Field Notes- Cambodia

Hey everybody-
Here's what I'm working on for school- these are my field notes from the last few days in Cambodia. The school work post has to be a little longer than my other posts because that's how the universe works- hope you enjoy

I am now in Siem Reap, Cambodia. The standard Thai tourist visa only lasts 30 days, so I took a train to the border town to come into Cambodia a few days before my visa was up. If I return to Thailand by air, I get a 30 day visa extension, so I'll head back into the country mid February, so that I can stay there until I fly back to the states mid March.
My Cambodian food experience has been much different than the food experience in Thailand. In Thailand I had a hard time finding food that I felt had been prepared by a careful cook, who was skilled in their craft.
In Cambodia, I've found multiple small, family run restaurants that are very, very good.
There is a restaurant just around the corner from the hostel that I'm staying at and the food is phenomenal. The mother and her eldest daughter stand behind two woks and do all of the cooking. The children wait on the tables and hang out at the back of the restaurant. They are some of the sweetest people I've met... I met them all last night and as I left the restaurant we were all waving goodbye, not just the family who ran the restaurant, but all the other guests, who were a mix of foreign and local.
I picked up a bit of Khmer from one of the children, and the connection that they feel to new friends, especially such a  stranger like me has been astounding. If you ask them how to say certain words, or tell them the food is delicious, their faces light up and they have the brightest enthusiasm, and want to make new friends in a way that I've never experienced in the west. Especially the children, are so quick and eager to make friends. I’ve had kisses blown at me and been given the biggest smiles in response to a wave or smile. Not only has it been touching, it's made me realize that there is a universal response to friendliness, or smiles, or affection.
The Khmer food is very similar to Thai food. Amok is a traditional dish, made with fish. It tastes like a Thai green curry, but is thicker, with more vegetables. I adore Amok. When I’ve had cravings for curry, Amok is exactly the dish that satisfies that, but I've never had the dish before two days ago.
I realize now that food discovery, and the search for “the best food” is all chance and circumstance. As a single ethnographer, I'd have to spend multiple lifetimes to understand the variation in food preparation that occurs across this city alone, let alone the whole country...
I thought I'd have a grasp on what the general trends were in food preparation…. That I'd somehow be able to “summarize” the food here. That my experience alone would be an approximate guide to other people visiting the area… Now I realize I'll be able to record very, very little…. All I can do is write an interpretation of the food experience that I had… Which is so, so small when compared to the scale of how much there is to record of it.
Another thing that I was afraid of was getting stuck in what I saw as the “wrong” culture group… As a young female traveler, it's easiest to stay at hostels or shared dorms. This way you can meet people of approximately the same age group as yourself, jump from city to city without doing advance planning, and have help with logistics from the hostel staff… Tours, transportation etc. I was worried that by putting myself in this sort of accommodation,I'd wind up spending all my time with people who I see as more culturally similar to me than the people that I actually wanted to be learning about… I couldn't have been more wrong about the type of connections I'd find through the hostels. I’ve met other travelers in the hostel that I'm staying at here in Siem Reap, who've introduced me to local friends that they’ve made. I've gotten to know locals simply because I spent time with westerners… Which I never would have assumed would be the way I'd get to know local people. I thought I would need to work on a farm or teach English somewhere far less touristed to make connections with a local… I never thought I'd make such connections right where I am. I would still like to spend some time in a school or on a farm before my trip is up, but I'm highly appreciative of the view that I've gotten from this perspective.
I've had lots of small conversations with locals and travelers alike that have been extremely informative, but I previously held the opinion that my research would be done in the form of very formalized interviews and one-on-one interaction, but most of what I've learned so far has been little tidbits that I’ve picked up during brief encounters. I thought I'd be writing out detailed questions and going in depth about one topic with somebody… But like any conversation, it is impossible to formulate it ahead of time. I cannot “interview” somebody in the way that I thought I could. I thought I could gather formalized answers to very specific questions… This has been almost impossible due to language barriers, and in some ways, it was ridiculously hard for me to overcome some sort of ego barrier on “setting up an interview” with somebody. I feel perfectly comfortable doing this in the US…. Asking somebody, “may I interview you?” And knowing that they feel comfortable setting up a large amount of time to discuss one specific topic… but since I’ve been here, I haven't wanted to make myself stand out to that extent. I don't want to be the westerner that doesn't have enough grasp of the language to really understand somebody, and to present questions that come from a “what I think is relevant” point of view… also, pretty much all my interview questions simply DON’T WORK because of language barriers. I spent hours at the Amphawa floating market (outside of Bangkok) trying to find somebody who could tell me whether there was another market where the vendors gathered their raw ingredients… Nobody understood me at all…. Eventually I met a woman with amazing English because she wanted to show me the tapioca drink she was a selling… The conversation I had with her was the most informative talk I'd had all day (there WAS another market where the vendors bought their raw ingredients, it happened in the morning before the amphawa floating market, and to get there, the vendors row their boats to the market, because the whole area is on a lake)… But it was chance encounter, and not formalized interview, that led me to her.
On a side note- I did have a lot of fun giggling with the people I tried to pose my questions to who didn't understand English. I think they thought it was funny that I was trying to talk about things they didn't typically talk about in English.. Most of the Thai speak perfectly about the product that they sell, the price, and the basic things that tourists talk about… They couldn't understand my questions because they weren't what they were used to… I thought it was funny that I hadn't thought to learn the words in Thai ahead of time, and have them write responses to be interpreted later… I was 90 kilometers away from Bangkok and didn't have a source of reliable wifi… I'd been so used to the people of Bangkok, who would mostly be able to answer my questions with ease… I thought it was funny that I'd just assumed I could talk to everybody in English and hadn't put advanced planning into the translation issue… now that I'm in Cambodia, I'm working a lot harder at picking up the language to avoid this issue

What took a while for me to understand, was that I won't be able to conduct my research EXACTLY how I thought I was going to be able to… I've adapted the ways in which I'm gathering information… But I've had so many periods in which all I could think was “I have no idea what I'm doing.” I think that the goal of anthropology is to be so fully immersed in an experience, that you cannot possibly set a goal or a standard for it…. What has been difficult for me to grasp is that everything I do, in this experience, IS my research… I cannot write out a plan for “how to understand what I WILL be doing,” all I can do is DO what I'm doing, and record it. After recording everything I've done, I will have to tackle the issue of interpreting what I did… Or merely presenting it in a coherent way. This has been so hard for me to grasp. I’ve started writing blog posts… Because it feels like I'm writing for my future self to remember what I was thinking at the time… Similar to journaling, but in a format that I hope will also be interesting, funny, or informative for others…. This blog has helped me record things I'm thinking about without trying to adjust them first… Which is what I think I NEED to be able to do in all my field notes, but learning how to do this has been a very difficult process.
I'm good at talking to people, I love conversation.... I've spent the last 3 days talking almost non-stop… My voice is hoarse and scratchy… But despite the ease with which I can hold these conversations, I find it so hard to write it down, to remember it for future use… Which is what I need to be able to do if I'm going to present my findings, or present any sort of research. I never realized how much help I'd need on this project. It think it is just now clicking in my mind, that what I'm learning is from OTHER people… Which sounds so obvious from the get-go…. But “ethnographic research” is unlike anything I've experienced, because I can't JUST read a book, or summarize or interpret some information… I HAVE to get my information from other people. I felt so, so stuck in my research… fellow travelers have helped me understand that I just need to write down everything… Everything I'm experiencing about my expectations and my feeling of not knowing WHAT to do… And write about what is ACTUALLY happening.
What is actually happening is that I'm eating at restaurants that all the tourists eat at… And this is because this ENTIRE city is built for tourism. Siem Reap has sprung up in response to the worlds interest in Angkor Wat. Millions of people from all over the world come here to admire temple ruins, and Siem Reap (as it is today)  is the city that was built to accommodate them. I can't conduct ethnographic research on what Siem Reap used to be… Authenticity is NOT history (although history no doubt plays a large role in it) authenticity is what is now.
What is now, is a city built around tourism. The Chinese, the Europeans, the Americans, the Australians, all are mixed in this teeming city of Cambodian culture …. A culture which CANNOT be defined, without defining the tourism culture. Tourism, in a way, IS the culture…. This realization is so far from what I expected to study…. THAT has been the hardest part for me to accept. When I work on my final project, and put all my findings in essay format… I won't be presenting a study of 100% Cambodian people… I won't be presenting a study of what westerners probably think is “Cambodian” (what I thought is Cambodian)… I'll be presenting a study of a food industry that exists because of tourism, to serve not just a Cambodian palate, not even a western palate, but Chinese, middle Eastern, Indian… food production that IS alive and here to serve the purpose of serving tourism.
What I expected to be doing was meeting people who had loads to talk about their food, their culture, and their special connection to the  food of their culture. It's not that I haven't found that in the people here, per say, but they have a lot less to say about it than I'd thought they would. I thought everything would be a conversation about how one specific food was different from another, which one is best, how it's been around forever, how there is one way of cooking it that has been around forever etc. etc.
In Thailand, I did find that there is “one way of cooking” for the most part, every common dish is prepared in exactly the same way, with exactly the same ingredients…. But they're not the ingredients I thought they'd be. Or perhaps they're just not as healthy as I thought they would be (almost every dish is made with a tablespoon of cane sugar, or more), or locally sourced.
I’ve held the misconception that American food is the only food that is defined by globalization and world food trade. I wanted to believe that in the developing world, there is a stronger local food system, that restaurants work directly with farmers for all of their supplies etc. this is true to a certain extent of course. Many spices and base ingredients are grown in SE Asia and not imported… But a large part of the food has also been influenced by western globalization…
Snack foods and soft drinks are sold almost exactly the same as they’re sold in the US, and are the easiest food to buy because they're found everywhere. Street food is also easy to find, but the street food is not what I wanted to believe was “authentic” Thai. The street food is fried chicken, gyros, hot dogs… So many things that I thought I'd only find in large restaurant chains… There is also street food that one would typically think of as “ethnic” food. Crispy dried bugs, boiled quail eggs, fresh local fruits like durian and dragonfruit…
Cambodian street food is very similar... Almost exactly the same, except it's harder to find Pad Thai or stir fried noodles… There's more variety in the Cambodian noodles. It is impossible though for me to draw a line between Cambodian and Thai food, because all I have to base off of is the restaurants that I’VE seen and the dishes that I’VE tried… And that's a very limited resource. I have asked other travelers what foods they’ve run into… And I like to find out what dishes are everyone's favorites whenever I have a conversation, whether it's with my tuk tuk driver or hostel roommate…. In Cambodia, amok is the clear winner… But maybe I'm a little biased because the amok I had last night was the best food I've had in weeks.

Never compare your average to someone else's highlight reel

So far, Thailand hasn't impressed me. But you're not going to hear me complain about my dream travel life, so keep reading- I’m still committed to finding the bright side, I wont let you down.
I’ve had a lot of down time to meditate on these things, and I've come up with two main reasons why I'm not having the TIME OF MY LIFE right now (except for the simple statistical reality that by definition, it's not possible to have the time of my life continually. Or even just more than once, come to think of it). I’ve also had enough down time to come up with a way to fix this issue to some extent. Not enough time to know how to fix it to the I’M GOING TO CONTINUALLY HAVE THE TIME OF MY LIFE extent. But that's because I’m not a mathematician and I don't want to put the time into becoming one. It's not really something I’m worried about though.
Ok. So here's what I’ve got.
Mostly, I’m addicted to stimulation. I’ve got one of those personalities that feeds off of drama. Like if I walked into a room and everybody was meditating and singing “ommmmm” and perfectly at peace with the world I’d probably explode from boredom. On the flip side, if I walked into a room where everybody was talking loudly and there was just generally a lot of not being at peace with the world going on, I'd feel perfectly relaxed and comfortable (if you don’t believe me, please google “extrovert”). Naturally, some of my favorite memories were made in the presence of LOTS of other people, in rooms with LOTS of things happening all at once. I didn't have to meditate to figure this out though, I’ve spent enough time listening to my mom to know that I’m not the calmest person around. I did have to meditate to figure out a way to fix it. By meditate I mean spend lots of time rolling around in the sand. I don't know how to actually meditate, plus sitting still for that long sounds terrible.

Part 1, The Stimulation Hunt
There's something about doing nothing that's really really stressful. We spend our working days rushing around trying to take care of all of our responsibilities, but as soon as we are left free of responsibility we don't know how to use our time.
Every time I travel I remember how hard it is to sit down and relax for long amounts of time, to have nothing to do, to be peaceful and calm without stimulation.
I was raised in a real Waldorf family (I’m defining real Waldorf family as one that didn't have a TV) I’m going to assume this played out on me in some sort of positive way, not just in the way that I don't have enough attention span to finish watching a movie which probably saves me a lot of wasted time and makes me really good at getting stuff done on the weekends while everybody else is just busy watching movies.
In my family, media and stimulation were seen as inherently negative. Of course, when you’re young, everything is stimulation, everything is entertaining. Why? I think it's because we're always learning. Its hard not to be entertained when you're seeing new things everywhere. As we get older, I think our brains become less strong because we stop learning. But there's got to be a solution to it. In reality, there's always something else to learn and there's always a way to hone your brain. But our RESPONSIBILITIES take over. Our day to day duties and the mundane tasks we see as so important to our survival take over the majority of our time and we forget to make time to learn, to really learn. This is why it's so important to have relaxation time, to do nothing so that we feel we will have the space to do something that is important. Something that's not built just from habit, or from duty, but something that stimulates our minds and our creativity. Rather than taking this step, it's easy to stuff our lives with stimulation that won't achieve anything. To become hooked in habit and in the mundane, to never make time for our minds.
So how does this relate to solving my need for entertainment? The important part is that I don't want to have to be entertained. I want to have the space to learn. And that's what traveling does for me, it forces me to be away from all my regular sources of entertainment, which eventually leads to me opening my mind just a little bit. The first week or two of being in a new place is always frustrating. That's why I'm frustrated at Thailand right now. Because I’m forcing myself to be in a place where I can be calm, where I can try new things (like blogging, ha).
One of the best adventures of my life was doing the Camino de Santiago last fall. But you know, most of the time I was walking I was ridiculously frustrated. I remember ranting to a Camino friend about how pissed I was at the whole thing. How I wasn't learning anything. How it was hot and boring. How my legs hurt but I wasn't getting fitter. How there was no point in walking through all those tourist trap towns eating their tourist trap food. But at the end of the walk, I'd created some of the best memories of my life. But that's going to be a separate blog. Once I get around to it.

Part 2, The Food Hunt
Thus far in my trip, the food has been terrible. Not just bad, but really, really, terrible. It makes me sick, I’ve been nauseous after almost every meal, it's overly sweet, they put sugar in every dish, savory or sweet. I’ve only been in highly touristed areas though, so I think the bad food is just a result of high demand.
I realize that what we put in our bodies determines a lot about what we feel, how our bodies function, how much energy we have. The food we eat affects everything we do, and when we put nourishing, delicious foods in our body it increases not just our physical wellbeing but our emotional state as well.
The best place I've ever been, thus far in my life, was Crete. When I think about my time on Crete, what really stands out are the foods I ate and the setting in which I ate them.
I'll never forget a specific zucchini flower that was lightly fried in olive oil and served with feta, at a restaurant set into a cliff side overlooking the beautiful Cretan mountainside and the Mediterranean. Or a squared, crispy goat cheese with honey I ate at a table underneath an arch of flowers miles into the mountains. (Once again- that's a story for another blog post).

P.S. Sorry for making you read a whole lot of what you thought was going to turn into a really cool story about a lot of really cool people. I tried to give it a boring title to discourage you but you just can't take a hint.

P.P.S. Little update on the food situation- I've recently rediscovered my childhood McDonalds infatuation and it's done wonders for my mental and digestive situations- I've been McNugged into gastronomic heaven.

Flight Prep

Traveling isn't all sunshine and pool parties.
Every time I arrive in a new place, I remember why traveling is hard. For some reason my memory skips over all the negatives when I’m sitting at home planning a trip. Then I begin my journey, and I remember the tough parts. Being exhausted after hours of traveling, arriving in a new place where I know NOBODY and not having the energy or the guts to go make friends. Forcing myself to sleep in a new place when I'm home sick and bored. Accepting less than ideal accommodations because I don't have the energy to find any place else. These are the things I typically DON’T remember, because after a few days I start having amazing new experiences and meet incredible people.  That's the part I remember later on, the part I cling to when planning a new trip. It's all worth it in the end, but getting to my happy place takes some struggle!
Also, why are there ashtrays in all airplane lavatories when we KNOW we're not supposed to smoke in there?
And why does there always have to be an announcement for turbulence?
“We know you’re feeling it guys, but we just wanted to interrupt your movie real quick to make sure you’re paying attention to the intricacies of the weather. Okay, great, hope you weren't enjoying that plot twist before we cut in. Carry on."

Eat UP, Thai!

Seeing as I'm studying food, and I love food, and everybody loves food, I'm going to be posting about some of my favorite Thai food experiences. For those of you who don't know, I'm working on an independent study project on Thai food in which I try to create a definition for "authenticity" as it relates to Thai cuisine.
After my first week in Thailand, I uncovered a life truth that is ridiculously unexpected.
I DON'T LIKE THAI FOOD
I mean, I loooove Tasty Thai campus. I love American Pad Thai with peanut sauce. I love pretty much everything that doesn't smell like fish and lemongrass.
Unfortunately, everything here smells like fish and lemongrass.
I took a Thai cooking class.
Instructor: "ooookay, we show you basic Thai ingredient!"
"Lemonglass. Lemonglass in almost all Thai dish!"
"Shlimps! Shlimps! Shlimps in powder, shlimps in paste..." (Commence Thai style Bubba Gump shrimp speech) 15 min later.... "Shlimps powder in Pad Thai, then chops shlimps on top, then whole shlimps on top!"
Et VOILÀ!
Que auténtico. Pad Thai, Thai style.
Alright. I'm kidding. Exaggeration comes naturally to me.
What I mean is, most dishes are cooked with at least a bit of fish sauce or shrimp powder, and the fish flavors are really prominent in the dishes.
I do like some Thai dishes, I'm just slowly learning how to adjust my eating habits and my fish smell acceptance levels. I'll keep you updated on it world. Until then, don't judge me for my once a day McDonalds habit. Thanks.

Thailand: First thoughts

Girls sit side saddle on the backs of boys motorcycles. The US needs to get onboard with the 21st century Prince Charming upgrade.

The Thai enjoy PDA. Witnessed pre-pubescent couple sucking face on mini bus. Blessed myself with the sign of the cross to purge the sin from surroundings.

Little known truth about lady boys: they're very nice. You can identify them by their extra big smiles in case the boob implants are tampering with your usual gender classification strategies.

My body feels at home in this climate/ I think I'm Asian.

Flying over/ driving through farming land always really frustrates me. I have so many questions but nobody knows the answers.
Scratch that. Maybe they do know the answers, but I don't speak enough Thai to find out.

Language CDs and voice recordings in Thai are highly deceptive. The recorded voices always sound so lovely and sing song, but when real Thai people speak it doesn't sound sing song. Real life Germans still sound bossy and real life French still sound snooty and real life Italians still sound argumentative, why do real life Thai have to sound constipated?

If I could speak Thai I'd ask my mini bus driver if it's really that hard to stay within the yellow lines and not drive on the shoulder of the freeway the whole time, but I don't know if my comment would make any change in the safety of the drive because passive aggressiveness may not translate.

Do most anthropologists start taking notes as soon as they get into the field, or do they sometimes just sit there and daydream about getting into a new change of clothes and worry about when they're going to get a chance to go pee next?

There was a dead dog on the side of the road and it looked like it had been pumped full of helium except that it wasn't floating away.

I usually base how much I like a guy off of how warm he keeps his house. That's why I'm always falling in love in the summer and when I visit places with tropical climates. Those guys can't avoid keeping their houses warm. Thai boys + 1, American boys 0

Euro trip part 1

Well world, I went to Europe, and I never blogged about it. Until right now. I'm blogging about it right now.
I'm going to kick this story off from the Tom Bradley international terminal at LAX where I was lounging on a comfortable although highly spatially inefficient couch, the type one finds only in airport terminals that have seen little traffic. If you're having trouble picturing it, don't worry, I was having trouble too. Having trouble figuring out why such a comfortable couch was only available when I had little to no use for it. I'd spent the previous night curled in a corner of the American Airlines terminal (that's terminal number seventy seven) with my bag as my pillow and my white silk sleeping sack as my protective cocoon from people that might have otherwise tried to talk to me.
I’d spent the night in this very specific terminal because I read on some travel blog somewhere that it was one of the best terminals at LAX for sleeping in. The author had clearly never experienced the wonders of Tom Bradley.
Even if you’ve never slept curled in a corner in a white silk sleeping sack with a bag as your pillow, you probably understand that spatially inefficient couches are much more desirable as beds than corners of terminals numbered seventy seven.
So there I was, peacefully stretching out my legs on this remarkable couch in the Tom Bradley international terminal which, by this point, I was affectionately referring to in my head as the Tom Brady international terminal, when the thought crossed my mind that I’d really, really like some chocolate.
Less than 5 minutes later, I kid you not, a middle-aged lady sits down next to me, pulls out a bar of dove silky smooth dark (this is the best kind there is, in case you didn’t know!), turns to me and says, “you want a piece of chocolate?” I suppose my internal response must have been something along the lines of “Jesus is risen and Jesus is a female” but what I said out loud was “duh.”
 We made friends pretty fast, and not just because she gave me half her chocolate bar. She was a member of the Baha’i faith and wanted to tell me all about it. I was much more inclined to listen to her because she’d just performed a chocolate miracle through some sort of connection with my innermost desires, so I figured she might have something good to say. I’m not so sure how I feel about the Baha’i faith, but they do build some pretty cool temples and what she mostly wanted to tell me was that their temples are rad and that I should travel to them whether or not I agree with her that Baha’i is the one and only true religion.
I suppose some other reasons that I liked her were that she was traveling alone and she was a scattered, chocolate loving female. She kept telling me how great it was to travel alone, that there was no other way to travel, and I maintained a constant inner dialogue throughout our conversation of “you go sister,” and “get it girl!” But really, she must have sensed my enthusiasm, because you know what she did? She gave me money! Or she tried to at least. Here's what happened.
She says, “you know, I went to Israel last year, and I have this bag of shekels that I didn’t exchange back to American. You’re going to be traveling a lot, you should take them. Maybe they’re worth a lot, I’m not sure.”
I thought this was a really strange offer. I asked her how much they were worth in American and she answered vaguely “Oh, I don't know, anywhere from twenty to fifty dollars, I don't know.” I told her there was no way I could take them, that was too much money, I wouldn’t take them. She responded by telling me they’d been sitting around her house for a year and she’d never get around to exchanging them, they were just a bother, she really wanted me to take them.
She pulls the shekels out of her bag, and these things  look like they were made in the land of Jesus in the time of Jesus. Even the bag she’s put the shekels in is woven from silver fabric, complete with tassels and a drawstring. I eventually accepted, twenty to fifty dollars is a lot of money to pass up and everything was feeling very religious by this point.
We wrapped up our conversation as boarding began, but she gave me her email so that I could write her and let her know what I ended up doing with the shekels and how much they were worth. She cheerily let me know that she hopes she gave me a lot of money  “I hope they’re worth a lot. I hope you get fifty dollars.” She even told me to contact her next time I’m in LA, so she can show me her house and take me to a Baha’i meeting. “Rainn Wilson comes to these meetings you know. He’s Baha'i. He’s a good friend of mine.” This is actually a really appealing offer. Rainn Wilson plays Dwight Shrute from the office, for those of you who don’t know. And if you aren't familiar with the office, we’re not operating on the same brainwaves anyway, and there's no way you’re reading this. Point being, Rainn Wilson is great. I would love to meet him. I asked her if, on the off chance I never get to see her house and go to a Baha'i meeting with her, she’d mind letting Rainn Wilson know that there's a girl named Maria who lives in Oregon who thinks he’s really, really funny.
We can all operate under the assumption that I will never see her house in LA, that I will never go to a meeting of the Baha’i faith, but that Rainn Wilson most likely knows I exist.
So what ever happened to the shekels?
I got to Europe safe and happy. I spent my first European hours dashing around Rome trying to learn some Italian and find cathedrals with my name in them. I also visited 3 different currency exchanges. All of them had the same response: “we don't take coins, only paper.” At this point I figured I just really needed to meet somebody who was going to Israel. When I was on Crete I met a friend of a friend who miiiight be going to to Israel. I told her the story and gave her the coins. I met up with her two months later back in Eugene, she decided not to go to Israel but she gave them to somebody she met who WAS going to Israel. I’m going to assume that the coins have been put to good use in the holy land, that hopefully this unknown friend of a friend has purchased lots of delicious food and visited lots of holy places with the money sent to her indirectly through a nice Angelian Baha'i chocolate miracle practitioner. Otherwise, the coins are still swirling around in a sea of travelers navigating airport currency exchange kiosks, duty free shopping malls, and oddly religious chocolate induced conversations.
I counted the coins, by the way. There were 120 shekels. This is $30 at the current exchange rate. It's enough to buy a nice dinner date for two, or an interesting conversation and a new friend in any airport near you.
Turns out, I didn't personally get twenty to fifty dollars. What I did get was half a bar of chocolate, a good story, and a distant connection with Rainn Wilson. These things are much harder to come by than 30 dollars US.

Me my dreams and the land of the Thai

I had a dream last night that my family threw a goodbye party for me. Okay, that was actually a daydream I had before I left. But last night, I DID dream that I was saying goodbyes, and my family WAS there.

My family owned a big clean multi-bedroom house with more than three stories, weirdly reminiscent of both my awkwardly skinny three story apartment in Eugene and my grandparents extra long house in Santa Cruz, where I've been staying for the past two weeks. The house was set against a hill in the middle of nooooowhere and the only thing in sight other than a lot of trees was a wood shop building with three walls, a roof, and a laundry line (this building gets important later on).  

I was staying in some sort of a bunk bed in a room with all my classmates although I don't actually know who any of my classmates are this term, because I'm taking entirely online classes. Despite my dreams lack of specificity in characters, I seemed to have a very strong emotional connection to all of them all I was very happy to be sharing my funky bunk bed room with everybody. I remember giving an extra long hug to a tall, red haired man and thinking "man, I'm really going to miss this guy." I don't personally know any tall, red haired men, but Ronald Weasley is someone I've missed since the last time I set down a Harry Potter book. I'm assuming that my childhood preference for spending most of my time with books rather than real people is still affecting me.

So here's what happened in this dream. I had a rad time bonding with my unknown classmates that I really, really miss whilst taking a train from nowhere to nowhere and eventually arriving in our funky bunk bed room, where my parents and all my siblings greeted me with lots of baklava and singing. I spent time with my family and time with the baklava, but then realized that I really needed to finish a construction project I'd started that was due before my Thailand departure, so I cut one of my most emotional goodbyes short to run out to the shop and work on it. It was 1 am but I don't think any of my dream characters noticed the time or the fact that it was dark. I halfheartedly built some nails with a nail creator machine, but then realized that the nail creator machine was actually making screws. This pissed me off so I decided to stop working and go back to my goodbyes, even though I'd only spent what I thought was 5 minutes on my project. 

I left the shop and returned to the house just in time to catch a glimpse of my red head friend tipping his hat in a final goodbye, dressed in what looked like mid 19th century travel gear and all his possessions tied in a red bandana on a stick over his shoulder. It was all very "I'm the one running away from home and you sure won't see me again for a while." This doubly pissed me off because I was fairly positive I was the one with a flight to catch and I wanted my departure to be the dramatic one.

When I looked at the time on my phone it was 3 am, and when I went back to the house I discovered that THREE MORE HOUSES had been built on the hill. All I could think was "wow, my Dad is really efficient, he built three houses in the time I built three nails." 

I'm still not sure what any of this has to do with the fact that I'm going to Thailand tomorrow, but I think I had to publish this post to prove to myself that I'm not as inefficient as my subconscious wants me to think I am. There ya go, subconscious.