shopaholic

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

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!

ignorance is bliss?

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.

crime and punishment

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."

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

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.

Christmas in the twilight zone

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

culture shock

Hello, friends!

I've been in Bangkok for three days now. My impressions of the city (or the small part of it I've seen, so far): dirty, crowded, awful traffic, full of smells (both savory and foul), loud, and polluted. I'm fully aware that the city will seem better as I get used to it, but right now I'm kind of missing clean air.

Adjusting to everything is hard. I suppose I've got culture shock. I don't know what's going on, I can't communicate or read, I don't know the cultural norms... I'm foreign. Today at the school, for example, one of the Thai teachers came up to the English office to ask us (very apologetically) if we'd come to the nurse's office to have our temperature taken. They wanted to make sure none of us was sick, because one or two of the girls had been feeling ill the day before. This teacher seemed to think we'd be offended by having such an intrusive device as a thermometer placed in our ears for 10 seconds. We told her it was fine, really. I think she believed us, but she said Thais don't like being asked to have their temperature taken. There are lots of little things, I'm sure, that we have no clue about. We've probably offended everyone many times by now.

One of my books said Thais think it's weird and gross to put your fork in your mouth. At every meal, they have a large spoon and a fork. The fork is used to push food onto the spoon, or to hold meat down while you cut it with the spoon. I learned this by watching Star, a Baylor grad who taught last year and signed up for a second term. I've adopted this method to avoid seeming uncouth.

I'll tell you all more about daily life later, but for now, I'm tired and still getting over the jet lag. I miss you all!