My Peace Corps Soundtrack (Vol. 3)
Join Seón as he takes a dive into the music of his Peace Corps service. Come for the great tunes, stay for the stories.
Seón Tromble, 137 TESS
It’s been too long since I added to this series so let me catch you up on what’s been going on in my life in the intervening months.
School finally began in mid May. We had that awkward phase where I was trying to figure out my school and they were trying to figure me out. My strategy for that was to really insist on myself. Yeah I’m a random American that pulled up to your school. I look different, I act different, I teach different. That’s the program.
I think the ability to be comfortable being different is such a crucial skill for a PCV. Chances are you will be thought strange and you will be judged for it. And that’s alright. We’re exchanging culture, not assimilating. It’s not an easy skill to pick up either. I’m a wily vet now but it took me a long time to develop that comfort during my first service in Tanzania.
So I got through that awkward period and settled into a rhythm. My co-teachers and I have continued to evolve and improve a partnership that works for us. I’m learning so much about my students. I’ve gone to funerals and monk ordinations and all kinds of other celebrations. I’m starting to be viewed as a community member rather than an outsider. I’ve established routines for exercise and struck a healthy balance between alone time and host family time.
I’ve been spending the last three months learning by doing. And after all those months soaking up all that information about my community, my school, my co-teachers and my students; I got to bring it all to reconnect (early service training) conference.
You see, in pre service training (PST) we learn the general stuff about working and living in Thailand to try to prepare us to go to our sites. But now at reconnect we can take all those things we learned at PST and reevaluate them in the context of our sites to strategize and plan with our counterparts (who joined us at the conference).
Plus I got to see all the other volunteers in my cohort. I got so many good ideas from other volunteers that I’ve already implemented at site. Of course, we also bounced around plenty of bad ideas like “session is at 8 tomorrow but one more beer couldn't hurt” or “let’s blow way too much money on charcuterie.”
Ok the charcuterie was worth it.
After reconnect I had some time to travel so I visited an island called Koh Samet (“koh” means island in Thai so to a Thai speaker like me it's just called Samet 😎) with some other volunteers.
I helped run a two day English camp at another volunteer’s site.
I got a shipment of books from the States to set up an English section in my school’s library.
I started playing pick up soccer with some other guys in the village on weekends.
I attended a monk ordination (in my roman catholic mind religion = solemn, but this was a big two day party).
I visited my student’s homes to formally meet their families.
I went to Bangkok for Pride.
Vol. 3: Vignettes
Basically, I’ve been busy.
And like I said earlier, it’s been too long since I’ve added to this series.
I feel bad about that.
So for this volume of My Peace Corps Soundtrack I want to do something a little special.
Below, I’ve picked three songs to go with three different short stories that highlight three aspects of my life as a volunteer. School life, inter-vounteer relationships, and home life.
Santigold - Disparate Youth
Working at Thai schools keeps you on your toes. Sometimes communication is not the best and schedules are fluid. We don’t always get much (or any) warning for meetings we’re expected to attend or classes that get canceled. And students… well students say and do the wildest things.
At the beginning of the school year is a day called Wai Kru day. It’s a teacher celebration ceremony with speeches and then an exchange between students and teachers where students will present teachers with these flower trophy display things.
And teachers will in turn give students a blessing for the school year to come. It’s a very sweet event and was really special to be involved in.
Fast forward to the end of the ceremony. I’m taking a minute to really look at the student displays they had gifted the teachers.
As I got to a display at the end of the line I froze.
No, can’t be.
I look to my side, where my co-teacher is watching me with a huge shit-eating grin on her face.
I look back at the bright pink sphere of styrofoam with smaller pieces of styrofoam sticking off of it. The smaller pieces look a bit like white raindrops with wiggling tails. Each one has a student’s face printed out and glued to it. On the top there’s a larger white piece with their teacher’s face pasted on it.
“Do you know what that is? It’s for their biology teacher.”
I CACKLED.
These kids really made a sperm fertilizing an egg, put all their faces on it, and then gave it to their biology teacher as a gift.
Sixth grade, hats off to you.
A.M. 180 - Grandaddy
If you come down, we’ll go to town
I haven’t been there for years
But I’d be fine wasting our time
Not doing anything here
Just doing nothing
PCVs work hard. And we spend weeks at a time in our villages which, honestly, can be difficult. That’s nothing against our villages, but it absolutely can be difficult to spend extended periods of time surrounded by people that come from a fundamentally different background than you and with whom communication is not the easiest. They can be loving, supportive, and kind, and sometimes you still just want to sit down and have a beer with someone who shares your mother tongue.
I think part of it is the idea of “absence makes the heart grow fonder”. Here’s a fun fact for you: the word for “rice” in Thai is the same word as “food”. Which makes sense with how ubiquitous rice is. After weeks of rice for every meal, a mediocre pizza or burger tastes incredible. After weeks stumbling through conversation in Thai a chat in English hits like a cold sprite on a summer day. After getting excited about biking 10 miles just to visit the closest 7-11, spending a night in a city with stuff in walking distance is the pinnacle of excitement.
It’s also the relief of letting your hair down after a few long weeks. To be able to stop being "Teacher Seón” for a few nights and get to be “young adult Seón in a fun and exciting place” instead.
I’m telling you, a PCV meet up is the place to be.
So let me tell you about a night that I consider a perfect 10.
I was staying at a hostel in Bangkok’s Chinatown with some other volunteers the night before our reconnect conference began. We were all pretty tired when we first met up so we spent some time sitting in the lounge catching up. Which was nice because it had been months since I’d seen any of them.
For dinner we decided to pool our money and get a little bit of this and a little bit of that for everyone to share. I grabbed some steamed buns from one shop, others got dumplings, fried rice, meat skewers, desserts, and, of course, beer.
After an absolute feast, we cleaned up and pulled out the beers. Now if you know me, you know I love a good game at the function. This night I taught the other volunteers a game called “liar’s dice” (if you’ve never played, look it up, it’s from one of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies and it's a blast) and we played until we started to run out of beer.
Now here’s the crucial moment, the decision point if you will. There are a ton of really cool bars and speakeasies in Chinatown. I had suggested a Chinatown bar crawl. Liar’s dice and beer was only supposed to be the pregame for a night out. But as the beer ran out and we met each other’s eyes someone suggested…
“Should we… should we go grab some more beer and bring it back here?”
I’m going to tell you right now, we didn’t go out at all that night. By the time someone suggested we finally make our way to a bar they had all closed already. Instead we stayed in and taught each other new games called (I can, world’s greatest expert, contact). We had some more drinks. We laughed, and talked, and were glad to be together.
And we had a 10/10 night.
I'll Be Here Awhile - 311
My host family consists of a mom and dad, the grandma on the mom’s side, the grandpa on the dad’s side, and my host sister, Focus. Focus is one of my 4th grade students and when I first moved in she HATED me.
To be fair, her parents gave me her room. She had also just started school vacation and her parents kept pressuring her to speak English with me when all she wanted to do was run around with her friends.
I wouldn’t have liked me either.
It took time and effort to win Focus over. A big step came a few weeks into school when she turned ten. That evening we had dinner and cake at the house. After clearing the plates my host dad brought out a present. Then my host mom brought out a present. Then the host grandparents brought out their presents and I’m panicking thinking I can’t be the only person at this table without a present.
I mean, am I really going to eat the ice cream cake (which was delicious) and then sit here watching Focus open presents like “oh actually that one is from all of us”?
Absolutely not.
So I excuse myself from the table and run back to my room.
“Damn, what do ten-year-old girls like?”
I realized I held on to a gift bag my host mom gave me when I left PST. Perfect.
I also have a journal I haven’t opened yet.
Well she’s either gonna like this or it’ll be her teacher saying “hey kid, write more.”
Now for my ace in the hole.
I have a pair of goofy sunglasses I brought with me all the way from Tanzania. They’ve got a pink rim with a little plastic cat between the eyes. But wait there’s more. Those pink rims flip up to reveal blue rims with clear lenses underneath. Going inside? Flip the cat shades up. Going out? Flip ‘em back down.
Oh yeah that’s going in the bag.
I didn’t get her the best gift of the night. I think that superlative goes to my host grandma. When Focus unwrapped those shower towels her face lit up in the way that only an inside joke can make a face light up.
But I will note that at the end of the night when Focus went back to her room she left her gifts on the table for her parents to bring inside. That is, all the gifts except for the shower towel and the pair of glasses.
