2.  You can’t get over the conveniences of drinkable tap water, washers and dryers, hot showers.

3.  You still frequently think and dream in Thai.

4.  You feel strangely isolated knowing that no one around you would understand you if you spoke in Thai.

5.  You feel confused about simple things like telephone etiquette and tipping.

6.  You get unnaturally gleeful over a plate of rice.

7.  Certain worship songs you knew in both Thai and English are now more familiar in Thai.

8.  You think about people back in Thailand a LOT.

9.  You cringe and try hard not to judge people whenever food is thrown away.

10.  You try hard not to judge people about a lot of things.

11.  You feel guilty, somehow, for leaving.

12.  You feel more poor in America than you did living in a slum in Thailand.

13.  You don’t recognize a single song on the radio.

14.  You’re back on season 2 of Lost.

15.  You don’t get fazed a bit by L.A. traffic.

16.  You still calculate prices into baht.

17.  You realize one day how nice it is not have any mosquito, ant, or cockroach bites.

18.  It seems like everyone around you is always SO BUSY.

19.  You find yourself forgetting that certain topics are taboo here that you’re used to being open about.

20.  You feel like you knew who you were in Thailand, but have to figure out who you are now in America.

21.  You realize you’ve adapted Thai values that people around you don’t necessarily have.

22.  You assume that, like Thais, your friends often have a hidden meaning to what they say, when they usually don’t.

23.  You feel like you have to start over from scratch in every area of your life.

24.  You realize you aged during your time overseas, and haven’t returned to a former age as well as a former country.

I was on the city of Pomona website this evening, looking for pictures I might be able to use in my presentation tomorrow, to illustrate the place that will soon be my home.  I visited the “New Resident Information” page, which is mainly some helpful essential info like how to set up a phone line and locate your local public school.  Then down at the bottom is a list of “frequently called numbers”.  Here it is.  I’m not making this up.

Abandoned shopping cart reporting
Grafitti removal
Illegal dumping reporting
Landlord/tenant disputes
Weed abatement – vacant lots
Fire prevention and complaints
Roaches, rats and vermin
Sewer main back-up
Sanitation special pick-up
Street/alley potholes

Not exactly the best advertisement for your city, Pomona.  But I guess it’s a tactful way of showing me what I’m getting myself into.  Well, I’ve had “roaches, rats and vermin” in my house and sometimes my bed, slum children writing on my walls with whatever they could get their hands on, mounds of garbage floating on the swamp under my house, for five years.  So here I come.  You don’t scare me.

This is an interesting question, because I know this place has gotten under my skin and into my blood, but while I’m still here it’s sometimes hard to see how I’ve changed.  The Thai in me will stand out most clearly when I’m back in America.  But with a little reflection, here are some of the things about me or habits that I anticipate will seem a bit odd in the States, or will have to work at changing.

1. My first impulse will be to wai (greet by placing the hands together and bowing the head) whoever picks me up at the airport.
2. I’ll probably feel slightly offended if someone sits with their feet pointing at me.
3. I don’t think I’ll be able to wear shoes in the house anymore.
4. I’ll prefer eating with spoon in the right hand and fork in the left.
5. I’ll need at least a few meals per week of something spicy over rice.
6. It will take awhile to get used to paying for things with debit or credit cards rather than cash all the time.
7. Speaking of money, I’m much more familiar with green 20s, pink 100s, and tan 1,000s than army green 1s, 5s, 10s and 20s.  (In fact, are they still green?  In these same denominations?  It’s seriously been a long time.)
8. I’ll have to refrain from voicing shock and disgust at how huge serving sizes are, and how long the list of unrecognizable ingredients is on food packages.
9. I’ll be wearing a sweater when the temperatures are in the 60s, long sleeves in the 70s, and short sleeves only when it’s above 80.  I haven’t worn shorts above my knees in almost 5 years and I think I’d feel naked in them now.
10. People will probably tell me I smile all the time.
11. I’ll feel really uncomfortable talking above a whisper on public transportation.
12. I’ll be thrilled by little things like thick carpet, baked goods, quiet, free press, Pandora (blocked here), American TV shows, clean air, driving a car, English worship services, beef.
13. It will take me a while before I feel like it’s safe to wear yellow or red again (colors worn by the clashing demonstrators here).
14. I’ll want to get in on the wrong side of the car and drive in the wrong lane.  I’ll need people to remind me about seat belts for awhile.
15. As dusk falls I’ll start thinking about lighting a mosquito coil.
16. The days will feel super short in the winter and super long in the summer.
17. I’ll have to remind myself that it is NOT okay to ask just anyone their age, salary, or how much they just spent on the groceries they’re carrying.

I’m sure there will be more to come. 

Or take their drama or horror movie genres.  The films will have their scenes of intense emotion and gruesome violence (but these, really, are too over-the-top to elicit much of an authentic response).  But then they’ll cut from bloody decapitated guy to goofy extra getting his pants pulled down or something.  Or from poor, misunderstood Cinderella figure to other characters pulling each other’s hair until they both fall into the pool fully clothed.  It can feel kind of jarring to watch, like you’re not sure how you’re supposed to be feeling, except to not take any of it very seriously.  Maybe that’s the point– life is best lived a little lightheartedly.

The first three words I learned in Thai are three of their most important values: saduak, sabai, and sanuk, or convenient, comfortable, and of course, FUN.

I’ve been discovering that even some of the Thai Buddhist temples are this way.  Even in these most somber and contemplative places there are often elements of fun or quirkiness.  Two that I visited within a month of each other are perfect examples– one inhabited by a colony of monkeys, and the other populated by grinning clay Thai children and monks, each wearing their own pair of real glasses.

The first (with the monkeys) was at a look-out point we visited with our church leaders after a training.

This next one was in Ayuthaya, which is most known to tourists as containing ancient ruins of Thailand’s former capital.  We did go see those, but because our Thai friends were playing tour guides, we mostly saw the Thai tourist traps.  Which are a little different from the Lonely Planet highlights.  We didn’t see a foreigner in sight at most of the places we stopped.  You can see more photos from that day on my Flickr page; here are a few from the highlight of that day.

I forgot to mention that this temple is actually most famous for… its bathrooms.  The first air-conditioned bathrooms in a Thai temple, they say.  Carpeting, individual AC units in each stall, flowers… it’s quite the facility.  I guess they didn’t want to leave out the last two ideals of saduak and sabai.

It’s so hot that the slum dogs are too tired to get up to scratch their mange.

It’s so hot that I routinely have sweat running down my legs and pooling at my ankles.

It’s so hot that I actually appreciated the cowboy hat my music teacher made me wear home.

It’s so hot that people in my slum are eating ice cream at 10 a.m.

It’s so hot that my refrigerator is hot to the touch from the strain of keeping the inside cool.

It’s so hot that two showers a day is a minimum.

It’s so hot that a cold drink can soak your clothes with its condensation.

It’s so hot that the pages of all my books at home are curling.

It’s so hot that when I’m in the sun I expect to hear my skin sizzling.

Also, the glue trap we had placed out was not only unsuccessful in trapping any of our unwanted house guests, but was covered with plastic bags, which rats must have dropped on it from our collection of them hanging on the wall a little ways away.  And my washcloth had been pulled off its hook and dragged to the corner of the bathroom.

Needless to say, it was difficult to go back to sleep with the sounds of squeaking from inside our wall and the fear of a toe getting eaten off during the night.  I would be thoroughly annoyed if it wasn’t so hilarious– I think our laughter and attempts to scare away the rat probably woke up most of our neighbors.

I wonder who is really trying to evict who from our house, and which side will be successful. 

For example. I love the kids in my slum, they have each found a special place in my heart, but when over a dozen of them make the main room in my house the public playroom, make as much noise as possible, and see anything in the refrigerator as obviously put there for their consumption… I start to go a little crazy.

So a major accomplishment I made before going on furlough was learning how to set boundaries with the kids. When the door is open, they can come in. When it’s closed, that means I want to be alone. If I’m disciplined to not give into their puppy-dog pouts when I really need my space, this system works well.

But children are only one imposition on my personal space. Three mornings in a row I awoke to discover rats had come into my bedroom and made off with random objects, of seemingly no use to a rodent. Mosquito coils, for instance. They swiped my stash right out of its box. Or a plastic bag from a grocery store. A visitor’s toothbrush. Come on! Sometimes I think they’re purely out to torment me.

In the States, it is a valid assumption that the things in your bedroom will be there in the morning. Not so here. You also don’t need to protect yourself from insects, or at least convince yourself that they won’t find their way into your bed tonight.

I sleep underneath a mosquito net, tucked tightly around my floor mat to keep out not just mosquitoes but bigger things too, like roaches or spiders or even rats. Well, that illusion of security was taken away as well, when I woke up the other day with a cockroach running across my hand. I proceeded to have to fight it out from under my net with a broom, and then convince my nerves to calm back down enough to go back to sleep.

I hear the details of my neighbors’ personal lives because our plywood walls do nothing to block out sound. A couple nights last week one of my neighbors was drunk and throwing up out his window into the swamp that separates his house from mine. My first week back one of the slum dogs had 7 puppies which yipped all night long, keeping me awake.

I often end up sharing more with my slum than I would like to.

In the midst of this, it struck me how truly amazing it is that Phothong has welcomed me in the way it has. Moving into a slum is more like joining a large family, moving into someone else’s living room, sharing in the joys and difficulties that family faces. I came not only as a stranger, but a complete foreigner, barely able to communicate, different not only in appearance but in mannerisms, values, lifestyle… I’ve tried to adapt as much of the culture and lifestyle as I can (and still honor God), but I will always be a foreigner.

I see and experience up close both the beauty and the shame in the slum, and yet my neighbors have welcomed me, a stranger, into that. As one of my Thai friends there said recently, I’m “part of the family now”. That is very humbling to me.

So I’m praying that I would continue to reflect Jesus in the midst of the stress this lifestyle places on me. In the ways Jesus was able to remain patient and loving while crowds pressed in on him, and at other times retreat to be alone with his Father, I long to also have that balance. Pray that I would be so tapped into God’s love and peace that the things most likely to bring out my worst would instead cause grace and compassion to flow.

“Why don’t you cut your toenails more often?”

“It seems like you’re fatter.” (This accompanied by hand motions which seemed to indicate that my face had swollen up like a balloon.)

“Have you been eating a lot lately?”

“You don’t speak Thai well at all.” (Thankfully, lately people have been complimenting me on my Thai almost every day. But for awhile this was very discouraging.)

[neighbor] “Sara! Where are you?”
[me] (washing my face before bed) “In the bathroom!”
[neighbor] (waits for me to emerge) “Oh, were you showering?”
[me] (thinking “to shower” might be a general term for washing in general) “yes.”
[neighbor] (looking into my bathroom) “You didn’t use much water…. you didn’t shower!” (accusatory, for Thais shower at least twice a day, religiously). “Why not, because it’s cold?”
[me] “Yes, and because in the States people only shower once a day.”
[neighbor] “But it’s not hot there. You need to shower twice a day. In the morning and when you get home in the evening.”
–Since then she has been watching to see if shower in the evening and will often ask me about it. I’m considering sucking it up and showering twice a day so I make a little more sense in her eyes.

“How much did you pay for your haircut?” “How much did it cost you to fly here?” “How much did that shirt cost?” “How much do you spend on food every day?” (Followed by very blunt opinions, almost always– “too expensive.”)

“Don’t eat too much food or when you go home your friends will tell you how fat you got in Thailand.”

“Narak jung luuy!” (or “So cute!”)– yelled at me by random people on the street.

“You’re 23?! I thought you were about 16!”

“Your skin is so white and beautiful. You have such pretty blonde hair. Thai people aren’t pretty at all– we all have black eyes and black skin.”

(in broken English) “Hellooooooo! Hey you! Farang! (foreigner)”

“Hello! I don’t have a girlfriend yet!”