The "almost" one month blog post ::)

So today marks the “almost” one month(Jan 17- Feb 15) anniversary of my time here in Thailand. To say the truth, it feels as though I have been here for a year already – minus the poor language skills. I sure hope after an ACTUAL one year, I will stop talking like a baby and will be able to have full conversations with people without wanting to speak English,Uyghur, French or even Spanish (yeah, don't ask). Seriously though sometimes when I just cannot think of how to say a particular word or question, I just want to use any language that I ever came across to see MAYBE they will get it. Of course most people here only speak “ English Nit Noy (a little)” so my attempt fails 99.9% of the time.
Besides all that, I really do not have anything else to complain about; or maybe it's more so the fact that I have not had any moment beyond couple minutes to really think about what I am missing. The frustrations that I have usually stem from “ gosh am I seriously eating rice, chicken, vegetables, egg for breakfast?” , “ Can I not bike today when it's like 35C outside?”, “If I hear Riap Rioy (proper behavior) one more time, I might just go nuts” and of course, “Shi*t almost two months later I gota tough it through all this relying completely on myself”. Anxiety about all that comes and goes, but at the end of the day, I look around and realize, 1). why I have chosen the P.C. 2) I only want to complain because I know how life in the States “could be better”. And the people here, they are completely content and maybe happier than so many people in the States who have lives 10 times better than the average rice farmer here in Thailand. It's truly amazing to see how much people can live without and still be the happiest, most kind, selfless people on earth → and that reality is what I have learned/lived through the past month.
All in all, a month later, we have 60 volunteers remaining (out of the 63), ages ranging from 60+ to 20+, females, males, teachers, community development volunteers all making up an AMAZING/DIVERSE group of people. We all had (continue to have) our share of too much rice/too much food, mosquito/bug bites, tummy aches, SWEAT, muscle pain (from biking), exhaustion, lack of privacy, squat toilets, Thai bf/gf proposals, bucket showers, geckos, language mishaps, awkward interviews, and continued hub/village/tech meetings that all of us can just do without at least for one day but taking a deep breathe, taking it one day at a time, and realizing that no one said this would be easy will probably get us all pretty far in our journey :)