Fasting to Swimming pools and Head Colds!!

So Thursday night while waiting anxiously for 25 minutes until darkness at 6:25pm in order to eat with Tuti--I realized that those 25 minutes were a pathetic amount in comparison to an month's worth of fasting. After this I resolved to testing out the feeling myself. I later told Tuti at dinner that I was going to try fasting, she told me it was hard and that it would be especially hard for me since it would be my first time and that was that.

So Friday morning I wake up and I am still recovering from a sore throat, I lay in bed and feeling hunger pains decide to stay there. Finding my own distractions until 11:30, I am feeling fine but tired. Finally, after missing the shuttle, I walk in the heat to Thai class and arrive feeling incredibly tired and sleepy. Once in class I rest some more waiting for the Ajan, and slowly students file in asking me how my fasting is going, I tell them that I am fine but tired. Then when Tuti comes in and realizes that I have been fasting, she immediately urges me to eat something when I refuse politely she exclaims, "Are you trying to kill yourself?". Amused I tell her I will be fine, unconvinced Tuti looks at me worried. After class I join some classmates getting their hair cut and find that by the time I get back to PIH it is nearly time for night time (6:24pm) I lay on my bed and nap until the approaching time, as the time ticks nearer to my goal, the more faint and dizzy I begin to feel, in reaction to no water, Katie calls me and asks me about eating out so I go to ask Tuti about it and then I run into Katie as well finally we decide on eating downstairs and we all go downstairs to eat.

After the whole ordeal I've decided that fasting was indeed a different way to experience things but I didn't feel any more spiritual or humbled, just tired and in the end a little obsessed with any food which I constantly saw and knew could not be mine. Tuti also told me that Ramadan was to remind us of the many people who are starving, but I am not sure that it was effective. Then again maybe one day is not enough to experience the real sentiment behind Ramadan.

Apart from my first time fasting, today was my first time going to a swimming pool in Thailand. In comparison to fasting it sounds less of an worthwhile experience but I found it surprisingly meditative. First of all the pool was empty of other company and the instant my body was emerged in the water--I felt nostalgic. I never realized how much I had missed it. It reminded me of summers back home, and of family and friends I spent the summer with. It was also so relaxing and peaceful to just lie in the water looking up to the sky and realizing that it was the same sky I had seen in the United States and just looking up and lying there I felt like I was back home. It was only when I stood up to see myself in a pool in Thailand that I missed being at home. I am staring to miss my home, but I won't let that weigh down my experience here.

And while at the pool I got one of the most recognizable feelings ever--the light headiness and water eyes of a head cold. And here I still sit with the sniffles and a red nose :(