Back From the Dead

Hey everyone, sorry it has been so long since my last post. Quite a bit has happened so hopefully I don't forget too much.

First of all, as you may know the reason that I was not able to post anything during this last week was because I was at a homestay in the Ban Yang Luang village in the Mae Chaem district. The village is up in the mountains and it is surrounded by more mountains and rice paddies. There were some absolutely awesome views at this village. You will be able to see this from my pictures when I get them posted. There was one little pavilion that became the hang out spot for most of the students to get out of their houses and the view from it was probably the best I've ever seen. To get to this village we took a sam taew (it is a covered military style truck with three rows of benches in the back; sam means 3 and taew means row so that's where the name came from) and it was about a 4 hour ride with 35 or so students packed into the back of this thing. It was a little ridiculous to be honest because all of the professors going got to take air conditioned vans and because the vans were smaller they got to take a route that went directly over the mountains and only took 2 hours but since we were in such a big truck we had to go around the mountain. The guy that I roomed with for the week, Ian, decided that he was going to stand up and give everyone a little "mission briefing" before we got there to go along with the whole military style truck theme. It was hilarious. I will try to get that video posted at some point as well. For those of you with Facebook, it is up already and I'd say its worth the watch.

Upon arriving at the village I, along with many of my fellow students, headed straight for the bathrooms. Imagine our surprises when we came face to face with squat toilets. It was, for many of us, our first encounter with these. I knew right then that it was going to be a very eye opening week and I wasn't disappointed. All of us students split into groups of 2 or 3 so we could be separated into different houses. Ian and I were assigned to the religious leader of the village's house. He was 65 years old and lived with his wife. I imagine that she was probably around the same age. Also, living right next door to them were his daughter and his son-in-law. They were both in their early 40's. That is another phenomena of Thailand, especially in the villages; it is very typical for a child to live with their parents their entire life. If not in the same house then near by because there are no nursing homes here. When parents reach a certain age, it then becomes their child's responsibility to take care of them.

When we got to the house it was really shocking. It was literally a shack. We had an outhouse equipped with 2 squat toilets and a pipe connected to the well for showers. No hot water though. That took some time to get used to, especially since Thais typically shower 4 or 5 times a day and urged us to do the same. It was also really difficult to communicate with our family because they didn't speak any English. It was really frustrating at first. It made the first day or two really hard. That was the first time that the culture shock really hit me. I had never felt further away from home. After a bit of settling in though, it was a really great experience. It was actually kind of nice to get away from everything and just be able to truly enjoy what is around you.

The food there was a bit tough for me to stomach at first. This was all home grown stuff. All of the chicken was from a chicken they slaughtered themselves because there were thousands of roosters and chickens running all around the village. Those damn things started clucking and cock-a-doodle-doing at around 4:30 every morning. It was ridiculous. Anyways, the first few days I didn't eat too much because I was a bit nervous about some of the things our family made for us. Finally by the end I was able to eat almost everything though. It was our "sister" that prepared all of the meals for us. Also, women never at with men. It was always only men eating. That was another of those big cultural differences.

We had our Thai language class everyday while we were there at 10:30 A.M. and then we would go back to our houses and eat lunch with our family. After we got done eating usually we would end up going out and doing something as a program. We went to a few different Wats one day as you'll see in the pictures. Another day we went to a waterfall up in the mountains and swam in it. It was extremely cold. Another couple days we went to a few different markets around the area. One of the days we also went to see this old man who creates hair pins by hand and he is apparently one of the last guys in Thailand that knows how to do it. I guess the hair pins used to only be worn by the queen and princess.

It was kind of sad to say goodbye to my Thai family. They treated us so well and showed us so much hospitality. However, it was good to get back to the city. On our trip back they decided to give us air conditioned vans. That made the ride back so much better.

That is basically how my week was. As I think of more things I will create another post. My next post will also include what I've been doing since I got back from the village. I would just include it in one giant post but I feel like it'll be better for the people reading to break it up a bit and also because I have to go to my muay Thai gym here in a couple minutes.

I hope everyone is doing well and I miss you all.

P.S. I just joined a weight room. There are no racks, only smith machines, but there are a couple of benches so I have just been doing everything rackless. Kind of ghetto but I'm making due. I'm sure that disappoints you Phil because you still won't be able to beat me when I get back.