Thailand's Elephants

Okay-- so I should have written about this a long time ago, but I'm finally getting to it now!

Please note that, since my camera was broken at the time, I did not take any of the pictures in this post. They were all taken by fellow volunteer Tara. (Thank you!)

As I mentioned before, in Thailand I spent one week volunteering at a place called Elephant Nature Park. This place is basically a sanctuary for rescued elephants who had been abused (sadly a pretty common thing in Thailand).

I love animals and had thought for some time that I'd like to try volunteering to work with them in some way. Then I decided I wanted to travel to Thailand, which is known for its elephants, so... I looked online and found this place.



My first impression of the park was that it was a really beautiful place and it seemed like elephants would be happy there. As I later found out, many of the elephants had terribly sad stories. One of them, for example, is blind because she was stabbed in the eyes by her owner when she refused to work.

Elephants are really gentle and intelligent creatures, and they all have different personalities too. We got to get pretty close to them sometimes!



When I say "we", I mean myself and the other volunteers. They were all really great people from all over the world (mostly Europe), and some of them had traveled all over the place and had really interesting stories.



As volunteers, we had lots of different jobs to do (though actually the work wasn't that hard, and since there were a lot of us there wasn't always enough work to go around!)

We cut grass...


Peeled corn...


And, yes, scooped elephant poo. (Actually it really wasn't that bad!)


The food was all home-made, and really good.


It was a week of cold showers, wearing the same dirty clothes, and getting eaten alive by mosquitoes... But the experience really was all worth it. I met some amazing people, learned a lot about elephants and their situation in Thailand, and I really did feel like I was able to do something to help by volunteering. Elephant Nature Park is a really good organization, and the work they're doing is really important. I would highly recommend visiting if you ever plan on traveling to Thailand!

Even if you don't visit the park though, please do not ever ride an elephant, see an elephant show, or buy food for an elephant begging on the street. Elephants in these situations are often being abused, and you are only supporting their abusive owners by participating in these tourist activities. It's a complicated situation that goes beyond the scope of this post (I'm not an expert on it, either), but feel free to ask me if you want to know more about it. You can also find more information on the Elephant Nature Park website linked above.

ご無沙汰しております

Having been me for 25 and 1/2 years, you'd think I'd know myself pretty well by now. But sometimes I still don't understand myself at all.

Why is it so hard to motivate myself to do what I know is good for me-- what I want to do, even?

There are so many things I want to do; I have so many plans; and they all sound so good in my head. But whenever I find myself with some free time, I just end up wasting it. Why is that?

I've thought of blaming it on my job-- I must just be too exhausted from teaching to focus on anything else. But that doesn't really make sense when I think about it. My job can be exhausting, but the truth is that even when I have a whole week off, I still don't get anything done. In fact, sometimes having too much free time seems worse than having too little.

It seems that I'm really bad at managing my own time. It would make sense to schedule everything in so it all gets done... But there seems to be something in me that rebels against schedules. I just want to do the thing that comes to me at that moment, whatever that may be. So I have all these ideas, but then they get pushed aside by other ideas, and so many things are put off or left halfway done...

Like this blog. I haven't updated in forever, even though I've been meaning to. Even though there are lots of things I could write about.

At this rate, I don't suppose I'll ever have much of a following here. But those of you who do read this are all really important to me, and I do want to share my life with all of you. I'm going to try to keep this up, for you guys. (And for myself, so I'll have my memories written down to look back on.) Don't let me forget!

Why I'm a terrible photographer

So, as I just wrote to someone on Facebook, I have issues with taking pictures. Being an artistic person, I actually do like to take pictures-- but the catch is that there can't be any people around. So most of my pictures are of random objects in isolated places, or of myself with random objects in isolated places. It does get kind of old, especially since I think the most interesting pictures involve people. But whenever I decide to take a picture of anything anywhere where there are lots of people milling around, my inner monologue goes something like this:

"Okay, I'm going to slip my camera out of its case, and turn it on inside my bag so I can whip it out at a moment's notice. Okay, there's no one in the way so maybe I can take it now... Oh, wait! That guy is looking at me. I'm not a weird tourist taking pictures of this perfectly normal sign, mister, really I'm not. See, I'm just standing here spacing out like a perfectly normal person... Okay good, he looked away. Better get this done quickly. A quick look around again to make sure no one's watching, spot the target, and, bam! Okay, it's done. I hope no one saw that..."

Then of course when I go home to look at the picture more closely, it's all blurry or off-center because I didn't take the time to focus it. They say that with a digital camera, you're supposed to just snap a ton of pictures in succession so you have a better chance of getting some good ones... But I only take one (or maybe two if I'm really brave), and they usually turn out sucky.

Thus, most of my pictures from Thailand are... Well, sucky. And that's only because I forced myself to take a few. I have practically no pictures (that I took myself, anyway) from all this time I've been here in Japan. For some reason I just hate the idea of looking like a tourist or a "weird foreigner" (even though I really am a weird foreigner, even though being a weird foreigner is actually not a crime, and even though it really doesn't matter what random people think, anyway).

I think I need to fix this problem. Because it sucks not having pictures to share with people, and to look back at and remember things later.

Unfortunately, my camera (which I'd hardly used at all anyway) broke halfway through my trip in Thailand, and I'm not about to go out and buy a new one unless I'm sure I'm going to use it. I do have my cell phone though, which takes not-such-good-quality little pictures like this:


(This one is from Thailand, at some ancient temple ruins. It was windy. And there were no people within eye-shot when I took this.)

The great thing about a cell phone (for me anyway) is that it's not as obvious as a camera-- people can't always tell you're taking a picture with it. So maybe if I try taking lots of pictures with my cell phone, it'll help me get used to the idea?

I think I'm going to try it. We'll see how well I'll follow through with this, though.

Passions

I have many passions, but I don't seem to be capable of juggling many of them at once because they come and go in very intense spurts. These "spurts" can be as short as a few days or as long as several years.

For example, as you can see from my last post, a couple of weeks ago I suddenly felt inspired to start drawing. This particular spurt was very sudden and extremely intense. For about a week or so, I could think of nothing else but drawing. Every minute of free time I could find was dedicated to it. I got so into it that I forgot to eat and sleep properly. I couldn't bring myself to do anything else, not even study languages (even though I felt guilty about it). It was so intense that I was actually kind of afraid I'd never feel motivated to study languages or do anything else again. I mean, it was fun, but I found myself feeling relieved when it finally calmed down, all the same.

And calm down it did. Right now, there's an unfinished drawing hiding in a minimized window on my computer screen. It hasn't been touched for several days now, and I have no idea when (or if?) I'll finish it. I don't have the space in my brain to concern myself with it-- because right now, I'm obsessed with learning Chinese.

Yup, the language thing came back. It's funny how this happened, though. I now feel absolutely no desire whatsoever to study Thai, even though I was crazy about it for over a year. As for Chinese, I first started learning it in January of 2005, during my second year of college. I was learning Japanese at the time, and wanted to better understand Chinese characters (because they're used in Japanese too). I was also just itching to try learning another language, and Chinese seemed as good as any. (And ooh, there's a study abroad program in China, and ooh, it's so nice and pretty and shiny! *__*) My roommate at the time was doing the same major as me and taking both Japanese and Chinese classes. I was taking Japanese and French. (Yeah, you'd think that'd be enough, right?) Then in January, I started secretly studying Chinese on my own. Yes, secretly, because for some reason I didn't want my roommate to know I was studying it. I think it's because I was weirdly competitive about it, and felt like I had to know Chinese better than she did before I let her know I was learning it. Pathetic, I know. I was also just overly self-conscious in general and didn't feel comfortable doing pretty much anything in front of pretty much anyone. I don't know how I ever survived in a college dorm room.

Anyway, I studied Chinese on my own until the following autumn, when I spent a semester abroad in Beijing. I learned a lot of Chinese during that time, but as that semester came to an end and it was time to return to the states, I realized I still didn't know Japanese as well as I wanted to and needed to focus on it some more. (OMG, I don't know this word; Oh no, I can't read this book!!!) So I dropped Chinese and went back to cramming Japanese into my brain until just after I graduated later that spring. Then I felt guilty for not "finishing" Chinese and decided to go live in Taiwan for a year to improve it. While in Taiwan, I decided that life sucked and I didn't care about Chinese anymore, so I sat around my apartment watching mostly Japanese TV and reading Japanese books. Then I was just like, "screw this", and moved to Japan.

My personal feelings toward the Chinese language at this point were that I just wasn't fond of it and probably wouldn't ever go back to it, and whoever had anything to say about it could go eat stinky tofu (Real food in Taiwan, by the way. Taiwanese food is amazing in general, but that stuff is horrendous). So I forgot about it completely. I was happy living in Japanese land for a couple of years, and then in the dream world of Thai in my head for a year or so more. Then I went to Thailand and was disappointed, and I was like "Screw this. I should learn Chinese instead."

Then suddenly Chinese was beautiful to me, and I was determined to own it. And now here I am. I've broken out the Chinese translation of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone I bought in Taiwan (Yes, I have that book in Thai too, and in French, and Japanese, and I must have the English one somewhere. And I don't really give a darn if you think I'm crazy), completely untouched for three years. I started trying to work through it three years ago and stopped at the first page. When I picked it up about a week ago, the first page was covered with highlights and penciled-in notes, while the rest of the book was completely untouched. Now the entire first chapter is covered in highlights and I've filled about half a notebook with notes. I can almost read it all now. And this is only part of all the studying I've been doing.

I'm making it sound like most of my "different passions" consist of different languages, but that's not entirely true. It is true that languages in general are one of my greatest and most consuming passions. But there are others, too. The above-mentioned passion for drawing consumed much of my childhood and teenage years. It left suddenly, completely, as soon as I got to college. I'm not sure if it just decided to come back for a week recently, or if it's going to show up every now and then. I kind of hope it's the latter (especially since, I'm kind of embarrassed to admit, I kind of went and spent a lot of money on a certain tool for drawing on the computer...). My other greatest passion is singing and songwriting. In my last two years of high school I thought I was going to become a musician, and I even majored in music in college (only to change to Asian Studies later, of course). I was in choir and sang at church and wrote a ton of songs, though unfortunately I was never able to get most of them out of my head and into a form that could be shared with people because my skills on the piano weren't that great. A few months ago, though, I suddenly felt I needed to play the piano, so I went and bought one of those cheap little electric keyboards with only like, 20 keys. I couldn't do much with it obviously, but I was lost in music for a month or so, trying to play every song that came to me. It was nice. I still play with that keyboard every once in a while.

There are other random things too. For a few months recently I had it in my head that I might want to become a diplomat, so I went and bought a load of books about history and economics and politics and read like crazy. I read the news every day, too-- something I'd never done before. In the end I decided I don't really want to be a diplomat after all, but I did learn quite a bit. Once I went through a phase where I tried to learn how to meditate. I've had a cooking phase, and an exercise phase, and probably some other phases I'm forgetting at the moment.

You see, people?! This is what it's like to be me. I never know what's coming. And I can't stop it. I really can't.

Some people might say I'll never accomplish anything if I keep switching between different interests. Honestly, I used to think so too, but recently I've been seeing things differently. You couldn't say that I've accomplished nothing. I'm pretty good at drawing, and it really comes in useful sometimes. I'm a good singer, and even though I'm not an amazing pianist, I can use music as an outlet and a way to enjoy myself. I can speak Japanese almost to a near-native level, and I know a couple other languages at least well enough to get by. That's not nothing. I don't want to sound boastful, but I kind of need to lift myself up a bit because honestly, I've put myself down way too much in the past. Well screw that.

I'm going to go learn Chinese now.

Drawing

It's been years (seriously) since I last picked up a sketch pad and seriously drew anything, but today I suddenly felt inspired and spent six hours doing this with an online paint program:



And I did it all with a mouse. My pinky is sore... @@;

The girl is a character I've had in my head for a long time. Her name is Kaiyinn and she can communicate with animals. Recently I've envisioned her with a white tiger as a companion, hence the picture.

As a teenager I used to do things like this all the time. Drawing pictures and making up characters, etc. I don't know why I stopped, but one day I just didn't feel like drawing anymore. I wonder if it's come back? I did have a lot of fun doing this!

******************************

Edit: I just drew another one today. Six hours again. Maybe it really has come back? @@;


I don't know, she's... some hot chick. XD I also thought I'd been drawing too many skinny white girls and needed to break away from that a bit. ^^; I'm quite happy with how this turned out!

Thailand-- or "The place I never quite made it to"

When I first left for Thailand, I imagined myself coming back two weeks later completely invigorated, bursting with exciting stories that I would rush to my computer to write out while they were still vivid in my mind. I saw myself falling completely in love with Thailand and its culture and its language all over again, beyond the point of no return, ready to dedicate myself to its mastery like never before. I was sure Thailand would be everything people had always told me it was, everything I had dreamed it would be.

But the reality was very different. By the end of the trip, I felt like I couldn't get out of Thailand fast enough. I rushed home not because I couldn't wait to start blogging, but simply because I couldn't wait to sleep in my own bed. I dreaded the hour when I'd eventually have to sit here at this keyboard. It's not that there's nothing to write about-- there are many things to write about, naturally. But they are very different from what I expected, and I've put off writing about them until now because I didn't want to face them. I've also been sick with a terrible cold and stomach problems (I guess my stomach couldn't quite take the food in Thailand) ever since I got back, but that's more of an excuse than anything.

The trip certainly started out well enough. The six hour flight, on the Japanese airline ANA, was really quite pleasant. The in-flight announcements were broadcast in Japanese, heavily Japanese-accented English, and Thai. I was pleased to find that I could understand more of the Thai than I could of the English (seriously). I was also very happy that the flight attendant didn't speak English to me-- she addressed me in Japanese when she saw I was reading a Japanese book (a guide to Bangkok, which I was happily engrossed in for much of the flight). Towards the end, I pulled the Thai version of "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone" out of my bag and studied it with a very satisfying gusto for a good two hours, managing not to care one bit what the Japanese guy next to me thought of it. Every once in a while I stopped to gaze out the window and saw some very nice scenery, especially when we flew over Okinawa.

When we finally arrived at the airport, I was getting really excited to finally get a chance to use my Thai. My eyes darted around reading all the Thai signs, my ears alert for any signs of the language being spoken. Almost everyone around me, though, was foreign. My first disappointment on arriving in Thailand was the experience of waiting to go through customs in an endless sea of foreign tourists. There were people from all over, and it was interesting-- around me I heard German, French, Japanese, and some form of Chinese. But as far as I could see in all directions, everyone was waiting behind one of the signs that said "foreign passport". They were all standing there with their backpacks and their cameras and their overdone suntans, like a small army ready to take over the whole country. I knew Thailand was a popular tourist destination, but this was overwhelming. Around me, there was not one single Thai person. I wondered how much of "Thailand" would be left after this wave of quintessential un-Thainess was done crashing through it.

Unfortunately this unpleasant first impression turned out to be a theme that continued to rear its ugly head throughout my time in Thailand. Much of that time was spent, often unsuccessfully, trying to escape it. Trying to dig my way through the thick sludge of tourism that lay on the surface, and to find the "real" Thailand. Once in a while I caught glimpses of it, reached out to grab it, and almost, almost grasped a bit of it and made it my own. But I never quite got there. I didn't have enough time, I didn't have enough resources, and the sludge was just too thick. And I think this is what lies at the heart of my disillusionment.

It wouldn't have been a problem if I hadn't already invested so much of myself in this country. If I hadn't spent the past year and a half (albeit on and off) studying Thai-- if this language hadn't been my joy and my comfort and my escape for so long-- I could have just shrugged my shoulders and said "It's a nice country, but the overload of tourists kind of ruined it. Oh well. I'll just choose a less hyped-up place for my next vacation." But I couldn't. I had sold a piece of my soul to this place. It was like falling in love with someone only to come to the realization, much too late, that they just don't love you back. It was painful.

For me, traveling is not about taking nice photos. (Incidentally, my camera broke a few days into the trip, and most of the few photos I did manage to take are crap. The above picture was taken with my cell phone.) It's not about "seeing the sights". (Sure, I do enjoy visiting tourist attractions once in a while, as some of them really are impressive. But they are far from the most important part of a trip.) It's not about sampling exotic food (though Thai food is delicious), or relaxing on a pristine beach. (I didn't even go to the beach on this trip actually, though I did want to. But again, it wasn't important.) For me, traveling to another country-- especially a country whose language I've studied-- is about getting to know its culture, experiencing life first-hand through the eyes of its people, and hopefully finding the best parts of it and making them my own. For me, being completely lost in the middle of nowhere with a flat tire on my rented bicycle and getting directions from the lady selling instant coffee on the side of the road, who called her husband over to put air in my tire (yes, that really happened!), was a far more valuable experience than any guided tour on an air-conditioned bus. Such experiences are what I thrive on, but in Thailand they were few and far between. Part of it was due to the pervasiveness of the tourism industry, and part of it was due to my own weakness in not being bold enough to break through. Somewhere inside I'm afraid it's mostly the latter, but maybe you can help me decide.

Part of me wants to keep avoiding it, but I know I have to get this out of my system. I have to share my experience, just the way it was. It wasn't all bad, after all-- there were some very good moments. Maybe if I write them all out, I can get myself to believe that the real Thailand is still in there, somewhere. And that it really would be a place worth getting to.

You'll have to be patient with me, but I'm going to wrench it all out of myself over the next few days. I'm grateful to anyone who cares to come along.

ภาษาไทยเรียนไปทำไม?

I first became interested in going to Thailand when I was living in Taiwan in 2007. Some of my fellow English teachers had traveled to Thailand and came back absolutely glowing, raving on about how wonderful it is. How beautiful it is, how good the food is, how nice the people are. They were so enthusiastic about it that it made me want to go myself. Even after that, I continued to meet people who sang praises of the "land of smiles", as it's called. Apparently there's something about Thailand that draws people to it.

So I decided that I would definitely visit Thailand one day. And about a year and a half ago, just for fun really, I decided to try learning a few basic phrases in Thai. Little did I know that I would fall completely in love with the language and end up studying it seriously. I learned the alphabet, and started trying to read it, and I just kept going. I didn't really know why I was learning Thai. I had no immediate practical use for it. But I just couldn't stop. I guess it was meant to be, because I've kept up my study of Thai to this day (admittedly with a few breaks along the way), and I've reached what I'd call a solid intermediate level. (I've been spending a lot of time watching Disney movies dubbed in Thai, among other things.) =D I'm pretty sure I can have a basic conversation and understand at least the gist of what people say.

Now I'll finally get to try it out for real, because I'm leaving for Thailand on August 2nd and will be staying for two weeks. I plan on exploring Bangkok and volunteering at an elephant park in Chiangmai. (I've always wanted to meet an elephant!) Other than that, I don't have any specific plans. I prefer to go with the flow and figure things out when I get there.

I bet someone is thinking, though, "You're so weird, Jana. Why on earth would you learn Thai?" The only reason you might really need it is if you were going to live in Thailand. (Though you could argue otherwise, considering that some people actually live in a foreign country for years and never learn to speak the language!) Knowing Thai isn't really necessary if you're just going to travel (though obviously it would help). None of the people I know who traveled to Thailand could speak a word of it beyond simple greetings. Thai isn't a major world language or the language of an economically advanced country, so it wouldn't give you much of an advantage career-wise. There aren't many Thais living abroad either, and those who are probably speak the local language. Practically speaking, it just doesn't seem to make sense.

But honestly, I've never been a fan of doing things just because they're practical. "Practical" is a word for people who are comfortable keeping things just the way they are and staying on the path everyone else expects them to take, and who never feel the need to do anything different. But I want different. I need different. Forget practical. Practical makes me bored out of my mind!

Really, the same person who asks why anyone would learn Thai might just as well ask, "Why did you bother to learn Japanese, anyway?" Japanese may seem more "practical" than Thai, but it's not that much different if you think about it. I grew up in a small town in the United States. There were no Japanese people around me, or at least none who weren't completely Americanized. I had no interest in going into business in the automobile or technology industry, or any other field in which Japanese might be particularly useful. I didn't even want to teach English in Japan, really (though I ended up doing so anyway as a means of coming here). I didn't "need" to know Japanese at all. There are a million other paths I could have taken, many of which society would see as more practical choices.

But I wanted to know Japanese. I didn't need a reason. I never asked myself why-- it just made sense. I wanted to know Japanese so badly that I just had to learn it. And so I just did. Then I came to Japan, and I made Japanese a part of my life, a part of my very soul. By doing so, I made it "practical" for myself in every way that matters. And I don't regret it one little bit.

Though to this day, people still ask me why I learned Japanese or why I wanted to come to Japan, and I still have trouble answering that question. People expect me to say that I like anime or Japanese food or karate. I mean, sure, I do like those things. But none of them are the reason why I learned Japanese. There is no reason.

I think people these days are too hung up on finding a reason for everything. They're too hung up on so-called practicality. If you tell them there's no reason, they get lost and confused. But let me tell you something. (shh, it's a secret!) You don't have to do something because you can make money from it. Or because your parents want you to do it. Or because your boyfriend/ girlfriend wants you to. Or because anyone wants you to. Or because it will make you look good. You only have to do something when you want it more than anything, because you know it will make you happy. And if you're happy and fulfilled doing something you love, you'll be contributing to the good of the world in the best way you know how. Don't ask yourself why-- just do it. It will make sense eventually.