Almost a real volunteer!

So I have been meaning to update this but these last few weeks have been super busy! We are now coming down to the last few days of training and we have so much wrapping up to do with our villages, communities, the Peace Corps and everything else. Last week on Thursday, my technical group, which consists of me and three other volunteers, gave a 45 minute presentation to our government office that we have been working with for the last two months and we had to give the ENTIRE thing in Thai! Needless to say, most of the presentation was very elementary and because this language relies so heavily on tones, which none of us have mastered...clearly, we probably sounded like a bunch of idiots that no one could understand, but of course we did it anyways :) We tend to look like fools a lot in this culture, especially with me being 6 feet tall, white...and uon (fat) compared to the rest of this twigs. So after we finished this simple little task, we then had our final language placement interview the very next day. This interview lets us know how well we are doing at the Thai language as well as whether or not we met the requirement for our technical job. Since I am CBOD (community based organizational development) I had to get intermediate low, the teachers only had to get novice low because they aren't using Thai as much in their job. Luckily and definitely not expected, I placed intermediate mid. So that is one less thing that I have to worry about them using against me as a reason to send me home.
This week was a bit more fun and much less stressful. We had our overall competancy test yesterday, which luckily for me was a complete joke. I chose the room where the adorable little Thai man who does all of the administrative work for the Peace Corps and who is not strict at all was the one proctoring the exam. The test was actually somewhat difficult and very specific, but with a room full of CBODers working together...I think we did alright :) Today we have our final review interview and then tomorrow we have our exit interview. The exit interview is basically to tell you whether or not they want you to swear in as a volunteer or not. I really wish it was set up Bachelor style where we all had to pack our bags going into the interview and then everyone could watch as the interviews took place to see which bags were mysteriously taken....aka which people didn't make the cut.
This weekend we are finally moving out of our homestays and back into the hotel for 4 days before we ship off to site. My family has been super nice and treated me so well. My grandma is the cutest little thing ever!! I love how in this culture everyone is so conservative and generally well-behaved, and then you get old and can act however the hell you want. My grandma is 75, she drinks almost every day if not every other day (being a woman this is highly unusal in this culture), and she hangs out at home all day with her other old lady friends and constantly chews this tobacco stuff 24/7. She has fake teeth, probably because of the tobacco, but continues to chew every day all day, and her fake teeth are now stained red. Just to give you an example of her attitude and personality, a few weeks ago we were at this monk party and she had been drinking all day since the party was across the street from our house, so around 730 when she came home to get me and we went back to the party, she really had to pee, so my grandma gets up from the table and walks about 10 feet away so she is only slightly in the dark, bends down and straight up pops a squat. All of the women at the table were laughing hysterically at her and she came back and was like "what?! I had to pee and didn't want to go find the bathroom." So I am understandably going to miss my family, especially good ol' grannie.
Next week is going to be the biggest transition yet and I am really excited but yet very nervous at the same time. On April 9th we are leaving Chaibadan and heading to site with our Thai counterparts, which conviently for me, doesn't speak English. We will then live at these sites for the next two years....alone. The closest volunteer to me is about 3 hours away. For the first month I will stay with a homestay at my site in hopes of getting integrated into my community through this family. It should definitely be an interesting month, seeing how I already stayed with them for two nights when I visited site so I have a pretty good idea of what the house is like. Just to paint a quick picture of what it is like.....My room is probably 10 feet by 10 feet and luckily for me, they gave me a full size mattress that takes up about 90% of my room. The walls of my room do not attach to the ceiling, so there is about an 8 inch gap that leads to outside...which turns into a great entryway for animals and bugs into my room. For example, when I was at site I laid down to take a nap and was rudely awaken by a lizard crawling across me and my bed. I also heard many creepy crawlers scaling my walls during the night but refused to leave my mosquito net to inspect the situation. Also, my family apparently likes to have roosters as pets and don't mind the 4:30 wake-up call of crowing that takes place for approximately and hour every morning. Luckily for me the wall of my room faces the yard where the roosters live, so I get a front row seat to this crowing alarm. It's okay though because then the family gets up at 5:30 and begins there day, which involves getting ready at the desk/vanity on the opposite side of the wall of my bedroom. One thing you need to understand is that the traditional Thai houses are actually built on stilts, and many times the walls only consist of one thing piece of wood, definitely no insulation. So if someone is moving in the house, everyone else can hear absolutely everything.
Living in Thailand I have definitely completely changed my sleeping schedule. My day now resembles that of a 80 year old grandma. I get up around 5:30 am and go to bed no later than 9 pm. Thankfully I will only live at this homestay for one month and then I am moving out into the house that I found. I will live there by myself and will clearly not be adopting any pet roosters. I actually told my family that even though I am vegetarian, I will eat meat if we could cook up the roosters for dinner. They laughed but obviously did not take me serious since the roosters are sadly still alive and crowing!

I should probably stop this before it becomes a novel but I will try to routinely update this so that I don't have to write so much each time. I miss and love you all!