First Home Stay: Village Life

So our first home stay was in Nong Jon, a illegal village in a National Park. These people took us in their house without knowing anything about us in order to teach us about their way of life. We were nervous and excited having no idea what to expect from our first homestay. We just had survived our week of "Thai boot camp" and well...the experience left us hunger for more lessons.

(some of these photos are Tyler's)

The first order of business was the making of a giant feast. Here is the making of Som Tom or Papaya Salad.

The chopping of garlic

They have these amazing stoves. I want to bring one back.


This is was Tyler, Luke and I's family's house. We would make attempts at Thai and get decent amount of laughter in response.


The next morning our Pa took us farming. But you see the thing is, we couldn't speak Thai at this point and got the directions wrong. So after filling up a basket of produce we picked Pa came over, frowned and dumped it all out. Fail. We did a little bit better the second time around. Then we helped cook our pickings for breakfast and listened to Thai radio while drinking coffee. The coffee was "turbo coffee " and our Pa poured us three packs worth per cup. Thanks for looking out for us Pa.





Then Planet Earth happened.

This be the Golden Temple inside the Bangkok

Many of these types


This guy means business


These are the rolling hills where our orientation was. Pretty, but not hobbit habitat.


Yay, off we go to our first home stay! Ekk?

Well, there is so much to say. Let me just start out saying that in situations like this where you're constantly being challenged to your core I find words fail to grasp the the reality of your experience. I want to pinpoint the perfect word that accurately describes the emotions and feelings running through me during this trip, but they always seem to fall short.
I've also been struggling with whether or not I should maintain a blog or not. I have been fearful that having such a strong, constant connection to my life back home would limit my ability to totally throw myself in to a new environment with a open mind. By temporarily cutting off those bonds I feel that I can be challenged the most and therefore growing the most. But I love everyone back home and feel that it is important for everyone to know what is going on in my life and that I am safe (specifically my family). Additionally, I literally have no time to write or even call everyone, so I hope this blog will suffice (especially for my fam).
Time
We live off of the "industrial time structure". That is, we don't observe weekends or the standard "9 to 5" workday. Our director David describe it as " instead of working intensely for five days in a row we work everyday, but at a slower, consistent pace". Its really interesting to step outside that frame of mind and not really be aware what day of the week it is, but just be focused on what is happening here and now. We definitely work longer days. Everyday our schedule is planned with events from (give or take) 7am to 5pm. Our weeks are so intensely packed full of homestays, thai lessons, group discussions etc., etc. that I've stopped planning ahead and only look at what is on tomorrow's itenerary. It's all I can handle. You just have to go with the flow or it all just overwhelms you. Its wacky.