Thailand – Page 3 – Peace Corps Worldwide

Wendy Bronson (Thailand 1985-87)

Feb 13 2010

Monday, November 21 6:06 pm THAI CHRISTMAS Thais love a party, even under the guise of another religion. Few give us a chance to celebrate, and no less than at Christmas – a puzzling holiday that brings out fat men in red clothes, and odd-looking deer. I settled in Kamphangpet, Thailand, for my two years of Peace Corps Volunteer experience. Kamphangpet is equidistant between Bangkok and Chiengmai. Nobody stops, though, because it’s seven kilometers off the Asia Highway, and boasts only an old city, filled with crumbling Buddhas, ransacked four hundred years ago by the Burmese. Kamphangpet seldom merits a place on the maps of Southeast Asia. Kamphangpet Teacher’s College is even less noticeable, three kilometers off, across the Ping River from town. But there I was. This year, my senior English majors asked me to write the skit for the Christmas party. Their contributions to the festivities was entitled, . . .

Dumb Things I Did in the Peace Corps

Apr 01 2009

This is a piece by Dick Lipez who after his Peace Corps tour (Ethiopia 1962-64) worked in the famed Charlie Peters Evaluation Division of the Peace Corps. He then went on to become a successful novelist and editorial writer at the Berkshire Eagle and author of gay detective novels. • • • Attention Peace Corps authors: Here’s a good idea for an anthology. I don’t have the time to edit it — I have two other books I keep telling people I’m writing—but I’m a prime candidate to contribute to the collection. It would be called Dumb Things I Did in the Peace Corps. We all have lists. I get chills when I run down mine. Some of these blunders are amusing, but others are so excruciatingly dumb that no one else should ever be allowed to know about them. Unless, of course, other volunteers were there at the time, and maybe even participated in the . . .