I have had quite an eventful week, so be ready for another fairly lengthy blog entry. I have decided that I will post a blog entry once a week, given that I really have fairly little time to sit down and write. Sunday is my day off, so it will accordingly be when I write my blog. There will be an exception this week. On Tuesday we find out where our sites will be, so I will be sure to let everyone know where exactly I will be spending the next two years of my life.
I am actually going to start with a little side note that relates directly to my final paragraph of
my last blog entry about my host family. I had mentioned that my host mom had been heating water for me in the morning so that I could avoid the shocking experience of dumping freezing water on my head at 6:30 in the morning. Well the water heating ordeal only lasted a few days. After I had went with my family to have lunch in a near by village my host dad stopped by the local construction store to pick up a few materials for an undisclosed purpose (or most likely due to a lack of understanding). Later in the afternoon my host dad was hard at work installing not only a heated shower in the bathroom, but also a toilet paper roll holder. I now have a hot shower, a western style toilet, and toilet paper. All the luxuries a good American boy needs! In fact the hot shower has become a slightly diminished necessity given that it has once again “warmed up” and I now have to have a fan blowing full blast on me to be comfortable at night. The joys of Thai weather!
Last Saturday we were treated to what was presented as a “fun filled day of sports” at a national park that is about 25 km from our hub site. I think we all left the hub site with a substantial amount of enthusiasm and a lot of pent up energy. We would finally be able to enjoy a day with the Peace Corps that didn’t involve sitting in a chair for 8 hours and doing endless amounts of “flip charts”. Well I’m not quite sure how I was so ignorant. The first hour was spent discussing Thai language, not really learning anything in particular, just discussing. The second hour was spent finding out who our new language teachers would be and chatting with them about our objectives for the next five weeks. At this point I was a little confused concerning the seeming lack of sports during “sports day”. I wasn’t sure if it was due to a vastly different conception of “sports days” in the United States and Thailand or just a simple bit of justified deception on behalf of the Peace Corps. I will leave the answer to that question open. It should be pretty easy to decipher the correct answer as you read further. By this time it is 10:30 am and the sports had yet to begin. Instead of heading out the courts and playing fields we were directed to choose team colors and come up with two cheers: one in Thai and one in English. This was a 15 minute activity. We then proceeded to watch the cheers from each one of the eight groups, and to my surprise they managed to sneak in more interactive group building exercises. These included a race of passing a ping-pong ball from spoon to spoon protruding from each person’s mouth, among others. Time: 11:00; still no sports.
When the group building exercises where finished we got the official notification that the sports would begin! Four typical Thai sports were set up and two groups were sent to participate against each other at each “sport station”. The sports were: bachi (sp?) ball (Thai = pe-tong), badminton (Thai = bad-mit-tun), mini soccer (Thai = foot-sol), soccer/volleyball (Thai = taak-law). My group started playing foot-sol and had barely started playing when a whistle was blown for us to switch groups. I just loved the feeling of being like a 10 year old at a day camp. Well it turned out that at each “sport station” we were allocated 15 whole minutes of playing time. Our “sports day” seriously consisted of a grand total of one hour of sports!
Although I was a bit disappointed with the degree to which our sports day actually included playing sports, we were after all at a national park that had tigers, bears, elephants and one of the largest remaining monsoonal forests in Southeast Asia. All we had to do was get out and experience it! They had sign up sheets where you could choose to either: hang out at the park headquarters and relax, go to a waterfall, or go to the waterfall just to see it then go for a hike through the forest. We I chose the third option and turns out that about 40 other people did as well. Our like hike through the forest in hopes of seeing some wildlife turned into a human traffic jam with the nearest animal most likely taking refuge in Cambodia.
Once again I am using my blog to vent about my frustration with the PST portion of my Peace Corps experience. Well let’s end on a good note. Our weekly schedule showed that we were going to an AIDS training conference and we were given a schedule that clearly stated we were going to be at a beach resort. Well after sports weekend I was a bit skeptical, but my skepticism was changed to gratified belief as our bus pulled in to a very posh beach resort near the city of Chantaburi. This once again reaffirms my status as a “Posh Corps Volunteer”. The resort was right on the beach and had an amazing pool. We did have to attend informational sessions, but they were put on by current Peace Corps Volunteers and were pretty informative. I think the best training and information has come from the current volunteers that have put on sessions during out training. Too bad that has happened only three times in 5 weeks! It turns out the in 2005 Peace Corps Thailand received a grant from a presidential fund to conducted AIDS awareness conferences and activities throughout Thailand. Every current volunteer has a very good chance of receiving funding to support an AIDS related activity within his/her community and past and current volunteers have rounded up a wealth of materials that can be used in these endeavors.
Although the sessions were very good, being able to spend time on the beach and in the ocean was the true highlight. After our sessions got over on Friday afternoon nearly everyone went out to the beach. It turned out that none of us had the mental capacity to think of bringing a Frisbee or a football, but we Peace Corps volunteers are resourceful! As we were messing around in the shallow tidal flats in the ocean we found a coconut that just happened to be shaped almost exactly like a football. Soon a good game of American football was being played out in full force in two feet of water. It was a great time, as the pictures truly show. There was one slight problem. A coconut is not made of leather and dry weighs at least 5 times more than a football. As the game progressed, the coconut got water logged and all of us were waiting for someone to catch a stray coconut flying through the air right in their noggin. Well that didn’t happen, but I can confess that during one of my heroic catches the coconut managed to reach my ribs. I felt like I could puke but of course I couldn’t let anyone know that. I got up and kept playing wearing the foot long red battle wound proudly. This came to accompany at least four sand burns from being tackled in water that may have been a bit to shallow.
I am actually going to start with a little side note that relates directly to my final paragraph of
my last blog entry about my host family. I had mentioned that my host mom had been heating water for me in the morning so that I could avoid the shocking experience of dumping freezing water on my head at 6:30 in the morning. Well the water heating ordeal only lasted a few days. After I had went with my family to have lunch in a near by village my host dad stopped by the local construction store to pick up a few materials for an undisclosed purpose (or most likely due to a lack of understanding). Later in the afternoon my host dad was hard at work installing not only a heated shower in the bathroom, but also a toilet paper roll holder. I now have a hot shower, a western style toilet, and toilet paper. All the luxuries a good American boy needs! In fact the hot shower has become a slightly diminished necessity given that it has once again “warmed up” and I now have to have a fan blowing full blast on me to be comfortable at night. The joys of Thai weather!
Last Saturday we were treated to what was presented as a “fun filled day of sports” at a national park that is about 25 km from our hub site. I think we all left the hub site with a substantial amount of enthusiasm and a lot of pent up energy. We would finally be able to enjoy a day with the Peace Corps that didn’t involve sitting in a chair for 8 hours and doing endless amounts of “flip charts”. Well I’m not quite sure how I was so ignorant. The first hour was spent discussing Thai language, not really learning anything in particular, just discussing. The second hour was spent finding out who our new language teachers would be and chatting with them about our objectives for the next five weeks. At this point I was a little confused concerning the seeming lack of sports during “sports day”. I wasn’t sure if it was due to a vastly different conception of “sports days” in the United States and Thailand or just a simple bit of justified deception on behalf of the Peace Corps. I will leave the answer to that question open. It should be pretty easy to decipher the correct answer as you read further. By this time it is 10:30 am and the sports had yet to begin. Instead of heading out the courts and playing fields we were directed to choose team colors and come up with two cheers: one in Thai and one in English. This was a 15 minute activity. We then proceeded to watch the cheers from each one of the eight groups, and to my surprise they managed to sneak in more interactive group building exercises. These included a race of passing a ping-pong ball from spoon to spoon protruding from each person’s mouth, among others. Time: 11:00; still no sports.When the group building exercises where finished we got the official notification that the sports would begin! Four typical Thai sports were set up and two groups were sent to participate against each other at each “sport station”. The sports were: bachi (sp?) ball (Thai = pe-tong), badminton (Thai = bad-mit-tun), mini soccer (Thai = foot-sol), soccer/volleyball (Thai = taak-law). My group started playing foot-sol and had barely started playing when a whistle was blown for us to switch groups. I just loved the feeling of being like a 10 year old at a day camp. Well it turned out that at each “sport station” we were allocated 15 whole minutes of playing time. Our “sports day” seriously consisted of a grand total of one hour of sports!
Although I was a bit disappointed with the degree to which our sports day actually included playing sports, we were after all at a national park that had tigers, bears, elephants and one of the largest remaining monsoonal forests in Southeast Asia. All we had to do was get out and experience it! They had sign up sheets where you could choose to either: hang out at the park headquarters and relax, go to a waterfall, or go to the waterfall just to see it then go for a hike through the forest. We I chose the third option and turns out that about 40 other people did as well. Our like hike through the forest in hopes of seeing some wildlife turned into a human traffic jam with the nearest animal most likely taking refuge in Cambodia.
Once again I am using my blog to vent about my frustration with the PST portion of my Peace Corps experience. Well let’s end on a good note. Our weekly schedule showed that we were going to an AIDS training conference and we were given a schedule that clearly stated we were going to be at a beach resort. Well after sports weekend I was a bit skeptical, but my skepticism was changed to gratified belief as our bus pulled in to a very posh beach resort near the city of Chantaburi. This once again reaffirms my status as a “Posh Corps Volunteer”. The resort was right on the beach and had an amazing pool. We did have to attend informational sessions, but they were put on by current Peace Corps Volunteers and were pretty informative. I think the best training and information has come from the current volunteers that have put on sessions during out training. Too bad that has happened only three times in 5 weeks! It turns out the in 2005 Peace Corps Thailand received a grant from a presidential fund to conducted AIDS awareness conferences and activities throughout Thailand. Every current volunteer has a very good chance of receiving funding to support an AIDS related activity within his/her community and past and current volunteers have rounded up a wealth of materials that can be used in these endeavors.
Although the sessions were very good, being able to spend time on the beach and in the ocean was the true highlight. After our sessions got over on Friday afternoon nearly everyone went out to the beach. It turned out that none of us had the mental capacity to think of bringing a Frisbee or a football, but we Peace Corps volunteers are resourceful! As we were messing around in the shallow tidal flats in the ocean we found a coconut that just happened to be shaped almost exactly like a football. Soon a good game of American football was being played out in full force in two feet of water. It was a great time, as the pictures truly show. There was one slight problem. A coconut is not made of leather and dry weighs at least 5 times more than a football. As the game progressed, the coconut got water logged and all of us were waiting for someone to catch a stray coconut flying through the air right in their noggin. Well that didn’t happen, but I can confess that during one of my heroic catches the coconut managed to reach my ribs. I felt like I could puke but of course I couldn’t let anyone know that. I got up and kept playing wearing the foot long red battle wound proudly. This came to accompany at least four sand burns from being tackled in water that may have been a bit to shallow. 
After the coconut football game was over we enjoyed the pool for quite some time. As we BSed we saw John relaxing like a “bad man” on the other side of the pool and remembered that this “bad man” had chosen to go ahead and wear his Dockers while he participated in the coconut football match. Well the Dockers were still being rocked and the underwater capability of my camera made it irresistible to snap a photo of John’s unique choice of a bathing suit. I’m planning on sending it to Dockers in hopes
they will use in an ad campaign and I will receive some serious royalties! After getting our photo and relaxing a bit more we had a descent Thai meal and ended with some drinking of Thai beer (Bia Chang of course) and a few games of Pete’s famous card game Synch. Pete taught Anton and I this game our first week while we were at Kao Yai and swore that it was a card game specific to his county, Dubois County, in Indiana. Well Anton and I proceeded to beat him and Colin about 5 consecutive games and he wanted revenge. Well he got it, but that’s beside the point.On Saturday we went to a development project promoted and supported by the Tha
i king. It is a bay that only a few years ago had seen its fisheries substantially depleted due to unsustainable prawn and shrimp farming and a destruction of the mangrove forests that bordered it. The project had revived the mangrove forests and created sustainable shrimp farming practices in the areas adjacent to the bay. We took a tour of the mangroves on a boardwalk that had been built and watched a movie that explained the whole project. It was very informative and very innovative.I nearly failed to mention the funniest cross-cultural blunders I have gotten myself into so far. On Friday we all stayed at the hotel in our hub town so that we could leave early Saturday morning for Chantaburi. After we were done with our sessions about 10 of us went to eat dinner at a restaurant that I had frequented several times before. When we were nearly finished with our meal two groups of our friends went walking by saying that they were going to go down the street to the “Jam Bar.” After we finished our meals we set out to find the Jam Bar. We didn’t know the exact location and after walking for a short while we came across two bars that were all lit up and had Christmas lights outside. We walked up to one and it looked like it had some pretty nice sofas and a descent atmosphere. Most everyone decided that they would continue on down the road to look for the Jam Bar, but Mike and I decided we would sit down and have one beer at this place. We sat down and were served beer by one of the girls working there. We filled up our glasses and soon two girls were sitting next to us pouring themselves beer out of our bottles. At that point the ignorance was suspended and I said to Mike, “I think that it is very well possible that we are in a brothel.” Well sure enough, we were. As “admin sep” was looming ever closer we promptly finished our beers, said good bye to the hospitable ladies and made our way to the Jam Bar. Who would have thought that probably the only two American men in Thailand not looking for a whore house would accidentally ended up in one. Alright, it probably isn’t that big of an improbability given Thailand’s extensive sex industry, but I still think it is a pretty funny story.
I hope you enjoyed and I will be back in a few days with the anxiously awaited news about site placement. I know that Janae is crossing her fingers for me to be sent to the south next to some world class beaches and the nearest Hilton. Sorry Janae, even if that happens there will be no Hilton, only squat toilets, fried grasshoppers, and huts for you! I also want to wish Jason, Doug, Megan, and Roxana good luck with their Peace Corps departure preparations. I know it is still a ways off for Jason and Megan, very close for Doug, and unfortunately and unexpectedly a few months off for Roxana, but I miss you all and any advice you need just let me know. I am a man of infinite wisdom...or at least some say. For my Wyoming family and all my Wyoming friends I have included the picture below. Wyomingites may be few and far between, but they are still being represented!
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