2. Thais believe that killing an animal is bad luck, so there are stray dogs and cats everywhere. They take over the foot paths and wander around all day looking for things to eat. Bangkok is pretty dirty, so they normally find something and then they shred it all across the foot path. It is lovely! On friday, on the way home from work, I watched a dog finish a whole chicken off. There was a trail of bones including the feet for about 15 feet. Then, once you got up to the dog, he had the head, beak and al in his mouth. YUM YUM! Thais will not even kill rats and mice. They will set up traps though to just catch them and then they put them outside or keep them as pets. It is pretty disturbing. Although, our next door neighbor found a squirrel living in his house and now it is his house pet. haha It stays in a cage and he feeds it every morning while we walk to the bus. It's pretty cute, and it is funny that anyone would have a pet squirrel.
3. Really random...fleas like to live in showers here. There are a couple hundred in mine! I know you are starting to itch, but it is really gross. They constantly bite me whenever I shower, and I just don't really like bugs much anyways, so dealing with a new variety of them, isn't going over well! We're working on the flea problem.... A lot of houses in Bangkok don't have walls in the entrance. I am not sure if I am describing this right, but they have a solid door and then the rest of the front is a grated-kind-of wall. It isn't solid, although there is a wall. It is just too hot to ever worry about needing a solid wall, but this allows animals to get in, and since we can't kill them, they bring in fleas and other lovely bugs!
First off, I want to say that I picked out that thermometer thing on the right of the screen so that you all can see what the temp is here in Bangkok, unfortunately, the thing won't stay on Bangkok. I guess I am in New York now. haha If you type in Bangkok you can see how much I am sweating!
This morning I woke up thinking about what I would do with my day off. I have been really looking forward to going to this park near where I work. It is quite exotic with huge lizards wandering around and such, but things never seem to go as planned here. I walked over to the kitchen and grabbed made some toast and sat on the floor with Cal, one of the Rahab ladies, and her son, De-jour, who is 3, and joined in on a conversation she was having with Alex about the confusions of foreign men. haha Sounds funny huh? Unfortunately, the funniness of the conversation didn't last long.
You see, what I have learned about foreign men here, Americans, Germans, Canadians, men from all over the world, is that the majority of them that come to Patpong for the prostitution, say to these women that they want to be their boyfriend. It really doesn't make sense to me, so if you understand please shed some light, but why would you want to be the boyfriend of a woman that is selling her body to other men on a nightly basis. She really isn't yours. Weird!, well, these men sometimes emotionally commit to these women and email them while they are away from Thailand, and always stay with them when they come to Thailand, and sometimes send them money. They play with the heart of these women in unusal ways. I get this part though. These men play with their hearts just enough, so that every time they come to Thailand the woman is willing to do anything for the man just because she believes that he loves her or that he wants to marry her. It is really sad. Cal is involved in a situation like this. She has this guy, we'll call him Jack, and Jack and Cal have a son together, De-jour. So, Jack is connected to Cal in a big way and comes to visit her and their son once a year. The tricky part is that Jack never tells Cal that he loves her unless she tries to start seeing someone else. Then, all of sudden, "Oh Cal I care about you so much and I want to be with you." and so on... So, she drops everything and starts to stay in constant communication with Jack again and starts to fall for him again. So, today, i asked her if he was going to marry her, because this situation seems odd. She said that he didn't want to marry her because he has been married before and he doesn't like marriage. Alright, so he's selfish. At least that was my conclusion. I told her and Alex agreed that if a guy loves you he will do pretty much anything to be with you and he most likely will marry you or at least head in that direction. She said "oh, no, Jack just likes to have time to himself and travel and go to casinos to gamble." Great, so he gambles too, I soon found out that he has never even financially supported their child and that he has left her to fend for herself and yet, expects her to drop everything when he comes to Thailand and stay with him. It is a sad story. We talked it out quite a bit, and she said that she understood and had a lot to think about. We suggested that she lay it out for Jack. Tell him that he can come and visit De-jour, but she wasn't going to be part of his life anymore. He is dragging her along and he probably knows it, so she needs to stand up for herself and drop him fast! He will be here in December, so she has some time to think about it, so hopefully she realizes that she is worth much more than Jack!
Well, all that to say, near the end of our conversation, she bounced up and said "okay, we must go." Okay...I thought! Where? So, she took my hand and said grab your purse we are going to a party. Party here means like a dinner party, but for lunch. We all go to someone's house and eat and eat some more. Nice! So, off we went and I was treated to an extravagant lunch of lobster, prawns, clams, octopus, and fish. I must say it was pretty dang amazing! Here when you have a special meal, you normally are served a bunch of different lettuces, some cold sticky noodles, seafood, and super hot chili sauce (it is like salsa). So you combine the ingredients and wrap them in your leaves. It is really good. After an amazing lunch we all watch a thai animated film about elephants and their place in thai history. I got really in to it, even though I had no idea what was being said!! haha I was sitting with Cal's son, so I couldn't help, but get into the story, since he would randomly laugh like the evil character in a deep "ha ha ha" and stab me with an imaginary sword whenever the same bad guy came on the screen. He is so funny!
About 4 we all headed home and well, there went my day in the park. No worries, there are always other days. haha It really turned out to be a nice day!
THIS WEEK:
I finally got to teach hair this week! It was a blast. I had six students and I taught them to curl hair. Seems easy, i know, but they don't know how. They are amazing at making it straight,but otherwise, not so much! So, we curled each others hair until we had it down pat. Everyone looked very pretty when we finished. I also showed them how to cut layers into a longer hair cut. They can cut the length and frame the face, but have never had training in cutting more into the haircut. They can learn these things in school, but it is weird here because they have four 3 month schools for different things and in order to get started in a salon, you only have to do one. So, when you enter a salon you don't even really have much of the basics down.
One of my girls, got a job this week in a really nice salon. She will be making a really good amount of money and working decent hours. I am so excited for her because in a salon she can really get a lot of practice and learn new things on a daily basis. Rahab hopes that all of their hairstyling girls are able to get their foot in the door of a salon. Then, Rahab will support them financially if they want to take more classes in hairstyling and may even help them open their own salon if they show enough confidence, have had enough training, and are doing well at the salon they are currently in. It is neat how they work to provide for this women by using the woman's talents and making them better.
It was a busy week, but really good. I am adjusting more and more each week! I feel confident getting places now and being a little more independent than when I first came.
Oh and our bar visit this week went well, other than that I was asked if I liked women or shopping better? Yeah....About that! Umm, I spent the majority of my night explaining that I was there to just be friends with the bar girls and that I like men. It was funny and a bit awkward, but the girl just couldn't understand why I would want to be friends with her. It was kind of neat in a way. Hopefully, I will see her again, now on the terms that I am only there to be a friend, not for other reasons! She spoke quite a bit of English, so hopefully she will be able to share with all the girls that work there why we were there and that we want to help them.
Laura
Miss you Laura!
ReplyDeleteThank you for the inspiration today, I needed to enter a bigger story, you gave that to me!
Love you
Zack