Thursday, July 23, 2009

17- Get Together Now

Post 17: Get Together Now
I’ve was gone from site for 16 days, and it feels like a lifetime. I left on the afternoon of June 26th. PST 2 started on Sunday, but 13 of us decided to meet up in Korat Friday evening and visit Khao Yai National park on Saturday morning. After a late night (including a hotel “suite” a la 1970 that 5 people shared, a harrowing tuk tuk race through the city streets to a bar, and a 30 minute 3 am stop at a gas station for snacks), we did not manage to leave the hotel until noon and arrived at the park gates around 4. At this point, it was not worth it to pay the entrance fee and attempt the trek in, so we opted to hitchhike to a nearby guest house and rent cabins for the night. The next morning, we hitchhiked again into the park, this time divided into three cars. The people driving my car were heading to a waterfall, so we yelled to the other volunteers to follow us. The park was beautiful with big mountains and thick greenery everywhere. The car wound slowly around the sloping hills and occasionally just after a turn, dramatic cliff-laden views filled our windshield. We saw monkeys by the side of the road and an elephant. Even for the short time, it was worth the trip. Once at the waterfall, we hiked around a bit, took some pictures, and then negotiated to have a song taio come pick us up so we could make it back to Korat, at the university hotel by 5 for the training opening meeting.
2 song taio rides and 2 bus rides later, we arrived at the training site at 5 o’clock on the dot. We checked into our rooms and said hello to the people we had not seen in 3 months. All Peace Corps volunteers go through 12 weeks of training. In Thailand, we do 10 weeks before we swear-in, and then the additional two weeks after 3 months. The training involved discussing life at site, challenges, and sharing advice, as well as additional technical training and a week of intensive Thai. For four days in the middle, there was a counterpart conference where each of us had one person (teacher or local government worker) coming to plan projects. Pii Orasa came as my counterpart and luckily we got placed at the same table as Julia for the project design workshop. I had expressed to Julia before my interest in doing sanitation education (read: wash hands after using the bathroom), and my desire to procure liquid hand soap. Julia said her co-teacher had an easy recipe for how to make liquid soap at home. It was quite the puzzle-perfect fit of goals, expertise, and compatibility. Julia, I and our co-teachers then spent the next 4 days designing a soap project (Project Bubble) that involves teaching students to make the soap, distributing the soap to schools, and then holding sanitation workshops to emphasize why it is important. Another beneficial aspect to the counterpart conference was it gave Pii Orasa a chance to see me in my “natural” environment. Normally, I live in hers. But in Korat, she was on my turf, so to speak, where I was surrounded by friends and could speak English. She kept commenting on how much I smiled and I think we understand each other better, now that she has seen another side to me. After the counterparts departed, the next week was spent mainly on additional language training. It was intense, but extremely helpful and I made headway on reading as well. Thai is a difficult language, and while I communicate effectively and relatively well, I still want to improve.
Training ended at 4:15 every day. Around 6, there was usually some kind of coordinated effort to eat. The hotel was 20 + km away from the center of Korat, and the nearest place to eat was 7-11. Most nights, we walked 15 minutes to the nearby market, which had lots of options and was fun to explore. I had the spiciest som tum I’ve had since coming to Thailand, which is saying something. A couple times, we went into Korat for Mexican food or pizza. Usually after dinner, the rest of the evening was spent hanging out in someone’s hotel room. We brought cards, music and simply enjoyed being together. Beau tracked down plastic cups and ping pong balls in the city, so there was beer pong as well. Interestingly, it appears I have improved since college. On one or two occasions, the night ended in the pool or on the roof (but you didn’t hear that from me). Late night after late night was exhausting, but time together is so precious no-one wanted to miss an opportunity, as we won’t all be together again until January.
A highlight of the week was on the fourth of July, when Peace Corps held a party for us. We played sports in the afternoon, and then the hotel staff prepared American food. There was a pseudo salad bar, mashed potatoes, spaghetti, hot dogs, and “hamburgers” with little pork patties. After dinner, we held a “no-talent” show. Acts included horrendous karaoke, interpretive dancing (which I participated in), a back-bend contest, and-hand farting. When the contest was over, 30 of us took over the only real bar in walking distance, called the Hank Over- *note this is not a clever pun on the owner’s name, rather they misspelled hangover. We requested American music and had a big dance party until a band took the stage and kicked us off. There were no fireworks, no parades, but it was still a fourth of July.
Training ended on Friday and 20 of us took vans to Chaibadan, our original training site, to visit our host families. My family has called me almost every week since being at site, and I looked forward to visiting them and seeing the village again. My host father picked me up and took me back to the house, where my sisters per usual were watching TV. They got a new puppy since I left, so I sat and played with the puppy and told them about my life at site. Then we went and visit my grandmother and a few of the neighbors who hosted volunteers also, but that was awkward as only 3 out of 10 of us came back to visit that particular village. It was strange to see how quiet the village was with all of us gone, and I felt a little nostalgic, but still ready to leave. At 9:30 the next morning, the same van took 10 of us to Bangkok. Once checked in at our somewhat grimy Bangkok guest house, we took the skytrain to the giant mall complex. We ate delicious Mexican food with real guacamole and went to see movies at the English language theater. We hit up the grocery store and bought foreign food for ourselves and for our people back at site. I bought goldfish for Film, granola bars for Pii Orasa, and Werthers Originals for my students. That night, we went to the Arabic part of Bangkok and had fantastic Middle Eastern food and hookah at an Egyptian restaurant. The night ended at an “underground jazz club” where the singer did Queen and Rihanna covers on repeat. All in all, it was an excellent end to a long and exhausting two weeks. I felt a little sad going back to site, saying bye to my friends and knowing I’d be [in a sense] alone again, but now that I am back in my house, in my village, in my town, it feels good. I can’t wait to get my routine going again and get to work on the projects we devised at PST 2…