Toilet Paper on the Table?

Alas, the rigorous days of being a Peace Corps Trainee – knowledge and language cramping the brain and biking cramping the knees – are wrapping up, and soon I head to my permanent 2-year site-placement as a true blue Peace Corps Volunteer. 

Here's an essay displaying how adjustment is a continual process, and is forever entertaining...

During the tender developmental years of early childhood, I conversed with a spider – an imaginary friend spider, named Hadobee. Hadobee was a common house spider with brown fur, green eyes and four-sets of squiggly legs. He was a kind and attentive listener, who would perch protectively upon my shoulder, backpack, and pillow-case while I slept.

As a Peace Corps Trainee in Thailand – curious, confused and often times stunned – I am no doubt going through a child-like developmental stage an incredulous amount of the time. That said it would surely be nice to have Hadobee around. Another entity – imaginary or not – would be much welcomed as a companion for witnessing this other-side-of-the-world.

Cute little geckos decorate the bathroom walls, scampering about and gorging upon the surplus of mosquitoes (note: a friend has a 2.5 foot long lizard bathroom buddy). Pet fish are sold in glass soda bottles, while soda, coffee and tea are sold in plastic bags. Dogs with humorously disproportioned heads, long broad bodies and short legs patrol the roadways in mass force. Fried centipedes are a crunchy snack. And, toilet paper is found on tables (as napkins) more often then in bathrooms.

Shoes come off everywhere – homes, shops, temples, etc. – and floors are often so clean you can eat off of them, and we do (or we sit on-the-table, it varies). A rainbow or curries, mounds of noodles (gluten-free!), stacks of sliced cucumbers, carrots and cauliflower, and a slew spicy dipping sauces welcome one. Amazingly, nearly each meal consists of cuisine one would typically fork over $40 for at Taste of Thai on U-Street. And gosh, $40.00? I think that’s like enough money to feed one for a full month. (A rough estimate of the minimum wage here converts to $150 a month.)

So there’s the food, and then there’s the entertainment. Apparently putting us Americans on display is great fun for the Thai’s. At least such was the case at a community Sports Day Festival, during which a couple dozen of us volunteers were garbed in Pepto-Bismol-pink polyester shirts (each of which were individually tailored), and literally paraded about the field’s track for the opening ceremony.

Then there’s the prolific amount of karaoke – we are put on display at big or little parties, and in living rooms or on buses. For sure, I must build my karaoke repertoire. Put in the spotlight just the other night, with an audience of over one-hundred, my sweaty palms grasped the microphone and I proceeded to sing a most familiar tune, “Happy Birthday.” Granted it was someone’s birthday, so it wasn’t all so inappropriate to sing, but it was surly pretty lame. Suggestions of any groovy Americana classics to share with the Thai’s? I am open to requests! I must also learn some Thai songs to sing. Especially because I am continually told what a lovely voice I have – one language instructor even went as far as to say: “your tones are like undulating waves of beauty.” A pretty nice complement if ever I heard one, eh? Particularly because I’m accustomed to folks in the states saying things like: “your singing sounds like a cat in heat!”

Indeed, whether it’s the people that enjoy my nasal, Smurf-like voice, the never-ending luxurious meals, or the random rolls of toilet paper gracing the table tops, things are, simply-put, different. I wish I hadn’t flushed Hadobee when in the second-grade. It would be nice if he were with me to validate it all, to share it. Though, as my little brother – a boy sometimes wise for his years – recently assured me, “The most profound journeys we have in life were meant to be walked alone.”