Second Week In Thai!

I'm really tired all the time.  I wonder if there's something wrong with me. Maybe I'm low in iron.  I mean, all I eat is rice here.  Literally, every meal since I've been here has had rice.  Today I couldn't handle it so I bought some yogurt and banana bread from a grocery mart near school.  I have lived in a couple of other places and never had a problem with getting tired of the food and craving American food.  I'm generally not picky about food and will eat anything.  But I'm getting really really tired of rice.  It makes me not want to eat when I think about eating rice.  I thought the food was really good when I first got here, but now all I want is a sandwich.  Or maybe some cheese.  Milk products aren't popular here.  But my host family bought some milk and bread for me, which I thought was really nice of them.  But I think I'll likely end up losing weight unless I learn to love rice because I'm eating about a third as much as I would normally just because I don't want rice.  That and sweet things are not popular here.  And I love sweet stuff.  And I eat it all the time at home.  But here--nothing.

I feel a bit lost here.  I know that's to be expected when you come to a new country, but even in the objectives of this program are really vague.  I know I'm supposed to help in community development.  But that term is so vague and what duties that entails is still very unclear to me.  We have language class for four hours in the morning and then a break for lunch then we meet for four more hours to talk about community development.  We've met a few current volunteers and talked about projects they've done and are doing and asked about things we would be working on.  But still, it seems so unclear.  It sounds like there's a lot of time where they just didn't know what to do.  And all of them keep saying that you need to build relationships and talk with people in the community, that the biggest role a volunteer has is cross cultural exchange.  So I'm supposed to just learn about Thai and become a better person from it and then Thai are supposed to learn about Americans and become better people because of it.  That's what I've gathered so far.  I have tried to put this in perspective of what I have gained from being around people from other cultures and I've realized that it actually has helped me gain a greater appreciation of people and life.  I think I am a better person for experiencing diversity from other cultures.  I've had friends from all over the world and i suppose that the biggest thing they did for me was open my mind.  So, I can be satisfied knowing that's what I'll be providing in some degree to the Thai community here.  Today one of teh current volunteers talked about what success is and that many of us believe it's these big goals and projects, when mostly the success we are really expected to make is in the relationships we build with the community.  It's nice to think we've made a significant change in forms of projects, but it's actually more subtle than that.  People are the most important thing in life, not projects.  I appreciate this perspective even if my goal-oriented mind rebels against it, I'm going to be working on re-focusing my perspective.