The Haircut

Nov 28

You ever have one of those moments when you’re sitting in class, or a meeting, minding your own business, zoning out, until someone says something that quickly snaps you back into attention? I had one of those moments the other day. I was sitting in a meeting with the director of CCD, Koon Wasan, and the other volunteers, minding my own business, when all of a sudden I hear Koon Wasan say “…and they asked me to play Santa Clause for them, but I said, why not have Jeff be Santa Clause instead? So Jeff, you’re Santa Clause on Dec. 6!” A sentence like that captures my attention pretty quickly. The other day he told me that they really wanted him to be Santa Clause instead, but I’ll be able to be Santa on the other day. I have no idea what is going to happen that day, but I’ll be wearing a big red suit and saying Ho Ho Ho (only probably in Thai, I still have to learn that).
I went to get a haircut last Saturday too. That was an experience. The only word I know that has anything to do with getting a haircut is “pom”, which means hair. I didn’t think that word was going to help me too much when trying to explain to him how to cut it. I didn’t even know how I wanted my hair to be cut in the first place, so I knew right away this would be fun. I walked into the barber shop and one of the guys waiting for his friend handed me a newspaper. I gave him a funny look since I don’t read Thai and he just laughed and then handed me the women’s underwear ads instead. I thought that was funny. One of the hair cutting guru’s told me to sit down, and as I was walking towards the chair we exchanged that familiar look. It’s the look I often get when I approach someone and they can tell by the expression on my face that I don’t speak Thai, and I can tell from the expression on their face that I’m probably going to be lucky to get what I came for. Fortunately, when I started to mumble something in Thai to break the silence he simply pointed to the wall where there was about four pictures to choose from. I quickly pointed to the one in front of me and sat down. I’m not sure why I pointed to that one, I think I knew deep down that it didn’t matter what picture I chose, in the end my head wouldn’t look like either of those four pictures. I was right, but it’s still a pretty good haircut.

Happy Thanksgiving

24-Nov

Happy Thanksgiving everyone. Me and Sarah couldn’t find anyone here in Thailand that celebrated Thanksgiving, other than a Canadian (that doesn’t count). People seemed interested in knowing what it was, so we decided that we would cook some traditional food for them and invite a bunch of people over. The first problem is that no one in Thailand seems to have a working oven that’s more than the size of a toaster. Once we realized that Thailand doesn’t have any turkey’s either we figured that ordering from pizza hut would be just as good. The only way to describe a turkey to a Thai person is to say that it is a big chicken. They eat chicken all the time so we figured it would lose the meaning if we just bought a couple chickens to eat. Sarah also made some fondue for the night.
So we celebrated. We had 2 Swedish girls there, 1 Thai guy and 1 Thai girl, 1 girl from Austria, 1 girl from Switzerland, 1 girl from England, a Canadian lady, and Sarah and me. Quite an interesting mix for Thanksgiving. The only leftovers though was one piece of cold pizza in the fridge the next morning…didn’t take long before someone got to it. Today for Thanksgiving I brought in some cookies and snacks for the guys I work with. These guys are all smart enough to take care of themselves, or at least know what they need. They ate their fill of snacks and then would say they didn’t want anymore. Except one boy. He ate most of what I brought in. I set the box of cookies down and walked away. He ate the rest. I would guess he is about 20 years old or so and most of the time he seems pretty disinterested in my presence there. I try to play with him but it doesn’t last long and he goes back to his own world quickly. For some reason which I couldn’t understand at first, he seemed to be full of energy that afternoon. He was running around trying to play catch with me, we’d play for a couple minutes and then he’d see the exercise bike and insist on being on it. I thought that was rather strange since he seems to have a fear of gravity and doesn’t like to walk down stairs, let alone ride on any kind of bike. Pretty soon I realized he was doped up on sugar and all the snacks I brought in were gone. Still, I’ve never seen him so interactive and happy…makes me want to bring in a bunch of pixie sticks for him everyday!

New people and a Big Jungle

22-Nov

Another girl arrived today from England. She came to work today and I welcomed her home to Thailand by giving her a ride to our house on the back of the motorbike. I never rode with anyone as nervous as she was! I prefer weaving through the busy streets with two Thai women on the bike than with on jumpy foreigner!
The Belgium roommates left on Saturday to do some traveling. It’s nice to have more room in the house. I think they were frustrating to live with for most of us, so things seem to be going better around the home. It’s really clean anyhow.
Also, a Thai guy named Dao just started volunteering today and will be here for the next 3 weeks or so. This is nice because it gives me someone else to speak some Thai with. I think he’ll move into our house here, which means I have to clean the room tonight. It would be good if he comes I think because where he is living now there are no people for him to talk to and go get food with, etc. It’s a good chance for him to learn English better if he comes here, which is what he wants to know more of. I finished chopping down our jungle of a yard today. Now I’m left with a giant grass pile in the front of our house. I have to figure out what to do with that. I was given a pair of hedge clippers to cut the lawn with. I realized pretty quickly that the job wasn’t going to be any fun and take forever. I decided to go down to the big weekend market here on Saturday and buy a couple of gardening weapons…I mean, tools. I figured a couple different swords (machette’s) would do the trick just fine. Surprisingly it only cost me 5 dollars for the two swords I used to cut down our jungle. And, the job became a lot more fun rather quickly!

Gratong Day

Nov. 17

Yesterday we celebrated some festival here in Thailand called Gratong day….or something like that. It was pretty cool to see. Basically they take these little rafts, or graton’s made of styrofoam, or something floaty, and place candles and maybe gifts on them and float it down the river. It’s a Buddhist tradition so we didn’t take part, but just went to see it. It was amazingly crowded but really fun to experience. They float the Gratong down the river as a prayer offering I think. I keep hearing different things about why they do it. I hear it is an offering to the god of the river for any sins they may have committed against the river, such as littering in it, etc. Without any disrespect to the festival, I couldn’t help but notice the irony of asking forgiveness for littering in the river by having an entire city float styrofoam down it.
In other news, I think that living here is starting to wear on me a bit. The people and the culture is great, but going every day for the last 2 months not being able to understand when people talk or what is going on is getting a little annoying. For instance, yesterday morning one of the ladies came into work and said “so you’re going with Pueng tonight to the festival right?” This was the first I had heard of these plans so I said “huh?” To which she replied “Pueng told me you were going with her tonight.” To which I replied “oh…I guess I am. What time are we going?” She told me at 5. OK, Then after work I stopped by to see Pueng and ask her where we were meeting and TakTan had me drive her to the place that Sarah works to see her and the other people there. Apparently Sarah was entered into a beauty pageant and had just found out that afternoon. 30 seconds before she went on stage the lady that entered her told her that she had to do some Thai dance while there (of which she had no idea how to do), and the press was there also filming. That’s funny. After some more confusion we end up going to the festival at around 7 o’clock and coming back at half past 1 am.
It seems pretty common to hear about meetings and things while talking to staff by hearing them casually drop the information into the conversations. Today while talking to Sam he quickly said, “Anyways, I’m going to see you tomorrow after you get off work because you’re coming to the office for a meeting.” I need a vacation from all this confusion. Most things that should be very simple become so difficult without the understanding of the culture and the language. In other news, I saw the new Harry Potter tonight. It was good. I also found out today that I’m going to Phukket in a couple weeks to help with the children affected by the Tsunami. This will be a blessing I think because the Tsunami relief all came at once but now has died off a lot. I’m really glad for the opportunity. It was set up by the Friendship foundation people that we had the meeting with last weekend. I’m starting to understand I think what those meetings with them has been about.

just another random day

13-Nov

So, a couple weeks ago we went to Reyong with that other foundation that works with orphaned kids in Thailand. They told us that we would all meet again on the 13th of November to have some kind of a forum about volunteering. They told us that 2 people from each country had to prepare something to talk about at the forum describing the volunteering in that country. Since there’s only two of us from America, that meant we would each have to speak. The Belgium’s were able to make there way out of going, and Sarah and the two Swedish girls spent the weekend planning and preparing what they were going to say. I had to wake up at 6:30 this morning and take a shower so I was ready for the van by 7. When we got on the van I decided to start preparing…after all, the press was going to be there so I needed to have something. None of us really had any idea what the goal was in this forum and spending the whole day in a classroom telling each other about what volunteering looks like to them didn’t sound real appealing. There was about thirty or forty people there, half of them students from the University. Only 5 of us didn’t speak Thai and so the whole thing was in English. This was harder for the people talking and for the Students who attended because they didn’t all speak English well. Lunch was good, and so was the opportunity to see some of the people that we met a couple weeks ago. I found out that the goal was to start building a network of volunteers…I think. We got back home around 5:30 and I was pretty tired of sitting through speeches all day. Oh yeah…about the 10 minute speech I had to give. I feel like it went pretty dang good. It felt like I was back in college again…getting assignments done at the last minute and sitting back in amazement when it all comes together as if I’d been working on it for days.

Connect 4 and dirty mop water

Nov 10

Today was a pretty good day. I brought the guys at Rachawadee Boys (where I work) at connect 4 game. It is a pretty good game because they can all play it and it takes some mental concentration to win the game as well as some physical concentration to place the checker pieces into the slot where they want it. They really seem to enjoy playing it too. I also got to teach Sen and Peetaya some English today. Sen is really smart and seems to remember some from other volunteers in the past, but it takes him a long time to say something. It’s difficult for him to move any of his muscles so it always takes him a while to do anything. Peetaya is always asking questions about what things are in English but he has a hard time remembering the words.
After work I went home and had one of the funniest accidental falls that I can remember. I fell off of the stairs. A couple of the girls were cleaning the floor and put the kitchen chairs at the bottom of the stairs. I was on the 3rd step and went to step on the chair that was at the bottom of the stairs and somehow I missed it completely. I fell. I crashed through the chairs and fell on my back right into the bucket of dirty mopwater. I’ll try to put a picture of it up on the website. The other people in the house didn’t waste any time taking pictures of my circumstance. That’s all.

amazing thailand

nov. 8

thailand is really cool. today i took the motorcycle in because the back tire had been popped. it's basically a bicycle tire. anyways, the guy had to take the entire back wheel off and put on a brand new intertube for me. total cost...$2. can't get service like that in the States.

i'm hungry right now though and wish i had a slice of pizza. i think this is the first time i have craved any american food.

girls night

Nov 6

Friday night was “girls night” at the house. I’m not too sure what that meant since there are 7 girls living at this house and 1 other guy. That being said, every night here feels like girls night so I don’t know why there was a need to set a night aside for girls night. Oh well, I wanted no part of it. The moment I heard about it I decided that under no circumstances would I remain in the house on that night. So, I packed a bag and headed for Klong Toey, the largest slum community in Bangkok. I figured I would go and see the family I stayed with last year and either stay the night there if they offered or I would find a cheap guest house. It took 2 1/5 hours to get to Klong Toey by buses, I should probably find a faster route. I was an hour late for prayer that night but it was good to be there anyways. They had a prayer meeting with a bunch of different people in the slum. I recognized a lot of them from when I lived there last year and they remembered me. It was really good to see them again. We prayed a lot for the slum and when we were done I went back to P Charley’s house (my host from last year) and ate some Thai soup with him and the family. He offered me to sleep on the floor which I gladly accepted since it was almost 10 at night. So I slept on a hard tile floor all night with a sheet as a mat next to P Charley. It reminded me of staying there last year in a lot of ways. I never seemed to fully be able to understand what was going on at any given moment and I had a Bible study with P Charley late that night and early in the morning (½ in Thai, ½ in English, and ½ in gestures!)
I think the girls had fun at the house here, and, from what I hear about the level of girliness that was going on, I can’t think of a better place I could have slept that night than on P Charley’s floor!

motorcycle

Nov 3

I have a motorcycle that I ride back and forth from work now. Well, it’s not really mine, it’s supposed to be repossessed soon, but the people haven’t come to get it yet. And, I have access to the keys so I take it to work everyday now. It’s a lot of fun. Today I took a couple of the Thai women that work at CCD to the supermarket. I wish I had a picture of that because the bike is only a 125cc I think and 3 people on it must look funny. A lot of people look anyways because I’m the only white guy in Pakkred I think that drives a motorcycle around.

Happy Halloween!

Oct 31

Happy Halloween everyone! There’s no kids coming to the door asking for candy here, and even if there were I don’t think I’d understand them. Yesterday I took one of the guys to church with me. TakTan had to help a lot though. We took Peetaya to church and he really liked going. He wants to go to church every week he can but there isn’t always people who are able to take him. We went to church and then took him to McDonalds afterwards. He liked that food a lot better than the food he gets on a normal basis! He was talking to the other staff today about it and said how much he really liked going yesterday.
Today was payday for the staff also and some of them invited me and Sarah out to eat dinner with them at Sizzler. They don’t do it often but it’s a nice treat for them to be able to do. It was fun being there with them, even though we didn’t understand much of what was being said at all! The other thing I learned was that dinner at Sizzler didn’t mean a 1 hour endeavor. We met them there at 5 o’clock and didn’t leave until around 9 o’clock! It was lots of fun though and a great chance to bond more with the staff. Well, my Halloween was good, I hope that yours will be too.
Happy Trick or Treating everyone!