The blog in which I completely change my mind about being homesick...

Now, with the end in close sight, I am no longer homesick or ready to go home! What is wrong with me? I mean, I am completely ready to see Jeremy and sleep in my own bed and eat tacos... but suddenly the sky seems bluer here, the mountains more...rolling, the beach more tempting, and my $250/month house rent so so appealing to my budget needs.

It is strange really, this turnaround. Sure, I am still lonely. Still often frustrated with my staff and the so slow you are practically moving backward in time way of getting things done here, but then a weekend afternoon comes where my only responsibility in life is getting myself and one small dog to the beach located 6 minutes away and possibly, if I feel like it, taking the half hour that is needed to clean my little house. I suppose you could also count returning emails, watching tv, and going to the local market responsibilities so I'll add those in. Sure, my daily job is work but it ends around 4:30 and then life is my own. Even without a job my daily responsibilities are about ten thousand times more in Washington, DC. And access to the outdoors and beach are pretty limited. I will miss that.

They posted a For Rent sign on my gate this week! Felt like a huge insult! I may want to leave but I certainly don't want someone else living in my house!

I am coming to the realization that I may not ever be back. And while it has not always been an easy place to live it is my place now and this chapter is almost closed. Every shell and sunset and rainstorm suddenly something to be valued and appreciated.

Last weekend I drove to Phuket and took my friend to the hospital where she was diagnosed with "mild hepatitis" although they could not tell her which variety. It was all very comical. I visited the eye clinic of the hospital where they showed me disgusting photos of the insides of my eyelids and told me I could no longer wear contacts and need lasik. Great. The upside was that we went to the VIP cinema at the mall. The Thai VIP cinema has not yet arrived in the US but it should! For the equivalent of $15 we were ushered into a special entrance with a lounge and buffet snacks and drinks. Then entered a theater with only 24 huge reclining plush seats. We reclined. We were given blankets. We were given big ceramic bowls of popcorn and huge glasses (not cardboard cups) of coke with crushed ice. I think we saw Ocean's 13. Didn't really care what movie it was as long as I could recline 180 degrees! Heaven.

This week I have realized that maybe my calling is both children AND animals. I've started bringing Talay with me to visit some of the children we are working with. Now that the project is almost finished we are mostly still working with the kids living at a local institution so we've gotten to know them well. Talay, who I thought might be scared of all the kids, handles it wonderfully. They pull her, squeeze her, fight over her, and generally squish and over handle her but they love it and I think she gives them the affection they really crave. So it is a match made in heaven. And somehow it is so much easier to cross that language barrier with the dog as part of the meeting. The kids are much less suspicious of what my team wants when we come and hand them a puppy. :) Maybe a future career of kids + animals? Well , we'll see.

Night from suddenly fantastic, ha ha ha, Bang Niang.

Take me home, country road, to the place, where I belong…west Virginia, mountain mama, take me home…

This was the song playing in the taxi on the way to Bangkok airport on Saturday morning. Actually there was a whole country meddly of songs. I think my taxi driver was quite proud that he could accommodate my American-ness that way. Normally not a fan of country music. But I was loving this song! It made me feel so teary and nostalgic for good old USA. I almost made him play it again.

My home, my family, my friends. Ugh. I am homesick. And it is just so funny to read all of your emails saying how much all of you wish you were in the "field" doing good work. Yes, it is rewarding to some extent. But I really have realized that without people to talk to about the work it is just lonely. If a woman does good work for kids in Thailand but nobody knows does she really make a sound? Or something like that. Shooting for that tree falling the forest metaphor folks.

Laura left me on Saturday and I flew back down south. Another sad goodbye after just an amazing few weeks with someone I love.

You know, I don’t think I have ever had such highs and lows in life. It is just perfect here when I have someone with me. I loved every minute of the 6 weeks with Jeremy. And the two weeks with Laura flew by in a haze of sunshine (yes, not one day of rain while she was here-it was a miracle!), laughter, talking talking and more talking, and happiness. I keep telling myself that if I weren’t living here I wouldn’t get to have those great weeks with Jeremy and Laura and I would just be living normal life at home. So I guess the price I pay for those amazing highs is the daily slog of Bang Niang. Nothing to do, restaurants almost all closed down now, not a bit of food stocked at the store, no theaters, no shopping, no activities, not many friends. I am pathetic. At least I have Talay who entertains me with her puppy antics.

So Laura spent her first week in Bang Niang where the sun shone hot and shimmery every minute! It was like a different world here. We rented a motorbike for her and on my day off I zipped around to show her all of the beaches. We snuck into Le Meridian for an afternoon of pampering, we spent every evening watching the sunset over the beach, we shell hunted, ate a lot, and the week went so fast! I was so proud of my location for being nice and cooperating with sun. I was also really impressed by Laura’s willingness to just hop on a motorbike and get herself around with not a word of Thai.

We left on Friday the 25th for our week of travel and all I can say is that I have never had a week of international vacation go so smoothly. Every connection made, every hotel we wanted was available and readily gave a discount, every restaurant gave low-season discounts, tours were available last minute, bus tickets and train tickets all worked out. We couldn’t stop laughing at every amazing piece of good luck! In fact, we were just about in hysterical giddiness mode the entire week.

We flew to Chiang Mai which is a very pretty city in the north. I was surprised. It was full of flowers and waterways and mountain views. Big and busy but very pretty. We stayed in this bizarre kitsch guesthouse called Suan Doi House on the outskirts. It was full of gardens, talking birds, kittens, flowers and vines and our room had two little canopy beds. In Chiang Mai we hit the big Sunday night market until it closed! We rode around in tuk tuks and songtheaws and visted temples. We also went to the Elephant Nature Park for a day (see the previous blog.)

Then we went to Chiang Rai. Dum dum dum…
Despite the fact that this was the one glitch in the perfection of our vacation I now can look back and just laugh.

At a friend's advice we reserved a night at Akha Hill house. And please do not take this as a plug for the place. We were picked up at the bus station by three men on cell phones and driven to their other guesthouse (which I HIGHLY GUARD AGAINST) in the city. There they proceeded to get high and possibly do a line of coke (Laura is convinced she saw this happening) while we waited for them to tire of the football match on tv and actually take us up the mountain. We were a little concerned but actually still giddy from the rest of the week so not exactly making good choices. The cloud of smoke around us may not have helped sharpen the senses either.

Then they loaded us into a car and drove all around Chiang Rai picking up snacks for themselves. Offered us NONE! Almost lost my baggage by the side of the road while they were "rearranging" things in the trunk-read this as possibly stashing drugs in our bags for the trip up the hill. By the time we wound up the mountain and actually PASSED the sign for Akha Hillhouse Laura and I were pretty much convinced we were either being trafficed to Burma or would be thrown over the mountainside when the drugs safely arrived at their destination. They kept stopping and looking over the edges-which threw us into a fit of whispering and hopeless attempts to locate landmarks in case they threw us out. This was accompanied by irrational giggling only made worse by crazy Akha man 3 rubbing his thigh against mine in the backseat.

Ok, how much worse can it get you wonder? Well... we arrive at the place.

A village in the mountains where Akha people live and gave us weird stares. No other tourists arrived until that evening. No activities offered, no greeting, no tours. All of this lovingly offered on the website. DO NOT BE FOOLED. Once the village chief won his ecotourism award or whatever it was several years ago he definitely quit trying.

To skip ahead to the horrific part we went to bed at 10:30pm. Pitch black outside. Freaked out from seeing hand sized spiders in the open eating deck and hearing horror stories from a lovely little Swiss girl who had been stranded there for 24 hours. We entered our "VIP" room and spent much time assessing the corners with my booklight to check for hand sized spiders. Only one was located and died a very undignified death accompanied with our screams and my Tevas being launched and missing it several times. Then we pulled back the sheets-at my suggestion-just to check for bugs. But the gift we found was much much much worse. In Laura's bed-dirt dirt and more dirt. Then in my bed...crusty orange, green and yellow body fluid stains. Not the kind that have been washed either. The kind that oozed everywhere from some horrible disease I imagine and then sat for weeks while some evil villager laughed and just pulled the blankets up to hide them. We screamed a lot. We ended up sleeping on the blankets with clothing covering all body parts and sleeping with a light on. Laura still managed to get flea bites from her mattress all over her legs. We caught the first ride out the next morning and checked ourselves into the best resort in town. The Chiang Rai Legend. Complete with fluffy

white beds, 2 decks, a shower room with a fountain and a sparkly

infinity pool.

Ok, you say, I work "in the field" I should be able to handle a little hardship. But poverty is one thing and absolute filth - really malicious filth - is an entirely different matter. I am sure I could have slept cleaner and safer in any village hut other than my own VIP hut. I will include photos, although they do not do the situation justice.

From there things only got better. The Legend was amazing and within 24 hours we had forgotten all about the Akha as well as learned that the "long-necked tribe" that can be visited by trek in that area are actually trafficked women from Burma set up in fake villages and forced to stay while tourists hike there to take photos. We learned this at the hilltribe museum so thank God we did not take one of these treks and please don't if you ever visit Thailand!

Skipping ahead we night trained it to Bangkok which was a new experience for Laura. So much fun really to be rocked to sleep in little bunks and wake up looking out at the scenery passing. Bangkok was fun with Laura - all the usual sights plus some very late nights at the night market and a half day at the spa.

Now I have sort of lost my train of thought on this blog since I am trying to hurry and get it posted from the office. It is the weekend here again and I will go spend the day in Phuket for fun tomorrow.

Night from Bang Niang.

Elephants, elephants, elephants...

Elephants. I just can’t get enough of them!

Last week Laura and I traveled up to Chiang Mai in the north of Thailand. On the top of our list of things we wanted to do was spending time with elephants. We went to the tourism ministry and asked about what we could do with elephants. They described to us many one day treks into the mountains that involved a one hour elephant ride as well as visits to “elephant camps” where tourists can both ride them and watch them perform in shows. We also heard about a conservation center listed in the Lonely Planet guide that offered mahout courses and shows.

But we didn’t book anything. We just had a gut feeling that nothing sounded quite right. Then we found out about the Elephant Nature Park. The park is a sanctuary for 32 elephants and allows them to just be animals. No shows. No rides. But the day at the park includes feeding and bathing the elephants. We signed up for it even though the cost was a lot more than the other options because it just felt right.

It was one of the best days of my life.

We rode to the market in a little van with only 6 other people and helped load what seemed like several tons of bananas, watermelons, cucumbers and sugar cane into trucks. Then we drove about an hour into the mountains and entered…well, Amanda heaven.
Elephant Nature Park is located in this lush green valley surrounded by mountains and tropical fruit trees with a sparking river running through it. There are several tree house type huts located in the park for the mahouts and volunteers to stay in and a main building with showers, an eating deck and porches running around it from which the elephants are fed breakfast.

We spent the entire day with elephants. Watching them roam through the valley, snacking on grasses, playing with their babies, spraying themselves with dirt. We were lead all day by a woman who leads the tourists and who herself came as a volunteer 4 years ago and stayed. Her husband is now a mahout (an elephant caretaker/trainer.) She explained to us about how many tourists take elephant rides and go to elephant shows but don’t know the pain inflicted on the elephants. The elephants have 5 different shapes of spines but the platform that holds the tourists for rides is only one shape and can damage the back of an elephant. To get the elephants to follow directions the mahouts are trained to use this sharp metal spike that they stab into the elephant’s forehead. We saw the marks and scars on the elephants at the park… They claim it doesn’t hurt them but anything that can get a several ton elephant to obey a human must hurt to some extent. The worst part was learning about the way that elephants have their spirits broken in a centuries old tradition/ceremony which begins their training. We watched a video of this that was made public, I think by Nat’l Geographic, in 2002. It shows the trainers stabbing the elephant’s eardrums, burning her, tying her into a cage and depriving her of sleep, food and water, etc. They do this for days until she is so upset and scared she will either go crazy or

become more docile. Many elephants die during this ceremony. The crazy ones have to be put down. The rest become the frightened docile creatures that roll logs

and paint pictures for tourists. It was horrifying. Elephants are not only wild animals that deserve to be treated with respect they are also these amazing social and emotional creatures who will remember someone for their whole lives. They are capable of remembering the hunter who killed their mother as a baby and taking revenge on that person 25 years later. They are capable of burying (!) their dead. There are stories of elephants saving the lives of other species for purely altruistic reasons. They cry real tears. They celebrate birth with wild abandon and the elephant version of a party. They create life bonds with others and live in close family groups. They are intelligent and awe inspiring. In America we would condemn the treatment of such intelligent life if this were happening close to home. And yet we freely travel to Thailand and jump to take these ridiculous and boring one hour rides without a second thought to how in the world these beautiful creatures have been trained into such submission.

The Elephant Nature Park is amazing. It provides a refuge for elephants who have been beaten, blinded, backs broken. The elephants are cared for and allowed to roam free except when they are chained in family groups at night so they won’t cross the river into other people’s lands. They bond together and create new families of moms, aunties and babies. The males are more independent. They are huge and fascinating and wild. Even though we got to feed them breakfast from the deck of the main building and bathe with some of them in the river, we still had to be careful to avoid swiping trunks and reckless babies and adolescents. At no time were we encouraged to pet them and treat them like big pets. The guide walked us around the park and explained a lot of the cases and personalities. Also on the land are 36 dogs, 20 cats, some cattle and a veterinarian! It really felt like heaven. I hope my photos reflect that!

If any of you have a chance to do an elephant activity in Asia please consider rejecting the commercialized rides and shows. We don’t accept that kind of treatment of the African elephant-we accept that it is a wild animal to be observed and cherished from afar. So why do so many well meaning people willingly hop onto Asian elephants without asking any questions?

No easy answers...

In development there are no easy answers.

You clear land for a road so people can reach the market but you create flood problems and soil erosion, you build a school but there is no money for teachers, you help one orphan you stigmatize him/her, you build a dam or reservoir for water and some people are helped while others suffer, it goes on and on. And here, in our own little project bubble we have no easy answers either.

We are far enough along now that it is becoming clear which cases can be closed and which need far more attention. And the problem is money. When we thought we had no money we were simply case workers, checking on children, making suggestions to caregivers, sensitizing the community. My team was demoralized because they thought they weren’t helping enough, but I was pretty much relieved. With no money there wasn’t much of a possibility of doing damage.

Now we have an overflow in the budget and a lot of money to spend in a short amount of time. My staff is drawing up glorious proposals for me about how they want to spend money on each case. They are taking a child to the doctor here, buying shoes there, providing books, school clothes, toys and on and on. The smaller things don’t worry me. But, take for example the case of two little boys living with a father who works every weekend. He locks them in their one room shack so they won’t wander the streets. My team wants to pay for childcare for them! And we have been over and over the idea of sustainability-what will happen when our project is gone? What has a family gained from us other than short term dependence? AND STILL, they remain firmly committed to the idea of paying for childcare. I cannot get them to actually meet with the community and come up with “community based” solutions, cannot get them to believe that others may have the same problem and thus the families could join together for a solution. They want the easy way out. And that brings me to…there are no easy answers.

Maybe the ultimate trouble with this project is that no one on the team, other than myself, has any development experience. I have two 22 year old social workers fresh from school and 3 local Burmese liaisons with differing levels of ability and experience in things like education and women’s empowerment. Their answer to everything is throw money at it because that is what they have seen NGOs in Thailand doing for as long as they can remember. This may be an unfair assessment of both my team and of NGOs in Thailand but it is the best I can come up with right now.

What can I do? It is nearly impossible to explain the principles of sustainability and development. You have to experience it-both success and failure. You have to read about it, write about it, let your mind twist and tangle with the options and the consequences before you begin to grasp it. We don’t have time for this. And, sadly to say, I don’t know that my team has either the desire to understand or the mental capacity for it. They have not been in a challenging educational system. Logic and analysis are not well developed at any level of education or in the workplace it seems. Memorizing the answers and looking to superiors-those are their favorite fall backs. I am not at all sure what to do.

Helloooo out there...

It feels, on days like this, that I am living at the very end of the earth. A place where the ocean and the air and the sky all converge in wet steamy fogginess. Today it has stormed 3 times already and it is only noon. And by storm I mean torrential downpour of rain and winds that spread my shoes all over the porch, kill my electricity, rattle the shutters, down the cable, and cause Talay the puppy to cower behind a pillow.

So here is the dilemna. The project is going well and there is a follow up project being planned which will require a Child Protection Specialist. And, amazingly to me, my abilties are being way overestimated and they want me to fill this role. The problem is that I would have to move here for a year. With Jeremy of course. I sort of saw this coming. I know that before June 30th I'll need to have a decision made. However, at this point, drowning in rain and lacking any emails from home today I am feeling like another year might put me over the edge of sanity... If only I could go home for a week to sort things out and get perspective.

Maybe the problem is being 30. That is what I'll blame it on. In my 20s I would have done anything for an opportunity like this. I daydreamed about the title Child Protection Specialist. I even remember applying for jobs in Sudan where I am positive there would be even less entertainment or food available. And suddenly, just this year, I find myself craving more stability and am less interested in jetting off around the world to fight poverty. I actually daydream about travel for vacation's sake -- to, horror of horrors, European countries, where I can be pampered and comfortable. WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME? How am I supposed to become a specialist and help the world's children if I am living it up in a pension in Italy?
Why are there these two conflicting people living inside of me? It would be so much easier if I just gave up all hope of helping others, became a California real estate agent and lived the high life!

I am afraid that it is dawning on me that you really cannot have it all. Getting the career I want will take it all out of me. But giving it up and sticking around the States seems like an awfully big waste of the last 10 years... Is an opportunity really an opportunity if you don't want to take it?

(Possibly last night of sunshine on the beach-Jer's last night in Bang Niang.)

Drowning now in Bang Niang.

Cambodia

I know this is coming a little late but I wanted to post some photos of Cambodia....





Days 1-3 Phnom Penh
Jer and I flew into Bangkok and then to Phnom Penh on a Sunday. We were so fortunate to have a great hotel. We tried to explore a little by foot on Monday but after a long hot wander through some very dirty roads we rented a tuk tuk driver for $10 to take us around for the day. We didn’t know much about Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge so we did a little history tour to the Killing Fields and S-21 (the former school turned torture center in the 70s.) I don’t know if I tuned out in high school world history or what but I swear I don’t remember learning anything about Cambodia and the Khmer Rouge. It is disgusting what the human race is capable of and yet another testament to the frightening power you can create in children when you give them guns. Many of the Khmer Rouge soldiers were just little boys.

The second day we went to the Russian Market where I fell in love with antique opium pipes (a slight issue later when trying to fly back into Thailand-although I did manage to convince the airline that I wasn’t actually carrying opium!) and we spent 2 hours in the tuk tuk trying to find the school of Khmer Classical dance. There is a very funny story in this but the end result was wonderful. We were entertained for over an hour by a troupe of extremely talented little children learning to dance in the traditional Khmer style.

Days 4-7 Siem Reap (Angkor Wat)
Another amazing hotel. The Boppha Angkor Hotel. $77/night will buy a luxury suite overlooking the pool with a private terrace, huge bed, all traditional décor. It was a really relaxing place to get away from the rest of Siem Reap every evening.
We had a really amazing few days here. We rented a tuk tuk every day and bought a 3 day pass to all of the Angkor Temples. Jeremy was so upset at Chichen Itza in Mexico last year when the stairs to the main temple were roped off and he couldn’t climb up so here is where he got his payback. None of the temples are roped off. You can climb straight up to the top of the temples, explore every inch of the carvings and really have a personal experience with Angkor Wat. We were lucky, there weren’t a ton of tourists and there was no rain. We saw Bayon (the one with the faces) in the Angkor Thom complex first and this was by far our favorite temple although close behind were little pink Banteay Srei and Banteay Samre.

Our tuk tuk driver was very irritating being a wannabe tour guide. He stopped at every temple and felt that he had to give us a long, complicated and only semi-coherent English description that did not match up with any information from our guide book. Sometimes he would take a breath and we were convinced he was done (you know the feeling, where you breathe a sigh of relief and start to put a foot out the door), only to have him start right back in again with a change of subject. He would actually get off his tuk tuk motorbike, turn around backwards in his seat, adjust his hat backwards, take a deep breath and launch into it. We couldn’t be rude and stop him mid sentence when he was regaling us with examples of his political interests, problems paying for the guide license, low salary or his father’s background but it was excruciating sitting in the heat within steps of a temple we were dying to explore while trying to make interested faces and nods! Ugh. Jeremy does a very nice impression of him if you are ever interested.

So our days in Siem Reap were great even though the town itself is a little dusty and disappointing. It is filled with tourists and the small children who follow them offering every conceivable souvenir for “$1! $1!”

Sunrise at Angkor Wat. Wake up call at 4:00am. Tuk Tuk at 4:30am. Arrive at 5:00am all so our guide has a good solid hour to talk our ears off. I swear I almost saw the sunrise on his face instead of over the temple. We had to beg him to let us get out of the tuk tuk in time. Falling asleep on our feet by 8am...

Jeremy's dramatic ascent! Ok, the photo is a little posed but it was VERY hard. We found an easier way down though.

A whole blog about walking down my street

Large multi-winged fast flying insects swarmed my house last night. And I am not talking about a few innocent bugs, I am talking about hundreds of lunatic flyers racing around my driveway, zooming around the lights, dive bombing my porch and glass doors and even sneaking into the living room. Once in the living room they crawl very slowly across the floor like they think they can hide from me just because they sort of blend into the tiles. I haven’t been able to predict their arrival in the past but right after they left it started to pour rain and so now I think they may be rain heralds. So I guess I’ll be seeing more of them. I take my amusement where I can find it here and spraying them with large cans of bug spray is sort of satisfying.

Have I mentioned that I have a puppy again? Talay (my team named her – it means sea or sometimes it means seafood!) I will spare you the long story but in summary she is tiny and fluffy and full of passion for chasing bugs. Normally she spends a good hour or two each night patrolling the driveway and eating them but even she was overwhelmed last night and begged to come in and escape from them!

So my unnatural interest in the bugs last night got me thinking about just how different my days are here than back at home. Not exactly good different in terms of social life (I have none), definitely good different in terms of work, but overall just strange. Here is a typical day.

In the morning I walk my trash down the street to the communal garbage can (yes, just one normal sized can for each street of houses to share) because that is when it is empty and not swarming with stray dogs picking through people’s toilet paper and strange leftovers. On the way I am joined by Floppy Dog (his real name is Milo but picture lots of hair tied back in bows and an annoying penchant for trying to mount anything that moves), my own puppy, and Luc Luc, the neighbor’s puppy. This is 7am. I pass my neighbor as he is walking in a sarong and nothing else looking for water at some of the empty houses (we have a chronic water shut off problem)-he waves and I hope the sarong doesn’t drop. I pass the Burmese young men heading down my block to work in the rubber plantation which starts 2 houses away from me. They stare at me like I am the first woman they’ve ever seen and laugh and they like to shout “good morning” really no matter what time of day it is. Then I pass the car washing woman. She scrubs her shiny black car every morning and every evening. Usually wearing only a towel. And how does she have water to waste I do not know! She doesn’t make eye contact. I think she may be the maid and her employer has some weird passion about her and his car. Sometimes he watches her from his porch. Weird.

Then I get to Luc Luc’s house where toothless grandma emerges and laughs and laughs at me. I have no idea why. She finds my morning walk to the garbage the highlight of her day apparently. She talks and talks to me in Thai and follows me around and feeds my puppy and Luc Luc all sorts of terrible things that make them both sick. Last week it was some sort of rancid milk that left Talay’s lips green for the entire day. I don’t know how Luc Luc is still alive really. Sometimes the owner of that house comes out and shouts “goodbye miss” like she is annoyed with me. Not a greeting-definitely a very strong “get away from here”. No idea why. Maybe she doesn’t want grandma so worked up?

This is all before I get to the end of the block!

Today I found a spider in my underwear before I put it on. It was just clinging to it looking for a new home-on my skin! I was not pleased and realized that I haven’t been examining my air drying clothes well enough before using them. Yesterday I found a HUGE spider in my kitchen and honestly it was just too big to kill. I had to usher it out the door. I have given up.

The rest of my morning, until I leave for work, is usually spent fighting the leak on my water tank while I try to take a fast shower (at least this is better than a bucket) and then dealing with the myriad of people who like to show up before 8:30. Ok, not a myriad, but Nong (the caretaker of my house) and her fix it people. They come, they ask if my cable is on, I tell them it is still off and has been for 7 days now. Same as every day that they ask. They apologize. They ask if the water tank is fixed. I explain that it still has a leak. Like it has for 10 days. I don’t know why they think these things have fixed themselves?! Then I explain, again, that I get no water from the street. AND, once again this morning, Nong miraculously turns it on. She thinks I am crazy but I swear I turn those knobs at the curb pipe that controls my house water every morning and nothing comes on. Today I think she was explaining some complicated system of turning it until I hear a click and then turning it back the other direction. If only Jeremy were here. I absolutely hate trying to figure this out. Pluming, electricity, bugs, the tv, they all hate me!

Ahhh…is it weird that I find all of this so entertaining? I think I am severely socially deprived.

I did have my team and some of their significant others over for dinner 2 nights ago and we had a lot of fun. We went to the market and bought Thai junk food (fish on sticks, fried shrimp, unidentifiable soup, sticky dessert things and sticky rices) and brought it all back to my living room floor. I like the Thai style of eating at a party. No one ever sits on chairs or tables. We just sit in a circle and dip our hands into everything. It is a lot more fun. We played everyone’s favorite game of make Amanda read long and complicated sentences from my Thai/English phrasebook and try to guess what she is saying. HOWEVER, my Thai pronunciation is too good now and they actually understood me. I am quite proud.

In really good news, Laura (my college roommate and kindred spirit) is arriving in 2 weeks from Sunday!

Nothing more to report from Bang Niang.