Update #16 (final)

Hey folks!
There is a reasonable chance this will be my last update, because my
life has become pretty much ordinary, and while it would be cool if
everyone did this all the time to keep in touch…that would be weird.
So whatever.
There is a chance that something will happen that is worth e-mailing
about, but there is nothing really on the horizon except papers and
presentations and packing, all of which make for very interesting
subjects. So I am just going to quickly talk about going home.

I get home on the 17th, and then I got to camp on the 30th. Here are
the things I am most excited for:
Cheesesteaks
Sandwiches in general
Steak in general
Cheese in general
Sidewalks
Trashcans
Ketchup
Oreo (my dog, they have the cookies here)
Public transportation
Not needing to skype
My friends/family
Not constantly sweating
Toilet paper in bathrooms
Soap in bathrooms
Being able to read signs
People liking American Football, or at least understanding how much I like it.
Being able to drink out of a sink
Punctuality
Not standing out

Things that will be weird:
Everything not being beautiful or interesting
Bad food
Understanding everything that people say
Using complete sentences
Not doing something worthwhile (before camp starts)
How much food will cost
How much EVERYTHING will cost
Money all being the same color
Driving on the right side of the road
Everyone not being laid back
Not needing to skype
Not being around my friends here
Not always speaking in Thaiglish
Not constantly sweating
Not always having amazing fruit available
Not having a 7-11 at every corner
Not showering 2-3 times a day (I might just keep doing this anyway)
Not standing out

Definitely the weirdest thing will be getting back into the swing of
things, even though I have been so out of it.

I think that is a pretty good list, though I am sure there are more
things. This has been one hell of a semester. If you want a more
complete concluding statement, talk to me when I go back to America in
person. I don’t want to just rant about the whole ting like this.

All right, thank you for reading all this, and for being interested in
my life while I am away. As I say, I will be back in Da Burgh on the
17th

Reid

Update #15

Hey everyone!

So I just got back from Mae Sot, which is on the Thai-Burma border. I could spend this entire e-mail trying to educate you all about the human rights violations that are going on there, but that would probably just get didactic, and is not best learned via email. I would love to talk about the problems if you want to though.

Basically, all you need to know about the situation for now is that the government is a military dictatorship, and since 1949 has been committing human rights violations that…well…would have made Hitler proud frankly. Since 1988, there have been hundreds of thousands of people that have fled Burma, trying to either live in Thailand, or get resettled to a third country. Many of them are not legal immigrants, and could theoretically be sent back to Burma if they are caught, which is the official policy of Thailand. However, there are too many of them, so the police are totally random and sporadic about their raids. I’ll get to that later.

While we were there, we visited NGOs (non government organizations) that were setup to help either Burmese migrant workers in Thailand, or trying to illegally cross the border and give aid to people in Burma. We also went to a refugee camp. This might be another long email, so watch out!

Please note, while I am going to withhold a fair amount of information, we met with a lot of people and programs that were doing their work entirely illegally, and I really do not want to be the reason they end up in jail or anything, so please…just…I dunno…sell them out the the Burmese junta? You know what I mean. If you want me to go into detail, give you names of the programs, or see pictures that I am not going to put online, let me know.

The first person we met was a leader of a rebel group that has been fighting against the Burmese government since 1949, making it the longest ongoing war in the world. They are an ethnic minority, and they have been victim to horrid abuse from the government since 49, and have thus been forced to fight for their protection all this time. For a while, the US and UN considered them to be a terrorist organization, but they have been removed from that list, because what they are doing is totally for survival, and they are fighting against a government that is more like terrorists than they are. The leader was extremely informative, having been part of the resistance since it started, and was extremely impressive because of his knowledge of the world, but also his resiliency. These people will not give up until they have equality, which is obvious since they have been fighting for so long.

The next morning, we visited an organization that dangerously travels into Burma to setup health clinics for victims of the Burmese government. This work is extremely important, because there are thousands of people within Burma that cannot get any health aid whatsoever, and this organization provides their only chance of treating injuries they receive from the Burmese army, or illness they contract from not living in a house for months/years. Their work is also extremely dangerous, because if the army finds out about them, they will be shot. They also have to deal with the Thai police, which wants to arrest them; they had to move their office just last week because the police were planning a raid.

The next NGO we visited travels to villages and refugee camps in Thailand, but also crosses the border to the health clinics in Burma and sets up solar panels and green hydro power pumps to give electricity where it is needed. This is especially essential for the health clinics, so they can refrigerate vaccinations, but also for the villages and camps, so they can light their schools and get Internet so they are not so isolated.

In the afternoon, we visited an organization that helps migrant workers deal with legal issues. Migrant workers generally work in factories or construction, and usually get a maximum of 120 baht per day (35 baht = 1 us dollar). The minimum wage is supposed to be 200 baht per day. Some workers make as little as 70 baht. The biggest issue is that the Burmese, coming from the oppressive military dictatorship, do not know they have rights, so this organization informs them, and helps them with their cases. They have taken 127 cases to the courts, won every single case, and have won over 10,000,000 baht for the workers. This organization was funded by a Jewish federation in New York, which was really cool to see, because Jews should really be doing more about this situation, since it really hearkens back to the oppression we are so familiar with.

The next organization we went to is an organization that tries to give aid and raise awareness about the political prisoners within Burma. In 1988, university students led a protest to try and achieve democracy. Since then, there have been thousands of political prisoners that the government have arrested and tortured in ways that are absolutely appalling, even to someone like me who has travelled to Auschwitz. If you want to sign a petition to try and let the UN know that you think these people who have been imprisoned while trying to fight for democracy should be freed, sign their petition here: http://www.fbppn.net/

The next morning, we visited the Mae Tao clinic, which is run by the “Mother Theresa” of Burma: Dr. Cynthia. This is a free clinic that offers vaccination and health care for anyone from Burma, either people who cross the border for the day to get their infant vaccinated, or migrant workers who live in Thailand. This clinic was truly amazing: there were probably almost 1000 people there, some because of malnutrition, malaria, some in labor, some getting vaccinations, some needing psychiatric help, some getting their land-mine wounds treated…everything. It was amazing. We then met with Dr. Cynthia, who is an amazing woman. One interesting thing I learned from her, and from my Ajans, is that President Bush was actually extremely good and helpful regarding Burma. Laura Bush visited this clinic many times, and our Ajan, Ajan Win min, who was a student protester in 88 and then fled and became a leading expert on Burma, was invited to the White house to meet with Bush. Apparently, Obama and Clinton have made comments that have worried Burmese activists, and it seems like Bush might actually have had a better policy.

In the afternoon, we went to Mae La refugee camp, which is the biggest of 9 camps in Thailand. This camp houses 40,000-50,000 refugees, many of who have lived there since 88. The camp is about 7 miles length wise. To put that in perspective, Kenyon is about 1 mile long and has 1,500 students. The entire village of Mt. Vernon has 14,000 people…
We had lunch with the head of a bible school in the camp, and then we walked one of the hospitals in the camp. Everyone in the camp lives in bamboo huts, but you can tell who has been living there for longer, because their huts have more decorations or are more elaborate. It was a truly amazing experience

There were signs setup to educate the refugee about what getting resettled will involve, which is the eventual goal of everyone in the camp. Everyone would like to be able to move back to Burma, but that is currently impossible, and for the most part, it seems like the US is the best option, and the US does take the most refugees. They had pictures explaining what the flight would be like (including how to sit on a western toilet), pictures of what Americans like to do with their free time (play sports, video games), and pictures of Karen (90% of the refugees are Karen, an ethnic minority) celebrations in America. I learned that there is a community of Karen in Pittsburgh, who I will have to look up, but also a large one in…Ft. Wayne Indiana! I found that funny, although, most of the Karen are christian now, so I guess that makes sense.

The next day, we went to the border. There is a bridge (Friendship Bridge) that goes across the river, but most people don’t really use it. People wanting to cross the river to find sanctuary just pay 10 baht, borrow an inner tube, and walk across. Now they are illegal, and you might think that the soldiers who were stationed along the border might try and stop them, but no. They let them go, because if they bother to send them back, the migrants will walk down the river, and then just cross it again. They can’t police the entire thing, so they just don’t. That doesn’t mean that if they raid and find migrant workers they won’t send them back, but that is just how they prefer to do it. It’s weird and corrupt, but whatever.

This was a really…moving trip. It is hard to find one adjective to describe it. I am really glad I went, and I hope that I can use what I learned to try and help these hundreds of thousands of people who need aid.

So this wasn’t a very fun e-mail, and there is a good chance I am not going to do much fun for a while. I just have a lot of work, and no more trips planned. Its winding down…

Hope sendoff was awesome!

Reid

Pictures
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=30356411&id=1473570027&saved#/album.php?aid=2012029&id=1473570027
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=30356411&id=1473570027&saved#/album.php?aid=2012649&id=1473570027
There are more, just let me know if you want to see them.

Update #14

Hey! I am back, and totally find, except a tiny bit sunburned.

Since I only explained a little bit about Songkran, I am going to try and do it justice and spend a bit more time on it this week. As I explained, the basic gist of it nowadays is this humongous citywide water war. That was about all we knew about it. Technically, the holiday of Songkran started on Monday, but on Saturday night, as we were taking a Song Tao home, a few kids threw buckets of ice cold water on us as we were driving. This was a mere prelude of things to come.

We woke up on sunday, loaded our waterguns, put our wallets, cameras, and phones in ziplock bags, called our Song Tao, and headed out to the city. It didn’t take long for everyone to get completely soaked. Basically, most of the restaurants and bars around the city put a huge barrel outside their joint, and kids stand there with buckets and throw water at song taos and trucks. As you get closer to the center of the city, the traffic starts. When the song tao stops, usually somebody on the streets will jump on the back of the song tao and squirt/dump water on everyone in side. The further you get, the more people there are along the streets waiting to attack.

Around the moat of the city is pretty much just good-old-fashioned mayhem. There are people packed a long the sidewalks with barrels of either really dirty lukewarm moat water, or really dirty ice-cold moat water. You can just walk along, fill up in any random barrel, and then continue walking and dump water on other pedestrians, or the people driving. Some people pay tuk tuks to take them around the city. They take their roofs off, load a barrel of water, and just drive around and shoot people. There are lots of trucks with people with their own barrels of water, shooting/dumping everyone else.

Songkran is actually quite dangerous, especially for motorcyclists, which makes up like 70 percent of the driving population on a normal day. It is apparently really hard to drive a motorcylce while people are trying to dump a bucket of water on you, or shoot you with a super soaker, especially when the streets are completely packed with people. In general though, the people on the road are driving because they want to take part in the chaos, so it just ends up being crazy.

Both days we really just walked around a lot, occasionally choosing certain water tanks to make our base, but eventually moving on. It was really cool to watch how nationality kind of slid away in the chaos. There was no real animosity towards farrangs at all, except they might have been a bit more forceful with the force they dumped water on us, but they were very playful, and seemed happy that all of the farrang were there enjoying the Thai culture. It was a big community of people that were in an all out war, which was just really fascinating.

We went back on Monday, and it was basically the same, except there were more people, and they blocked off the road around Thapae gate so the parade of the Buddhas could take place. One day, if I become a PhD student or something, I want to come back and study the religiousness of this holiday, because for the Thai people, this seemed to be really significant, and it was really fascinating. Every main Buddha image from every Wat in the city, i think, was on parade, and was getting doused with water and jasmine. Obviously, all the farrang were on the sides, continuing the water fight, with many Thais, and is was really difficult to turn my academic brain on, which adds to the many reasons I am going to need to come back to Thailand, especially for Songkran.

We continued wandering around, and after most people went home, Champ led Ashley, Kelly, and me around to more night time festivities. It was nice to hang out with him, since he has moved out, and I won’t see him as much anymore. I currently have a single, and I do miss living with him. I really got used to having a roommate, and we had become very good friends. We are all going to continue hanging out, but my room is quite lonely.

Anyway! The plan had been for over a month that Wednesday night we would fly to Bangkok, take an overnight bus for 5 hours to the port city of Trat, and then take a ferry at dawn to the island, then catch a taxi to our hotel, and go rest on the beach. Obviously, the political…um…activity in Bangkok worried us greatly, especially we didn’t have a ton of wiggle room between our arrival to Bangkok and our bus departure for Trat. On Wednesday, we heard that the protests had ended, so we all breathed a sigh of relief.

Our traveling was really completely smooth, except for some usual trouble with taxi drivers (Bangkok drivers are notorious for not using the meters with farrang, and just being difficult to deal with, unlike taxi drivers in the west!). Our bus was also uneventful, and we arrived in Trat at like 4:30 in the morning. Unfortunately, this was when illness began to attack our group. About half of us dealt with stomach issues while we were on the island, and all of us got sunburned after the first day. Ashley was the first to get sick, with what was later determined as food poisoning.

We got on our ferry with a sick Ashley just as light was appearing on the horizon. It quickly became evident that it was an extremely overcast morning, with storm clouds everywhere. We were all a bit anxious that weather would end up deterring our paradise. It was still really pretty though.

We got to our hotel, which is owned by a very nice German, moved in, ate breakfast, and headed to the beach. It was a bit of the walk to the beach, which was fine, and the beach was gorgeous. It was completely inhabited by farrang, as we later would discover the whole island was, and every now and then we were graced with the presence of topless Europeans. Ah the glory of near-sightedness!

Koh Chang is the second largest island in Thailand, and has either rock or white sand beaches along its shore. The south is populated by fishermen villages with great seafood restaurants, and the whole island has pretty much become a tourist destination. Everything is in English, and in general, all the Thais speak English. While this might sound appealing, at this point, it greatly frustrated us. All of the Thais were totally surprised and dumbfounded that we were trying to speak Thai to them, and in general, all of the Thais seemed to greatly resent the farrang, which is understandable, because they have completely taken over the island.

I WENT SCUBA DIVING! I have been keeping a list of mildly dangerous things that I want to do in my life, preferably soon, like sky diving and bungee jumping, and scuba diving has been on there for awhile, but I thought that it was likely going to be the hardest to cross off, since I don’t think anyone in my family does it, and I spend most of my summers either in Zionsville, Indiana, or with my family. Fortunately for me, Koh Chang has fantastic corals, and my friend is a certified diver, so she wanted to do it as well. We found a really great diving company, that is run by people from the Netherlands, and they were absolutely fantastic. Ashley (yes, the girl who had food poisoning two days before) and I travelled to Bang Bao, and headed out for our adventure with about 15 other divers. Three of them were first timers like me, and some of them were so advanced they were getting their certification from BB Divers (the program we were on) to be instructors themselves.

They ran a great instructional program, giving one instructor two pupils. My instructor was this extremely Aryan looking bald looking guy from Holland that reminded me a lot of my boss, Chris, at Kenyon. When we got to our dive site, we loaded our gear and learned the basics. After we had mastered taking our regulator (the thing you breathe out of) and getting water out of our goggles while under water. With our remaining air, we swam with our instructor holding on to us around the coral. Turns out swimming like that takes a fair amount of practice, and I couldn’t really get control of my body in that dive. We went up, and head off for our next dive.

After lunch, we did our second dive, and since we had done well enough early, our instructor let us swim on our own, which was really exciting. Once you get the hang of it, it is really the coolest thing ever. It’s just a different world down there. Ash and I bought an underwater camera, so once we get it developed, I will hopefully have some awesome pictures for you! I really want to keep it up if I can after this, because I loved it. Oh by the way, on the way out I got received my dose of illness and got sea sick, but after I threw up off the boat and almost splashed a guy on the lower deck, I felt fine. Whatever.

The next day, almost all of us went snorkeling, which was a bit of a step down for me and Ash, but it was still really cool. The day before, my instructor spent a long time talking about sea urchins, which are these little devils: http://bradyoshiro.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/sea-urchin.jpg
They sting you when they bump you, and their thorns just get stuck in your body and sting for days until they dissolve in your skin. You can’t pull them out, which is fine, cause they are just calcium, but they hurt a fair amount. My instructor had quite a few on his legs and arms, and I got one really small one on my leg, which I can barely feel now.

However, while snorkeling, my friend Eva kicked backward, and basically kicked one of these dudes with her entire foot. Now my very masculine, European, buff, diving instructor who has been diving for years and has been stung by countless urchins still thinks it stings pretty bad when you get one in your leg. She got 26 in her foot. whoa. We took her back to the boat, and she was instructed to stomp her foot and whack it so they wouldn’t calcify in her leg. It was crazy. Needless to say, her foot still hurts.

Despite the many stomach issues, the sea urchin attack, and my one friends’ phone being stolen, we all had a great time! It is really hard not to when you are living on an amazingly gorgeous island, and especially when, like me and Ashley, you spend two days underwater with multi colored fish and coral you have only ever seen in an aquarium. It was great!

Now I am back in PIH, and there is really no time left until I leave. Songkran break had seemed like this far away sign that the semester was almost over, and now we are on the other side of it. Weird. My plane leaves for Pittsburgh May 16th, and Avodah starts the 30th, and I just can’t believe how soon that is.

This week, I am travelling with the other IPSL kids, who are the other students (9 of us) who are doing service learning on top of our normal school to a Burmese refugee camp. This is going to be quite an experience, extremely different from the touristy tropical island.

Okie pokie! Let me know how all of your lives are going!

Reid

Pictures:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2010701&id=1473570027
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2012029&id=1473570027

Update #13

Hey everyone! Look, I am alive!

OK, this email probably could be very long, but I don’t really have time to explain everything in detail, so you are going to get the rushed explanation of last week, Songkran, the political situation, and our unfortunate travel plans.

I suppose I should start this e-mail with the fact that Bri and I broke up. This e-mail is more about keeping you up to date about my life in Thailand, so I won’t go into details about it here. I am totally fine, and I am having plenty of fun to distract me.
I am also totally healthy. All of my stomach stuff seems to have passed, which is very exciting.

About my service placement: Despite our attempts, it doesn’t seem like we will be able to continue teaching at Wat Don Chan as our primary service, because we weren’t getting enough hours. Our program head found us a new place to work, which is a Christian orphanage for converted ethnic minorities. It is an extremely nice setup, but Kanako and I are a bit hesitant about missionary work in general, but it seems like it will be a great place to work. We are going to continue teaching at Wat Don Chan, but only one afternoon a week.

Songkran: Songkran is the Thai new year, and it was orignially celebrated by throwing water on all the buddha images from the Wats in the city. This practice some how developed in Chiang Mai into a huge friggin water war. Everyone goes down to the moat, with buckets or super soakers, and dumps/shoots/throws/pours water on litterally everyone. All of the traffic is at a standstill because people are throwing water at them, and there are lots of trucks with people in the beds throwing water at people on the ground. It is so much fun, and everyone just goes absolutely crazy. I will try and write about it a bit more next week, cause I need to speed through this.

OK, I don’t know how much you all have been following the global news, but if you have been at all this past week, you apparently will have heard about what is going on in Thailand. You all probably can find out more of what is going on, because you live in a country with freedom of press, where the government that is being protested against can’t censor the media. Here is the situation as we understand it.

In November, there was a military coup (this happens frequently) and the a new government was put in place. The old government was a democractically elected government, they were pro-Taksin (a former leader who had been kicked out of the country), and red shirts. The current government are yellow shirts.

The biggest issue that the protestors have with the current government is that they were not elected, and the protestors are calling for the government to disolve and hold elections. If that happened, it appears that the current government would not be re-elected.

I am not sure what day the protest started (it was some time around thursday). The taxi drivers of the city placed there cars on certain streets to block off sections of the city. They did this to disrupt the ASEAN summit that was supposed to take place. This upset Abhisit (the PM), and he sent the military in to “ewncourage” the protestors to go home. Since then, violence has escalated, and really no one has any clue what will happen. If the protestors don’t want to stop, the military will just keep killing them or arresting them, but that can’t go on forever. One side will need to give in.

Now here is how this relates to me. Chiang Mai is not affected by this at all. People up here are talking about it, but there are very few demonstrations, and litterally no violence. People who live here are telling us that there hasn’t ever been violence up in Chiang Mai when there was unrest in Bangkok. I am totally safe up here, except for the insanity which is Songkran, but I survived that.

The issue is that 10 of us are travelling to Koh Chang today, which is an awesome tropical Island off the shore of Thailand. We had booked our hotel and flights a month or so ago, and low and behold we are flying through Bangkok.

This e-mail is going to my relatives, and I can just hear them all saying in one voice “DO NOT GO!”. We all talked about this. While we certainly want to go to the island, we are very aware that the situation in Bangkok could be dangerous. So, we called our program leader (the man that is responsible for our saftey and has witnessed many coups in Thailand, and has many friends on both sides of the protest in Bangkok). Adam said that he is currently in Bangkok, and that while the situation is certainly tenuous in certain areas, other parts of the city, including the airport and bus station, are currently totally unaffected. It is bussiness as usual there, and in many other parts of the city. Where ever there are government offices, however, is quite unsafe for bystanders. He said that we should be totally safe, however, if we avoid anyone involved with the protests. Neither side has any interest in harming or involving any foreigners.

We are all going to be adults about this however, because we are aware that this is a potentially dangerous decision. We are going to call Adam before we leave, see if anything has changed. When we get to the airport here, we are going to keep checking to see if it is still safe. We will only be in Bangkok as long as it takes to get from the airport to the bus station (which is very close), and then we are going to leave right away and head to our paradise.

On the island, I don’t know what the internet situation will be, but I will try and check it as much as possible. If anything happens, I will try and let you know.

Please try not to worry about me, which I know sounds silly. We wouldn’t be going if we and our supervisors didn’t think that we would be safe, but from all the information we can gather, we should be fine.

OK!
I am excited to see the responses I get for this e-mail! If there is no internet on the Island, I will email as soon as I get back, which will be my sunday night!

Have a great week!
Reid

Update #12

Hey all,

There is a fair amount to talk about this weekend, since I was in the hospital, and also went to another village. I don’t really think anyone wants to know about my bowel movements, since it was pretty bad. Basically, starting Tuesday morning, I had to go to the bathroom every hour, which ended up being by the next morning every ten minutes. I went through classes Tuesday, but I wasn’t feeling great. I got a fever that night, but I felt alright, so I went upstairs to see what other people were up to. I walked into my friend Ginny’s room, to find her completely covered in her sheets, and when I felt her, she was extremely hot. She was really achy and really week. We decided she should go to the hospital, but I didn’t go because I wasn’t feeling great. I carried her downstairs to Champ’s car, and they drove her to the hospital. When the doctors measured her temperature, she had a fever of 40.2, which is 104.36 Celsius.

That night was real bad for me, and I didn’t really sleep at all, and I was in a lot of pain, and my fever was getting worse. That afternoon, when Champ, Ray, and Kanako were going to visit Ginny, they drove me to the hospital so I could get checked out. They decided that I should also stay. I had a fever of 39.7 which is 103.46 Fahrenheit, and I was really dehydrated from all the diarrhea. They hooked me up to an IV, and I pretty much went to sleep. They told me that there were white blood cells in my stool, which means I had an intestinal infection. A few of my friends were really nice, and traded off staying with Ginny or me, and few others stopped by to check on us. We both felt better the next day and checked out.

On Friday, those of us who were taking Ajan Otome’s class on Ethnic Minorities went this weekend to a Lisu village that she did a majority of her research in. She came when she had just gotten her PhD, and she is now about 80. Almost all of the villagers call her “Mama” which is basically Grandma. The man I was staying with has been sorta raised by Otome, and he considers her to be his mother.

We spent most of Saturday and Sunday wandering around our village which was Lisu, and then a nearby village that was Akha. They were interesting, and both villages have stayed more traditional and also were very agricultural. The people were also very warm to us, especially our families, and I felt the least out of place in this village. We could communicate with them, and they had seen many farrang before us, because of Otomei, so it was pretty easy.

The last night was the most fun, as usual, and a few us of got dressed up. I fortunately got my dad to get me some Lisu pants, which are awesome. I managed to buy them, so even though there many pictures of the night, I am pretty sure that you will see me wearing them at some point. Most of the night was spent dancing, mostly Lisu, but we threw a little Hokie Pokie in there. Lisu dancing is circle dancing, and involves stomping. I obviously loved it, and got several comments from the older women that my dancing was “beautiful”. What now?

We left this morning, and there was much sadness from us, but mostly from Otomei and the villagers who are so fond of her. We stopped at another Akha village to look at their village gate, and I ran into one of my students from Wat Don Chan, which is crazy. She came from her village, like all of my students, and studied in Chiang Mai, but came home for the summer. It’s such a small world…I guess. This is a normal week, but then Songkran. My next update will probably mostly be in anticipation of the craziness that will ensue, so get ready.

From Reid

Update #11

Hey everyone!

It sounds like I am missing an extremely cool time at Kenyon, and while I am certainly sad to be missing it, I don’t think you will ever hear me complain about it.

OK, this might be a kind of ridiculous e-mail, because I can’t really explain the village home-stay without giving a ton of background, because I really need to assume that none of you know anything about the plight of the Hmong people in Laos and Thailand, or very much at all about “hill tribe” or ethnic minority people in South East Asia. If you want to skip to my description of what I actually did, that starts with the “***”, otherwise, here goes a quick summary of 200 year old racism and human rights violations! N.B.: I am not an expert on this stuff, and this is all stuff I have learned in the past two months. I didn’t know anything about what was going on before I came here.

About 200 years ago, there were several different groups of people in Southern China that did not share China’s culture or customs, and considered themselves to be a different group of people than the Chinese. They wanted to create autonomous governments that were separate from China, but that wasn’t going to happen. Thus, many of them moved to modern day Laos, Burma, and Thailand.

There are also other ethnic minority groups that have lived in Thailand for longer than the Hmong and Mienh groups (pronounced mohn and mee-in), but the village I was staying in was predominantly Hmong, with a some Mienh, and also some Lua, but I do not know much about Lua history. All of the ethnic minorities have always been predominantly farmers, and this has caused a lot of problems with the lowlanders (ethnic Thais).

I am not going to go into detail about all of the ways the ethnic minorities have been persecuted, but there was an incidence that occurred in Paklang, the village I was staying in, that is a pretty good summary of the whole situation. The Thais down the hill who were also farming thought that the hill tribe’s new lychee (a type of fruit) orchards were causing erosion and eradicating their source of water during the rice harvesting season, which was obviously a big problem.

In order to deal with this, the Thais marched up to the orchards, and burned down everything, which was the primary source of income for many of the villagers. This riot was not entirely the act of crazy farmers alone. Along with the farmers, there were representatives from the Thai government’s forestry department. This event happened in 2000, and not one baht has been given to any of the people of Paklang to compensate them for the millions of baht that they lost as their primary cash crop was burned down.

The village of Paklang only exists because there needed to be a village to house the thousands of Hmong refugees that had fled from Laos after the CIA’s failed secret war during the Vietnam War. I won’t go into this, because I simply can’t do it justice at all, but Google Laos Secret War if you want to learn about it. The UN and the Thai government set up Paklang, as a group of villages, combining Hmong, Lua, and Mienh people, because they could not stay in the refugee camp any longer.

Ethnic Minorities are distinguishable by their unique traditional clothing, which I will talk about later. Each group has their own style, and they used to wear the clothing every day, but now people wear t-shirts and jeans more often than not, and the traditional clothes are now mostly used for ceremony.

If you want to learn more about this, either ask me, or come to Thailand. This is getting too long, so I am just going to start.

***OK, so we left Chiang Mai at 9 am Wednesday, and drove pretty much all day, stopping to check out a Khmer Wat in Phrae. We arrived in Paklang in Nan province at about 6pm, and we got out, had a quick orientation, and then were all told what village we were going to be staying in. The villages are divided by the minority groups, so villages 1, 3, 4, 5, and 7 are Hmong, 2 is Mienh, and 6 is Lua. There were three of us who were assigned to the Mienh village, and we loaded the village leader’s car with our stuff and drove over. When we got to the first house, he asked us in Thai who wanted this house, and Evie took it. Eva took the next house, which left me with the last house. I got out, met my family, had dinner with them, hung out, got to know them, and went to bed.

OK, my family is comprised of a mom, a dad, two boys, and the mom’s parents. My dad is an English teacher, so he speaks pretty much perfect English. My mom could understand English, and spoke Thai fluently. One of my brothers was studying in Bangkok, so I never met him, but my other brother is 13, and his name is Future. He speaks English very well. My grand parents could even speak Thai! This is unusual, because every ethnic minority has their own language, and a majority of the older generation never learned Thai. My house had a computer with Internet, three bathrooms, two of which had showers with hot water, and the half of the bottom floor was a convenience store like 7-11.

Now let me describe one of my friend’s situation. Her house had about 8 kids, one or two of which could speak English. Her mother could speak Thai, but it was not perfect, so it was occasionally difficult to communicate. I shouldn’t really use the word house, because it was a bamboo hut, and it was essentially one room, and she slept on a bamboo mat. There was one bathroom…in the middle of a complex of about 8 houses that they all had to share, that was essentially an outhouse with a bucket with cold water for showering.

Now some/most of you might think that I was extremely lucky to get the house I did, and would not want to live in a bamboo hut for 5 days. I certainly can’t complain about it at all. However, we went to this village to experience something new, to learn how these people live and try and understand their culture. I didn’t achieve any of this nearly as much as the people who were in huts, and spent all day farming as opposed to teaching English to privileged Thai students in the nearby city like I did.

This might sound like I am bitter, and that’s not true, because I had a great time, and I loved the people I met. It was just a very different experience than everyone else had (I was not the only one not in a hut, but I was the only one with hot water). I did manage to learn a lot about Mienh culture and history, and I think in some way I learned more than others, because Dad could answer all of my questions, and we could totally understand each other.

Just like in Mae Chaem, children in this village are communal, and it was very confusing trying to figure out whose kid was whose, but it didn’t really matter. I made friends with a few, as well as my brother and his cousin. My Thai is at the point where I can understand enough to have a bit of a conversation with people, which is pretty sweet.

Thursday was pretty much just hang-out-with-villagers day for me, though some of my friends went up to a cave to see some Buddhas. On Friday however, we all went to see the remains of the refugee camp that many of the villagers lived in, some of them for 12 years. We learned about it, saw where the houses used to be, and then loaded our trucks and headed to a waterfall. Waterfall isn’t really an accurate description; it was more of a stream with deep parts and about 15 small changes in elevations, which made for some really fun sliding down mini waterfalls.

When I came home, my dad told me he was going to take me with him to a party that night. Like I said, he was a teacher, and his deputy principle was throwing a party to celebrate the end of the year. It was a lot of fun, and they all wanted to talk to me and learn about me and about America. I don’t know how much fun my dad had, because he pretty much just translated the whole time.

On Saturday night, our last night there, we held a cultural exchange dinner. Many of our families decide this meant they should dress many of the girls up in traditional clothing. Check out the pictures, because the outfits are fantastic, and you really can learn a bit about their culture by looking at the clothing. They also performed some Hmong dances, including a very cute hoolahooper. We performed “Why don’t you build me up butter cup” which was just silly, and the few of us who had stayed with Lua people put on a very goofy skit about hunting. I am trying to upload videos to no avail, but they will eventually get on facebook. I swear.

After tearful goodbyes on Sunday, we headed to a village that one of our Ajans had stayed in, and visited their Wat, which had just about the coolest Bodhi tree I have ever seen. We loaded the buses, and came home. As soon as I got home, Champ told me he was cleaning the room, so I dumped my stuff down, and started cleaning our bathroom. I still get a weird enjoyment from cleaning toilets, which is good, because that is going to be my life in 2 months exactly.

Overall, it was a very cool and educational trip, but I would have liked to stay with a poorer farming family. The challenges alone probably would have taught me more, but I still had a great time. This coming weekend, those of us who are in the Ethnic Minority class are going to a shorter home-stay at a Lisu village, which will probably also be a lot of fun. I don’t think there is much else to say, other than I really love hearing from people. I didn’t really expect people to actually read all these updates, but it sounds like a fair few of you, other than my family, actually like me enough to read these unnecessarily long and rambling summaries of life, and I appreciate it. Keep telling me how you are doing!

Reid

Pictures:
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1473570027&ref=profile#/album.php?aid=2009344&id=1473570027
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1473570027&ref=profile#/album.php?aid=2009475&id=1473570027

Update #10

Hey Everyone!

I just got back from an awesome weekend, but I have to start this e-mail with something I forgot from last week. So on Sunday, we went to a lake to hang out and swim. I didn’t write about it because nothing all that interesting happened, other than the girls were uncomfortable in their bathing suits, cause Thais don’t wear bikinis…but whatever. Anyways, I forgot to add to my list of unusual food I have eaten: Dancing Shrimp! While I am very curious what you might imagine a meal entitled dancing shrimp would entail, if you guessed that it was called dancing because the shrimp are served to you alive then you would win a gold star. You are given a bowl full of live shrimp, and lid to keep them in, because they all jump around and…dance. It is served with this spicy sauce, to kill the bacteria, and you have to shake the bowl up to calm the shrimp down and spread the sauce. Then you…eat them. They are still alive and moving when you put them in your mouth, so you have to make sure to bite down quickly. It was awesome! I am curious if I am going to eat anything that tops that, but that was great.

So I think I had mentioned that the school I am teaching at has ended for the year, and the graduation ceremony was last Thursday. It was really interesting. The first part was very religious, with all the graduating students sitting outside and receiving merit from the abbot. Then we migrated inside, and all the underclassmen formed two lines, guys and girls, and made an aisle that led to an archway, which the graduates walked down, and received high fives from their friends. They sat down, and then the speeches started. I am pretty sure that, officially, graduations are boring in every country. This is not based on Kanako and my experience, but our observation of the students and other teachers. Everyone was bored. The coolest part of the ceremony was at the end, where they performed the white bracelet ceremony. In Mae Chaem (the last village I stayed in) they also performed this ceremony. Basically, after a lot of chanting, everyone is usually given one white bracelet, just made out of yarn. The bracelet is meant to maintain all of the spirits that inhabit your body, and the ceremony is usually done at the end of something or before a journey. Instead of just getting one bracelet, however, the students got as many pieces of string as they wanted, and they went to all of the teachers they liked, and the teachers put them on the students. For GUCI people, imagine the candle activity on final night, but make it religious and with white bracelets. It became very emotional with lots of tears and whatnot. It was really cool to witness.

There are two girls on the trip here with me, Evie and Ginny, who go to Sarah Lawerence, and one of their friends is here visiting them for her spring break. This weekend the four of us went on Flight of the Gibbon and Elephant Riding. Flight of the Gibbon is a zip-lining trip. We were picked up, and drove out to a mountain which is pretty much a jungle. I had never been zip-lining, but it was awesome! There were several that were pretty long, one was a full 10 seconds or so (here’s a video of it: http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=1041447684459&ref=nf) There were 18 zip lines, and then three…well they essentially dropped us down the tree. They called it repelling, but I don’t know if that is technically accurate…w/e. There is nothing quite like flying through the jungle, and I am not a talented enough writer to describe it, so you will have to make do with pictures and the video, and your imagination.

Then today we went elephant riding all day. I could just end the e-mail now and let you all revel in jealousy, but that would be mean. We woke up early, got picked up, and drove about an hour to the camp. There are apparently a lot of other Elephant shows in the same area, as well as monkey and snake shows, so we might have to head out there again. Anyways, we got there, changed into our elephant riding clothes, and walked down to meet a few elephants. We fed a few of them some bananas, and then mounted elephants to learn how to direct them. We rid them bareback all day, which was really cool, but a little difficult and uncomfortale. Totally worth it though, especially casue you can feel your elephant, and also control it more effectively. For those of you that have never felt an elephant before, there skin is extremely thick, with very prickly hair. After we learned a bit, we got off and started playing with the only boy there. His name was Jon, and he was very friendly. He kept using his trunk to sniff us and grab our hands, butts, and kiss us. He was very curious and persistent, and just a lot of fun to play with, if you don’t mind snot on your face. Once the rest of our travel group showed up, and after our handlers rounded up a few more elephants, we boarded our stedes and started our walk. Of course, I was on the biggest one, a big mamma named Maila. We walked for a it through the village, crossed the stream, and walked up the hill to where we would eat lunch. Maila could be very fast when she wanted to, but she really wasn’t that interested in following the path. She would walk ahead of the group, then go to the side of the road to pluck a plant to eat, then we would tell her to turn, and she would turn….and walk to the other side for more food. We did end up at the front, so she knew what she was doing. We got off at a little hut and ate lunch. We met an American family that is living in Japan, but visiting Thailand. There were two little blond kids that were very cute. Jules, the little boy, liked to call me mister watermelon when I told him my nickname. While we were waiting to go, Jon came over to play with us some more. He was really fun, and he kept kind of leaning on me, which could get really uncomfortable, cause lets face it, he is an elephant. It was adorable though. After lunch, we rode for a bit up to a mud pit. Needless to say, we all had fun giving the elephants mud baths, but none more than Jules, who by the end of it was left with more mud covered skin than not. The elephants were really funny. They loved the mud on their skin, and the big ones get stepping on the hill to bring more dirt into the pit. When we were done, we trekked back down the stream, and proceed to swim with the elephants. This was just as much fun as it sounds. They can be really playful. One girl kept trying to turn on her side to knock us off, which was a little more scary than she realized, because if she slipped and I fell, she probably would have crushed me, but whatever. We rode back, but Maila was getting a little bored being told what to do, which made it more entertaining. She would just stop walking and turn around and look at her friend, and we would have to give a few good kicks to get her to go again. We got back to camp, showered, and got back to the dorm at about 4:30. A fantastic day all around…until I had to sit down and do homework…

On Wednesday, we are leaving for another homestay. This village contains three different ethnic minorities: The Hmong, Mien, and Lahu. Crap…I haven’t explained ethnic minorities in Thailand have I? Well, it’s too late to explain that now, so maybe I will get a chance next week. Wikipedia it if you are interested. Try Hill Tribes as well. Anyway, we are going to be staying by ourselves with a family, which is very exciting and a bit scary, and we also don’t know what are living situation will be like. Some of us will be in bamboo huts, and some in nice concrete houses. It should a great experience, and a great opportunity to practice my Thai, which is coming along very well. Unfortunately, none of the ethnic minorities speak Thai at home, so only the younger folks (probably 40 and under) will know any Thai, and the older folks will only speak there own language, which we don’t know any of.

Okie dokie! I am sure I will have another long e-mail after my homestay! I hope everyone has a great week.

Reid

Pictures:

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=30235776&op=1&view=all&subj=1473570027&id=1459620195#/album.php?aid=2009343&id=1473570027

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=30235776&op=1&view=all&subj=1473570027&id=1459620195#/album.php?aid=2009344&id=1473570027

ICU Lunces

At my second lunch, I really discovered that Thai people can be just as awkward as Americans or anyone else in the world. After going through the standard pleasantries, we ran out of things to talk about. It didn’t seem like their English was sup par, it just seemed like they were either uncomfortable, or just uninterested in getting to know me. We never really talked to anyone, and I don’t remember any of their names. They ended up talking to Ajan Lexy about her class, but I don’t think they learned very much about me or the US.

My third lunch was a lot of fun, partly because I was at a table with guys. As one of the only guys in Thai Studies, I have spent the entire semester thus far only hanging out with girls, and the past two lunches I was with mostly girls and one of two guys. When we were figuring out where we going to sit, however, we ended up segregating, and I sat down with some of the biggest Thai guys I have met. The most talkative guy’s name was Buff, which is short for buffalo, and he was a lot of fun. I was worried, because I initially got the impression that the guys weren’t that interested in actually talking to me, and were only there because they were required to be. However, we started talking, and it ended up being very interesting and enjoyable.

We talked a lot about language, and I was surprised to find out that Buff and his friends preferred the English language to the Thai language. They particularly preferred our Alphabet, and when I tried to argue that in some ways the Thai characters were less confusing, they laughed. We actually had an intellectual discussion about it, which was very impressive, especially since none of their English was superb. We talked about American girls for a bit, and what American guys thought made a girl attractive or ugly, and how that differed in Thailand.

At my fourth lunch we talked primarily about differences between our cultures. I spent about fifteen trying to explain the concept of “awkward” to them. I had recently learned that the concept simply did not exist in Thailand, and trying to explain it turned out to be very difficult. I at first tried to explain that it was a social situation that made someone uncomfortable, but based on my example, they thought I was talking about homosexuality (of course that was how I tried to explain it). I eventually got to a point where I think they understood it, but they still couldn’t say it, so I attempted to write it our phonetically in Thai. They had to correct me a bit, but it helped, and I am confident that there are now at least three Thais at Payap that now what awkwardness is, and can say it.

My last lunch was the most fun, because I was with people I had already met. The lunch started out a bit uncomfortably, because I had forgotten all of their names, but they remembered mine. They made fun of me for a bit, and I felt bad because Nick had told me that Thais find it more insulting if you forget their names. Luckily, I am very adept at making fun of myself for forgetting people’s names (I have to do it often), and I think Emme and Sherry ended up just finding it humorous.
I also met a guy named Bank, who turned out to be the funniest Thai guy I have met. We were talking about something, and I agreed with what they said, but instead of simply saying yes, I responded with my typical “yep yep yep”. Now I had already discovered that this means “sew sew sew”, so when Bank asked, I knew I needed to explain. He liked the phrase, and asked if he could use when he didn’t understand something. I said he could, but that might get him in to trouble. For the rest of the lunch, whenever he responded to a question, he said “yep yep yep”, which was particularly funny one time when he had no idea what I had asked him.

I am very glad that we had this opportunity to meet Thai people outside of Payap. Sine we were all aware that we were all aware that we were forming very ephemeral relationships, especially now that they are all leaving for the summer, most of the time we just jumped right into questions about each other’s culture and personal lives. I definitely learned a ton about what Thai people our age are like, and also I think that they learned a lot about us. It was interesting for many of them to meet a Jew, since I was the first most of them had ever met. Most of them thought Judaism was an ethnicity, similar to Karen or Hmong, and they all thought I was Christian as well as being Jewish. Many of them said that they were interested in travelling to America, and I think having met us, they at least have a slightly better picture of what American college students are like.

Update #9

Hey everyone!

This will probably be another short update, because it wasn’t a terribly eventful week.

Most of the people on this list aren’t from Pittsburgh, so you might not appreciate this as much, but I grew up learning about Pittsburgh in the Steel Mill era. The city was apparently so smoggy, it was never sunny, and to this day, buildings are stained from the pollution. I had always thought it was kinda unbelievable that people actually lived like that, but I just figured that that was how the world was when my grandparents were growing up.

However, I now have a very clear idea of what Pittsburgh was like during that era, cause Chiang Mai is like that now. Recently, when we wake up in the morning, and look out the window, it is really gray, the kinda of gray that makes you think it is going to rain. Then we remember that we are in Thailand, and it doesn’t rain in March, nor has it for several months, and the gray is from the smog. The sky is this gross smoggy gray all day, and you can see the polution. We get really excited when it the smogg breaks and we can see any sort of blue or sun in the sky. Now it turns out that the King of Thailand has a patent on making it rain artificially. He apparently shoots de-icing chemicals into the sky to break up the clouds or something, and it makes it rain. We think he did it, cause rain is in the forecast for next week, so we will see.

On Tuesday, as part of our Thai Studies class, we went to the hospitiality department of Payap, and took a class on cooking thai food. We didn’t really learn that much about cooking, other than that we all kinda failed at making Pad Thai, becaus the people helping us didn’t really help. But we did learn how to make tomatoe roses, which I was passable at. They were kinda cool.

One of the girls here does her service placement at Ban Sanook, which is essentially a store that sells clothes and scrafs and things woven by people with disabillities. Basically, Thailand doesn’t do anything for people with disabilities, so these men moved here from Japan to setup Ban Sanook, and they hire the people with disabilities, teach them how to weave, and the “artists” get all the profit. On Saturday, the artist were putting on concert, half for a bit of pulicity, and half to entertain kids who were born with AIDS and are orphaned. An NGO that takes care of them brought them over for the concert. A bunch of us went, played with the kids, and performed Build Me Up Butterdcup and Do Re Mi. It was a lot of fun.

That night, Champ took a few of us to his little brother’s end of the school year concert. It is this huge event that happens at every elementary school in Thailand, and the kids from every class go on this huge stage in front of hundreds of people and perform a choreographed dance. It was quite interesting, and it was also nice to hang out with Champ’s parents again. His little brother is cute (he is in 5th grade).

OK…I think that is it. Not too many pictures from this week, just finished off one album: http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1473570027&ref=profile#/album.php?aid=2009235&id=1473570027&ref=mf

A bunch of you have asked about when I come home. I fly back on the 16th, and then I will be in Pittsburgh getting used to the US until the end of the month when I go to camp until August.

Have a great week!

Reid

Update #8

Heylo everyone!

It has been a rather uneventful week, so this will be a short one. The really frustrating thing is that, despite having nothing out of the ordinary happen at all, this past week went by extremely quickly. As we have been looking at our calendars, all of us have noticed that we are going to be really busy in the coming weeks with tons of trips, so the fact that normal weeks fly by does not bode well for the future.

Teaching has been going very well, and a lot of the kids seem to really like learning from me, and seem to be learning a fair amount. It is hard to figure out what to teach, because some of them know a lot, they just don’t really know how to speak and form coherent thoughts, which is hard to explain because of the language barrier, but overall it is going well. I found out they the school semester for them is technically going to end this coming week, but I am going to keep teaching the kids till I go home. The school is a boarding school for kids who are ethnic minorities, which means they are all dirt poor and if they can stay at the Wat, they will be in a much better environment than trying to scrounge for money at home. Either way, there will be lots of students for us to continue our work.

We went bowling on Wednesday night, which was highly entertaining. If you have never gone bowling with me, you might not know this, but I am terrible at bowling. I am pretty sure my high score all-time is 70, and the highest I got here was 69. However, fortunately for me, pretty much everyone else sucked at bowling as well, and after a game and half we got bored and started bowling a bit more creatively.

My roommate applied to study abroad in America, and he found out this week that he was accepted to Pitzer College, and will probably be studying there for the whole year. One of the girls on the program with me goes to Pitzer, and she knows a Thai guy who studied at Pitzer for a semester, and on Saturday night we went to watch him play at a Jazz bar. They were really good, and the bar was just very cool, as you would expect a good Thai Jazz joint would be.

Pretty much sums up the week. I found out today that the word for Jew in Thai is the same as the word for stingy…hmm. Okie dokie. No questions to be answered. Keep e-mailing me though! Here are my pictures from Bangkok and recent adventures:

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1473570027&ref=profile#/album.php?page=2&aid=2009131&op=6&id=1473570027 (starting in the middle of the album)

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1473570027&ref=profile#/album.php?aid=2009183&id=1473570027&op=6

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2009185&id=1473570027&op=6

http://www.facebook.com/photos.php?&id=1473570027&s=6&hash=47a555f0e7213d2fef8d3c7f52fbd594#/album.php?aid=2009186&id=1473570027

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2009187&id=1473570027

http://www.facebook.com/photos.php?&id=1473570027&s=0&hash=34550010354d91266a265d668598318d#/album.php?page=3&aid=2009189&id=1473570027

http://www.facebook.com/photos.php?&id=1473570027&s=0&hash=34550010354d91266a265d668598318d#/album.php?page=2&aid=2009190&id=1473570027

http://www.facebook.com/photos.php?&id=1473570027&s=0&hash=34550010354d91266a265d668598318d#/album.php?aid=2009235&id=1473570027

From Reid