Farang

"Where are you from?"
"I'm from Wisconsin. Who are you?"
"I'm a volunteer from Germany about to end my stay in Thailand."
"What do you do as a volunteer?"
"I coach kids sports and run after school programs."
"I'm kind of doing the same thing. Do you know what Peace Corps is?"
"Yeah. That's cool."
"Cool."

 Tonight is finally my first night in my host family's house. My sister takes selfies and my mom runs a massage studio upon the beds that the 5 women in this house sleep. She says she'll teach me (but like don't ask for massages quite yet please. It's hot here and we're all sweaty.) Half an hour into arriving at my new home, I was showing one of my host sisters the family album I brought that she said was too long when this German dude (the "where you from" voice from up top) getting a massage from my host mom decided to break the English silence. Disappointingly he didn't leave a whatsapp number for me to call when I got back from the market, and we didn't fall madly in love over our mutual estrangement all within a two minute exchange (I have high expectations). But what did happen is my host sister and her daughter took me to meet her friends at a cute cafe with puppies in the back to get too many toasts with chocolate on top. During which exchange I barely spoke but did a lot of communicating with said friend's google translate while host sister numero uno Facebook Lived our tea time. Once she generously paid for us, we went to the weekly market that had previously been unnecessarily overwhelming and I bought two shirts and a pair of leggings for a grand total of 11USD. We then said goodbye to our now mutual BFFs and went home just in time for me to pump out this post out before my 9:30 bedtime.

Getting to my host family's house after 10 days of adjusting and language training really was necesary. I feel so much more confident because of the personal connections and professional training provided during the past week. Living among the people I'm supposed to serve is making this experience feel more real, less isolated, more tangible, and less temporary. They've done nothing but smile with me, make sure I figure out how to shower, and feed me--in other words: they've beyond satisfied all of my immediate needs. Tomorrow I will wake up surrounded by curtains for walls and a new person to call mom (sorry, woman who birthed me!) I'll let you know how the next few days go!