Emily Takes On Thailand

Growing up, my family and I would drive up to Boston to see our relatives every year. I remember never being able to sleep the night before, so excited to see everyone again. My sister and I are two of eleven cousins, so you can imagine that this annual one week trip was absolute, joyful chaos. Nothing but swimming, snacking, and laughing until the sun went down, only to rinse and repeat the next day. I've been thinking of these summer days more frequently since moving in with my site host family. My host mom is one of six siblings, and together they have a total of -ironically- eleven kids. They all come to my Yai's noodle restaurant (nextdoor to us) for dinner every night, which means every night it's a party. It's fun to watch: the older cousins play dominoes at the small marble table, the younger cousins run around out front blowing bubbles, and the adults sit on various benches and chairs eating and talking about their days. I understand roughly thirty percent...

I have officially been at site for two weeks. Before we packed our bags, our trainers in Don Chedi told us "you'll have so much down time when you get to site. It's bid term there so you can kick back and relax a bit!" I think they were right, if you exclude the two day exam conference, graduation ceremony, staff dinner parties which you're given thirty minutes prior notice for and told to "go shower!" and the usual demand to play "hospital" with my crazy (but perfect) little host sisters. All joking aside, having a jam packed schedule has been essential for my integration here. I can feel my counterparts and I getting more comfortable with each other (last night she said "I'm gonna miss you when you leave" and I told her she literally has two years before she has to worry about that). My host family cracks jokes with me more, the students who play volleyball ask me to join, even the stray dogs know I'm probably gonna ...

Part 3: Hua Hin The van ride to Hua Hin was brief, only four hours. But my mind raced the entire time. I had no idea what I was getting myself into. All of my friends were gone, my family was gone, it was just me now. What was the school going to look like? What was my new host family going to think of me? Did I just spill iced coffee on my shirt? My co-teacher was sitting next to me, and my principal was in the front seat. Both had been incredibly warm to me in the past three days during the counterpart conference. They were visibly nervous, but I'm sure I was too. We made light chit chat along the way, and eventually became more and more comfortable with each other. Eventually, farms turned into mountains, and mountains soared above the water. The closer we got, the more beautiful it became. I thought "there is no way this is going to be my home." Then suddenly, my co-teacher (Cru Tok), said "we're here." I looked up to see the most stunning templ...

Okay, so it's been a while since I've posted, but I JUST MOVED TO SITE, and I don't want to leave out a single detail of what it's taken to get here, so I'll break it down into three parts... Part 1: Site Reveal It was Tuesday afternoon, everyone had just walked (more like jogged) back from lunch. We sat down on the benches that lined the walkway of the Don Chedi school, since they would not let us inside the meeting room. I swung my legs over the bench so I was turned away from the crowd. Behind me, I could hear people chatting excitedly: "Oh my gosh, is this really happening?" "I should not have eaten that much pineapple at lunch, I'm nauseous now," "Is that sweat going down my back, or just a bug?" I sat there watching some water trickle down a leaf right in front of my face, and thought Well, it's now or never I guess. Then, the doors opened. The country director smiled and shouted "Are you ready to find out ...

Part 2: Saying Goodbye I biked home as fast as my legs could take me to tell my host family the site I had been given. My phone was blowing up with texts from them: "Do you know where you are going yet?!" "Tell us where you are going!!" "When are you coming home?!" When I finally got there, Bua raced up to greet me as she always did. I jumped off my bike to give her a hug, and ran into the house. I called out "Hellloooo! I'm home!" No one answered. I quickly realized the only one home was Paw. He and I were probably the least close out of everyone in the family, but I still could not wait to tell him. I went to the back yard to greet him as he watered the plants. I said "Di chan ja bpai tii Hua Hin!" (I am going to Hua Hin!). The often stoic man smiled, something that only happened now and then, and exclaimed in English: "Ah! The beach!" Soon after that, the rest of the family came home from the market. Meeh (Mom...

Group 131 is exactly one week away from finding out about our site placements. This means that we are six days away from taking the LPI exam, twelve days from leaving our host families, and fifteen days from swearing in as official volunteers. There is much work to be done until these days, and for some reason, I am finding it hard to bring myself to do any of it. The TESS trainees have been out of the classroom for a few weeks now, so the average day of Pre-Service Training usually consists of a four hour language class, a one hour lunch break, and a four hour technical training. In other words: sitting, sitting, and more sitting. While I know all of this information is necessary and there is really no way around it, I find myself fighting the urge to fall asleep. If you asked my fellow trainees, you would probably hear similar sentiments towards the sessions. But for me, I think it goes a little farther than that. I have noticed my mind beginning to wander, often to things that...

This post is going to be kind of long, but only because SO MUCH has happened in the past few days. Last weekend, my host family asked me if I wanted to go on a little trip for my day off. I said "sure, why not!" having no idea what we were about to do. My host mom knocked on my door yelling "Emily, gin khao!!" at 6:30 (even though we definitely agreed on 7:00, farewell, zzz's). I groggily got ready, grabbed my backpack, and jumped in the car with my family. In about two hours, we arrived at our first destination: Kanchanaburi war cemetery. Here, almost 7,000 prisoners of the Japanese during World War II are buried. These prisoners were forced to build the Thailand/Burma railway, which stretched over 258 miles. The pictures of the prisoners building the railway are quite disturbing, and I'm slightly embarrassed that I did not know anything about it beforehand. The cemetery was beautiful, and also filled with Dutch and Australian tourists looking ...