bulletin board #5: december

Santa's in a cookie coma.

feast of the east

The kids had their New Year's party on Tuesday. It was a half day (lovely) and the morning was spent giving food offerings to some monks and then watching the students put on a talent show.

There were two first graders who compete (and win) at ballroom dancing competitions. It was amazing. Like watching So You Think You Can Dance, but in miniature. They salsaed and rhumbaed and Lindy hopped. I was jealous.

We went to the classrooms after the festivities. All the students brought food and each grade level feasted.

There were tons of leftovers. I took home some chocolate cake for dinner. As we were getting ready to go home, Sukjai burst into the office with three big bags. He handed one to me.

"Here you go! Leftover fishballs."
Mmmm. My fave.

Don't get me wrong. I love a good, mushed-up wad of fish as much as the next person, but honestly: is there anything appetizing about that picture?

Five of us piled into a cab outside the gates of the school grounds. I looked over at the driver, pulled the bag of fishballs out of my purse, and asked, "Do you like these?"

He laughed and said, "OK."

I handed them over. "Happy New Year!"

Amy ended up giving her bag to a homeless guy. It was the gift that keeps on giving.

par-tay numero dos

Just when I thought my job couldn't be any weirder...

I, along with my colleagues Amy and Erin, attended our school's New Year's party on Monday night. It included a talent show and a multi-course meal that cost 300 baht for everyone but us, we were told. Just another reason why the Thai teachers resent us; but that's another topic for another day.

The first course, a soup, came out in a great big tureen. Pikay and Sukjai offered to serve us. "What is it?" Amy asked, as she eyed the gluey, viscous brown broth with mushrooms and clear chunky bits bobbing around.

"It's made from the belly of the fish," Sukjai answered, pointing to his own torso.

Amy was able to gracefully decline. I wasn't so lucky. Pikay made sure to fill my bowl up with delightfully chunky fish belly fat. Does a body good!

I sipped some broth, carefully avoiding solid bits and trying not to think about its contents. Amy breathed slowly, looking away and trying not to "yak all over the table," according to her.

Thankfully, we were distracted by some of the male student teachers performing as sequin-bedecked drag queens. Did I mention that this was the weirdest work party ever?

Christmas in the twilight zone

I went to a Christmas party last night and learned that everyone isn't the same as me. Whaddaya know?

We played Christmas charades. I think I was the only Christian on Team Ebeneezer, because my teammates had a hard time acting out and guessing some of the more traditional songs. I couldn't believe it when one British guy didn't know "Hark, the Herald Angels Sing."

I had a great Christmas week. Kristy bought us each a stocking, which we hung by the bookshelf with care. We did Secret Santa and tried our best to be sneaky.

Sunday night was candlelight, carols, mulled wine, and mincemeat pies at church.

On Tuesday, classes were shortened to 15 minutes long because a group of traditional Chinese dancers came to perform at school.

Thursday we had three peformances of the Christmas show. A group of students from another school came and acted out a story of a lame lamb who gave his wool to baby Jesus. The farang teachers sang "Go Tell it on the Mountain," "Angels We Have Heard on High," and "We Wish You a Merry Christmas" with a choir of our students.

We woke up early Friday morning and gathered in Kristy's room under her Christmas tree to drink hot chocolate and open presents. Later, we cooked makeshift Christmas lunch in the office microwave. Instant mashed potatoes and microwave stuffing are surprisingly tasty.

It didn't feel much like Christmas without cold weather, sweaters, and family, but it was still a festive week.

shopaholism

I've never been a big shopper. I'm a saver by nature. When I've got money, I don't like to let go of it. Plus, shopping is (almost always) a huge pain.

Thai people love shopping. It's what they do. All. The. Time.

A big expo of Thai handicrafts from all over the country came to town last Saturday and ends this weekend.

We went on opening day and spent nine hours there. NINE HOURS! My shoulders were in knots for days from lugging my purchases around.

I bought myself seven scarves. I'm from Texas. Winter is like two minutes long there. But they're silk, they're pretty, they're cheap (compared to silk in the U.S.), and I couldn't stop.

I also bought six or seven pairs of earrings. I lost count. I'd just go up to a jewelry stand, take a look, pick something, and pull out my wallet.

I got home and realized I hadn't bought any scarves for my mom, so Mariela and I are going back this Saturday to pick up a few last items.

'tis better to give...

I had my first bite of a traditional English pudding at the work Christmas party. It wasn't awesome. It tasted like raisins. I'm not sure what all the hype is about.

We had tons of food, I discovered a new salad recipe, and, after the gift exchange, my coworker Amy learned that you probably shouldn't go around pretending your stuffed, blue gingham water buffalo is a dog and begging people to trade. You will eventually run into the person who brought said buffalo, and you will embarrass yourself.

This was supposed to be a nice gift exchange, as opposed to a White Elephant exchange. The spending limit was 400 baht (about $12). The gift had to be appropriate for either sex.

It's funny, sometimes, the things people bring. There was the infamous buffalo that belonged in a Thai baby's crib, a People magazine, and a bag of Swedish fish. There were also gift cards to Starbucks, boxes of chocolate, and a cute mug accompanied by a box of Twinings tea.

It's so hit or miss sometimes, and people who bring really nice gifts are inevitably disappointed when they receive something like a giant curve-handled old person umbrella (how the heck are we supposed to get that home in a suitcase?!).

What do you prefer: "real gift" exchanges or White Elephant ones? Do you spend up to the limit? How do you find a gift for both genders?

deck the halls with cows and chickens

I never dreamed Christmas would be such a big deal here in Bangkok. There are decorations in every mall (and there's a mall on just about every block), so things are looking pretty festive. The grocery store in Siam Paragon is even playing Christmas music.

Our school Christmas program is on the 25th. In the past, the American teachers coordinated it. This year, for whatever reason, the parents volunteered to take over. We were totally cool with that.

They've invited a performing group to come in and act out a Christmas play for the students. In a department meeting, Sutima showed us some brown sack puppets featuring horses, cats, pigs, and other animals.

She said we would need to make one for each student to use during the show. There are 720 students in Prathom.

We looked at each other and looked back at her, confused about why the students needed barnyard puppets during the Christmas program.

The performing group would be leading the children in singing "Old MacDonald." Festive, right?

Fortunately, Nummon acted as our advocate and convinced the other teachers it would be too much work for the kids to use them in just one song. Reason triumphs, for once!

have you ever been on a shrimp boat?

Shrimp is the fruit of the sea. You can barbecue it, boil it, broil it, bake it, sautee it. There's, um, shrimp kebabs, shrimp creole, shrimp gumbo, pan fried, deep fried, stir fried. There's pineapple shrimp and lemon shrimp, coconut shrimp, pepper shrimp, shrimp soup, shrimp stew, shrimp salad, shrimp and potatoes, shrimp burger, shrimp sandwich... That's, that's about it.
- Bubba, from Forrest Gump



Though Bubba's list is impressive, it's not quite complete.

Today, while walking past a Pringles display in Big C, I came across these:

That's right, grilled shrimp flavored Pringles. Correction: pink grilled shrimp flavored Pringles.


I almost snapped a photo in the store and left it at that, but I couldn't deny you all, dear readers, the opportunity to know whether the chips are revolting, delicious, or somewhere in between. So I bought them.

While not quite as bubblegum pink as the package suggests, the chips do have a lovely, rosy hue. And they're not half bad, either.

easiest week ever

I only had to teach one day this week! We had Monday off for the King's birthday. On Tuesday, third through sixth grade spent the morning at the movie theater, watching a documentary about the royal family. Wednesday was normal, but we had today off for Constitution Day.

A few of the girls and I spent our day off riding bikes and checking out some 500-year-old ruins in Ayutthaya, the ancient capital of Siam.

Our magic school ID badges didn't get us into the ruins for free, unfortunately, meaning we had to pay 50 baht at each one. My fellow bikers weren't interested in doing this too many times, since we'd already been to see Angkor in Cambodia back in July.

We ended up only really exploring two different ruins. I would've liked to see more, but democracy wins, I guess. Maybe I'll go back some Saturday.

Pattaya/Jomtien Beach/Koh Larn

We had Monday off for HM's birthday, so I went with a group to Pattaya. The place has a bad reputation, and not without reason. It's known as the sex capital of Thailand, and it's run by the Russian mafia. OK. That last part may not be true. One of my comrades was saying it. I'm not sure where she got her information.

We stayed pretty far away from the sketchy parts, in an area called Jomtien Beach. I never actually set foot on the beach there, because there wasn't much sand and the water wasn't nice.

On Saturday, four girls and I went to a vineyard about 20 minutes from town. We spent a long time there, but, stupidly, failed to secure a songthaew ride back to Jomtien. It got dark and became all too apparent that songthaews and taxis didn't really drive out to that area much (or ever).

We talked with the security staff who said we could get a ride with one of them if we paid 500B for gas. We had only paid 200 to get out there.

Christy and I ventured into the poorly-lit parking lot. We avoided some loitering guys and headed toward a group of women. We explained our problem and they offered to give us a ride closer to town. We jumped in the back of their pickup and enjoyed the cool night air.

Sunday and Monday, we took a ferry to Koh Larn. The motorbike ride to Tawaen beach was hilly. I looked past the driver's shoulder and gasped. Past the tree tops I could see a beautiful, white stretch of sand bordered by deep turquoise water down below.

We rented beach chairs beneath umbrellas and I read and drank smoothies and played cards and relished the beauty of Thailand for two days.

I'm spoiled, I know, but you guys can come over and visit at any time. We'll soak in some rays, OK? OK.

tickled pink?

For those who aren't in the know about the state of the King of Thailand, his health is deteriorating and he's been in the hospital for about two months.

Yesterday at work, our boss made an announcement.

"You need to wear pink every day in December, starting tomorrow."
Right. Okay. Thanks for the giving us plenty of time to find a new work wardrobe.

The King's astrologer, or someone, prescribed pink as an auspicious color to promote his health. The last time he left the hospital, he wore a pale pink shirt. If if we wear pink, he'll get better sooner.

I don't have any pink shirts, and I didn't have time to go shopping yesterday. I put on what I thought was the next best thing: a skirt with pink roses printed all over it. There are bits of black in the background of the print, but, overall, the skirt is dark and light pink. I wore a black top with it.

Nummon motioned for me to follow her into the hallway this morning. She had a pink pashmina in her hand and a concerned look on her face.

"Lalen, you need to wear this today. Your clothes are more like 80% black and 20% pink. No one in the school has to know this isn't your scarf."

I don't know who taught her percentages. I was under the impression that my ensemble was 50/50. But colors are taken seriously here, and black is a color of mourning. It's easier to nod and smile and wear the scarf.

So, today I'm experimenting with different scarf styles:

faster than a speeding... something

In preparation for Fathers' Day, I wanted my students to draw pictures of their fathers as superheroes. I plan to use their pictures to decorate a poster I'm making for Wednesday's Fathers' Day festivities.

I began class today by asking kids to name some superheros.

Batman! Superman! Spiderman! Supergirl! Ben 10!
"And what makes superheros different from other people?"
Superpowers!
"That's right! Can anyone name a superpower?"

One hand shot up -- an especially precocious student named Janjao. "The United States?!" she cried out.

"Not what I meant, but have a sticker."

monkeys and flowers in lopburi

I can only tolerate so much Bangkok at a time. It had been over a month since I'd left town, so on Sunday I set my sights on Lopburi: home to thousands of monkeys and endless sunflower fields.

Every year, this primate-infested town holds a feast for the monkeys at some temple ruins. My colleagues and I got there by noon, just in time to watch them have a milk break. Did you know monkeys can drink through straws? I didn't.

They're thieving little devils. We were warned not to wear jewelry, or carry anything that looks like food. One monkey snatched a container of hand sanitizer dangling from a rubber band on Simone's backpack. She tried to get it back, afraid he'd be poisoned, but he scampered up the side of a building and out of reach.

Next on the agenda was taking pictures in a sunflower field.

I had anticipated communication problems, and before we left in the morning I did an internet search for "sunflower" in Thai. No luck. I settled for drawing a little picture of a sunflower and hoped it would be sufficient.

Nonverbal communication worked remarkably well. I held out my scrap of paper to people and pointed to the sunflower. A ticket lady ushered us onto her bus, which was filled with colorful pictures of Hindu (?) gods.

She got off with us at a bus stop, motioned for us to wait, and asked a nearby satay vendor to let us know which bus to take to the sunflower fields.

We waited on a bench and chatted amongst ourselves until the bus came. It was packed, and we had to sit on a raised area directly above the engine. Not the most comfortable ride ever, but it was OK.

After 20 minutes or so of riding, we started seeing small sunflower fields. We got off on the side of the road.

It was one of the loveliest sights I've seen here. There were rows and rows of tall, beautiful yellow flowers stretching as far as I could see.

We hitched a ride in the back of a jackfruit truck down to a field bordered by some rocky hills.

It was definitely worth the three hours spent getting there from Bangkok and the threat of rabies.

bulletin board #4: november

This month's unit was simple past tense, kind of.



My next board is going to be Christmas themed!

100-meter dash

Some people here jog in nicely landscaped parks - little oases of green in a world made of concrete.

I, for one, prefer to take my exercise while tearing down a sidewalk in flip flops and a pencil skirt.

Today, I had in mind that I'd take a bus from work to the Suan Lum night bazaar before meeting Alyssa and Mariela to walk to our Wednesday night Bible study. The bus driver had other plans.

I found a seat and the fare collecting lady came to ask where I was going. When I told her, she started talking to me in Thai. I stared up at her with my clueless do-I-look-like-a-Thai-speaker-to-you? look. She kept talking. I gave her a helpless-sounding, "Mai ru kah" ("I don't understand"). She sighed, took my change, and handed me a ticket.

Thirty minutes into the ride, she signaled for me to get off. We were nowhere near the night bazaar and I was confused. "Go to Suan Lum??" I asked. She shook her head. What choice did I have? I couldn't ask what was happening, so I got off.

Annoyed, but needing the restroom, I walked across a granite plaza, up some steps, and through the glass doors of a shopping mall.

I took three steps inside and stopped. I felt I was forgetting something.

Cursing, I wheeled around and ran out the door, pausing on the steps to survey the traffic. I had to find that bus; it was driving away with a bag containing my brand new work shoes! I had only worn them twice.

I spotted the bus 40 yards ahead. Traffic was moving slowly. I wasn't about to let go of those shoes - not when they were within sight.

I ran as fast as my skirt would allow. My flip flops slapped the pavement. Motorcyle drivers and bystanders stared.

I swerved around pedestrians, sprinting like a mad woman, praying the traffic wouldn't pick up speed, and wondering how long I should commit to chasing a pair of shoes that only cost me $4.50.

Traffic stopped and I caught up. I dodged taxis, cars, and motorbikes and ran to the doors, knocking and gesturing wildly. The ticket lady looked at me as if to say, "You again?!"

She and the driver shook their heads. I kept waving until they opened the door. I pointed to my feet - "Shoes!!" - and pointed back to where I had been sitting. The lady walked back with me and laughed when she realized what I was on about. I retrieved my cheap footgear and panted all the way back to the mall.

franks a million

As I was standing by the office microwave this morning, waiting for my breakfast to heat up, I couldn't help but notice that Nummon was carefully unwrapping a hot dog from its paper.

It's 7:40am, mind you.

She smoothed the paper out on the table and put the hot dog down. She opened the bun. There was mayonnaise on it. Mayonnaise. On a hot dog. At 7:40 in the morning.

Call me culturally insensitive, but that's revolting.

Then, Erin walked over to the table. She had a bag of mini tangerines and was going around the office dispensing them. She offered one to Nummon, who made a face and said, "Fruit? In the morning?!"

Last week in pictures

I see weird things in Bangkok all the time, but I don't always have my camera ready to capture them. Here are a few serendipitous moments from last week:

This was taken at a small promotional event for the new Michael Jackson movie in a bookstore in the Siam Paragon mall.



I have no idea what a horse's head has to do with MJ.


Moving on.



Apparently, having Mickey Mouse's arse sewn to yours is a fashion statement.


An last, an ad on the BTS for a local fast food place. Wedged between some OK-looking spaghetti and a pretty cake is a box-o-weiners.



Because what respectable party spread doesn't include the family-sized box of franks sliced to look like flower blooms?

dictation!

My class has dictation time first thing on Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday mornings. The students have five words to study.

I call out three words for them to write in English and in Thai. Number four is used in a sentence, which they must listen to and write correctly. For the last word, they must come up with their own sentence.

Today's dictation words were all job-related.

"Number one: farmer. Farmer. Faaaaarmerrr."
"Teechah is a farmer."
"No, teacher is not a farmer. I've never farmed a thing in my life. Number two: dancer. Dancer. Dancer."
"Teechah is a cleaner."
"I'll make you think cleaner, kid. Number three: vet. Vet. Vet."
"Teechah is a zookeeper!!"
"More than you know, Poom. More than you know..."

par-tay

Last night I was reminded of why my students don't listen.

We were made to attend the 60th birthday/retirement party for three teachers from our school yesterday.

Two MCs started off the program with what I can only assume to be some cleverly-scripted banter. As our table of farangs sat watching them and eating our Pad Thai, I noticed that no one else was looking their way, much less listening to them.

The principal of the school (who's kind of a big deal) also got up to give a speech. Not a head turned; people just kept on with their dinner conversations.

The same thing happened at the Queen's birthday back in August. It baffled me just as much then as it did last night.

I don't know where I got the silly notion that if someone has a microphone, they're probably saying something important.

Later in the evening, alumni, students, and teachers gave performances ranging from beautiful to amusing to offensive to the ear.

The Prathom teachers did a traditional Thai dance, which was SO fun to watch. The women looked beautiful -- like painted dolls. We all agreed that Aekapol (a guy I teach with twice a week) was 10 times more graceful than any of us.

Next, one of the Chinese teachers did a traditional Chinese dance. She wore a gorgeous gown covered in light blue and gold sequins. The way she moved was mesmerizing. Sometimes her arms looked like cobras. Other times, her hands looked like twitterpated birds chasing each other.

Four male teachers ballroom danced together. One was wearing a dress made of a black trash bag covered in colorful paper flowers. We thought perhaps he was supposed to be a ladyboy. There was a female teacher in the same bag dress with a flower in her mouth, trying to get the attention of the dancing men. Not sure what the point of this skit was.

The final act was a traditional Thai song performed by one of the custodial staff. I can't imagine a world in which it would meet any criteria for beauty, but, inexplicably, everyone cheered as she sang the first few words. It was kind of like a nasal Tarzan yell. Really, no description can do justice to the sound, so I'll leave it at that.

But Mariela was right when she leaned over and said to me, "Just think: In all our lives, we'll never, ever attend another work party quite like this one."

in the lap of luxury

It's amazing how drastically my definition of "luxury" has changed in five months.

Alyssa, Mariela, and I had the privilege of apartment sitting for a woman in our small group this weekend. I was eager to get away, as the furniture in my apartment was scheduled to be treated for mold.

All weekend I was thrilled by things I'd never think twice about back home, such as:

1. A comfy, fabric-upholstered couch with throw pillows.
2. Having multiple rooms in an apartment to walk in and out of.
3. Watching a movie on a TV screen.
4. The option of a shower or a bath.
5. Closets with sliding mirrored-glass doors and lighting that comes on automatically when you open the door.
6. Mold-free storage space in general.
7. Air conditioning all the time.
8. Falling asleep snuggled up under a soft comforter.
9. Being able to prepare food and store it safely out of reach of ants.
10. Bath mats.
11. Bookshelves and an entertainment center.
12. A bathroom sink with a hot water option.
13. A shower enclosed in its own little glass walls, as opposed to a shower head on the wall of a tiled room with nothing to separate it from the toilet and sink area.
14. Pots, pans, cutlery, dishes, a fridge, and drinking from glasses rather than water bottles.

We kept calling the place our penthouse, when it was really a very ordinary apartment by Western standards.

Pasta with fresh vegetables was a delight. So were the scrambled eggs and toast, fruit, muesli, and yogurt for breakfast. And sangria. Yum!

All in all, an excellent weekend.

something's fishy...

On Tuesday I was standing with the mom I tutor for, waiting for her daughter while she chatted with another mom. The other woman had two first graders - twin boys. They were sharing a bag of Big Sheet.

I've seen the kids munching on this stuff before. In its essence, Big Sheet is a crispy, paper-thin sheet of dried seaweed.

The twin in charge of holding the bag looked up at me with his big, sweet, brown eyes, shoved his hand into the bag, snatched a sheet, and offered it to me, beaming.

What choice did I have?

I accepted it and moved it closer to my mouth. It smelled like fish food.

I took a bite. It tasted like fish food.

He was watching me eat; I couldn't throw it in the shrubs. I ate an entire sheet of reconstituted, flattened fish food. Sick.

grammar lesson

One of my students approached me before class this morning.

Student: Teechah, what is 'duh' mean?
Me: Duh?
Student: *nods*
Me: Where did you hear that word?
Student: Like, 'I went to duh school.'
Me: Oh! 'The'!
Student: *nods* What is mean, 'duh'?
Me: The... well... "the" is an... article? And you use it with nouns because... um... It's an article.
Student: Thank you, teechah.

He might as well have asked me the meaning of life.

respect the earth, or else

Today, the primary grades participated in Environment Day.

Like most other things that happen at this school, I spent half of the time trying to figure out the point, and the other half laughing at how ridiculously executed things were.

Case in point: At one station, students learned how to turn perfectly good garbage bags into worthless bits of trash by cutting them up to make shirts and skirts. Good for the environment? Nope. Good for keeping little monkey children preoccupied for 30 minutes? Yep!

The English department covered the five Rs –- Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Repair, and Reject. Students were meant to file through the station, learning about one R at each stop. At the end, they’d take a 15-question quiz of environment dos and don’ts. Ideally, learning would take place.

The Thai teachers in the English department believe the best and most effective way to convince children to learn is to bribe them with crappy, Chinese-made toys.

When the children stopped at our posters, we were supposed to make them answer a question in return for a plastic quarter, penny, nickel, or dime.

They would proceed to the prize table, where they could exchange their coins to pluck a paper leaf from one of hundreds of strings hanging overhead. Each leaf had a letter. They could find out what their mystery letter was and take a piece of junk from the corresponding prize table.

My station was “Repair.”

It started out OK. I read the definition of repair and gave the students examples of things that could be fixed rather than replaced. After about the second or third time I gave my spiel, I could clearly see that they didn’t understand or care.

Then Michael Jackson's "Heal the World" started blaring from one end of the English station. It was all downhill after that.

I couldn't help but feel like I was in theater of the absurd at times: Kristy at my left, trying to explain "hazardous waste" to first graders, Sukjai at my right, yelling in Thai on a megaphone, and some club song on the mix CD singing the word sexy over and over again. Appropriate for schoolchildren? Nope. Appropriate for Environment Day? Nope. Hilarious? Sure was.

We manned our stations from 9:00 to 11:30 this morning, and then after lunch from 1:00 to 2:50.

In the afternoon, my exchange with younger students generally went something like this:

“Repair.”
*silence, and a blank stare*
“Can you say, ‘Repair’? Re-paaaair.”
…
“Repair. Repair. Repair!”
…
“OK, kid, take your plastic dime and go.”



Or,



"Name two things you can repair."
...
"Two things... any two things."
...
"OK, just say a word."
...
"...Or, conversely, do a dance."
...


By the end, I was asking older kids to name a Michael Jackson song to get their token. And then I zoned out and started mentally rewriting "R-E-S-P-E-C-T."

R-E-C-Y-C-L-E,
Find out what it means to me,
R-E-C-Y-C-L-E,
Go on, save a tree!

Sort it for me, sort it for me, sort it for me, sort it for me
Sort it for me, sort it for me, sort it for me, sort it for me...

hippies smell

Pai is a tiny mountain town 762 curves away from Chiang Mai. That's what all the t-shirts said, anyway.

The drive there is absolutely beautiful. We went by public, 4-hour, non-air-con bus from Chiang Mai. It was actually chilly at 7 am as the morning breeze whipped in the window of the seat in front of me. We froze, until Mariela so wisely crammed the backpack into the opening to block the wind.

By minibus, the ride takes 3 hours. It's air-conditioned, and it's quicker, but I preferred the public bus. There were much better views of the mountains and valleys from the big, open windows. And the ride is only shorter because the driver whips around the mountain curves that much faster.

Pai is full, chock full, of hippies. It was the most relaxed place I've ever been. They've got hammocks, great coffee, and some of the most delicious baked goods I've ever had -- certainly the best I've had in five months.

There are two Muslim-owned bakeries in town. I could have eaten at them for every meal. Mariela and I split a massive piece of cake our last day there. It wasn't just any cake, though. It was banana chocolate cream cheese cake. There was a layer of rich, dense banana cake, cream cheese filling, more banana cake, and about half an inch on homemade fudge frosting. Heavenly!

We also had cinnamon pumpkin pie topped with walnuts, apple pie, pineapple pie, and "real" meals scattered in here and there.

from Laos to Chiang Mai

I left you all hanging at Laos, but I wanted to mention the last week of my vacation.

Mariela and I spent 16 hours over two days traveling up the Mekong River by slow boat to get back to Thailand from Laos. The first day, we had the "luxury boat," which earned its title because of the padded car seats nailed to 2x4s that made up the passenger rows.

It was fine for eight hours. The breeze came in off the water and we were comfortable enough to read and journal and even nap. We spent the night at a super-dodgy guesthouse in Pak Beng. At no other point on this trip was I afraid to fall asleep at night, but we did, in fact, live to see another day.

The next morning we had a scrumptious breakfast -- an egg, ham, and cheese bagel and muesli with yogurt and fresh fruit -- before heading down to meet the boat.

It was exactly the same as yesterday's vessel except for one unfortunate detail. We were on the edge of our seats, literally, because the wide, comfy car chairs had been replaced by rickety, narrow, wooden benches with loose floral cushions so flat there might as well have been no cushion at all. Observe our chagrin.




It was a long eight hours. We spent that night at a non-sketchy guesthouse in Houay Xai. This one was on a three-tiered pricing system. See the photo for details. We must have chosen "cheaper price," because ours didn't come with toilet paper. It was OK, though. We nicked some from the room across the hall.

The next day, we crossed the river into Thailand and spent the day riding various buses on our way to Chiang Mai.

We stopped in Chiang Rai to see the White Temple, or Wat Rong Khun. We also perused a small gallery of the artist's other work. Most of it was very Buddhist, but there were a few unique paintings that caught our eye. One pictured George Bush clinging to a rocket blasting into space and waving. Odd. Another interesting piece had a title that was something like, "The Dominance of the Male Organ Over the World." I almost bought a postcard of that painting, but I couldn't decide who I'd mail it to. You don't want to send the wrong message...

back to the grind

Nummon approached me before class to tell me that we wouldn't be dividing the students into three small groups today. Instead, I'd be teaching all three class periods (with 40 students in each class, mind you) myself, so the our new student-teacher, Pear, might gain wisdom and insight from my teaching style.

Specifically, she wanted Pear to observe and take notes on my "teaching techniques and classroom management." I almost laughed when she said it.

I've been teaching -- "teaching" -- for four and a half months. I never earned a teaching credential. I didn't do a TEFL certification program. I've never even substituted in an American school.

I had a six-hour ESL training day at Baylor from a lady who teaches English to Mexican immigrants at her church. That's it. No test, no license, nothing. And a teacher-in-training is supposed to learn classroom management from me?!

Then, Nummon showed me the worksheet I was meant to cover in class. The front page had two long paragraphs about the King of Thailand -- when and where he was born, where he went to school, the 53-letter names of his parents, grandparents, sister, and brother, his coronation date, etc., etc.

It had words and phrases like "Massachusetts" and "coronation ceremony" -- words that fourth graders learning a second language don't really need to know.

She told me she wanted me to teach them about why Thai people love the King, because I'm obviously the most qualified person to do that. She gave me some tips, like, "The king is the center of our heart."

The last page of the worksheet introduced the past simple tense with "to be."

To illustrate the difference between am/is/are and was/were, I filled two buckets with plastic produce and labeled one "Today" and the other "Yesterday."

The idea was that I'd pull out a carrot from the "Today" bucket and the class would say, "Today there is a carrot." Then I'd pull tomatoes from the "Yesterday" bucket and they'd say, "Yesterday there were some tomatoes."

Pear took loads of notes on goodness-knows-what during the first class, and then assisted me in the second class as I turned the bucket practice into a game between Team Cabbage and Team Asparagus.

odds and ends from october

A fruit vendor in Hanoi, Vietnam.



Ziplining through the jungle in Chiang Mai, Thailand.



A beautiful waterfall near Luang Prabang, Laos.



Rawring.



Kayaking in Halong Bay, Vietnam.

with love from laos

My short visit to Laos is drawing to a close. I've enjoyed it immensely and would recommend a trip to Luang Prabang to anyone.

I've had wonderful food here - mostly Western food. It's actually the first Western food I've eaten in Asia, apart from two meals at Mexican food places in Bangkok.

You really can't beat walking through the night market at dusk eating a baguette smeared with Nutella and peanut butter and filled with sliced bananas.

Or zooming around the twisting mountain roads in the back of a tuk-tuk, whizzing past plants with leaves twice the size of your head.

Or sitting in a tea shop, reclining on the floor while watching a movie and drinking vanilla hazelnut black tea.

Or sucking down a creamy mango smoothie and eating Lao soup on a riverside, lantern-lit terrace, looking out into the pitch black night sky.

Or taking a flying leap from a tree and plunging into an ice-cold pool of milky turquoise water... after a hot, sweaty, 20-minute hike up to the top of a waterfall in the jungle.

You just can't beat it.

The only thing that would make it better is if Michael were here to enjoy it with me.

budget tours ain't all that bad

Mariela and I booked a budget tour of Halong Bay from the travel agency in our hotel in Hanoi. I'd read all kinds of warnings online saying these tours were hit or miss, but we decided to try our luck.

Overall, it was a good deal. The boat was nice, the cabin was cozy, the beds were comfy, and the food was decent.

The negatives? The water cut off at night, and I had to hunt down a boat guy to get it turned back on for a shower. Our tour guide was also awful - not friendly or helpful in the slightest - and he told us we couldn't get off the boat to swim because the police would give him a fine.

We knew this was a lie, because other people we talked with said they got to swim. The travel agent at the hotel said it was included in our itinerary (and Mariela is trying to negotiate with him at this moment to knock a few bucks off our hotel room). We tried to tell this to the guide, but he'd have none of it.

We met some cool British people our age, though, and played cards with them last night. We taught them Continental, and they taught us Shit Head.

I'll post some photos of the bay when I'm back in Thailand, but Google it to get an idea. The water is a beautiful jade green color and the bay is dotted with hundreds of tall, rocky islands that jut up out of the water.

We got to kayak around a little bit this morning, which was really fun. It was quiet and peaceful.

All the scenery wasn't beautiful, however, as Mariela pointed out a butt while we were kayaking. Yes, a butt. We were approaching a fishing boat when Mariela spotted a women who had just squatted over the side of her boat to use the toilet in the water! What a way to start the morning.

After kayaking we had the worst breakfast ever. The bread tasted like cardboard and the jelly was artificial beyond description.

We enjoyed soaking up the scenery and some sun as we headed back toward Halong City, and lunch in the tour company's restaurant was pretty good.

For $30, I can't complain.

Hanoi: Day Two

We saw the outside of the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum today. It wasn't open to the public; I think Uncle Ho is in Russia for preservation right now. But the uber-trippy Ho Chi Minh Museum nearby was up and running.

The third floor was a bewildering assortment of modern art exhibits meant to represent Ho Chi Minh's life and achievements and the progress of Vietnam. Words can't describe it. I'll try to post pictures when I'm back in Bangkok.

We saw the One Pillar Pagoda -- unimpressive, but we had to take pictures since it's the only pagoda we've seen so far.

We had lunch and saw the water puppet show in the afternoon. It was weird, but fun. This particular form of puppetry originated in northern Hanoi, and it's a big tourist attraction.

In the afternoon, we shopped and shopped. I love looking at the handicrafts here, but it makes me sad that I can't buy everything I see.

We had a wonderfully delicious meal of chicken pho (a rice noodle soup) and fried rice by the street.

When we returned to the hotel, Mariela and I started talking to the guy at the front desk about the bus to Halong City, where we wanted to catch a boat to go around the bay and visit Cat Ba Island. He ended up talking us into a 2-day, $30 tour. I've read very mixed reviews about these budget Halong Bay tours, so it might be a total debacle. We'll know tomorrow!

Hanoi: Day One

We had a great first day in Hanoi. I love this country. Granted, it's probably only because I'm here as a tourist for a limited time. Whatever. The food has been delicious, the shopping good, and the people friendly.

HCMC was a more chill place than Hanoi, I think, but the traffic was definitely more hectic there than here.

We spent our day wandering around the Old Quarter. We got an excellent (free!) city guide at the airport today, which included maps, a list of which streets sell which products (as in, shoe street, bag street, handicrafts, jewelry, lacquerware, fake Adidas... the list goes on and on), and a guide to street food, including pictures! I wish we had one for Bangkok.

We had an overpriced, mediocre lunch, followed by a stroll around the city. We walked around Hoan Kiem lake, took photos, poked around a Catholic cathedral, and went to an ice cream place listed in our magic book.

The place was packed with locals (and their motorbikes), and the most popular flavor of ice cream bar seemed to be "green." We decided to go with it.

It had a wonderful, creamy texture and the flavor was a combination of something like coconut, sunscreen scent, shea butter, and corn. Sounds awful, but it was strangely delicious. We're going back tomorrow for seconds.

Street restaurants here feature low, low tables and tiny, kid-sized stools to sit on. It's not the most comfortable way to eat, but we had some delicious fried rice and baked shrimp for about $1.60 each. Did I mention that I love the food in southeast Asia?

cu chi tunnels

We took a half-day tour of the Cu Chi tunnels today.

We got to crawl through a section of the tunnels. They've been widened since the war, so that tourists can fit, but they were still cramped and claustrophobic. Parts of them had no light at all, so you had to feel your way in the dark, crouched over and scraping your back and shoulders against the tunnel walls.

We also saw some of the booby traps used by the National Liberation Front against the American army. Creepy, creepy stuff.

I had a nice chat with two older Australian men on the way to the tunnels. We got on the issue of guns and gun control, because they have different weapons you can pay to shoot after you see the tunnels.

One guy asked if I planned to shoot. I said I wasn't that interested, since I shoot guns at home. I ended up telling him about my 5-year-old cousin Krista's pink 22 rifle, and Krista's dad's AK-47. The look on his face was priceless.

Not that I'm a gun fanatic at all, but it was just funny to see the cultural difference. I take it for granted that we'll go out to the farm and shoot guns after Thanksgiving or Christmas lunch. I'm from rural East Texas - what can I say?

We spent the second half of our day wandering around HCMC's Chinatown. Not impressive. Also, a pagoda-fail and market-fail. We did manage to take a bus back to our street, which was much cheaper than a taxi. So... 10% success rate, maybe?

Ho Chi Minh City

I'd read before coming here that the city is crazy, hectic, and has awful traffic. After walking around for a day, I have to say I disagree completely.

My view is colored, of course, because I've lived in Bangkok for the last four months. HCMC certainly has more motorbikes than BKK (probably at least 3 times as many), and it's true that traffic lights are infrequent occurences (and pedestrian crossing lights even less so), but Alyssa, Mariela, and I agree: HCMC is a chill place.

French colonial influence has given it a European feel. The streets are luxuriously wide, the sidewalks are smooth and clean, there aren't street vendors everywhere you turn, and there are lots and lots of parks.

It's not nearly as polluted as BKK, which means breathing is pleasant and the temperature by the street isn't suffocating.

The food here is SO good, so fresh, and so cheap. Dinner tonight (vegetable curry, cashew chicken, rice, and mango smoothies) cost us about $2.50 each.

Another nice thing - nearly all restaurants in Vietnam give you little moist towlettes to clean your hands with before you eat.

More to come!

After the 7-hour van ride Sunday afternoon/evening and a night of rest in our hotel, we were ready for some beach time. It was a 3-hour boat ride out to the island.

The boat was pretty nice - kind of like airplane seats, with four seats on either side of an aisle. They gave us bottled water and a small package of cookies to snack on.

As soon as we pulled into the dock, it started raining. We were only mildly inconvenienced, however, as Mariela's fiancee's dad sent us a Southeast Asia survival kit, complete with emergency ponchos!

We got a cheap van ride to a hotel listed in Alyssa's Lonely Planet guide and got situated in a musty, less-than-spotless little bungalow.

We ordered lunch from the kitchen. All they had was shrimp, and it was the freshest tasting shrimp we'd ever had. Delish.

We watched the Disney channel, played cards, and napped. Every single time the rain stopped, I said, "OK, let's go out to explore!" And every single time, the rain would start again within one minute.

Late in the afternoon it finally settled down to a light drizzle. Determined to see some sand, we donned our ponchos, hosed our legs down with bug spray, and headed in the general direction of the ocean.

After navigating a slippery mud path, a tangle of overgrown weeds, empty resort pools, and a vine-covered bridge, we made it to the beach.

It wasn't quite the white sugar-sand stretch we'd been expecting. The sand was brown and a little coarse. The beach was empty. The wind was howling and the waves looked rough. We walked along, picking up seashells and receiving bemused looks from Vietnamese who were probably wondering what the heck these tourists were doing on Phu Quoc in the low season.

Now we know why it's the low season. It rained all night and all the next morning.

On the bright side, the women who ran the bungalows were great cooks, and our first experience with Vietnamese food was a good one.

On Tuesday morning we decided to cut our losses and leave a day early.

We caught a 1:00 boat, where we met our new friend Thiet (pronounced "Chee").

More on that later.

Day 1 of our vacation: Ho Chi Minh City to Rach Gia

Alyssa, Mariela, and I decided we wanted to begin our three week holiday from teaching with a trip to Vietnam.

I spent weeks researching and had a whirlwind itinerary planned, starting from Ho Chi Minh City in the south and working our way up through the scenic coast by train.

Hurricane Ketsana ruined all that last week, resulting in much freaking out on our parts.

We settled on just flying into HCMC and then flying directly to Hanoi. We were disappointed about missing all the lovely parts of central Vietnam, but maybe some other time.

We arrived in Ho Chi Minh City on Sunday morning around 9:30am. We exchanged some baht for Vietnamese dong and made a game plan.

Task #1: Buy a plane ticket to Hanoi for the 9th.
Task #2: Secure a place to stay on the evening of the 8th.
Task #3: Get to Rach Gia and buy boat tickets to leave for beautiful Phu Quoc Island Monday morning.

It was a pretty overwhelming task list, really, in a new, unfamiliar city and unable to speak even one word of the language. But my friends and I are go-getters, so we went and got some plane tickets.

The next stop was the taxi stand, where we got in, chose a hostel from my list at random, and set off.

It's a cute place, and we're looking forward to staying there. We left, had some lunch at a nearby restaurant, and then started walking toward the Ben Thanh market where we could catch a city bus to the bus station where we could catch a private van to Rach Gia. Simple, right?

As we were walked in the direction of the market, we passed about a bajillion little travel agencies advertising bus tickets to Rach Gia. Fearful of missing the last bus there, we decided to pop in and inquire about bus times. They told us the next bus left at 2:00, and the last at 5:00. It was 1:15. Not wanting to get into another unfamiliar town at midnight, we decided to buy our tickets there for the 2:00 departure.

Enter the Roachmobile, our lovely mode of transport for a bone-rattling 7-hour drive at breakneck speeds over, around, and through the zillion potholes that make up the road from HCMC to the coast.

By the time we arrived at Rach Gia, it was dark. We got off the van without a clue where to go, and were promptly swarmed by motorbike drivers. We didn't want to be separated, and we asked one of the van passengers if he knew of a taxi service. He didn't.

There was one vehicle that wasn't a motorbike, but didn't look any more promising. A rickshaw-esque contraption pulled by a bicycle, it looked as though it were built for two small passengers, maybe. We didn't have much choice, so the three of us (and our backpacks) crammed in and perched precariously on the wooden plank seats.

We found a hotel, crashed, and got up early for our boat's 8am departure.

To be continued...

the best laid plans...

On Wednesday, our trip plans fell apart. On Thursday, we pieced them back together. Today, they crumbled again.

Dear Typhoons Ketsana and Parma,

Is now really the time for all your nonsense?

We had planned to fly in to Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam on Sunday and spend one week working our way up the coast by rail, visiting lovely scenic beach towns, and ending in Hanoi where we'd catch a flight into Luang Prabang, Laos.

Ketsana put central Vietnam underwater and the South-North trains are out of commission at the moment.

The modified plan as of this afternoon is to fly into HCMC, spend a few days there, and buy a cheap flight to Hanoi in time to catch our flight to Laos.

However, the tropical storm left over after Typhoon Parma has hit the Philippines could potentially ground flights in Vietnam.

We're praying this doesn't happen, and you should too!

My stress levels in the last two days have probably shaved six months off my lifespan. I'm a worrier - what can I say?

a treat

Ice cream sandwich, Thai style.

all i have to say is, "why??"

Ant problems, again.

I was cleaning my room today and picked up my camera battery charger. I noticed some suspicious white lint around the holes and metal prongs where the battery connects to the charger.

I removed the lint and an ant crawled out. And another. And three more. These **** ants are nesting in my camera battery charger!!

One crawled out holding what looked like an egg.

[Insert a long string of profanities]

They keep poking their anty little antennae out. I'm sitting here on the edge of my bed, peering into the hole, cursing, and waiting to annihilate each one.

These kinds of freak things happen to me more than the other teachers. Although, another girl did find mold in her wardrobe recently. It made me feel a little better to have someone to commiserate with.

bulletin board #3: september

This month's topic: Must and mustn't.

rumination

I emailed my beloved 7th grade reading teacher, Mrs. Muhl, several weeks ago to ask for her vocabulary lists. One of my fluent tutorees, Jame, is so good at English that I figured I'd go ahead and teach him the things American kids his age are learning in school.

For the last two weeks, I've been giving him words like "hirsute" and "ostracize" to study and write sentences with.

I was checking his sentences tonight and there, between "My room is often disheveled." and "Most of the things that my friends say are ludicrous." was just another small reminder that I'm not at home:

"Monks ruminate on small pillows."

It made me smile.

This kid cracks me up sometimes. I was giving him the next 10 words to study, when I said, "Germinate. G-E-R..." He interrupted me. "Germinate? Like turn someone into a German?"

soy una gringa

Spanish is turning out to be ever-so-helpful here in Bangkok. Sometimes I use it to help out a stranger. Other times I use it to avoid one.

I was standing alone at a bus stop on Sukhumvit after lunch today. Mariela and Alyssa had taken the BTS to read at Starbucks. I wanted to try out bus 2 since Navin (the tailor) told me it ran near my road.

Naturally, a woman who’s standing by herself wants to be approached by a strange man, right? After I had been standing there for two or three minutes, this guy walked up to me and asked, “Do you speak English?”

He didn’t look Thai, and I couldn’t place his accent. Ever-suspicious, I said the first thing that popped into my head.

“No, no entiendo ingles,” I replied, looking distinctly non-latina and definitely non-European.
“Ohhh. Spanish?”
“Si, si,” I said, naively thinking he’d lose interest.

But he didn’t lose interest. He said he had a friend back in New York who knew a little Spanish and he, in turn, knew un poquito.

"Does 'Si' mean 'Yes'?" he wanted to know.

Much to my amusement, he spent the next half-hour combining English, gestures, and the two or three Spanish words he knew to try to get me to understand him.

I honestly don’t know how I kept a straight face. Especially when he told me his name (“My nambre es Jason.”) and handed me a small slip of paper with his number on it.

He wanted my “nambre” and phone number. I told him, “Me llamo… Lauren.”

When I speak Spanish, I don’t sound like a total gringa. If I'd been quicker, I probably could have gotten away with being from Spain. But I gave my real name, sounding totally, 100% estadounidense.

Anyway, he must be really thick, because he didn't question it and continued trying to Spanishify his English to help me understand him.

I told him I had a novio. He didn’t understand that, so I mimed someone taller than me, and pretended to hug my invisible novio. He asked if I was married. I shook my head "No," but realized I shouldn't acknowledge that I understand English. (Incidentally, it's really rather difficult to pretend not to understand someone when you actually do.)

Unfortunately, he was waiting for the same bus I was.

When we got on the bus, he asked if I drove in Spain, pantomiming using a steering wheel. I played confused, acted as though I suddenly understood, and told him no, I didn’t drive there, because there was a metro in Madrid ("El metro, como el beh-teh-ese," I said, while pointing up to the BTS station) and people like to walk. I told him Madrid was very beautiful. Of course, the only word of it he probably understood was, “No.”

He had to get off at the same stop as me, but so did a lot of people. I let the crowd separate us, put on my sunglasses, and made a quick escape, succumbing to a fit of giggles as soon as I knew I was out of sight.

rain

Today's excursion was a double fail. Worst attempt yet.

Mariela and I wanted to go see the reclining Buddha today at Wat Pho. I had looked up which buses we could take, and there was one - 512 - whose route stopped not too far from our street.

We took a free bus up the road and spend some time figuring out which direction bus 512 would come from. We walked around for 15 minutes in the sun. We climbed some stairs to get a better view of the traffic situation. 512 was nowhere in sight.

Reclining Buddha = 0%.

Luckily, I had read about another temple nearby, notable for its forested meditation area. It was between Siam and Centralworld, so we were able to take the skywalk and stay above the crowded sidewalks.

When we got there, it started drizzling. No matter - we had umbrellas. But little rainstorms quickly turn into downpours here, and we had just started walking around the temple's grounds when the sky opened up.

We decided to wait it out in the dry, air-conditioned Siam Paragon mall.

Several hours later, tired and ready to go home, we ventured back out to the skywalk. (Other random temple = 0%.) Down below, the streets had turned into rivers! We watched a poor pedestrian wading through ankle-deep water as he crossed between two sidewalks.

We had planned to take a bus home, but after seeing the water level, we didn't want to wade through the street to board.

Walking wasn't much better, though, as we had to make multiple crossings through cold, dirty, gray water that reached as high as our calves.

Even worse, heavy rain forces cockroaches out of their hiding places, giving you yet another thing to try and avoid.

que dios te bendiga!

Sometimes you want a fruit smoothie and a quiet walk home. Sometimes you get a fruit smoothie and a frantic Peruvian man instead.

I was minding my own business at a corner smoothie shop, sipping on some pineapple-banana deliciousness, when a man walked up.

"Do you speak English?"
"Yes."
"Hablas español?"
"...Si..."

And then a rush of rapid-fire Spanish that I didn't understand.

"Señor, mi español no es tan bueno. Necesita hablar más despacio."

So he slowed down. Kind of. He needed to make a phone call to Kuala Lumpur and was having trouble with the international calling card he'd bought. I told him I had never used a card like that before. There were no instructions on it, which didn't matter, because he didn't know any English.

I spent the next hour figuring out how exactly I could help him make this oh-so-essential phone call. Turns out, he had the country codes written down incorrectly.

After a few failed attempts at finding this information (including calling a Thai phone number he had on a scrap of paper and subsequently leaving some Thai lady thoroughly confused on the other end), we wound up in the lobby of a nearby hotel.

There, I told the concierge about our problem (because by this point, it was my problem, too), she made a couple of phone calls, and 10 minutes later we had country codes for Peru and Malaysia.

We walked outside where I tried no fewer than 12 different combinations of adding or taking away plus signs and zeros from the phone number.

When I finally got through to Kuala Lumpur, I handed him the phone. He talked for three or four minutes without taking a breath, hung up, and thanked me effusively, asking if he owed me anything.

"No, no, it's perfectly all right..."
"Gracias, gracias," etc.
"De nada. Que Dios te bendiga!"

He strode away and I walked home, thinking about how surprising life can be and thanking God that my parents convinced me to take Spanish in high school instead of Latin.

mi amigo

I went to the tailor shop after church today to take my dress back and (hopefully/finally) get the lining fixed properly.

I put the dress on, and Navin, one of the employees, pinned it. I was all ready to leave, but he insisted that I stay and have a drink of water. Navin and another employee got to telling me about their lives and families back in Burma, how they came here to find good jobs, how they worked illegally for awhile, and about all the struggles they went through as illegal immigrants.

Navin hasn't been home since he arrive four years ago. His mom always asks when he'll be back. "Next year, Mom." But, he told me, next year never comes.

"How can I go home and visit when that money could feed them for a year? So I stay."

Anyway, he said my dress would be ready and he could drop it by on Tuesday night.

This evening, Navin called me up to chat. He said he liked that I really listened as they talked. Then he asked if we could be friends. (Yeah - I know...) I couldn't say no!

Over the next 20 minutes or so, he covered a wide variety of topics including (but not limited to) alcohol, food preferences, astrology, past girlfriends, Thai cuisine, money troubles, and his family life.

Tonight, I had four missed calls from the tailor shop's cell phone. What have I gotten myself into?

they're causing me alarm

Ants are an inevitability in any apartment in Bangkok. I was warned before I left the U.S., but I was unprepared for the irksome reality.

They crawl across the floor, on your bed, and up and down the tile bathroom walls. They're on the table. They're on the dresser. They're outside, inside, everywhere. They eat things. They are incredibly resourceful little beasties.

A few weeks ago, I was digging through one of my suitcases, looking for a shirt I had packed away. I noticed an ant, and wondered what business it had nosing around in my luggage.

I moved some shirts. More ants. I dumped everything out of the suitcase, trying to see what they were after. I found the answer in a mesh side pocket: A chewy peanut buttery granola bar.

I am baffled as to how they sniffed it out. Its shiny plastic package was unopened and zipped away in the bottom of a suitcase. When I inspected the wrapper, I could see tiny holes where ants had eaten through the plastic. I took it outside to my balcony and gingerly unwrapped it. They were swarming over the peanut butter deliciousness that was meant to be my going-home snack in April. Phooey.

That was the craziest thing I'd seen them do, until yesterday. I was putting a shirt in my laundry bag and noticed one of the little fiends crawling around in my dirty clothes. I pulled out a shirt and shook it. I took everything out of the bag and found three or four ants.

I inspected my clothes, because I'd heard the ants are attracted to sweat. A pair of brand new underwear had tiny little ANT HOLES in it. Grrrrrrrr. I was so mad!

I gave all the clothes a thorough shaking and laid them on a chair. I went on tidying my room, organizing my shelf and throwing things away. I moved an unopened box of tampons and saw an ant crawling along the seal.

What the heck?! I wondered.

I opened the box and ants swarmed out! I gave a yelp and dropped it. I dumped the contents out. Ants, ants, ants, crawling all over the stupid tampons! It didn't look like they had eaten through the wrappers, but what were they doing in there??

Like everything here, it's useless to fight it. You either adjust, or walk around in ant-eaten clothes. So, I'm going to start washing the sweat out of my clothes in the sink and hanging them up to dry before putting them in the laundry bag.

There are some things about Thailand I won't miss. Crazy sweat-eaters are one of them.

it's the little things...

Lunch today was awesome.

Actually, the entrees were mediocre, but one of the P3 students had a birthday today and his mom brought goodness-knows-how-many cakes to the lunchroom for the third graders.

But not just any cakes. No. These were Neapolitan ice cream cakes from Swensen's. YUM! Mariela and Alyssa spied a few leftover slices on the end of the teacher's lunch table. We made short work of them.

In other news, I have two weeks of classes and a week of testing before the three-week holiday. The time has flown, and so much has changed since I first got here. Or maybe I've just changed.

I've gotten into the swing of things. I know what the job duties and expectation are. I'm enjoying my students more than I first was - they make me laugh.

I've gotten more patient with correcting their mistakes while grading, too. For the first few weeks, I was an angry, irritable grader. It's still a chore, but I no longer hate grading with the fire of a thousand suns. Of course, ice cream cake helps with that.

love and marriage

I was talking tonight with a mom I tutor for and weddings came up. She said Thais invite everyone they know to their weddings, including coworkers. The average guest list is around 1,000 people.

I can't imagine trying to pay for a soiree like that. But she told me receptions here are more like cocktail parties, since you'd have to sell a kidney to fund a sit-down meal for 1,000 guests.

This mom also said a law was recently passed here saying that women are no longer required to take their husband's last name. She told me more women are opting to keep their last names since the divorce rate is so high (around 50%, like the U.S.). Women don't want to go through the hassle of changing their names, just in case it doesn't work out.

Seems to me you're doomed from the start if you take that attitude.

Questo il beccio di Tosca!

Some of the girls went out tonight for a dose of high culture at the opera. I'd never been to an opera before. I tried to put preconceived notions out of my mind, but part of me kept hoping a fat lady in a viking hat would show up.

We saw Puccini's Tosca. It was tragic, but good. I wish I were so vocally gifted.

There were English and Thai subtitles projected onto screens on either side of the stage, but I enjoyed trying to figure out as many words as possible based on my Spanish.

It wasn't until I got to Thailand that I realized how much I like foreign languages. I feel like a spy trying to crack the code. Every street sign or poster I pass is a secret message, waiting to be deciphered.

As of right now, I can read about seven Thai consonants and two vowels... out of 44 and 28, respectively. Baby steps, people, baby steps. Did I mention that Thai is hard?

I know some quasi-useful words and phrases, though.

Hello, goodbye, yes, no, thank you, left, right, the color blue, the color purple, beautiful, ginger chicken with rice, chicken, pork, the numbers through 100, "Look at this/that.", "How much is it?"

Hm. I guess that's about it. Now that I can see my Thai vocabulary enumerated, I'm pretty unimpressed with myself.

no more pooh rice for me...

My beloved Cholada Cafe - the restaurant on the second floor of my apartment building that always molds my steamed rice into the shape of a bear - is closing at the end of the week.

I'd like to observe a moment of silence for this loss.

They're moving to somewhere off Sukhumvit Road. It'll probably be better for their business, but I'm pretty bummed about it. Their gai pad king was the best!

And Cute Little Boy will be gone. I'll miss the slapping noise his tiny foam sandals made as he spent the days tearing up and down the halls.

*sniffle*

English Camp is done!

I was too tired to write about English Camp last night, but it went well. The teachers remembered our intro rap, the morning stations ran more or less smoothly, and the afternoon talent show of skits and songs was entertaining.

The kids liked Dirt and Worms, although some said it was too sweet. I never thought anything could be too sweet for a Thai. Chocolate pudding and Oreos is the limit, apparently.

In the afternoon, we voted on the three best songs or skits (out of 10 acts, total) and those teams advanced to play camping Jeopardy. This was fun for the three teams that got to come onstage to play, but the other seven groups got bored pretty quickly.

I came home at 4:00, showered, and crashed. I woke up to eat some leftover tuna sandwiches Nummon sent home with me, and sat around my apartment like a zombie, too tired to go out to dinner with Alyssa, Mariela, and Simone.

Now I can look forward to the October break!

pomegranate

I love how Thai people are thoughtful in really random ways.

I was eating lunch on Friday in the teacher lunchroom, as always. Ekapol came in and sat down at the opposite end of the table, as always. He never sits next to us, for some reason, but he'll carry on a conversation with us from the other end of the table, or even from the next table over.

I was chatting with Mariela and Alyssa when he asked me if I saw the pomegranate.

"Pomegranate? Out there on the lunch table? No, I didn't see it... Where was it?"

No, he told me, not on the lunch buffet table - on my desk. I hadn't seen a pomegranate on my desk, I told him, but I hadn't been at my desk for a few hours.

"Oh, I bought a pomegranate yesterday at a vendor, and he wanted to go home, so I bought another one for you. Have you tried it?"

I told him I'd never eaten pomegranate before, and that I was looking forward to it.

success!

Mariela and I did a pudding test run in the school kitchen a little while ago. It was easy and it tastes great! I'm super excited to make 150 servings of it tomorrow.

Huzzah!

We're English teachers.

I'm sitting in the back of a cab, thinking about English past tenses...

"What's another verb that ends in -ish? Wish... fish..."

"Dish."

"Wish, wished. Fish, fished. Dish, dished."

"Squish!"

"Squish, squished."

"I say squashed - 'I squashed a bug.'"

"But you can say squished, too."

"Yeah, but they're not interchangeable. Squashed is like..."
*smacking one palm down onto the other*
"...and squished is like..."
*slowly curling fingers into a ball as if squeezing playdough through them*

"So, I guess squished is more like a substance oozing out, and squashed is used for things you flatten."

"Yeah. So... the person in the middle of the back seat is squashed, but mud is squished."

"You can't squish just anything."

"Squash, squish, squish, squash."

"Can you squish a squash?"

"..."

homemaking

The students made a list of classes they take in their workbook yesterday. Along with Thai, history, and geography, several mentioned something called "vocational."

I asked Nummon about it. She said the kids learned cooking, flower arranging, sewing, and sweeping.

"Sweeping?!" I said.

"Yes, you know, what the different tools are, how to use a broom..."

"Why do they learn to use a broom at school?"

"Because it's something they need to know later in life."

She said this as if sweeping were a totally normal thing to teach a fourth grader in a school class.

How much instruction is involved, I wonder? I mean, the only way you can really mess up is by holding the brushy end up and scraping the stick against the ground... but you'd think most people would figure that out without 30 minutes of classroom instruction.

dirt and worms

English Camp approaches swiftly, and I think all the American Prathom teachers are dreading it. Mariela and Simone have both had nightmares about it - no lie.

Our theme is English Camp-Out, and I'm in charge of the snack station.

I decided Dirt and Worms would be a great idea - it's a typical summer snack that American kids love, and it'll sure beat the heck out of the neon-colored, flavorless gelatinous noodles floating in coconut milk that so often make up the school cafeteria's dessert.

I soon learned that grocery stores here don't stock the just-add-cold-milk-and-refrigerate instant chocolate pudding. Where's Bill Cosby when I need him most?

Undeterred, I sought a homemade pudding recipe. I found a relatively simple one that had been tested by some girl who wrote a blog post about it. Good enough, right? Never mind that I've never made pudding from scratch before in my life.

Several times since the first English Camp brainstorming session in July, I've thought to myself, "Self, what the hell were you thinking when you agreed to make homemade chocolate pudding for 120 kids?!"

I still haven't come up with a good answer for that question.