"Are you lost or a teacher?"

"To be friends is the best. Please be happy in Ubon, you teach and help Thai students and this will be the best way to make the world more beautiful" -Pilaiporn, my new neighbor/friend

This one little comment on my Facebook has been making me think a lot the past couple of days.  It all started when the Chinese teacher Sumin and I decided to take a mini-bus trip into town to get some lunch during our week off.  It was just us and a tiny Thai woman, nothing out of the ordinary.  I noticed she was staring at me (also an everyday occurrence), but then the strangest thing happened...an amazingly cohesive English sentence came out of her mouth!

"Are you lost or a teacher?"

My lovely friend Pilaiporn on the left!

Both, perhaps?  To be honest, sometimes I feel so lost here in this different culture.  But she was expecting one or the other (she knew it had to be one because there are no other foreigners her she told me later haha), so I told her we were teachers at the local school close to the bus stop. And with that we started a conversation, that led to her calling her friend to pick us up, taking us to a steakhouse for lunch, taking us to sing karaoke, shopping and finally back to her house (she lives a five minute walk from my house!) where she cooked us a pasta dinner. Pasta. In Thailand. That doesn't just happen! She yelled out to the neighbor men and suddenly we had rides on the back of motorcycles to our homes. She also said I could drive her car, motorcycle or bicycle whenever...and this to the strange farang she had met only hours before!

Life is utterly quirky here.  One moment I am going out to have some noodles with a friend and next I'm singing and dancing with old Thai men, learning the dirty words in Thai and driving around with my new friend Pilaiporn.  Making friends and becoming a part of someone's life here is seamless---you go from nothing to a daughter in one fluid motion and no one bats in eyelash.  In America, it takes the trial period to gain trust or some close connection or acquaintance for hospitality to be extended in such a way.  Here, it is as natural as breathing to extend yourself and take someone under your wing and to give them everything you have.  Nothing is off-limits, personal, protected.  Western culture prizes independence, self-reliance and the accumulation of things that are 'yours'---family, home, money and so on, but I am gradually loosening my grip on those things and am able to see the beauty in the collective spirit of Thailand.  We eat together, many hands reach into the same basket of sticky rice and it a beautiful, messy, communal experience.

Although I think independence will always be ingrained in me, being here allows me to see it in a different perspective.  Why are Americans so intent on self-improvement and 'getting theirs', whether it be through education, relationships or work, that they only see their families once a year?  How can it be that I go months without talking to a friend, and still call them 'friend'?  The individualism that pervades our culture is taken to an unhealthy level and I think being in Thailand has forced me to reexamine something that has been status quo for me.  After this year, I don't want move away from my family and those I love for the sake of 'starting my own life' or the need pioneer some new existence for myself.  There is beauty in togetherness.

My Chinese friend Sumin's first steak! I taught her how to use a fork and knife :)