Bike Lessons

The other day I was asked, "What was the biggest shock when you first arrived in Thailand?"

I'm still mulling over that question because I still can't really give a straight answer. A lot of things about life here - actually, almost everything about life here - is different from home. But it's not different in a way that I can put things in categories of "opposite" or "the same" as the States. And I'm usually too busy trying to absorb things as fast as I can to be "shocked" by them. So, maybe it's easier to describe things I'm used to now, after two weeks, that I wasn't used to at all 2 weeks ago - "lessons" I've learned. A lot of them involve bikes.

1. Pedaling on the left side of the road.... and making right turns from the left side of the road. And freeing one arm while pedaling to make signals for right turns from the left side of the road. That took me a while.

2. Being constantly observed - especially outside of school. This morning, following the unfortunate bike fail of last night, Prakop took Emily to get her bike fixed at the shop. Afterwards they went to grab breakfast (sticky rice and banana...yum) at the market. A woman stopped Prakop, waii-ed her, and spoke to her for a few minutes. Afterwards, Prakop explained that the woman had heard about Emily's bike trouble. Emily looked puzzled, since the bike had only broken a mere 12 hours before. "You are a teacher at Bandon Sriserm. Everybody knows." News travels fast in Nan - especially about white people.

3. Things going wrong, and having no choice but to be Thai about it.

I'll use one of my lovely roommates as an example. In a single 24-hour period, the following happened to her:

- Her bike broke mid-intersection on the way home from dinner

- Her room flooded... the ultimate irony since we are rarely able to get our water to work at all

- While trying to clean everything that was affected by the flood, the power converter to our washing machine went defunct mid-wash cycle

- A gecko somehow crawled into her hair while she was biking

Life here for us - at least so far - is all about trial-and-error, pausing and reevaluating, adjusting and making do. There's simply no other way to do things.

4. Asking, not telling.

Ajaan Prakop asked for about the fifth time today if we would like her to set up a laundry service for us, where a woman will wash and iron our clothes regularly for 500 baht a month. She also mentioned something about our clothes looking wrinkly. So apparently her question is less of a question and more of a demand... I realize now that that is how things are usually done here: don't be confrontational by giving an order. Just ask, and ask again, and ask a different way...

5. Gifting as a continuous act, not a one time exchange.

One of the teachers at school kindly bought us lights for our bikes last week. Another took us out to lunch, and then brought us sticky rice desserts from the market another day. For every gift, we must remember to give something in return... in this case, a bag of mangoes for each. In Thailand, gifting is a continuous thing: simple "thank yous" won't suffice.

Here's to a lot more learning ahead.