I was super bummed to be leaving Sawankhalok for Bangkok, because apparently I get really attached to places and hate the idea of leaving. I was devastated that I would have to leave my students for a few days, as well as my Badminton buddy, Mint, Steven, Kaiu, and my favorite family at the Kao Soi stand (I even got a text message from Mint on Friday when I hadn’t talked to her in a couple days, saying “EARTH TO KORIN! ARE YOU STILL ALIVE MISSY?!” Yup, all in caps, just like that).
To make me even more devastated, I had to miss all my classes on Tuesday because there was an English competition in Sukothai. My day started with P’Sonya calling me as I was eating breakfast saying the kids wanted to have another fundraiser and play at the competition. This was 30 minutes before we were supposed to be leaving for Sukothai, But they made it happen and we held a last minute fundraiser. We didn’t make more money than the cost to bring the three bands to Sukothai (all dressed in their uniforms even though they didn’t set foot in a classroom all day), but the kids were just so happy to play, and continued to play hours beyond what they anticipated. I was not much of a help, because I was busy helping Tide win his spelling bee. Well, he got second place, but he did so well! After two weeks of blowing me off for his spelling bee coaching sessions, he nonchalantly walked in and out of the test room round after round, giving me a thumbs up every time. I felt super cool as all the old Thai teachers watched this kid with a goofy smile keep winning, and giving a high-five to his American coach. What can I say, I was coaching a genius that can spell better than I can. I don’t know if Tide enjoys my company, or if he felt like he owed me, because he would not leave my side during the rest of the day. I told him he could go find his friends, but he just stayed with me, silent, with an occasional goofy smile. For someone that can spell imminent, interference, and assassin without blinking an eye, he really doesn't speak much English.
When I got back from the competition, I wanted to stop in and play some games with my 3/6 class, but they didn’t show up. None of them. Haha. Apparently everyone was skipping class that day. I walked up the empty staircase, and looked down the hall for signs of life. The only ones around were Be’s 3/8 students I had played games with one day. They screamed, “hello teacher! No class teacher! Teacher beautiful!” Typical. I asked them if I could play games with them, but they just looked at me confused, and yelled “no class teacher”, so I went home.
In the morning, I was off to Bangkok. P’Sonya took me to the airport three hours early, so I could sit and wait for the only flight that comes through the airport each day. Being back in Bangkok with the whole Fulbright crew was weird. It was nice to see how everyone managed their first few weeks, but I think we were all still just settling in, and three weeks wasn’t long enough for me to miss anyone. Well, except Sarah.
Since our entire program was canceled, Fulbright set up volunteer days for us, which I thought was the coolest thing we could ever do, and made missing my classes in Sawankhalok okay. We got up at 5:00 on Thanksgiving morning to head to Chula to package 40,000 bags of lunch. Forty thousand. Can you believe it?! There are over 40,000 people that don’t have lunch! And that’s just from one relief center. And it’s not like we were taking them ramen noodles and canned corn to eat. We were cooking rice, pork basil, pork and vegetables, and chicken curry. We made the food on site, and individually wrapped the rice, with a little plastic spoon, with a meat dish. When we got there at 6:00 AM, they had already been working for hours, preparing lunch. The first station I was stuck at was the rubber banding station, where I rubber banded the individual rice with the individual meat bag, and uncovered one of the great mysteries of Thailand: how they wrap rubber bands around food bags! It takes me so long to unwrap food from the market because of how cleverly the rubber band is wrapped, and now I know how it’s done! I still don’t know how to unwrap though.
I hopped around different stations the entire morning, moving rice from one container to another, putting spoons in rice, etc., and cheered with the hundred plus volunteers when we filled a truck with thousands of lunches. Then, the chicken delivery came in! 40 or so of the volunteers formed a line where we passed bags of raw, diced chicken down a line to the chefs.
After the truck of chicken, in came the truck of vegetables, followed by another truck of more vegetables. Then they scooted us inside to move the thousands of care packages they had already put together into the army trucks to be delivered. We formed another assembly line, and hardly put a dent in their stock of care packages as we moved 5,000 bags into the trucks, each weighing at least 15 pounds. And no, that wasn’t it. Some of the Fulbrighters joined some friends that we made to move another 1,000 packages that were in another building across the street into army vehicles. This time, Rachel and I sat inside the truck and received the bags, counting as we went. I was counting out loud in Thai, but I got demoted from my position when I couldn’t count quickly enough after forty, so I had to jump down and help the marines lift bags to the truck. When I told one of the marines I was from America, he said “Oh, America! Lady Gaga!” And I said, “yes, yes I am Lady Gaga! Nice to meet you”, and he replied, “Oh! Lady Gaga, I am Justin Beiber!” And this became the ongoing joke of the afternoon. When I introduced myself to other marines, he would stop me, and say “This is Lady Gaga!” and refused to tell anyone his name other than Justin Beiber. Even as I was leaving, he said, “Lady Gaga, so nice to meet you. See you on stage”
As promised, for dinner that night we had turkey. But we didn’t just have turkey. That would be so boring. We had turkey on the 8th floor of a mansion in Bangkok, with a balcony overlooking a portion of the skyline. Only a portion, because Bangkok is ridiculous. Thanksgiving dinner was held at one of the Fulbright board’s house, and was complete with turkey, mashed potatoes, quiche, pizza (?), and wine, with pumpkin pie and apple pie for dessert. Sarah and I snatched one of the tables out on the balcony, and enjoyed our Thanksgiving dinner in style.
P’tip came over at one point and said, “I hope you are all enjoying your Thanksgiving dinner, and it makes you feel at home”, then looked directly at me and said, “I’m sorry it’s not Thai”. I thought that was so funny because I had sent mommy a letter that very morning saying I love that Fulbright is giving us turkey, but all I want is Pad Ka Prow…and then I checked my email to see that my mom had written to me asking if I was having pork basil instead of turkey. How funny! (I was so happy to get back to Sawankhalok on Sunday night and have Thai food again- I think all the Western food made me sick!)The next morning we were volunteering again, but at a much smaller center. This time we went to a temple that was only packaging 14,000 lunches. This place was a lot less intense than Chula, with maybe only a few dozen volunteers, many sitting down taking their time wrapping sticky rice in paper with a bag of soy egg or pork and vegetables. Again, everything was cooked on site, with fresh ingredients and plenty of love. My favorite part was lunch! They fed us congee with fresh ginger, cilantro, soft boiled egg, and fish. Oh my goodness, so yummy. Apparently that is Thai style congee, and so delicious. My least favorite part was the overly friendly monk. He strolled in and out of the volunteers so nonchalantly, it made me so nervous, because women in Thailand can’t touch monks, and I was so scared of accidentally bumping into him while moving a package of lunches to the other side of the temple or something. Ever since I heard repeatedly how terrible it is for a woman to touch a monk, I just get nervous now when I see a monk and don’t know what to do.
After all that hard labor for two days, I decided it was time to indulge and get a massage. I went with the ETAs from Laos (there are only four of them and this is the first year the program exists in Laos, so we invited them to Thanksgiving with us, and I love them!), and we all got 2 hour heavenly massages. We had a private room, the four of us, and the masseuses were all from Issan, and spoke Lao! So they all spoke to each other while I had no idea what was going on, per usual, and just endured the most delightful massage. Afterwards I ran to meet Uncle Fung for dinner at the crab curry restaurant, accompanied by Uncle Jeet, Uncle Dtaw, and…drumroll please….Uncle Fung’s wife! I was so excited to meet her because Uncle Fung doesn’t talk about her much, but I was pretty sure she existed even though he has no pictures of her on his fancy I-phone (though I’ve seen plenty of his dog). She is so adorable, and speaks English so clearly, and just seems like such a perfect person, I adore her! Throughout dinner, they all spoke Thai to each other, which was really cool because they all speak fairly slowly and clearly (well, minus Uncle Dtaw. He talks too fast), and I could follow their conversation for the most part. I knew when they were talking about the flood, when they were talking about politics, and about languages. I just couldn’t ever contribute to the conversation, which is frustrating. But it’s nice to be able to follow along. We of course ate way too much food, but I was super happy to be with my closest family in Thailand, and eat too much amazing food. Now that is Thanksgiving, Bangkok style.
The rest of my weekend in Bangkok was a whirl (when is Bangkok ever not a whirl?). With sore calves from the heaven massage, I went to play rugby with my touch team on Saturday morning. There were so many people there that day, which was fantastic for me because that meant less play time and more rest from that crazy Thailand sun! I was secretly ecstatic when I said hi to the Frenchman that never passes to me, and he asked me how Sukothai was. I didn’t expect him to notice I was gone, much less know where I went! The players I recognized greeted me warmly, especially Patricio! My favorite! And there were a lot of new girls. Which made me happy, and put less pressure on me, being the new-ish girl.
That evening, my last evening in Bangkok, was a great one. Uncle Dtaw took me to a cousin’s house way down Sukhumvit, to greet a cousin visiting from England. I don’t know anyone’s name, whose house it is, and how many were actually my relatives, but I can tell you how I am related to someone in this house. My father’s mother was one of 12 (just learned that), and this was her brother’s wife’s house. The wife is still alive, but my dad’s uncle has passed away, and I think they are all close to my dad’s family because his grandma and their uncle are close in age. I think. Anyway, I met lots of people, and in contrast to the very easy-going dinner the night before, this house was mayhem of like 25 people all speaking/yelling Thai loudly, and I have no idea what they were saying all night long. I didn’t even try. I did get that more than one relative would look at me, and tell me I have my fathers face, sometimes in Thai, sometimes in English. Then I swear, these same relatives told Uncle Dtaw in Thai that they don’t remember what my father looks like. Funny.
After a yummy Vietnamese-style dinner, the card games commenced. They were playing a Thai game that has poker-like aspects, and a lot of Thai randomness. I watched the first several rounds, trying to figure it out, having 5 people trying to explain it to me in Thai and English, but I really wasn’t picking it up. They told me the only way I would learn is to play, but I didn’t have any baht on me to play. I didn’t want to admit that I had no cash, so I just kept saying I’d rather watch. My aunt visiting from England persisted that I should play, and when I told her I can’t because I have no baht to gamble, she handed me a 1,000 baht! So I guess I had to play. And I lost, round after round after round. My cousins thought I was playing with my own money, and they told me I should probably stop playing because I’m losing so much money, but I figured this money is going back into the family anyway, so I might as well play until I won. I was convinced that it was my chair, and frequently moved seats, but that didn’t seem to help either. I was finally dealt three of the same suit, which is not the best but better than anything I had gotten. I showed my helper at the time, and she got all excited, and asked one of my cousins on the couch if it was good enough to stay in. They discussed it for some time, and I was trying my hardest to figure out what they were saying. Finally, they decided I should bet 20 baht. I looked down at the table, and everyone had forfeit! They heard what my cousins were talking about, and all forfeit because they knew they couldn’t beat my hand! So I won…a mere 100 baht! Haha, but it was exciting anyway. From there on, I won a hand every now and then, but that was mostly because my cousin told me to bluff, not because I had a good hand. I can’t bluff, but I also can’t speak Thai, so he bluffed for me and it worked out well. I didn’t lose ALL my aunt’s money, only about half, so I handed her the remaining baht and thanked her for letting me recklessly gamble her money away!
As if that wasn’t an exciting enough night, I then hopped over to Karaoke with the other Fulbrighters (after buying a blouse at the night market, not because it was that cute, but because the vendor did not speak a word of English to me and told me that I speak Thai very well. That in itself was reason enough to buy the blouse), and then we went dancing! And not touristy club dancing, even worse, but cooler. We went to a super rich fancy hotel, overflowing with white people and a 400 baht cover. We took the elevator to the 39th floor, and stepped into a party scene so un-Thai, un-Bangkok even! I have never been to the Full Moon party on Ko Pha Ngan in the south, but I think this is what it would look like. Strobe and laser lights, bad dance music, and a lot of white people. Still, it was cool to dance of the roof of a hotel in Bangkok, I was with my favorite Fulbrighters, and surrounded by many young, made up, semi-attractive women, so was not approached once by any skuzzy foreigners. I call that a success.
Whew. After sprinting through that weekend, I came back to school on Monday totally drained, and my tummy hurting from too much cheese and bread. It is way harder than I thought taking a week off of teaching and trying to swing back into it, with every muscle in my body sore from volunteering, rugby and dancing. Catching up is hard to do, especially when I have badminton and jazz aerobics partners to meet. And I’ve found a new sport: takraw. It’s that sport that is like volleyball, but hackey sack style, with a ball woven out of bamboo. One of my students plays, and has gotten me to play with them after school. I love it. It’s so much more fun that badminton. And as soon as I catch up on things at school, you can say hello to the Sawananan Wittaya school touch rugby club!
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