Sarah Kellogg -- Thailand (THS)

It was just coming up on five when the first rooster crowed setting into action a snowball of crowing roosters. I rolled over and closed my eyes, soaking up those last few moments of sleep until the chorus of roosters and dogs became too much to ignore.

At six I emerged from my room. Outside the village was wide-awake, though the hot Thai sun was just beginning to show its face above the lush green mountains. I brushed my teeth using the gourds that hung on the side of the house to scoop water from wooden jugs. I made my way to the "hung naam" (bathroom) and washed myself in the cold water. Then I did some dishes in the large cement tub where the hose water pooled. At 6:30 my mom gave me a mug of warm soymilk, such was our routine.

Sometime after breakfast I left my house with a lunch pail and an umbrella in hand and headed down the dirt road toward the village store. The dog across the street barked at me, and pulled at the rope that kept him away from me, he did this every morning. Perhaps he felt shame at being the only dog in the village that was leashed and so he tried to intimidate the "ferong" (foreigner). Mostly however, I was greeted warmly each morning. The villagers smiled and I waved, forgetting that such a familiar gesture was not in the Thai custom. But soon enough the old lady that gardened every morning in a big straw hat was waving back to me, and the old man whose deck I could see from my window waved to me first.

And like such was the merging of two cultures that ensued. A group of 11 students who came from homes scattered across the America's found themselves becoming a part of something much larger than waving to a Thai neighbor or drinking soymilk with a host mother that spoke a different language. I was one of these students, learning how much the world extends beyond New York, beyond all the states, and across oceans.

But then even more that learning how large the world is, what I came to realize is how small it is; how close we all live to each other, and how similar we are. My house in Thailand had four rooms. The walls were thin and made from wooden boards that stopped just short of the roof. Our kitchen had a one burner stove with a propane tank where my mother cooked every meal. Then there was the fireplace, over which an enormous wooden pot filled with tea would steam every night. Other than that the room was empty. There was no furniture except a mattress leaned up against a wall that we would use to sit on and watch TV at night after all the work was done. We sat on the floor to eat, and we used our fingers instead of utensils. At first glance this was a life so different from any I had ever experienced. But I knew right away that it really was very much the same.

My first night in the village I mistook a chilly pepper for a string bean and so I ate it. And as the tears were rolling down my cheeks and I was chugging water, my host family did just what any American family I know would do, they laughed. Actually we all laughed. That was the first connection I made with my family, and it humored me that my host family reacted in such a way that my family at home would have.

When I got home weeks later I sat with my little cousins telling them about my trip to a country they had probably never heard of at the ages of 5 and 7. They liked the little wooden frogs I'd brought back though, and were eager to hear more about the snakes I'd seen and about my village where the coffee and tea grew right outside. They asked me what my house had been like, and so I told them. I told them how we cooked, how we showered with buckets of water, and how hard my parents worked picking the tea and the coffee. Then the older of the two asked me "Were they poor?"

I had to think about it. Yes, they were poor in that they didn't have indoor plumbing, or couches, or many of the things that we take for granted. But then I thought about my family. They had time to laugh, and play soccer, and they were never at loss for good food. Their daughters were educated. And most importantly, in the village there was a sense of community and of responsibility for each other that I had never really known at home. So it really didn't matter very much what they didn't have. They had enough.

When I came back home everyone wanted to know how my trip was. I told them it was good, and the conversation moved on, there was just too much to tell, it was something that had to be experienced and could never really be explained. This trip allowed me to become a part of a world that was thousands of miles away from mine, but that in many ways I was already apart of. I formed connections that I know will last forever and learned the Thai spirit of humility and of hospitality. Thank you EIL!