Becky's Big Adventure

2 times in 1 week i know its amazing

2007-01-18T02:41:00.000-08:00

So I'm figuring that while i have internet access i should take advantage of it
Here are some old pictures from site and other places enjoy...

These are some of the kids from my neighborhood... they were the ones who seranaded me in May (right after I moved into my house) with a fantastic rendition of "Jingle Bells" (The kid in the front left corner is absolutely adorable in this picture)

This is Bow she is the kid that spends ALL of her free time at my house... the only way to keep her out is to close my gate/front door... she is so cute and i play Phase 10 dice with her on a weekly basis, by the way she is 11

These are some of my Volunteer friends... The weird hand thing is something that many kids do in thailand if you take their picture... so we adopted it.

Also just as an update... My cat Eddie was killed by the dogs outside my house about 3 months ago... since then i have gotten another cat her name is Maybelle (named by Wesley) with the nickname of May... she is terribly cute... and i will post a picture of her at some point... i would say soon but we all know that would be a lie... ;)

alright bye again
love ya miss ya
Becky

Sorry... Nuf said

2007-01-16T02:52:00.000-08:00

I know I know its been forever and im sorry... but with the horrible internet access at my site and such its hard... although i know 4 months is pushing it...
Well i went to India and then came back... several months ago
It was amazing although i was still happy to come back to Thailand the only thing that would have been better would have been getting to come to America to see everyone...
My mom is currently in Thailand but not with me... she is doing her Healing the Children gig in Bangkok, although i was able to tag along for a couple of days and it was amazing... while I prepare for my first big event/project in Peace Corps, the HIV/AIDS Camp that Wesley and I are planning that is going to be held next week... mom will be flying up to me on Saturday for a week of "Becky is Super Busy" Fun.
Also the night that Mom flew in the new group of Trainees came in, so my mom came to the airport to greet them with all of us... and here are some pictures. Sorry they are so small... I took them from a friend's website...

Lets spin Paulo around in a luggage cart after a few beers and see if its still a good idea afterword... The answer to that is... NO ( the other two dudes in this picture are Tex and Mark)

Bonnie and I with some welcome signs

This is my friend Welcome... as you can see she was amazingly creative with the sign she came up with.

And then as the buses with the new Trainees left we felt that the situation warrented a dance session...

well I have been here for a year already and I only have 15 months to go... before you know it ill be back stateside to bother y'all in person... but for the time being...
I love you and miss you
See most of you in July when I come home to see Sab tie the knot
Becky

Ko Samet and a SURPRISE for Jacki and Rob

2006-09-08T05:02:00.001-07:00

I went to Ko Samet in August for a Thai Youth Theatre meeting with a bunch if other volunteers and these are some of the pictures... Enjoy!

We went for a walk to see more of the coast and it was beautiful... and there are Wesley and Liesbeth taking pictures too... OOPS!

On another walk Wesley and I found... PUPPIES!!! and they were really cute and we played with them for a while... with the owners looking at us funny because we were adults playing with their dogs... generally here only kids play with dogs... oh well

at night the beach transforms with many places to sit with mats, pillows and tables... the places are either restaurants or bars and there were fire dancers... and I will steal pictures from Wesley's blog later ;)

The bungalows that we stayed in they werent anything fancy... a bed, cold shower, but there were western toilets which was GREAT!

around sunset

this is everyone that went...
in the back left Sarah, Wesley and Katie
Then Merissa, Liesbeth, Natalie, Emily and then ME

So a few days ago, I walked over to the calender I have on my wall, I wasnt paying attention because I tripped over Eddie and I looked up and this thing scared the &*$@ out of me... I screamed and ran away... I am such a wimp... I didnt have the heart to kill it since it was missing a leg and was going to die anyway but I avoided that part of my house for a while... Yeah

AAAAAAND...

Bud-Bud and Rob spooning... Jacki sent me a couple of pictures and I thought this one was funny/cute...

I really do amuse myself with this blog...
anyway I have to get out of here now... but
I love and miss you all...
Next post India (or maybe one before that if the internet at my office isnt too slow and I can get a computer without getting in the way of work being done)
Becky

Long Time No Talk- Part 2

2006-08-17T03:08:00.000-07:00

Pictures from places other than site... friends... yes i have them

from the Left Welcome, Donna, Me, Mary

outside of a Mexican restaurant... mmmm Mexican

Me and my roomie from San fransisco, PST, and PST2 Barb... I love this woman... this is us at the... i would type it but y'all can read it on the wall behind us...

Me at an English Camp me and Ajung Garuna teaching the kids about traffic signs in English... Yes kids as young as 8 learn how to drive motorcycles...

also this is a picture of me actually doing something... Woo Hoo

Also at the English Camp...
Thai kids like to dance... a lot... what i dont show is Wesley doing the same thing to my left

Mr Ruth is Wesley's fat cat... he sits like a man too

We went to a ceremony for Wan-Meh (Mother's Day)... we spent our time taking pictures of each other with 1500 Thai people around... some, wait no... most of them looking at us

this is one of those pictures...

I love all you guys and im sorry i havent kept this updated as well as i should

Peace out
Becky

Long Time No Talk- Part 1

2006-08-03T19:24:00.000-07:00

Sorry about the blank post, everything that could have gone wrong in the internet cafe... did in the past 3 weeks...

so this post is pictures from site...

the little girl on the right is one of my favorite kids at the daycare... when i go in there she is the first to come running across the room to attack me... i love it

There was a talent show at the school in my town... one of my little girls that I play Uno with asked me to come and watch her dance... she is not in this picture but these kids look so funny... i know thats mean but they do... the little boy in the red in front of the girls is singing into the mic

these kids also look funny and the dancer all the way on the right in the blue was the best out of all of them... and he is a boy... here in thailand they are called gatuis... or ladyboys... and they are great... they may dress like girls but they are still boys... this one threatened to punch another boy who was making fun of him

these three are dressed in traditional thai dress... the one in the orange outfit in the middle is the one i came to see... i almost didnt recognize her with all that make-up on

a bunch of teachers from my school

this is the huge spider that gave me a heart attack the first night that i slept in my house... I was on the phone with my friend Bonnie and i saw it run along the wall... I screamed and killed it with a flip-flop... then i took this picture of it next to a business card... now just imagine it with its super long legs stretched out and long and ewww....

This is my new roomie... i have 3 or 4 huge frogs living in my front room... they are so big that eddie doesnt even try to play with them because he is terrified... he is scared of everything

Next post... other pictures...
Becky

My First English Camp

2006-06-25T01:36:00.001-07:00

This past weekend I went to my first English Camp at my friend Wesley's school, and it was so much fun... the point of an English Camp is to play games and sing songs and get kids interested and excited to learn english... which is very hard since most of the kids in the schools never use english in their daily lives and most of them dont get help with school work at home... It was two and a half days and the Volunteers there were wesley, arnold, brian and me, the kids were 11-12 years old and the little girls liked to ask me if i have a boyfriend (and then after PCV guys arrived, telling me that they thought they were cute and asking if they had girlfriends) and they laughed when i told them i dont have a boyfriend and i dont want one because i dont have time
I also went to my first thai funeral with pee-lan this past week because i happened to go to her house for dinner and she had to go to the wat (temple) after dinner so she invited me, funerals here are very different, they go on for several days more that funerals in america, the "service" consists of 4 monks chanting for about half an hour, and another thing is that in addition to flowers on the coffin, thais also like to put blinky christmas lights there as well, as new cultural experiences go, this one was one of the most interesting and different,
my birthday is this week and the girls at my office dont want me to miss home on that day, so they have decided to throw me a party... there will be chocolate cake, lots of food and i am sure a kareoke machine
I have PST2 coming up in a week and we are going to southern thailand to the beach... life is so hard sometimes...
Things i have in the works right now(even if just in my brain)
- HIV/AIDS Camp for thai high school kids
- world map project (conjoined with a local history project with the kids at the high school)
- and TYT (Thai Youth Theatre) with an English Club at a school in my Amphur

things that i have realized...
- you can be married off without actually meeting a guy as long as the mother likes you enough (one of the teachers at the English kept telling me that she has a son who is 25 and she kept calling me her daughter-in-law)
- it is impossible to get half an hour to myself after getting home in the afternoon, due to the 5- 11 year old girls who stake out my house after they get home from school so they can come over to talk to me before i even get to put my bag down (although they are so cute and sweet, i dont mind all that much)
- that i am HORRIBLE at the humdinger cards in the boardgame Cranium
- it is amazing how much people can care about you even though you cant really speak the same language (ie- the thai people at my site)
- that after a bad, frustrating day, one phone conversation in english can make everything better
and
- my nayoke has no rythm, we started aerobics at my office and for some reason the 45ish man decided to join in with the women, (just try to imaging the mayor of your town jumping up and down like, and with, a bunch of girls) this memory is in my top 3 funniest things i have seen at site since my arrival

i love you and miss you
becky

New/ Not so New Pictures

2006-06-09T01:52:00.000-07:00

Just a little up date... This week I have began learning how to read thai if you have seen the alphabet you will understand how difficult this will be so far I can remember 21 of the 76 letters... yeah i know there are a lot...
This morning I got a call from my pregnant sister she is going to have a little girl in October... thats right y'all im gonna be Aunt Becky... scary but i am excited, as one of my friends here said... "you are going to spoil the (pardon my language family) shit out of that kid aren't you"... and my response was "you got that right"
now for pictures...
first and formost... Eddie

I like this picture of myself better than the other one that i have where eddie looks cuter... so this one makes the blog

Eddie was being a lovey with my friend Wesley, who is the guy who got eddie for me

He is so cute... i love him

This is a very unhappy eddie after i had to give him a bath the day after i got him... he was so smelly i had to do it

And now the inside of my house (these pictures are dark sorry):

the main room/ kitchen/ dining room

my huge bed with my mosquito net... i know its exciting

my bathroom... yes i take cold bucket showers and its not very fun

alright this computer is being slow and i am being an impatient american...
so other pictures are gonna have to wait
love y'all
becky

Update

2006-06-03T22:46:00.000-07:00

Hey y'all
I wanted to post pictures this time but i was in a rush when i left my house and grabbed the wrong cord to connect my camera to the computer in the internet cafe, so pictures will have to wait... sorry.
Many things have happened in the last 3 or 4 weeks since my last post, first my friend Wesley found and gave me a kitten, he is tiny, Dark grey and white, and adorable, his name is Eddie and he keeps me from being lonely when i am at home by myself (Pictures to come)
Next last weekend I went to the Province just north of me called Sukothai, where there was massive flooding, I went to help my friends Maeve and Arnold clean their houses up after being flooded out, I have some cool pictures of the flood water that hadnt been pumped away, but once again (pictures to come)
I am currently trying to find a tutor to help me with my thai since this language is one of the hardest languages in the world and i dont have a particular talent for languages.
also one of the women from the office thought i was lonely so she rounded up some 11 year old girls from the neighborhood I live in and had them come over to "play", so far we have played badmitton, and gone to the temple to watch the monkey that wanders around there,
Pre Service Training 2 is coming up and we are going to the beach for 2 weeks and i am so excited cause i have never been to the beach in thailand

alright ill write more when i remember the cord for my camera...

and jacki- just remember to trust... its hard i know... being hard and cynical is a great way of protecting yourself but its no way to live... just go with the flow and have fun... you never know what will happen ;) (and now i have to follow my own advice haha)

love ya and miss ya
Becky

Hey I'm back!!!

2006-05-13T00:05:00.000-07:00

Sorry it's been so long, I am in Kampaeng Phet visiting a friend and I have some time to go to the internet cafe, we have recently gotten internet back in my office at site but it is so slow that it's not worth it...
lets see...
about a week ago I moved into my own house, which is interesting since I have NEVER lived alone before and what a better time to start but in a foreign country where I can not communicate without a dictionary... I dont mean to scare anyone, i just found that ironic
What else
it is getting to be planting season so the villagers in my community are heading out to the field to plant the rice, sugarcane, casava, and Bananas that they make their living on,
and it is also getting into the rainy season, and I am okay with that because it was getting extremely HOT.
well my life isnt all that exciting at site, EX: yesterday I spent around 4 hours doing a 600 peace jigsaw puzzle of the japanese cartoon Doreman, with Luk-ete, and i really enjoyed it
After the super exciting puzzle adventure, I went with my host family to a Buddist Ceremony at the Wat in town, I dont remember the name of the ceremony and Im not sure what it was for, but it was beautiful, it was dark out and we all had incents, candles and flowers and we followed the monks around the wat while they chanted
Then I had people looking at me, because I look different, or as i like to call it... funny...
I have to say I now understand what it is like to a minority now (only with a lot of pointing and yelling Farang)
alright well my friend just got here to meet me... Say Hi Wesley (and he says "Hi")
Bye everyone
I love you and Miss you all
Becky

The "Nation-wide water fight"

2006-04-18T05:09:00.000-07:00

Well, JACKI,
the reason for the nickname is purely because I have a horrible memory, my meh from training grows cucumbers to sell at the market and i took me about 9 seperate times of them telling me the word (over a span of about 2 weeks) for me to remember it... so in order to be "funny" they decided to call me that, it started out as a joke and now it has stuck and even followed me to site, I walk through the market with random Thais yelling Dang-qua at me, and they arent trying to sell me cucumbers either

the reason for the title is because of the Thai new year called Song Kran... It goes for around 5 days in April, the hottest month in this country, and it really is a nation-wide water fight, I personally "len nam"- ed(literal meaning "play water") with the two kids I live with on 4 different days and it was fun, and of course you could get arrested in the states for throwing water at a passing motorist on a motorcycle, and i had a flash back to when i was younger and some kids in the back of a pickup truck sprayed my mom with a watergun as we were driving past... needless to say my mom popped the minivan into reverse and went and told on the kids to their mom, and they got in trouble... but not only is it OK but the kids and I were inside playing a game and the mom of the family actually came in and told us to go outside and play, so anyway all of the water was accompanied by a old fashion community activity day complete with egg toss and potato sack races (apparently both are universal worldwide) and of course that day I was dripping wet for about 5 hours because EVERYONE (and I mean EVERYONE) thought it would be funny to throw a bucket of water on the farang (foreigner), and now I have a wicked cold... but i wouldnt trade it for the world, it was a once in a lifetime experience and i had fun, I feel like a real member of there community, since they invited me to participate in community activities and i feel very honored, especially since I havent even been here a month
alright i have to go play with the kids (luk-ett, 13 and guay, 9)
I love and miss everyone
Becky

More pictures for those of you bothering me about it... cough cough mom

2006-04-07T22:10:00.000-07:00

Back in training, one person patches a tire while we all stand around looking busy... we like to say we are helping but who are we kidding
(from left: Jenny, Pam, Ron, one of the PC drivers, Arnold, Meegan)

My family wanted to have my Farang (Foreigner) friends over for lunch the last Sunday at our training site, these are the people willing to ditch there families to come to my house j/k
(from left: Paulo, Reuben, Mollie, Brian P, Aui, ?, Bonnie, Chai(my sisters boyfriend), ME, Meh, Nong, ?, ?)
the "?" are my sisters friends, i can not for the life of me remember their names oops

Paulo and Amanda acting stupid in the hotel when we got to bangkok, what they are doing is from some Mad TV skit about anna nicole smith that Paulo loves,(do you know what he is talking about Rob cause I have no idea)

Some of the women from the government office I work at
( From Left: Noi, Nan, Jai, Get)
They are great and patient, I had no idea where we were going when I got in the car, we went to the hot springs not too far from my site

they insisted on getting me in a shot
not all that exciting, although I color-coordinated my outfit splendidly that day

there were about 300+ Thai men on these little rafts throwing nets out to catch fish for a "Big Fish" contest, the winning fish was a monster
it was actually really cool to watch believe it or not

action shot

this is a usual site at the office
me looking confused and my friends searching in a dictionary to find the word for me to make me unconfused (they are gonna have to look a long time before that happens)

I love it, they are too much

(Noi, Me, Jai)

well thats it i have been tying up the phone line at my homestay for too long I hope you enjoy the pictures and thanks for caring about what im up to,
miss you and love you
Becky
Thai nickname "Dang-qua"
(it means cucumber, if you laugh at that you are not the only one, every Thai person I tell laughs, thanks to Meh and Aui for giving me the nickname that brings laughter to EVERYONE)

Just for Jacki

2006-04-02T03:12:00.000-07:00

I saw this in Bangkok in a department store and just knew you would LOVE it...

I love you and miss you
(sorry I had to do it)
Becky

At Site Now- And God It's Hot

2006-04-02T01:26:00.000-08:00

Alright now I am at site and it is the hottest month of the year in Thailand... My room is approx. 95 degrees when I go up there for the night (other than the other night when it was 80 and I was freezing, Jacki's reaction to that was "Oh my god you are one of those people now") Yes, yes I am. I am living with yet another family since the house I want is currently being rented, I have been told it will become available in the next month or two so cross your fingers everybody I cant wait to live by myself, mostly because I have been living in other peoples houses for the past 3 monthes and I would like to make my house an american space if possible and a place where i dont have to speak thai constantly.

I have made a good friend at site already her name is An and she works at the government office where i work, she is the one with the most patience so we were forced to sit with each other and talk (with a lot of help from the thai/english dictionary that Peace Corps gave me and another one the office bought) we have dictionary races were she says something and I tell her the word i dont understand and then we see who can find it first An is usually the winner

Let's see... i spent the week before coming here in Bangkok and i have some conclusions about that city, it is loud, noisy, and expensive for someone living on a Peace Corps budget, but the water taxi is beautiful and there are so many malls i felt like i was at home, I am not a huge fan of bangkok, especially since there are so many amazing places to visit in this country but if anyone comes to visit and wants to go i will (just for you)

My boss at the government office wants me to get permission from him before I go anywhere, but i have a feeling that will end soon, and my counterpart wants to follow me on my bike in his car so that i will be safe, I hope that will end soon too, I have had about 7 invitations from old women to come and live with them/ come to dinner, and An doesnt want me to move to my own house because i will be too far away from her and i wont be able to come to dinner everynight (even though i will be just down the street only in the opposite direction of where i am now and i will probably come to dinner everynight anyway) all of these are just examples of the fact that this community is very protective of me already and i have only been here a week, so family, dont worry about me too much, even though i know you are going to anyway

Now I would like to thank bigfo and bereheiko for looking at/posting to my blog, it was so nice to see you guys took the time to see what i have been doing, it has not been easy (in fact it has been the hardest thing i have ever done) being here like this and i really appreciate it

Alright
Peace out
I love and miss everybody
Becky

Moving to site soon

2006-03-15T21:29:00.000-08:00

Ok first of all I would like to apologize (especially to aunt karen) for my poor grammar... my head is so full of thai grammar and language that worrying about grammar in english just never occured to me

Just an update, tonight is my last night in my host family house, my meh breaks my heart because she helped me pack and she would cry, but I was able to talk to her about how to get to my site from her house by bus in Thai (using a lot of the vocabulary that I learned in language class which made my ajang very happy) on Saturday my training class will be traveling to Bangkok for our last week of training, we swear in as volunteers on Friday and then we go off to site with our counterparts, aka nice thai people who don't speak any english, so it should be interesting.

Im not sure when I will be moving into my own place at site, but when I do Ill let you all know, but not on this site because that is not allowed

I love you guys and i am sorry that I dont keep in touch better, that will hopefully get better after training when my time becomes my own again,

and lastly

I would just like to share this picture with you all because it was like pulling teeth to get my family to pose for this, they kept saying it would be
"mii suai" which means "not beautiful"
my answer to that was "that's the point"

I just think its great

Love ya and miss ya,

Becky

Yeah I know I don't get to the internet cafe very often

2006-03-10T01:39:00.000-08:00

This is the house that I have been living in for the past 2 months with my host family (pictures to come later in post)

This is my host family mom or Meh in thai her name is Aloom and I don't think she could love me anymore if I were her real daughter. She tears up when I mention moving to my permenant site. She is so freakin cute. By the way she doesn't speak any english but she does slap my butt when I come home late cause she worries. I just thought that was funny.

This is my Host family sister Aui (pronounced oo-ee)
She's 26 and her favorite past time is making fun of me, the farang (Foreigner) who lives in her house. And of course me being me, I have to get her back as much as possible

.

These are my cousins, Nong and Em, they spend their days teaching me Thai words that I will never us in my life, words like See-saw and Pirate. They also like to make fun of me, That is pretty much the biggest running theme in Thailand, we are here to amuse the locals by falling off our bikes, eating chili peppers by accident, and pretty much making asses of ourselves as much as possible, all of which I have done a lot and often.

They also like to make fun of me for wearing a helmet, something I could be sent back to america for not doing, and something they should be doing anyway, ok ill get off my soapbox now

This is the view of the sunrise out the front door of my house, over the rao chaya river( I think that's the name, I should probably pay attention more)

And now the view of the sunset out of my backdoor, now this i know for sure is rice fields, with a little cucumber (which my meh grows and sells at the market) and corn thrown in there

And now some beautiful pictures I have taken while I have been here

An ancient wat in Auythia (outside of Bangkok)

Same

Same

A "Graveyard"for broken spirit houses, religiously it is wrong for buddists to destroy them so they put them all together.

This is me learning to weave a fan from a group that makes them from bamboo, I worked with the group during training to make them business cards and a brochure to give out at the market to increase their business, sorry i know business talk is boring ill stop now

This is the grandmother who befriended the volunteer that I went to visit, I just love this picture

That is my friend Julia holding a big knife, this is the image the grandmother from the picture above was smiling and laughing at

and last and definately not least this is my ajung (teacher)
she has been teaching me thai for the last month and she is great, we have taught her phrases like brown nosing, dumb ass and other such useful terms

alright thats all for now
ill be sure to post pictures of the americans that i have met next time

Miss Y'all
becky

Alright I sucked it up and created a blog, ya happy

2006-03-04T23:19:00.000-08:00

I have to say that I am usually so against sites like this
but since i am so bad at keeping in touch with people i figured this would be the easiest way for y'all to know what i am doing and also how i am doing

so i'm doing pretty okay in this incredibly random country called thailand
- the language is difficult but i pick up more and more everyday
- my host family is great- i come home at the end of the day and we make fun of each other (mainly me making fun of myself to make them laugh, which is just what i do)
- my fellow trainees are wonderful, we are one big (most of the time happy) family, the support that i have recieved is simply amazing

ok i have to go but ill write again soon