bulletin boards

I suspect Thai education majors spend an entire semester learning to produce magnificent bulletin boards. Their boards feature multicolored geometric borders, 3-D components, and elements that can be removed and used as classroom demonstration pieces.

In reality, these boards have little educational value. The kids rarely look at them. Their main purpose, as far as I can tell, is to gratify the Thai teachers' egos and fuel their unspoken rivalries as they try to outdo each other every month.

Much to our collective chagrin, last month we learned that we, the farang teachers, are responsible for decorating one bulletin board in each of our classrooms by the last day of the month.

My theme for July was "Around the World." The kids were learning fun facts about 13 countries picked randomly by Nummon. I thought making the countries' flags, printing our their names in their official language, and adding a well-known symbol of each country would be easy enough.

False. The flags were extraordinarily time-consuming because the school decided to get ride of the color printer. I made them by hand, painstakingly snipping out the tiny construction paper pieces. And did I mention there are three boards to prepare?

I learned my lesson, and decided the next board would have a few large, simple pieces instead. This month's unit focuses on possessive pronouns. I finished my three boards this afternoon. Pictures to follow...

And 10 points to the person who can name the 13 countries represented on the bulletin board pictured!

an excursion of average proportions

Mariela, Alyssa and I have decided to rate our excursions based on their success levels.

Today's trip received an 85%. Not bad. Way within passing range.

Mariela and I took a ride on the mighty Chao Phraya River today. I researched day trips within an easy distance of Bangkok. Getting to Ko Kret - an island to the northeast of Bangkok where the Mon people make their signature pottery - sounded simple enough.

We live across town from the river. Taking the bus is the most affordable option, so we walked to a bus stop and waited for number 16 for at least half an hour. We finally caught our bus on a street a little further down. We rode for about 20 minutes and got off on Sam Sen Road.

It was clear we weren't in a tourist area. We were the only western faces around. We wandered through some food vendors and noticed the prices on Sam Sen were lower than on our street, probably because a lot of farangs live where we do.


Some helpful folks pointed us toward the pier. We walked through more vendors selling big bags of bread crusts for 15B. Curious. When we got down to the pier, we could see why. There were swarms of huge fish in the water below. People would toss handfuls of crusts into the water and watch the fish go crazy.

We waited a long time for our boat. The ride probably lasted another 30 to 40 minutes, but it was pleasantly cool out on the water. If we lived nearer to the river, the express boats would definitely be my preferred method of transportation. At the last stop, we disembarked and waited for a bus to take us nearer to the island.

We were dropped off near an old, decrepit temple that looked nothing like a place to catch a boat. We stopped the first passerby and held out a piece of paper with "Ko Kret" written in Thai. She pointed us in the right direction. The ferry stop was through another temple's grounds. Pretty soon, we were on Ko Kret.

I don't know if my estimates add up, but all in all it took us four hours to get there.

We looked at a tiny wat (temple) a few yards away from where the boat dropped us off, and then meandered through the market. It was nice, and had some of the same handicrafts we'd seen at the Made in Thailand expo. There were lots of delicious-looking food options, but when we saw sticky rice with mango, we couldn't resist. Yum.

Later, we went back to the same food stand and bought a bag of yellow, coconut-topped cakes baked in little cups made from banana leaves. They were tasty, too.

We spent nearly three hours there before the sun and walking around wore us out. I had read that we could get a bus back to Bangkok, but that we might have to ride the BTS Skytrain after that.

We took the little ferry boat, walked through the temple and the old, defunct temple, and back out onto the road where we could catch a bus. Luckily, we saw "Victory Monument" listed as a stop on the side of bus 166. We live within walking distance from Victory Monument, so we wouldn't have to spend any extra money on the BTS. Joy! We hopped on and settled in for what we thought would be an hour-long ride. In 25 minutes, we were at our stop. Another 15 minutes of walking, and we were home.

We laughed when we thought about the four hours we spent getting there. Hence, we felt it necessary to dock 15% off our trip's score.

Tonight we ate mediocre Mexican food at Charley Brown's. It was like being home. We went to The Australian afterward to hear a band that covers popular songs. One of the singers was the most spastic dancer I've ever seen. And he was able to sound exactly like Chris Martin from Coldplay. I'm talking dead on. Ten points for him.

today's special

School lunches are always an adventure. You never know what lurks in the vat of brothy soup or the pan of mystery meat.

I can normally find a least one tasty dish each day. Today's lunch was only so-so, but what greeted me in the teachers' air-conditioned lunchroom robbed me of any appetite I had.

There, on a gold stand surrounded by flowers, was a pig's face.

And sitting right in front of the pig face was one of the Thai teachers, eating his lunch as though nothing was amiss.

I looked around, and there were, in fact, two pig faces in the room.

The P.4 through P.6 students had a Buddhist ceremony of some kind this morning. There were other gold trays with fruit, flowers, and sea creatures. I think they were all part of the offerings for the ceremony - NOT for eating, thank goodness.

Still, eating in a room with pig faces was unnerving.

"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.

photos... again

If you've read my post from last month about the do-it-myself photoshopping incident, you already know the school has asked us for a lot of small passport photos.

On Monday at lunch, Geoffrey (silly British man who works in the Mattayom office) told us they needed three more small photos. Something to do with health care... I don't really know. He wasn't specific.

We turned those pictures in today.

Then, this afternoon, Sukjai tells us he needs more of the larger 2" by 2" sized photos for the work permit paperwork. "Will one or two be enough?" we asked. "Oh, no. We need at least six."

SIX more photos!

I have a third theory about where the photos are going. I think they're making "Go Fish" decks with our faces on them.

i'm leavin' on a jet plane

I'm in the process of doing research for our long October holiday. We have about three weeks off, and I want to make the most of my time.

As of right now, Alyssa, Mariela and I are planning to fly into Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, work our way up to Hanoi, cross the border and spend several days in Laos, and then spend the remainder of our time in northern Thailand.

There's so much preparation to do. We have to find out the process for Vietnamese and Laotian visas, choose cities and towns to visit, find cheap (but clean) accommodation, figure out the best sights to see, find transportation, and make a budget for it all.

Five days of traveling into, throughout, and home from Cambodia cost us around $250. Not bad, considering we flew home and did a $50 four-wheeling tour.

I'm aiming to keep a three week vacation under $1000. Is it possible? We shall see.

If anyone has advice on Vietnam, Laos, or northern Thailand, do share. In the meantime, I'll be reading everything I can find.

harry potter

Harry Potter = awesome.

Harry Potter in Thai when you paid for an English ticket = not so awesome.

We had been psyching ourselves up all day for Harry Potter. One of the Thai teachers named Ekapol was going with a group of eight of us, and he had called to reserve tickets.

We got to the box office, paid, and hung out in the mall until the movie started. At 7:00, we went inside to find our seats. The ridiculous Thai commercials started. I love them.

We stood up for the slide show of photos from the king's life and the stirring instrumental theme that goes along with it. Thais love their king, and this slide show makes farangs love and respect him, too.

The Harry Potter music started, and the title screen came up. Funnily enough, it was spelled in Thai. We didn't think anything of it.

When the first spoken lines came up, our hearts sank. It was all dubbed in Thai, no English, no subtitles. We looked at each other, got up, and walked out. Ekapol, poor Ekapol, was all stressed out because he felt like it was his fault.

But some other Thai people had also walked out. We looked at our tickets. We definitely bought the ones for the English showing. We stood back and let Ekapol and the other Thai people talk to movie theater staff.

It turned out to be a simple mistake; they just put the wrong soundtrack on. We went back inside and watched about 10 minutes of Thai Harry Potter before the situation was rectified.

Whew.