Communicating

It's pretty hard to get salt (gleua) tablets when I ask for banana (kluay). My attempt to kid Mr. Thongkam, our landlord, about his knit hat one morning, as I returned sweaty from jogging, didn't make much sense when I said, "It's not morning," while fanning myself instead of, "It's not cold." They are probably used to us "ferengi," as Gary calls us, doing weird things like that though. We are probably almost as weird as those Star Trek creatures, but we don't bargain as well as they do and most of us have smaller ears. They actually call strangers "farangi" in Iran, but Thais use the word "farang."

Some communication efforts are getting better. One tuk tuk driver we pass everyday asked as, "You happy walking?" After I nodded and smiled he said, "I don't believe it!" The next day as we passed the group I said, "Rauw (we) me kwaam sook (have happiness)..." One repeated, "Me kwaam sook?" and I said, "deum (walking)" and gestured at the sidewalk going up the street. They laughed. At least it was better than just saying "no" again to their offers to take us places. Another day, at Lotus (the department store) I was able to understand that the free bowl the free sample girls were offering came with the purchase of some salad dressing. It's still discouraging, though, when I've thought I've used all the right words to explain where Gary is to Mrs. Janooan, and then she asks where he is.

The language class has also given us insight into the thinking of Thai people. In the Thai language the self, or the speaker is most important. That becomes the frame of reference for their sentence structure. The way to say "bring" changes depending on whether the object is going toward or away from the speaker. Also, when they say "on the left" or "on the right" they mean it from their left or right, not to the left or right of the object they are looking at. They keep saying it is a "picture" language. That means they throw in extra little words here and there to make the picture work, but if we try to translate each of them to English they become repetitive.

They are very respectful, though, and laugh easily about their own faults and those of others. Their word for "excuse me" is the same as "I'm sorry," so they apologize often and bow their head behind their pressed together palms (a wai). Thais we've met have brought up their

shortcomings regularly, laughing all the while. They laugh easily about most things that happen to them or that they or others are doing. We could learn something about being less serious from them, I think.

Their light attitude might come from their tonal language. When I read in my Thai language class I have to sing to get the tones in. It is very much like warming up in a choir class. If they are singing whenever they speak, maybe that lifts their spirits!

I guess I need to get back to my singing lessons.

:J

Defining Moments

Most of us don’t think about life changing experiences on a daily basis. We’re busy living our lives on cruise control, done that, seen that and been there. Even when we’re put into a new environment our mind fights to find some daily routine to make life bearable, believing we find security in living life without having to think too hard. Then, when those defining moments happen, we are caught unaware. Often we miss them altogether, or their real significance.

I believe God uses defining moments to reveal Himself, His love, or His working to us. Yet they are totally personal and can only give impact to the person experiencing them. These are the moments when, after they happen, we long for them to repeat. But the very nature of them, short, powerful, personal, unpredictable, and infrequent, make them what they are.

Someone wrote and asked me if I have had any more great adventures lately. I think this was after I wrote about my hair cutting adventure. I thought no, most of the things I thought were adventures when we first started are becoming daily routine. Although they are still difficult I find comfort in knowing I have done them, seen that and been there. Now I see I was getting to the zone where defining moments can slip by without notice. It almost happened!

Here is my disclaimer. Defining moments are * personal. They probably mean little or nothing to others since God uses them on an individual basis. With that in mind, read on at your own risk.

I’ve had two defining moments in my travels around the world to this point. The first came a few years ago and the second, last week.

During our mission trip to Chile in 2002, Jean and I were staying at the home of a SIM missionary couple, Tim and Sharon Sandvig. The air on one beautiful spring morning was crisp and clean as the sun began to rise. While others were beginning to prepare for the day’s work, I decided to sit on a small wooden bench overlooking a grove of trees heavy-laden with apples. Many apples lay under a nearby tree where they had fallen. I had no inkling that something special was coming, but this is how defining moments happen. They don’t give warning signs.

My eyes began to scan the fruit on a nearby tree. Then, the instant my eyes focused on one apple it fell. Never before had I seen an apple, or any fruit, the moment it fell from a tree. To me, this was a miracle. I sat in stunned silence not believing what I had * seen. I felt God had shared a part of His creation in action with me and I was awed. Don’t ask what it means. I don’t know. Maybe nothing. Maybe everything. Which is the answer to same question about the second defining moment.

We ride these taxi-like pickups (song taews) back and forth from our apartment to language school every day. We have done this about 50 times so far. It has become routine. The drivers know us so well we don’t even have to signal when we want to be picked up or tell them where we want to get off. It’s not like we have gotten to be best friends with the drivers. These guys and gals are on a route to get as many passengers as possible to their destinations along the route as fast as they can. The more passengers, the faster, the more money they make. So, when we get off, I usually pass the fare money through the window with a nod of recognition (still don’t speak Thai!) and the driver is off to the next stop.

This defining moment happened at the moment I passed the money to the driver after one such trip. Nothing usual about the trip. Same old white people (that’s us) sitting in the back of the song taew with another group of poor Thais. I see our destination and push the signal button. The driver find a safe (ha, ha!), expedient place to pull over to drop us off. We hop off and I head to the cab to pass the money through the window. I’m pulling the 30 cents fare out of my pocket as the cab window comes rolling down. An older Thai man is sitting in the passenger’s seat between me and the driver’s open hand. This older, poor man has a less than a year old baby boy on his lap. As I reach across to hand the driver his fare the older man turns the baby so it was facing me. I didn’t find this odd because although most adult Thais have seen white people, we are still sort of a spectacle for the kids. Kids seem to find our white skin and light hair more interesting than the adults. We quite often get stares of curiosity. I suspect the old man wanted the baby to get a glimpse of the old white guy. Maybe his first. Anyway as I’m pulling my hand back, I realize what the old man is doing so I decide to pause a second and play along. The baby now puts on a big grin to the howls of laughter from the pickup cab. Just when I thought it was over, the baby reaches out his hand and I of course play my part. I put my index finger into the palm of the baby’s hand. Then, to the continual laughter from the cab, the baby squeezes my finger. Thinking, “The driver needs to get on with his business, and my hand is holding him back,” I shake his little hand and pull my hand out of the cab window. As the window rolls back up I can still hear the laughter of the two men.

Cute, but a defining moment? I almost missed it, but the significance of it came to me later. I may have been the first white person that baby had ever come into contact with. I left a good impression. I also left a good impression with the driver and his passenger as they got to see a white person show love, friendliness, and humanness. Most poor Thai people never interact with white people and know us mostly through what they see on television or in the movies (which, if you have seen either of those lately, doesn’t show us in the best of light). Even the white tourists here do not treat the Thai people very well. I played along with their desire to show off their cute child. My finger in the baby’s hand was east meets west, young meets old, white meets dark. In less then 3 seconds a lot happened.

As I wrote before, maybe the significance was nothing, maybe everything. That is the uniqueness of defining moments. They are for you. Don’t miss them.

Gary

Walking in Chiang Mai

The important thing to remember here is that you are the prey! Pedestrians have no rights. Most people who walk in Chaingmai are tourists. Did I mention that one white guy got shot yesterday? Yes, dead! But he was riding a motor scooter, so that’s another story for another time. Let’s concentrate on the walking lesson.

In addition to there being few sidewalks, there are things you need to watch out for when using the ones there are. Most of the sidewalks on the main roads are about 2 to 3 feet wide. They are not necessarily for walking on, though. They are also used as extra lanes for motor scooters and motor scooter

parking lots. There are little ramps the storeowners make for the curbs in front of their stores so people using motor scooters can use them to drive up

over the curb, onto the sidewalk, and park them to go shopping. It’s a good idea to remember this when walking in front of a store, which is almost all the time! More than once I have been brushed by a motor scooter using the sidewalk as a road. As we say in basketball, “no harm, no foul.”

There are other moving objects you’ll encounter. Watch out for dogs, cats, lizards,

French, German, Swedish, American, English, and

who knows what tourists and Monks.

Some of the non-moving things in the middle of the sidewalk are phone booths, electrical poles, street vendor carts, pot holes, merchandise from stores along the sidewalk, steel grates, and a variety of plants and trees. Some of these depend on the people who decide they want to block the sidewalk on any

particular day. Arriving some place, after walking through Chiang Mai, makes you feel like you’ve survived a gauntlet.

Now if you are walking along the side of a road where there are no sidewalks then a whole new set of obstacles present themselves. But I’m not ready to think about that yet. All of this seems to support my contention that you do not walk in Chiang Mai.... you hike.

Made it so far!

Gary

Food Monday - Sweet stuff

The salesgirl said “Waan, waan” to us with a rising /\tone as Gary bought the popcorn. I couldn't figure out what “day” (wan with regular tone) had to do with buying popcorn. Gary wondered why the bag had less in it than usual. Then he said, "It's sweet!" and I realized what the girl was telling us. “Waan /\” means sweet!

Often foods we expect to be sweet aren't and foods we don't expect to be sweet are. The wheat bread from the store is sweeter than we've had. Gary had a sausage & baked rice dish yesterday that was sweet. I bought a little roll from the Lotus bakery that looked like it was cherry. It turned out to have a little hot dog in the middle. I ate it anyway, and it was sweet enough for me. Of the 6 small Chinese coffee cakes I've tried, only 3 have been sweet.

We bought a piece of decorated, thickly frosted cake from the neighborhood outdoor market. The cake part was sweet, but the frosting had little taste. Their donuts look sweet enough, and they are, except for the tasteless little balls grouped in the center of the top.

A man sells Chinese sweet steamed buns across from the AUA every day. I bought one this week. The outside was a soft, plain rice flour bread. Inside was a sweet paste made from red beans. A smaller, green one from the vegetarian restaurant had a green paste inside. They were ok, but I'm still adjusting to the idea of beans for dessert. Christer, from Thai class, said red bean flavored drinks are very good too.

A sweet orange juice we found is called Blood Orange Juice. We thought it might be

grapefruit juice from the picture on it. Once again, it was sweeter than we expected. The internet informed us this delicious orange is rare in the U.S.

Gary has been satisfying his sweet tooth regularly with the soft serve "ice cream" from KFC, the mix of chocolate and vanilla, but we had a treat of real, hard ice cream the other day. After experimenting with staying on our usual song tau past our usual stop, we ended up on the other end (North) of the city. Our walk to class then covered new ground for us. In our quest for a place to eat lunch we found a Wall's Ice Cream shop. We did eat lunch first before having

the ice cream. Then, Gary ordered a Triple Delight and I had the Thai special. His turned out to be a dish of three large scoops of Chocolate, Chocolate chip, and Vanilla ice cream over sliced bananas and with chocolate sauce on top. Mine was a scoop of white ice cream with chunks of sweet green fruity things in it and a yellow chunky, slightly salty topping. Finally I realized it was creamed corn! I always thought creamed corn was sweet. It doesn't taste quite so sweet on ice cream, though. It fits in with the Thai tendency to always mix salty and sweet things together. I'm not sure if I would have that for a topping again, but I think I would like a scoop of that ice cream!

:J

Hair cut

When does a haircut make news? When I'm trying to get one in Thailand.  Several people told me it shouldn't be that hard. There are people cutting hair on every corner here. But this is my head! First, there are a lot of people cutting hair but where did they learn? Second, most cut only women's hair.  I wanted a recommendation from someone who had used a person before. I got one from the Landlord lady about a guy down the road. 

Down the road is about a mile. So I go down the road one morning and when I get there the place is jammed and I don't have time to wait. Walk another mile back. 

Next day I leave a little early (Thais don't like to get up early unless someone is going to pay them) . I beat the crowd. No one there. I mean no one there. The barber is not around, but the door is open. I have 3 hours before I have to be back at the room and I've just walked a mile; I'm going to wait. 

I wait 15 minutes and the Barber shows up. Now, I don't speak Thai (same as yesterday, I still don't speak Thai) and we're motioning and he's speaking Thai and I'm speaking English. Finally, he understands I want a hair cut and not to sell him something! At this point I'm a total wreck. What the heck does this guy know? I can't tell him how I want my hair cut. He still looks half asleep but he feels sorry for me and turns the TV on to the BBC News.  At this point I figure there is going to be a lot of screaming and yelling and he wanted the TV to drown out the noise. I'm scared but I keep looking straight ahead and put my best fake smile on. I figure if I don't move my head I might have a better chance of it coming out decent. 

So the guy pulls out the clippers and oils them up. Puts a sheet around me and starts to cut. Every muscle in my body is tense (I'm thinking this will save me time in not going to the club for a workout) and he's cutting away, talking Thai and me pretending to understand. When he's done with the clippers out come the scissors. He's doing a pretty good job on the sides but has not touched the top. This is what I was afraid of. Short on the sides and a big clump of hair on the top (I know

my friend Bob might like to have that clump on the top). He's working away with the scissors and it's looking pretty good. 

I'm beginning to think maybe I'm out of the woods on this one. And then the RAZOR! Yes, I wrote RAZOR. When was the last time a Barber used a razor?  I was used to Great Clips! I thought I was a goner.  I could see the news flash, "American killed by Barber". He proceeded to shave around

my ears, neck and sideburns. Then it came to me. That's what it was like when I was a kid and the barbers put a little dab of shaving cream around the ears and shaved the neck, forty years ago! He offered to shave my face but I figured I was pretty lucky at this point no need to push it! The "long and short" of it is that it was a very nice job. I also felt much better once I was out of the chair and in one piece, and he charged me only $2. I liked it so much I'm going back in two weeks for a trim.  This time I might not shave before I leave.

Love Ya, Gary