What does a French, an Austrian, a Chinese and a Japanese in common?

Sawadii Ka!

We say ma, ma, ma, ma, ma together. All these "ma"s have different tones and mean different things. We are in the same Thai language class.

I've been learning Thai for 6 days now, and I can finally say a few sentences and initiate a simple conversation with the cleaning lady. It's been frustrating not being able to communicate, and I feel really good about learning the language of the land.

We have 8 students in the class, but the four of us women like to hang out a little afterwards and have lunch together, and complain about how difficult it is to learn Thai. Both the Japanese and I have arrived in Thailand 1.5 months ago, and the French has been here for 2 years and the Austrian has been here for 9 years and finally decided to learn Thai. The French has been working in Asia for the last 10 years and lived in Vietnam for 4 years, China for 2. She never learned Vietnamese, but could understand and speak a few words, so it's even more confusing to her because the same sound means different things in Vietnamese, Chinese and Thai. She recently quit her job and is taking some time to learn Thai.

It's fun to share the cultural differences. One story the French told us happened at her company here in Thailand. The French usually greet their friends and family with kisses, but at business settings, they just shake hands. But since everyone is far away from home here, they kiss each other too, even with clients. But once some clients came and one guy is the president of the company, who is a really big shot, so they would kiss him, but just to shake hands. Her Thai female coworker thought kissing was the proper French way, so when the clients were leaving, she went ahead and kissed the president. The president was so kind that he turned around to my French classmate, and said to her, "let me kiss you too then", so he kissed her too, to save any embarrassment the Thai women would have. I don't know if anyone ever explained to her when it's proper to kiss and when it's not.

"Face" is very important here, and that's why Thais are always smiling and being very polite to each other, though there must be ways to put each other down too. So the difference between Thailand and China is - the Chinese would rip you off with a straight face, the Thais will rip you off with a smile and you walk away happy!

We visited a small mission church last weekend. There were mostly Thai, with a temporary American pastor, so a translator is needed. There were also a couple of Americans going there regularly. They were in the process of hiring a Thai pastor and one candidate was available. One American lady asked - "since some of us here don't speak Thai very well, is he (the candidate) willing to learn English?" What a strange request! I almost blabbed out - maybe it's time for you to learn Thai! It's his country you are staying in.