The Soi Dog

Time for another creature feature! The pictures above are a Peace Corps Volunteer in Thailands greatest foe. This is the soi dog...soi meaning street in Thai. These are perfect stereotypical examples of what a soi dog looks like. Sometimes they are bigger, smaller, a different color, have longer or shorter hair....but they are always mangy, always filthy dirty, and are almost always stray. Thailand is infested with dogs! Most of these dogs are homeless and the ones that arnt are allowed to run around free. Thai people almost never fix their animals. Thus, they are always breeding with each other increasing the ever growing population of dogs. I often times see dogs mating with each other, dogs locked together( which is really sad because no one helps them), and mama dogs with saggy teats. The reason they are especially a nuisence is because they are usually very mean. Unless an animal is a lap dog, dogs in Thailand are treated as nothing more than a guard for homes. At night they are especially vicious and will often times form packs. I have more than once been chased down by a pack of dogs, one time half of my sandal got bitten off. Its also not uncommon to see dogs wandering around with muzzles if they are known to have bitten someone. Kicking and hitting dogs is not something to be ashamed of or thought of as mean here...its often times a matter of survival!

Where the Heart is

Where the Heart is by Billie Letts is a story about a 17 year old girl who gets pregnant by her boyfriend and then they start a drive to California. In Oklahoma Novalee, the main character, has to use the bathroom so her boyfriend stops at Walmart and leaves her stranded there. She then lives at the Walmart until she eventually gives birth there. She becomes a star over night and makes friends that truely love her. She starts living and working in the town where she learns about friendship, life, and love.
I Loved this book! I couldnt put it down. I give it a 5 out of 5. It really reminded me of home a lot. Its so personal and so well written. I felt like I really knew the characters and feel like Ive known people like them in the states. I think anyone can identify with the people in this book....Its a great read!

A Cure for Homesickness

This last Tuesday night I was feeling a bit homesick...as I do from time to time. I called Bom to tell him and he invited me out to a Pub with a few of his friends. This past week I have done nothing but sit in my house and read, as school is still closed, so I said sure why not. This picture is of Nu, me and X.
This is the infamous three....Nu, X, and Bom. These pictures were taken at about 2 oclock down by the river. It was such a fun night that definitly cured me of my homesickness.

The Memory Keeper's Daughter

This week I have read The Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards. It is the story of a father who delivers his wifes fraternal twins into the world. The daughter is born with downs syndrome. He gives the girl to the nurse helping him and asks her to take her to an institution, telling his wife the girl died. The nurse runs off and raises the child on her own. The story is basically about the parallel lives of the two families and how the father deals with the guilt of it all.
I give this book a 4.5 out of 5. It is such a beautiful book with often times very poetic writing. I really enjoyed this book and think any mother, teacher, or person who knows a mentally disabled person would really enjoy it.

MMMMMM Tastes like chicken!

I keep meaning to post a picture of an insect food stand. In almost every city and village there are stands that sell deep fried insects. These are delicacies to Thai people and go for quite a hefty price per kilo. I have only eaten a silk worm one time. Basically fried insects just taste like fried anything else. It all just has a fatty fried flavor. Only this fatty fried flavor sometimes comes with wings, legs, and eyes!

The Vegan Festival

Right now my town is having what is known as Tesegon Jay...or the Vegan Festival. In Thailand, it is a very highly respected thing when people are vegetarians, but very few people actually are. They respect them because its part of the Buddhist religoun. Monks are suppose to be vegetarians, but very few actually are. At any rate, at the end of every October, for two weeks, my town celebrates veganism with a festival. All over town there are food venders set up selling vegan food. In this picture you can see the yellow flags.
The yellow flags mean they are selling food with no meat or animal
bi-products.
This is a picture of some of the awesome vegan food being sold. The last time I posted pictures of food I got a lot of people saying...that looks discusting. Looks arnt everything. Thai food is awesome because of how flavorful it really is. As a vegetarian myself...I love this time of year because I dont have to give off a list of things I dont want them to put in my food. Generally if I tell them I dont want any meat, they think that just means pork and go ahead and put chicken in my food...thus, I have to give them lists of all the possible meat that they cant put in it, unless its a place I go regurally!

The Hobbit

The Hobbit...There and Back Again is by J.R.R. Tolkien. It is about a little hobbit that goes on a journey with a group of dwarves to recover the treasure that the dragon Smaug has stolen from their family years and years ago. Lots of adventures happen on the way with elves, giant spiders, goblins, and men.

I give this book a 5 out of 5. It was really captivating from beginning to end. Its a literary classic that truly deserves being called a classic because its a story that is written so that anyone at any age and in any period of time can enjoy this book.

One Hundred Years of Solitude

One Hundred Years of Solitude is by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. This is a very hard book to describe what happened because it is not mearly one story, but what seems like hundreds. The umbrella story is about one family and their struggles of helping to start the new town of Marcondo in Mexico.
I give this book a 3.5 out of 5. I really did struggled through this book. It all comes together in the last chapter, literally on the last page and makes the book wonderful. Once I finished it and had read the whole book, along with that last page, I had a great appreciation for this book. But to actually get to that last page took some real work and a lot of just reading for readings sake. This book is the Nobel Prize winner for Literature in 1982, thus it is an important piece of literature.
Marquez's writing style is really wonderous. He is truely a master of storytelling. The only problem is that there are too many stories and too many characters in this book. I constantly had to kept flipping through and figuring out who each character was, as it is about a family who grows to be very large and its about a family for a hundred years. Even though it was a hard book to read it had a lot of really good, interesting, and well written stories within it.

India 1

One of the great thing about being a Peace Corps Volunteer are the great holidays you get the chance to go on. The first two weeks of this month a fellow volunteer, Becky and I, went to India. Here are just a few of my pictures. This picture is in Dehli. It is a picture of the spice market.

These are bangals. Indian women will often wear many of these around their wrists. I particularly like this picture because of the homeless woman sitting behind this brighly colored jewlery. Its a perfect example of the amazing amount of poverty there.
This is a picture of boys bathing in the streets. If poor people are lucky enough to have homes, they may not have proper facilities inside. Many of the streets in Dehli had pumps on the streets for bathing.
This is a picture of Humayun's Tomb. This is the tomb of a Humayun. It is made out of red sandstone and white marble. It was really amazing.
Another interesting thing about India are the cows. There are cows everywhere! Cows are considered sacred here and thus not eaten or owned by anyone. They just roam the streets free as you please.

India 2

This is Udaipur...my favorite city I visited. It is known for its many palaces, especially those floating in the center of the lakes.














We happen to come to India during its holiday season. There were many festivals and parades going on while we were there. This is just one of the many parades.
















Here is a picture of the castle known as city palace. It was really beautiful inside with lots of history. There were also lots of monkeys running around in this city.
While we went shopping, one of the shop keepers dressed us up in traditional Indian wear. Below is a picture of Indian women in a procession at night.

India 3

This is Pushkar. This city was absolutly magical. Its in a valley surrounded by mountains and the desert. It is one of the holiest cities in India. People come from all over India just to bathe in the lake in the center of town. The picture below is also in Pushkar. Becky and I got to go on a camel safari in the desert.


This picture is totally worth of national geographic! This is Beckys guide and her camel at a rest stop.
We would often times be surronded by children that would say one photo...befcause they wanted you to take their photos. Then they would often times ask you for money or a pen. Lesson: if you come to India, bring lots of pens to give to the many children who beg.
This picture is in Jaipur. Jaipur is known as the pink city because it is a law here that all buildings must be painted pink. This is the Hawa Mahal. It seems very ornate on the outside, but is complete bare and boring on the inside. It was designed so royal women could look through the many holes in this castle at the street, without being noticed by the public.

India 4

These are tombs for some kings and his family over looking the tiger fort....this is in Jaipur.

This is the Amber fort. This place was just huge! We were there for like an hour and a half and got lost lots of times. We had only seen a small portion of it by the time we decided to leave.
Here are some women in the Amber fort. They were doing construction inside and these women were carrying rubble out of it. This is how most people carry large loads in India.
Here is Becky in Agra pretending to climb the Taj Mahal.
Here I am in front of the Taj Mahal. This trip was amazing, but you definitly need to have a thick skin to go here.