The third week

If the first week was culture shock and the second was settling in, this week has been the week of being in the routine. While the first two weeks flew by, this week has been so long that I had to remind myself it was only week three. Feels like I’ve been here forever again.

That’s not to say it was boring. I’ve continued to have the same rollercoaster of emotions, from lows, struggles, and frustrations back up to rewarding highs. I’m learning to collect myself during the times of “What am I doing here?” or “Why did I think I could do this?” so that I can stay focused and wait out those times I’m frustrated or critical of myself until the moments of success come.

… Like the day I had to force communication with our project director, having to pull information out of him with question after question and specifically ask for a meeting to discuss some things while he was still in town. But after an afternoon of crossfit and light-hearted dinner with co-workers, we had a great staff meeting about the focus group interviews I’m doing at the end of the month. Went from feeling like I was failing at my research methods, to my three co-workers now collaborating with me and owning this research too to varying extents, as I’d hoped.

… Or when the meeting I didn’t know we were having (one of the many) ended up being really relevant to my research, including a tense discussion of the new methods in this project and how they change the way the mapping projects work together. Which went way over time so I had to leave early… to be really late to work with Ajaan Wilasinee on translating, still not having eaten by mid afternoon. So much tension and stress! But later, when I came back to IMPECT with a little snack for my co-workers to brighten their day, we ended up eating dinner together and hanging out all evening. One of the more rewarding times yet.

Sometimes I feel integrated into IMPECT and sometimes I don’t. In the day to day, I really do whatever I want to do. Since the director of our mapping project often isn’t here, I just work in the same room as the mapping staff I know from before. I have no idea what they think I’m doing… which makes me feel odd, because I’m not sure what they think about my role here or my place in their work.  But I also have more of a social circle here than I did at first, because I have two roommates now—two of the women that I know best. One that I became close with before and the girl I’m working with now. Which is nice, because now I have people to chat with or go eat with and am not completely alone outside work hours.

I’m missing going out to villages as often as I did before, because that was such a rewarding part of working here—building relationships with people and hearing their stories. But I’m somehow finding a way to stay busy. I’ve been translating things for myself pretty much all week. The language barrier makes things much more difficult than I’d remembered... not just preparing interviews and translating them (it took me days and a 3 hour session with Ajaan Wilasinee to fully, accurately translate my first interview) but also simple things like minutes from important meetings, community documents, and even our monthly work plan.

Before, if there were documents like that in Thai that I couldn’t read, I didn’t really worry about it. My research demands for ISDSI during my internship were so minimal that I could get by on what I understood or learned by asking other people. But now, a lot of these things are important! I need to know what our department is doing for the month, need to understand meeting discussions between the different mapping departments, need to know communities’ histories so I can make my interviews as effective as possible. Which are great ideals… but this week it’s just meant a ton of translation.

Hopefully more exciting things to come soon! I’m starting IMPECT staff interviews tonight and have the focus group interviews in villages in a little over a week. Going to try to plan some other trips too.. We’ll see what happens!