2D Theory

I have been given the most difficult assignment of my life thus far. I am to analyze the last three books we've read in my soc/antho seminar by creating an annotated map. The books have been A Small Place by Jamaica Kincaid, Cosmopolitanism by Kwame Anthony Appiah, and Remotely Global by Charles Piot. All relate to colonialism somehow, but all are very different books. Kincaid's book is about the small island of Antigua, how the British slavers and now tourists have fucked it up and should stay home. Appiah's book is a philosophy book that uses stories about Ghana/England to show there are universal values. Piot's book is an ethnography of the Kabre in Togo, particularly their relational social structures and gift-giving practices.

How exactly am I supposed to map this? I am not particularly artistic nor creative. I think I'm just going to put little pictures of the countries, and lines to show what is moving between the countries (people, ideas, identity, money), and annotate to tell exactly what that means (ex: Antiguan identity was shaped by England to be oppressed and enslaved, whereas Antigua helped shape England's identity as a colonizer and master, roles which are still continued in todays tourism models). Not the most beautiful or profound, but it beats writing a paper. :)

Trudging

Well, back in the swing of things. Meeting, meeting, class, meeting, work, meeting, class, work, work, cram homework in before I can't think anymore. I enjoy it, but I just wish I had extended periods of downtime. I look forward to the weekends because I'll actually have enough time to get my homework done, and maybe pick up an extra shift of work.

At least since I quit my third job, I actually have time for homework on the weekends! I wonder if this is something that I do to myself, or if I'll actually have time to do things like make a fancy dinner on the weekday, or just hang out at a friends house on the weekends after I graduate. I'll probably over-commit myself, but will I have time to not have to work? I like being busy, but I also like watching TV and playing video games, too. Hopefully, college is just a place where there are so many opportunities to do things that I can't stop, and it'll calm down when I'm not on every mailing list or see every opportunity on a poster by the post office.

In other news, here's a picture of me from Thailand that the photographer on the trip took. She's wonderful! Alyssa Lund Photography!

It's the Final Countdown!

So, final semester has started. I'm really excited. I'm taking 3 senior seminars and a history of political theory class. My polisci seminar is a seminar on immigration and citizenship, and we'll be interviewing the immigrant population in a nearby city. My soc/anthro seminar isn't focusing on something in particular, but is synthesizes a lot of the themes from the soc/anthro major. My third class is a history of modern political thought, which covers a lot of writers like Machiavelli and Locke. My other class is a Women's Studies seminar. We get to choose the topics, and have to choose readings and discuss them as a class. Should be fun.

I'm also really excited to graduate. No jobs found yet, but I'm done writing papers and reading obnoxiously long books and dense academic short papers.

Upon Returning

Well, I landed around 11am the day before yesterday. The flight home was surprisingly short, with only 20 hours of travel, as opposed to 36 hours on the way there. The food was worse, but I finally finished watching 3 Idiots, the movie I tried to watch several times on the way to Bangkok from Tokyo. We even had time to breathe in Tokyo airport, but not enough time to look around. A couple students changed money to buy a bottle of water. Or what looked like a can of lemon sparkling water, which turned out to be beer. Good times.

Anyway, after I landed at 11am, I went to my dads house (Mom was still in Ecuador, so Dad picked me up). He brought me out to lunch, then back to his house. I tried to stay up, but I decided to take an hour nap around 2:30. I woke up around 11:30pm, and played around on the internet until 4:30, when I went back to bed. I couldn't sleep past 8, though, and decided to just have a long day. I gave Dad and his wife their souvenirs, then Dad brought me to Mom's house, where she had just returned from her trip.

After exchanging pictures and souvenirs, we had dinner with my brother, and I went to bed at 7ish. I woke up around 2:30, but stayed in bed until 5:30, then gave up trying to sleep. My body is very confused. I'm used to the opposite time of day and the opposite season (err, rather, what I know feels like the opposite season, but is actually winter).

All my pics are in the process of uploading to facebook, so you can view them there. You can even see pics of me that other people took. Like me on an elephant!

Abroad Trip Day 24 - Last day...

Today is our last day in Thailand. Sad! I don't want to leave Thailand. I want to travel around to different cities and get out of Bangkok. I feel so anxious in Bangkok because it's always crowded and busy and takes forever to get anywhere. Ah well, Sabai Sabai!

We get up early this morning to go to the Floating Market, which is about an hour and a half out of Bangkok. It's like other markets, only the stalls are boats, and we're in boats and the vendors hook us with poles and pull us in to their boats. I like markets, but they all sell the same things, and when you don't have the option to walk away, it gets a little irritating to keep saying no and ignoring the vendor til your boatman starts paddling more. It was fun once we got to walk around, though. I bought a tacky hat/fan and a pretty green tunic shirt, which is probably a dress on Thai people. Too Tall for Thailand!

After, we ate lunch at a fancy hotel, where we were reunited with Julia, our classmate who has been in the hospital with pneumonia for a few days. One of the waiters was the Thai version of Neil Patrick Harris. I should have taken a picture. We debriefed as a class, and one person did the last presentation (the partner of Julia, who did a presentation for Ryan at the hospital instead, because we weren't sure she'd be out before everyone else left). Then we went to MBK, the giant shopping mall of Bangkok. It's not so great. Too much stuff to be able to enjoy it. Not many people from our class bought anything there. There are 7 floors, and each store has the same products as all the other stores on the floor. I don't know how they stay in business.

Then the group of 4 I was with grabbed the water taxi home. The water taxis have stops at different places along the river and canals, and you just wait on the side of the dock in the direction you want to go until the boat comes along. Then you climb in the boat, which was holding a couple dozen people, and a ticket lady walks around the outside of the boat on a small ledge (about 4 inches), and gives you a ticket for however much baht that taxi costs (9baht in this case). It's pretty fun. It's like a boatbus. We got out on the last stop, which is closest to our hotel, but is also in a super busy intersection with about 8 different roads coming into it, in a confusing area of Bangkok (aren't all areas of Bangkok confusing?). Hence, we got lost. Crossed a lot of roads, walked a lot. Finally, we gave in and got a tuktuk to bring us home. We paid 100baht to go about 6 blocks. However, they were 6 blocks we never would have thought to walk. We would have wandered for hours, lost, asking people for directions and getting different advice each time.

Anyway, we went to dinner at 6pm. We ate on a tourist dinner boat, with a dance show. Similar to the Lanna dinner when we left Chiang Mai, we got a show of traditional Thai dance and music. The food was as good and yet also as odd as the Lanna dinner. The boat trip was very nice though, and we had a good time. Dessert was fruit (pineapple, papaya and roseapple, which is delicious and you should try some if you can find it in the states) and traditional Thai dessert, which were all these gummy jelly things, and a prune, served in individual banana leaf bowls. Oddest things, but they tasted good.

When we got back, I went to get my finished suits. They look awesome, and I got 2 custom-tailored suits for 4000baht, or approximately $135 dollars. The jackets look best. I never look good in jackets, because my body type is too boyish for women's jackets, and men's jackets aren't fitted enough for me. I look great! Especially with my new haircut. I was also videotaped and photographed for their promotional material because I won their special promotion. Also, they included the garmet bag, which means I also have something in which to carry my winter coat! Thanks, komodo dragons! I appreciate the fortune you've brought me!

Now, since we leave for the airport at 3am, I'm going to go let fish eat my feet, maybe get a facial or something, and drink lots of coffee so I can sleep on the second flight and get a normal Minnesotan time sleep. I'll allow myself to sleep in 11 or 12hours, even though I've been up for 17 already today. I would rather get over jetlag fairly quickly.

Overall, I'm really glad I came to Thailand, and I am sad to be leaving, but I want to come back one day, and spend some time in other regions of Thailand and Asia.

Abroad Trip Day 23

Today was our second free day! I organized a trip to the beach (about 2 hours away) for 16 of us. Unfortunately, one is in the hospital with pneumonia, so only 15 of us went. It was so nice to go to the beach, though. The sun was hot, the breeze was cool and the water was like bathwater. We decided we were done with crazy tourist locations, so we went to the “locals” beach called Cha-am. More farang were on the beach than locals, but it was still much less crowded and fewer vendors. Lovely day overall, with a nice lunch of chicken burger with pineapple and a pineapple smoothie. Yum!

When we got back, I showered quickly, and then went to get adjustments on my custom-tailored suits. Hoorah! Now it's on to paper-writing. Boo...

Abroad Trip Day 22

Today we went on a touristy day with Tony, our tour guide. We left early in the morning, and started off the day at a meditation center. We pull up to the curb, and step out into this wonderland just outside of Bangkok. The meditation center is also a nunnery. No monks, only nuns. They're so cute with their shaved heads and white robes. Also, they are much nicer than the monk at the meditation center we went to before. Their garden is walled in, but you can hear the sounds of traffic and construction amid the sounds of fountains and birds. There was no large Buddha statue. Instead, a pagoda with a relic inside was in the center of the room, with circles of flowers surrounding it. Much less imposing when we're all in a circle, instead of facing the monk at the head of the room with a huge Buddha behind him. We did a quick prayer, then went outside for 10 minutes of meditation before the nun arrived. The nunnery was founded in 1988, and provides parenting classes to pregnant women and families (including single-parent families), in addition to the meditation retreats it offers. I wish we had done our meditation retreat there. Ah well. The nun we spoke to mostly translated Thai through Tony and her novice, but she could speak English a little, and was fluent in Hmong. She actually was Hmong, and was glad to talk to our Hmong-American students on the trip. We then took a tour of the center grounds. It is so peaceful and open, yet removed from the busy city. There were ponds and statues and winding forest paths, and new construction of a waterfall into the irrigation ditch, so it would be more part of nature.

After, she gave us books and sent us on our way to Ayutthaya. Ayutthaya was the old capital of Thailand until the early 1700s, when Burma invaded for the second time and destroyed most of the city. The ruins of the royal wats are still there, and that's what we went to see. The temple grounds are so extensive, and we could wander for an hour and not see the same place twice. The pagodas are mostly opened because they would place a persons valuables in them with their ashes when they died, so grave robbers have opened them and taken the gold, etc. Also, all of the Buddha statues (hundreds of them), are missing their heads. All of the gold has been removed, and the heads cut off to sell. Bad karma for the cutter, but lots of money, too. There is an iconic image of the head of a Buddha that has been absorbed by the roots of the bodhi tree, and the body disappeared. It was pretty cool to see. Almost as if the holy tree were retaining at least one head for the temple, when the rest were cut off and sold on the black market.

We then went to the Summer Palace, near Ayutthaya. This is where the royal family goes for the summer (thanks, Captian Obvious), and was the royal palace of the old Thai kingdom. There are many ponds there, and it's near a river, so it's easy to see why they go there in the summer. Natural air conditioning! Anyway, we took farang pictures with bushes shaped like animals, and walked around the grounds. We noticed a large reptile on the edge of a pond. Is that a baby crocodile? Then it turned to look at us. A komodo dragon! Cool! We then saw another and another, all in or around the ponds. We ran into Tony, who told us they had moved in and no one removed them. They used to be bad luck to see, but it changed when they were found on the palace grounds to mean fortune and wealth. I guess a cultural construct is easier to change than it would be to remove a dozen komodo dragons. He also told us they were wild and dangerous and we should keep our distance if we saw more. We then turned around the building we were near only to see three of our classmates about two feet from one of the dragons. One was trying to pet it. It was tasting the air. “Anna! Get back!” They didn't hear us. Finally, Katrina yells “Anna! Those are wild and dangerous!” They scurried back to the path quickly. You should youtube videos of komodo dragons hunting. Scary stuff!

Anyway, when we got back to the hotel, I noticed the tailor shop in the lobby was having their grand opening party. So, I go in and enter my name in the drawing for a free suit. I also tell everyone else in my class about it. Guess who won the free custom-made suit? I did! Guess the komodo dragon paid off, after all. I can pick it up tomorrow night! I also bought another one, because it's 4000baht, so $135 or so for a custom-made business suit. I was going to get one made anyway! One is black, and the other is grey pinstripe. It'll look great!