dinosow (Thai for 'dinosaur')

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!

a friend

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."

supervisor meeting

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.

faster than a speeding... something

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

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

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

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

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

monkeys and flowers in lopburi

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

100-meter dash

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

respect the earth, or else

Today, the primary grades participated in Environment Day.

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

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

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

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

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

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

My station was “Repair.”

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

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

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

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

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

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



Or,



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


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

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

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

soy una gringa

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

que dios te bendiga!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

waving the white flag

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.

no words can describe...

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

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.

dining with Thais

I had a taste of legitimate Thai culture tonight.

I tutored after school until 5:00. My Thai counterpart, Nummon, was still in the office.

When the student left, she asked what I usually do for dinner. She told me about a delicious place near the school and asked if I wanted to go with her.

We got in her car and headed for the gate of the grounds. We passed Ekapol and Kate, who teach computers and art. Nummon told them to hop in.

On the way, Nummon quizzed me over what I liked and didn't like to eat. We got to a little hole-in-the-wall restaurant and sat down. She took a slip of paper and a pencil from a box at the end of the table and started scribbling our order. She handed it to the lady who owned the place and that was that.

They talked in Thai most of the time, with Nummon pausing to explain in English or ask me a question. A man and a woman walked in. Kate had been gossiping about him the moment before, and Nummon taught me a Thai term that translates to "die hard."

From what I understood (which wasn't much), dying hard is a term you use when you're talking about someone and they walk in just as you're saying their name. She explained that when you're talking about them, it's kind of in the abstract, like they're frozen in time and space -- or like a dead person, she said. (Yeah, it doesn't make much sense to me, either. Especially as I try to articulate it here.) So when the person walks in, they go from being dead to alive.

"And it means they will live a very long life."
"So... living a long life is a bad thing?"

The Thai teachers looked at each other.

"Well, it could be a good thing..."
long pause
"...that's a very good question."

I didn't understand at all, really, so I suppose it's inaccurate to say I learned a new Thai concept.

I did witness a cultural thing I'd read about. Nummon went and paid for the meal. I asked her how much I owed. Ekapol and Kate didn't seem at all concerned about the bill. Nummon said it was no problem, that she was covering it.

"Really, are you sure?" I asked.
"Yes, anytime."

We all stood up, and Ekapol said to me, matter-of-factly, "It's OK - She's the elder here."

The oldest or wealthiest person always pays the bill when people go out. According to one website, you also foot the bill if you go out with a group for your birthday.

"what we have here is a failure to communicate"

Today was very trying.

Actually, there's been a snowball of little, irritating things over the last two months. This week, the irritation snowball reached a yard in diameter.

The main annoyance today was the English Camp meeting.

English Camp is where the 120 5th graders come to school on Saturday for a themed day chock full of learning and fun! We chose a camp-out theme and we were told to create six different stations with activities and new vocabulary.

The kids will be split into 10 groups with a dozen kids in each group. They'll rotate through the six stations, with 24 students at a station at a time.

These stations should last from 8:30 to noon - they'll spend about half an hour at each station with a 30 minute break thrown in somewhere.

Pikay (the P2 teacher) told us there should be an afternoon show from 2:00 until 3:30 or 4. From what she described, it sounded like a talent competition or a variety show... or perhaps a circus (like everything else around here). The important thing was that the kids use English.

We put our heads together and determined that the simplest thing to do would be to keep the kids in their small groups. Five camp songs will be performed, as well as five skits written by us. We'll alternate - skit, song, skit, song - to keep it interesting.

I typed up the afternoon schedule, listing the camp songs and providing the lyrics. I also gave a brief description of the storyline for each of the five skits. I handed two copies to Pikay at our English Camp meeting this afternoon. She looked at them, turned around to confer with the other Thai teachers, then turned back to us with a frown on her face.

"The principal don't like songs or role play. She's afraid some student don't practice talking."

Huh. We were under the silly, deluded impression that having kids act out plays or sing songs in English was a surefire way to make them practice speaking.

"Okay," Alyssa asked, "Can you tell us what they've done in past years that has worked?"

It took several minutes, and several repetitions of this question, before we could get a direct answer:

"Oh, I think two years ago they do song and role play."

We all gave each other bemused looks again. We were clearly missing something. The meeting ended with Pikay telling us she'd ask the principal again, showing her our plan this time.