Can I be Honest with You?

What I REALLY love about this country/my site:

- The hospitality

- The people in my community

- The children

- The fruit

- The History/the temples

Things that I don’t understand/frustrates me (both important and perhaps not-so-important points)

- The hierarchy in the office/age/women-men

- How you can be the mayor of a town without an undergraduate degree; what happened to education???

- Lack of communication between everybody!

- Lack of expression of real emotions: people don’t talk about things, feelings, show that they are upset or sad

- And with that lack of real emotions; there is a lack of consideration for how people might feel/think. I cannot tell you how many times I have heard a kid being called “ fat, ugly…” Even with me, people ask how much I weight, how ugly/pretty I look on different days of the week…etc And they will schedule meetings, ask you to teach on weekends, without thinking about you and your day off. You can be telling people that you are actually really tired and they will say “ OK I’ll pick you up at 2, so you can teach”

- How many times I have been told “ Oh she doesn’t look American” I swear I think 80% of the time, people that I newly meet think that I am straight out lying to them.

- How drinking is acceptable during any hours of the day

- You cannot break the face of anyone who is higher than you no matter what they say or do; they can be bullshitting to the max; and everybody has to sit there and agree with it

- How hot it can get; I understand that I’m in Southeast Asia but it is frustrating when you are the only person sweating like a pig. Plus my mayor does not allow the staff to turn on the A.C until it is 10 am while his room is as cold as a fridge.

- How 90% of food has to be extremely fried, over salted or over sugared; I liked Thai food A LOT more when I could have it once in a while in the States; right now, I can SO do without it

- Lack of accountability

- How the head of the office (mayor and deputy executive) can go on trips (as Thai’s call it Du Ngan – see work) with the Office budget then tell everyone else “we have no money”….

- Any project can be EXTREMELY inefficient as long as it looks good on paper and it is nicely decorated

- Half of the time, I have no idea what the students are learning here; maybe it is the lack of staff and the fact that it is a poor school but; come one, these students have to learn! You cannot just accept that 80% of the kids are not going to continue pass 6^th grade so why not just screw them?!?!?

- When I go workout, I LOVE it that the staff thinks it is perfectly OK to have unplugged elliptical and bikes. .. The plug is seriously nowhere to be found and I have come to realize that, that’s how people work out – without plugging it in.

So other than points of 'frustration" I REALLY love this country :)