Chill Chill

Halfway There

January, the start of the new year, and officially reaching the halfway point durring my exchange and time in Thailand. It actually scares me a little bit, how fast the time is passing. A year felt like a long time at the beginning, but now, I almost feel worried by how soon I’ll be going home.

Chinese New Year Season

Perhaps that feeling is amplified slightly by the speed at which January passed by. This month has been the lest busy yet, but that’s not a bad thing! It’s the beginning of the Chinese new year season in Nakhonsawan, so the whole town is preparing with practicing performances and lanterns and banners all over the city.

Oh, also children’s day was this month, think like ‘mothers day’ or ‘fathers day’ but for the kids. Good idea if you ask me. My friends at school secretly printed these really cute t-shirts with all of us as kids on it.

The Daily Rhythm

Currently, my host mom and aunt are both working. It’s the sugarcane harvest season right now, so almost every day they are out in the fields from early morning until after dark. Of course, the three months that im staying with my family are the exact three months that the sugarcane season runs for… oh well. I’ll have to make mroe time to see my current family in the second half of the year when they’re not working so much.

Instead, I have been taking a lot of the opportunity and free time to hand out with my friends and see different events all around the city.

Almost every day after school I have something going on, wether it’s hanging out at a cafe, teaching english, or just chilling. The countdown to the end of the school year is currently on, with just a few weeks left until final exams so things are busy while still feeling somewhat local.

Making Things

At Achiwa, we have begun doing art classes as well. Genuinely, I think I kind of shocked myself that it’s possible to draw something other then stick figures.

I have alawys like photography though. In Monday’s photo class, we were learning about studio photography and one day the teacher was sick, so we did a photo shoot outside all arround the school.

Exploring Beung Boraphet

Another cool thing that happened, my host uncle came up from where he lives in Bangkok for a weekend. Normally, he works his job as a member of the secret police, which makes it very difficult to get time off from work. Usually, he can’t get much more then three trips per year off to come back home.

For the weekend, we did trips to Beung Boraphet, the largest lake in Nakhonsawan and in Thailand. Depending on how clear the day is, you often can’t see the other side of the lake. It feels like looking out onto an ocean, only, a freshwater one. The entire lake is quite shallow. In the hot season, it’s often not more then 15 feet deep at most, more like a shallow plain then a true lake.

Thai Keun

Finally, I feel like for the first time, I’m actually starting to really understand Thai muchhh better then before. Over the past month, I set a goal to spend 90 minutes each day working on learning Thai, whether during free time at school or before going to bed at night. Unfortunately, as much as it pains me to say it, studying does work (ugh), but side benefit, now i feel like most times people speak, I actually can understand what the’re saying. Still not conversationally fluent by any means, but it feels like a good step in the right way of progress.

Thai Music

Actually, alongside studying, I actually think I’ve started listening to a lot more Thai music. Like I mentioned in the past (when I went to see the concert), Thai music is really actually quite good, and actually a major part of life here. The Thai music industry is surprisingly big, much more then you would expect, and somewhat split into two worlds. On one hand, you have the modern pop/rock and indie bands that play in the cafes and are popular with my generation. On the other hand, you have ‘Luk Thung’ (literally ‘child of the field’), which is the og country music style. It’s what blasts from the trucks at the temple fairs and what my host family listens to during the sugar cane harvest.

But anyways, I wanted to put together a little collection of some of my favorite songs to listen too, and what makes them special to me.

So that’s all for now, just a another month, this time a pretty chill one.

Best,

Declan