I hope all of you are staying warm and safe during the stormy couple days that have taken over the Northeast. As to me, on the other side of the World, it is getting hotter and hotter everyday and it does not really help much that we bike all across the city from 8am to 6pm. You can only imagine how tan I am getting and it has only been 1 month :)
My daily schedule has not changed much although we have been incorporating more "field work" to our everyday training; which involves, interviewing people throughout our village - in Thai . It can be both fun and frustrating to say the truth. Most of the time, we write down all the questions with want to ask IN THAI with our language teacher; so we go into people's business, houses and sometimes different NGOs and think we are just " SO READY" to start. As soon as we open our mouth beyond the intial " my name is ...." anything else we say, the Thai look at us like we are speaking another language. Then we just all start laughing because we know how much we are messing up the tones. You would think for someone who speaks Mandarin, this won't be that hard.... well it is. So far, we have interviewed village heads, some middle school students, staff at the village clinic and visited an NGO that works with local farmers to promote organic farming.
On to more non-work related issues, my weirdest experience was, one day I saw my host Dad take out the intestine of bunch of rat sorta like cleaning an animal before you cook them. Well as much as I hate rats, I thought i should watch him, then he told me " these rats are from the rice fields, they eat the rice....no good. So we are eating them for dinner". I just looked at him and said um..... I like chicken. Thai people mince, and/or grill rats ... and it is supposedly pretty delicious. I decided to stick to Pad Thai and Pad See U which are all so so so delicious for only like 20 baht a plate (less than 1 dollar).
Alrity, I am sitting at the Hotel it's about 5:22 right now, I need to bike home before 6:30pm.
Keep updating me with life in the States and do call if you can I would love to hear from you. 0878499773 :)
Take Care, sending my warm thoughts to you all during this cold season
Above are pictures of 1. provincial hall/town 2. Big Buddha with my awesome language group (we call oursevles "team sweet dessert" 3. my nephew and I 4. Really pretty Temple 5. Family/Friends 6. My bed 7. The river where I take the Faerie everyday 8. My teachers
Hey Zarina,
ReplyDeleteAlright!!, you look so much happier in those pictures above!!! I guess you've really found your self in place and feel comfortable with everything around you and, with you. If you ask about us, we're still trying to dig out our selves from 70 inches of snow. Yah, its getting colder and colder everyday as we head into the month of March. We try to stay warm...
Those pictures reminds of farm like areas of Kashgar and Atush. Specially, the 5th picture...like beshkerem in Kashgar, if you 've been to beshkerem. Anyway,the point i was trying to make was that i like the place you're living right now and what you do on your daily bases. Cool, keep on posting Zarina!!!
Shafkat