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Published: March 30th 2011
So its official, I am a Peace Corps Volunteer and I am at the site that I will call home for the next two years. I got to say I am both nervous and excited to be here. Currently I am just hanging out in my room relaxing, but it has been a non stop whirlwind of attempting to speak Thai and learning about my new home.
For the next month I will be staying with my second host family. Nothing can replace my host family from Ayutteya, but these folks seem just as lovely. Meme, my sister, also works at the Tesseban with me and the two of us have been taking our bikes there daily. I can hear the laughs as we drive by and I can't tell who its directed at. The Thai woman who normally rides a motorcycle to work or the farang (white person) wearing a neon green helmet. Either way we just smile and say Sa wat ti ka.
Both my new parents have been awesome trying to do their best to communicate with me and randomly throwing in some Isan, because naturally learning Thai isn't hard enough without throwing
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I'm not the only one who can rock a neon green helmetin a new dialect. But it has been fun learning both, although I can't guarantee that its sticking. I've been bonding with my new ma by cooking with her both breakfast and dinner. Its been an interesting experience 1. because I never cook 2. because i never cook meat considering that whole vegetarian thing for 8 years. Either way the meals end up tasty, to me at least. My family would like it if I added about a pound more sugar, but I'm trying to ween them off it just a bit.
The Tesseban which is my new work place seems pretty relaxed. There are over 100 people working there which I have now been introduced to. I can name about 10 of them and that is only because 5 of them have the same nickname. Everyone has been amazing at welcoming me to the area although I have been told some are scared of me. I know right, scared of me! The reason being that I don't speak Thai and they don't speak English so they are afraid of the silence. Hopefully that won't last long. The women in the room with me have been awesome talking
to me in my limited Thai. It is usually about the weather or what I ate yesterday, today, later on, yeah food is a big part of our conversation. I can't tell if that is the culture or just them realizing I can't really talk about anything else.
The Balat and Rong Balat have spoken to me and we have discussed a bit about what I will be doing for the next couple of months and even into the future. As of right now they're trying to keep the farang hidden because on Thursday there will be a big welcoming ceremony and it would be no fun to have that if I had met everyone already. So even though I should be IRBing (building relationships within the community) I've been hanging out at the Tesseban. This isn't all bad because I have been practicing my Thai which has doubled in the couple of days that I have been there, but lets face it can you real hide a red headed white girl who rides a bright blue bike and wears a neon green helmet? No you can't.
Especially when there is a big debate about tourism
in Roi-et. Grant it I understood about 1 percent of what was going on, but I did meet quite a few people. Again if you were to ask me to list off their names I probably wouldn't be able to, but it was nice meeting many of the "important" people around town. With limited Thai I got across why I was there, what I like to eat, and no I do not have a boyfriend. On top of that I had to make a little impromtu "speech" about how I can help with the tourism in Roi-et.
Now to get to where the title of this blog implies, I have been scarfing down all types of delicious Thai food since I have been here, but now in Roi-et things have changed. Not the delicious part but rather what makes a dish delicious. I still get the geng kiawan (curry) and cow pot gai (fried rice and chicken) but now there is an added ingredient. One night I had a helping of some rather tasty tot ma-leeng (fried grasshopper), on another I looked down and wondered how those dam ants had gotten to my dinner so fast only to
realize they were part of dinner and today I had a lunch composed of ants and grubs. Now it might all sound disgusting but once you get past the idea that they are bugs you realize they aren't that bad. The grasshoppers have been my personal favorite. Its kind of like eating potatoe chips because they are just crunch salty goodness. Depending on ant species depends on taste. Some have no taste at all and others are a bit more sour. Even the grubs weren't bad except they kind of pop in your mouth, just think of them as flavorless gushers. The only dilemma of eating bugs are those legs which seem to constantly be getting stuck in my teeth.
I've only been here a short time, but I am already enjoying it. The people here have been lovely, the town seems to have anything and everything I may need, and at night there is aerobic dancing who can turn that down. Song Kran is next month along with a two week soccer festival followed by a 3 day festival. The last festival is a Rocket Festival where on day one we sing, day two dance (woo-hoo), and
day three shoot of rockets. Sounds interesting right? Well I'll let you know when the time comes.
Hopefully now that I am at site I will have more time to update this blog as well as add pictures. I will be moving into my own house in a month and then I'll also have internet and an address. I'll keep everyone posted!
P.S. It is freezing here in Thailand. Who knew I should have brought my scarf and jacket!!
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Peg Rynshall
non-member comment
just amazng
I volunteer at the hospital by your mom and am living vicariously thru your adventures.and am so enjoying your pictures now that mom told me about your blog.Thanks for the thrill of seeing things I'll never see in person. God bless you and your endeavors.