wet and wild

so this last unit was the Water unit. i don't remember if i have been explaining the whole unit thing or not but in case i have i will not do it here. we went to two different communities that were affected by dams. the first one is a semi famous dam apparently, called Pak Mun, and we only stayed there for 3 days 2 nights. for the first time i didn't stay with a whole family, it was just us and Pa. he was pretty much the coolest guy i've met here so far, he was like 70 or something and was a medicine man guy. he took us out into the forest to find herbs and trees and mushrooms and whatever else to use in his medicines. he tried to explain it to us but, you know, we don't speak thai, so it was mostly in gestures and most of them indicated a release of constipation. anyway he gave us this little spiel about the government not allowing him to use the forest anymore and how he thought the government was dumb and could shove it because he was using it anyway. i have developed an ability to respond correctly even when i don't actually have any idea what is being said, basically i can read what their general point is i.e. "this sucks" or "can you believe this" or whatever and respond with the proper head shake or chuckle. this makes them feel like we are communicating, which is good, but also gives them the false impression that i can understand thai which comes back and bites me in the butt later when they expect an actual verbal answer and i can never provide one. i'm not going to lie, i was Pa's favorite, he just loved me.

we had a lot of fun there; i drank freshly collected wild honey, and chewed some kwai (water buffalo) jerky that i had seen rotting on a shelf along with all the bones the day before. we also got to len footbon (play soccer) with the neighborhood kids and scored some injuries doing so,, those kids don't mess around with football. but we had to move on to a different community with a different dam. we went to rasi sali village next and i stayed with my meh, nung sow, and pa. Meh thought we were a riot and had never seen a foreigner before, my little sister was 17 and also thought we were just ridiculously entertaining, pa was scared of us and wouldn't come into the house until we were asleep. if i were them i would feel gypped that i got defective farangs because both me and the girl i was staying with were sick. i was just developing a really good cough and she got pharengitis while we were there and had a 103 fever the whole night. the family raised cattle and had 2 that lived in the yard. the baby decided that it hated me and charged me everytime i walked outside, it even stuck its head through the window whenever i was inside the house near its pen. that cow was the devil in my opinion. unfortunately everytime it charged at me they would beat it with a stick so i had to pretend it wasn't doing so while still running for my life. it was tricky. thats about it for that trip for me, we didn't really do much and the family didn't want to take us out with them when they were working so we didn't see much local stuff, mostly we went shopping at the markets with the teenager. my friend who was living across the street got bit by a poisonous millipede and had to go to the hospital, her hand swelled up to mickey mouse proportions. all in all it was a pretty eventful trip, though i really didn't learn anything more about how these people are being screwed over by the dams. they just are.

have fun at home everybody, drink some orange juice for me, i am craving it like crazy.