Bobby Door

On the morning after I made my last post, I woke up in the hotel having zero idea whose bed I was in, or where the bed was. I rolled over to see the lizard on the wall, removed my earplugs at the faint rumble of hundreds of motorcycles, and it all rushed back. 20-plus hours of sleep will do that to you.

I can't help but constantly compare Chiang Mai to Neilly, Costa Rica, where I spent a gap semester between high school and college. From the daily downpour to the good humor of everyone I pass by, to the jury-rigged storefront electric advertisements, it's hard to keep from speaking Spanish. When I explained this to my mom over the phone, she told me that she observed the same phenomenon between the U.P. with the American south. So maybe different just resonates difference.

We bused from the hotel to ISDSI, the headquarters and classroom of our program. There, we munched on some fresh fruit and lined up like clueless little cattle to be bestowed upon our prospective host families. When they called my name, a sweet, five foot nothin' woman with a pursed smile and kind eyes came up to me and massaged my hand. She told me she was my mother, and hauled me away by the elbow to meet my new Paw. They sat me down, asked me my name, and attempted to pronounce "E-lene" once before changing my name to Arroon, or dawn, after I told them my name meant "light" in Hebrew. "Arroon sawat" means "good morning," and they get a big kick when I say it. Just like in Costa Rica, the proficiency of my humor plummeted as soon as I crossed the language barrier. I did, however, fare better on the name front than a girl named Cat on our program, whom her family now calls "Meow."

Mae, Paw and I went straight to the two-story bustling mall in to buy a cellphone before picking up my sister, Nong Fai, from her high school. Then we burrowed between meat, fruit and jewelry vendors in the sprawling walking market where I bought two surprisingly dashing school uniforms. The white blouse and black skirt that eventually fit were size large. I think there might be something inherently different in a country where an American XS struggles into an L. From there, we drove (on the left and very quickly) to their spacious, comfortable home in a suburb of Chiang Mai where I was shown my own room on the second floor. Nong Fai loves Harry Potter and sleeps adjacent to me. She is shy, smart and very hard-working. She leaves for school around 7a.m., and Mae and I pick her up at 8p.m. The program coordinators warned us against forgetting the difficult-to-pronounce names of our family members in order to avoid an embarrassing inability to introduce them to friends weeks later. I'm still trying to fit my mouth around Porngak and Patchanee Duangputan, but for now, "Mae and Paw" does the trick.

My family and I get along fantastically, considering the language and culture chasm. Mae and I are especially close, and I either follow her or am elbow-tugged by her literally everywhere I go outside of school. Independence is not a pillar of the Thai paragon. On one such dependent occasion, Mae pulled me from bed over to the house next door and introduced me to the non English-speaking neighbor. The woman took a beat, and said,

"She look just like Bobby Door! Just like Bobby Door! Bobby Door!"

Though a bit embarrassed that my pajama-clad, messy-haired appearance resulted in a comparison to a male stranger, I just smiled along and agreed as though I get that all the time. It wasn't until I was back in my room that I realized Bobby's true identity: a Barbie Doll.

Smooth as Silk

I made it to Chiang Mai, Thailand, my semi-permanent home for the next few months. It is sprawling, congested, green, noisy, dotted with dazzling temples and friendly. Evan and I departed from LAX on Wednesday night, after a couple relaxing days visiting The Getty Center, reading by Phoebe's pool, saving a baby bird, eating more cheeseburgers and visiting Santa Monica for some last minute price-jacked headlamps from REI.

As if from a time warp filled with delicious airplane food, friendly service, and personal on-demand video screens, a group of 17 Kalamazoo students and about 13 more kids, mostly from Colorado, stumbled out from the benches of our red mini bus and into The Mountain View Hotel on Friday afternoon. The Mountain View Hotel could more accurately be named the Mountain, Ford Retailer, Bustling Highway, Channel, Crumbling Temple, Shiny New Temple, and Crowded Market-View Hotel, but for some reason they didn't go with that.

Everyone seems friendly and excited to be here. We are all trying our best to speak the first few phrases we need in Thai, though almost everyone we've met seems to speak at least basic English. I tried to order a $2 plate of Basil Leaf Chicken in Thai, and when I thought the waiter couldn't understand me, it turns out he just wouldn't allow me to order anything that spicy. He told me the basil is too hot for my white little tongue. I'm just going to assume that they have some kind of 'roided basil here, but the Cashew Chicken ended up tasting very comforting. After I ate that, I slept for 13 hours. I have resolved to overcome the 11-hour time difference by sleeping as much as possible. I don't know if it will help, but I do know that it's 7:40am TOMORROW morning here, and I feel great. If any of you want stock advice, better send me an email before Wall Street opens there.

Sleep Talking in LALA Land

It's 7:39 in the midst of a passive morning in Los Angeles. Jet lag dragged me out of bed and into the quiet living room, but it's nice to feel like you're the only person in the world for a few hours after waking up. Although Phoebe, my host, did hear me stirring enough to wake up and tell me that I kept her up talking in my sleep. If my subconscious is any indication of my preparedness to go to Thailand tomorrow, then I'm still decoding:

"It's fine, they're just curlicues."

and

"Turn around Grandma, it's time for your spankin'!"

I'm indulging in anticipated nostalgia by eating whatever cheeseburgers I can get my hands on. Though, In 'n Out has always had that effect on me. On the other hand, I'll be ready to selectively forget some things about these great states.

On the Dalls/Ft. Worth-LAX leg of yesterday's flight, I was sitting in the widow seat near the back, shyly eyeing my possible seat mates like the new kid on the school bus. Then a 10-year-old girl with her mother, both dressed in matching bejeweled velour tracksuits, whose hair was lighter than my skin and whose sun drenched skin was almost as dark as my hair, sat down next to me with a curious mesh box. Inside, I glimpsed two wet little eyes that I later learned belonged to a ten-week-old Chihuahua named Prada. Prada sat shaking on my lap during takeoff where the girl asked me to hide her from the flight attendant so that she and her mother could finish their reeking boxes of Popeye's chicken. The attendant didn't see Prada as I held her, covered by their leopard-print inflatable neck pillow, but she smelled her about two hours later. The girl, fuming, carried her soiled puppy and carrier to the bathroom to wash. The flight attendant, sitting next to the bathroom doors, looked at me and hissed,

"This is why we don't like dogs on board."

When we returned to our seats, whimpering Prada was reprimanded for being an "idiot dog," and lightly kicked under the seat by the mother and daughter, who then resumed playing Angry Birds on their twin iPads.

Phoebe has to go observe at Warner Brothers Studios today because her uncle is the director of some sitcom, and we figure security forces impenetrable enough to ward off Charlie Sheen are certainly going to keep me out. My fellow Chiang Mai-bound buddy, Evan, who landed last night after I went to sleep and is presumably sleeping somewhere in this house, and I are going to explore today.