I am Thai-ing not to go crazy.

(I wrote this a few days ago. Internet hasn't worked for the past four. Sorry about the delay.)

This is the week. I can feel it in my bones. My motorbike is on the way. I have my International Driver's Permit, and according to the deal I made with my go-to Thai gal, the next step is the actual acquisition of the vehicle which freedom built. But enough about that.

I have alluded to the fact in my other posts that the Thais operate a bit differently than I am used to. Sometimes it is endearing. Most of the time my sanity suffers (and as most of you know, it was already teetering over the edge). Here are a few fun facts about the Thai people.

1. SSSSLLLLLLLLOOOOOOOOOOOWWWWWWWWW. To get anything accomplished here takes eons. I still have yet to sign a work contract. (Although this is partially my fault because I refused to sign it until the school actually raises my salary in the written contract. The administration agreed to the pay raise verbally, but when the contract was laid before me, the salary remained unaltered at its original, half-the-salary-of-a-normal-worker level. More amusing still was their suggestion--and they thought it to be a good one--to sign the contract anyway and they will work out the salary later in a non-contractual way.) In another instance of Tortoise-dom, the custodian for the building, not even the school, cleans the same portion of the hallway almost all day long. And the next day she does it again while the rest of the building remains dirty. This is not a case of "slow and steady wins the race."

2. "Maybe." The Thais are noncommittal and nonconfrontational about everything. Might, maybe, it's possible, sometimes, likely, not sure, I don't know, a blank face and a smile. Can you possibly understand that it's a little likely, maybe, that a person might get somewhat annoyed... (wait, too strong of a word)... displeased at the lack of a fairly clear answer to a question sometimes? Maybe, I'll see what I think later.

3. Wait for it, wait for it, oh too late. This is really a combo of the first two. Since the Thais are slow to accomplish anything, and they never quite give a clear answer to questions, all endeavors/responses/actions take place in the final minutes before the deadline. For instance, this weekend there is a big conference in Kanchanburi (about 12 hours from here). Only some teachers will be going on this 4 day trip, yet no one knows who yet. We leave on Wednesday (it is Sunday). Here's another: Last week we had shortened classes, but I was unaware of the shortening until the students informed me that class had finished five minutes previous, and I tried to argue with them that it hadn't. As it turned out, I was wrong. I was given the notice when I returned to the office, finished with school for the day.

4. "Oh, you got fat" accompanied by a big round belly hand gesture. Though the Thais cannot confront anyone about fixable problems, they are quite direct about your unchangeable flaws. When a teacher returned to the school, I heard multiple times comments about her larger features--arms, belly, face, etc.--that were directed at her. And this weekend I got my first haircut in Thailand (my left side is twice as long as my right) and a girl from my class told me I look less handsome and she walked away disapprovingly. A teacher grew some nasty acne due to the dirty water, and another teacher pointed at it and made a noise of disgust.

5. Thailand is called "The Land of Smiles."



(A Day After Posting) I was just informed that this post is pungent with frustration, which isn't necessarily false. The frustration is derived from the business dealings I am having with the school, not the people of the school and their treatment of me. And as much as this may sound like a embittered rant, it definitely is a description of SOME of the actual cultural differences--these just happen to be the ones which irk me at times.

Kids in the Hall (part 2)

Before I begin, the answer to the post, "When I was your age, I had a flush toilet."

Answer: Use spicket, toilet paper for verification. Throw away the (clean) toilet paper.

Part 2 of my exposé on the Thai students.

Three factors which seem most influential on classroom/lesson success:
1. Sanook -- Thai word for fun; every activity must be fun
2. Points/Attendance -- the ultimate motivator, students hate zero's
3. Mood -- if they don't feel like doing something, they won't do it

These three factors (particularly 1 and 3) combined do not make it easy to teach vocabulary, and it is nearly impossible to teach grammar. What does this really amount to, you ask? Very seriously, no one pays attention to anything ever. I am very pleased if 5 students in the front of the class notice I am there.

Thai students are the most recalcitrant individuals I have ever encountered. Sometimes it is extremely apparent that they understand the words I speak, like when I simply say, "stop." But they often look at me with blank-slate expressions and proceed "innocently" with their work from another subject. Their greatest weapon is the weapon of silence. Damn you, defiance.

As I have mentioned in previous posts, the students are extremely curious about me and my White European peculiarities. Most commonly I hear "Hello Teacher," "You handsome," and screams and giggles as I walk by the girls and the occasional boy (Thais are very open about sexuality). The most frequent questions I receive are "How are you?" "Where are you going?" "How old are you?" "Do you have a girlfriend?" and "How tall are you?" When I respond to these questions, the conversation typically stops because the students are too nervous or giggly to continue, and I am left grinning. Occasionally the conversation is steered toward the cold and bleak winters of my economically-stricken home state. When I tell them that the temperature reaches -5 degrees Celsius, easily, they are in awe. Very commonly the follow-up question is: "How often do you shower?!" They often suggest answers before I can respond, "Once a week?" or "Once a month?" (Only in my dream world.) Showering , I have learned, is nonsensical to the Thai mind when it is cold.

On Wednesday, I was teaching my M1 class, the equivalent of 7th Graders in the US. One girl said to me, "Teach-ERR, can I go get my bag?"
I asked, "Where is your bag?"
"It is in the music room."
(How in the world do you forget to bring your bag to the one classroom you use during the entire day, especially when it is 6th period?) "Yes, you can. Be quick," I tell her.
She looked up at me with bright eyes. "Ten minutes?"
(No way it takes ten minutes.) "No, five minutes," I said.
"Oh!" she exclaimed disappointedly, "alright, five minutes." She then pointed to her friend and began to leave.
"No, five minutes for ONE person. One bag, one person," I told them.
"No! Uh, there are two bags. Two bags," she quickly exclaimed.
(I do not approve of or condone deceit.) "Well, one person can carry two bags," I said, stifling all of her excitement about leaving the classroom.
The girl left the room, defeated, and her friend remained. She retorted, "Teacher, you dick... you DICK."

I smiled big for her.

Kids in the Hall (part 1)

(For reference, I am Teacher James at the school. There was another Brian already. Weird.)

The Thai children, and really all Thai people, are a bit different than their American counterparts. I present here, in part 1 of my story, a brief profile of the schoolchildren plaguing and enriching my existence in Thailand.


Every individual in Thailand has a nickname, mostly because their real names are filled with extra Thai words meaning beautiful or lovely. An example of a long name: Siriwarangkana Krietcheewaworn. Some nicknames are particularly funny to native English speakers. My Favorites: Big, Man, Name, Ninja, Boing, Pookie, Thong, Yam, Pee, Mint, Now, and Beer. And the children laugh when I pronounce it the English way, as if I am pronouncing their English names wrong.

When I enter the classroom each day, I greet the class with the typical greeting, "Hello! How are you?" They are so trained to respond to this sort of questioning. Often in unison, I hear, "I am fine, thank you, and you?" It is almost creepy. I taught each class to not respond with "fine," which seems to be the only reasonable response to them. I offered them a new response scale: Great - Good - Fine - Okay, So So - Not Good - Bad - Awful. Now when I greet the classes, they respond, "I am fine, thank you, and you?" (Sigh.)

Thai students LOVE to draw, and they are amazing at it. If I ask them to write five sentences about their weekend, they write five sentences accompanied by elaborate pictures of the activities. I said nothing about drawing. Here are three sample responses (all pictures and coloring are done originally on BLANK pieces of paper):


Weekend Writing: Boing wrote, "This weekend I went to a trip with my family. I went to shopping at department store. I went to the zoo. I saw a monkey. A monkey was very lovely. I saw elephant. It was very big. I was very happy."


Work ethic seems to be optional in the school setting. Sometimes homework is completed. Sometimes it is not. Sometimes students are not even aware of the homework, although I write it on the board and remind them about it twenty times. Of fifty-five children, only one turned in an assignment on Tuesday. Sometimes they give me their attention. Most of the time they talk. Sometimes they scream the entire period. Sometimes they throw things at me and other students. Sometimes they sit quietly and do their work perfectly. Frequently students from other classes enter and leave the classroom. Sometimes students in the current period enter and leave the classroom. Never is there less than twenty percent homework from other classes on the students' desk. Never is a student on time. Each day is its own adventure.

A sample response to an assignment (write a 10 line conversation using 5 vocabulary words--emotions):
A: Hello, Dan.
B: Hello, Nick, how are you?
A: I am fine. And you?
B: I am bored.
A: Why are you bored?
B: I think that Teacher James is boring.
A: Why are you think?
B: Because he is sick.
A: All right and goodbye.
B: Good bye.

When I was your age, I had a flush toilet

Have you ever spent five minutes trying to get that log past the porcelain gate? I have. I've spent ten minutes. With a cup. Since the toilet does not flush here in beautiful (and I mean gorgeous) Thailand, the water pressure which is normally provided by the cistern of the toilet is not present. Therefore, to create that pressure, I have to fill a cup... again and again and again. And when I dump a cup of water into the toilet bowl, the contents are pathetically mixed and settle once again, the consistency wholly unchanged. At most there is tincture of color difference.


So here I was, the first time, dumping cup after cup of water, thinking, "What the @#$#%$%^&?" I tried different ways of pouring the water, down the side, from high above the bowl, slowly, quickly, in combination with the shower sprayer, everything. Nothing seemed to substitute for the simple, but unbe-effin'-lievably smart design of the flush lever. I finally decided to leave it, "The smell won't be too intrusive," I thought. Wrong. Awful. Thai food origin. Bad. (Sorry, all, for the grotesque imagery, but seriously, you need to understand.)

The worst--yes, there is worse--part of the toilet trouble is the complete and utter lack of toilet paper. Not that I don't have it, I just cannot use it, unless I throw the used paper into my trash bin. As you can imagine, that would not really eliminate the smell which was the original issue. There are many solutions to this, although none are entirely ideal.


I'll let you ponder this solution. Next post I will tell the most effective (in my opinion) solution. The tools: A toilet bowl, a spray hose, a cup, a spicket, a person--with a hand (as the Thais do it), toilet paper, and a refuse bin.

(P.S. The picture above this paragraph is definitely whole, dried octopi.)

Prison (Wo)man-Handling and My Pimp, Nancy

The Chiang Mai trip was a success, to say the least. Nancy, Pez, Alan, Cindy, Danny, and I had a blast. In Chiang Mai, we hit up the national park, Doi Suthep, and climbed around a waterfall, and we visited the Saturday walking street and I finally got my Northern Style Thai shirt... They will never be able to tell that I am not Thai again.

The funnier events (and the title of the post) are the following two.


First. A visit to the women's correctional institution. Alan, Nancy, and I stumbled upon this gem thanks to our trusty Lonely Planet guide book. Maybe that means we didn't really stumble upon it, but you get the idea. As we walked up to the prison, I noted my possessions and photographed our destination in case we went missing--the camera would provide documentation of our "last seen" locale. As we approached, the facility seemed normal enough. We did not actually enter the prison, just the prison massage shop across the street. We were taken into a windowless back room (not sketch at all), were given clothes, and were asked to change in a secondary massage room. Alan took to the bathroom, first to change, while Nancy and I stood waiting. The inmates are apparently of the impatient variety, and one came in to rush the changing process. She literally made Nancy strip right then and there, in front of me. I barely turned around in time (that's respect). Next, I was up, and I was forced to "dropped trou" in front of the others. Although the changing was odd, the rest of the massage was quite pleasant, to put it softly. And really, the masseuse had very deft hands, very deft indeed. Though it felt entirely safe once the massage had started, I was glad to have in-the-same-room Farang (foreigner) company to figuratively hold my hand throughout the process.


Second. My first night as a (failed) prostitute. Do not go jumping to any crazy conclusions yet (yes you, Grandma). Really, it was a fairly normal visit to a dance club, or discotheque. Nancy, Alan, Pez, Danny (newcomer--teacher at a Chiang Mai school with Pez, and instigator of the club as a destination), and I chose, reluctantly on my part, to go to the club at 2:00 am, about the time it started to get hoppin'. It was an all Thai club, meaning that there were only Thais at the club. Farang had to pay a cover, whereas the Thais did not, a very common occurrence in Thailand and not just for club covers. We bought a bottle of whiskey at the bar and finished it in about a half hour. We then put on our dancin' shoes and took the the floor. After some dancing and some serious surprise groping by some of the other club patrons, we returned to the upstairs bar. Looking back, it was a fairly normal, as normal as a Thai club can get, experience up until about 4:30 am. As we headed to the second floor, Nancy and I were stopped by a group of four Thais males. Being English teachers, we were readily drawn to the conversation. I was the first to realize that the exchange was heading south, however; 200B kept being waved in our faces in what seemed to be an offering gesture. (Mind you, everyone is drunk.) I said to Nancy, "I think that they are trying to buy me." As it was, they were. But instead of using logic and departing the interaction, awe took over my face and Nancy embraced the role of my pimp. She began negotiating. She managed to up the price to 300B (that's only $9, by the way) before common sense finally took over and we left. Just so you are aware, this was a safe encounter, there was nothing threatening about it (that's true, Grandma. But I kind of hope you don't read this particular post). :) The Thais are actually overly nice and respectful, even in this kind of exchange. We took off at this point in the night and stumbled back to the hotel. Next thing I knew, I was waking up at 12:45, in utter disbelief of the time, and I rushed to the bus station to return to Phayao. Schit.

Overall, Chiang Mai is quite pleasant.

Learn Me Good

Just a quick set questions for you all out there in cyberspace. Leave a comment. I would appreciate the help.

What did you like most about learning in middle school?
What lessons or activities engaged you most?
What lessons did you hate the most?
What did your hormone-driven mind want to think about (appropriate for school, please)?

'Twas the 12th Full Mooon the 2nd of November...

...Lanterns ablaze I will always remem... Ugh, awful. That's the cheesiest crap I've ever put out. I hereby promise no more poetry. Before I get too far into the Loi Krathong festival, a few updates:

1. I am having a blast; this place is full of amusement and the students are ridiculous. Mostly giggles and screams when I walk by. And "Hello Teach-ER!"
2. My Motorbike -- I still have not gotten one, but I am closer. I am applying for an international driver's license and I should be able to get a bike when the license arrives. Two weeks. I am hopeful.
3. This weekend is my first 3-day weekend (every three weeks I get one), and my plan is to head to Chiang Mai and live it up in a university town. Should be fun.
4. For my mom, I wear pink on Tuesdays. Today I am wearing red (Wednesdays).
5. Another American showed up; she is my neighbor. I hear her sing Christian music at night. She is very sweet.

So, Loi Krathong. As I mentioned, this festival is held on the 12th full moon of the lunar calender, which meant November 2nd this year. The Thais do not seem to care too much about the exact date, though; here in Phayao the celebration lasted from 30th of October to the 3rd of November. The Krathong, a flower shaped raft about the size of a disc golf disc, is decorated with flowers, incense, and candles and is released into the water to symbolize letting go of problems and grudges. Apparently, you can make wishes on them, too, as I did with a group of giggly female students. I cannot tell you what I wished for... against the rules.

Two parts of Loi Krathong I found most interesting: The beauty contests and the lanterns. The lanterns are pretty. That's about it there. It's a spectacular sight to see 3,000 lanterns fly into nighttime sky. We should definitely bring this to America. On second thought, there are reports of fires--houses, trees, fields. And really, I wonder where they all land, because eventually they come down; they are just far away by then. There are probably 30,000 lanterns in the giant trash heap in the Pacific.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pacific_Garbage_Patch

Check it out. We should go count, but oh well. The beauty contests here are a bit different than ones in America. It feels like you're at a karaoke bar for pretty, sometimes tone deaf girls. And then other people sing as well, because we need to be entertained when the contestants are not singing. The really strange bit was the amount of stuff each contestant received from the crowd, mostly in the form of money and plastic, colored chains. All strange to me.

Pictures of the beauty contest to come next time. Sorry for the long post. Much love.

Living the Good Life

Sometimes new homes take a little getting used to, and this one is no different. Here is a glimpse into a day at the school.

5:30 am -- Wake up to that damn rooster
5:48 am -- Rooster won't shut up
6:30 am -- Wake up to the annoying sound of my travel alarm. Sometimes it's a normal beep; sometimes it's ocean waves; sometimes it's crickets. But it is unpredictable
6:45 am -- In the shower; often confused. The water heater is mounted on the wall and turns on when water flows through (energy efficient!), though the temperature varies. Water gets everywhere in bathroom (no curtain, door, or ledge, just a floor)

7:00 am -- Getting changed, must wear appropriate color (Yellow Mondays for the King)
7:10 am -- Roll into breakfast, late, after dropping laundry off at the laundry building
7:30 am -- Head to the office, receive lots of "Hello, Teacher" on the way, many giggles from girls scampering away, thumb print to sign in, at office, review the lesson made the night before, use internet

8:30 am -- Make a big entrance in class, kids may return to desks, much more Thai than English is spoken, I smile and pretend they aren't making fun of me, kids (sometimes) like my wicked awesome lesson, lots of blank faces
9:20 am -- Return to office, at a loss, use internet and think about lessons, write blog, communicate with friends, look at schedule to see what's next

12:00 pm -- Lunch, almost as disappointing as breakfast, oh school lunches
1:00 pm -- office and class again, internet again, days begin to blend together, lessons for tomorrow, the end of work is coming!
5:00 pm -- heading home, giggles, "Good morning, Teacher," "Good AFTERNOON" I say, make it home, relieved, maybe exercise (run, frisbee with kids, fail at learning the unicycle), much needed shower again, await dinner

6:00 pm -- DINNER! oh... dinner... slight disappointment again, hopefully not eat alone again, wish I had motorbike to get delicious food in town
6:48 pm -- nighttime routine, read, journal, exercise if I did not earlier, wander around school and talk with kids, "What is your name?" "My name is Brian" I say, "Where are you from" "I am from America" I say, I think I have been over this before..., head to room, smell myself, shower again
10:12 pm -- read, talk to orientation friends on phone, sleep, dream of roosters