spared you, the reader, from the last month of my life, which can be described in a word as a bummer (Though I have high hopes for February).

But in an effort to both look on the bright side and prove to all of us that I haven't fallen off the map, I've decided to blog about all the free time I have.

In my real life I would never waste my time with origami. This isn't because I'm so busy and productive it's just that I can find better ways to waste time. In the wifi-wasteland that is my one-room concrete apartment, origami is one way I keep my brain from falling out.

I've also stepped up my podcast game. Economic broadcasting is my bitch. And shout out to Ira Glass for recording 485 hours of on-demand radio gold. Ira, if you are reading this and planning an episode on time-wasting, I can be reached for interviews in between the hours of 11 pm and 4 am EST.

After sliding through both high school and college without actually reading an entire book besides Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, I am proud to announce in the last year, I've read twenty-three. Thanks you, Nook. Confession time: if at any time in the previous seven years of my life, I compared notes with you on a book, I probably just skimmed  and/or Spark Note'd it. Someday in 2014, Stateside, let's you and I have a real convo about books, now that I'm a bonafide reader.

Books are great, especially for waiting in train stations, but that bulk of my awake time (when I'm not eating mangoes, of course) i spent watching illegally-downloaded TV on my laptop.  I've powered through some quality dramas like West Wing, Mad Men, and The Sopranos, but a lot of what I watch is mindless girl-power comedy. After a long day of speaking Thai and writing proposals for organic farming seminars no one attend, it's time to live vicariously through Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, and Zooey Deschanel. I watch HBO's Girls, for the opposite reason: to feel better about not being young and single in the city.

In the Peace Corps I also have time to list things. So here is a non-exhaustive list of time-killing things I do in Thailand.

1. Origami. This aforementioned activity is my primary creative outlet
2. Digital Scrap-booking. My second creative outlet is spending hundreds of hours (not figuratively) photo-archiving my life and presenting it in a way that makes it look like I enjoy my time here.
3. Reading New York Times Best-Sellers. The Help was better than I anticipated.
4. Watching the movie version of books I just read. Again, The Help, better than average.
5. Making paper beads that I'll never turn into jewelry. I don't even count this as creative.
6. Eating unripe fruit. In the States, I just buy ripe fruit, but here munching on unripe papayas dipped in sugar with the office ladies is a good way to kill an afternoon.
7. Yoga. I hate yoga, 'nuff said.
8. Talking on the phone. Why talk when you can text? I'll tell you why: Starvation for English-language interaction.
9. Mall Walking. There's air-conditioning!
10. Making spreadsheets. I'm not going to pretend this is a new thing for me. But rating each day of Peace Corps on a scale from one to ten and then graphing it is extreme even for me.
11. Blogging. Please read my blog!

What I'm Thankful for (besides the obvious, which is you!)...

This Thanksgiving I am thankful for Loi Krathong, a different holiday. Actually thinking about Thanksgiving is a little more than I can handle, especially considering last year's outpouring of love from my family. So I'm taking solace in the next best thing, Thailand's festival of lights, laterns, and beauty contests.

The preparations for the festivities began in earnest several weeks ago, but are now in full swing. If time really is money, than Loi Krathong costs approximately one million US dollars to put on. Handmade flag garlands and nine-foot-tall pink lotuses litter the office lawn. Takhob's kateuis, ladyboys are honing their skin-bleaching and make-up techniques for Wednesday's pageant.

My own preparations included learning the following song I plan to sing ad nauseam next week. Enjoy a better rendition, and check back for Loi Krathong updates next week.

Legacy

There's this really funny story the ladies at my Tessaban, office, tell me during lunch at least once a week. It's hilarious. Ready? Here it is:

One time Shelby cooked lunch for us. She made vegetable stir-fry. She put all the different kinds of vegetables in it. The end. 

First you should know, Shelby is my Peace Corps predecessor. She served in my village, Takhob from 2010-2011. And then you should know how much the Tessaban  raconteurs love this story. They can't spit it all out before breaking into raucous laughter. It's apparently comical and a little scandalous. And though I can't tell you definitively why this is a funny, much less scandalous story,  I will say outside-of-the-box cooking is not a thing here. Adding all the vegetables, unheard of. Ergo hilarious?

What strikes me most about Vegetablegate, is that it's Shelby's Takhob legacy. This is how she is remembered.  Shelby herself told me she worked on water buffalo diary, solid water disposal, and environmental education. But what does our community remember? The time she cooked pak tuk yang, all the vegetables. 

This has got me thinking of my own Peace Corps legacy. I'm approaching the one-year mark and "How will they remember me?" is the burning question. I like to think I'll be remembered for my ground-breaking community development projects. But if no one remembers Shelby's cool projects, the chances they'll remember my composting efforts are remote.

Still, I'm sure when I'm gone they will still mention their second favorite farang from time to time. The only clue I have, as to how I will be remembered by my T-ban, is the "stories" they currently share about me with the same raucous laughter. Here are some candidates for my legacy:

This is our farang, El. She puts a whole spoon of chili peppers in her noodle soup.

El's parents send chocolate for American holidays. Oh man, we love that chocolate. 

El wears her shoes in the house. She is such a silly farang.

The farang made spaghetti one time. It was not spicy.

Our farang is beautiful like a Thai person, she has many Thai shirts. But her hair is not like a Thai person's. 

El has a weird purse she got in Cambodia made out of trash. I bet it only cost one baht.

Look what happened to El when she was at the beach! She is much uglier now that her skin is black.

El loves to have fun. She smiles a lot too.

I hope it's the last one. If I can't be remembered for my work as a volunteer, maybe I can be remembered for being nice.

Election 2012: A Spectator Sport

Sitting in an internet cafe waiting for the exit poll data to start trickling in, I am seriously questioning my expat lifestyle. Leaving the office this afternoon and looking forward to a whole night with no internet was unbearable. I knew I had to get to the nearest pay-to-use computer as soon as possible to feed my burning election desire.

I thought I had kicked my punditry addiction this election cycle. I missed all but one of the debates and I'd only been checking the Gallup poll once a week. But this morning my political cravings were back with a vengeance. I warned my Thais I could not be bothered to sit around and eat mangoes, "It's election day!" or as one Thai put, "erection day."

I'm typing rapidly, hoping to finish this post before the sun goes down, rural Thailand shuts down, and I am forced back into my unwired row house. Tomorrow when I wake up I may be the last to know if America has a new President and if the state of Minnesota did the right thing. I feel uneasy observering an election I have so much stake in from 20,000 miles away.

I may be inhaling election coverage sorrounded by fifty plus twelve-year-old boys playing World of Warcraft but my heart is back on my couch in Minneapolis sitting with my parents eating flaming hot cheetos, drinking root beer floats, and praying that we'll have the same president when we wake up.

Great Balls of Fire

I did not take this picture.

"The fireball experience is much more than just watching a few small lights rise from the river; it's mostly about watching Thais watching a few small lights rise from the river."
               -Lonely Planet

When  a local Nong Khai news crew interviewed me for a story they were doing on the Naga Fireball Festival, I echoed Lonely Planet.

I warned my fireball-watching compadre, Leslie, that we probably wouldn't see any Fireballs since I'm not the luckiest  PCV. But after my suspicions were confirmed, I explained to the reporter that, actually seeing fireballs would have been great, but it was almost as fun to pretend to see a fireball, jump up and point, sit back and enjoy mob mentality and work. Watching Thais watching fake lights rise from the river. I also told the reporter that with without jing jing fireballs,  most of the night was blissful: full moon, floating laterns, candle-lit boats.

What I didn't tell the reporter was that some fo the night was more harrowing than fun. After a floating luminary and attached sparkler almost landed on our picnic blanket I wanted to grab the microphone from the boring semi-dignitary was speaking to the crowd and do an impromptu lesson on stop, drop, and roll, People of Thailand, during tonight's  festivities, many of you will catch on fire. Here's what to do...Although distressing, this part of the event it inspired my new community development project: Festival Fire Safety 101.

We went up to Nong Khai to watch some tiny fireballs inexplicably shoot out of the Mekhong River, what we got was an undeniably Thai experience, danger included. At the end of the interview, the reporter asked if I would recommend the festival to my friends living in Thailand, "You should definitely go to the Festival just not with me, I'm not that lucky."

The Negotiations



This is not my house, but it might as well be.

 My "house" in Sukhothai came with one piece of furniture, so when I finally broke down and bought a small table to put my fan on, my household furniture increased by a staggering 100%. You would think the bar was set unbelievably low for my next rental, but things here have a way of not quite meeting your expectations.

Last week when I got the pitch for my would-be ban chao, rental house, it was touted by my counterpart that there would be lots of kids around for me to play with, "It's nice and small so you can clean it all by yourself! And you will have lots of friends for play dates!" There was a curious lack of promotion for more adult domestic perks. I was getting the pitch for a kid's tree house.

"Does the house have a fridge?" I asked not yet understanding the kind of playhouse I was getting."

"No, no fridge."

"How will I cook?"

"Don't worry, it doesn't have a stove either. You won't be cooking."

"What kind of bed does it have?"

"Oh, you want a bed?"

What is this, Peace Corps Africa? I resented not being seen as "grown-up" enough to deserve a house with adult appliances and a bed. I felt sorry for myself.  I posted something on Facebook just cryptic enough as to solicit lots of comments.

After reading said post, my friend and- I would say- mentor, Kathleen called. She was ready to give me the tough-love kind of pep talk I was ready to resist. But Kathleen has a way of getting through to you,  I realized to actually be a grown-up I had to take responsibility for my own happiness; that meant negotiating a soft place to sleep, a place to stir-fry my vegetables, and a place to store my leftover pineapple. When Kathleen tells you to negotiate, you negotiate.

So I channeled my inner-Kathleen and got myself a bed, a stove, and a fridge. My landlord must have been impressed by my new-found bad-assness, because he threw in a free washing machine.

Last night I went home to my charmless row house carrying a few groceries to put in my new fridge (the fridge actually had not been installed yet, so that was actually kind of a bummer). There were indeed lots of kids running around. I smiled. There was a lot of satisfaction in knowing I got what I needed to be happy in what I'm calling my "First Real House of Adulthood." I negotiated and I won.