Confessions

Quick note before I begin: GREAT NEWS!! I created a Flickr page so you can see photos of all the things I’ll be talking about in this post! There were about 50 photos which was too much to have directly in the post like I did last time. I included captions and such so it should be really fun. Follow this link below and enjoy the visual adventure! (but read my post first!) 


Photo Credit for a lot of these shots goes to Hillary, Erin, and Berrett. Thanks guys!! If for any reason you can't view these, comment on this post and I will try to resolve the issue.

Flickr Photo Set: Thailand, My Land

Well hello there, long time no talk. I know...

I've officially been in Thailand for 17 days and have posted once. Needless to say, I stink at this. I feel as though I need to explain why I've neglected to write until this point before I can even begin to try to tell you about the last 17 days of my life. Being here is beyond difficult on a multitude of levels, so I’m going to break this up into pieces in order for you and I both to fully understand what I'm feeling and what life here is like for me. Writing this blog makes me face my own thoughts about my life in general and my experience here which I don’t think I was ready to do until now.

My first reason is my most pragmatic. I have been putting off writing this for so long because I'm completely and totally overwhelmed by the thought of having to attempt to explain what I'm doing here. I am literally busy from the moment I wake up to the moment I fall asleep.  Life here is hectic and exciting and overwhelming and stimulating. This trip has just been consuming all of my time and energy. I find myself constantly involved in some sort of inner struggle between trying to fit in as much as I can and see as much of this enchanting place as possible, and needing time to process all that I've already done. These have been the most jam-packed 17 days of my entire life, and the idea of trying to explain each thing that has happened to me leaves me feeling terrible because I just can't. I think to myself everyday "okay, make time to contact people from home and write that freaking blog of yours" but at the end of each day I'm already mentally and emotionally exhausted and can't even imagine trying to document things or talk to one more person. Being here, I have to be constantly on. I'm in a group of 22 people (including myself) so when I'm not in class or having an adventure, I'm involved in deep, philosophical conversation or attempting to get to know my new friends on a deeper level as well as allowing them to truly know me. It's exhausting. 

This brings me to my next point. There are 21 people here, as well of all my new Thai friends, trying to get to know me and what I've realized since being here is that I don't know me. At least not anymore. That is why socializing is so consuming. I have to look really deep inside myself to be able to answer their questions and now my own questions about who I really am. Coming here has been such a mind bending experience. I feel like a story book character who has been plucked from my tale and dropped into another. I have no context anymore and without context, who are you? This idea has left me asking larger questions about life, reality, religion and myself. I feel stripped of my identity. I have lost myself and there is no one around who knows me, so I have no one to help me remember who I am. I am on my own. I feel naked and vulnerable. I don't know what I believe or think or feel half the time and because of reason number one, I hardly have time to look inside myself and find the answers I'm seeking. I know that I've been given the opportunity of a lifetime on myriad of levels. I'm in one of the most magical places on earth and beyond that, I have been given a blank slate. I am attempting to see this as an opportunity to truly reinvent myself and decide who I want to be and how I want to make that happen but that too is overwhelming. I know I've used that word about a million times by now, but I really don't know any other way to describe how I feel. It's a good overwhelmed and a bad overwhelmed. 

I then think about having to actually reach out to all of you either through this blog, facebook, email, the phone, etc., and I have one more thing to be torn over. I struggle so much with owing all of you my energy and time and love and owing what little I have left to myself. This year has been extremely hard for me since my mom was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. I pulled away and started giving far less in my relationships than I was taking. I needed so much holding up by those around me, because I was literally falling apart. Now that I'm healing and finding peace, I feel like I need to make up for being such a terrible friend, daughter, cousin, niece, granddaughter, student, you name it. I feel like I failed you all so much in the past year (or more). I'm ashamed of who I was. I feel like I was just so unaware. Now that I am starting to recover from my past with my father and my mother's illness, I feel torn between using this little shred of peace I've gained to give back to all of you or to help myself and try to process all that I'm experiencing. I'm not only going through things here, but Thailand is bringing up all of my issues of the past. I know that it's a positive thing and that I'm here to release them, but in the meantime, it's excruciating and consuming.

And what about my health? I’ve already spent an entire day in the hospital with food poisoning. When does this leave time for me to take care of my physical body? I need to go to the gym and clean the dirt out of under my nails and shower and sleep and eat and all those important things that keep me alive and well. I’m already struggling with issues of body image; so caring for my body is a must for my mental and physical health. God forbid I wanted to find time to find a place to do yoga or meditate or anything of the sort! 

SOOOOOOOOOO, as you can see, there is a lot going on for me. But now for the good stuff. I obviously won’t be able to tell you every single thing that I’ve done but I will try my best to cover the highlights.

My first weekend here was such a great introduction to the area. We were taken on a tour of the city of Chiang Mai. We visited markets full of food, clothes, hand crafted goods and altar items. The smells, colors, tastes and sounds were intoxicating. Every sense was stimulated and satisfied. The food was incredible and I tried so many new and delicious things! There were temples all along the market that we were able to stop in and admire. I had seen pictures of places like this my whole life but never thought I would really ever get to walk through them. The whole time I couldn’t believe I was REALLY in Thailand at these markets, eating this food, talking to these people, having these experiences. I felt like I was dreaming. Everything had been moving so quickly since I got there, and I had to keep reminding myself that I really was having this astonishing adventure.  My favorite part was using what little Thai I had learned to greet and thank the vendors. Smiles go a long way here in Thailand and even when you don’t know what to say, the language barrier seems unimportant compared to what is shared through body language and geniality.

 Video of Chiang Mai City Tour Trip

The rest of the weekend was sort of hectic. I had to buy lots of things for my dorm room like bedding, towels, garbage cans and such and of course, I had to get my uniform for school! Everything seemed a little bit like a struggle those first few days. For instance, Thais don’t use top sheets because it’s so hot here. I didn’t know this. When I went to buy bedding I decided not to buy a comforter and just use a top sheet because I pay for the time that I use my utilities in my room such as the AC. To my surprise, I didn’t have anything to sleep under when I unpacked the bedding. Little things like that kept happening, but as the Thais say, mai bpen rai! I just kind of had to go with the flow.

That following Monday and Tuesday we had orientation days. We met our professors, learned about our class options, had a campus tour and were given a lot of useful information about Thailand and Thai culture. For instance, when dealing with our Thai roommates, it is better to give them options rather than yes or no questions as Thais will often defer to the preferences of others because they are so kind, thoughtful, and eager to please. Also, toilet paper (which you need to bring with you most places as it is not commonly used in public restrooms) is to be thrown out in a trashcan and not flushed. Crazy, I know.

Unfortunately, Tuesday I had to leave early and ended up in the hospital from about 11am until 10pm. That whole experience was really traumatic. The hospital was very clean and the staff was nice, but I went by myself and didn’t speak a lick of Thai. At the time I couldn’t even introduce myself so going by myself was a really bad idea. By this time I was not only sick with food poisoning, dehydrated from vomiting nonstop for 3 days, and had a fever of 103, but I was so frightened that I was having a serious panic attack that caused me to go completely numb in my face and arms, have an asthma attack and shake violently which lasted about 45 minutes. Once the hospital staff realized that I was a Payap student, they called the school and some lovely women from the school rushed over to be with and comfort me. I was told that I couldn’t go on my home stay the following day unless I recovered so I did everything the doctors told me to which including drinking a TON of disgusting electrolyte fluid and taking a lot of Tylenol to break my fever. I managed to get myself feeling better by late that night and came back to my dorm to pack up and get ready for my home stay trip.

After that, it was off to our home stay. I would have to say that this was my favorite part of the trip so far although I still wasn’t feeling great. We spent 5 days in the northern mountain villages in a town called Mae Cheam. The three-hour car ride there was something straight out of a movie! When I wasn’t terrified of falling off the edge of cliffs on the hairpin turns, I was enjoying some of the most beautiful scenic views I’ve ever had the privilege of seeing. By the end of the ride though, most everyone was completely carsick and happy to be out of the vans and near bathrooms.

We met our host families and got settled in. I was paired with two girls from the trip, Jenica and Asha. I was very excited about that because I didn’t know either of them very well and saw this as a great opportunity to get closer to them (and since we shared a mat to sleep on, getting close wasn’t hard to do!) I had a very large family. I had a poh (dad), meh (mom), pi-saao (older sister), da (grandpa), yiy (grandma) and even a neong-saao (younger sister) although she was away at University and I never actually got to meet her. We had chickens, roosters, and a cat. It was hard to tell which animals belonged to whom because everyone let their animals roam free around the village except for the cows.

After a nap on the floor of the living room with our mom (which for some reason she insisted we take although we were not sleepy) our group leaders took us for a hike around the village. We walked through neighborhood after neighborhood. It was so thrilling to see real Thai villagers in their homes, working on their farms, living their lives. I thought it would be a much more difficult experience over all and much more of a culture shock, but the people are so warm and welcoming, that I felt right at home. The views were breathtaking and the vibe was so positive from both our group and the people we met along the way.  Some houses had children outside who were eager to speak what little English they knew with us. At some points, the paths were so muddy that a few of us lost our shoes or at least ruined our shoes. After about 3 hours of hiking though we realized that we were lost and caught a ride in a song-tao back to our village. We got back just in time to eat dinner with our families. Just a side note: the food was AWESOME. I loved having home cooked meals from our host mom. Most mornings I awoke to see that our host mother had caught us a fish for breakfast to go with our eggs and rice. CAUGHT US A FISH. How cool is that? At first I was really disgusted by a whole, grilled fish sitting in front of me, but after a while here I’ve gotten used to food with faces and I’m starting to love it!

The rest of the trip was so electrifying.  We walked shoeless through rice patties, up to our knees in mud to catch crabs for our host families, taught English to school children (and learned Thai from them), saw how rubber is harvested, cooked with locals women and learned traditional Thai recipes, helped renovate the temple kitchen and roads in our village, participated in a traditional village ceremony and made an offering to the temple, and used an herbal sauna! I got to do cute little things with my host family too like putting together a puzzle and laughing at our inability to communicate well. At night, we all got together and drank rice whiskey with the villagers which was really fun and such an experience. Of all the fun we had, I have to say that I loved just sitting around at the end of the day with my new friends talking about how lucky we were to be living such a life! A lot of self discovery took place on this part of the trip too and we all had great discussions about our belief systems.

One part of the trip that will always stay with me was the very last night. I had been over at the house of one of my friend’s host families and the night was beginning to wind down. Just as I was ready to head back to my house, an elderly woman came over to bless us. It was so late at night, and it was just so humbling to have this elderly woman who lived alone in the rural mountain villages of Thailand come over just to bless us before we left. She hugged us all and I don’t there was a dry eye in the room after that. Here, it is common for people to tie (hahahaha tie….THAI…I crack myself up!) a white string around your wrist in order to keep you healthy. They believe the string calls back your 32 spirits and it’s a blessing of sorts. This is part of a belief system known as Animism. I’ve had it done a few times since being here, but this time was easily the most moving and memorable.

Video of Home Stay Trip to Mae Cheam

Once back, we were all so grateful to shower and use real toilets that nothing else seemed to matter! It’s funny, actually. I feel like we took the amenities here at school for granted before the village because they aren’t quite what we are used to back home. We won’t anymore, I can tell you.  The next day, we had our first real day of classes. I am enrolled in Human Rights in South East Asia, Thai Language, and Globalization in South East Asia for this half of the semester. Next half I’ll be taking the second portions of Globalization and Thai Language as well as Economics of the Sex Trade and Contemporary Thai film. The week was kind of stressful and dull all at once. We did a lot of fun things at night like go out to Reggae and Jazz clubs and such, but getting back into school mode was difficult to say the least. I am REALLY excited though about the fieldtrips I’ll be taking with my classes. One of my trips is a few days stay at a Burmese refugee camp near the boarder of Myanmar (the country formally known as Burma)!!!

One of my favorite days so far was this past Wednesday. Two of my closest friends here, Liz and Hillary and I were all having pretty crappy days. We were sitting down to dinner and the food in the cafeteria was unappetizing and too spicy. The topper to a terrible day. I decided that that wasn’t going to stand and urged them to leave campus with me. We just hopped in a song-tao (red taxi) and decided to have a nighttime adventure. We got amazing hour long massages and found an Irish pub to have dinner in near the night bazzar. Hillary and I had chicken potpie and we all shared apple pie and strawberry ice cream for dessert. The music in the pub was terrible American music from the early 2000’s and we felt right at home. It was so nice to just get out with the girls and talk and laugh and allow ourselves to de-stress. I love being around people adventurous enough to just get in a song-tao and let the night take us where it will.

Friday night was my friend Berrett’s birthday, so we all went out and bar hopped. We danced the night away and had a great time. This night was really special to me because not only is Berrett a great guy but the girls all got very close that night and a few slept over in my room because my roommate was away for the weekend. It’s not always the moments that we are busy and bustling around that I cherish but the ones where we are all just really present with one another, enjoying each others company and being really relaxed.

Saturday was AWESOME. SO MUCH FUN. Oh lord. There is a waterfall here in Chiang Mai that the locals call “sticky waterfall” that we went to. They call it this because the rocks contain a mineral that makes them climbable as if they are dry! We played all day at a natural water park in the middle of the jungle! We hiked and climbed and played and splashed and picnicked on food we got from a local market. It was amazing. Then, we went to a monastery where you can climb a staircase that seems literally vertical up to a cave. Inside the cave is a temple with one of the most beautiful Buddha statues I’ve seen since being here. We climbed back down the stairs and walked over to the temple where we watched the monks chant. Later, we were invited over to a Thai students home for dinner. Only about ten of us went which was a perfect number. The girl’s name is Jayje and she is amazing. She is one of our best Thai friends and we all love her to death. Her family got us pizza, made us delicious food and opened their doors and heart to us. We had a great time playing piano, dancing salsa, drinking wine, talking about life, looking at baby pictures of Jayje and talking to her folks. It was a really special night and a perfect way to end a magical day.

Today was really fun too, actually. A few people went for a hike, but I decided to finally take a down day. I went with my friend Hillary to cut all of her hair off into a Mohawk and to dye it from brown to bleach blonde. It was a big deal for her and I’m really glad I could be there J It looks fantastic on her. She is beautiful inside and out.

Well, now you’re all caught up! That is my life here in Thailand up to the present. I guess I want to close with this: my life is awesome. I am so grateful for this opportunity in a way that I have not been grateful for most other things in my life. I am in love. I am in love with this country, the people, the food, the land. Every moment feels like a blessing. There are no words to express the experiences I've had here. Each moment is a blissful, sublime sensory overload. I am somehow simultaneously completely out of my comfort zone and entirely in my element. I will never be able to relay each fantastic event as it was experienced. I look around all the time and say to myself “my life is awesome” and it really is. I am having the best time of my life. Yes, it is emotionally challenging but Thailand isn’t difficult, it’s myself that I’m struggling with. I thought it would be so much harder to acclimate to a foreign country, but it doesn’t feel foreign. It feels like home.  Thailand is my land.

Until next time, my lovely readers xoxo


Love,
Zoey