The GoGlobal Blog

Month: January 2017

a new taste of Thailand

a new taste of Thailand

วัดพระธาตุดอยสุเทพ- Wat Phra That Doi Suthep  
วัดพระธาตุดอยสุเทพ- Wat Phra That Doi Suthep

สวัสดีครับ Sawadeekrap!

Welcome to beautiful Thailand! Filled with stunning temples, smiling locals, spicy food, and a tai-kadai language, this authentic culture craves study from all disciplines. While sharing my unique adventures and pretty pictures, I aim more to delve into the vast abyss that is Thai culture, too often assumed to be pad thai, pretty girls, and white beaches.  With my background studying cultural anthropology, paired with language and political science, my time in Thailand will be focused on deconstructing the importance Thais place around their food, as well as how tourism has changed the meaning, practice, quality, and importance of eating as a Thai. Since a little kid drinking ชาเย็น chaa yen (Thai iced-tea), my mom instilled a passion for Thai cuisine. It is important for us, as humans who require sustenance, to appreciate the food we choose to eat. Anthropologist Gillian Crowther, author of Eating Culture (2013), reminds us of the function food plays in our lives. “Food is our everyday creative and meaningful engagement with nature through culture…humans don’t just randomly feed; we select, fashion, concoct, and make an edible assemblage that fits our imagining of food” (Crowther 2013:XVIII). Food, therefore, is the simplest form of the selective choice of environmental manipulation for human advancement. Changing the environment from object to artifact for the sole purpose of consumption creates the basic definition of a culture; placing hierarchical importance on objective material in a human’s life. Food, therefore, is vital for understanding any culture.

My first week in Thailand was overloaded with new flavors, textures, smells, and sights. With a home base at Uniloft in the neighborhood of สุเทพ Suthep close to the campus of Chiang Mai University, I am luckily far away from the touristy center of Old Town, where authenticity within cuisine is quickly diminishing. On ซอยเจ็ด Soi 7, carts serve dishes from ข้าวซอย Khao Soi (traditional chicken bone & beef liver soup) to  ข้าวไก่ทอด Khaw Gai Koah (fried chicken on rice). At my favorite restaurant, ขนมจีนหล่มเก่า หลัง มช kah nom thien loo khaw laam ngoo, I order ส้มตำ Som Tam, spicy papaya salad–crisp, refreshing, sour, sweet, salty, and spicy, all masterfully combined together in perfect proportions, leaving your mouth in awe of its magic.

 ส้มตำ Som Tam
ส้มตำ Som Tam

All these dishes are prepared by one woman cooking on a single burner stove, with 1 wok, 1 knife, and 1 spoon. Watching these chefs prepare the 30 orders that come in at the same time is a miracle in itself. No measurements, just different spoonfuls of น้ำปลา nam plaa (fish sauce), น้ำตาล shugar, น้ำมะนาว nam manow (lemon juice), พริก prik (chili), and ถั่วเหลืองหมัก khoon loo mak (fermented soy paste). It is amazing that different combinations of these simple ingredients create such a varying palate that defines Thai food.

Since I have been here, two Thai students have reached out to help me and Christian, an ethnographic film major, with our Thai and learning the ins and outs of Chiang Mai on their motorbikes. Recently, Mew and Chitsa took us out to try a Thai dessert, ขนม kha-nom (literally ‘dessert’). This cereal of coconut milk, ice shavings, corn, stale bread, green noodles, and fermented water chestnuts coated in a waxy red sugar was devoured by my new friends. Even for my adventurous diet, watery coconut milk with salty corn didn’t sit well with me. Despite my intolerance for the dish, Mew and Chitsa were ecstatic that two Americans were willing to try something so foreign. Their positive attitude and excitement made me feel at home in such a new environment. Their smiles and laughs were parallel to that of many Thais, where my desire to share in their local culture makes thems proud of their heritage and traditions. That makes me feel great, showing someone that what makes them who they are is valued in the eyes of someone completely different from them. So, I look forward to continue try new things, learn more Thai, and become as local as possible with my three new adventurers.

Christian, Chitsa, Mew, and myself
Christian, Chitsa, Mew, and myself

 

 

Learning Curve

Learning Curve

“I’ll be leaving the country in January.” “Oh, where to/what for?” “I’ll be studying abroad in Vietnam for four months”.

 

A nice thought, this more or less summarizes more than half of the conversations I’ve been having over the past month or two in preparing to leave for my first semester abroad. It never fully felt real, although I heard myself saying the words and the excitement in my voice. I had traveled before, and had in fact led a trip abroad for high school students to Costa Rica, so of course I was ready for my time abroad.

 

Hell no.

 

I boarded the plane just over a week ago, said goodbye to friends and family I wouldn’t see until May, and set off for what I thought would just start to push me outside of my comfort zone. After making great friends with the people next to me, handling the first 15 hour leg of the flight like an old pro (even giving advice to people who hadn’t done it before – I am a straight fraud, everything I know I learned from Pinterest), and enjoying a free hotel because of a missed connecting flight, I believed I had it all figured out.

 

To give you context, I’m a biology major turned international studies circa sophomore year with another major in sociology, and if I’m passionate about two things, it’s about pushing outside of my comfort zone and building authentic, raw relationships with people. I chose the Vietnam center for a combination of reasons, ranging from the fact that my scholarship applies to this program to not having any prior context for Vietnam to wanting the most intense adventure I could find. I’m a lead facilitator for Loyola’s experiential education office, Ramble Outdoors, and am pursuing a career in adventure education. More or less, the combination of outdoor adventure and working with people is kind of my thing. Even in the first week I have absolutely seen how lucky I am to have the opportunity to study abroad in a country like Vietnam.

 

Meeting some of our partners for the first time and exploring district 10 together!
Meeting some of our partners for the first time and exploring district 10 together!

 

I was the first to arrive for our program, which has a total of 16 people. No emotion had hit me yet of the fact that I was leaving for a few months and it won’t fully hit me for a few weeks more. That night I walked around by myself trying to do my best to look like I knew what I was doing. The air tasted sweet although the fumes of the motorbikes often overpower it. Vietnam has already flipped my world upside down in some ways and I love it. With having a smaller program, there are so many perks, especially having Vietnamese partner students. Their kindness has been overwhelming and I’ll talk a little bit more about them later on. Vietnam is a lot to take in at once, and in 7 days I’ve already been drenched in a rainstorm while riding on the back of a motorbike, struggled through language barriers to the point of frustration, made travel plans for the upcoming holiday, maneuvered through a few of the districts of the city, and tasted more food than I could have imagined. While I still have an incredible amount of cultural and linguistic wisdom to catch up on, I couldn’t be happier to be studying at the Loyola Vietnam Center.

 

IMG_0807 (1)

 

As someone passionate about adventure and having been challenged and pushed to my limits in several other aspects of my life, I’m so excited to start my journey through Vietnam and discover what this semester is going to mean for me. I firmly believe that travel holds such powerful meaning for one’s life and keeps one from limiting their own life to a narrow worldview.

 

Life is not meant to be lived in one place, and while traveling this melcouth world takes courage, life is meant to be lived creatively and the benefits of studying abroad have already proved to be ineffable.

 

As Maslow once revered, “In any given moment we have two options: To step forward into growth or step back into safety.”

 

Today, and for the rest of the semester, I’m choosing to step forward.