Tuesday September 25, 2007

Emma has expressed some interest in knowing more about my home stay, so i will indulge her but I will not indulge her with photos of my uniform, she will have to come here and see for herself.... My home stay mom is the sweetest woman, period. My home stay dad is this funny guy who always mumbles when he speaks but is also really sweet to me. Their daughters are quiet and both have little to no interest in getting to know me. I absolutely feel like a guest in their house, the mom always asks if I'm hungry and I almost always eat alone, I think that that's just how it is in their family but because my family has always been really communal about eating, it feels weird... The only person in the house that i feel like i have really made a relationship with is the mom Phii Jip. Phii Jip and I have had a lot of really great conversations and shes the only one in the family who I have really told anything about myself too. The family watches a hell of a lot of T.V., which gets quite mind numbing. Regardless, they have been really sweet to me and i hope to keep in touch with them for the rest of the year...

Pat, Breta and I have all decided to live in the same apartment complex, one because there isn't much housing at all, two we went looking together and three the pool is a high selling point. This fact makes moving out of my home stay easier though. I don't like living alone, I find it isolating and quite depressing, therefore this is perfect set up because we will all live near each other and offer each other support but this will also allow each of us to be very independent. I think one of things i looking most forward to, in terms of not living in my home stay any longer, is the fact that i wont need to eat a large bowl of rice in the morning! I must say, spicy stir fried pork at 8:30 am is, to say the least, unappetizing..

My field work project is really starting to come together and its been really exciting to begin to formulate the basic structure of my project and I have already done a bit of research, so that's really exciting as well... Hopefully by the end of November I will at least have 95% of my book research complete.... My book research is focusing on the history of sustainable agriculture in Thailand (and somewhat globally), from after the Green revolution in Thailand in the 1970's to the present day where there is a wide somewhat large organic and pesticide -free movement. My field work is going to based around the question of why a farmer chooses to use sustainable practices? I most interested in incentives. I also plant to investigate what about their farm is sustainable, focusing mainly on pest control and green manure. I'm hopefully going to be living on a peri-urban farm for all or some of December. There is a pesticide -free farmers market on Saturday's and Wednesday at CMU and I hope to talk to the farmers there. I also plan to get in touch with an NGO in CM, that focuses on the sustainable movement in the area. I have a lot of work a head of me and i would be lying if i said it wasn't daunting but I'm also extremely excited to see what comes of all of my ideas....

Saturday September 22, 2007

Today and yesterday proved to me that apartment or room hunting in the CMU area during the end of September is quite a challenge. I had three wants, one i wanted to not live on a sketchy dark side street, two I wanted a balcony (which is a pretty normal easy thing to get here) and three i wanted a desk type thingy. there are three streets which surround the entire cmu campus, thanon suthep (where i live now), thanon huey keow and thanon nimanhaiman. Ideally i wanted to live on thanon suthep but we quickly found out that there are no rooms available. thanon huey keow is a pretty touristy area and the only part with apartment type places was the on the opposite side of the thanon furthest away from cmu. therefore nimanhaiman was our best bet. I think in total we saw about 12 apartment complexes, most didn't have openings and out of about the 6 that did, I only liked two...the one i really liked though (by the way the room was perfect, nice homey feel, everything i wanted in a room), was on a really sketchy side street that i knew at night would not be lit and that it probably wasn't the safest place for a single women to be walking after 10pm. The other place is right off nimanhaiman, the room was ok (bed, desk, tv, fridge, good storage, a huge terrace that just pours in light and the best part is, it has a really nice pool!!!!). Breta decided that she wanted to live there too and our rooms are right down the hall from one another so that is also a perk. This afternoon i put a reserve fee on it and Saturday I'll be moving in. This another big hurdle I had to get over and it feels good to have figured it out on my own.

Thursday September 20th, 2007

As many of you know, my sophomore year in high school, my family hosted an exchange student from China. To say the least, it didn't go so well, but that's beside the point. i remember that he would spend hours on the computer and my family and i felt frustrated by how withdrawn he was from trying to experience" American culture". After a little over a month in a home stay, I am beginning to understand how he must have felt. Unless you have ever lived in someone else house for a long period of time, much less a house of people who don't speak your language, are culturally very different from you and have expectations of you that are sometimes hard to meet because of cultural differences and misunderstandings, it's hard or even impossible to really grasp how difficult home stays are. Lately, I have spent my nights in my room reading (i have read three books already, which if you know how slow a reader i am, this is quite a feat). I think i have maxed out on continuous cultural immersion, well at least for right now... i spend much of my day with Thai professors, Thai students, and being constantly immersed in the country that I'm in, and i would be lying if I didn't admit that it is very tiring. This weekend i begin apartment hunting and I'm very relieved to be doing so because i think its time for me to have some personal space to call me own....

Wednesday Spetember 19th, 2007

My advisor, Acaan Phrek is officially the most amazing professor I have ever met. I don't even know where to begin without completely gushing over how impressed I am by him. He has been a professor here at CMU since 1971, and more or less created the Multiple Cropping Center at CMU, which has two sets of experimental fields and is kind of the leader in the sustainable agriculture movement in Thailand... He also set up a farmers market for pesticide-free produce on the CMU campus, one that comes very Wednesday and one that comes every Wednesday and Saturday morning... He introduced the fact that their needs be a educated common relationship between the farmer and consumer if the produce is going to be economically sustainable. I could go on and on... More or less he was part of building all of this without much support from CMU... He is completely a product of the Student Revolution here in Thailand and he is so forward thinking and knowledgeable, it astounds me... I feel so lucky to have the chance to work with him, I cant even explain it.. Sorry for gushing but I have had very few professors in my college career that get me truly excited about what I'm learning...

Today A. Phrek took me to one of the field sites and more or less gave me a two hour tour and explained roughly what was going on... All of the plots at the site of pesticide-free except for one plot that is completely organic. They grow mostly rice crops, especially now considering it is the rice growing season, but about half of the field is vegetable crops, fruit orchards and a small sector is the experimental field for integrated forest agricultural. All the fields are experimental fields and the university uses them for research and for hands-on student learning. because all the crops are pesticide free there is a lot of research being done on pest/ predator relationships and how to use that system in order to control the pest populations. I could continue but I think you will all just have to read my field work project report at the end of the year... Anyways those that come to visit me, I promise to take you on a tour and show you around, it's really quite an amazing place.

Yesterday, I got the worse hair cut of my life... And for those of you who know me and hair cuts, you know that this is a very tramatic thing.... I think the first thing that went wrong was the language barrier and my lack of barber shop language.... At first she cut too little but then she got carried away... I dont think she had ever cut curly, frizzy, unruly hair like mine before and didnt get the concept that once it dried it would shrink about a half an inch because of the curls... The worse part though, is the back is REALLY short and the front is much longer.. She cut the back seperately from the front and I dont think the blending worked out so well... I think the other worse part is that it was my host mom who cut my hair so I cant walk around with it up or in a hat because i dont want to affend her... Luckily hair grows and no one from home will be here till january..... haha

Anyways, I should probably start doing some book research, considering I'm down at the Agriculture library. Love you all, please keep the comments coming it's been nice to hear from folks.

Tuesday September 18th, 2007

Hey All,
I just got an email from my adviser at UW-Madison saying that the US media has been really playing up the plane crash in Phuket, so I wanted you all to know that I'm safe and sound and no where near Southern Thailand... That's all...

Friday September 14, 2007

The best view of CM (and the reservoir at CMU) we have had so far... This was on top of the second waterfall we went to on Wednesday...

Pat and Meen at one of the waterfalls we went to on Wednesday.

The CYIT office...

This is one of the main buildings in the agriculture "compound"...

"Kanaa Gaan Ga Seet Sat"- Faculty of Agriculture

I hope you all have a better mental picture of where I am and what the university looks like....

I started both my language and Buddhism tutorial today and they were both excellent. My Thai teacher is really funny and continued to crack joke after joke for the whole two hours, he also proposed that we go on a field trip to Chiang Rai, a province to the northeast.. My Buddhism professor is fantastic! He is from the US but has lived a lot of his adult life in a monastery in China. His name is Acaan Christopher and he is a Mahayana Buddhist. He was also really relaxed and has already invited me over for bbq and the like... After about 3 weeks with him, I will work with another acaan and learn about Theravada Buddhism, the type that is most widely practiced in Thailand. As of right now, I'm really excited and kind of giddy because I just finished my class with Acaan Christopher... I'll keep you all posted as things here begin to unravel...

Thursday September 13, 2007

Today was pretty excellent. It started off with an laam (yummy, northern Thai) ahaan chaaw (breakfast) -although if i were to say it in Thai it would be ahaan chaaw laam-. It consisted of moo laab of sorts (which is stir-fried pork with basil and chilies but this one had something else that i wasn't so sure what it was but it was good none the less...), rice (which is surprisingly better here), a fried egg (basically they drop an egg in a couple inches of hot oil so its real crispy and delicious) and these little cake thingys that taste like coconut milk and have a really smooth consistency and have pieces of scallion in them (sounds a little weird but is really really good)... I cant say all of my breakfasts have been this good, yesterday I was served this nasty fish innards curry ( which i had had for dinner the night before and which made me kind of sick to my stomach..)...
Anyways, then i got a free ride into CMU by brad, who was riding by right as i stepped out of my house (usually it's a 30-40 minute walk to the CYIT office, which is on the opposite side of the university, from the entrance that is closest to my house.). When I got to the CYIT office Phii Jiw then informed me that my language and tutorial classes were finally set up and tomorrow I would start both of them... Personally, this in itself could have made my day... I must say, my only real critique of this program so far, is we come way too early, more of less we have waited 3 weeks for things to begin...
After meeting with my field work advisor on Monday he gave me a quick car tour of the agriculture compound on campus and pointed out both the science and agriculture libraries... Side note- the first few months of my field work project is going to be purely book research so finally knowing where the science libraries are was music to my ears. Unfortunately, the faculty of agriculture is on the opposite side of campus, a place I had yet to explore and it would have been quite a trek to walk there, so today I tried out the electric cart system (there is the 1 and 2 but within them there are a bunch of numbers and considering I don't really understand most of the Thai that I can read, its a bit difficult to read the signs saying which cart goes where...). Luckily the drivers were nice enough to try to understand my bumbling Thai and got me on the right cart. I spent the rest of the day in the agriculture library putting together a rough bibliography for my research project, by the end i had about 4 pages.... While doing my research i realized that about 3 of my books and 4 of my articles were written be my advisor and I feel like that's a really good sign... Acaan Phrek (my advisor) has already promised to take me out on any field trips he goes on and that I can work on the rice harvest in December!! He also gave me a work area in his office, which in the next coming months will be extremely helpful considering I expect to spend a lot of time on his side of campus.... I guess things are really starting to pick up and begin moving, it's very exciting to say the least....
During this week a group from Kalamazoo college and Trent college (in Canada) arrived in Chiang Mai. We have met a few people from the Kalamazoo group and i have met one girl from Trent, its really interesting because they are all in the same place my group and I were three weeks ago, totally overwhelmed and wide eyed.. It's nice though to meet some new students, especially because they have helped us realize how well we already know the city and CMU... I'm hoping to take a few of them out this weekend and show them around.
Yesterday Oil and Meen (two friends from CMU) took Breta, Pat and I to two really beautiful waterfalls right outside of CM. I am continuously amazed by the amount nature here and around the city, I'm not used to being in a city that is so green. I think I have also officially fallen in love with Doi Suthep, it is constantly a backdrop for everything I do and it is absolutely gorgeous.
I'm trying to take pictures of the university and my house and such to give you guys a better idea of where i am, hopefully I'll upload them tomorrow or sometime soon. Love you all.

Monday September 10, 2007

A bunch of folks have pleaded for pictures so after many trials of going to internet cafes and realizing I couldn't upload photos and one electrocution, here they are:
This is Brad, on our hike up Doi Suthep, behind him is a view of CM.

This is Phii Anny's House, the first home stay I had here in Thailand. My room was right under the porch in the front of the house. The 'garage' was also the kitchen, in Thailand kitchens are almost always outside because it is so god damn hot!

This is the reservoir at CMU, the mountain behind it, I think is Doi Suthep... Kind of beautiful, eh?

This is Thanon Suthep, the street I live on and probably the street I know the best so far... The university is to the left and my favorite cafe is directly to the right. My house is about a two minute walk from where I was standing when I took this photo.

This is also Thanon Suthep but now we are looking towards the University and towards Doi Suthep... If you look really closely at the top of Doi Suthep, you can kind of see the temple...

I have also added more photos to a shutterfly account if you want to check them out....

http://www. share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=8QYs3Lhgzcveg&noyag=1

I also met with my field work advisor today and it was amazing.. More to come on that later...

Saturday September 8, 2007

Today I was planning on uploading some of my photos but you all will just have to wait because my internet cafe doesn't let you do anything except use the internet and play games.... but i will try again on Monday at the CYIT office...

Yesterday, Brad, Breta and I decided that we wanted to climb the mountain (Doi suthep) behind CMU, which has a beautiful temple on top of it, but the only way we knew how to get there was up a very long windy dangerous paved road where motor cycles, cars and the like whip around sharp corners. So we decided that might not be the best route... Brad had talked to Jeff, a grad student living in CM who did the CYIT program 2 years ago, who told him about a hiking trail that goes up the mountain past 3 temples (2 of which are abandoned) but of course brad couldn't remember where the trail was.. After an hour or so of searching for the end of Thanon Suthep (Suthep st.), which is the main road that I live on and at some point turns into a country like road, we found a hiking trail, we weren't sure whether it was the right one or not but at that point we were all just excited about doing some hiking... We hiked directly up through a bamboo, vine entrenched forest for a good hour, until we reached a temple at the top of a beautiful waterfall... There was a crew of guys working on it but non-the-less it was pretty beautiful... We ate lunch by the waterfall, which by the way had a great view of CM. The trail we had decided to take, was a loop but for life of us we couldn't find a trail beyond the temple... At that point breta and I noticed that the water in the water fall was not only coming down faster but it had turned into a muddy brown and we decided that Acaan Bickner (our prof. back at U-W Madison) would not be so happy to hear that 3 of his CYIT students were caught in a flash flood (remember it is the rainy season) so we turned around and went back down.. Later that afternoon, brad did some research and if we had only followed the road behind the temple it would have taken us to another trail that would have led us to the Wat on top of Doi Suthep.... Hopefully we will take another shot at this real soon.... Regardless it was really great to do some exploring in the outskirts of CM and this trail is definitely a keeper...

Today brad and i are going to do some exploring in the old city, here is a map of CM to you guys a better of idea of what that means (the squared in area is the old city and CMU and the place i live is to the far left): Look to the top... Sorry it didn't paste where I wanted it to. (click on the square below the image to enlarge it)

Tuesday September 4, 2007

This morning my group and I had our first class, a basic research methods course... Although I have had many classes which have had research method components, it was really interesting to learn some tools for doing research in Thailand and specifically at CMU. CMU, as I have said before, is very bureaucratic and it takes some skill and deep breathing to make your way through the system. But most interestingly, our research methods professor is also my field work advisor.... I'm meeting with him on monday to begin my project and that is so incredibly exciting. I'm really pumped to just jump right in...

This morning was also the first morning where I wore my full uniform, a purple short sleeve button up, a black knee length skirt and a sweet black belt with the CMU emblem ( it's a elephant by the way..)... My next order of business is to get the silver pin with this little dangly thingy.. Breta and I have decided that I look like a nun in training and I must admit I feel like quite a fool... For those of you who know me well, I'm not one to be prancing around in such a uniform and it has been quite surprising how uncomfortable I have felt around the issue of wearing my uniform. I have spent a lot my life trying to figure out what kind of dress I feel most comfortable in and for now i think I have found it and it has been really hard to wear something that I feel so uncomfortable in... I guess this will just be part of the 'cultural immersion' and I also know that when the pictures leak it may also be entertainment for some of you... (ALEX!)

Point blank, older Thai women are, on the whole or at least the ones i have met, are kind of fabulous... All the 'older women' I have met have been the sweetest people in the world and just take me right under their wing, but they are also not ones to mess with... They are hard as nails... I dont really know how to explain it.. But regardless their wonderful...

It's time for some terribly horrible chessy Thai soaps.. Hope you all are well..

Monday September 2, 2007

So today, to most of us I believe, is September 3rd 2007 but to Thai's today is actually the year 2550 (talk about time travel...)

To start, I love my new home stay! The location is ideal and the family is so sweet, except for their extremely creepy nasty dog. Let me take a second to describe how creepy this dog is, Breta, the first time she saw it was like "whoa sasha, that dog is real funny looking, you cant tell whether its staring at you or not.." So it's this tiny little dog, ie Ramona and Isabella could totally kick its ass, with its hair braided into this little turd on the top of its head and it has these huge bug eyes that are seriously popping out of its head. It's true, when it stares at you, its hard to know if its really looking at you.... It also doesn't go outside so there is newspaper on the floor for it to pee on and of course last night I stepped in it... But besides the creepy pooch, the family has two girls, one is 11 (her name is Miin) and the other is 20 (her name is May), and she goes to CMU too. You would think the 20 year old would have some interest in getting to know me, but I think she is just really shy (as are most of the Thai girls I have met)... Last night I spent all last night giving Phii Jet (their mom) a English lesson and I have decided I'm not such a good teacher.,.. but regardless, it was fun..

Last night I found out that on Sunday nights CM, especially the old city, turns into a big open market with tons of food, clothes and chachqies (i know that's not how you spell that but I tried..)Living in CM is really going to be amazing and I feel like everyday i find a new cool little place or part of the city...

This weekend a few of us might go back packing in Doi Inthanon national park, its probably an hours drive from CM and it has the tallest mountain and some of the most beautiful waterfalls in Thailand.. Hopefully we will be able to pull it off...

Anyways, I'm off to go eat some food....

Sunday September 2, 2007

Right now, I'm sitting in a rather large internet i dont-know-what to call it, in an extremely comfy reclining chair amidst a slew of internet gaming thai teens. It's quite an interesting place to be, to say the least.

This morning I moved to my new home stay which is about a 5 minute walk from the university gate. I'm living with a family, of I think 4 people... The mom, Phii Jet, runs a barber shop at the front of the house. The fathers name is Phii Tem and i have yet to meet their kids. I thought that i would spend the day getting to know the family but that has not worked out so well.. Phii jet has had a continuous flow of customers and phii tem is no where to be found, hopefully dinner will be a better place for chatting.... Regardless I'm very happy to be living in the city, especially in a part of the city that I suspect i will spend most of the next 9 months.... The area around CMU has a lot going on and its nice because I am one of few farang (white folk) in the area. It's so interesting, the moment you step foot in the old city the amount of farang increases 10 fold..... a little overwhelming...

Yesterday I spent much of my day at one of the gated communities outside of CM. Suburbrial sprawl has defiantly begun to take root here and it seems quite out of place..... Five minutes out of CM are rice patties, small villages, lush greenery and beautiful mountainous back drop and intermixed between all of that are shopping malls and gated communities... yesterday I relaxed by a beautiful pool and had a two hour conversation with a Thai man named Tony and a German ex-pat named Chris. Tony is a retired police officer, that kept finding ways to tell me how important and powerful he is. He is personal friends with the ex-priminister of Thailand, and if you dont know anything about him you should look him up... Chris, is a retired I-dont-know-what, who moved to Thailand a few years ago and continued to tell me over and over again about how lonely he is and offering to take me on an array of trips, but i could tell he was more lonely than harmful... I had a lively discussion with these two men about politics, sustainable agriculture and the like and it was defiantly interesting to hear their points of view, to say the least. Afterward, when Phii Anny and I were driving home she told me that we had gone to visit these men because Tony was trying to get Phii Anny to go on a date with Chris, she was not interested. Rightfully so, considering he is about twice her age...

This Tuesday my group meets with our research methods professor and I am so incredibly excited to begin my studies here. To say the least, I have been a bit bored, it's hard to be a tourist in a place that you are living in....

Anyways, its been nice to see the comments that people have been leaving on my blog, so keep them coming. Love you all.