Thai Home Stay

So this past weekend we had our Thai homestays. I was a little nervous for two reasons: For starters, I lived with a host family for four months when I was abroad in Denmark, so I didn't think one weekend would be enough time to get to know someone, nor enough time to get over the initial "awkward phase". Secondly, aside from some of the high-rise condos I've seen in Bangkok, I haven't really seen many actual homes or apartments. In our neighborhood of Chula (short for Chulalongkorn University, which is where our classes are held) the apartments are more like tenaments. On the first floor is the family buisness, which is usually either a silkscreen shop where they make shirts, or a restaurant, and the top two floors consist of the actual apartment. Mind you, these apartments look extremely grimey from the outside, so who knows how nice they are on the inside. The point is, this left me wtih little knowledge on what a "typical Thai home" looked like.

We got picked up by our host families on Friday afternoon. My host parents spoke abosolutely no English, but their daugther, Bua who is 16, spoke perfect English, so right away I knew I would be speaking English for most of the weekend. Within 5 minutes I basically exhausted all of the Thai that I knew ( we didn't really get up to conversing in Thai in our langauge class). I introduced myself by saying, "Hi, my name is Leah Werner-Evans, I'm from New York, I'm an English teacher, and I like pinneapple and banana." Done. My host parents did laugh and think it was funny. Or maybe they were laughing because they thought I was an idiot... oh well.

We drove back to their house. Although Bua attends an all-girls school in Bangkok (the same school I will be field-teaching at for the next five days), they live about 40 minutes from the school. Kind of like living in the suburbs of Bangkok. We had to cross a river to get to their house, so I guess it would be the same as driving from my high school to where I live in Astoria, or maybe even a little farther like to Forest Hills or something. Yeah, it was more like driving out to Forest HIlls or maybe even Jamiaca, Queens, as we did pass through coconut and banana fields to get there. To my surprise, they live in a gated community, in which the houses were almost identical, and looked very American. I felt like I was in Florida or California, not Thailand. Their house was a modest size, small and compact, but they have three cars. As soon as I got settled in they offered me food. Thai people are all about the food (my kind of people!) and one of the first questions they always ask a person is, "have you eaten yet?"

My first night, Friday night, they took me to Black Canyon Coffee for dinner, one of the restaurants in their local mall. It's a coffee shop and an 'international Thai" restaurant, but American-style. I think they took me there because I'm American and they probably assumed that my palate wouldn't be able to handle real Thai food. Of course all of the main entrees on the menu were served with french fries. Why do non-Americans assume that Americans like to eat french fries at every meal or with every type of food? I certainly do not crave french fries all the time nor feel the need to eat them with everything. Also, if you tell Thai people that you like to eat a certain dish, be prepared to be served it quite often. When asked, I told them that I like Som Tam (papaya salad), kao pad gai (chicken fried rice), pad see ew, and pad thai (of course). So naturally at dinner they ordered me Som Tam and even ordered me pad thai to go even though I ordered Salmon for dinner. Maybe they thought I could get hungry later that evening? Or for the rest of the weekend?

The rest of the weekend was pretty great. It was filled with relaxing, shopping, and of course, lots of eating. On Saturday I hung out with Bua and her two friends from school. They also spoke perfect English; one girl had actually spent a summer in California taking classes. They took me to a Wat and then we went shopping at JJ Market, which is a huge outdoor market in a park. I bought a new bag and a skirt for work, both of which were really cheap. We ended the day by going to Swensons (an ice cream chain here in BKK that's apparently an American chain). Perfect.

On Sunday, my day started by eating a big meal for breakfast. Thai's eat regular food for all meals, which includes breakfast. They don't do the cereal or yogurt-thing for breakfast. Instead they eat soup, rice, chicken, etc. My breakfast consisted of brown/whole-grin rice, fried fish, and ham sauteed with bok choy. At 8:30 in the morning. It was delicious, but I mentally had to prepare myself the night before so that I would be able to eat fish that early. Off we went to a floating market, which i was really excited about because I had been wanting to go for a while. This market wasn't like the famous picture of Thai women with those straw hats rowing down a river w in a canoe filled wih fruits, veggies, or flowers. This was more like a boardwalk type of set-up with a narrow-brown river running through and around it. Still pretty, still awesome, and still got tons of cheap stuff for work. My host mom bought me these awesome print pants. I didn't know she was going to get them for me, but when I stopped to look at them and then walked away to look at another stall, she showed up with them in her hand just for me. I tried them on when Igot back to my dorm, and they're really big on me, which is a huge dissappointment. Instead of fitting me, they look like MC Hammer pants, so they'll have to be pajamas until I work up the courage to wear them outside. AFter more shopping and eating, we went back to their house to gather my stuff so they could take me back to my dorm. I had to get them something (in addition to the lame snacks I gave them on Friday) because they were so gracious to me all weekend, so I got them a flower plant from the market. When we got back to the house they had me plant it. They kept saying, 'its your plant, you put it in the ground, and it wil be here forever". Ahh, so sweet, I almost cried! To top it off,they gave me another gift: a book of Thai fruits in Thai and English to help me with my Thai vocabulary (we talked about fruits a lot that weekend, since it's one of the only Thai words I know) AND they even gave me the host stay money that Fulbright had given them for the weekend. Their explanation was that I would be in the country for a year and would need it more than they do. WHAT A WONDERFUL FAMILY!

Even though I didn't really practice my Thai that much over the weekend, I had a fabulous time with my host family and hope to keep in touch them throughout the year here.

An another note, I start field teaching tomorrow, eek! Wish me luck!!