Running on Empty

Oftentimes we don't realize how much we truly rely on familiarity to get us from day to day. We see the same friends, all talk in the same common dialects, and are always bound by the same cultural expectations and norms. It's a predictable system, one that we find comfort in. Being here in Chiang Mai, I now know what it feels like to be that awkward ass exhange student, smiling and nodding at what someone is telling you although you don't have the slightest clue as to what their saying. I am constantly walking on eggshells as I try not to culturally offend my family, trying my hardest not to put my feet up on the table or pat my cute host cousin on the head when she stands next to me, calling me "giant" in Thai.

Hell, familiarity comes in forms that we take so far for granted that you don't appreciate them until they're stripped from you. In the past three days - which have been a nonstop whirlwind as it never seems there are enough hours in the day or just enough available brain cells to separate the Thai word for shower from the hundred or so we now know- I have been clamoring for some sort of familiarity, not out of desperation, but for simple comfort.

For example, take what I've ingested today alone. This morning I woke up around 5:30, showered, and wandered out to the breakfast table still half asleep to find a large bowl of rice porridge (I'm assuming that's what it was, either way it was some base rice dish) with what looked like insect legs poking out from the soupy abyss. Halfway through my breakfast, I bit into something crisp. I stopped mid-chew as an aqueous fluid spilled into my mouth. Fire bathed my tongue, causing me to choke from surprise as tears began streaming down my face. Apparently, as I found out after my host family had stopped being doubled over in laughter, I had bitten into some pepper that was hotter than a jalepeno. Don't get me wrong, the breakfast was delicious though, knowledge of what the contents were aside.

Later that morning, our class went to the market, assigned to complete a scavenger hunt to utilize the first parts of our crash course Thai language base. We felt like fools as we ran around and awkwardly stumbled through phrases like "So-wat-de kraap. Teenai Dok Rrug kraap?" (Hi. Do you know where "Dok Rug" is?") We managed to buy everything on the list after consulting upwards of twenty people, and proceeded to eat our spoils on a bridge over the market street. We ate fried silk worms, deep-fried grub, and some sort of spicy sausage. Silk worms tasted remarkably like lima beans, with roughly the same texture, and we all decided that the fried grub resembled the taste of Bugles.

We took the taxi (covered pickup truck) back to ISDSI (the International Sustainable Devlopment Studies Institute, or where I go to school) for lunch. They had two pans of a delicious chicken dish, which I assumed were just a copious amount of the same recipe, as did a few other people. Five minutes later, several of us were continually rushing back and forth from the water cooler, trying to drown the fire raging in our mouths.

Later in the evening as I sat down for dinner, I wished for the first time in my life I wasn't a biology major. I gazed into my dish and saw, without a doubt, what was stuffed pig intestine. I knew it was intestine because it still had the mesentery tissue connecting the ileum together. It had a rubbery texture as I chewed it, and I closed my eyes and pretended it was a just a rubbery sausage. Once I was mentally convinced it was sausage, it was actually not half bad.

Every once in a while though, something familiar does appear. My host family still thinks I love bananas - which I do - so it's nice to have a taste that I recognize after being constantly bombarded with new scents and flavors, although I discovered by word of mouth on Tuesday that bananas are the one fruit that are a natural anti-laxative. Even with only three days of intensive Thai under my belt, I can start to communicate with my family in very basic sentences, and when they talk to each other, it now sounds like conversation rather than like they're uttering complete gibberish. My class began learning the Thai alphabet yesterday, - a lot more sounds and letters than just 26 latin-based ones - and on the ride home, a recognizable letter would appear amidst the jumble of other heiroglyphic consonants and vowels. We even spelled my name in Thai in class with only a few hitches, but when we tried to spell Ellen's name, all I could think of was how much we probably looked a gaggle of illiterate dyslexics, making failure after epic failure in trying to ram random letters together to phonetically form "Eh-lehnn." Honestly, we sounded like Hellen Keller trying to say her own name for the first time as we repeated it over and over again, mapping out each syllable. Ajaan (professor) Wilasinee was laughing so hard tears were streaming from her eyes.

These probably sound like really insignificant things to be appreciative of, but when in a world where nothing is familiar, it's nice to have the little things every once in a while.

Oh, and speaking of familiarity, to the Thai, my name is associated with a very popular type of beer: Leo Beer. I get asked if I drink Leo Beer every day.