Alot of different kinds of people here. Thats good to see and somewhat expected.
As for me my journey is a bit more eleborate then typical (at least I think it is). I'm ethnically a
Karen, and was born in a small town in the Karen state in Burma (Myanmar). My mother moved to Bangkok when I was very young to get a teaching job in an international school. I lived with my grandparents until my mother called and I moved to bangkok. From there I went to a very small private Christian American school and studied the way a typical American kid would but in the background of living in Thailand which seeped into my every being. This happened much more easily because my mother was a single mother and was always working and never home. I didn't really live near any Burmese/Karen community so most of my friends were
third culture kids like me and included all sorts such as White, Thai, Indian, Chinese and Filipino. Because I didn't have cable (too expensive) I watched Thai TV and grew up like a typical kid in my interests such as waiting religiously for the next episode of DBZ as a kid and waking up early on Sunday mornings to watch Japanese anime on TV. I usually watch lakorns with my mother at night time and usually doing the translation for her since she can't speak the language.
I had the fortune of going to HS in both the US and Bangkok and have experienced the awkwardness of being a teenager on both sides of the world. One thing that was pretty different about me was that I always loved to listen to Thai songs and a large part of them have intertwined with many experiences in my life. But alot of my friends including Thais, are very snobbish and think Thai music is lame
Now how's that for being really white washed hahah
One of the reason I started helping out AF was because I missed Thailand so much (mainly music) when I was in the US that I wanted to be a part of something that would remind me of Thailand. Even though I'm a naturalized American now after living in the US for the past 10 years, I've just moved back to Thailand with plans to live here permanently (at least SE Asia) and discovered that probably half of the kids I knew are now back in Thailand. Even in my own high-school group of 4 guys; 3 of us are back living in Thailand (2 of them are Thais so I can't really blame them on this).
Anyway, because of the way I was brought up, I identify myself as a hybrid American-Thai with some sprinkle of Burmese. Because I can speak Burmese I see that they are everywhere in Thailand, usually doing the menial work in Thailand (kinda like how in US you see Mexican/Hispanics doing menial labor). I also find it interesting to see how people react when they find out I'm a Burmese-American because they're 2 really opposite spectrum of respect in Thailand. See the thing is I've always been an outsider. In Burma as a Karen, I wasn't treated well by the Burmese kids, and then in Thailand I was picked on for being a Burmese by Thai kids, and then when I was in the US, being in a majority white town, I represented all things Asian.. such as Chinese/Japanese/Vietnamese. This has really shaped the way I think about race/class/culture and I myself tend to think alot of these ideas are outdated for the 21st century. Anyway thats probably for another uninteresting topic haha.
Wow I wrote alot more then I was thinking of doing lol.
