No Fear of Boredom

Dear All,
It's been a while since I've updated and there's a lot going on in my life unlike in previous emails. I know some of you have been worried that I would grow bored here, have no fear!
I'm now taking Thai lessons twice a week and have a small grasp of some conversational Thai and can certainly count and order food- most of the time. But people still laugh whenever I talk and correct my accent on every word, it's very difficult and doesn't really seem to be getting easier but then it's only been two weeks. I'm also taking art classes which I started last week! The guy who's teaching me is quite the character and though he can speak fluently in English his accent and the speed at which he talks makes it very hard to understand at times. We're starting with pencil drawing and hopefully will move to watercolors and acrylics soon, he says that he can tell I have real talent but it's hard to tell if he's being truthful when he obviously has a bit of a crush on me but I'm taking it as a compliment wishing myself into believing that it's true.
Our friend Tricia has gone south to visit with her sister who's in Thailand for a while and while she's gone I have her bicycle. It makes getting around town much easier and I find that I can do most of my errands in the time that it takes me to cross town on foot (I'm a slow walker), needless to say it's nice to have.
Last week Erika and I went with her classes from school to Chiang Rai's flower exhibition. It was small and interesting, mostly amusing though. CR and Chiang Mai remind me of that song from the play Annie Oakley ("anything you can do I can do better, anything you can do I can do too") and CR is always trying to live up to CM, unfortunately they fail pretty miserable but it's a valiant attempt and nice to see them try. Mostly it was fun walking around with Erika's students and hearing them try out their English in a relaxed setting and gather around for pictures with their "falang" teacher.
We're at Sirirat's families house this weekend, going to their thanksgiving celebrations at a couple of different churches where the kids from the orphanage perform, there's a long sermon, other people perform, prayer in another language and then we're fed large quantities of food.
When we first got here we were impressed by the orphanage and Sirirat's apparent love for the kids, she told us that they were like family and that she saw them as her own children since she didn't have any of her own. It's hard to believe that now as we've also heard from her that she doesn't hug the children because it's not Thai culture- a lie, her sister hugs and loves on her son all day long. And we've heard about all of Sirirat's other responsibilities and involvements, there's no way she loves on these kids like their her own, she's not around them enough to know them like they were her own let alone be there for them all the time. Their lives are obviously better here than they would be alone or sold into prostitution or trafficked somewhere else but it's hard to see people treating other people like second class citizens, especially when they claim to love them like family. I guess in the end it's hard to know where to send your money and support when there are so many places that sound really good and even look good when you only see it on the surface.
We gave the kids the Christmas presents we had asked our family to send from the States, paints, brushes and crayons- their all big artists as all kids are. We've had a blast showing them how it works and seeing what comes out on their papers. Today we pulled out stamps to use with the paints and all had a really good time. They've grown used to us and now hold our hands and hug us of their own accord (apparently we can hug them cause we're not part of Thai culture) and tell us how great our white skin is and we have interesting conversations that no one really understands.
Now I have to run and go to bed as I never sleep really well when I'm at this house, it's loud from the super highway that runs right outside and then there are two cats who make noises like they are possessed outside our window.
I do love hearing from you all so I hope you will all write soon, love you and miss you,
Kristen Rose

Pictures

That's Allen and Tricia teaching us to dance the Scottish way.
That's right, me, golfing!
Outside the White Temple, freaky right?
Inside the Golden Temple, Neo with a giant squid.

Erika's hair is now short and beautiful but she's still getting used to it.
Greek food!
Attempting to open a coconut at Allen and Tricia's house on New Years day
Scottish dancing!
Again with the Scottish Dancing

Erika at the Royal Floral Expo. We don't know what this little round man was doing but we found it peculiar.
One of the expositions where they were talking about wind power and how effective it can be.
I think this photo speaks for itself. We don't know what it means but it speaks.
This was Belgiums garden display and one of my favorites.
Erika enjoying our Mexican food in Chiang Mai

Our matching "Guiness" caps and the White Temple
The White Temple
These are the cheerleaders competeing at the schools Sport Day, we were scarred.
Mary teaching E and I how to cook Philipino food
Our Christmas tree! And if you look up in the left hand corner you see our "stockings"

These pictures are all mixed up but that's me with the flowers.
Mary, Kristen, Erika and Malou outiside of Holland
Japan
Nepal's garden had a Stuppa which we see a lot around here as they're put up in "spiritual" places to harness the power, you walk around it or leave offerings to harness a little bit of the "power" for yourself.
This is the building inside the Lanna garden.

Thai Golf

Dear all and everyone,
First off the news that the cheap email place has just stopped providing email so I now either have to go to a more expensive place or the school and as the school only has two computers that ever really work and then only at times I'm at a new place down the street. This always seems to happen to me when I'm overseas.
Okay so all the fun things that have happened to me since the new year began: First off my friend Tricia took me, on the back of her bike, down to the other end of town where there's a driving range and golf course and gave me my first lesson in golf.
I've always been one of those people who laughed at golf and for good reason, it's not an interesting sport and it's boring as heck to watch but even I will admit that playing it has it's high points. Tricia's only ever been playing four times so she's not the best person to be giving lessons but the owner Barry was there and just couldn't help giving me a free lesson when he saw that Tricia was teaching me. After a while hitting balls at the driving range we joined up with an English guy who's lived in Thailand for sixteen years or so named Wolfe and an Aussie guy named Trent to play nine holes. It's a lot harder to play actual golf than to hit balls in a range and I went from feeling really good about how I was doing to losing approximately eight balls, either because they dropped into the water or I just couldn't find them. I'm not bad though, for my first time ever and we had a really good time.
The next day Tricia and I found a place to take Thai language lessons and we're now going to be learning this very hard language two hours a day two days a week, we're both hopeing our heads won't explode but Tricia says hers will go first as it's the oldest and tiredest. We'll see.
This last weekend we had the bikes again as Tricia and Allen went on a three day trip and on Saturday went down to what they call the White Temple. It's this huge, white Wat with lots of surrounding buildings that was designed by a pretty famous Thai artist and is still in the process of being made. It's super gawdy and but rather attractive from certain angles. Inside it was interesting how little decoration there was but he was in the process of putting up these paintings that were interesting; old budhist images and stuff mixed in with Neo from the Matrix or Jabba the Hut from Star Wars- all very weird stuff and it was hard to say what he was trying to get across. They also had a gallery of his artwork and, like E said, a lot of it reminded one of Anne Frank stuff from the '90's with super bright colors and flying horses and swirls. Odd, very odd.
Yesterday we had a super evening meal as we made a bean and rice meal and had it with guacamole and tortilla chips and appreciated our Thai version of Mexican food. It's not easy to pull off here and definately more expensive than our regular meals here but probably cheaper than it would be in the States.
Hope all is well wherever you are, xo Kristen Rose

Erika's December Letter

Happy New Year!

Well, this is your December letter from Erika—even though it’s January already. A lot has
happened this month (I hear your collective groans, anticipating an even longer letter—I’m
trying to keep it under control!) and I’m not sure how well I can describe some of these
events but I’ll try to fill you in on the most interesting bits.

The 5th of December is the king’s birthday and is celebrated as Father’s Day. We didn’t
have school—we all were encouraged to attend special ceremonies honoring the king. Most
people don’t need the encouragement. Devotion to the king is beyond anything an American
could imagine, except in sci-fi stories that warn us against ever trusting the government
too much! Every part of my being would like to condemn this national brainwashing but I
don’t think that I really have a right to do so. After all, I can recognize that my
reaction against it is part of my national brainwashing: don’t trust the government or
submit too much of one’s individuality to the whole. In contrast, if the king asked that
there be a day in which everyone wears purple polka dots and hops instead of walks, that
would happen, both because it was the king’s request and because no one ever wants to look
different. It’s important, in this culture, to blend into every crowd. All stores
(besides Mom and Pop shops), banks, schools and offices have uniforms. People don’t say
or do anything that will make them appear different. This is one of the biggest
challenges of my job. My students freeze if I call on them and never raise their hands.
It’s easy for the whole class to repeat something but individuals speaking in class is
tough. This explains why everyone studies English for the 12 years they attend school but
very few people actually speak it. They might not ever have spoken a sentence aloud
alone!

There is another reason my students don’t speak up without significant prompting (read:
begging from Erika!) Saving face is very much a part of this culture, as with most other
Asian cultures. If my students venture an answer and it’s incorrect, they have lost face
and, worse, they’ve caused me to lose face. I finally realized that it didn’t matter what
I said, they would not understand that I really wanted them to try, despite the potential
consequences. Now, when I ask a question, I let them all consult with each other until
they are confident. I am playing games that necessitate individual speaking but that
don’t punish wrong answers to gradually help them understand my view of the matter. It’s
still really difficult as an American and as the perpetually obnoxious student who always
asks questions!

I think that I mentioned that my school was gearing up for something called Sport Day (by
cutting academic classes short). The Sport Day (really week) festivities started for me
on the 11th, which is a holiday here. First, they told me that there was a holiday:
Constitution Day. Later, it was mentioned that, although we would not have school, I was
expected to come round. It turns out that we were taking this opportunity to have Teacher
Sport Day. Yippee, would pretty much sum up my response. I was somehow talked into
running the 3-legged race (guess how evenly matched I was with my Thai partner?) We had
one very distracted day of school and then 3 days of games, parades and fun (and vast
periods of boredom for at least one teacher!). The best part was the cheering
competition. Imagine teenagers in ridiculous outfits; I’m talking New Orleans brothel in
the 1800s (judging from movies) except with more feathers and fishnet and less fabric.
Then imagine that the cheerleaders do not actually lead cheers but that the crowd sings
(and does coordinated movements like wave fans-along the lines of ‘the wave’ or ‘YMCA’)
while the cheerleaders dance with various props. Imagine also that there are guy
cheerleaders (doing dances, not gymnastic stuff) but just because boys want to participate
doesn’t mean, in most cases, that there is any reason for us to come up with other
outfits, they can wear the same thing. Most of the straight guys had a variation on the
costume but the gay ones stick with the fishnet and feathers.

This brings me to an interesting culture difference. I’ve just told you that no one wants
to stand out from the crowd here. In our culture, being openly gay, especially
cross-dressing, especially in high school, would be standing out. In Thailand, all sexual
orientations are pretty freely accepted. In each of my classes, I have at least a few gay
and lesbian kids. What’s more, I know who they are even though I don’t speak the same
language, so it’s obviously quite open. At my Christian school, there are no qualms about
having cross-dressing cheerleaders; presumably it made life simpler, not having to come up
with 2 costumes. I can think of cross-dressing occurrences in high schools or college,
but it was obviously a joke undertaken only by the biggest and manliest guys. Here, it is
completely in earnest and no one even questions it. How’s that for different? Culture
shock takes some strange forms.

Kristen and I had a lovely Christmas, surrounded by parties involving many cultures. We
sang karaoke (I sang 2 songs, really!), danced and ate at Thai and Filipino parties, then
had Scottish and American people over for Christmas dinner. Thai people are shocked that
Americans don’t sing karaoke very much. It is automatically linked to fun here.
Everybody sings, whether they should or not (the only reason I sing is so that I’m not
thought of as a total party pooper). Fortunately, our Filipino friends don’t share this
love of karaoke. The other 2 foreign teachers at my school are Filipino (the Filipino
school system is completely in English so they came to teach English as well) and they are
really good friends. They include us in their Filipino circle so we’re learning Filipino
cooking and language almost as much as Thai!

On the 26th, Kristen and I joined a bunch of teachers for a trip to Chiang Mai’s Royal
Floral Expo. It was an amazing exhibition, filled with gardens contributed by countries
and companies from all over the world. We didn’t go back to Chiang Rai with the other
teachers but stayed in Chiang Mai for a couple of days. We felt like country mice flung
into the big city for the first time. Chiang Rai is a small-ish town. We live in the
tallest building in town, which is 12 stories! For 3 months, we have only seen this town
and the small villages that surround us. We reveled in the international-ness of Chiang
Mai. We ate at McDonald’s, Greek food and (best of all) real Mexican food. We ate ice
cream at Haagen Das, watched a movie in a theater and went into every bookstore—they all
have English books! We were amazed that people started conversations with us in English
and that we were not regarded as oddities. It was a super couple of days. I got my hair
cut—yup, short hair again, can you believe it? We also went to a Monk Chat. A monastery
has a time when its monks can practice English by speaking to visitors. I took the
opportunity to further my research on women in Buddhism, to learn about the persistent
draw of Buddhism on Thai people and to find out monks’ opinions on the shockingly
animistic and folk nature Buddhism has here. It was great and made me excited to continue
to learn about this country and its religion.

We stayed in for New Year’s and watched the fireworks—there is no city display but anyone
can buy pretty impressive stuff here and there were lots of private displays. We have a
good view since we live nearly at the top of the tallest building in town. I was shocked
to learn that there had been multiple bombs in Bangkok on New Year’s Eve. It is almost
imperceptibly becoming more restive here. I’m not sure what, if anything, this will do to
our plans for travel. Right now, we’re planning to travel around Thailand for March and
Cambodia and Laos for April (my 2 holiday months.) We’d really love any/all of you to
join us for some part of that. I’m sure you’ll take me up on that now that I just told
you about the bombings! Really, it’s a lovely place and we’ve never encountered the least
unfriendliness. Come visit!

That’s all the news that fits, folks. Thanks for your friendship and correspondence.
Until next month,
Erika

Postcript: I forgot 2 fantastic things and 1 boring one. Boring: if you want to see a
few pictures or get my sister’s ungrammatical view of life here, go to her blog at http://wherekristensgoing.blogspot.com/ <https://mail.whitworth.edu/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://wherekristensgoing.blogspot.com/> Fantastic: 1. You might remember that I said
I’m learning so many unexpected things. One New Year’s Day, we learned several Scottish
dances from our Glasgow friends! How’s that for unexpected? 2. When we went to the
movies in Chiang Mai, we were asked to stand while a montage about the king came on the
screen! I’m telling you, they really love him. (Best thing about the movie theater,
though, was the cheese popcorn!)

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Dear All,
There are so many of you that I want to write individually and thank you for your notes over the Christmas holiday and into this the new year but in case I don't have time for that here's a thank you to all who wrote. Our Christmas was an interesting one as was expected in a country such as Thailand. Christmas eve we went with Mary and Malou, the Filipino girls, to a ten p.m. mass at the catholic church before returning to Malou's one room apartment with a bunch of their Filipino friends for a party. There was more food than we could possibly have eaten and we watched a movie before starting the karaoke and dancing, we didn't even open the wine until midnight and Erika and I headed home just as the party was revving up at two thirty- three. Quite the night!
Christmas day we called home for a late night Christmas eve chat with our family after opening our presents to each other and eating our scrumptious breakfast of a danish, cinnamon roll and oatmeal! I didn't even cry for that phone call and was pretty proud of myself. We had a party that afternoon but one after the other people called to tell us they wouldn't make it so it was only Allen and Tricia (our Scottish friends) who joined us in the end. We had a really good time and after an afternoon of crackers and cream cheese and peanut butter sandwiches with hot cider we had the meal we had made using our one pot and a wok and doing everything in stages. We were pretty impressed that we pulled off mashed potatoes, candied carrots, fried chicken (well, we picked that up) and cauliflower soup. When we called home that night for a Christmas morning chat with the family I did cry but it was understandable I think.
It was interesting spending this Christmas away from home and in a country like Thailand and I'll always remember my time here and how E and I got through it but I can honestly say I never want to celebrate this holiday away from my family again. The next morning we walked down to the school and boarded one of the buses they had gotten to charter everyone down to Chiang Mai for the day to visit the Royal Floral Expo that is going on just now.
After a three hour bus ride with Thai music blasting and being fed several times we stopped at a huge shopping center for lunch where we shared a pizza with M&M before driving on to the expo. It was amazing! First we took a bus all through the giant area and then walked almost the entire thing. Countries from all over had set up gardens to showcase their country and the plants from their areas and we had a blast walking through India, Morocco, Holland, Malaysia and several dozen others, it felt like we were traveling the world in one afternoon! The girls got tired earlier than we did so we left them lounging in Qatar's large tent and continued on until we met up with them back at the bus later that evening. We picked up our bag from the bus and took a small bus into town, getting a hotel room was interesting and in the three nights we were in C.M. we stayed in three different hotels or guest houses- completely unintentionally.
It was late that night so after a quick walk around our neighborhood we shivered in our beds until I joined E in her tiny bottom bunk because our room was absolutely freezing and we each had only a small blanket. Not nice. The next day made up for it though when we got to a Mexican restaurant for real burritos, tacos and enchiladas- it was like being home for an hour and completely delicious!
Walking around C.M. E and I felt like country hicks come to the big city and we realized how much we had judged Thailand on what we had seen of it- being mostly the backwoods and small villages of the north. It's like someone from here going to the States and only seeing... West Virginia. Seeing tall buildings and plenty of white people on the streets, knowing that almost everyone you talk to had at least some English for you to work with and not being the novelty in a small town. In C.R. people in our neighborhood recognize us cause it's hard to pass us up, in C.M. people could care less who we were or why we were there or where we were from- it was probably good for our vanity if nothing else.
We went to a Wat Wednesday night that has a certain time several nights a week when you can go and have a conversation with the monks there, it's an opportunity for foreigners to learn about Buddhism and the monks to work on their English and was a really interesting time. E asked most of our questions as she's still continuing her study of religions and her work on women in Buddhism and some of the answers were very interesting to listen to. The monk we talked to was very friendly and knew a lot of English and we enjoyed talking to him for about an hour before we set off for the large night bazaar downtown. The night bazaar was a large, crowded and very busy place with everything you could ever think of for sale, a lot of the stuff you can buy here in C.R. but it's cheaper in C.M. or there's more variety there and we ended up with a couple of presents to take home. We also found our way to McDonald's for fast food- it may sound silly but I've never had such a delicious big mac in my life! And after that we found Haagen Das and our lives seemed complete! The next day we checked out of our new and much more comfortable hotel room thinking we would take the bus home that night after our day on the town. We walked around visiting a Wat and a Stupa before having lunch at a place called Zorba's where we had real Greek food and I wondered at the fact that a year ago now I was in Cyprus eating gyros and Greek salad all the time and now here I was in Thailand trying it once again! When the guy next to us left almost all of the moussaka he had ordered we became scavengers and ate it ourselves- it felt a little weird doing it but it tastes delicious so I had no second thoughts. From lunch we went to one of the shopping malls in town and bought tickets to a real, full size movie at a movie theater and saw The Holiday! It was so much fun and felt like we had had a little holiday home and to England ourselves for the afternoon.
Of course by the time we picked up our bag and got to the bus station after that we had just missed the last bus back to C.R. at five thirty. So we got tickets for a bus in the morning and got a hotel room for the night. We got the cheapest bus home which is smaller, older and more crowded than the air conditioned or VIP buses you can take. It wasn't that bad actually and other than our seat mate continually edging her leg further onto my seat and feeling like we would have to get out and push the bus up the steep hills it was an okay trip all around.
We spent new years night in and watched a handful of rented movies waiting for midnight and then watching the fireworks that went out from random parts of the city. We tried singing the song they sing at the new year- old acquaintances and whatnot- and realized we didn't know most of the words. The next day our friends Tricia and Allen had us over for dinner at their little country house, they had a couple they knew up from Australia on a short holiday, Ralf is a real Aussie and his wife Elaine is from Scotland like T&A, we had a great evening together talking about the differences of language and how we could all misunderstand each other even though we supposedly all speak the same language and talking about Scottish folk music until they put some on and taught us a couple of Scottish folk dances.
Looking over the time we've spent here in Thailand it's amazing the things we've learned and done, trying Scottish folk dancing one evening and singing karaoke the next, learning to cook Filipino food and watching Australian news- it's truly a cosmopolitan education!
Now I have to run as I've already been here longer than I should. I love you all and hope you'll all write again soon, Kristen Rose