Weird Clothing Dynamic

Today was my second day in Thailand and BABSEA's second day of orientation. It started out wonderfully and finished the same way. I woke up early in the morning (probably since I went to sleep so early), but I felt so good, having slept like a log that night (from 9 pm until 5:30 am...*sigh*; it was blissful), that I just woke up and wrote a little in my journal (don't worry, all similar things that you get to see here; I'm not leaving you out of anything). Then at 6:45 my roommie and I went downstairs to catch the red taxi-truck owned by BABSEA to take us to the main house. (All the taxis here are red trucks with campers on the back that have long-ish benches along the sides for you to sit and open backs to climb in and out; well...all are red trucks except the tuk-tuks obviously, but those are so expensive nobody uses them.) When we got to house we had a Yoga lesson taught by a French woman. It was great. (And interesting to get Yoga instructions in a French accent.) Now, I have to say that I have been doing Yoga once a week in a class in Portland for about 3 months now and do it on my own at home during the week, and this lesson was technically much easier than those. However, it is hot enough here (even at 7 am) that a light Yoga workout is a HARD workout. But overall it was really fun and quite enjoyable.

After the yoga lesson, we caught a ride back to our apartments (called PT Residence by the way) and took a quick body shower and changed for the day. We spent the whole day at Orientation again (and I finally remembered the name of the building, Uniserv). It was another fun day, which means that you can accept my statement that yesterday was good too; it evidently was not caused by jet lag. We did more icebreakers/silly games to teach us how to teach others (the importance of activities to learn, the importance of rules, etc.). A group of us went to the same restaurant we visited yesterday. Zenia and I wanted to go someplace new, but after looking around we realized there wasn't really anywhere else to eat on that road, so we caved and went to the same place, but got something new. I had a sweet and sour chicken stir fry that was amazing! It made me really happy to have such delicious food (although I do have the sinking suspicion that I will eventually get tired of Asian foods at the end of this trip and just crave Mexican, Italian, American, etc. food when I get home).

Tonight we had Thai lessons again where we learned words for food and ordering. I definitely need to study some more, but it will probably come down to carrying around a little cheat sheet or some index cards with pronunciations written down. After lessons Zenia and I took a taxi to the "mall" (it seems like more of a giant food court to me) where the closest market is located. Since I was starving by this point (probably partially induced by the constant chatter about Thai food during our lessons), I got some food at the market (which was pretty good and very cheap; and as well know the cheapness just makes the food seem tastier). :)

Tonight I also had to do some research online. We were split up into groups today and have to put together a fake lesson plan we will present tomorrow. To create the fake plan (about a topic given to us by Bruce) we had to do a little outside research. Our lesson plan is about how to explain the rule of lawyer confidentiality. Anyway, it's hard to really explain all this (and probably extremely boring to you), so suffice it to say that I had to come home tonight to do some research on Thai, Vietnamese, Laotian, Malaysian, and Cambodian law. All I could think when we got the assignment was, "But I just finished my first year of law school two days ago! I don't want to do legal research yet!!" Luckily, it was very brief research as we didn't need to know a ton on the topic, just some of the basics (ex. do the countries have rules on confidentiality between lawyers and clients?). Now that that is all done and this blog entry is almost complete I will be ready to head off to bed soon. :) So, goodnight, or rather, good morning to you!

Some More Interesting Notations:
1. You might have thought my hair was curly at home, but it is nothing compared to how extremely curly my hair gets here in this humidity. It is NUTS! The curls are just springing every which way (even the bangs).
2. KFC has invaded Thailand...I've seen it and it depresses me.
3. I'm really nervous about our immersion week with the local family. For example: how will I survive for a week without A/C, particularly at night; what will I do if I don't like the food, but I can't be rude and not eat it; how will I survive for a week without internet (and how will you survive without me and my blog?!)? All very important questions with no answers as of yet.
4. I think I am going to be forced to go out at night with people soon. I managed to skip it yesterday because of jet lag and tonight because Zenia and I have already showered and gotten ready for bed, but those protections will be gone tomorrow. My doom is coming...I see it heading toward me and it looks like a Thai bar and peer pressure.
5. I ate another new fruit today and it was amazing too! It is the color of a plum, has a hard "rind" (peel?) that stains your fingers red if you suck at peeling it (which I do and I suspect all the Thai people are laughing at me). Inside the fruit is white and in little sections like an orange. There isn't much fruit in each one,b but what is is in there is amazingly delicious.
6. I was thinking about it today and aside from the religious element of the region requiring modesty, etc. it is insane to think that here skimpy clothing has never been developed or accepted, but in Western countries (aka the US) we created things like the micro-mini and string bikinis. Now, that is a weird clothing dynamic. After all, how can it make sense that one of the hottest and most humid places on earth insists on wearing T-Shirts at the skimpiest and long pants the majority of the time? It just can't.
7. We heard about two incredible programs today. The first is called Sunflower, which helps local Thai (and other countries') women in crisis (usually by being pregnant or having a young child) and teaches them how to care for their children, gives them prenatal care, health care, and continues their education (wherever it left off) and gets them ready for further education if they want it. The second is called Sustainable Cambodia, which deals with rural Cambodians who have a hard time living in the farming, country areas, but who become dump squatters (people who live in the dump and spend all their time looking through the garbage for their food and items to use/sell) if they move to the city where they can't afford to live and can't get jobs. This program helps the villages become self sufficient by teaching village members about how sustainable farming, helps them create family businesses, and promotes essentials like well digging. It seems like an incredible group that has the potential to help thousands of people.