Birthday memories and the frankness of the Thai

Last week there were two deaths within our school’s larger family. My 6^th grade student, June, lost her mother (who used to be a teacher herself) and one of the 4^th grade teachers lost her husband. It appears June’s mother retired last year because of severe cancer. The teacher’s husband died from fluid in his lungs (in addition, according to one of the other 4^th grade teachers, to heavy drinking and smoking).

Everyone has been wonderfully kind and understanding, yet the openness with which they speak about the deaths it outright disturbing. Because the Thai find no qualms with stating facts (such as “you’re fatter than she is”, or “he’s the slow student in class”) they talk about the deaths with little emotional concern for those who suffered the loss. For instance, when one of the Thai teachers explained to us about the death of the other teacher’s husband, she had no problem essentially justifying his death because he drank and smoked.

My students came to class Monday morning (the day after June’s mother’s funeral) and explained to me that her mother died. They then told me how happy June was today and how she was smiling a lot. They then told me that at the funeral yesterday she had been crying a lot. They went so far as to imitate her crying! I was completely shocked but June didn’t look like it was hurtful. I was on the verge of tears when I told the other teachers what my students had done. I can’t even begin to imagine what losing your mother at the age of 12 must be like, let alone having your friends imitate your tears.

But it’s ok to say, I guess. June was (justifiably) crying at the funeral, and I suppose my students were just trying to tell me that. It all left me very disturbed. I could, however take solace in the fact that, when we wrote in our notebooks about all things we are thankful for June wrote that she was thankful for her mother’s funeral.

On a much lighter note, I celebrated my 22^nd birthday 2 weeks ago. I mentioned about a week before that my birthday was coming up. I had no idea what I was in for. On Thursday Kathy, Kelly, and Helena surprised me with a homemade apple pie! For some reason I had been craving apple pie and I mentioned it. Note, never attempt to make crust with rice flour, it doesn’t work. But hey, it’s the thought that counts and I really appreciated that they baked a pie for me, even if it wasn’t very good.

On Friday, in typical Thai fashion, I bought 80 pieces of cake for my students and co teachers. In Thai culture you give gifts (often food) on your birthday. However, I also received a beautiful bouquet of flowers from my 6^th graders and my boss. I also got a pair of earrings from my student Kow (all of my students quickly recognized that I like earrings). On Saturday, my 5^th graders threw me a “surprise” party. I put surprise in quotes because they had been talking about the party all week. All of the students come to school for 2 hours on Saturday to practice English and math. Around 10:45 on Saturday morning, two of my students showed up at my house. We then rode our bikes back to school where the entire class sang an original song to me gave me lots of flowers! Then we ate a delicious cake that my (5^th grade!) student Nam-Pet made. There was a bit of a frosting fight as well. Then they gave me their gifts. I got food, teddy bears, a cute clock, and more food. It was a ton of fun. After giving gifts and eating cake we danced the cha cha slide for about 15 minutes (all the children love that dance!) and then we played bingo (they also love bingo). It was really great.

M and my co teacher Aj. Wandee and the beautiful flowers they gave me

The cake my 5th grade student Nam-pet made from scratch!

The chalkboard

Me, obviously

The wonderful things my students wrote.

Me and the students with presents

Culture Shock and Competitions

So there are many stages of culture shock. When we embarked on this journey they told us all about the many things that we were likely to feel and experience while living abroad. I think I have just successfully emerged from the “these people” stage of culture shock. This is the stage when you are essentially your angriest (and if you know me, you probably know that this isn’t very angry compared to the average person). This stage consists of lots of complaints and frustrations with the country and people, hence the phrase “these people.”

Overall, there isn’t a lot for me to complain about, I am truly living a great life here. But hey that’s what people are apt to do, we find things to complain about. The one thing that I can complain about is the language and all its glorious barriers. As I’m sure I’ve mentioned before, Thai is a tonal language. The same word can have 5 different meanings depending on whether it’s said with a high, low, flat, ascending, or descending tone. The sentence “new wood doesn’t burn does it?” can be said using only one word. It’s really ridiculous. And as a foreigner, new to tones, the differences seem nonexistent to me. So when attempting to speak Thai I get a lot of crazy looks. Trying to order my dessert without (sweetened condensed) milk, I might be asking for my dessert to come with sagging breasts. Discussing water buffalo I might end up talking about a penis. Trying to call a child beautiful, I might call him or her unlucky. It sounds funny, and afterwards it most certainly is, but during such a slip up, you just seem like a moron.

The other problem with learning Thai is that because there are so few foreigners in Nan who speak any Thai, the people of the town are not used to hearing anyone make these mistakes. Since America is such an immigrant filled country, we are used to people mispronouncing words, using improper grammar, and struggling with vocabulary. If someone says they are going to the bitch, I can safely assume they mean they are going to the beach. If someone tells me to chake, chake, chake, it’s a solid bet that they mean shake. But in Nan if I say kow with the wrong tone, they might think I want knee with my meal rather than rice. The subtleties of the language are so intense that I have been in a room of students and told them that my favorite Thai food is pad thai, and they stared at each other for 2 minutes trying to figure out what I said! But hey, it’s all just incentive to get better at the language, so I can’t complain too much.

The other thing I like to complain about (that I really do appreciate being a part of despite the extra work) are all the English competitions that my students participate in. Thai people really like competing. They have all kinds of educational competitions: science math, computers, etc. But they take it to another level and they have competitions where the students are dressed like Jane Fonda and are doing workouts on stage, it’s really awesome. My kids are most often part of English competitions. At the beginning of the year I taught my kids the play Snow White. We have now performed it at two different competitions and have won 2^nd and 1^st place. I’m quite proud. Additionally the kids are part of spelling bees, speaking competitions, and general knowledge quizzes where they ask questions like “Which country is the biggest exporter of coffee.” It means lots of preparation from the teachers and driving hours to competitions in many different provinces, but the students like being involved so it’s all worth it.

The Queen and her magic mirror

Snow White, the 5 dwarfs (our cast is limited) and the random cat we keep deciding to leave in the play

The poisoned apple!

The Prince who falls in love with Snow White while she is "dead." Don't you love fairy tales!

Best Vacation Ever

We had been planning it since August. We knew where we wanted to go, what we wanted to do, who we wanted to see, and how we were gonna do it all. Well sorta. We had known abut our 3 week vacation since the school year began almost 5 months ago. We had general ideas about locations and activities but for the most part we wanted to relax, have fun, and see Thailand and we managed to do just that.

Ko Chang (Elephant island, named apparently for it’s shape as seen from the mainland)
I started my vacation by taking the infamous 11 hour bus ride from Nan to Bangkok (this was by choice, there are 1 hour flights from Nan to Bangkok every other day, but I don’t mind the bus ride and they are about 1/6 the price of the plane ticket). In Bangkok I met up with Helena and her family. From Bangkok we took the 5 hour bus ride (though some evil human told us it would only be 2 hours) to the coastal town of Trat to catch a ferry to ko Chang. Ko Chang is a really special island. The entire interior is a beautiful forest. In the forest you can do everything from elephant trekking to hang gliding. We even saw monkeys on the winding roads that cut through the island. The beaches are nice, though certainly not the best I’ve ever seen (Panama has them beat, hands down). But during our stay we mostly walked around town and swam in the pool. We hung out by the beach and took an amazing snorkeling trip as well. The water was bit murky but there was a ton of stuff to see. Pictures below.

A parrotfish we saw snorkeling

Ko Samet
From Ko Chang we headed northwest to the island of Ko Samet. Ko Samet is nice because it is just two hours south of Bangkok and there are just as many Thai vacationers as foreign ones. The beaches are much nicer than in Ko Chang. They are cleaner, clearer, and deeper. But there is less to do. The shores are separated by rocky shores and each beach is fairly separated from the next. Ko Samet is designed for complete and total relaxation. Massages, comfy chairs, a few hammocks, the sun, the sky, and the beach really made for a relaxing time.

The gorgeous beaches of Ko Samet.

Bangkok We were only in Bangkok for 2 and a half days. We took this time to be especially Western. We were a little nervous about doing too nuch traveling because we had been hearing news of large protests and violence around the city. Thankfully none of it came near where we were. We walked around town, visited the malls and made a few foreign friends. I’ll likely go back to Bangkok to get a better experience in it.

Kanchanaburi From Bangkok we traveled west to Kanchanaburi. This city is famous for a few reasons. The first is the film The Bridge over the River Kwai. During WWII the Japanese forced hundreds of thousands of American, British, Malaysian, Australian, Indian, and other S.E Asian POWs to build a railroad to send supplies and troops into Myanmar. Thousands died due to the climate in Thailand and the horrible treatment in the camps. We visited the bridge that they died building, one of the cemeteries in town, and a museum. It was a very saddening experience but really educational. We also visited the floating market outside the city. It was once used as an efficient means of transporting food and other goods between families living on the river. People set up mini restaurants and markets in their boats. It has now become a large tourist spot but was still fun to see.
The other reason we visited Kanchanaburi was for the Tiger temple. About 10 years ago some monks living in a temple about 40 minutes out of the city adopted an injured tiger. Since then the monks have been taking care of many more tigers, wild boar, deer, water buffalo, peacocks, and even a leopard. It is now a huge tourist attraction as people can come and take pictures up close and personal with all these animals. It is truly wonderful to play with a tiger cub and touch a full grown tiger.

Me on the bridge over the river Kwai

With a very playful tiger cub

Close Up

Ayutthaya
From Kanchanaburi we traveled northeast to Ayutthaya, a city popular for its ruins. The former capital city has over 300 temples many of which were destroyed when Burmese soldiers attacked the city. The temples are marked by crumbling prangs and pagodas and statues of Buddha with the heads removed.
From Ayutthaya we took a day trip to a small city called Lopburi. Lopburi is also a city with famous ruins that was once an extremely important city. It also experience skirmishes with the Burmese. However, today it is most famous for its long tailed macaques (small monkeys) that live freely in the city and at the temples. They were so cool to see. It was a little disturbing for Kelly (who we met up with in Bangkok) because her sister had a rabies scare when a monkey bit her in China. But all in all it was just really amazing to see the monkeys willingly interacting with humans.

One of the most famous images in the Ruins. The roots of this tree grew around this Buddha head.

A family of macaques chillin at the temple

Chiang Mai From Ayutthaya and Lopburi we headed far north to our familiar Chiang Mai. There we took some time to relax, see a movie, and take an amazing tour.
We finally went to visit my people, the Karen tribes. They are famous because of their long necks. The women wear gold rings around their necks. They start wearing (with the option to decline) at the age of 5. The rings (based on research and X rays) actually push down their rib cages in order to create the image of a lengthened neck. It is said that they were originally used as protection in case they were bitten by tigers or to make themselves less attractive to males so that they wouldn’t be taken from their village. It was really interesting to see how tourism has become an important source of income for them while at the same time they are not the least bit interested in us when we come. In addition to visiting the Karen “long necks” we also visited two other tribes, a cave with Buddha images in it, an orchid and butterfly farm, and a factory where they make paper products from elephant dung. It was a really great time.

A young girl from the Karen 'Long neck' tribe

We arrived in Nan on Saturday evening and we are very excited to get back to teaching.

Since I haven't updated in ages!

Hello to all my Western readers! This is not a true to form blog entry. I am in an internet cafe in Ko Samet (and island about two hours south of Bangkok) paying 2 baht a minute to use internet. For comparison, in my humble home of Nan it costs 10 baht for a hour of internet use, so you can see my need to be brief. I just wanted to let everyone know that Thailand is still amazing and I am still very much loving it.

The beaches are absolutely gorgeous. Clear water (for the most part), excellent snorkelling, mostly clear skies, and gorgeous mountains. It is the definition of a tropical paradise. The hotels are more expensive than some of the guesthouses we've stayed in in CHiang Mai but we haven't had to sleep on any restaurant booths. There are a lot of foreigners here. Mostly Scandanavians and Australians but a few Americans here and there. In Ko Samet, there are also a lot of Thai vacationers since it's so close to Bangkok. There are also a lot of lady-boys. Far more than we have ever seen in Nan. They are feminine, fashionable, and always willing to hand out compliments. It's actually really interesting to see. One of the most disturbing parts of vacation has been seeing hords of very old falang men with beautiful young Thai women. I mean you hear about the sex trade and you know the brothels exists. But seeing them in the pools and beaches with you (and by "them" I mean 55 year old Russians with 22 year old Thais) just makes things a little too real. But I suppose after a while you get used to it.

We get a total of 3 weeks off for vacation and I spent the first week on Ko Chang a less popular island to the south east. I'm spending 4 days on Ko Samet, the island near Bangkok, then a few days in Bangkok. The trip has been extremely relaxing but has made me miss Nan and my students a lot. When I get home I will share photos of the trip and tell you all about my students’ English competition, where we performed the play Snow White and the hilarious parties I had with 5th and 6th grade during the last week of school.

My Rediscovery

Surprises have become less and less common for all the people of Nan. The falangs come and go and everyone gets used to that. We are learning to speak more Thai and blending in better with the general populous. Our students high five us less frequently, though still pretty regularly. And the first black person to come to Nan is now part of the community. People still say hello and smile at us, but our celeb status has dropped significantly. Until now… I took out my braids and now I’m rockin my afro. And boy is the town in an uproar, the good kind of course, but an uproar nonetheless. My students, who surprisingly knew the word afro, were shocked when they first saw it. They smiled and giggled, but they called my hair beautiful in both English and Thai. The other teachers stared and pointed, then smiled. I let my students touch it and they really enjoyed that. When I went to the market to get my breakfast, people were really taken aback. Lots of women stared and then touched their own hair, as though it could have happened to them as well. One woman, holding a small child, walks up to me, and stares at my hair, gently grabs my arm, and moves my arm to touch her child. It was really weird. About a week later a man walks up to me and asks to take a picture with me because I am the first colored person he’s seen in Nan (that’s a direct quote). He spoke decent English because he had spent some time in the U.S. and apparently still retained some dated vernacular. Of course I gladly took the photo. People in the market make strange sounds when they see my hair and one woman sounded like she screamed. It’s really quite funny to see/hear. We are concerned that I might cause a motorbike accident.

I think the best part about the hair change is that people still seem to genuinely appreciate it, even though it’s not long and straight. Some of the students have been saying to me “Ajarn Karen beautiful,” unable to complete the full sentence. It’s kind of become a last name for me. This week my hair is in Bantu knots, I’m excited to see what happens.

Current hair , I think the kids will like it

A few other updates…

I’m really good at Muay Thai. We have been going regularly for the last few weeks and I’m pretty sure I’ll be a master by the end:). The language barrier still makes learning some things hard but it is getting better everyday.

Me on my first day of Muay Thai training

I'm good at kicking!

I have been recording some of the wonderful things my 6^th graders do. I am uploading a video of one of my best students Tor imitating a monkey. The song they are singing goes:

“Don’t wake a sleeping monkey, it will get up. It will stretch its legs. 1.2.3.4. It will open its mouth, it will yawn. And then it will chase, chase, chase, chase YOU!”

Tor is the sleeping monkey and Name is the student being chased.

Here is another video of one of the other people that trains with us at Muay Thai, my goal is to be like him!

The Cook wants your Blood, and other musings

This blog entry is a bit disjointed. Bear with me, I am the queen of non sequiturs.

So everyday at school we eat lunch in the cafeteria (canteen) with all the other teachers. Lunch is free for us and usually consists of lukewarm to cold plain white rice, some unidentifiable part of a pig, and a fairly spicy coconut soup. They switch it up with different unidentifiable parts of a pig, noodles, and the occasional fruit. Suffice it to say we are often still hungry after lunch. So last week we started politely eating as little as possible, without making it obvious that we hate it, and then leaving to eat lunch.

Last Wednesday we found out why the food was more abhorrent than normal. As we were just coming back from eating lunch at a nearby noodle stall, my co-teacher for 5^th grade, Ajarn Wandee (pronounced Wendy), walks towards us with the assistant director of the school. She gestures towards us and says “The cook wants your blood.” At this point we’re convinced that we’ve offended the cook and he wants us killed. We asked confusedly, why the cook would want our blood. My co-teacher responds “Because you are foreign.” After about another five minutes of conversation she explains that the cook is in the hospital and he needs a blood transfusion. Apparently he has a blood type that is extremely rare in Thailand and they want to test the foreign teacher’s blood.

So we leave (and Kathy misses one of her classes) to have our blood tested. Helena and I are not matches, but Kathy is the universal donor. In our flustered state, we weren’t really prepared to give blood. The woman on the bed five feet from us was bleeding profusely and no one realized, and we were concerned. So while they were questioning us I did my best to explain in disjointed English that we were all menstruating. It was pretty ridiculous. But it worked for the time being. They told us that we’ll have to come back this week (or at least Kathy will). Then on the drive back from the hospital, the Assistant director offers to buy us ice cream. It was all very strange.

Moving on…so last week we started hearing this strange animal call near the house. It sounded like a mixture of a cat’s meow, a gecko’s chirp, and a bird’s call. After being unable to sleep for a night or two we found a very young kitten living under our stairs. Apparently it’s a hobby of Kathy’s to take care of stray animals so we bought her some milk and tried to feed her. It didn’t take long at all for her to warm up to us. Probably two days later she was playing our laps and we had been adopted. We fed her more milk, gave her a blanket to sleep in, and moved her upstairs. The next night she had explosive diarrhea and vomiting, apparently you’re not supposed to feed kittens cow’s milk. Who knew? (Kathy did, she read it online and disregarded it). So a friend of ours took us to a local vet who told us that she was fine and that we should feed her this caloric supplement (it looks like black hair gel, gross). Anyway Kathy and Helena named her Hermlila because originally we were unsure of the sex. Helena said it was a boy and that we should name him Herman, Kathy said it was a girl and we should name her Delilah. So we combined to two. She’s a great cat, very adorable and fun to play with. Initially I was against it because having to leave a pet forever in seven months is going to suck, but no one listens to me.

Hermlila

She likes laps

Last week was a big week for us. In addition to having our lives threatened by the hospitalized cook and gaining a pet, we made a great friend. Her name is An and she is a student at the high school down the street from out house. She speaks very good English and the reason we met her is because she competed in and won the two English competitions we’ve been to. Next week she is going to Bangkok for the final round. The first time we hung out with her, she took us on a bike ride to one of the universities and to visit one of the now deceased Princesses’ homes. She also invited us into her home. She and her mother taught us how to make green curry. It was really delicious. She’s also teaching us a lot of Thai. She took us to a market we had never been to where we sampled cricket. It was pretty tasty except that the legs got caught in your teeth. But the best thing An did was encourage us to try taklaw. Taklaw is a Thai sport that essentially combines hacky sack and volleyball. You have to hit the ball over the net and to your teammates without using your hands (all other body parts, shoulders, feet, head, etc. are fair game). We have to get the basics down before anyone with any skill will try and teach us so we bought a ball and are gonna be practicing soon.

The traditional Thai noodles we used to make curry

Our final meal...delicious!

Right Understanding, Right Thought, Right Speech, Right Action

Last week we celebrated the start of Buddhist Lent. For the next 3 months all monks will have to sleep in the temple and in the past they could not leave the temple at all. In town many of the schools participate in parades to the temples to be blessed and taught by the monks. Our students made offerings of food and medicine and brought a huge candle to the temple. The older students at the nearby high school wore traditional Thai dress and sported very festive hair styles. It was pretty cool to watch everything. It’s also been really interesting seeing how this eastern religion permeates life here. When you see the extreme respect that everyone gives to monks and to statues of Buddha, it makes sense that students bow to teachers and that I’m supposed to hold my glass below the glass of someone older than me. The title of this blog is a Buddhist understanding of life and the path to rightness. I included it because I think it’s beautifully simple and that it encompasses my appreciation of Buddhism.

The monks and our students during the Lent celebration

In celebration of Buddhist Lent, we did not have school on Thursday or Friday. We went to Chiang Mai for the holiday. We took a 5 hour bus ride (that costs the equivalent of $10 for first class!!) to the second largest city in Thailand (Chiang Mai). We took the night bus so we arrived around 3:30 am. We called our hotel about 2 weeks before to confirm our reservation and to make sure it was ok that we were arriving so early in the morning. All was set in advance. However, when we arrived the hotel manager informed us that the hotel was full as of the previous night. After a lot of conversation and complete expression of our exasperation she offered us the hotel restaurant for the remainder of the night/morning (until a room became free). Because it was 4 am and we were just coming off a 5 hour bus ride, we were too tired to search for a new hotel, so we reluctantly accepted. We then slept on the booths in the restaurant until about 7 am. It was undoubtedly the worst “night” of “sleep” that I’ve ever had. Around 9 (after we had eaten breakfast in the restaurant we just slept in) she told us there was a non air conditioned room available for us, which we gladly slept in until our rooms were ready at 11. It was a pretty strange experience. Suffice it to say that we won’t be staying there again and we won’t be taking the night bus again. “Mai ben lai” was the theme of the night. Mai ben lai (or mai pen rai, Thais switch L’s and R’s and B’s and P’s all the time) just means don’t stress over it or don’t worry about it. It kinda puts things back into perspective.

How we slept that first night, in our restaurant booths.

Anyway our weekend in Chiang Mai was pretty great. Because it is such a large city (that is still extremely cheap by western standards) it has a great deal of tourism and a lot of western amenities that you can’t find in Nan. To start, in the area where our hotel is, it took us a solid 5 hours to see anyone who was Thai who was not either working or dating a foreigner. We did not have to use Thai at all. We felt like we were forcing some merchants and restaurant owners to talk to us in Thai. It was very strange coming from Nan where most people speak no English. But we were still able to enjoy ourselves. In Chiang Mai there are like 5 Starbucks and a few Burger Kings and a McDonalds. We even saw a Subway and a Haagen Daz. There are a lot of English bookstores so we got to buy some books. There is a huge mall with a movie theater and we got to see the new Batman movie in English (with Thai subtitles)!!!! It was nice to feel a bit western again but the Thai part of Chiang Mai was not lost on us. We visited the Doi Suthep temple which is a large temple on the top of a mountain overlooking the city. It is a beautiful place and the views of the city were really nice. We also took a tour of the national park and we stopped at three amazing waterfalls and visited the highest point in Thailand. We stopped at this research station that had recently been developed to farm flowers and vegetables and research sustainable processes for the area. The whole region used to be filled with opium fields. We visited the king and queen pagodas, two very large temples made on the King and Queen’s 60^th birthdays to…umm…. celebrate them. We also visited the weekend markets where I bought farmer and fisherman’s pants which are these adorable and really comfortable pants that perhaps at one point in time fisherman and farmers wore. We went to a traditional khantoke dinner where we saw several kinds of Thai dance and performances. There was fire dancing and a dance with candles and swords. There was definitely a lot to see and do in Chiang Mai and we most definitely want to go back in the near future.

Me below a Buddha statue at the Doi Suthep temple

The pagoda at the temple. People would walk around this holding candles and praying

The sword dance at the khantoke dinner

The candle dance. It was painful to watch this because you could see the hot wax dripping onto their hands.

I think thing that struck me most about the city were the black people I saw. Because it’s so touristy I saw other black folks from a lot of different parts of the world; Europe, the US, North Africa. But when I say black people I don’t just mean individuals, there was a black presence in Chiang Mai. We walked into one store with woven blankets and wall hangings and were immediately struck by how African the patterns were. I took a few more steps and saw the picture below showing “Women from the African Ark.”

In a fabric store in Chiang Mai

We passed a bar called Rasta-bar in bright red, yellow, and green colors. We saw another restaurant called the Freedom Bar with pictures of Bob Marley on the front and a mural of a guy with an Afro. It was really cool.

At the freedom bar

Bob Marley collage, also at the Freedom bar

Six Weeks Later

Last week I started going to muay Thai training. We got these horrible directions (all directions in Nan are horrible, streets don’t have names, it’s all by landmarks) from some of the teachers who were here last year and me and two of the girls biked to the camp. We arrived (after a few wrong turns) at the camp, which was really just a mat, a boxing ring, and some weight lifting machines in someone’s backyard. We see some people and start miming and saying “muay Thai?” After a few minutes he starts showing us the basic punching move. We politely say the phrase to ask how much he will charge us and he politely refused and continued to show us the moves. We stayed for about an hour. It was an amazing workout. On the mat he showed us the punch and knee attacks. Then we got into the boxing ring and put on gloves. We practiced by punching pads he was wearing. Then he showed us the basic kick. There is still fairly large language barrier so I don’t know any official names of any of the moves. But we are collectively working on that. However, it turns out that I’ve got pretty decent form and a pretty powerful punch and kick. I need to work on the knee move a lot more. My back was sore and so were the insides of my elbows. It’s been really fun though and I’m very excited that I’m getting the chance to train with them for free.

Yesterday I judged an English speaking competition. The competition was at the local high school around the corner from where I teach. A few of our school’s students participated (none that I teach but two that Kelly teach). The competitions were initially a little bit strange to us. The students are given in advance several topics to come up with speeches for. The younger children get topics like “my school” and “my family.” The older students have topics like “the environment” and “my ambitions.” Our younger students do not write their own speeches. Their Thai teachers ask them questions about their families and what they like to do at school and then write the speeches. The students then memorize them and the foreign teachers help with pronunciation, sentence structure, and things like that. The older students (and by old and young I mean 6-11 vs. 16-18) actually write more of their own speeches and their teachers help to make them better. At the competitions the students pick a topic and if they like that topic they give a speech on that topic. If they don’t they can pick one other topic. This means that the students have to memorize two to three speeches for each competition. The speeches have to be 3-5 minutes long and we judge on pronunciation, accuracy, presentation, personality, content, and a few other things. I had a lot of fun. I judged level 4, the oldest students. A lot of the speeches were really good. The students who came in first place gave a speech on the environment. She started her speech by singing part of “Heal the World.” I was really surprised because she had an amazing voice and her pronunciation was really impressive. I gave her the most points of any contestant because she referenced global warming, CFCs, polar ice caps, and Al Gore and an Inconvenient Truth. I mean come on, I know people fluent in English who wouldn’t have done as well. She and the girls in second and third place will go on to a larger competition in a few weeks. One of my students and one of Kelly’s and Kathy’s will go to that same competition.

There are a few things that were initially surprising and/or disturbing to me that I’m now completely used to. The first is, disturbingly enough, bugs in my food. There is always a bug in or around my food. It’s an ongoing joke with me and the girls, because it’s almost always my food or the food nearest me that ends up with bugs in it. But usually I just pick it out and keep moving. In the states I would’ve sent it back and have lost my appetite or something ridiculous. In truth, it’s really nice not to care about that sort of thing. I’m also more ok with strangers touching me. Thai people tend to touch your arms or your hair or your stomach or your shoulders, just because they look or feel different than their own. Again, in the states, that not exactly ok, but I have no problem with it here. The last major thing that I’ve gotten at least more used to is that Thai people don’t seem to believe that any information is private. For instance a teacher might introduce a friend by saying “This is Nong, he has diarrhea.” And that will be completely ok. A teacher might mention casually (and for no reason) that a student is in Bangkok for the weekend because her parents are divorced. One time, Kelly had her students drawing pictures of their families. Her co teacher takes her to one of the students who is drawing a picture of his father. She then proceeds to tell Kelly (with the child clearly listening) the story of how the student’s father committed suicide a month ago. At the English speaking competition Helena judged a speech about a student’s family where, 30 seconds into it, she learned that his father died when he was a baby, his mother abandoned him and he has never seen her nor does he know her name, and he lives with his extremely poor grandmother. I don’t think anyone I know would let a small child put that into a speech. But it really is the Thai way. It’s ok for everyone to know everything.

So I’m about to begin my 6th week of teaching. They say that the first 6 weeks are the hardest. Setting classroom routines, maintaining student respect, encouraging interest in the subject, and effectively teaching are all supposed to be accomplished by that point. The truth is it doesn’t feel like it’s been almost a month and a half. 6 weeks ago I was graduating from college. I didn’t have 63 students dependent on me to learn a language. I wasn’t learning a new language or attempting a martial art. I had never touched an elephant, let alone ridden on one. A lot’s happened in 6 weeks and I’m really happy about all of it. That’s the best feeling, I really enjoy life. I love teaching and my students make me so excited. Everyday I learn more Thai or try something new and I’m enjoying every minute of it.

A Brief Musical interlude (Send me stuff)

A few updates. Last Thursday was language appreciation day. We missed literally the first three hours of school. It was almost like a really long talent show. Except they gave out awards and several students took a quiz on stage (kinda like a gameshow, except much less exciting). Some of my 5th graders put on a play about a princess crossing an ocean and being attacked…or something like that. Anyway it was cute for the most part. Some 6th graders did karaoke in these really interesting costumes. As a sidenote, most Thai singing is not pleasant to non-Thai ears. We’ve concluded that in order to make it in the Thai music industry you have to always sing about unrequited love and sound really bad. But I digress, the kids had a lot of fun and hopefully appreciated their language.

We’ve been able to hang out a few times with the other farangs (westerners) in Nan. We went to the one bar in Nan last Friday. That was interesting. There are randomly a fair amount of foreigners in Nan teaching English (and by a fair amount, I mean like 15-20). Most are from the UK but there are some from the Philippines and obviously the US. We try to get together occasionally to hang out. The bar was pretty cool. There were two bands (apparently the owner of the bar is in one of the bands) and they played mostly Thai pop but a few US songs. I think my favorite song of the evening was a Thai song with the lyrics “I’m heartbroken, but I’m not gay.” The bar etiquette was a little strange for me. Apparently you do not dance in front of the band. You dance standing next to your table (where you have no room and where everyone who’s not dancing blatantly stares). It was a good time though. Also we are slowly but surely learning lyrics to Thai songs.

To end, I’d like to say that I welcome any and all packages from you (my amazing family and friends). Packages may include (but should not be limited to) DVDs (I’ll take whatever I can get) and books, pictures of you, US snacks that won’t spoil (oatmeal, pretzels, chips, mac and cheese, applesauce? etc), and toys and stickers for the kids. But I’m sure I’ll love anything you send me. It takes about 10 days for things to arrive here.
My address is
Karen Bailey
Bandon Srisermkasikorn School
T. Nai Waing
Amphur Muang
Nan 55000
THAILAND

The students had the opportunity to go to concert by a band with all blind performers. They had so much fun. These are some of my 5th graders dancing: Miew, Khaidow, Mook, Milk and On2 (because there are two Ons)

My 5th graders dressed for the play for Thai Language appreciation day. From L to R, Un, one of the boys (can’t tell with the mask), Nampet, Benz, Joop-Jang, and Miew.

Some of the younger students dressed for their play.

Elephants and Appreciation

Last Thursday was Thailand’s national Teacher Appreciation day. We participated in a very touching ceremony. In Thailand, the career hierarchy is such that teachers rank just below monks. Teachers are respected and revered for all that they do in society. So every year in June, the students appreciate them. We met in the hall which is just a covered multipurpose area where the students go for gym and prayer. All 800 students sat in the hall. They sat by grade level and gender and sang and recited prayers and words of appreciation to the most experienced teachers. The students made offerings to Buddha and presented the teachers with gorgeous flower bouquets. The school recognized me and the other foreign teachers with a beautiful bouquet. Following the Buddhist offerings and recognition of specific teachers, all teachers sat down in front of the children. When their grade level was called they ran to the teachers, bowed in front of them and gave them flowers that they had picked and wrapped in banana leaves. It was truly amazing. They were on their hands and knees bowing before us with their heads literally touching the ground. It is a sign of thanks and honor that I have never witnessed in the States. Obviously, I did not feel deserving, but I was very touched.

Flowers for their teachers

Two of my students, Tor and Manoon

On Saturday we went Elephant riding. AMAZING! There are apparently only three elephants left in the area that we are able to ride, the four of us rode two of them. We drove about 30 minutes east of our city to a national park. We met our guides and climbed onto the Elephants. We did this by getting above them on a small hill and stepping onto their heads (this disturbed me greatly) and into a small bench attached to their backs. Then we were on our way. It was kind of a bumpy ride…if the bumps were really large and regular. Each step the elephant took lifted or dropped us a lot. But you got used to his stride quickly. Most of the ride (which lasted about an hour) we were on a relatively narrow road. At one point the elephants were walking by putting one foot directly in front of the other (because the path was so narrow). To add to this, they were always walking to the edge of the path and eating. Initially, we were kind of scared, but you get used to all this.

When you are on flat ground it is a wonderfully relaxing ride. The forests are beautiful. Not a whole lot in the way of mammal or bird life, but tons of cool insects and sun blocking trees and foliage. But when we were going downhill, we were pretty certain we would fall off the elephant. The bench we are seated on (obviously) leans forward when the elephant goes down a steep hill (of which there were many). We had to lean completely back and hold on for dear life…it made it all very exciting. All in all it was a really awesome time. We rode the elephants with their trainers sitting on their shoulders and it was amazing all the things they had taught them. They directed them either left or right by nudging them behind the ears (the same way a horse rider might use spurs or reins). When there was a large branch (or even a tree!!!) in our way, they directed the elephants to move them and they listened with no problem. The one thing the trainers could not control was the elephants urge to eat, but we didn’t mind that.

Our elephants-Edwin (left) and Horton the Old Faithful (right). Obviously those are names we came up with. The chains around his neck connected to his foot so they could not run.

The elephant dropping his head so we could get on

The way the bench connected to the elephant so that it did not actually flip when they go downhill.

Stopping for a bite to eat

Amazing eyes

Me holding the chains