Norming

As I write this, the evening monsoon is pouring down it's greatest attempt ever to cleanse this city of cities.  It's as if a special effects man is standing on my roof literally heaving buckets of water over the edge, while thunder rumbles across the sky.  And I think to myself, ok.  Rain.  That's normal.  Monsoons, that's not normal.
I do this as an exercise, so I can start to see how I can "normalize" life here in Thailand.  I think it helps to identify those things that are "normal" (such as internet, Cartoon Network, and my iTunes playing Ani DiFranco) and juxtapose them against the things that are not "normal" (such as riding a scooter to work, the Thai soap operas ...they've gotten worse... and this apartment as 'home').  The hope is that eventually, my list of "normal" starts to get longer as I get used to things here, and "not normal" remains a fixed list of those things that I recognize as those things to which I can't or won't normalize against.
In case you were wondering, it's quite unlike being here as a Peace Corps volunteer.  Then I was clearly a stranger in a strange land.  The token "farang," Western within the door of my home but constantly adapting to Thailand whenever I stepped outside.  It took me a while, but I got used to that life- my soy milk lady knew when I had been away for a few days ("maksidad, mah deh sai?  by nan luy, dur!") and the MeKong River was always welcoming when I came to see what color the water was that day.  This norming happened to all of us, all you guys who lived with me here at that time.  Dare tell me you don't occasionally jones for some sticky rice and grilled chicken, I'll tell you "ya gohok, se." Didn't we all learn to live without tv, no phone, no internet...when we learned to live closely with ourselves, exercise unimaginable patience in unbelievably boring situations, and develop some language skills that totally kicked "dooh" by the time we all left, specifically because we never wanted to go through life without knowing what it was like somewhere totally different?
Well, it's not like that here in Farang Village, aka "Nichada Thani."  Within the gates, we farangs are the lords and ladies of the land.  It is where Thais become invisible and dismissable.  Cable tv with an abundance of channels, gyms, a Starbucks, a western grocery store...it's all in here.  And if that's not enough, then you can go just outside the gates and encounter Big C (think UBER Wal-Mart) or Central Mall with its western gadgets and prices.  You could seriously live here without ever having to speak Thai.  You could live among other Westerners, eat Western food, and just get by totally without speaking a word of Thai.
Hmmmmm.  It's funny.  It makes me think of the Hispanic communities back in Virginia.  You know the ones, where people come here from Guatemala or El Salvador, move in together, huddle together at the bus stops, shop together at World Market and eat together at Pollo Loco.  They're the ones that don't learn American history, the English language, and are just there to take advantage of the economy that allows them to live by a higher standard than they would ever have back home.  And they're looked down upon for that...
Yet here in Thailand, it's wonderfully ok.  In fact, it's been my observation that it's the "norm" here to live as one would in the US, Canada, Australia, or wherever they are coming from.  And there are no Thais demanding legislation or requiring us to learn their constitution or language in order to reap the benefits that their economy affords us.
Ok, that was a total deviation from where I was planning on going...just thought...interesting.

So, I have been wondering for quite some time, how do I normalize?  What's my "norm"??  Am I a westerner that orders in pizza and surfs Facebook every night?  Undeniably.  But is that all?  I know I'm not a Thai, of that I'm sure.  I don't think fart jokes are funny, especially when grown men perform acts of farting as a joke on national television.  I don't ever plan to go without my bra with a mouth full of beetlenut.  I also just don't know how to read, no matter how hard I try to decode the letters.  But you can easily find me out "kweeing" with the guards, nannies, mae bahns at the school, and of course, those fascinating taxi drivers that seem to never get over the fact that a farang is speaking Thai to them.  We cook a pot of rice every day, and bring home "gap kao" every night from the markets outside the gates.  I hang bags of pineapple from my scooter handles and occasionally, drive too fast, too slow, on both sides of the road, and stop at random intervals-all within 50 yards along any given road.  I forget that teachers around me aren't my PC friends who could speak Thai often much better than I could, and have found myself more than once actually a little annoyed at them for living here for 2, 3 even 10 years and still unable to appreciate a play on words in Thai, of which there are many.

And when, if, I normalize, how will my kids normalize?  They have even farther to go than I do.  They have actual family members here.  They will be inextricably tied to this country long after I am able to return to the US and blend back in with my own family.  They are biologically linked to this country.  How far will they need to go to "norm"?

Or maybe, what we need, is to get to the point in which "not normal," is just simply "normal."  Where there is no abnormal, everything abnormal is...  Woa.  I think I just had a flashback to college, there.

We've only been here 2 weeks.  I think these adjustments are normal (there we go again) and the struggle to find who I am in all of this was something I went to with eyes wide open.  So I'll continue to keep you posted about adjustments, norming, and life on the otherside of the world.  Thanks for all your genuine support!!