After a week of living in Thailand at a hotel in Singbury, Peace Corps called us in for interviews for our home-stay placement. They asked us all kinds of questions about squat toilets and privacy which made me more scared to move into a strangers house. On the day we met our future home stay family my Ma came to pick me up and was very quiet. Soon we were saying goodbye to our friends and driving off with our families. When I saw my house I was pretty sure I had won the home-stay lottery. The house was beautiful, no squat toilets and no bucket showers!! Then I met the rest of the family and I knew I was lucky. My family was wonderful and were so forgiving when I made my many mistakes with the language.
June and Jane. It took me ages to figure out which one was which. Of course they were extreamly shy of me when I first got there but we started playing English games every night and they warmed up. They still call me weekly to make sure I am doing ok.
I wanted a family photo of us to give to my family as a present before I left so one morning before I biked into town we took a million pictures with all the combinations of the family we could make. BUT we never got one photo of all of us. Missing from this one is my brother Joe, he is the father of the young girls.
Notice how beautiful the house is. I was very lucky, most volunteers got placed in the traditional Thai style houses.
This is an elephant I saw walking down my street one day. It is loaded with stuff the gentlemen were selling. They asked me if i wanted a ride and I really really did but my cousin told them no.
So in my Tambon (village) we had 8 or so volunteers. And 3 of us were placed with one family that had 3 houses, so we ended up doing a lot of things together. The three of us are here, Jackie in the blue dress, Alex the tall white guy and me the tall white girl. We are surrounded by some of our families.
The last week we were there all the families of our Tambon got together to throw us a going away party. We ate a lot of good food and sang some kareoke.
P.Tim and me at the party. She is my older sister and was amazingly patient with me during my stay. She was always helping me with my Thai homework. Thought I still don't believe it she tells me she is 40.
And here is my Pa. He is old enough to be my grandfather and we didn't have many conversations because my Thai was/is difficult to understand but he is a very good Pa, and so cute!
