Monday, January 10, 2011

Post 35: Holiday "Thai"me

I assume most of you are aware of my brief return to the states in December. There are many things to say about those two weeks, and thus I’ve decided to take the nutshell approach and keep my remarks on that front uncharacteristically concise:
Mom-aneurysm-hospital-Emergency Leave-Winchester, VA-snow-ICU-Guttenplans-jetlag-coffee(x 100 cups) -bed pan-Hearst House-Target-hospital cookies-ipad-Drs. Fergus, Ferdieu, and Liu-car rides with Sarah and Shu-UVA-angiogram-baked potatoes-Courtyard Marriott beds-l unches with Dad-home-latke party-too much wine-DC to LA to Hong Kong to BKK to Plok to Wat Bot.
My mother is doing beautifully, by the way. She is safe at home, resting, recovering, and regaining her strength for the spring when I get home “for real” and drag her on excursions all over DC.
Now back to Thailand.
Thanksgiving
The days before my Mom’s “event” were the days of the Close of Service Conference. COS is our final, official meeting as Peace Corps Volunteers. The first day was held in Bangkok and consisted of an oral language exam and a panel about career options after Peace Corps. I received The Call from my sister while I was en route to my test, and thus opted to postpone it. I ultimately received an Advanced Low, which was what I expected and not too shabby. Later that day, we attended the traditional, Thanksgiving dinner held for outgoing volunteers at the American Embassy. The Ambassadorial Compound is beautiful, but with all the guacamole, turkey, and mashed potatoes on the premises, I didn’t do a proper look around. The cook was American, and the Thanksgiving fare closely resembled home food enough to make us feel comforted and patriotically full. I tried turkey for the first time in roughly 12 years. It turns out I am a big fan of turkey, a fact I confirmed at Panera in Winchester.
Then, all 38 remaining volunteers from my group were bused down to Cha-Am (a beach mainly patronized by “lesser affluent Scandinavian tourists”). We went over hours of administrative matters, discussed the future, prepared to readjust to life in America, and engaged in a slew of wonderfully sappy wrap-up activities. Cumbaya may or may not have been sung. Soon, people will begin trickling their way back to America and we will diffuse into the world with our oh-so-valuable Thai language skills and squatting abilities. With this in time, we treated our free time preciously, using it to ravage a full leftover turkey with our fingers, sing a group rendition of “Lacey Lost Her Cow”, gaze at stars on the beach, and make s’mores using candles on the hotel rooftop (thanks again to Dad for that care package). The time was predictably filled with conflicting emotions: excitement about going home; pride about completing our service; gratitude, or bitterness, for what Thailand has given us; and sadness that this incomparable experience is nearing its end. I spent most of the conference preoccupied with concern for my mom’s health, and working out the logistics of Emergency Leave, and it was my brief time in America that illuminated the things I will miss the most about Thailand, and the things I can’t wait to be home for. Perhaps for my next blog entry, I will expound on this topic.
[Halfway around the world and back]
I spent two weeks in America and arrived back in Bangkok on Sunday, December 19. Beau met me at the airport and we went straight to the bus station to catch a bus to Phitlok, as I wanted to be at school the next day. All the people at site were kind and concerned about my mother and me, and asked many questions about what happened. Peace Corps notified my counterparts however, people like my neighbors, other teachers, my regular fruit seller, had no news and were curious where I’d absconded to. My Thai speaking deteriorated rapidly while I was gone, and patching together an explanation was embarrassing and difficult to say the least. In true Thai form, everyone’s advice was that Mom should rest, be happy, make merit, and all would be well.
It was disorienting being back, and took most of the week to resume life as a functioning human being. My counterparts were very forgiving of my spaciness in the classroom, and focused instead on how beautifully white my skin was. I brought back Christmas candy necklaces and boxes of holiday Nerds for all my students, and watching their reactions to the candy was priceless. That Friday, after a rehearsal for the Dream School evaluation, Beau and I caught a bus to Chiang Rai for our Christmas weekend at Pu Chi Fa, or the “Mountain that Reaches to the Sky”.
Christmas
Last year I spent Christmas at site. I planned a day’s worth of Christmas activities for 900 students, gave multiple explanations that “no, Christmas is not Santa Claus’ birthday or a pre-New Years celebration”, and strove valiantly to familiarize the locals with Hanukkah. I was chastised for not wearing red, which is apparently our tradition, and watched White Christmas by myself at home while waiting for the reindeer to show. This year, if I couldn’t be with my real family, I wanted to be with my Peace Corps family. Pu Chi Fa is a mythical mountain 2 hours outside of Chiang Rai that only Thais know about-it is not in guide books, nor will you encounter many foreigners who have been. There is no public transportation and the accommodation options are…rustic. However, if you can weather the transportation difficulties and devote the time, the sunrise is one of the most breathtaking views you will ever see.
10 of us rented a cabin on the mountain and reserved a song taio, which are usually forms of public transit, just for us. On our way out of Chiang Rai, we stopped by a store to buy booze and all of us came bearing Christmasy stuff, ranging from Ben’s Mom’s Christmas cookie box, to Christmas decorations from the Peace Corps Lounge, to my boxes of hot cocoa, cider, and s’mores materials, fresh off the plane from America. All of us crammed into one little cabin with one giant bed and one squat toilet. The bed took up the whole room, there was very little space to move except outside on the porch, where we set up our little Christmas tree and put gifts under it. We all sported a Santa hat or reindeer ears and Julia’s laptop played Christmas carols. It is genuinely chilly at Pu Chi Fa during the cold season, so we were cozily bundled up in sweatshirts and socks. After a group viewing of Home Alone, we did a White Elephant gift exchange with crap from the Chiang Rai market (Dear Santa, thank you for my plastic bunches of grape necklace and weird wooden house in a box thing). Then we played Apples to Apples, the Peace Corps Holiday version we made ourselves, which quickly devolved into wine-soaked chaos where some of us (who me?) attempted to play with snickerdoodles instead of cards. After romantic soul searching on the porch with Julia, we tucked into our giant bed for two hours of sleep before our 4 am wake-up and trek to the top.
It took roughly 30 minutes to make our way to the top. We were warned repeatedly about how crowded the mountain would get and how difficult it is to find a good viewing spot, so 2 hours ahead of time, we found ourselves alone on the summit. After doing some recon, we found a primo location, technically past the barrier, but on the edge of the world with a completely unobstructed view and convenient grassy knolls for sitting. Most of us curled up and took a two hour nap in the darkness, awaking to find the summit behind us filled with people and the legendary “red line” beginning to make its appearance.
Alas, there are no words to describe this incredible beauty. Actually, there are many, but none suffice. Mystical, enchanted, awe-inspiring, gorgeous, sublime. From the top of Pu Chi Fa, you are surrounded by sky. The horizon is free and open until the earth curves, and the space between your eyes and the distance is filled with the silhouette of mountains and clouds that look like a downy ocean, clouds you want to swim in and taste and make bubble sculptures out of, or look at endlessly. It looks like heaven up there. As the sun begins to climb, the encircling darkness is bisected by a red line that slowly becomes brighter and brighter until it’s a blinding neon and all of a sudden, the sun appears. And everyone cheers. Good Job sun! The horizon is now shaded with infinite shades of pink and orange. The clouds fade into opalescence, pastels flutter about the atmosphere, and more of the mountainous countryside is revealed.
Then the sun has risen, and the rest of the world comes floating back. The Thais behind us are discussing their favorite types of papaya salad and everyone in sight is taking peace sign pictures. We stroll around the mountain, catching the view from different angles, and then walk down to our cabin for breakfast and a nap. It may not be the most traditional Christmas, but there was cold weather, good spirits, and love, and really, that’s what it boils down to. Happy Birthday Santa!
New Years
I returned to site exhausted. In the wake of the conference, my trip to America, jumping right back into school, and my trip to the sky, I was sapped of all life force. I debated making the trip South with some friends, as I had previously planned. Then, I recalled the adventures of last year, when I spent a memorable night in Chiang Mai involving a knife threat, false rooftop countdown, and run-in with the police over a stolen tuk tuk sign. Ultimately, I wasn’t up for that amount of excitement and all I felt like doing was sitting alone in my house. Pathetic, perhaps, but it’s what I wanted. I watched a movie, drank a “Bloody Maree” with leftover ingredients from Pu Chi Fa (because vodka, tomato juice, pepper, and vinegar does NOT a Bloody Mary make), and wore the sparkly top I bought in America for New Years with my pajama bottoms. At 11:30, I made my way to my hammock and watched the stars. I couldn’t be sure when exactly midnight hit, but I had a general idea when my neighbors began shooting off their guns (without bullets). It was like being in the midst of a gunfight. This combined with the preponderance of drunk driving, which is always “acceptable” but more common on New Years, made me very content to be safe behind my gate.
While swinging in my hammock under massive amounts of bug spray, I reflected on New Years Past, my favorite moments of 2010, things I am looking forward to in 2011, and resolutions.
Here is a sample of my musings.
Favorite Parts of 2010:
1) 2010 was a year of self-discovery and growth. My first year of service was spent figuring out how to exist as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Thailand, and the second year was spent learning who I am. Now in 2011, I genuinely feel wiser, stronger, and more in tune with my being. I have developed my own sense of the world and my place in it, and while this is an ever-evolving perception, it fortifies me every day.
2) Becoming comfortable with teaching and improving my abilities to the point where I actually see progress in my students and teachers. I witnessed Pii Som apply what I’d taught her, without any input from me, at camp for kids with low test scores. I saw my first graders blossom into second graders with a higher reading level than the sixth graders at the school.
3) Being chair of the Gender and Development Committee, and frankly, accomplishing an impressive and valuable amount. Our wiki page is pretty awesome.
4) The bulk of experiences and adventures of life in rural Thailand: cooking lessons with the kindergarten teacher, a mediocre massage hut opening on the river where 3 old people massage me at once, Beau’s monk party where I badly folded scores of banana leaf rice treats and wore a bridal suit with shoulder pads, the ladyboy pageant at Wat Bot’s palm juice festival, mornings drinking coffee on my porch, days “educating” at school, afternoons reading in my hammock, biking through masses of trees and flowers on the way to the market…I could go on and on. Can you tell the nostalgia is already setting in?
5) Volunteer shenanigans. We had some good ones in 2010. There was Songkran in Chiang Mai, Tigers 2 in Ko Samet, weekend trips to Pai, Mae Sot, the Phitakhon festival, Pu Chi Fa, and of course, my sparkling 24th surprise birthday party
6) Trips with friends and family. I was fortunate enough to be visited for a wonderful two weeks by my Dad, Yvonne, and Sarah. My mom came to Asia for round two, and I frolicked my way across a smidge of Indonesia and Singapore during the summer break.
What I am looking forward to I 2011:
1) The last few months of my life here. My sojourn home and the knowledge that I have less than 100 days left have filled me with a strong sense of what I love about my life here. I am excited for the 80 or so more days of walking around barefoot, eating fresh fruit, gossiping with my teachers and neighbors, reading in my hammock, and the goodbye party the schools will throw me.
2) Traveling around India and Nepal with Kelsi for two months
3) Returning to America!!! Good food, hot water, soft beds, cleanliness, English, choice, convenience, anonymity, acceptance, real coffee, entertainment and on and on and on and on
4) Celebrations with my family and friends. My sister’s graduation from Navy, bringing the Guttenplan family whiffleball team to victory at the annual Crab Feast, the many Welcome Home parties I am expecting across the country (and they better be good), Thanksgiving, Christmas, Hannukah, birthdays, really any minor cause for celebration. Happy Thursday! National Woodland Creature Day! The anniversary of Paul Revere!
5) Urban life. Museums, bars, restaurants, movie theaters, coffee shops, stores. I can’t wait to be strolling through a city, any city, at my leisure and being filled with all the possibilities.
6) Out with the old and in with the New. I can’t wait to burn (I am speaking literally) my dirty, ragged, worn-out, bedraggled possessions and procure new, sparkling clean, fresh, things of quality.
7) Entering the next stage of my life- I have no idea what it will bring. As they say, “The only uncertainty is uncertainty”, and I can’t wait to find out where I will be this time next year. I am exhilarated by the prospect of my life unfolding.