What world am I in?

So the way you prepare yourself to live somewhere for a year is completely different then how you would study abroad for a few weeks or months. When you are somewhere for a year you make plans. You take a few weeks to get settled. You take “me time” because you know if you don’t get to the tourist trap today you can get to it next week. You buy things like clothes hangers and peanut butter, and you start to wrap your head around the long hall.
So just when I have started to settle into Bangkok, the tradition of school, and how to manage my time in this new culture, the orientation throws a new twist at us: HOMESTAYS for the weekend. What this means is for Friday, Saturday, and Sunday we will be staying at a family’s house. These families were found at the school we are teaching at during orientation which is a private summer camp/school which means that most families found through this program are pretty well off in Bangkok standards. For me this meant Becky (or PiCky).

Now I haven’t quiet figured out how to explain Becky. First her name is Becky. I really how I heard wrong and her name is Pi-Gee , but I would have sworn she said the very American name of Becky. She is a mother of three wearing black leggings, white heals and a shiny, black long sleeve dress. Her hair is dyed Asian brown and her manicured nails are painted gold. Her daughter who is also there to pick me up, and she is the complete opposite of Becky. She is a 14 year old with loose jeans, black framed glasses, and a short bob haircut she hides her face behind. Bam Bam, the daughter, also goes nowhere without her handheld Play station, and as side note to further understand her character her favorite subject in high school is HTML writing.
With these two as my first introduction to what my host family is going to be like, I have absolutely no idea what this weekend is going to be like. But I take a deep breath and tell myself. I CAN be alone in someone else house for a whole weekend.

I started to realize that Becky was something else when we were the first one to leave the home stay pick-up because Becky already had plans for us. In her cute little heals she quickly ran/walked down the steps because the elevator was taking too long , just so that she could rush me into her van where her driver was waiting to whisk us off to the cultural center. We were dropped off at the Thailand cultural center where there was a museum of Thailand history. I didn’t really know how to look at an exhibit while someone was standing over my shoulder observing me, so we awkwardly rushed through all the exhibits. Then at the end of the Museum she said “Ok, now you go again and look again. I wait here.”- Well, that makes it even more awkward, but I went through the exhibits again reading a few signs in English I had glanced over the time before, but I was still very unaware of what her time constraints were.

After the exhibits I met her sons who were finishing up their cartoon class which was instructed in another room in the cultural center. Becky proudly made her kids show me every cartoon they had drawn, and I have to admit you can tell a lot about a kid by their drawling. Art really is something you don’t need a language to communicate.

Her driver then took us to the other part of town to a giant mall where we ate a FUJI, a very nice sit down Japanese restaurant. Now I have written a lot about the food on this trip so far, but everything I ate a Fuji seemed to just keep getting better and better. Like the typical Asian host family, Becky continued to order food and demand I try it. Every dish she would put in front of me and told me to try it, even when her kid’s meals came out she asked me if I wanted any of it. I had the best raw fish I have ever had, amazing sushi, spicy raw fish on salad, fried sweet sushi, fried eggplant, buttermilk jell broth with chicken, an octopus ball, and fish eggs. I was so appreciative for all the work she was doing and all the amazing food I was eating, but I didn’t know how to balance being a grateful person and not overstuffing myself. Every time a new dish would come out I felt obligated to try a little bit.

Now there were definitely moments along the way I was just thinking to myself “How did I get myself here, and what life path am I on.” There is no way to explain sitting with a Thai family not understanding Thai with the two boys pretending fighting swords, the girl on her PS, and Becky offering the best food I have ever eaten while you have no westerner to confide in. You really start to think what world you have entered.

This thought continued as Becky took me to the Thai Opera house where we listened to Swedish Jazz in English. Please read over that sentence again and realize how odd I felt with a mesh of cultures around me. The jazz was very entertaining, and I am very thankful for the unique experience.

Finally at around eleven we arrived at Becky’s house which was a two story modern Asian square house. We had to knock three times on the orange gated door around their house for the young servant to come answer the door. That is one thing I could never get used to living in the house is servitude. It is so weird to have their servant as they called her take in my bag and cook me breakfast, but my host mom said she was raised with a servant. Just for all those wondering she seemed to have inherited money and one of the family businesses from her Chinese Thai ancestors. I have to applaud her for being a very motivated and successful Thai woman with a family- a concept you do not see very often in Thai society.

The desk day we went to two wats. A wat is a Buddhist temple. They are everywhere in Thailand and for the most part they are absolutely beautiful. They are decorated with glass, mirror, gold-plated, and Chinese ceramic tiles. The intricate designs make for one of the most beautiful buildings I have ever seen! On top of all that one of the buildings will have a beautiful statue of Buddha.

At night my host family took me to a banquet that was meant to host Chinese Thais who went to Taiwan to learn Chinese language and Chinese culture- the culture of their ancestors. The way it was explained to me was that there were many Chinese who escaped China in order to keep their wealth and Education during the Cultural Revolution and settled in Thailand. Since then the children and grandchildren of the Chinese have become immersed in Thai society, but they have still kept their hard-working attitudes. Chinese Thais own 70% of all the wealth of Thailand. What all this means for me is that I ended up sitting in a banquet of 250 upper crest Asians- clearly I stuck out like a sour thumb. To make it all worse I was wearing black Yoga pants because we had been told to only bring casual outdoor outfits for our home stays, and I had already worn my only nice outfit to the opera the night before. Yet again I had one of those moments of what world am I living in.

As the theme of my weekend continued the next day I ended up at a crocodile farm. Yes I do mean farm because there were just pins and pins of crocodiles being raised for meat and skins. It was actually kind of sad seeing these crocodiles sitting in murky green water piled on top of each other with no room to swim.

If there was a highlight to this crazy animal amusement park it was getting my picture a petting a tiger. In my mind I knew I should be touching this tiger because you always hear storied about trained animals snapping, but it was the opportunity to touch and get my picture with a tiger!
We then went and watched the crocodile “wrestling” which actually meant that these trainers stuck their heads and hands down crocodile’s mouths. Yes I will let that sink in for a minute. There I no way to explain this hour long show so I took a few video clips for everyone to experience.

The crazy weekend concluded with seeing the end of an elephant show where elephant walk on two legs, on a tight rope, danced to music, and bowled. I am actually glad we did not get to see this whole show because it kind of made me sad knowing that these elephants had been brutally trained to be able to perform like this. The crazy thing about elephant is that they always look like they are smiling and such happy creatures that just want to have fun with their funny moving trunks. I can’t possible imagine hurting such a majestic optimistic creature. I did get a chance to walk under an elephant which is supposed to bring good luck and that video is displayed.

We ended the weekend by going to a replica ancient Thailand. It was probably a 50 acre park you bike through and see different sites in Thailand. They had replicas of different wats/temples throughout this park that was shaped like Thailand. It was a very relaxing way to end the weekend and such a unique concept.