So, this week was filled with more fun adventures. Wednesday we ate dinner in a Thai home. Super fun and super nice people. Good food too. My favorite Thai food has to be Som Tom. It's a type of spicy papaya salad. I hate actual papaya though :P.
Friday I had an interesting adventure to the dentist. I've been having problems in my mouth since I got here so I figured I'd go see the dentist cuz it's way cheaper here than it is at home. She was very nice and spoke pretty good English. She was able to understand me when I told her what was wrong. She was a little shocked when I told her that America's healthcare system wasn't good. Then I had to go on to explain that the healthcare itself is great but for those of us without insurance it's impossible to pay. She then proceeded to giving me the most painful cleaning I've ever had. Never again. lol. I'll stick with gentle American dentists from now on.
Saturday we plaid soccer with slum children. Those kids are so good! I was awful. lol. But we had so much fun playing anyways. The kids are super cool even though we don't speak the same language. They try hard to communicate even though it isn't verbal. We APSAI students have a new favorite song called "Too much. So much. Very much." It's mostly in Thai with just a few English words but we jam to it all the time. We had an epic time jamming with the Thai kids to the song in the van on the way home from the soccer game. They thought it was fun too! It's heartbreaking to look at the teenagers who were in their place just a few years ago. I pray these kids don't grow up to make the same mistakes, but instead will do better and make something of their lives. I hope they escape that black hole.
Also, this Sunday was our church's first week in their new building! Oh my goodness it looked amazing! We've had the opportunity to help a little bit but last time we were there it was still a mess. God has blessed that church and is alive and well within it.
Random emotions of the week, well and the week before, I just never got the chance to talk about... Being 3 weeks in now a lot of the luster and newness is wearing off. It's becoming increasingly frustrating that I can't speak the language and even the little bits I learned in class I'm still messing up. The people aren't like Americans. Americans think that English is like an uber language and either you should speak it or leave the country and if you don't speak it then they just won't speak to you or they'll treat you like you're stupid. Here, though, the Thai people are very kind. They try with all their might to speak English. In fact, sometimes random Thai people in places like McDonalds will sometimes practice their English with you. Still though. Most don't speak much English and if they do, it's very choppy. It's so frustrating. I want to make friends and stuff but I dont even know how because I can't even communicate with them.
A new fear has crept over me. Like a week ago I was followed back to my dorm. It was super scary. Some guy shouting "Darling, you can have me." Or "Darling can you help me?" Either way, creepy. Then while out with one of my other friends, we got full on creeper status checked out by some guy. And then the whole way home there were people staring at us. I know we're white in a non-white country but still. The looks they were giving us were creepy as all get up.
Also, homesickness is beginning to set in just a little. I miss my friends and family back home. I love the people who are here but still. It's hard to hear about all the things I always thought I'd be a part of that I can't be because I'm here. It's hard not to be able to find things like cheese for less than 10$ a brick. I want Mexican food. They have it here but it's more expensive and far from where I live. I miss not having to have someone translate for me. It's all bittersweet. Like we're still having tons of fun, but its hard. The sad part about it is that this week I bought a package of pasta and it pretty much made my week. When I went to read the instructions on the back, the whole back was in Spanish. They just placed a little Thai sticker over part of it so the Thais knew what they were buying. It threw me off guard because I could read it. lol. I miss hearing Spanish. Spanish is easy to understand. Thai is filled with tones and words that all sound the same to me. It's kind of frustrating to have to go shop in "big people stores" because the people here are like 1/4 my size at their fattest. It's also not so easy on the self-esteem. It's frustrating not to be able to get a hold of my family or friends any time I want. It's hard not to be able to just text someone when I need them. Communicating with my professors back home is equally frustrating. I send them an email and have to wait at least 12 hours for a reply. Some teachers I have to wait more like 4 days for and by then the assignment that I had questions on is way past due and I no longer have time to do them. And, since that guy followed me, I'm too scared to go anywhere by myself which I hate.
On the reverse side of this, I have a great family here. All of the APSAI students get along great! We have family nights Saturday and Tammy makes real American food for us. It takes the edge off of homesickness. And all the fun we have together, all the laughs and love that I feel between us and the missionaries and even just between us is amazing. So even though I feel homesick, it definitely helps to have so many great people around.
Furthermore, God is good and he has a purpose for bringing me here. I'm going to push through this homesickness and get back to loving it here. :)
Sunday, September 18, 2011
Saturday, September 10, 2011
Another week in this crazy place...
I should add, another AMAZING week in this place. :)
It's been crazy. I can't believe I've been here for two weeks already. It feels like I've been here longer, yet not as long all at the same time. Its also weird how the longer I'm here, the more I feel like I notice about the place. Let us see, where to start talking about this week?
I suppose I'll talk about classes first. They're now completely in full gear both her and at Evangel. It makes for an a very busy week. My professors back home have been super awesome about working with me while I'm here. I'm taking 2 classes here too. One is with Dr. Alan Johnson who is like a super genius and also really entertaining. He has a lot of good things that I feel like are important for us to know. Of course, we also have guest teachers really really often in that class, seeing as Alan has other things to do too. I also am taking Thai with Khruu Sasipa. She's so much fun and with our group of kids the class is nothing but smiles, laughter, and, of course, learning. Our Thai is better than it was when we started. Our nights are filled with games and movies up in our commons area. Sometimes we walk to the mall or other places near by. It's really great and the group we have is so much fun.
Let's see... what else? I go to a Thai church. It's amazing. The people are super nice. We're currently working on moving to a new building so that's pretty sweet. I got to go help them clean up the new building just a little bit the other day. Our pastor is hilarious. There's a wooden cross on the wall behind the stage, as there is in many churches. In the sound booth there's a switch that makes the cross light up. Our pastor went and turned it on and then came back and points to it and in his broken English goes "Look. I make miracle. Give me money." I could not stop laughing. The construction workers laughed at us too. Apparently, they're not used to white people doing physical labor. That was a great experience though. I can't wait to get to know everyone in our church better.
Also this week, I got to go on a cultural excursion. It's pretty much the greatest thing ever. Today, we went to the floating market. Somehow it reminded me of New Orleans the way the buildings were built and stuff. You take this boat and it just drives through the market and that's how you get to stores and stuff. You can barter with shop keepers, which I am terrible at. I wanted to buy this thing and she said it was 250 baht (~8.40$), which for what it was was pricey. I also know that if I were Thai she would give it to me cheaper. I didn't aim too low, 150 baht (~5$). She wanted me to go up to 200, but we evened out at 170. Still more than I should have spent, but I almost gave in haha. Glad I didn't. We also went to this zoo place. They had terrible food. :P I ate this green candy looking thing that had like a hard exterior and a goopy interior. I don't know how to describe it. It was like trying to eat flavored snot. I know that's gross but that is the only thing I can think of to compare it to. We also got to ride elephants! It was incredible. We had the coolest driver and he was super nice. He learned English just from being around tourists. He said he's lived all over the Asia Pacific. It was super cool. It's like riding a really really big horse haha. Only we were on seats. They also had an epic show with fire and everything. The elephants played soccer too! Its so cool! Elephants are my new favorite animal. :D
The only thing about it I didn't like was how they treated the animals. Not that it was bad, but they really pushed them hard. Idk. I spose its whatevs, but yeah.
So yeah. I get to learn by riding elephants. How do you get to learn? In a classroom? So cliche :)
It's been crazy. I can't believe I've been here for two weeks already. It feels like I've been here longer, yet not as long all at the same time. Its also weird how the longer I'm here, the more I feel like I notice about the place. Let us see, where to start talking about this week?
I suppose I'll talk about classes first. They're now completely in full gear both her and at Evangel. It makes for an a very busy week. My professors back home have been super awesome about working with me while I'm here. I'm taking 2 classes here too. One is with Dr. Alan Johnson who is like a super genius and also really entertaining. He has a lot of good things that I feel like are important for us to know. Of course, we also have guest teachers really really often in that class, seeing as Alan has other things to do too. I also am taking Thai with Khruu Sasipa. She's so much fun and with our group of kids the class is nothing but smiles, laughter, and, of course, learning. Our Thai is better than it was when we started. Our nights are filled with games and movies up in our commons area. Sometimes we walk to the mall or other places near by. It's really great and the group we have is so much fun.
Let's see... what else? I go to a Thai church. It's amazing. The people are super nice. We're currently working on moving to a new building so that's pretty sweet. I got to go help them clean up the new building just a little bit the other day. Our pastor is hilarious. There's a wooden cross on the wall behind the stage, as there is in many churches. In the sound booth there's a switch that makes the cross light up. Our pastor went and turned it on and then came back and points to it and in his broken English goes "Look. I make miracle. Give me money." I could not stop laughing. The construction workers laughed at us too. Apparently, they're not used to white people doing physical labor. That was a great experience though. I can't wait to get to know everyone in our church better.
Also this week, I got to go on a cultural excursion. It's pretty much the greatest thing ever. Today, we went to the floating market. Somehow it reminded me of New Orleans the way the buildings were built and stuff. You take this boat and it just drives through the market and that's how you get to stores and stuff. You can barter with shop keepers, which I am terrible at. I wanted to buy this thing and she said it was 250 baht (~8.40$), which for what it was was pricey. I also know that if I were Thai she would give it to me cheaper. I didn't aim too low, 150 baht (~5$). She wanted me to go up to 200, but we evened out at 170. Still more than I should have spent, but I almost gave in haha. Glad I didn't. We also went to this zoo place. They had terrible food. :P I ate this green candy looking thing that had like a hard exterior and a goopy interior. I don't know how to describe it. It was like trying to eat flavored snot. I know that's gross but that is the only thing I can think of to compare it to. We also got to ride elephants! It was incredible. We had the coolest driver and he was super nice. He learned English just from being around tourists. He said he's lived all over the Asia Pacific. It was super cool. It's like riding a really really big horse haha. Only we were on seats. They also had an epic show with fire and everything. The elephants played soccer too! Its so cool! Elephants are my new favorite animal. :D
The only thing about it I didn't like was how they treated the animals. Not that it was bad, but they really pushed them hard. Idk. I spose its whatevs, but yeah.
So yeah. I get to learn by riding elephants. How do you get to learn? In a classroom? So cliche :)
Sunday, September 4, 2011
Wow. Really? A week and a half already?
So we've now been here for over a week. Wow. Right? Sorry for my followers that I haven't posted all week. It has been crazy. We started classes this week and everything else. Monday, I think it was Monday... we went to Platinum which is a huge mall downtown. We took the Airtran which was fun. Platinum was HUGE. There's like a million malls here in Bangkok. They seem like a less organized version of American malls sort of. They have small local shops everywhere except in the really fancy stores. The mall closest to us has a grocery store in it and a water park lol. I haven't been yet but I will. :) Classes started and everything kicked into full gear. So with all the business not a lot of super exciting stuff has happened. Other than just the fact that I'm in Thailand lol.
Thai class is interesting lol. Its really hard to get the tones down. Our teacher is very patient and loves to laugh with us. It makes it so much fun, even though we suck at it lol. The language itself is way more simple than English. The tones however are so hard. Oh well. One class at a time :)
Saturday, my team had an English camp to teach at. The kids were so much fun and so cute! My station was shopping. We had a bunch of random objects and the kids had to ask how much stuff costs and we would tell them and ask them questions and stuff. Some of them liked to ask what objects were. We had trouble explaining the word "barrette" until we realized it was a French word and gave up and called it a "hair clip" instead. lol Even native English speakers get confused. haha. They kept feeding us weird food. Ok and food is one thing here. It's delicious and amazing. Usually. lol. The stuff we ate at the school, not so much. lol. But we were considered special guests so it was important to eat it. The first thing we ate was this weird stuff made of coconut milk. it was served on a folded leaf and also had these weird little ball things that looked like fish eggs but tasted like tapioca. The second thing we ate was like a roll with something else made also of coconut milk. Both were green by the way. For lunch we had green curry. Not really my favorite thing. It was cool to see some of the Thai games they play. They play hacky sack but their hacky is like little wooden round things with feathers on top. I didn't get a close look at it but yeah. Same game. Except they don't mind using their hands lol. We then went and walked around a Muslim community. It was small and rather adorable, but the smell was not so good. There and downtown I've noticed it. The smell makes me so sick and you can't breath from your mouth either because then it burns your throat. I guess it's the bad sewage here. Not just in poor areas either. That smell, I will never get used to. It made me so sick after we went downtown Monday. Anyways, the people there were super nice though.
Today we just got up and went to church. Our church is amazing. Definitely Pentacostal lol. And God moves in that place a lot. We came back I got a small break and then went walking around the mall. We ate McDonalds for dinner. Its different here. I kinda like it better. You can get ice cream cones for .30$ there. Its cool. The market was fun. They have an outdoor market right outside the mall. Its kind of sad. Thais are so skinny. So people who are like normal American sized have to shop at "big people" stores. Like an XXL here is the size of a medium in America. Yeah. Unite States. You're fat. Just saying. lol.
Well, I think that's all the update for now. So, until next time. :)
Thai class is interesting lol. Its really hard to get the tones down. Our teacher is very patient and loves to laugh with us. It makes it so much fun, even though we suck at it lol. The language itself is way more simple than English. The tones however are so hard. Oh well. One class at a time :)
Saturday, my team had an English camp to teach at. The kids were so much fun and so cute! My station was shopping. We had a bunch of random objects and the kids had to ask how much stuff costs and we would tell them and ask them questions and stuff. Some of them liked to ask what objects were. We had trouble explaining the word "barrette" until we realized it was a French word and gave up and called it a "hair clip" instead. lol Even native English speakers get confused. haha. They kept feeding us weird food. Ok and food is one thing here. It's delicious and amazing. Usually. lol. The stuff we ate at the school, not so much. lol. But we were considered special guests so it was important to eat it. The first thing we ate was this weird stuff made of coconut milk. it was served on a folded leaf and also had these weird little ball things that looked like fish eggs but tasted like tapioca. The second thing we ate was like a roll with something else made also of coconut milk. Both were green by the way. For lunch we had green curry. Not really my favorite thing. It was cool to see some of the Thai games they play. They play hacky sack but their hacky is like little wooden round things with feathers on top. I didn't get a close look at it but yeah. Same game. Except they don't mind using their hands lol. We then went and walked around a Muslim community. It was small and rather adorable, but the smell was not so good. There and downtown I've noticed it. The smell makes me so sick and you can't breath from your mouth either because then it burns your throat. I guess it's the bad sewage here. Not just in poor areas either. That smell, I will never get used to. It made me so sick after we went downtown Monday. Anyways, the people there were super nice though.
Today we just got up and went to church. Our church is amazing. Definitely Pentacostal lol. And God moves in that place a lot. We came back I got a small break and then went walking around the mall. We ate McDonalds for dinner. Its different here. I kinda like it better. You can get ice cream cones for .30$ there. Its cool. The market was fun. They have an outdoor market right outside the mall. Its kind of sad. Thais are so skinny. So people who are like normal American sized have to shop at "big people" stores. Like an XXL here is the size of a medium in America. Yeah. Unite States. You're fat. Just saying. lol.
Well, I think that's all the update for now. So, until next time. :)
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