5 posts from February 2008

so I've been a little behind on the posting, kawtotkrap. to make up for it i'll give you a double lesson. The last passa thai post (lesson #4) i told you how to apologize in thai and i told you i would tell you how most people would respond  if they forgave you. the second part although i don't have a picture of how you speel it or and audio clip is how you would respond to someone how said khopkhun krap\kha (thank you).

Maipenrai

"mai pen rai" is the first term. it's actually used for more than just when some one says they are sorry. basically it means "it's ok", "never mind", "don't worry about it", and "that's alright". so if you are talking to a thai person trying to use thai and they just can't understand you with your funny accent then you can just tell them "mai pen rai krap/kha" and smile.

the second phrase i'll teach you today is how you say you're welcome. it's pretty easy so it should be able to pick it up with out the audio. "yin dee krap/kha" (or "yendee krap/kha"). for some reason i don't hear this one as much but keep it in mind because it's good to always be polite.

enjoy your week.

our team took a trip to the mae hong son, a small village in the mountains of northern thailand, to put on an english camp for the local children. it's been a long wait (seriously all of this happened like a month  ago, my apologizes) but it's finally here, the conclusion of our trip. we've finished the english camp part of the program and now the kids are going to take us to a nearby water fall.

after we changed clothes the children led us down the road out of town, across a small bridge, along cow paths through dried out rice fields to a trail that made its way along a small stream. the scenery really brought me back to my time exploring the woods of middle tenessee (only a bit more bamboo this time and small thai children leading the way instead of my cousins). eventually we came to a waterfall and spent a few hours swimming in the cold water, drew, tum, and i jumping of the rocks to show how brave we were. again i was amazed by the beauty that just seemed to be so typical in thailand. it’s like a story i heard once (maybe from traci wilson) about a foreigner who came to america and was so shocked that every restaurant had sugar on the table and not only that but it was free! where he came from sugar was a delicacy, a special treat usually only enjoyed by the wealthy and here we offer it at no cost in every eating establishment. it’s expected. the norm. that’s how it is for me and this country everything is so beautiful or so exotic that i’m afraid i’ll go back to the states and be depressed by my environs. (i don’t really think that, but it is helping me to see how fortunate i am and how great our god is. i hope that this is something that will be carried with me even after my time here)
 

after the waterfall we trailed back to the village for dinner with the families we would all be staying with. a few of the kids stopped to climb a tree for some fruit (i can’t remember the name now but its thin brown pods with a thin hard shell and orangish-sourish-gummyish fruit) and they shared it with us. dinner was nice and after we had arranged our sleeping areas we headed back to the school to put on a show for the towns people. now skit shows are no stranger to a former afcer (woah i just said “former” weird), but doing them as foreigners on the other side of the world in front a large group of people none of whom understand much english is a little different of a challenge. so i was kind of nervous on how this would pan out. we stuck with some of the basics that we thought would be entertaining and tried to focus on things that didn’t require the dialogue to carry it. however the real gem of the performance was a skit that i had never done before (i hadn’t even seen it done or heard anyone describe it). it was called the princess skit. basically it has five characters in it all of whom are played by drew and myself (on a side note we’ve actually added a 6^th character which we’ve yet to reveal to anyone. fun stuff). the basic idea is that a knight (drew) comes to a castle to ask for a princess’s hand in marriage. the butler (myself) informs the knight that he will tell the king (drew) who in turn must tell the queen (me again) who then goes to the princess herself (drew) to ask for her answer. essentially the skit is the two of us running around changing into different costumes and doing different voices. we had old women rolling in the aisles. one lady in particular loved drew and kept requesting that he go up and do more things (like sing). so we finally gave in (and by that i mean he dragged me up with him) and we did an interpretive dance while three of the other guys sang and played guitar. i’m pretty sure we clearly communicated at least one thing, we are insane. so that’s how we became superstars in a small northern thai village.

we retired for the night after a short post-show devo and woke up the next morning for church. we had church on the same little platform we had entertained on the night before. it was awesome. after services we said our goodbyes and made our way back down the mountain to mae hong son. robert ended up not traveling back to chiang mai with us because he felt ill (actually he was just starting to have another flare up of pancreatitis, not pretty at all. it gave us all a pretty big scare and he is still kind of recovering from it. ) the bus ride was a lot better in the day time but seemed just as long. that fact was not helped by the fact that we had a random one hour stop at some town along the way. (this was actually a very bad stop. i decided i would walk around instead of hang with the group by the bus. you know stretch the legs see the sights. i ended up stopping at a street vendor lady and ordering to items wrapped in leaves. i knew from a previous meal on the trip that they were a kind of desert rice thing. i ate both of them and a sleeve of strawberry icing oreos… ya i’d never heard of them either… before getting back on the bus. i got really sick and the thought of the sweet custardish rice things still makes me queasy… no joke i’m stopping writing right now)

wow that was a longer break than i meant it to be (about a week….  yikes)  never the less our trip was a very inspiring one. i think after we got back a really began to start to find my groove here, to at home. since then there has been a lot going on; more trips and english camps, lessons in thai and classes in english, learning to drive better and get around the city, parties, preaching, equipping times, and planning for our big trip to cambodia coming up in march. i’ll do my best to catch everyone up on everything. God bless you all and thanks for continuing to read my words.

so as a farang you might make a lot of mistakes and insult people and the like because you don't really know the culture. for example in america it's alright if you step on a coin to stop it rolling or toss money on the table to give it to someone or even point at something with your foot if your hands are full but here all those thing will cause people to stare (or maybe even mutter under their breath). not to worry, i'm here to teach you how to say that you are sorry in thai. it goes like this khaw toht [polite particle] (spoken example: male female).

Kawtot

i was told this literally means something like "please give me punishment" and it's used like "excuse me" or "pardon me". this means it is also commonly used to interrupt or get someones attention. so if you really screw up you might want to say more than just excuse me you can say chan (or dechan for girls and pom for guys) sia jai. chan is the genderless "i" and sia i think means something like damaged and jai is heart. so "i damaged-heart" might be a better way of saying sorry if the offense is a serious one. remember the thais are very friendly and for the most part very forgiving of foreigners mistakes. well i hope you learned something and next week i'll tell you one response you are likely to hear when you say khaw toht.

i'm a little late with your thai lesson this week but here it is. i thought this week to make up for my tardiness i'd give you a bit longer of phrase to learn. actually it's two phrases, a question and an answer. you have already learned to how to say hello. now i'll teach you how to ask "how are you?" as well as the common answer "i'm well". here's the whole phrase then i'll break it down to each word. sabai dee mai [krap/kha] (note: both audio links have the word "kun" which means "you" but it is not often said since it is understood).

Sabaideemai

our team took a trip to the mae hong son, a small village in the mountains of northern thailand, to put on an english camp for the local children. i’ve been really busy but here is the long awaited part three of our story in a multi-post series telling about our trip and the things we did. we've just arrived at the guard post were we left the truck as we took boat rides up and down a small river in northern thailand to visit a few villages.

loading into the back of the truck again we headed further up the mountain. eventually we came to a temple. monks with shaved heads and orange robes roamed around as temple goers offered incense. we did what tourist do best.... took pictures. this time i didn't feel like a dirty tourist though. the peacefulness of the place gave off a calm quite disposition that left one in a good state of mind to appreciate the beauty of the mountains and the town nestled in the valley far below. my third cornetto of the day probably added to my harmonious mood. (ice cream is good for peace and quiet joy. the world would be a better place if ice cream was more plentiful… at least it wouldn’t hurt.) it was strange to be in the face of another religion in such a real way. looking back it leads me to think about how other religions or non-religious people see christians. what do they see? i saw people carrying out rituals, nothing too strange there. burning incense. offering a silent prayer to something unseen. is that what others see when they look at christians? waking up early on sundays. singing songs. praying. ceremonies. traditions. customs. rituals. is there not something deeper? i believe there is. do others see it though? interesting thoughts. we just took pictures.

that night we slept in a hotel owned by jenny’s parents called ban farang (“honkie house”?, if i haven’t yet explained farang or falang let me do so. farang is the name of a guava i think. it’s a white guava so it also refers white foreigners. so it’s kind of like saying honkie or cracker… but in kind of a nice way.) we slept well that night, (but not without get my fourth cornetto of the day) our first true full rest since the bus ride. we woke early to travel to the village we were having the camp at. the road this time was possibly more winding than the bus trip (although more upward than rollercoaster-esque) but it was during the day and not packed into a bus seat. the road slowly went from paved to paved and overgrown to dirt and then all of a sudden we stopped. rains had washed the road out in some parts and a truck was stuck in one of the grooves carved out by the rain. the driver of our rot dang (reminder: “red auto”, the taxis of thailand) was very protective of his vehicle. not peculiar due to the care it looked like he had put into it but definitely not the norm for professional drivers required to navigate the chaotic streets of this country. never the less he was not excited about the trip so far and although we thought he could bypass the automotive obstacle he was unwilling to budge until the owner had relocated the entrenched truck. this was not pleasing news since we were all anxious to get to the village and begin (we did have a schedule to uphold). eventually we were able to manhandle the small truck far enough over that our driver attempted to pass. we made it through but not without a small scrap on the canvas of his truck’s camper-top (oops).

our church had been to this village before but last time the town’s people did not have electricity. since that previous visit poles had been erected and power lines hung. despite this modern amenity the village still seemed quaint. we meet the student, all of them very shy, and started to play games and sing songs together. then came the whole teaching english part. we broke into four stations each of which would teach different words and had a different game for the kids to play. adelina (one of the one month interns) and i had a station that was to teach different types of animals. robert had told all of us that our goal was to help the kids become more comfortable around foreigners and help them to be more confident with english just as much as it was to actually teach then new words and phrases. after teaching each group about 15 english names for animals that group would then play a family feud style game of 5 on 5. there purpose of the game was for me to act/sound out the animal and then the first person to “slap” in and get the name correct earned their team a point (or vice versa I say the name and they had to act it out). some animals have obvious actions associated with them (ie a chicken or and elephant) other animals you have to rely more on the sounds they make (ie a pig’s snort, unless you want to roll around on the ground with your finger squishing your nose back). however, we found out before the camp that animals in thailand apparently don’t sound the same as they do in america. for instance a duck doesn’t say “quack-quack”, it says “gap-gap”. pigs don’t say “oink-oink” they say “oot-oot”. the rooster cries “ehkie-ehkie-ehk-ehk” and a cow say “maw”. (we actually heard a rooster while we were there and i tried to argue the point of cock-a-doodle-doo, but alas it was hopeless). the kids really seemed to enjoy themselves and before too long it was time to break for lunch.

during lunch we saw a small (albeit noisy) procession make its way past us as we dined. apparently, a wedding was coming up soon and the bride, lead by some music playing family members and half a large pig carried on a stick of bamboo between two men, was making her way to her husband-to-be’s house. quite a sight indeed. after we ate we played some more group games with the kids in the heat of the mid-day sun. the really cool part about it was that a lot of these things we had to come up with on the spot. it was a really nice way of having to work as a team and think on our feet. after games we took a short break before or next planned adventure. i’ll finish the story in my next post and tell all about the waterfall and how drew and i became superstars.