It's Not Easy Being Green

Maybe it's a case of the Mondays, but today has been as they say 'one of those days,' and those days are not easy to have when you are an outsider.  Needless to say, I stick out here.  At 5'6" I'm a bit taller compared to most Thai people, especially the women and I have long blonde hair and fair skin.  Of course I stick out, and I knew I was going to.  I knew what I was in for when I came here and honestly that was part of the appeal.  I wanted to challenge myself by living in a culture that was completely different than anything I'd ever seen.  Most days, it's great, but some days being an outsider is frustrating.  Now that I live in a small town with only a handful of other foreigners, I stand out even more.  Just by walking around town I can attract unnecessary and unwanted amounts of attention.  While walking to the grocery store today I couldn't help but feel like everybody was watching me; surveying me; trying to figure out what in the heck this white girl was doing here.  All I wanted to do was throw a bag over my head and run home.  Generally, people are friendly about it, they look at me with a smile as I pass, and I try hard to muster a smile in return, knowing they are somewhat skeptical of the newcomer.  But it's hard to ignore the all too common shouts of "FALANG, FALANG", which is the slang word for foreigner in Thailand.  It's not derogatory in anyway and it's not meant to be mean, it's just what they call us, sometimes we even use it to describe ourselves.  But after awhile, it starts to wear on you.  Every time I hear it all I can think is "Yes, I'm a foreigner, thank you for telling everybody what they already knew."  Basically, "Thank you captain obvious."  (I did learn how to say "that's correct" in Thai as a comeback, but I haven't gotten up to courage to use it yet.)  I think the hardest part for me is the fact that I can't do anything about it.  Thailand is a place where displaying emotion, especially anger and frustration, is unheard of.  It is seen as a sign of weakness and will get you nowhere.  When I get annoyed or irritated by all the staring and whispering; all I can do is bite my tongue and try to force a smile.  The concept of 'saving face' has definitely been one of the hardest parts of this culture to learn for me.  I don't mean to complain or sound ungrateful, I love being in Thailand and it's people are generally warm and friendly, but sometimes to really love a place you have to learn to take the good with the bad.  Some days that's harder to do than others.