Classes and other things: A long entry

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(After note: I'm not editing this because it's late and this is really long so I apologize for grammar and sentences that may or may not make sense lol)



Well, my internet’s not working right now, so I can’t do the research I would like for this paper I need to write. In the meantime, maybe I’ll give ya’ll a little blog to read 😊

I was asked to talk about my classes, and I realize that I actually haven’t talked about my classes at all! I can’t really take pictures in my classrooms so I don’t have those to put on facebook, and basically, they’re not nearly as exciting or fundamentally life-changing as everything else in Thailand has been so far. Except, that they’re the actual reason I’m here, and if it weren’t for my classes, I wouldn’t be in Thailand at all. So, classes.

My schedule is a little wonky, I have class on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, but no class at all on Tuesday and Thursday. I’ll go through my week.

Monday:

At 8am I have my Thai Society and Culture class. There are a couple of westerners in the class, from KEI (my program), it’s me, Andi, Sydney and Katie, but there’s also Hon and Hunter who are from different programs, and I think Hunter is an exchange student. I think I’ve explained before, but the difference between exchange and programmed students is that program students pay a program who pays the college and for their housing, and some programs, like KEI and CIS take the students on excursions to different places in the country. Exchange students are left to their own devices and pay tuition up front and pay for their own housing and have to figure out where and when to go places themselves.

It’s interesting to me how many Thai Students are in the Thai Society class, or well, it was interesting at first, but now I understand that they actually need to learn about the history of their culture and religion because many of these city kids don’t know anything about it at all. My teacher will constantly ask the Thai students if they’ve ever heard of this term, or this ceremony, or when this first occurred, or why this is common-place in society now-a-days, and hardly any (most of the time none of them) will have any clue. One example is the Thai nickname.

Every Thai person has a nickname, and if you ask a Thai why everyone has nicknames, they’ll tell you its because their given names are too long. But they really aren’t at all. Two names that come to mind are Hattaya and Choltiphat. Yes, they might look intimidating at first, but they’re only three syllables.. that’s not so long as to require every Thai person to have a nickname. The actual origin of these nicknames comes from an ancient tradition of naming children after animals or unpleasant things so that the spirits wouldn’t want to take the child. It was believed that there was a spirit called the Purchasing Mother, who wanted to take all children for herself and in response there were many ceremonies for children and mothers during pregnancy and infancy so that the Purchasing Mother wouldn’t want to take the child. We now understand that children often died because of sicknesses or malnutrition rather than being taken by a spirit, but the concept of giving children nicknames has kept on through the generations, however, no Thai student in the class had ever known the real reason they all had nicknames.

Recently in the class we’ve been watching a couple cultural movies and they have all been really good and really interesting! The first movie we watched was called the Beautiful Boxer and was based off of a true story of a Muay Thai boxer who was a transvestite and ended up getting a sex-change to become female but won many fights in her heyday. It was a really good insight into Thai rural life, and how becoming a boxer is one way to move up the Social Hierarchy ladder that controls so much of Thai society. Also a look into how Thai’s regard transvestites. It’s interesting that they really aren’t really that socially accepted, they’re just basically ignored. Since Thai society is Buddhist, they believe that their position in this life, is based off of the merit or demerit they accumulated in past lives. If a person is very poor and has an unfortunate life currently, it’s believed to be due to accumulating lots of demerit in a past life. Thus, its believed that transvestites had accumulated lots of demerit in their past life, and are therefore forced to walk this world in the wrong body, constantly suffering. As for their role in society, transvestites have a hard time getting respectable jobs, but can usually make a decent living on the stage and in performance art. I’m talking specifically about male to female transvestites, and while the opposite exist, they are less popular in society, or at least, less well-known. So while they aren’t fully accepted, they aren’t fully rejected either and can kind of float along in the middle cracks in Thai society.

The most recent movie we watched was called the Overture, which was an homage to the societal reformations that occurred during the 1930’s and ’40’s. The societal reformations began with Rama V in the mid 1800’s who was the first king to have studied in Europe and who gave his son the first title of Crowned Prince. They started to instill Westernized concepts into Thai Society, but little things such as no prostration before royalty, and the requirement to wear a shirt in front of royalty. In the past, men could not wear shirts as they could conceal a weapon, and they had to basically crawl forward in the presence of the king – but this was seen as barbaric from Western standards and was abolished by these kings. Many other reformations started to take hold, but it wasn’t until 1932, when the Absolute Monarchy was reformed to a Constitutional Monarchy that things got really intense. With the instilment of the constitution, there was not a parliament and a prime minister of Thailand. The first prime minister was a man name Phibun who took it upon himself to utterly westernize all of Thailand at every societal level.

Many of the rules were meant for the upper class, but they also trickled down to lower class Thai’s as well. The rules went so far as to control how Thai’s dressed and how they spoke and behaved in public. Just about everything that defined Thai’s was deemed barbaric and done away with in these State Conventions instilled by Phibun. In the movie, the Overture, the story followed a boy who wanted nothing more than to become a musician, and he was really good at it, but traditional Thai instruments required you to sit on the floor in order to play. This was seen as barabaric, since Westernized people never sat on the floor, and it was illegal to play the traditional instruments without a license, and as you can imagine, it was basically impossible to get a license. In order to play an instrument, you had to sit on a chair, such as the piano, or cello, but this was not the way of the traditional Thai instruments. The instruments have names I can’t even begin to remember right now, but they were like, xylophone-esque, banjo-esque, and recorder-esque. You would know the sound as soon as you heard it as they are traditionally Asian-sounding instruments. Anyway, the entire movie was about the musicians basically having to deal with law enforcement at every turn. It was really good.

Thai Society and Culture is probably my favorite class. It runs from 8am to 9:40, but sometimes we get out a little early because there are student presentations at the end of each class, and if she stops class at 9:30 or 9:15 in time for presentations, sometimes the presentations only take 5 extra minutes and then I have ample time to get breakfast and coffee.

I usually either get a pastry or something from the canteen (they call cafeterias canteens here, probably because it’s a lot easier to say than cafeteria lol), or some fruit from the fruit stand there. My favorite pastry are these little blueberry danishes! They’re only 25 baht and are magic! The pastries here are so much more substantial, they have more of a bite to them than the pastries in America that just flake apart in your mouth, and they aren’t as sickeningly sweet either. Also, their donuts are AMAZING! For the same reasons lol

Then there’s this place called the Brew and Bev where I usually get a hazelnut latte because they advertised it as literally “You’re life will never be the same” after you have one haha. And they’re pretty good, my life is usually as good as it was before, but I am definitely more awake, but it’s nothing special. (When I was in Koh Samet, I got an iced late with vanilla in it, and even though it was 125 baht (Which is like… woah… usually I can get a coffee for 40-60baht) it was definitely the best coffee I’d ever had in Thailand). An iced latte is “Latte Yen” and then I usually ask for a little bit sweet which is “Wan noy”. My favorite way to order coffee J

At 10:00 I have my Thai Language and Culture class. All my classes are on the MUIC campus, which is basically a large square building with an open courtyard on the first floor. My first class, Thai Society, is in building 2 on the third floor, and my second class, Thai Language, is in building 3 on the 4^th floor. I hardly ever take the elevators, they’re so slow anyway, no point.

In Thai language, we just learned about ordering food, and I really wish that we had covered that like the first week. Its literally the only thing we do here, is eat food, and it would be really nice to know the names of my favorite dishes in Thai. Most menu’s, in they’re in English, don’t have a phonetic pronunciation of the Thai name of the dish, but just describe what’s in it (which is actually what the Thai name of the dish means). So, like, on a menu, green curry would say, Green Curry with Chicken, while the phonetic Thai pronunciation is “Keng-klang-wan-kay”. I wish that’s what the menu’s said rather than green curry with chicken. It’s funny though that that’s how ethnic food menu’s are in America, they’re phonetic pronunciation of the traditional word, and you have no idea what it actually is or what’s in it! Lol.

My favorite things to eat are green curry with rice “Sai khao plow”.

Stir fried morning glory – “Phad phak bung”

Fried chicken and cashews – “Kay phat met mamuang”

Mamuang actually means mango… but for some reason in this context in means chicken and cashew nut lol. My other favorite fruit is sapparot = pineapple!

Oh and then there’s always the staple, Somtum, which is papaya salad. I really need/want to make a list of all the fruits and food dishes that I normally like to order so that I can find them easily and can order them quickly at restaurants.

This class usually goes by pretty quickly, but we cover A LOT in 100 minutes. I really wish that our teacher would emphasize the tones more though. Tones are the most important part of Thai language, there basically isn’t any grammar at all, except for word order. There are no particles, there’s no past tense, there’s no feminine and masculine, there’s no conjunctions… I can’t even imagine how hard it must be to learn English and be introduced to so much grammar! But there are tones, and saying words with the right tone is crucial for understanding. I asked someone for rice and egg once and they had absolutely no idea what I was trying to say because I was using the wrong tones. This was when I first got here and didn’t have any concept of the tones at all to begin with, but now, after two months, I feel like it should be more important for her to teach us the tones. I listen to students in the class who say words with the complete wrong tone, or even with the wrong accent or vowel sound, and she hardly ever corrects anyway and just says okay and moves on. I try really hard to get the tones right, and today I said something with the right tone and she actually sounded really surprised that I did it right. She shouldn’t have to sound surprised if she just taught the damn tones in the first place, but ah well. I just have to get the tones just right for the words I really need to know.

After Thai Language is over at 11:40, sometimes I get some lunch from the canteen, but it has such a high school cafeteria feel to it, that I don’t really enjoy sitting there. I usually get some spring rolls or a salad to go and eat it back in my room. Except that today I just discovered a separate canteen that’s about a two minute walk from MUIC that’s a lot less crowded and feels more like a hospital cafeteria or something rather than a high school cafeteria. I know hospital cafeteria doesn’t sound that pleasant either, but I mean that in the way of the atmosphere, that there aren’t that many people and that the food is more varied.

I have to sit and wait for the Bundit shuttle to come and pick me up. It comes around at every 15 minutes of the hour, so if I get there right after 11:45 (which is usually when I get outside MUIC) I have to wait until 12:00 for the shuttle to come around. It’s about a 5-10 minute drive to Bundit house from campus, and it only takes so long because of all the stops to let people on and off and all the speed bumps that prevents it from driving too quickly. If it were a straight shot without stopping, it would probably take less than 5 minutes from campus to Bundit House.

When I get back its usually around 12 -12:30, and then I have a break until 1:45 when I have to catch the shuttle back to campus for my 2:00 class. I don’t usually do much during that break, sometimes I take a nap, other times I play around on facebook, put up my pictures from the weekend or something.

At 2:00 I have my Ecosystems and Natural Resources class with my professor who also teaches my Marine Biology class on Friday’s. This class is probably my other favorite class. We talk about natural ecosystems, human impact on nature, ecological niches of animals and the environment, and just a lot of other cool biology stuff! It’s pretty easy since I’m a bio major, I’ve heard all of the terms and concepts before, and especially since he teaches it to non-science majors, it’s pretty dumbed down science, but it’s a good review, and I still enjoy it a lot. It’s also nice being the only American in the class, and since my teacher is American, he often asks me questions about things that are going on in America (he’s lived in Thailand for about 25 years now). I’m also definitely learning some things too about natural ecosystems and how they are balanced on certain resources. Today we watched a video about grass!

Just grass! How exciting could grass be! But holy crap I almost cried at one point during the documentary… Literally, grass is the reason the world is the way it is today. Because of it’s ability to exist in low carbon levels, it thrived when trees died off at a low-carbon period in earth’s history (caused by limestone formation but that’s not the point here), and its extreme flammability allowed it to burn super hot and kill off all the trees that impeded its growth, while being extremely resistant at the same time, after the top burns off, the roots and shoots are still very much alive. After a grassland fire, the grass can grow at extraordinary rates and doesn’t have any trees or shrubs in its way! But that’s not all! Grass developed little barbed edges from coating itself in silica from the ground, have you ever cut yourself on a blade of grass? That’s because it has microscopic silica teeth along the edge of it. This adaptation actually killed off a substantial amount of prehistoric herbivores that were unable to eat this sharp grass and eventually starved out of existence, though it also led to the adaptations and shaped the existence of the herbivores we see on land today. In the manure of these herbivores that were able to eat this silica coated grass, was the indigestible silica that washed into rivers and eventually down into the oceans where it was used by diatoms as a protective outer skeleton. Diatoms are microscopic phytoplankton and are responsible for one fourth of the world’s oxygen and led to the evolution of the ocean ecosystem we know today.

But that’s not all! You may have heard that there are these chimps in a place called Fongoli in the Serengeti, where a species of chimp lives in these grasslands instead of in the forest. These chimps have been studied extensively because they show evidence of what we believe our earliest ancestors to have been capable of. Not only do they use tools to capture termites as has been observed in other chimp species, but they are the only ones that have been seen to use a sharpened stick to kill small mammals! It’s believed that they developed this adaptation since living in the grasslands provides little cover, and heightened intelligence is necessary for survival. But get this shit… These chimps have not only been seen walking around on all fours, but actually STANDING AND WALKING ON THEIR HIND LEGS!!!! I almost had a heart attack when they showed the footage. If you can youtube it, I suggest you do that right now because just thinking about it is giving me chills. You see these chimps, just chilling, hanging out in the grass, when all of a sudden one stands up to see over the grass, and all you can think of is – oh, so that’s why we walk on two legs.

So basically, grass is responsible for the distribution of grasslands and forests that we see today, for the species of herbivores, for the ecosystems of the ocean and the diatoms which provide one fourth of our atmospheric oxygen, and the evolution of human beings. Just like. Holy shit. What the fuck did I just learn?! Not to mention its mutation that allowed it to be cultivated and farmed by human beings so that we could have settlements and evolved into having agricultural villages instead of being hunter-gatherers. Have I mentioned that I like this class???

This class usually gets out somewhere between 3:40 and 3:50, sometimes he goes the full 110 minutes, but not all the time. This is also the class that I went to Khao Yai National Park with and fell in love with Thai forests.

So that’s my Monday. Thai Society, Thai Language, and Ecosystems. I get home around 4-4:30, go to the gym, eat dinner, and then do homework or something (or blog J) until I go to bed! I’ve been really good about going to the gym here, probably because it’s literally an elevator ride and a 30 second stroll there haha.

Tuesday:

If I wake up early, I go and get some coffee and breakfast and then skype mom or correon, or someone or blog (usually, the last couple of weeks have been different). Or I will go lay out on the roof and get some sunshine or do some homework up there in the shade, just to get out into the fresh air. I usually hang around here until I have Muay Thai at 4 so I change into my exercise clothes and then head out to campus!

Lately Muay Thai hasn’t actually started until 4:30 because people show up late.

First we run 5 laps around the bottom courtyard of the MUIC building and then come back and do group stretches for a few minutes. Our Ajan (teacher), who doesn’t speak any English, will then have us line up behind him while he shows us a few moves. Usually its something along the lines of a 1-2 punch and kick, or knee and spinning elbow. Not usually more than 5 moves and we practice them while moving forward in our lines. When we reach the end of the mats, we go back and do them again to the end, and repeat until he tells us to stop basically, then he shows us something different. He has pupils that speak English that translate for him and help show us novices how to do the moves properly. I really like our Ajan though, because even though he doesn’t speak English, if you’re doing something wrong he’ll come up to you and say “Eh! No, no, no, no!” And then move your body into the proper position. He’ll show you what you were doing and say “No,” and then show you how you should be doing it and go “Ahhhh” or “Mmmm”.

After about an hour or so of practicing these different moves, I’m usually sweating like a…. idk what sweats a lot? Lol. Sweating like a person practicing Muay Thai in the 90 degree humid Thailand heat haha. When everyone’s nice and tired and just about done with all these moves (you can tell when people have just about had enough), he stops the lessons and brings out the punching bags and mitts and pads. I have my favorite mitts that are the most heavily padded, they’re 12oz gloves, but because of my wrist surgery so long ago, my right wrist is still a little weak, and if I use a glove any smaller my arm and wrist will literally go numb by the next day. So I need the big gloves lol. Ajan and his students will take up the pads and call on any of us students with mitts on to throw punches and combinations and kicks and elbows and knees at the pads with as much power as we got! I usually can’t go more than two rounds before I’m beat and sweating and exhausted. You don’t realize how tiring it is just to hit something until you go to hit something and realize that you’re punching with the force of a three year old even though you threw everything at that pad that you had in you lol.

I love Muay Thai. It’s the highlight of my weeks. Sometimes it’s hard to get up and get going to it since it’s in the afternoon after a whole day of me doing nothing, but I’m always happy I show up! It’s also significantly more fun if I’ve had coffee lol.

Wednesdays’ are a repeat of Monday’s, and Thursdays a repeat of Tuesdays, and then come Friday’s.

Friday:

I only have one class at 12:00, Marine Biology. This is the one class that’s actually going to transfer over to UofL as a credit towards my graduation. I won’t even bother to have the ecosystems and natural resources class transfer over since it will be such a low-level biology course equivalent that it won’t count towards my major in any way and will just be a waste of paperwork. So anyway. Marine Biology. I’m so glad I don’t actually study Marine Biology lol. I have decided (and kind of came to this conclusion many years ago) that I am not really a lover of the ocean, or water in general for that matter. Whenever I go to the pool, or the lake, I don’t usually swim a whole bunch. A lot of the time is spent hanging out on the boat, dock, poolside, in chairs or in floaties in the water. And when I go to the beach, I only get in the water when I get hot. I’m not really that good of a swimmer, and the water bores me after a while. I can’t read a book there, I can’t eat there, so what’s the point? Lol. I am much more of a bush baby, my home is in the trees. And discounting mangroves, there aren’t trees in water lol.

The class is interesting, but I guess I had all these expectations about learning about whales and dolphins and marine ecosystems… which I’m sure we’ll get to at some point, but for our midterm, we just covered currents, winds, ocean topography and geography and plankton. Even coral aren’t that interesting to me. But, it’s the one class that I actually need so I guess I should try to find something interesting about it. Just haven’t figured out what that is yet.

This is a three hour class, but he gives us a break around 1:30 or so and I either go get coffee or some food to keep me focused through the next hour and a half of class.

I get out of that class around 3:40 and then it’s the weekend! Yay!

So that’s my week here in Thailand. Those are my classes and my usual schedule.

Now that I’ve covered that, there’s a subject I want to touch on for a brief moment, it was kind of brought up when I was talking about my Thai society class and how a lot of the Thai students don’t have any idea of their cultural heritage.

Thailand kind of reminds me of America somewhere between 1920 and 1940. Deep into the industrial revolution, but still a growing and emerging economy. It reminds me of the 20’s in the way that Thai people are obsessed with being white/pale. They have all of these whitening creams to keep their skin from getting dark and are always seen with umbrellas or broad hats whenever they have to venture out into the sun. They avoid getting dark at all costs. Why? Because having dark skin means you’re a service worker, you are lower on the social hierarchy ladder, and you usually work outside as either a farmer or food-stall owner. These are low occupations, and if you have any sort of respect for yourself, you will never allow your skin to be dark. This is the same reason that having pale skin was attractive in the roaring 20’s. The lighter your skin, the less time you spend outside or in the factories, which meant you had the money to avoid those sorts of jobs, and were the ones being serviced, not providing the services. But it also reminds me of the 1940’s after the end of WWII when America was obsessed with having things made easily and cheaply and there was a massive influx of people into the suburbs as the cities filled to maximum capacity.

Bangkok’s population hovers somewhere around 10 million right now, and that’s expected to be about 12 million by 2016. The cities are rapidly expanding to the point that they can’t keep up with adequate waste disposal, they are just jam-packed with residents and tourists and immigrants and pollute the streets with trash and exhaust. The city people have forgotten all about their old ways and what used to make Thailand, Thailand. Acutally, Thailand wasn’t Thailand until the 1930’s when all the social reforms were instilled. Thailand used to be called Siam (with the Siamese people (and cats lol)), and ever since the name change, Thailand has forgotten about the importance of living with the earth and treating other with respect. In a growing metropolis, religion seems almost pointless, and people are killing and stealing and scamming with no thoughts of remorse or fear of being reborn with a bad life. Bad behaviors are in a downward spiral in the cities, as the populations continue to grow, people look for convenience and simplicity rather than what’s right and economically feasible both in terms of land space and resources. The only protected lands in Thailand are the mountains because they are the only places that cannot be cultivated and made into rice fields, so they basically aren’t needed for anything anyway (except timber and tigers and elephants).

What happened to the Western world, in our forgetfulness of sustainable development and demand of convenience and wealth, is now happening to Thailand. Sadly, in as little as 70 or 80 years, Thailand has decimated its natural resources and is now an economy based off of tourism. The society literally lives on the money of others.

Somebody asked me the other day if I would like to live in Thailand someday. The answer quickly, is yes. But would I live in Bangkok? Never. I’m not a city girl to begin with, but I could never, ever, live in Bangkok.

You may have already heard about my incredible spiritual experiences in Chiang Mai last weekend, simply because it was the first time I was in a place that was not built up for tourism, but left in its simplicity for tourism. The tourist attractions were the local markets that sold useful wears and not useless trinkets. The mountains and forests and trails were the tourist attractions. These people make a living from the tourists by doing nothing and being nothing than what they have done and who they have been for centuries. And there, I could live out the rest of my days a happy woman!

Thailand has presented me with so many new ways to see the world. I’ve finally come to accept that I am at home with nature, and all this city dwelling is killing my soul. Not killing, but hindering for sure. When I am in the trees, I can literally feel my soul begin to fly. It flutters at the chains that were put there by the exhaust and lights and noise of the cities, and lifts free from its cage when the sun bears down upon my skin and the wind whips my hair around my face. I’m sorry if this makes some of you unhappy, but medicine is not my path and it never will be. It always felt wrong to me somehow, for the longest time I was unhappy. I was unhappy in the way my life had led me. I had though that being a biology major opened so many doors to me, but I didn’t know which door to go through. Being a biology major had opened many doors, but the doors were behind me, not in front of me. I forgot about ecology, about animal behavior, and conservation, sustainable development, I let all of those go because I wanted money. I’ve seen what money does to a society, and it’s ugly. I’ve been looking at the wrong doors for so long, that when I finally turned around and saw these new doors behind me, I actually felt like I could move forward. Before, I had been so compressed, so hindered by not knowing which door to go through, afraid I could never turn back. I’m so happy that I’ve been able to turn around, and to look down the right paths for me.

Maybe they’re not what you think I can do, I can probably do many things. I’m a smart person and I have good grades, and I have the money to take me far in my education. But I don’t want it. Say what you will. Tell me I’m making the wrong decision, but how can it be the wrong decision if it’s the decision that makes my heart feel right? I opened the doors that led to medicine, to drugs and research, to lab coats and sterile environments. I looked into all of them and flinched. I knew I had to go into one of them, so which one was the least poisonous to my soul? That was the question I’d been asking myself until I turned around and opened the doors that led to me animals and trees and dirt and nature and my heart soared and I knew I could go through any of the doors. And the question wasn’t which was the least worst, it was which was the most best!

The most I can do for my country, for the world, and for human beings, is to protect it from ourselves. If I can help save our planet from our own destruction, then I’m doing something right.

I’m not sure how many more metaphors I can use to get my point across lol. I’ll never be able to put in to words the feelings and the changes in my mind and soul that I’ve experienced on this trip. And it isn’t just from being in a different country, but its being alone. It’s not the culture that’s the shock, its being alone and figuring out how to be okay with that. Away from everything that was ever comfortable for me, has given me a chance to look at my life in a perspective I’ve never been able to see before. It’s almost too much and I just want to come home and curl up in bed with my mommy and Patrick and tell them about all the wonderful things I’ve seen. But at the same time, I’ve only just begun to scratch the surface of my growth. I’m just a little sprout. Finally finding the soft soil around the rock that had been over my head. I’ve got so many more challenges ahead of me, but finally I’ve got a head start and I’m sending my roots down to steady my ascent.



So. Yeah. Thailand. It’s a fun place J

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