Recap

Hello All, I hope you are enjoying the new layout of the blog, I got bored yesterday because all I did was lay around.  Anyhoo shouting Claudel out, hes an avid reader of the blogeroooo.

If you like basketball you have to watch this>>> http://rivals.yahoo.com/highschool/blog/prep_rally/post/Meet-the-amateur-Shaq-prep-hoops-8217-best-du?urn=highschool-wp3891

So anyways back to Thailand.  The past two days have been eventful to say the least.  After a rainy saturday we decided to go out.  Our dean of students, this old balding guy who seems very strict told Larry who is a music minor to go to this bar.  Apparently it was authentic and only northern Thai people go and they had great music, he told us somethign happened at 12 that we shouldn't miss.  We just expected you know a Thai music fest, we definitely got sent to a Thai drag bar by our dear of students.  Though everything was in Thai, they had a comedy part first and we def knew we were getting made fun of. We were the only non Thai people, and we didn't have any Thai people with us. Some guys asked if we knew any Thai and started dying when we said no, they moved us tot he front, during the show people laugh and stared, and they called us furongs (westerners who come for the sex industry).  It was actually hysterical though, I took a million pictures bc the gay dancers had about 15 costume changes by the time we left.  People would get up and start dancing during the performances and it was just really fun, we couldn't believe thats where he sent us.

Today we went to a place called JJs market.  Its the biggest open aired market maybe in the world but definitely in Thailand.  I love to shop but I definitely was overwhelmed.  The amount of trinkets, clothes, food, spices, animals, and jewelry they had their was amazing and beautiful.  I probably spent too much money but it was all so pretty! We were there all morning and I just took a three hour nap!

Ok for the overview, Thailand can be summarized by five things. as in if you go for 5 blocks without seeing one, you are probably not in thailand anymore.
1. Buddhist Temples
2. Blown up pictures of the King and Queen
3. 7-11
4. Stray Dogs
5. open markets

There are no sidewalks,  no safety regulations ( no seatbelts, no age limits on being on a motorcycle, no lane change regulations).  There are just a lot of people all really very happy and nice.  I have seen so many people with so little, but they truly are happy to just interact and own their little rice stand or milk tea stand.  They truly love talking to you even if they are shy about their english skills.  When we didn't understand the taxi driver and he finally realized what we were saying, he taught us the phrase in Thai.

These are the phrases I kno
Sa-wat-dee kraup (male speaker)
Sa-wat-dee Kah (female speaker)
(you add ka and kraup at the end to make it polite,t hey say it at the end of everything).


Kop Khun Ka- Thank you


mai pet- no spice!


aaaaaand thats about it


My mother has emailed me that she is growing increasingly concerned over my crazy wallposts and would like to hear more about class.  So here it is.  The best classes that I have been too are about the human trafficking that I told you, Buddhism, which I will explain, and a disaster relief workshop with Thai med students at the the biggest hospital in Bangkok.
Due to the way their schooling system works, there were 5th year medical students that were the same age as me so it was interesting.  Anyways on Sunday 26, December 2004, Thailand had its worst natural disaster: a tsunami.  They were in no way prepared for this because no one expected it. It was a 9.0 earthquake that caused it.  Here are the facts...

No. people killed	5,395
No. people missing	2,817 1,972 Thai, 2,248 foreign nationals : 37 countries
Bodies still unidentified	1,650
No. of affected people	58,550
Children orphaned (loss of one or both parents)	1,480
Lost livelihoods in fisheries	30,000
Fishing boats destroyed or damaged	7,500
Lost livelihoods in tourism	120,000+
Houses destroyed or badly damaged	4,806
Estimated value of damages (not. inc. housing)	353.4 million USD

So we had a workshop of how to assess the situation, triage the victims (tell which one you should treat and in what order), and how to transport them to the hospital.  It is a growing field in Thailand whereas it is very developed in the United States.  In the US there is a very strict way on doing things but in Thailand regulations are still being made.  The workshop was difficult because of the language barrier but so fruitful because there was a beauty in trying to asses a disaster with the chaos of not understanding each other.


Onto Buddhism.  There will be no way that I do it any justice in this post but here it is.  The statistics say anywhere from 92-98 percent of all Thailand is Buddhist, therefore it governs the way the people act.  It is based on the idea that you want to essentially not be tied down by earthly possessions and that includes your body.  Monks meditate on the 32 parts of the body, essentially while breaking them down to objects in order to free themselves of it (bile, hair, skin, etc).  They believe in a kammic system, or karma, which means that people are reborn and every action has a karmic reaction, so things that happen in this lifetime could very well have been because you are serving out karma for a previous life.  It is so important to remember that in order to reach nirvanna you have to in a sence become enlightened by arresting the karmic cycle and freeing yourself from your body.  As you may  notice this has severe bioethical implications because sometimes when people are sick or dying, people tend to say or they are living out karma and give out hope.  With modern medicine it is hard for a doctor to take that, she/he wants to operate but you want to respect the wishes and autonomy of a person.  Also Thai people really believe in spirit mediums and other traditional forms of medicine which sometimes interfere with western practices.  How do you treat a person? You have to take into consideration that no matter what you tell them, they will probably still take their own medicine so you have to figure how it will interfere with what you prescribe and you have to be culturally sensitive enough to maybe incorporate the two. A doctor who practices here but was trained in the US told a story of a man who was badly burned.  The doctors treated him and dressed his wounds and his wife you always come in and tamper with his arm.  The doctors got frustrated but they couldn't deny her visitation.  Anyways one day she spit some "holy" grass on his arm because a monk chewed it and they believed that it was best for his arm.  Of course the doctors are upset because his arm will pronably become infected, but she was going to do it again so they dressed his wounds and put a plastic sheet over it so she could put the holy grass on it again.


Sorry for the long post! I'll post about our project on ptsd after natural disasters later and will put up pics of the drag show very soon!


love y'alls,
erin