Beautiful People, Beautiful Place

A view of the mountains behind my side of the campus

The path through the jungle and banana orchard

Climbing the hill through the banana plants

The view of the Burmese mountains across the river

More mountains on the Thai side of the river

I think the movie uploaded as a gif, but at least you can get an idea of what it's like up on top of the hill

Chit Chit Way, Hannah, Sabrina, Naw Hsa Hay Blu Paw

Naw Hsa Hay Blu Paw

Chah Sa Nay Aye, Sharon, Sabrina, Paw Eh Thoe, Hannah, and Naw Hsa Hay Blu Paw

Cha Sa Nay Aye and Hannah

Sabrina and Naw Hsa Hay Blu Paw

Sharon, Paw Eh Thoe, and Sabrina

Sabrina, Jaw Nyunt Aye, and Sharon

It's been kind of quiet around Sunshine Orchards this week. The students are still on break until Sunday, although some may return today. There have been only around 90 students on campus during break. It's amazing that there are that many of them, because you don't see them all at once unless it's for morning or evening worships, and it never seems like 90 people. Maybe that is because the students are all pretty small and they sit very close together.
People here don't have the same amount of personal space as people in more modern countries.
In fact, everything about the way they interact is different.
At any given time, you can go visit someone in their house, without letting them know you are coming. You can just go up to their hut, clear your throat, and walk right in. Or, you don't even have to let them know you're there. It's all good. We're family here.
As we walk back from Mae Salid (about a 5 k walk), we pass a few villagers and they all greet us, though we don't know them. When we are in town, eating or whatever, sometimes we become the center of attention as overly friendly guys start filming us with their phones. They smile at us, and try to speak English, but we are not charmed. They are all somewhat drunk, and who knows what they want our pictures for, anyway. It's not the time for us to be sweet, friendly girls. We turn our faces away and tell them to stop. Then, they don't seem to understand English anymore.
A few days ago we went to Mae Sot, which is the nearest big town. It's about two hours away
Because it's so far, we spent the whole day there, from 6 am to 4 pm. We ate at the same place for breakfast and lunch; imagine coconut potato curry, taro stir fry, ginger fried rice, pad siew, mango-coconut smoothie...it was amazing. Mae Sot has bigger stores, including the chain store Tesco-Lotus, which is a two-story building with a food court and little stores on the bottom and a Walmart-type store on the top. We also went to a walking market, which is several narrow streets full of vendors, people, and merchandise. The ground was wet and muddy, and the vendors were selling clothes, food, everyday necessities, and more under separate awnings or umbrellas. We passed by buckets of live snails, eels, goldfish, and baby catfish, pig heads, dead fish, and other extremely gross items being sold for food. That part of the market was somewhat sickening. I held my breath sometimes, and tried not to think about what was there. Actually, the best part of the market was so good that I didn't mind all the gross smells and sights. I didn't find anything that I would actually wear, but all the clothes were so much fun to look at! I am so fascinated by clothes, styles, and fashions, that I have dreams about clothing. The styles that I see in my dreams are usually like nothing I've ever seen before, but when I went to the market, I found a lot of styles that looked similar to what I've seen in my dream. That was exciting.
(Don't judge me; different things are important to different people. : )

Baby Catfish, or something like that. The bowl in the corner is full of snails.

Live eels!

 

Goldfish!

It's really hilarious to see the English words some clothing have printed on them. I have seen shirts that proclaimed, "I have a great pressure of work today!"
Some shirts have the word, "Boy" printed all over them, as if it's a brand name.
I think a lot of the English writing printed has been directly translated from the local language, so it doesn't always work quite right.
Here are some note books I found.

The cutest. notebook. ever!

True, that.

 

The one I took home with me. : )

So going to town was fun. However, about half-way through the day, I heard myself thinking, "Man, get me out of all this civilization!"
So there you have it. I have begun to love living in the jungle in a hut, eating rice and yellow beans or bamboo shoots for every meal, and sleeping on the floor. It's second nature to take my shoes off when entering a building, and I think when I come back home, I'll be disgusted with everyone else wearing shoes inside.
Last night I went to cook some ramen, and upon opening the bag, discovered that the noodles were swarming with miniature ants! What do you think I did?
I'll tell you. Food costs money! I boiled the ants, and strained that ramen until it was ant-free. And then I ate it. And it was good.
I probably wouldn't have done that in the States. I probably would have screamed and run away.
So you see, it's been a rather life-changing couple of weeks here.
I like it here.
We'll see what life is like when I actually start teaching.