Saturday, August 24, 2013

Introducing My Host Family

There is so much I could write, it is a bit overwhelming. I guess the logical step is to tell you about where I am staying and my host family and a little about this past weekend. We did a lot of relaxing, but we also went out a lot as well. Expect posts to be a bit more disjointed now, I'm doing so much and don't want to put it all in one post and there is already stuff from Friday I forgot to post, like winning the ISDSI rock paper scissors "tournament" and going to a temple Friday morning.

I live in the Mae Rim district in the central part of the Chiang Mai province. Mae Rim district neighbors the Mueang Chiang Mai district, the capital district, which contains the city of Chiang Mai and my school, ISDSI. To get to school most days I will take a taxi of sorts to school. The taxi is a big truck with bench seats in the back and an open back. They red ones take you wherever you want to go, but each district also has its own with set routes. The Mae Rim ones are yellow. Our house is very nice two story and is on a big plot of land. I have my own room upstairs with air conditioning. We also have two bathrooms that have western style toilets and showers.  Across the way is my host mom's sister's house, I haven't met her yet though.

Every Friday about 10 feet from the gate of our house is a huge open-air market/carnival where they sell EVERYTHING from electronics, to fruit and produce, meat, dessert, clothes, and shoes. It is really similar to the shuk (market) in Israel.

Kuhn Paw (lit. Father) is my host father. He used to teach chemistry and now he is retired. He is very nice, but does not speak much English. He has helped me learn the names of the fruit we are eating. Kuhn Paw grows ma-mooang (mangos) and gloo-ay (bananas) in the front yard. We eat a lot of fruit here, some that I have had before, but most of it is new to me! Also, just in case anyone was worried, THEY HAVE NUTELLA HERE! :) Paw also has a beautiful garden and pagoda area in the front lawn that he works on.

Kuhn Mae (lit Mother) is my host mom. She is an English teacher for 16-18 year olds in the upper secondary school. She was on a educational school trip with teachers and administrators in the central part of Thailand when I arrived, but she got home last night and I met her this morning. She is very nice. She lived in Melbourne Australia for a while when she learned how to teach English and how to train English teachers. She also received a Fullbright scholarship to study in the states. She spent time in DC, Kentucky, and Oregon staying with host families. She has also taken educational trips in Vietnam, Laos and New Zealand. She presented her reseach in Malaysia the past two years. She's telling me her ccredentials to type now. :)

My pii sau is my host sister. Her nickname is Dew. Most people in Thailand have a longer full name and a shorter nickname that they go by. Dew is 22 and studies Geology at Chiang Mai University. She studied abroad in New York for 3 months and speaks very good English. We are facebook friends now and she has already read a bit of my blog! Dew has been taking me around Chiang Mai this weekend and to the markets and malls. She is teaching me a lot about Thai language and culture. Tonight we are going to a walking street to see the Chiang Mai Lantern Festival. So excited!

My pii shai is my host brother. His nickname is Dawn. He finished university and is a marine engineer, but he is working in Japan right now, so I haven't met him.

Culture shock is not what I would have thought it at all. I expected it to be this overwhelming feeling of doom and helplessness. In reality, culture shock is the quiet nagging feeling of "what now, what do I do?" accompanied with wonder at how similar the world really is. Things here are not so strange or "foreign" as I thought they might be, but I'm sure this has to do with my host family and being in the city.

Tomorrow I start school at ISDSI. From 8-12 we will learn Thai language and from 1-4, we learn about Thai culture. So far, a lot of what I learned from my reading has been correct, but some of it has also been incorrect. Still, I am super thankful for the reading that we had to do, because it has helped me in several practical ways so far. Mostly, I just watch Dew and Paw, and now Mae and try to imitate what they are doing.k

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