musings from a confused farang

fin

2010-04-13T14:29:00.010-05:00

It's been two weeks since I left Bangkok. Acceptance -- and boredom -- have set in.

In the last two weeks, I've read three novels, applied for a job as a donut baker's helper, cooked two dinners, gotten over jet lag, helped with a garage sale, and sopped several inches of standing water out of the dishwasher with a towel.

It's high time I reflect on what I've learned in the last 10 months, in the form of newly acquired skills I might add to my resume. They are, in no particular order:

zookeeper
animal trainer
competitive athlete
event coordinator
environmentalist
translator
travel agent
detective
professional buyer
chef
crash dummy
barista
diplomat
mind reader
crisis manager
editor
taste tester
exterminator
propagandist
entertainer
graphic artist
financial planner
dancer

This list is scattered, bizarre, and disconnected -- so appropriate to how I felt for much of my time in Thailand.

So what did I learn?

I guess I learned that living abroad and working with locals requires you to be ready for anything and prepared to find creative solutions to whatever problems you face.

I also learned that it's not as difficult, stressful, or intimidating as people may think.

Really, there's too much to say. It's been fun, Thailand. Thanks for teaching me to eat spicy food and dance to pop music. Thanks for the daily sauna treatments and the rainy season soakings. Thanks for the memories. No thanks for the fish balls. I hope to see you again sometime.

shopaholic

2010-04-08T14:21:00.000-05:00

It just takes one look at Bangkok's shopping malls to know that Thai shoppers mean business. The two malls nearest my apartment, Siam Paragon and CentralWorld, make American shopping malls look like a joke.

According to Wikipedia, Paragon has 10 floors with 400,000 square meters of retail space. That's over 4 million square feet. CentralWorld has 11 million square feet of retail space. And these two malls are within walking distance of each other!

Shopping is the Thais' favorite hobby. They're pros. It used to boggle my mind; I was never a big shopper in the U.S.

Now that I'm home, I've found I have a much better understanding of the Thai shopping obsession.

I think it's due in part to the fact that life in Bangkok is basically one big shopping spree. As soon as you walk out the door, you're shopping. It can't be helped. The streets are lined with vendors selling anything and everything, from puzzles to ties, sunglasses to lingerie, massages, fresh honey, fake watches, donuts, flowers, cashews... everything!

In the last 10 months, I bought myself more earrings, scarves, and clothes than I know what to do with. Of course, now that I'm back in the land of the dollar, I've gotta curb my habit.

ขี้เกียจ

2010-04-07T13:52:00.001-05:00

I've been home for a week now and haven't left the house much. I promptly fell ill after my roommate's outdoor wedding in Houston. The (comparatively) dry, cold, pollen-saturated air was too much for my tropically acclimatized lungs to handle.

I'm improving. Yesterday, I was well enough to go out for my first meal of Tex-Mex at Ta Molly's. It was divine. I tried hard not to convert the meal price into baht in my head. Sheesh. I won't be eating out much, that's for sure.

I noticed that I've become used to a different standard of customer service. I ate half my meal and told the waiter I needed to take the rest to go. I started to hand him my plate, but he walked away and returned with a styrofoam box in hand. I was thrown off for a few seconds, as I'm used to having waitstaff box up my food for me.

Another slightly galling fact of life here: I have to prepare my own food if I'm at home and hungry. In my Bangkok apartment, I could pick up the phone at any time and order something from our first-floor restaurant. They brought it to my door in 30 minutes or less. It was so easy!

Or I could walk down the street and have a takeout box full of pad thai in about six minutes for less than 80 cents. Or a pineapple half, or a slice of cold watermelon, or papaya, guava, and all kinds of other fruits. I could walk to the corner and have a fresh fruit smoothie or a latte with cinnamon. Oh! How I miss that!

Even in the heat, humidity, and pollution, walking to get food was easier and quicker than driving or -- heaven forbid -- making it myself!

last day

2010-03-30T22:51:00.000-05:00

I had a splendid last meal in Bangkok -- hummus and naan bread, mandi rice, and chicken tikka masala at Sultan's on Sukhumvit soi 3/1. I'll miss that place. Especially since ethnic cuisine (beyond Tex-Mex, which really doesn't count) is non-existent in Greenville.

My morning was stressful. My luggage was a little overweight. My carry-on was way overweight. I combed through my bags several times to see what I could throw away. I can't even remember what I threw out, so it must not have been anything essential.

Bright offered to drive me to the airport, and it's a good thing, too. Trying to manage two 50-pound suitcases, a 20-pound carry-on, and a shopping bag by myself would have been frustrating and exhausting.

I curled up on a sofa at my gate in the Seattle airport when I arrived and cried a little. I already miss the smells of Bangkok. Only the pleasant ones, of course -- the jasmine garlands being strung together by flower sellers on the street... burning incense wafting onto the sidewalk from a nearby shrine... chai yen brewing at a street stand. I don't miss the bursts of black smog from buses or the occasional whiff of sewage.

Oh, Bangkok.

people

2010-03-30T22:33:00.001-05:00

Most of my actual travel time getting to/from/around the south of Thailand was done solo. In my last post, I talked about the boy who gave me his watch necklace. He sent me an e-mail telling me he had worried about me riding the train alone. He also attached photos of some of his artwork. I think I have a new pen pal.

I met my second random stranger on an overnight boat from Koh Samui back to the mainland. He introduced himself as Nik -- short for Nikolai. He said he was from Russia and handed me a CD called "Guitar Sounds by Onyx: Shadow of Your Love." He plays on the streets of Moscow for money. He tried it out on Khao San Road in Bangkok, but people weren't so generous.

Nik told me he was cutting his vacation short because he wrecked a motorbike into a car on Samui and had to pay for the damages. He also shared that it was his father's lifelong dream to play music on a Mississippi riverboat. I guess I looked like the right kind of person in which to confide such factoids.

Several days later, I was waiting by the pier on Koh Phi Phi to start my trip back to Bangkok. I had a couple hours to kill before my boat arrived. A Thai man working for a tourist agency sidled up and struck up a conversation.

He was 37 years old and unmarried. I asked why, and learned that he'd spent 14 years living in a forest in the northeast as a monk. He meditated for 10 hours a day for the first seven years. Sometimes he fasted for a month at a time, surviving only on sugar water. For the next seven years, he lived in a room with a bed surrounded by a thousand books. He read them all, and people thought he was a little crazy.

He studied international relations and philosophy in college, including some Western philosophy. His favorite, though, is Indian philosophy. His dream is to move there to study. His other dream is to go to the U.S.

I'm back in the U.S. now, sitting in the Seattle airport. I suppose some sort of reflective post is in order soon. My first observations:

1. It's weird seeing fat policemen.
2. It's weird hearing English spoken without a foreign accent.

More to come.

Fine Dining on Sukhumvit

2010-03-28T14:06:00.003-05:00

Just a brief overview of some of my favorite restaurants on Sukhumvit.

Sultan's
Sukhumvit soi 3/1
Middle Eastern
Recommendations: Hummus (creamiest I've ever had), Naan bread, Chicken Tikka Masala, any of their curries, Mandi rice. Go with a group and order a couple of dishes to share.

Kuppa
Sukhumvit soi 16
International
Recommendations: The entrees my friends and I tried were just OK. Go there for dessert. Try the cheesecake with blueberry compote. It's the best I've ever tasted.

Govinda
Sukhumvit soi 22
Vegetarian Italian
Recommendations: Don't let the fact that it's vegetarian scare you away. Everything on the menu is delicious. Highly recommend the lasagna.

Tacos and Salsa
between Sukhumvit sois 22 and 24
Mexican (So legit, the owner is from Mexico City)
Recommendations: Anything on the menu. The margaritas are especially delicious here.

Sunrise Tacos
Sukhumvit soi 12; Second location in Siam Paragon
Mexican
Recommendations: Black bean tacos, guacamole. Good desserts. A little cheaper than Tacos and Salsa, but also has less atmosphere.

a gift

2010-03-24T05:51:00.000-05:00

On Saturday night I made my way to Hualamphong train station alone to begin my trip down south. My three friends had already flown to Surat Thani that afternoon. I decided to go the less comfortable -- but more affordable -- route, taking the overnight train followed by a midmorning boat to Ko Samui.

I was in the train station food court getting some pad thai, since the train didn't have real food. I was hot and tired from walking from the bus stop to the station with a heavy backpack.

I ordered my food and flopped down into a chair, observing my fellow diners while I waited. A guy was standing in line wearing a blue polo shirt, a navy coat with big, gold buttons, and a tiny pocketwatch hanging on a chain around his neck. He asked if he could sit with me.

I said OK and asked him if he worked at the train station -- the pocketwatch made me think he was a ticket taker or conductor or something. He said no. I complimented his necklace and we had a nice chat. I learned that he was an art student from Chiang Mai attending university in Bangkok. He was going home for the break between semesters.

As I ate my pad thai, I separated the nefarious bits of tofu from the rest of my food. He eyed it and asked if I didn't like tofu. I asked if he wanted it. He nodded, so I pushed the tofu pile onto his plate.

We finished our meals and as we walked toward the platform, he took off his watch necklace. "Here, I want you to have this," he said, as he dropped it in my hand. I tried to object, but he insisted. I put it on, and he told me it looked good.

His train was at the platform. He asked for my email address and we said goodbye. I sat down to wait for my train. He came over to me a few minutes later, handed me a bag of Bugles corn snacks, and boarded his train.

That's Thai hospitality for you. You know a person for less than an hour and they give you a memento and a snack.

another half-baked idea

2010-03-19T02:01:00.000-05:00

I've gotten used to sharing my living quarters with diverse flora and fauna over the last ten months -- ants, geckos, mold, cockroaches... I usually ignore them as best I can, but the thought of a roach scurrying around while I sleep gives me the creeps.

Killing them presents a problem for me; stepping on them is the most efficient method, but the crunching noise it makes is too horrible to bear. I decided last night I couldn't do it anymore. I needed a less hands-on means of destruction.

When I got home from Saxophone and turned on my bedroom light, I spotted one of the little fiends near my closet. One swift throw of my sneaker and the roach was on its back, frantically kicking its filthy little legs.

I grabbed a bottle of Off! from my vanity and crouched down to poison the sucker. Twenty-five sprays seemed sufficient. Eventually, he lay still in a shallow pool of mosquito repellent. I scooped him up with a piece of paper and flushed him.

I cleaned up the bug spray with Wet Wipes, turned off my lights, and got into bed, only to get right back up again when I realized I'd lose 50% of my brain cells overnight if I slept in those fumes.

I turned my fan on. It wasn't enough. I changed positions so my head would be as far from the spray as possible, but I could still smell it. I got up and found my surgical mask (a leftover from the swine flu scare). I put it on and laid back down, imagining how ridiculous I looked sleeping in a face mask. Finally, I opened the sliding door to my balcony and left the screen door shut.

So far today, brain activity seems normal.

red shirts, blood, and graduation

2010-03-16T19:52:00.001-05:00

Our school was closed on Monday and Tuesday, thanks to the protests. It was really nice to have a few days to sleep, sit by the pool, eat, and relax.

Since last Friday, protesters have been streaming into the city via bus, truck, and motorbike. I got to watch some of it from the smoothie shop windows as the neverending parade headed toward Victory Monument. It was kind of like watching a high school pep rally. People were decked out in red clothes and accessories. They stood in truck beds and clapped, waved, shouted, sang, danced, and held their red flags high.

Yesterday, protest leaders organized a blood drive. In a bizarre attempt to make some kind of point, they poured the blood out at the four gates of Parliament. There are several videos about it on CNN's Web site. They're supposed to be doing it again in front of other government buildings today.

We were really hoping graduation would be canceled. I mean, would you come to work if a crowd down the road was dousing buildings in blood? But there hasn't been any violence, so I guess the show must go on. We're at school today for graduation rehearsals.

Thursday is Prathom's graduation and Friday is Mattayom's. Tomorrow, if he ends up attending, we'll curtsy before the Crown Prince of Thailand. Fancy-shmancy.

politicking

2010-03-10T22:17:00.000-06:00

I never thought I'd be so excited about political unrest. We have this Friday off for another round of Red Shirt protests.

As glad as I am to have a free day, I know it'll be hard to go anywhere, because traffic will be extra-horrible. I wanted to go to the Red Cross Queen Sirikit Snake Farm. You get to watch them milk the snakes' venom!

Speaking of politics, I finally got an idea of the kinds of little power struggles that go on in our department.

Ake came to me yesterday afternoon with nothing to do, wanting to improve his English. Specifically, he asked, "What are some words that Thai people say wrong?"

Sure, yeah, just hold on a sec while I pull out my handy list of every mispronunciation I've heard in the last 10 months.

I went to the bookshelf and pulled out a bedtime stories book from the '60s. He read aloud and I corrected him. After working a bit on pacing and intonation, he told me that some teachers were asking why he was teaching English here. He studied art, not English, in university, and has been teaching computer classes at the school.

"But Sukjai asked you to come teach English, right?"
"No, Ajarn Mina [the head of Prathom]."
"Right, so then, you're supposed to be teaching English. I don't understand."

Then he asked who the best English-speakers were in the department. We named off three teachers, all of whom are only part-time. He wanted to know who was the best of the full-time teachers. Alyssa, Mariela, and I thought for a minute, and then ventured that Sukjai was probably the most fluent.

He kept dancing around what he really wanted to say and went on to tell us he wasn't sure he should be teaching English. I assured him that yes, he definitely should be. Alyssa told him straight up, "Your English is better than Sukjai's, hands down."

He was vague about which teachers were gossiping about him -- we don't know if it's an English teacher or someone in another subject. He's only 27, so my theory is that one of the older teachers feels threatened by his English abilities and is trying to cut him down.

Maybe it's not a bad thing we don't know Thai. There's no telling how many times a week these petty battles are fought.

pre-spousal carousal

2010-03-08T00:34:00.001-06:00

We had a bachelorette party, Bangkok-style, for Mariela on Saturday. Our attempts at dressing like Thai teenage girls looked more like "Tacky Day" during a high school spirit week, with our mismatched accessories, graphic tees, ridiculous hair, and piled-on jewelry. And one mustn't forget the icing on the cake: miniature hats bought for us by Simone!

Throughout the night, Mariela had to complete various silly tasks, including, but not limited to:

- Taking a picture with a ladyboy
- Running around the taxi twice while stuck in traffic
- Buying a stick of fishballs and presenting them to a stranger, saying, "Would you like to try my balls?"
- Taking a picture driving a tuk-tuk
- Singing and dancing to "All the Single Ladies" in the middle of a busy street

We had dinner at Kuppa, a nice restaurant on Sukhumvit soi 16. Our food was OK, but the dessert was great. Simone's choice -- cheesecake with blueberry compote -- was the most delicious cheesecake I've ever tried, hands-down. Better than The Cheesecake Factory, and just a step above my friend Ryan's cheesecakes.

We headed to a salsa club and then on to Khao San Road (backpacker/dingy bar central) for dancing. Good times were had by all, even if we had sore throats the next day from all the smoke in the air.

We may have been lucky to survive that last cab ride. Erin likes to think the driver was just a happy soul, but the rest of us had a sneaking suspicion he was on something when he started giggling like mad at Mariela doing her Chinese fire drill.

Oh, well.

I love WedMD

2010-03-07T23:28:00.000-06:00

If I have symptoms -- any symptoms at all -- I like to use WebMD's Symptom Checker to figure out what horrible ill[nesse]s may have befalled me.

For one thing, clicking on the body parts and scrolling through every possible thing that could be wrong with each one is just fun. As a self-described hypochondriac, I naturally begin to imagine that, yes, yes, I do think that could possibly be a bald spot on my head.

But doctors hate self-diagnosers, right? I can imagine the sighs and rolled eyes when they see lists of diseases procured from the WebMD Syptom Checker.

Today's symptoms are dizziness and a slightly nauseated feeling. That's all. No headache. No fever. No vomiting. I don't want to go to the clinic on our grounds, or even a hospital, because doctors here do only two things: 1) neglect to listen to what you're telling them and 2) prescribe an antibiotic, along with three or four other medications.

WebMD suggests 20 possible conditions, including Meniere's disease, acute kidney failure, Botox injection, and esophagitis.

What should I do now?

in trouble

2010-03-03T19:19:00.000-06:00

We were met with quiet, almost-tangible hostility when we walked into the office yesterday. Sukjai didn't acknowledge our existence, but sulked into his breakfast of chicken and rice.

We sat down and exchanged nervous glances. When he left the room, we discussed a plan of action.

"Should we let him approach us?"
"No, in Thai culture, younger people always come to the elders. You can't make them seek you out."
"Okay, okay. So we have to approach him somehow."
"Not when La Bruja [a.k.a. P.Cham -- the third grade English teacher/office-politics puppet master] is in the room. We can't have him drawing strength from her."
"No, no. That wouldn't be good."

We caught him 15 minutes later as he was walking past our cluster of desks. Kristy -- a brave soul -- said, "Um, Sukjai? Do you have a second?"

We were immediately shot down. He waved his hand as if to say, "I don't even want to look at you right now" and told us he'd talk with us later.

I, for one, was relieved. At least the ball was in his court.

He waited until 3:40 to finally call us out of the office to have a chat. We sat down in a classroom and he said, "Well, what happened?"

Erin told him the same exact thing that I'd told him on the phone. He told us he felt so surprised on Tuesday when he came to work and none of us were there.

"Believe me, we were just as surprised when you called!" Erin said.

We assured him that we meant no disrespect and never would have missed work had we not truly, sincerely believed we had time off. We told him we'd stay an hour late next week to make it up, and he was placated.

Like everything else that goes on in our department, it was a needlessly dramatic buildup to an inconsequential outcome.

koh chang

2010-03-02T09:06:00.000-06:00

When we left Bangkok early Friday morning for Koh Chang, Erin and I thought we had six luxurious days to kill there. This morning over breakfast, my cell phone rang. It was Sukjai, wanting to know where I was.

The conversation went something like this:

Erin and I are on Koh Chang.
"Where? You're supposed to be in Bangkok."
I thought Lita asked for two extra days off last Thursday.
"She and Alyssa and Amy and Simone asked off, but you and Erin and Kristy didn't."
There must have been some kind of miscommunication [imagine that!], because we all thought when Mariela asked off, she was asking for all the foreign teachers.

The compromise Mariela had come to was that we'd get Tuesday and Wednesday off in exchange for staying two hours late every day next week. She kept all of us informed on the status of these negotiations.

We assumed Sukjai understood that we all wanted time off. Hello? Why would the rest of us be happy little worker bees when four of our number were off gallivanting around?

I guess I'd forgotten what happens when you assume. He sounded ticked. Said he needed to talk to the three of us when we got back. It pretty much ruined my morning... until I went on a four-hour snorkeling trip! I saw a baby octopus. It was fantastic.

The rest of the long weekend was great, too. I had a coconut-oil massage, ate nachos, and stayed in a bamboo hut. Seriously. Wood floors, bamboo walls, corrugated metal roof, mosquito nets hanging over the beds. We had the works.

Incidentally, I loved sleeping under the mosquito net. Spaces in the bamboo walls made it so our nets were dappled in silver-blue patches of light. It looked and felt like we were sleeping under Harry Potter's invisibility cloak.

I really liked Koh Chang. There weren't touts bugging you every five minutes like there are at Koh Samet. And the food was cheaper, and better. There were fewer people there, making it a very quiet, chill weekend. Overall, I give it two enthusiastic thumbs up.

I feel rejuvenated enough to face the coming wrath. Wish me luck.

on budget travel

2010-02-23T20:40:00.000-06:00

I love planning trips. Especially on a ridiculously low budget. Because on my salary, I can't afford $300 round trip tickets to Malaysia.

That's right: Malaysia.

Yesterday, we found out that we have Friday off due to protests. But we've all gotten a case of the gimmes overnight, and we're going to ask for four additional days off in an attempt to squeeze in one more international trip.

I'm trying not to get my hopes up too much, but I'm positively brimming with excitement. Do a Google image search of "Perhentian Island" and "Cameron Highlands," and you'll see why.

I'm a fan of low-budget travel for a few reasons.

Apart from the fact that it's cheap, I like low-budget travel because it takes much more creativity and patience than flying in and hiring a cab to deliver you to every destination. I love the challenge of working within public transportation schedules and our own time and budget constraints. There's a feeling of exhilaration in the planning stages when different legs of a trip fit together seamlessly. Or there's the puzzle of finding alternative routes when they don't.

I also like budget traveling because you never know what's going to happen. You can do all the research you want, but once you're there, plans can change completely in a matter of minutes. You get lost. You can't speak the language. You find out that the next bus doesn't leave until 6 a.m. the next day, and you have the better part of a day to kill in a strange town.

It's difficult and inconvenient sometimes, but too exciting not to love.

Here's hoping and praying that our boss sees the light of reason!

peace and quiet

2010-02-22T21:47:00.000-06:00

Monday was the last day of finals, and the last chance to see my students before the awards ceremony on March 18th. Today, the school grounds are blissfully quiet.

I finished grading the exams this morning. I had to re-grade one part because a concerned-looking Nummon informed me that most students failed the test. Failed it. (Side note: She returned one section of the test I'd written several weeks ago, with the message that Sukjai said it was too easy.) She said we had to find ways to give the kids more points.

I explained to her that teachers in the U.S. usually give a curve in these situations. I asked if we could do that, but she shook her head. "No. Not allowed here." So I had to give partial credit to sentences like these:

Did you seed a dog last yesterday?
Did he readed a book three day?

I hope no one seeded a dog last yesterday...

Anyway, my other task before graduation was to write unit evaluations for my grammar and speaking classes. I've just finished that, too. Now I've got three weeks to sit around the office and wish they'd give us time off.

My coworkers and I are crossing our fingers for this weekend's protests to be just disruptive enough to keep us from coming on Friday, but not so disruptive that they hinder our weekend trip to Khao Yai national park.

Hey, kids...

2010-02-20T22:48:00.000-06:00

Saturday night was... eventful, to say the least. Mostly, Bangkok never ceases to surprise me.

I went out with five friends to check out a nearby bar featuring live folk music. It turned out to be Thai folk music. We stayed for about two and a half minutes.

We walked up the street and stopped at 7-11 so a few people could buy beers. We were standing around, discussing what to do next, when an older white man approached us.

He introduced himself as Dee Dee and said he noticed that we left pretty quick. He was there to offer us his sage advice on entertainment in the city. "I'm a professional," he said.

He asked if we were Khao San Road people. Khao San is the main backpacker strip here. I haven't been there yet, but it's supposed to be full of cheap, dirty bars. "No. Not so much," we told him. We explained that we weren't tourists.

He went on to tell us where to find the best gay sex show on Patpong (a notorious red light district). Then his Thai wife walked up.

We asked where they were going. "Back to our hotel. We just bought a big bag of ganja. You guys know; you're from California."

Erin looked at me and mouthed, "Could this get any weirder?"

"What happens if the police catch you with it?"
"Oh, come on, the police are the ones that sold it to me."

We learned that he'd lived in Bangkok for eight years with his wife before they moved to the U.S. He said something about owning a business that sold designer labels like True Religion, Seven for all Mankind, and a few others that were supposed to impress us.

Before leaving, he wished us luck and held out a downturned fist toward Ryan. Ryan obediently extended his hand, palm up, and received a fistful of pot.

"You kids have a good time."

Sensitive to the fact that we were standing right in the middle of a sidewalk in front of 7-11, Ryan quickly shoved his hand into his pocket. Dee Dee and his wife left, and we started wondering aloud whether the Thai people watching us down the street were authority figures of some kind.

We walked to Saxophone Pub for some blues music, where Ryan spent the rest of the night nervous and fidgety and wondering what would happen if he got caught with that stuff in his pocket.

Gotta love the neverending supply of old, sketchy white men that Bangkok is so ready and willing to host...

ignorance is bliss?

2010-02-19T00:12:00.000-06:00

Today was a review day, and the best way to get kids interested in that sort of thing is by enticing them with games and junky prizes.

Nummon drew four columns on the board with the headings "yesterday," "two days ago," "last week," and "a year ago." She stuck a picture to the chalkboard in each column.

My job was to ask questions like, "What did you eat yesterday?" The first student to raise his or her hand had to answer in past tense. If they did so correctly, they won a prize.

Round One was fairly standard. The kids enjoyed it, but the stakes weren't high enough. Nummon decided to spice it up during the second period by adding another round.

She told the students the first one to raise his or her hand could call on another student to answer -- a student who they thought wouldn't be able to answer correctly. If the poor sacrificial lamb got the sentence wrong, the kid who chose him could have a prize. Twisted, right?

They loved it. In third period, one kid -- Mangkorn -- was called on five or six times in a row. After the fourth shameful display of ignorance, he started hiding under his desk. He finally got one right, just before the bell rang to end class. Pobrecito.

to bling, or not to bling

2010-02-17T09:05:00.001-06:00

I've never seen a Thai woman wearing a wedding ring. It's not because they don't have them; they do, at least in Bangkok. But women here are afraid to wear their bling. According to Nummon, there are many thieves.

I left my nice jewelry at home for just that reason, but I haven't had any problems with pickpocketing or robbery. I've never felt it was a threat. Then again, maybe that's because I'm not waving several carats of precious stone around.

Nummon only wears her wedding ring at her house. To us, this seemed kind of backwards. Mariela said the point of wearing the ring is to let others know you're married. Why wear it at home?

One of the other Thai teachers, Sutima, took her jewelry with her on a trip to visit her family months ago. There, her wedding rings and some other pieces were stolen. Her cousin "found" a bracelet that had been with the rings, so Sutima was suspicious.

Her mother visited last week and brought the rings. She said they'd been found in the room Sutima stayed in on her visit -- a room she and her husband had turned upside down searching.

She said, "I never want to wear them again! I just want to put them in front of my Buddha and leave them there [for protection]."

Maybe I'm too practical, but if I were that paranoid about my jewelry, I would ask my husband not to buy it in the first place. How about a lifetime subscription to a gourmet-chocolate-of-the-month club instead? That's true love.

eyelashes and other things

2010-02-14T19:40:00.000-06:00

This is Bright, imitating my eyelashes. He likes them because they're different.

Most Thais' eyelashes are dark, short, and straight. Bright told me some of the girls he knows like to wear fake eyelashes, so they can have long, curly, luscious lashes like stars on TV.

At Nummon's wedding, I saw more than a few women who pulled out all the stops for the occasion, fancifying the windows of their souls with their exaggerated fakes. From the side, you could see the two sets -- the false fringe swooping out and up over a row of short, straight natural lashes. It was silly.

In other news: this morning, I saw my first-ever semi-confrontational moment between Thai people.

It was exciting, because Thais hate confrontation. They avoid it at all costs, because it involves a loss of face. Losing your cool is just not, well, cool.

On the way to school, one of the crazy, dangerous green minibuses came so close to our school van that it actually folded the side mirror in. Our driver got out to flip it out again when traffic stopped. He got back in. We pulled forward a few feet. Traffic stopped, and the crazy green bus was in front of us.

The driver got out and shut the door. We all held our breath and craned our necks to see the drama unfold. He marched up to the driver's window and told him off. But he didn't get nearly as worked up as a Westerner would have, and I don't think he really yelled. Still, it was exciting and weird to see. I guess you just had to be there.

dancing queen

2010-02-05T21:47:00.000-06:00

I didn't spend a lot of time around drunk people in college, but I was delighted to learn last night that watching awkward, intoxicated white people try to dance is oh-so-amusing.

My coworkers and I went to The Australian -- a bar with nightly live music -- as an extension of Erin's birthday festivities.

There was a group of two guys and girls who'd had a lot to drink. By the end of the night, they were tearing up the dance floor, oblivious to the stares of the outside world.

The tallest girl wore brown hi-tops, black Bermuda shorts, and a green screen printed tank. Her style of dance can only be described as spastic. Her hips wagged back and forth. Her wavy, red hair grew frizzier and frizzier with each erratic toss of her head. Her elbows, which she whipped and flung about with wild abandon, threatened to blind anyone unlucky enough to interrupt her groove.

The lankiest guy bopped his head to the beat and tried to dip and step to the music. The funniest thing was his arms; he didn't quite know what to do with them. His hands sort of flapped around at the ends of his wrists.

The best thing about drunk people dancing is that they all think they look awesome. My friends and I sat and watched, the same way you stare at a car accident, and I couldn't help but wonder, "Do I look like that when I try to dance?!"

There was only one way to find out. Back at my apartment, I turned on some music and used the video setting on my camera to check out my technique.

Embarrassing to confess to the online world? Maybe. Judge me if you will, but I've got moves, y'all.

quarantine

2010-02-04T11:44:00.000-06:00

Classes were canceled yesterday, today, and tomorrow due to H1N1. And foot and mouth disease. Foot. And. Mouth. One of my P.4 students had it!

When I found out, I busted out the antibacterial foam and doused my desk, phone, writing utensils, and anything else that I may have possibly touched after touching something my students may have possibly touched.

We've had to come to work while the students wallow in their germs and play video games for three days.

On Wednesday, we purged the office of ancient stacks of papers, crusty notebooks, and general clutter. We even dusted! With the seven of us working, we finished up around 11:30 and spent the next five hours reading, asking trivia questions, and joking around.

There was a possibility, we were told on Tuesday, that we wouldn't have to come at all Thursday and Friday. The odds were against us, I guess. Yesterday at 4:00, the Thai teachers all gave us a cheery, "See you tomorrow."

To spite them, we decided to have a movie day in the computer lab on Thursday. We watched three hours of the TV show Glee, took a lunch break, and then watched another two and a half hours.

Tomorrow: same song, second verse.

dinosow (Thai for 'dinosaur')

2010-02-02T00:12:00.000-06:00

I don't know why I continue to be amazed by the lack of communication here, but I am!

The school had planned a teacher trip to a dinosaur museum and archeological site in the northeast this weekend. We had to sign up for it a couple months ago, and the department head stressed to us that we had to be sure we could go before signing. If you wrote your name down, there was no turning back.

Most of us signed up. We figured 1) it was a free trip, and 2) what better things do we honestly have to do than take a 6-hour ride on a charter bus to a Thai dinosaur museum?

I was talking to Ekapol in the hallway yesterday afternoon about the weekend.

So, are you going on the trip?
"No!"
What? Why not?
"Because it was canceled."
Wait, what? When did they cancel it?
"I don't know."
When did you find out?
"Oh... a few weeks ago."
Oh. Well. I'm glad you told me. We had no idea. So why did they cancel it?
"I don't know."

I double-checked with Nummon later. She said it was, in fact, canceled. There are 14 confirmed cases of H1N1 and they didn't want us teachers being in close quarters for a weekend for fear of spreading it.

I still don't know if anyone was going to bother to inform us, or if they were going to let us show up on Friday with our weekend bags ready and safari suits in tow.

Ridiculous!

sports day

2010-01-29T21:51:00.000-06:00

Her bright orange tutu flounced up and down as she ran across the finish line and claimed the victory in the race. Dejected, the other runners returned to the bleachers to shimmy and shout for their own teams in the coming heats. true story.
- Teacher Lita

Yesterday was Sports Day. It's actually been more like Sports Month, though. The Pink, Orange, Green, and Purple Teams have been competing in various events since the end of December for glory, fame, and plastic medals.

Thai cheerleading looks nothing like American cheerleading, we learned. It's more like Halloween crossed with a dance recital. Like American cheerleading, it has little or no effect on the athletes' performances or the crowd's enthusiasm.

I was supposed to run the 100-meter dash for the Pink team, but I got sacked immediately before my race. As in, a Thai teacher ran up to me and said, breathless, "They want me to run instead of you. Can you do the rice sack race in my place?" To which, of course, the only correct answer is, "Yes! I would love to hop around in a giant rice bag!"

The sack races were cancelled in the end, so it all worked to my advantage.

Overall, Sports Day was hot, sticky, and kinda miserable. We did get a half-day out of the deal, which gave us a chance to rest up for Christy's birthday celebration that night -- free BBQ at a restaurant on Sukhumvit. Bliss! The place does free food the last Friday of every month, and we were all wondering why we haven't been attending for the last seven months.

"it puts a rose in every cheek"

2010-01-28T21:19:00.000-06:00

We had a mini Australia Day celebration at my Wednesday small group when a couple of Aussie girls were nice enough to bring us some of their national cuisine.

Cuisine may be the wrong word when you're talking about a tube of Vegemite, but nevertheless...

I had heard the 1954 jingle for Vegemite years ago. My friend Alyssa played it for me on her parents' computer... I'm not sure why we were listening to it, actually. I remember little kids who sounded like they'd been sucking on helium, singing their love for the stuff.

Bernice made Vegemite grilled cheese sandwiches, but not before making me and Mariela try some Vegemite by itself. She squeezed the dark, tarlike paste onto our fingertips. We looked at it. We sniffed it. Gingerly, we tasted it.

She told us some people squeeze it straight into their mouths, the way some people in the U.S. do with Easy Cheese. (Coincidentally, both of these horrifying substances are made by Kraft. Hmm.)

Anyway, it tasted like a concentrated paste of salt, yeast, beer, and bread. But on a grilled cheese sandwich it was OK.

I also had Weet-Bix for the second time. It's a cereal bar with the look and consistency of plywood. It's a delight, however, when mixed with fruit and yogurt.

a friend

2010-01-28T02:35:00.000-06:00

It took eight months, but I finally made a Thai friend. His name is Bright (oh-so-fitting, as he's one of the most cheerful people I've ever met), and he owns the smoothie shop at the end of our street.

We discovered his shop shortly after arriving. I've been visiting it for months now, but it didn't occur to me to strike up a conversation with him until that fateful day a few weeks ago when I broke out my Lonely Planet Thai phrasebook. I turned to the Meeting People section and asked, "What do you like to do in your free time?"

"My friends and I shoot BB guns."
Oh, at targets?
"No. At each other!"
Well, huh. Isn't that something?

Our friendship has progressed a lot in the last two weeks. I've started teaching him some English and he's teaching me a little Thai.

I'm also one of the official taste testers for his sister's dessert-baking experiments. They're adding a bakery to their shop next month.

He taught me to say, "I'm full" the other night. That didn't stop me from stuffing my face with sticky rice and mango, a 20-ounce smoothie, and a thick slab of his sister's dark chocolate brownies drizzled with hot fudge and cashews.

Next lesson: "I can't; I'm on a diet."

the finished product

2010-01-24T16:00:00.000-06:00

Yeah. I know what you're thinking.

"Man, I would totally hire this young woman and give her health insurance and vacation time!"

a gift

2010-01-23T09:21:00.000-06:00

My friends and I were standing near a fruit stand waiting to get a cab tonight when a young guy walked up to buy some papaya. The vendor sliced it up and put it in a plastic bag.

The guy asked for some extra wooden skewers and gave each of us a piece of the fruit, indicating that we were too thin and should eat more. And that was the end of it.

When we got in the cab, both Alyssa and I noted our appreciation of how a guy managed to give four young women papaya in a non-hitting-on-us kind of way.

Way to not be creepy, papaya guy. We affirm you!

expelliarmus!

2010-01-20T23:30:00.000-06:00

There's a kid in my second period class named Petan who's fluent in English. A few weeks ago, he was reading the Harry Potter series before class. I watched his wee heart sink as he read the ending of book six.

Petan was absent for the speaking quiz last week over "there was/were" and "could/couldn't." I almost gave him a 10 anyway, because the quizzes are mindnumbingly easy for him.

I reconsidered, deciding to have some fun instead.

Today I called him to my desk to make up the quiz.

Number one: Name three magical creatures Hagrid takes care of.
He put his hand on his head and started pacing.
"Buckbeak... Wait, really?"
Yes! Three creatures. Go.
"Buckbeak... Fluffy... and... I can't remember."
That's OK. Question two: make a sentence using "there was" or "there were" and quaffles.
"There were waffles at breakfast this morning."
Quaffles?! At breakfast?
"OH! There were two quaffles in the Quidditch match."
That's better. Four dragons.
"There were four dragons at the Triwizard Cup last month."
OK. Now, could and couldn't. Could you be a seeker if you played Quidditch?
"Yes, I could."
Could you do magic when you were three years old?
"No, I couldn't."

I think he got a kick out of it. I sure did.

shocking!

2010-01-19T08:31:00.000-06:00

I'm already bracing myself for the severe reverse culture shock I expect to experience when I go home to my tiny, northeast Texas hometown in a couple of months. I actually get a sort of panicked feeling in my chest when I think about it.

In a nutshell, and at the risk of sounding like a cosmopolitan snob, I'm worried that Greenville won't be nearly stimulating enough. You can find anything and everything you want here in Bangkok.

Amazing international cuisine? Check.
Movies, bowling alleys, and bookshops? Check.
Coffee shops, symphony concerts, public parks, cultural events, festivals, sky bars, ice skating rinks, amusement parks, shopping, historical sites, easy access to beaches, bars with nightly live music...

And I mustn't leave out the incessant confusion, the thrill of being able to read a Thai word written in the few characters I know, the stares, and the adventures in navigating various modes of transportation including, but not limited to, the skytrain, taxis, public buses, tuk-tuks, and canal boats.

Will someone please remind me why I'm leaving?

In the meantime, I'm trying to drum up a bout of homesickness with -- what else? -- a country music binge.

crime and punishment

2010-01-17T23:45:00.000-06:00

I finished giving the speaking quizzes a few minutes early in my second period, and had nothing to do but mill about and watch Nummon teach.

Suddenly, she stopped and walked over to one of the boys. Standing over his desk, she reached for his backpack and proceeded to calmly shake its contents out all over the floor.

I watched, mouth agape.

Even more surprising -- the student didn't bat an eye. No tears. No pouting. His books, papers, and pencils lay in a heap on the floor for the rest of the period.

She came up to me after class and told me the student never turns in his homework or brings his books to class. She decided to "look for his homework."

supervisor meeting

2010-01-14T00:06:00.000-06:00

Nummon called a meeting this morning with me and Pear, the student teacher. She had lots of questions for me that probably should have been asked months ago, such as:

Which students are misbehaving or giving you trouble in class?
Which students are helpful in class?
and
How are they doing on their worksheets?

She asked how I normally operate the class. I told her I explain the lesson, give them a few examples, let them do the worksheets on their own, and circulate through the room to help. I told her I grade their work as they finish so they can see what they did wrong.

What do the students do while they wait for you to grade?

"Oh, they wait in line, naturally." (Lies! They run all over the place like the little miscreants they are.)

She told us the students have had trouble with the writing sections on the tests. Specifically, writing paragraphs.

I'm not positive, but I think it might have something to do with the fact that we never have them practice writing paragraphs in class. I told her as much.

She said the students should be able to apply everything they've heard and learned, putting it together in the form of a paragraph. She doesn't want students to write paragraphs in class because "if the test is exactly the same as what they do in class, they don't learn anything." She said they'd memorize the paragraph and copy it. Never mind that whole notion of changing the writing prompt...

The next item of business was equally baffling:

How many words do the students know?

"How many words do the students know?!"

Yeah. What you think? 100? 1,000?

I couldn't say how many words I know in Spanish, much less give an estimate for another person's knowledge of their foreign language.

"Um... I'm not really sure. I mean, they should know quite a lot of words," I stammered. "They know foods, jobs, clothes, verbs, sports..."

She wanted us to devise ways to test the students' vocabularies.

I suggested we give them all a sheet of paper and say, "OK; you have five minutes. Write all the foods you know. Next, you have five minutes to write all the verbs you know..." and so forth.

That method was far too rational. We have to quiz the class (individually?) using flashcards and make a worksheet asking them to translate a bunch of Thai words into their English equivalents.

I'm glad I could give my input. Meeting adjourned.

2010-01-12T23:33:00.000-06:00

Wednesdays are monk days at school. I don't like monk days.

Monk day means a monk takes the air-conditioned classroom (the dancing room) I normally use on small group days. I, in turn, have to teach in the sixth grade non-aircon classrooms with chalkboards for the first and second periods.
The dancing room is free during third period while the monks eat lunch. But more often than not, the desks and chairs aren't set up. When the monk teaches there, the kids sit on the floor.

Dragging 20 clunky desks and chairs in from the balcony is an annoying and unneccessary waste of class time. I didn't want to deal with the hassle today. I asked Nummon if it would be OK to stay in the non-aircon classrooms for all three periods.

We crossed wires somewhere, because Sukjai came to my third period class, visibly annoyed, and asked where I normally teach. I explained the desk problem and he told me the sixth grade needed the classroom I was in. I'm not sure why he waited until I was 10 minutes into the lesson to boot me out, but I guess that's beside the point.

I apologized and told the kids to stand up, grab their books, and go to the dancing room.

I followed my students downstairs and Sukjai appeared again to tell me we could use the meeting room. He waited until half the class had run to the other building to tell me this, naturally.

I shook my head and walked into the meeting room. There were no desks set up there, either, so I told him the kids could sit on the floor. I just wanted to get on with the lesson.

He asked how many students I had. I told him I didn't know (Another golden opportunity to display my incompetence. Goodie!). He recruited some kids to help him haul plastic desks and chairs in from next door. Again, an unneccessary drain on time.

One of the desks was full of water (?!), which sloshed all over the floor as a kid struggled to set it upright. All I wanted was to finish going through the can/could worksheet, but I stood there, helpless, as students trickled in and Sukjai went to find the mop.

thanks, but no thanks.

2010-01-11T08:40:00.000-06:00

I mean, I guess monks are regular people, just like everybody else. Some are with it, some aren't.

- Amy

Approaching my favorite smoothie place last night, I saw my coworker, Amy, sitting on a stool out front, chatting with a monk.

I sat down and caught snippets of their conversation. From what I could tell, the monk was trying to invite Amy to go to Las Vegas with him next week.

It was weird on a few levels. 1: Monks generally pay us little or no attention. They aren't allowed to touch or be touched by women. They can't even accept something from a woman's hand. 2: What the heck is a Thai monk going to do in Vegas?

I made a face at her and hummed the Twilight Zone theme song. Then the monk asked me to go to Vegas.

life is like a stick of fish balls...

2010-01-10T09:22:00.000-06:00

I don't know when it happened. Perhaps it was all in a moment. Perhaps it was a gradual desensitization. I realized yesterday that the absurd has become so commonplace in my life, I often forget to write about it here. I see it, I process it, and I carry on, unfazed.

Today, I let Bangkok happen to me anew, experiencing it with the help of an Australian friend I met on New Year's Eve.

On our way to meet Mariela for a symphony concert in Lumphini Park, we were approached by a Thai jogger who struck up a conversation with the usual, "Where you come from?"

Hearing I was American, he decided to show off his knowledge of U.S. geography by naming every state and city he could.

Ohhhh... Chicago, Illinois, Utah, Vermont, Minnesota.
Wow, you've seen a lot more of the U.S. than I have...
New Jersey, Connecticut, New Mexico, Arizona, Texas.
Hey, I'm from Texas.
Houston, Dallas, Austin... Nevada, California, San Francisco.

My radar was already set to Ignore, but my friend was amused. After naming the 48 contiguous states, the man started on Melbourne, Canberra, Sydney, and... I don't know what else. I stopped listening.

Things like this happen to me all the time. My coworker Amy calls it "The Twilight Zone," which is all too fitting at times.

I forget that tourists don't see this side of Bangkok -- probably because they zip from one place to the next in taxis. They miss out on the abundance of crazy moments to be had by being out there, sweaty and walking with everyone else.

Another quintessential Thailand incident I forgot to mention last week: On Friday at work, Mariela and I found ourselves sitting in a copy room singing "Puff, the Magic Dragon" while the mailman accompanied us on his acoustic guitar. Our next song was "Amazing Grace." He liked my harmonies.

Yes, this is my life.

fitted out

2010-01-08T07:56:00.000-06:00

I've begun my second foray into the tailoring world.

The first -- the little black dress attempt -- was only about halfway successful. I did end up with a dress, but A) it cost way too much and B) there is an all-too-noticeable rumple in the lining near the neck. They didn't fix it after asking them two or three times. I gave up.

I found a different tailor shop on the recommendation of a young Thai teacher. I played it safe and ordered a simple button-down shirt. It was inexpensive, turned out pretty well, and the fabric feels great, so I went back to be measured for a suit.

That's right: my first, grown-up business suit. (Or monkey suit, as my brother used to call them when he was a wee small child forced to wear them to church for special occasions. E.g. "Get me outta this monkey suit, Mom!")

I am 23 years old now, after all. It's time to look like an adult. Plus, in the event that I snag a job interview or two when I go home, I want to be properly attired.

I'll post pictures when it's finished.

On an unrelated note, I apologize for the curse word in my last post. I was all riled up about corruption and whatnot. Didn't mean to offend.

if you want a thing done right, you've gotta strongarm someone else into doing it for you

2010-01-04T04:40:00.000-06:00

I was greeted at work today by a completely unexpected, completely inappropriate request.

From what I understand (and it's still kind of fuzzy, due to the language barrier), Nummon wanted me to write a paper for the niece of the head of Prathom. This girl is an English major.

Nummon handed me a packet of papers the girl had put together. There was an outline on the first page.

The paper was on intermarriage between Buddhists and Hindus, Buddhists and Muslims, and Catholics and Protestants. Her plan was to include "case studies" for each religious combo.

I leafed through her notes and found that by "case studies," she meant postings from random people on online discussion boards - complete with copied and pasted excerpts of poorly written rants from people struggling with their own mixed-faith marriages.

WTF?

She also had notes on religious beliefs. Among the things Catholicism and Protestantism share are the ideas "That wicked people go to hell" and "That good people go to heaven."

She didn't have one scholarly source. Not a book or a single journal article. I couldn't believe it.

I asked Nummon what kind of work this girl was actually doing herself, since the paper had been delegated to Nummon and, subsequently, to me. She made an excuse about how the girl is still young and sometimes young students need help. It was due tomorrow.

I have this crazy notion that language learners need to do their own damn homework if they want to achieve any level of proficiency.

I attempted to correct some doctrinal errors (e.g. Catholics do not worship Mary) and gave the girl some feedback, telling her to go to the library (I even suggested some books to look up!) and to talk to sociology professors for more resources on interfaith marriages. I left everything else alone and decided to let Nummon deal with the mess her boss had forced upon her.

I also told her I'd be happy to edit a written paper any time.

The educational system here is ridiculous if this is not an isolated case. Especially at the university level! I'm disgusted. Truly.

bulletin board #5: december

2009-12-31T03:01:00.000-06:00

Santa's in a cookie coma.

feast of the east

2009-12-30T02:42:00.000-06:00

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

2009-12-29T08:47:00.001-06:00

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

2009-12-26T05:03:00.000-06:00

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

2009-12-23T06:27:00.000-06:00

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...

2009-12-20T03:01:00.000-06:00

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

2009-12-16T19:08:00.000-06:00

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?

2009-12-13T06:26:00.000-06:00

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

2009-12-10T05:25:00.000-06:00

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

2009-12-07T19:59:00.000-06:00

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?

2009-12-01T21:21:00.000-06:00

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

2009-11-30T23:59:00.000-06:00

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

2009-11-29T19:39:00.000-06:00

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

2009-11-28T04:31:00.000-06:00

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

My next board is going to be Christmas themed!

100-meter dash

2009-11-25T19:23:00.000-06:00

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

2009-11-24T19:30:00.003-06:00

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

2009-11-21T19:03:00.000-06:00

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!

2009-11-16T03:51:00.000-06:00

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

2009-11-13T18:58:00.000-06:00

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

2009-11-08T04:03:00.000-06:00

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...

2009-11-05T07:16:00.000-06:00

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

2009-11-03T01:01:00.000-06:00

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

2009-11-01T23:47:00.000-06:00

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

2009-10-30T08:37:00.001-05:00

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

2009-10-28T22:52:00.000-05:00

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

2009-10-27T00:55:00.000-05:00

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

2009-10-26T07:21:00.000-05:00

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

2009-10-16T10:01:00.000-05:00

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

2009-10-12T05:55:00.000-05:00

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

2009-10-10T09:02:00.000-05:00

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

2009-10-09T08:55:00.000-05:00

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

2009-10-08T08:33:00.000-05:00

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

2009-10-07T08:32:00.000-05:00

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!

2009-10-06T23:23:00.001-05:00

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

2009-10-05T23:21:00.000-05:00

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...

2009-10-02T06:54:00.000-05:00

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

2009-09-30T11:14:00.000-05:00

Ice cream sandwich, Thai style.

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

2009-09-25T22:44:00.000-05:00

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

2009-09-25T05:59:00.000-05:00

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

rumination

2009-09-24T08:01:00.000-05:00

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

2009-09-20T03:47:00.000-05:00

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

2009-09-19T07:05:00.000-05:00

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!

2009-09-15T08:05:00.000-05:00

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

2009-09-13T07:54:00.000-05:00

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

2009-09-12T06:08:00.000-05:00

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...

2009-09-11T08:45:00.000-05:00

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

2009-09-10T09:30:00.000-05:00

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!

2009-09-09T11:24:00.001-05:00

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...

2009-09-07T08:43:00.000-05:00

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!

2009-09-06T06:40:00.001-05:00

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

2009-09-05T06:34:00.000-05:00

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!

2009-09-03T01:34:00.000-05:00

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.

2009-09-02T10:35:00.000-05:00

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

2009-09-01T08:07:00.000-05:00

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

2009-08-31T08:30:00.000-05:00

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.

ko samet

2009-08-30T08:16:00.000-05:00

Four of us girls went to Ko Samet this weekend for a little much-needed R&R.

During our evening swim last night, we talked about how strange this year away is. We don't know what to call it or how it fits in the narrative of our lives. I may come back to this thought for some kind of coherent discourse in a future post. We'll see.

We sunned, read, ate delicious food, and drank fresh, creamy fruit smoothies (mango-pineapple-banana is an excellent combination) on a deck overlooking the beach.

It rained all morning today, but we had a leisurely breakfast and played cards and dominoes on a covered deck. We headed home around 1:15.

Alyssa and I had an appointment with the tailor this evening. I was supposed to get my finished black dress, but we were stood up. It was OK. We got ice cream instead, and I got to read all evening, which was a fine consolation.

waving the white flag

2009-08-24T07:56:00.000-05:00

The "In case of fraud or deception, call the MBK hotline at this number..." signs posted on the fourth floor of the mall should have been my first hint.

I returned to MBK today planning to return my (probably) fake SanDisk flash drive and get my money back. I had every intention of being diplomatic, but negotiations broke down pretty quickly.

My first approach was the, "Oh, I took it home and then realized it was the wrong thing." The girl wasn't buying it, so I quickly moved on to the, "I changed my mind and I just don't like this one" excuse. No luck there, either.

I came out and said it: "I looked this flash drive up on SanDisk's Web site. I know this one is a fake, and I want to return it."

"No, no, not possible. No refunds or exchanges. But if you want to trade it for a Kingston..."

"No, I don't want to trade, I want my money back."

"I guarantee this is one million percent real SanDisk."

"That's not a percentage, and no, it isn't."

This went on for some time. I threatened to call the fraud hotline. She dared me to.

Some Spaniards came up wanting to buy camera batteries. She ignored me and moved over to help them. Irritated by her lack of couth, I figured I'd cost her some business.

I got the travelers' attention. "No deben comprar nada aqui... Son deshonestos." They looked at me, looked at her, put down the battery, and said, "Muchas Gracias."

"De nada."

They left. The lady turned back to me, furious. I certainly hadn't done myself any favors.

I walked toward the big, fat man at the back of the store. I asked him to please help me. I begged, I pleaded, I told him I was a teacher with no money. I said he could give me only 500, so that he'd still be making money and he could sell the drive to someone else. He refused to see reason.

A younger man - maybe his son? - came up to talk to me. I explained myself and got the same responses from him. I went back to the front to pester lady number one again.

She was still fuming. "Why you come and buy and then try to return? Why you tell my customers to go away so they don buy??"

A scary, older woman in gaudy jewelry, long fingernails, and a floral print shirt walked up. They started talking in Thai. They said they were going to get the mall police.

A girl sitting at the front suggested that I leave. She was shopping there and she spoke good English. I asked her if she could explain to the saleslady. She didn't want to get involved, and said the women might hit me.

"Hit me? Like, punch me? Are you serious??"

She was serious. So I kept my distance. Gaudy-jewelry lady pointed her finger in my face, and held it there, telling me to get out.

I kept telling them I'd leave and never bother them again if they'd just refund my money. They'd have none of it.

I was there for a good 40 minutes when I decided to find a mall help desk. I found two blue-suited ladies on the second floor, explained my plight, filed an official complaint, and walked back upstairs with them to show them the shop.

They walked inside to speak with the owner. I stayed just outside, trying to make myself scarce. They waved me in and the older lady gave me the most poisonous look I've ever seen.

In the end, the owner gave his guarantee of the drive's authenticity (which means... nothing). I was too exhausted to argue, and I was late for my dinner plans.

They win, this time. And I learned not to buy electronics from little shops in MBK.

ugh

2009-08-23T07:39:00.000-05:00

Why is everything difficult?

I went to MBK to buy an 8GB flash drive today. I wandered around that awful, awful fourth floor between dozens and dozens of little electronics kiosks for 40+ minutes, trying my best not to get ripped off.

I found what looked to be a decent store with legitimate merchandise. I bought a SanDisk flash drive for 600 baht. The packaging looked normal and there were no misspellings or obvious giveaways, but I went home feeling a bit skeptical.

I got on SanDisk's Web site and looked up the drive I had bought. The last three digits of the product code did not match up with their Web site's information. I emailed tech support to see if there's a mistake, so we'll see.

I asked the woman at the store for a receipt, thank goodness, and I wrote down which store it was. I just really, really don't want to go back and have to finagle my money out of her... What a pain.

Dear Southeast Asia,

Could you please try not to rip me off at least once in the next seven months? Thanks.

Love,
Lauren

bulletin board #2: august

2009-08-21T22:31:00.000-05:00

For August's unit, we learned about possessive adjectives and possessive pronouns. I've figured out that you have to simplify the board design if you don't want to spend 12+ hours making everything.

The purse and the book the girl is holding are 3-D!

clash of civilizations

2009-08-20T07:35:00.000-05:00

Lessons of the day:

1. Lotus flowers are only for monks, Buddhas, or people you've seriously offended. They are not a good present for the school principal.

Alyssa and I wanted to give the principal some flowers as a thank-you for the lovely weekend at her home in Kanchanaburi. Alyssa chose some flowers she thought were pretty and came to school with them the next day.

One Thai teacher told us lotuses were for monks, etc., but she said the principal wouldn't mind since we obviously didn't know. And, the principal has lived in the U.S. before, so she knows different flowers don't have ceremonial significance there.

Later in the morning, though, Sukjai and another teacher tell us (repeatedly and emphatically) that the flowers are not suitable, but that we could buy different ones at a flower shop across from the school.

2. If you wish to give the Queen of Thailand a birthday gift, your birthday card's message is subject to inspection by the head of the English Department.

Kristy's mom brought a gift for the Queen's birthday when she came in June - a crystal dish or something (Now, what the Queen of Thailand is going to do with a crystal serving dish, I'm not sure. But that's beside the point). Kristy was told that she could give it to the school principal, and the principal would get it to the Queen.

She asked Sukjai how to address the Queen and what her card should say. Then she wrote it and sealed it.

Today, she was accosted by Sukjai and Picham, who wanted to read the card. She gave them a summary of what she wrote (because it was already sealed up). They told her to buy a new card, rewrite it, and let them see it first.

3. The Thai teachers in the Prathom English Department are exceedingly high-strung...

...Which is interesting, because I thought Buddhism was about non-attachment and the elimination of desire. I'd always thought of Buddhists as very chill people.

Maybe they've forgotten the Four Noble Truths. I'm pretty sure their desires for perfection are causing suffering. I'm sure they'd love it if I suggested as much.

act only according to that maxim by which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.

2009-08-16T06:54:00.000-05:00

It's generally considered bad manners to let bodily fluids leave the body in public. I assumed this was a universal. Not in Southeast Asia, apparently.

This morning on our way to church Alyssa saw a man stop by a tree, put a finger on one nostril, and blow snot onto the tree with the other nostril.

I know, right?! Gross.

I've also read about people peeing on the sidewalks in Vietnam. Businesspeople, too, in suits. I'll report on this after our October trip.

I don't know about you, but I think the no-releasing-bodily-fluids-in-public rule stands up to the categorical imperative.

no words can describe...

2009-08-16T06:24:00.000-05:00

I have new sympathy for non-English speakers in the U.S. Doing the most ordinary things becomes the biggest hassle when you can't communicate verbally.

Like buying a bar of shower soap. You have to play charades to find out whether it's hand soap or body soap. And figuring out which mascara is waterproof, and which is regular. Oh, and there's only one color of mascara here: jet black. Bah.

Also interesting (and annoying) -- Big C, the Thai Walmart, doesn't sell contact solution. They have food, clothes, electronics, makeup, toiletries... everything else... but not contact solution.

parent meeting

2009-08-14T10:36:00.001-05:00

Yesterday we had a parent-teacher meeting for P.4 through P.6. I didn't have to say a word, thank goodness. Nummon did all the talking. My job was to stand next to her and nod along as if I understood Thai.

Afterward, a parent came up and introduced himself as Kawin's dad. He expressed concerns that Kawin was having trouble with pronunciation and phonics, as well as forming sentences.

I wanted to say, "Oh, so he's having trouble with the English language, then?"

But, alas, such snarky remarks are unprofessional. I asked him if Kawin ever comes to Reading Rainbow in the mornings. He said no, and I suggested that perhaps coming early and reading aloud to the English teachers would help.

I should have also recommended that he practice English with his son. I think many parents here with good English don't speak it at home because they worry it will affect the kids' Thai skills. But I thought of it after he had walked away.