Bags of Caring Hearts

Fulbright has asked all of the ETAs to participate in a fundraiser to fund a project for the soldiers in Bangkok that have been working so hard during the flood, but don’t get much attention for all the hard work they do. With so many resources and fundraisers going to the victims, the soldiers delivering the goods, and building sandbag walls, and carrying people through the flood waters, they hardly are at the receiving end of the aid. So Fulbright wanted to do something for them. So all of the ETAs are supposed to hold a fundraiser in their schools to help with the project. But I’m pretty sure I am the only ETA that actually went through with the fundraiser and raised any money at all. And I raised a ton of money.

P’Sonya did the whole thing for me. I really wish I could take credit for this brilliant fundraiser, but I just mentioned it to her, and asked if I could do a small project in the school. All I was going to do was make an announcement in school and have a donation box. She asked the director if we could fundraise at school, and he said no, but the school would donate some money to me. That would have been fine with me, and I think that is what the other ETAs did. But P’Sonya wanted a real fundraiser. So she decided we should have a benefit concert, and open it up to the community instead of having it at school. She called the band director, the mayor, the sheriff, and who knows who else. By the following week, I was following P’Sonya around as she met the band director, the mayor and the sheriff, telling them our (her) idea, and only bringing me along so they could see there was an American involved somewhere in the project. Within one week, we had three bands, a banner, donation boxes, and the entire foreign language department set up at the night market in Sawankhalok for two nights of a benefit concert. If I maintain that Loy Krathong last week was the coolest thing I’ve ever done in my life, than this fundraiser was the second coolest thing I’ve ever done in my life.

I arrived at our night market at 5:00, where the band was already set up, the banner that read “Bags of Caring Hearts” was already hung up, and P’Sonya was waiting for me to make the announcement of the fundraiser. She did all the talking, and would just have me say a sentence once in a while, so they could hear an American voice. The band, Magma, played mostly Thai songs, their lead singer being the only member dressed in something other than the school uniform, and wore his sunglasses the entire evening. He was too cool. Since it was Wednesday, the M1-3 students all wear their boy/girl scouts uniforms, and the M4-6 wear their regular school uniforms, unless they have gym that day, and then they wear their P.E. uniforms. So most of the band was outfitted in their respective school uniforms and it was so adorable. With every song, the size of the band increased, and eventually the band had fifteen kids behind the set, waiting for a chance to play. Meanwhile, me and the English department stood in front of the band and collected donations. A ton of donations. I couldn’t believe the amount of people that donated money. Even laborers and store owners dropped in 20 bhat when they passed by. Charities are an amazing thing in Thailand because people are so much more generous, even if they have very little to offer. I think it has a lot to do with karma, and it’s incredibly inspiring. Steven pointed out how when people who had little kids on their motorbikes come by to donate, they’d have the kid drop the money in to build up their kid’s good karma. Everyone got really into it, and it was well accepted by everyone in the community and at school. And out of everyone, I think the band had the most fun, and now they’re trying to get a gig together for the English competition next week in Sukothai.

On Thursday night after the second night of fundraising, we counted how much we had made. In two nights, we raised 24,000 bhat..or $775!! Can you believe that?! And our fundraiser alone will fund 10% of Fulbright’s project. That’s so cool! On Friday morning during the morning announcements at school, I gave a huge huge thanks to the school and P’Sonya for everything, and took my bag of cash to the bank to send to Fulbright.

The rest of my week has been occupied by becoming an old lady. My routine Badminton practice with Arjan Nonkran takes over my afterschool time, which is now followed by dance aerobics in front of the hospital. I meet my new friend Kai-u there after Badminton every day for an hour of jazzercise with a bunch of old women. Kai-u is younger than me, and is another university student whose campus has been flooded. I met her through Mint, and have dinner with her and her friends after dance aerobics every night. By the time I get home at night, I’m so tired from running, Badminton and dance aerobics that I just fall asleep, then wake up early to go to school in the morning! Funny. I was totally under the impression that I’d have all this free time to read, lesson plan, or be lonely in Sawankhalok. Totally not the case! But Kai-u goes back to Bangkok in a month, so we’ll see what happens when all my friends leave.

My students are always the highlight of every day. I’ve gotten close with one of my 9th grade boys, who was always a trouble maker in class, but was a huge helper of the band for the fundraiser. So now we’re buddies, and he just pokes me in the arm and says “bye teacher”. And now I have the liberty of picking on him in class, and making him volunteer when he doesn’t want to. I have fallen in love with my 10th grade girls. They burst into the office when I was late for class, and cried, “where is teacher? We miss teacher!” So I get to class and three quarters of the class haven’t shown up yet cause they’re still in meditation. So I sat with my girls and they taught me Thai as the rest of the class meandered in. They love to teach me Thai, and quiz me every time I see them. And my 11th grade girls are just as lovely. They had to go to meditation during my class, so they asked me to come with them. We walked to the shrine on campus, and prayed to the monk that was the founder of our school. The students loved that I was there with them, and it was really cool to meditate with my students. When we got back to the class, I had them give speeches about themselves. Most of them can speak English well enough to stand in front of the class without notes. But one student, Man, the one lady-boy in the class, is really terrible at English. So he just came to the front of the class, held my hand and said, “My name is Man. Teacher… I can’t speak English. I don’t understand. My teacher, my friend” and sat back down. He gets so nervous when I ask him to do anything. He is too adorable.

I finally hung out my neighbors! I think my obnoxiously enthusiastic “Sawasdee ka” every day worked. They invited me over to have beer one night when I was coming home from the market. So I sat with them on their empty living room floor and had the least successful language exchange I think I have ever been a part of. It was so much fun. I managed to find out that they are from Chiang Rai, and speak mostly Northern Thai…maybe Burmese…so they don’t even understand the Thai I try with them. But they also know Central Thai, and taught me some phrases and asked some questions I eventually could understand. They really are the sweetest people, and now every time I open my gate, one of them will peak outside and ask if I’m leaving, if I’ve eaten, if I want to drink beer with them, or some miscellaneous questions I can’t understand. I’ve only been over there that one time, but I anticipate going over more, because I think they had so much fun with it, and it’s probably as exciting for them as it is for me. It feels really nice to have neighbors that are interested in my life. They even took my mail from my gate and put it in my bike basket, so it wouldn’t blow away. Then when I came home, the one guy came outside to make sure I had gotten my mail. So cute! And since these are really the only people I’ve met that can’t speak any English, I hope this will help me improve my Thai…

Other home news: the collection of little friends in my house has been steadily increasing. Cassandra, my red spotted lizard, is back! And the froggy in my kitchen is still alive, thank goodness! I’ve been at war with a spider in my bathroom. She isn’t very smart. She hangs out by my drain, then gets all pissed off when I turn the shower on and runs up the wall. Our war began when she actually jumped (or crawled??) onto my waist mid shower!! I sprayed her with water to retaliate, and got her off me. But Steven informs me that spraying her with water won’t deter her (which is true…she is still there) and I should just kill her. I don’t want to kill her though, because she will eat cockroaches when she is bigger, and plus that's bad karma. I just back closer and closer to the toilet each shower.

I find it so funny how my Thai ancestry reveals itself in Sukothai. First, anyone here can look at my last name and tell me I’m from a large Chinese family. And I can’t tell you how many people recognize my last name. The best time was when I was with Kai-u and her two friends Don and Tdi. When I told them my last name, they looked at each other, had a quick conversation in Thai about it, and then Don looked at me cautiously and said, “you know you come from a very rich family in Thailand”. It’s funny, even in this small town in central Thailand, people know my last name! I met up with one of my cousins on Saturday, but this cousin isn’t a Tangtrakul. I actually don’t know how he’s my cousin…and neither does he, but it must be something distant. All we know it that we were both supposed to be going to our “cousin’s” wedding in Bangkok this weekend, but it was postponed because of the flood so we remained in Sukothai. So this cousin lives in Sukothai city, and has been obliged to take care of me, should I need help up here. So I met him for the first time on Saturday so he could show me around the city, and take me out to lunch. Well, it was an interesting experience to say the least.

His English is remarkably good, for having never spent time in an English speaking country. He took me to a resort for lunch, which would never have been my first choice, but his friends were having lunch there so we joined. They had already eaten, but we sat with them, and he ordered us soup and fish. He had maybe two bites of the fish, before putting down his fork and saying he couldn’t eat. I thought maybe it was because he was hung-over, but it was still very odd. His friends were..interesting. They were in their late 30’s, and had started drinking beer at 11 AM, and were quite drunk as the lunch hour progressed. After four hours of very awkward/drunk conversation, we finally left the fancy resort to go see Sukothai. So P’Muak drove me around downtown, and we stopped at a shrine and he showed me how to pray to Buddha, which was very exciting. He kept asking what I wanted to do, but not knowing anything about Sukothai besides the ancient city, I really struggled for ideas of what to do. I suggested going to the market, walking around the city, looking at pottery, but my suggestions ended with him showing me his fish tank at his house (which honestly was super cool), and then going to the only bar in Sukothai.

I heard about “Chopper Bar” from my tour book, and from it being the only bar in maybe the entire province. I didn’t realize though that chopper bar actually meant that it was a biker bar, and alas I found out my cousin is in a biker gang, and they all drink at Chopper Bar with the owner every night, who is also part of their biker gang. We got there and I think P’Muak was trying to be discrete, but as soon as we entered his friends beckoned for us to join their table. It started as maybe 5 guys and us, but within half an hour had grown to a table of about 20. The owner had a bunch of food made for everyone, and more and more motorcycles blocked the entrance of the bar as his friends poured in. I started talking to the guy across from me in Thai, and exchanged maybe three sentences with him until I had to ask him in Thai to please speak slowly, to which he switched to perfect English. Turns out he spent a few years in L.A. close to Hollywood, and that actually most of the bikers are rich and/or well educated and can all speak fairly good English. AND THEN I found out as they were leaving that the guy I had been talking to is the King’s cousin! Yep, I was talking to royalty, and could only muster three lousy Thai sentences. But they all stood up at the same time and started heading back to the bikes. P’Muak told me they were all heading to a party on the other side of Sukothai, but he didn’t want to take me because it’s boring and full of a bunch of drunks. So we were left with all the food they ordered and never ate. I started nibbling on some fish while I talked to P’Muak. I was perplexed that he was still not eating, considering I had been with him the entire day, and he had had maybe two bites of food. This is when things got weird(er). We sat for three or fours hours and talked and slowly drank whisky while he told me about his eating disorder and that he needs to see a doctor about it, how he’s been in a three year relationship with an English vegan girl and every sentence about his girlfriend started with, “I love Dee, but…”, and about all the hard drugs he did while he was in University in Chiang Mai. Oh and his girlfriend didn’t trust that I was his cousin, so she called him, and insisted that she talk to me to make sure he wasn’t lying. I thought the night was never going to end. He must be the strangest un-Thai Thai person I’ve ever met. Luckily we’re not blood related. He finally took me home close to midnight, having not seen any of the night market, no pottery, and not trying the famous Sukothai noodles. Oh well, at least I met the King’s cousin.