Snake Snake Fish Fish is an ongoing series based around Thai idioms/phrases/colloquialisms written about and illustrated by Cloé Fortier-King and guest contributors.
GUEST EDITION: This week, Teresa Derr is the contributing author/illustrator of the Snake Snake Fish Fish column
Teresa Derr, 134 YinD
I’ve never really considered myself a chatty kind of person. Small talk stresses me out, I’m quiet when I’m with people I don’t know, and I’ve always been labeled an active listener because it takes me so long to come up with contributions in conversations (if I even get to say them at all – all too often, by the time I’ve thought of something worthwhile to say, the conversation has moved on). But with the right people, on the right topic – I can talk forever. I can ramble and branch out on unrelated tangents and spin conversations in all sorts of directions. It’s probably why I like writing so much – a chance to gather all my thoughts, reword them until they actually say what I want them to, and then bypass any and all small talk and only engage with people who want to hear what I have to say.
As a volunteer, my talking habits both have and haven’t changed. Small talk still stresses me out, doubly so because it’s in a completely different language, but I try to engage more because I want my community to know I’m trying to connect with them. Being quiet with people I don’t know would have meant, unacceptably, never speaking to anyone for the next two years, so I’ve again been making a conscious effort to talk to anyone and everyone (though it does exhaust me, and sometimes I’ll still retreat into my shell of silence after I’ve met my people engagement quota for the day). Of course, I’m absolutely still actively listening, harder than ever, though it doesn’t solve as many problems as it would if I actually understood what was being said to me.
Even when I do want to talk, when I’m with people I really want to be friends with and I know we’re talking about a subject of interest to me – well, it’s a lot harder to ramble and eloquently detail exactly why something has caught my interest when my vocab is a lot smaller than usual and my grasp on sentence structure flies out the window anytime I think I might have to use the word ให้ (‘hai’ – literally means ‘to give’, but it’s used in a lot of other contexts as well, and is currently the bane of my Thai language skills existence). Thai is a beautiful language; I love learning it, but it’s hard to be chatty with the people I interact with every day when saying anything beyond the simplest of sentences requires so much work.
Still, as every volunteer knows, it is entirely possible to build beautiful friendships even if most of your conversations are laughing at misunderstandings, google translating every other sentence, and funny gestures. There are always people patient enough to welcome you into their conversations, even if you just listen to the incomprehensible words wash over you. I know I’m lucky enough to have not one, but three friends at my อบต (SAO – Subdistrict Administrative Organization) who do this for me. And both of my อบต counterparts are loud, exuberant people, who use every lunch break to talk and talk and talk (and well past when an American might expect the break to end – they are often sitting in the back drinking beer for two or three hours some afternoons!) I’ll be honest, it’s hard trying to listen for as long as they can go! My brain gives up translating long before they run out of things to say.
They do try to include me when they can, asking me about my experiences in America, translating more complicated questions, and wanting to hear all about my plans for the future (be it future bpai tiaoing (traveling) or what I’ll be doing after the Peace Corps). I’m always thrilled to build these relationships, so I focus on answering their questions as best I can. And during lunch, that means I tend to stop eating to talk, so that I finish my lunch much slower than they do. My counterparts noticed this, and, when they asked, I said that I liked talking too much to focus on my food, and that I do the same thing in America with my friends! I get so focused on talking, I forget to eat. They found that hilarious and told me they were the same – that they liked talking (like I hadn’t noticed). In fact, they liked talking so much, they พูดจนลิงนอน (puut john ling nccn). They could talk until the monkey sleeps. I laughed and told them I could do the same in English.
As I continue to integrate into my community and find friends and get to know people, I get to practice talking more and more. Some days, I feel I can’t say anything in Thai and some days I realize just how much I’ve learned when I manage to express a new sentiment and am understood on the first try. As I keep learning, I’ve decided to set a goal for myself. While it might be a bit of a stretch, I hope to be able to talk a monkey to sleep on at least one topic before I leave Thailand. It might just be explaining the rules to a dozen games and their variations, as that is what I get the most practice doing as a YinD volunteer, but if I could do that, I would be thrilled. (So long as the monkeys I put to sleep aren’t the monkeys I’m trying to teach – rambunctious kids here are called monkeys just like they are in the States!) And maybe, with the help of patient, amazing friends, I’ll be able to talk about other subjects too, well enough to have longer, meaningful conversations.
Sticky Rice 
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