6/6/08 evening

Today rocked! James (the only guy in our group), Shayna, Anna and I went to Wat Phra Kaeo - the Temple of the Emerald Buddha- and the Grand Palace. There arent any pic of the Emerald Buddha himself because you can't take pics inside his shrine, but.... It was so great! He isnt very big but he is green and he has 3 different outfits...hot season, cold season, and rainy season. Right now he's wearing hot season, but the other's were on display at a little museum that had all kinds of cool artifacts like swords, jewlery, crowns, tea sets, etc. Anyway, he sits on this high gold, glittery throne in a hight ceiling room with all sorts of embellishments. In the corner were 3 monks, one seemed to be chanting. I love it when I see monks!!! Words really can't do this place justice, the pics probably wont either but at least you'll havc something to go on. We were a really nice mellow group that all got along well. So it was a good day with minimal frustration. After we went to some little place to eat and I have the best cashew chicken on the planet! Our taxi driver on the way home was very amusing. He spoke really good English and was super funny. He was telling us how when he comes home with "big money" his wife says "I love you" and when he comes home with no money she just yells. He also wanted to set James up with one of his daughters. Enjoy the pictures... sorry if there's too many!!!
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6/6/08

The last couple days have been spent mapping the street we’re staying off of, Rang Nam. This means I have walked up and down both sides of the street a few times taking pictures and making notes so that in the end I have a map with each establishment and what it is and any other significant information. It was kind of a fun little exercise, but if I shared my notes they would most definitely bore you. And the pictures are just random pictures of buildings, also not too interesting. But this is an exercise that every Anthropologist does when he first arrives in the area he is going to study. So I now know my street better than I ever wanted to and know the exact location of our many 7-11's. People definatly were wondering what the hell I was doing! I saw a guy with a pomeranian that looked like Elisa's dog Penny. I happened to have a pic of her on my camera so I showed it to him and he said, "Same, same!" It was really cute. Other than that, nothing all that interesting has been going on. My map is finished and we are not meeting today so I’m planning to go to one of the temples. Hopefully to Wat Phra Kaeo, the temple of the Emerald Buddha, which is situated on the same site as the Grand Palace which was the king’s residence from 1782 to 1946. But we’ll see if I can get anyone else to do that with me or if they’re all stuck on something else for today.

I’m having a little trouble with the group dynamic here. I’m 10+ years older than everyone else in the group, so I’m having a hard time feeling like I fit in anywhere. That on top of the fact that I’m not really a group person. I’d be fine going around in a group of 2 or 3 but trying to organize 5-6 people is a lesson in patience at the least. We don’t have to do anything in groups but it seems like the other girls want to do it that way. It’s very frustrating to me because I want to just get on and do whatever it is we’re going to do, but there’s always 1 or 2 people that hold things up. No one else seems to care. I learned a lot of patience in Uganda, but patience with the people in the culture you’re visiting and learning about and patience with a group of American strangers are proving to be two different things. And these girls are young and I definitely feel my age around them.

6/4/08

Yesterday we had another meeting and acquired a list of our assignments. There are 12 which are basically writing about our observations and impressions of several things, people, and places. They are: Mapping our block, Community Inhabitants, Establishing Rapport (Meet a Thai 1), Key Concepts (Meet a Thai 2), The Park, The Restaurant, The Club, The Temple, Chatuchak Market, The Day, The Night, and The Shopping Mall. I’ll probably give you more detail about all of these as I complete them. I slept a lot yesterday. I was just so tired from a mixture of let lag, the time change, the heat, culture shock and my body trying to heal from getting cut into on Friday morning. For those of you who haven’t heard about that, I had a mole that came back pre-cancerous and had to have a couple centimeters of flesh cut out of my stomach and I have 8 stitches. There’s a beautiful park down the street from where I’m staying and we went and checked that out yesterday evening. It’s landscaped really nicely with a great ½ mile path, fountains, lots of benches, and even music playing. Every evening at 6 hundreds of people show up for aerobics! It’s intense and these people have amazing stamina and hardly break a sweat. We may try it but will probably end up providing more entertainment than anything else. All for now!

6/2/08 Arrival

Ok, so here’s a more detailed email as promised. Where to start… It’s hot and very humid. Our rooms have A/C and so do most stores, but you don’t want to be going from cold to hot too much or you’ll have sinus problems. The city is huge and there’s lots of people and traffic. Our rooms are nice. I will try to attach some pictures of my room and the view from the balcony. So far the food has been really really good. Yesterday we had an orientation meeting with our Professor. We just met in a little restaurant. Than after that we went to the mall to buy our phones. They have a raised train here, kind of like the L in Chicago but way nicer. So we took that to the mall which is about 3 miles from here. The mall is insane! It’s huge and it’s the nicest mall I’ve ever seen! Every designer store you could possibly imagine is there. Needless to say I didn’t do any shopping because who can afford anything there?! But we all got our cell phone which ended up costing about $30… we got the cheapest models. It’s the same deal as Africa where you buy minutes and load them onto your phone. It’s about 2 bhot per min for local calls… that’s about 6 cents per min I think. But you don’t pay for incoming calls. Some of you expressed an interest in calling me so the number you would dial is: 011-66-878118676. You can buy calling cards at most gas stations or little convenience stores or Indian or Asian markets. The one I usually get is called Extreme and it’s on a bright yellow background with red lettering. A $2 card will give you about 2 hours of talk time. (you don’t have to use all the time in one call) And remember that I am 11 hours ahead of you if you’re on the East Coast… California I guess would be 14? So far we have been unsuccessful in picking up the wireless in our rooms which is a bit of a bummer. I can’t figure out if it’s a configuration problem with the computer or if it’s a network issue as they just installed it recently. I may try taking my computer to a place with wireless and see if I can pick it up somewhere else. If I can’t then it’s the configuration and calling Dell might be able to remedy that. But there’s an internet café 2 doors down from us which is what I used last night and will probably use today to send this. I was able to talk to a couple people via Yahoo IM and was able to use the web cam and the calling feature with Susan… but something was up with her mic so she could hear me but I couldn’t here her. It was a very interesting conversation of me talking and her typing. I said I felt like a deaf person using one of those services for calling and she said she felt like the guy on Pirates who’s had his tongue cut out and can’t talk… unfortunately she didn’t have his bird to talk for her. I’m not really sure what’s on tap for today. We are meeting at about 9:30 and I guess I’ll see what transpires from there. I’ll keep you posted!
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Love, Jenn