Home Sweet Home . . . and Vegetables

It's small, it's cute, it's home!!!! This is my house - a small, tan, cement structure in the middle of Thailand . . . somedays it's still hard to believe. The building you can see behind my house and to the left is the health center, where they have aerobics each night - I hop the fence and join them most nights, if I don't I have to sit at home and listen to it anyway, which makes me feel guilty and lazy for not doing what I can for the only body I'll be given in this life. Thai aerobics is hilarious and always worth the 5 second walk - the instructors have no training and usually no sense of rhythm, so it tends to be an hour of randomly bouncing around in an attempt to mimic the coach who has absolutely no idea what a successful hour of exercise looks like. I mostly stand in the back and laugh until my stomach hurts - I've decided that laughter is a kind of exercise in and of it self.

Back to my house!!! It is one floor, covered in blue tile (except for the really and truly intelligent person who decided to break that pattern and tile the entire bathroom in WHITE - which is now a yellowish brown, that no amount of bleach has been able to bring back to a clean shine!), two bedrooms, a living space, and a kitchen. The floor is tiled in blue, the refrigerator is blue, the washing machine is blue, my bookshelf is blue, my night stand is blue, my table is blue, my sheets, pillows, and blankets are blue . . . I don't mind blue, but there is a lot of it here and I seem to acquire more everyday.

The picture above is what you see when you enter the front door - I tried taking pictures of each room, but they are so small that my camera only caught little bits of them . . . pretty ineffective. Aside from the wealth of blue, I have an abundance of cement! The property surrounding my home does not have a blade of grass, no dirt, not a pebble of gravel . . . I am completely trapped by cement. I don't mind the cement because it is easy to take care of, but it is extremely hot and the lack of foliage around turns my house into something of a target for the suns scorching fingers. My house is the hottest house in my tambone and my neighbors think that if they tell me it is the hottest house in all of Thailand on a daily basis I will somehow be able to shade it from the suns burning stare. Unfortunately I have no such powers and spend a lot of time at a rolling boil.

Again, the cement doesn't really bother me, but I was looking really forward to planting and caring for a garden. I mentioned this desire to my landlord (also my principal), and co-workers and they made it happen . . . in fact they made it happen almost immediately. I have sinks that leak, a hot water heater that doesn't work, a door that locks but does not un-lock, and only one fan - all things I mention on a regular basis in hopes to have them fixed (I even put them on one of Abby's all famous lists and gave them to anyone I thought had the authority to see the tasks completed). I had a single, brief, and fleeting conversation in which I brought up the desire to grow my own vegetables and three hours later large CEMENT planter rings were set up in the back of my house and filled with soil. I was all set to plant a plentiful garden in no time . . . I am still waiting for the sinks to stop leaking, to take a hot shower, and to spend a day enjoying the breeze of an abundance of fans.

The following day my second co-worker and a couple of her neighbors came to pick me up and take me to the beach for the afternoon. They all heard about my new garden and wanted to come take a look at what I hoped to grow - they were outraged that the planters were put in a place which received little to no shade (I'm not sure they understood that there was no such place on my property). The rest of the day was spent discussing my need for an up-graded garden. I shook my head and agreed, but knew that what I got was what I had and there wasn't much I could do about it.

There was something, however, that they could do about it and they fully intended to. The next morning I was ripped from my sleep by a truk's horn and shouts of my name . . . I was a bit disconcerted, as it was 6:00 a.m. and I wasn't familiar with the voices. I got out of bed, unlocked my door, and was facing the men that could not let "their" volunteer live in a home that wasn't perfect. They brought lumber, tools, all the necessary elements for building a cover for my garden and then some. They spent the rest of the morning building me, what they call a slant, and then wandering around fixing anything else they could in and on my house. It rained that night and the next morning things started sprouting, my water doesn't leak, and my door easily locks and un-locks. I will likely never see these men again, but there will be more - Thai people are generous in a way that most of the world struggles to understand. I must have thanked them a thousand times, offered to pay for things, buy them lunch, get them something cold to drink - they stared at me blankly and said, "you needed this done, we did it, we don't want anything from you." Home sweet home . . . and vegetables.