Happy Valentine’s Day!
It’s been a little while since I last posted. (I’m sorry if anyone couldn’t stand the suspense.) What have I been up to I hope at least one of my readers was wondering?
Well, let me tell you a lot has happened in 9 days. But before I get to all of that let me just tell you that I had my 20th anti-climactic Valentine’s Day. (Maybe that isn’t entirely true. I got a gift from a guy once in high school, and Jonah bought all the girls roses today. ) I spent the afternoon doing homework at Black Canyon Coffee and then came back to the apartment to finish my financial aid stuff.
On to the more exciting, I want to let everyone know that I now consider myself to be a Champion eater! Why you are asking yourself (or me I guess)? Last week sometime during dinner with my host family I ate some soup with bugs in it. Yup. Now I know some of you are thinking that it isn’t a big deal, lots of people eat bugs, but that isn’t my only justification. Nicole, my American host cousin (also an ISDSI student) and I eat meals together on a regular basis and I continue to out eat her at almost every meal! I also ate 4 bites of the bug soup, (they were bee/fly things.) To be honest the first 2 bites I didn’t notice the bugs, and I ate the 4th after telling my host family we did not eat bugs in America, just to prove I was awesome.
While we are talking about food, I will tell you about the hot springs. In my mind hot springs don’t have anything to do with food, but they do in Thailand. We boiled eggs in the hot springs and ate them. It was not a wonderful bathing experience (although they had a foot area which I took advantage of.) I still had a good time with my host family though.
In other news, after 3 days in the apartments (you might have seen me mention above), I can tell you that freedom is sweet. I have control of two of my meals for the week, and what I do after school! I am loving it. We leave for Rivers (our first field expedition) on Sunday though. So freedom won’t last long. It was not that hard to leave my host family. I mean I only knew them for 5 weeks and I was there fourth student so I didn’t feel very special, especially since they talked about the last student that lived with Nicole’s family so often.
I also really don’t like being compared to Nicole all the time. And I have to say that Nicole’s little sister (6 years old) and I did not get along. She felt she had to hit me every time she walked by and then got mad when I wouldn’t play with her because she did things like that. She also made it a point to tell me I wasn’t pretty, which after Saturday I am convinced is because my skin is dark. I put my arm up to her’s and said it was the same color (in Thai) and she flipped out and said it wasn’t. She also got really upset when my host mom agreed. Anyways. I mean, my host sister rarely showed any interest in talking to me, and the rest of the family didn’t really either. I know that a lot of the pressure to integrate into the family is on me, but it is hard when people give up on talking to you so easily because of they don’t want to wait for me to figure out how to explain something in simple Thai since I don’t know much else. It is also hard when everyone else is talking and only sometimes try to include you or even tell you what they are talking about you.
Finally, my host family also called Nicole and I “Farang” all the time! That did not make me feel welcome. I first noticed Nicole’s Host Mom doing it at a party. She would show us off to her friends and from then on I noticed how much everyone called us “Farang” (means foriegner). I asked if other people’s families did that but so far that I know they didn’t.
Don’t get me wrong I appreciate them hosting me and my host mom helped me a lot with learning Thai. I was just very aware of how not family or real friend I was while there and I didn’t like it.
Not much else I can think of to tell you I guess. Thai class is the same. We had a test last Friday and I didn’t do so well, predictable. We also finished our Foundations course on Friday and had presentations. My group presented on Minorities and Ethnic groups in Thailand and what their role in Thai society is.
Well, I have to study for Human Rights and the Environment (not to mention Thai class).
