Wednesday, January 18, 2012

the Fralang in town

I’ve decided (multiple times) that Sawankaholok is the perfect size for me. Since we sit between two large, but less frequented, historical parks, we get a decent share of foreigners- maybe one or two a month. That’s great for me, because I am not the ONLY fralang everyone has ever seen, but I get to play THE fralang in town, when I chose too. When I want a night to myself, I can easily stay home and no one will bother me- except my neighbors. But that is always always welcome. (One night when I went to their house for dinner, their friend called and asked what they were doing. They were so excited to say "speaking English yuu" and put me on the phone to say hello). And when I want to be social, I can just bike to the night market, and it will take me at least 40 minutes to get one thing-because I make multiple stops and talk to all of my “friends”. And I am slowly (or not so slowly really) becoming everyone’s English teacher. Really. Everyone. Even on nights when I have dinner at home or have eaten already, I sometimes go to the night market to visit the woman that makes rice porridge. Her face lights up every time I come by, and she practices over and over again "Hello, how do you do? I'm good, thanksssss. What do you want to eat? Korin very pretty!" (I swear, she asks me how to say these things, I didn't just teach her that last one for fun). And every time I visit and don't get a bowl of soup, she sends me home with a little mini-sized bag of rice soup!

And really, where else but in Sawankhalok can I put together so many pieces of my childhood? I’ve been able to play soccer with my students, while teaching other students how to dance ballet. And then have delicious Thai food three times a day! Am I really being paid to live here?! I just need my family here, and my life would be complete! (and maybe some pets- I really want a Beta fish…)

Last weekend, I took my second trip to Lampang in one week, when the teachers all went for a retirement party. It wasn’t anything special, except for the eight hour bus ride there (Lampang is only two, maybe three hours away), with a stop at the MeMo power plant on the way. This was my favorite part of the trip because it explained how the natural resources in this region (coal) will run out in the next twenty years. They didn’t elaborate on what they plan to do when that happens, but they did elaborate on the multiple districts that rely on MeMo’s coal power plant. Oh, and did you know that this part of Thailand borders a tectonic plate? I certainly did not. And that may or may not be the reason there is an extinct volcano somewhere in Lampang and/or the reason for the hot springs in Jaeson, our next destination.

But by the time we got to the fabulous hot springs park (that I had just explored with Sarah earlier in the week), it was already dark. And since we would be leaving early in the morning, we basically got to Jaeson, hiked up to our cabins with enough snacks and drinks for a party four times our size, hopped in the hot springs for 10 minutes, then headed to our cabins for the night. Worth the eight hour bus trip? Questionable. But we did have a karaoke party (of course) and lots and lots and lots of snacks. Despite the endless stomachs of my co-teachers, we ended up hiking half of the booze and snacks back down to the bus in the morning, as we hopped aboard for the eight hour trip back. We stopped at a temple, and some European style house/museum, and for food several times, before getting back to Sawankhalok. This was the epitome of a Thai trip: lots of getting off and on the bus, and never really feeling like we have reached a real desintation until we get home. But I did have the most delicious duck noodle soup for lunch on the way back. That was probably the second highlight of the trip.

The students started their midterms during the week, which means I had to sign in and be present on campus, but had no classes or official duties other than to entertain myself. Since I had so much free time, P’Sonya assigned me to take some students to an English competition at another school in Pitsanalok. That meant my favorite student that’s not actually my student (Tide!!!) was going to compete, along with some other familiar faces. I coached the spelling bee students all week. We spent almost an hour every day reviewing words before I had my dance rehearsals with Man and Sea (which have been going amazingly, by the way). It was quite a busy week! Even on Thursday morning, as we were on our way to Pitsanalok, I was quizzing them the whole two hour bus ride there. So when we got there, we were surprised (angry) to find out that the competition was for lower lever students, M1-M3 and elementary school students. So the students I had been training (M5 and M6), could not compete. I also had my students from M3 (who I didn’t know were coming until the night before, and I felt bad for never coaching them, as they are actually my students), so they could compete. Oom explained to me that it was our (P’Sonya’s) mistake. No other school made the mistake, P’Sonya just read the sheet wrong. I apologized profusely to the older students that couldn’t compete. I wanted to cry I felt so bad for them. They missed their midterms to be there! One of the girls just whispered, “It’s not your fault. We all know whose fault it is. Ahjan Sonya did this to me last time too”. Apparently this isn’t the first time P’Sonya has sent the wrong students to a competition. She didn’t complain to me, but I could hear in her voice how upset she was about it. But we stayed and let my M3 students compete, while Tide and them went off to study somewhere. Our students did great, considering our buzzer didn’t work for the quiz section, and we were given obnoxiously harder words for the spelling bee than any other school. But we won first place for the spelling bee! (after having to spell cinematic and wholesome…who uses those words?!) and second place for the quiz section. Oom was still appalled at how poorly and unfairly the whole competition was executed, so she announced that we were not staying for the free lunch that the school provided, nor were we going back to Sawananan for the last midterm. We are going shopping at Central. So we got in the van and headed to Central and had McDonalds and Starbucks. Haha.

Following all that drama, we had another three day weekend, because Monday the 16th is Teacher’s Day. I decided to stay in town instead of traveling for the three day weekend, because an English teacher told me the football players wanted me to play with them for a tournament on Teachers Day. Up until then, I thought the men that have been playing with us were just random people from the community. It was somewhat relieving to know that I’ve been playing with teachers this whole time. So they recruited me to the team, thinking if they have a farang on their team, they will win (Seriously, that is what the English teacher told me).

Up until Teachers’ Day, I actually had a surprisingly eventful weekend. Oom’s parents took Steven and I to Sukhothai city to see an orchid festival on Saturday night. There were hundreds of species of orchids on display, including a competition showcasing orchids from around the world. Some were really strange, some miniature, and others taller than me! After browsing for a few hours, we went to their favorite restaurant for a well-deserved feast: laab, tom yum, grilled chicken, this amazing shrimp yam, mixed vegetables, and a very spicy fish. And yes, we ate it allllll.

Then on Sunday, I actually went back to Sukhothai! But this time to the old city. I had run into one of the teachers I play soccer with at the night market, and we started talking about what all people like to talk to me about: how I like Thailand so far. And he told me he wanted to take me and my friends to Sukhothai to see the ancient temples. Well, I don’t have friends, haha, so I made Tara and Be come with me. Be plays soccer too, and knows all the teachers pretty well. So my new teacher friend, Golf, picked the three of us up in the morning and took us to Sukhothai. I realized when I got in his car that this looked oddly like a double date. This is what happens when I pretend I can get by with my Thai and try to arrange things myself with someone who can’t speak English. But I swear, Golf had told me that two other teachers were going to come too, but they didn’t show. (I found out the next day that I was supposed to invite them myself, and they were offended that I didn’t! Woooops) But it turned out to be a really fun day. We rented bikes and wandered around the ancient city. I have been to the ancient city on two occasions, but this was the first time it was at a leisurely pace, and I really got to explore all the temples. I think we all had fun, even Golf who was stuck with three Americans, enjoyed saying things like, “turn left, turn left”, and asked me how to describe everything in English. Once again, always the English teacher.






One funny thing about the park... they were putting up these strange windmill kind of things as we were getting there. We couldn't figure out what the occasion was, but by the time we were leaving the park the central area was covered with these windmill things. And they made the eeriest sound in the wind, it sounded like aliens were coming! It had a really cool effect...but was kind of creepy.



We concluded our adventure, of course, with a trip to Big C, the department store in Sukhothai. Big C is always a big deal, because they have KFC and Swensons (ice cream). One of my students actually wrote in her journal about how for her birthday her dad took her to Big C. She wrote, “but I have bad news. They sold out of mashed potatoes! So pray for me, that next year for my birthday I will eat mashed potatoes!” I didn’t get the mashed potatoes, but I did have long-anticipated mocha almond fudge ice cream!

Teachers’ Day was exactly what a teachers day should be. This is what I was expecting: start playing soccer at 9, like the teachers said, play our three games, if we win, play one more, and be done by noon. This is what happened:

So I went to the school where the tournament was being held at 9:15 to an empty football field, then went back again at 10, then again at 10:30, still waiting for people to show up. Finally around 10:45, I got a call from Tara and Be that they were with the other teachers. I met up with them, and they cracked open the whisky. No joke. Be and I were dressed in our sports clothes, ready to play football, and all the other teachers were dressed casually. Were we really going to play football? We spent an hour or two drinking whisky and eating the free food provided by the school, all the while not really sure if we were actually going to play or not. We were given whisky by the regional superintendent, who makes his own whisky. The teachers had a fun time explaining the “infinity” of whisky that he has. Later, the superintendent came over to drink with us, (keep in mind, this is all before noon), and the Takraw coach introduced us to him, as Kru Tara, Kru Be, and Nangfaa (angel). He has given me that nickname. Then he says to the superintendent (and this is in English), “She nangfaa. For me”. Tara and I burst out laughing, and actually laughed about it all day. (When I first met the Takraw coach, he asked me to teach him English. When I agreed, he kept saying a word in Thai I didn't know. He asked one of the students to translate, and the kid blurted out "angel". I had told Tara this story, and we figured it was just a mistranslation, and joked about it. But apparently that really was what he meant to call me!)

By 1:00, I wandered towards the football field to see if there was actually anything going on. The Sawananan female teachers spotted me, and dragged me over to play chairball. I hope this sport doesn’t exist outside of Teachers Day because it is really stupid and does not deserve to be a real sport. It’s like basketball, except on a field rather than a court, and you shoot into a basket that a person standing on a chair is holding up. They made me practice with them last week. I figured I’d play with them, since I wasn’t doing anything else, and drinking whisky in the middle of a hot, sunny day before playing a sport quickly lost its appeal. The game nonchalantly started while I was still sitting down putting my shoes on, but they threw me in anyway, just shouting “Not rugby! Not same!” I am pretty sure I won the game for them, which was not surprising considered I was playing with a bunch of older women, the youngest maybe 40 years old. I feel like it was kind of cheating having me on their team. But they kept having me play…all four games.

We ended up winning the championship, though the last team we played was pretty good. My team wanted me to cover the other team’s best player, while playing forward center- which meant I had to sprint across the field every time there was a change of possession. But it worked- we won. Meanwhile, the boys finally started to play football. Their game started during a chairball match, so I could only play with them for the last five minutes of a game there was no way they could recover from. And that was it! They lost the one game and couldn’t play again! I would say that they lost because they were taking shots of whisky up until the game, but my chairball team was drinking beer between games too. I wonder what Teacher’s Day in America would be like.

Friday, January 6, 2012

Festivities to Welcome a New Year

So two weeks ago I had Man in my 11th grade class who copied word for word from another students journal. Okay, well in the same class, I have one student who always writes extremely well. I was reading over the journals this week, and I came across hers and I wanted to cry because it was so cute! I started reading it to Steven, and three sentences in he says "its from the internet". I ignored his pessimism, and kept reading, thinking that he didn't know what he was talking about. I got to the second paragraph, and I realized there was no way she really could have written it...so I reluctantly followed Steven's advice and typed it into google. She totally copied it! So I made a big deal about it in the office, saying how disappointed I am in Pair, she always writes so well. And then!! This is the best part. I write a big zero on it, and put her notebook aside, and out falls a piece of folded paper! I open it, and it was the quote she found online, printed out. Can you believe it?! Haha, Steven and I died laughing. And she didn't even copy it down correctly. She wrote "even" instead of "eve". Too funny. So I stapled the print-out in her notebook. Oom says copying is in their genes. I am starting to believe it.

I’ve spent an exceptional amount of time with my neighbors this week, possibly due to so many random cancellations of things around town, like aerobics, any sort of after school sports, and well, school itself. They discovered my newfound love for Takraw, and I was excited to learn that the guys play every day after work. We finally found a day I could join them to play. We got to the court, but unfortunately no other people came because everyone is off doing New Years preparations or traveling. So the four of us played badminton until it was too dark to see. They picked up some fallen coconuts on the way home, and cracked one open for me. After cleaning up a bit, we headed to dinner at the night market. I had had a delicious dinner the night before at their house that the wife, Waen, made. I can’t name anything, but there was a dish with barbeque pork, some raw shrimp to dip in a green chili sauce, and something really really spicy. The food from the night market doesn’t stand a chance to Waen’s cooking, but it's a treat spending time with them anyway. Then they took me to play snooker- a Thai billiard’s game. The rules and the balls are different, though not confusing. I really don’t like this game. My score at the first game was minus 11, and I topped that the next round with a score of minus 17. Too bad it’s not golf. But I was happy to be part of their evening adventures.

Even though I spent the same hours on campus last week as a “normal” school week, I taught 4 ½ of my 12 classes. And oddly, I still felt really busy. There was a lot of running around preparing for New Years. Every class at the school had to prepare a table to sell something for the New Years festival on campus, even the 7th graders! They had to sell something to make back their money and some profit, with pretty much no money from the school to help. A good exercise in entrepreneurship…as well as child labor to make money for the school. Some were really great- my 11th graders grilled their own banana bread snacks, and my 9th graders made coconut ice cream. The best was the lowest section of 12th graders, Mattyom 6/9. These kids stopped caring about school a long time ago. We walked past their empty table, and burst out laughing at their sign: “M6/9??” How perfect. P’Sonya teaches this class, and in the beginning of the semester there were a good 15 students that came to class. I peak in now when I teach after her, and there is an average of 3 students that now show up. I’m sooo glad I don’t have to teach Mattyom 6.

But I do love hanging out with them.


I spent Friday (the day before New Years Eve) bouncing between my 9th and my 11th graders and my neighbors, then New Years Eve I pretended I was in M6/1 all night. And I found out, Tide can dance! And he can dance really well. After his routine in “Sawananan’s Got Talent”, I was having dinner with all the M6/1’s. Tide came over, and asked, “Teacher, awesome mai?” But he said “awesome” in a Thai accent, so I actually had no idea what he was asking me. I had to ask Gafae what he was saying. It took the third time for me to hear “awesome”. Poor kids can’t win with me, I can’t understand when they talk to me in Thai or in English!

I watched the high school bands and talent show performances all night, and stayed at school till midnight. I did countdown with M6 kids (though countdown was at 11:52, instead of midnight. Why of all things in Thailand is this the only thing that has been early?), and we set off sparklers together, released a candle lantern, and took many many (many many many) pictures!


We even had a semi-impressive fireworks display, set off from different parts of campus. I loved watching the bands play- because it made me feel like I was in high school. As I was leaving on Friday night, I ran into one of my troublemakers, who yelled “Hello teacher!!!!” as he ran to join the mosh pit in front of the stage. And I am pretty sure right then I witnessed Thailand’s version of ska, and it was great. Ah, it made me miss Kate Tomaskovic so much!!!

On New Years morning, I joined my new adopted family to “make merit” as they kept calling it. They explained that on New Years morning, you should “make merit” to the monks, and invited for me to join. I anticipated that we were going to a temple, but as with many experiences with Kai-au’s family, it was a day of unexpected events. They picked me up early, and took me to Kaiau’s grandfather’s house where there was enough food out for 100 people. Her mother was already there, putting out dozens of plates of food. I didn’t know who the food was for, but I helped put out six servings of each of the 8 courses onto a mat. By the way, one serving was like 12 satay sticks, or a whole fish with two boiled eggs… basically more food than one person could eat in a week, I think. And there was pleeeeenty left over. Some of the other courses were chicken soup, chicken yam, pickled cabbage, coconut custard, and lots of rice. When I ran out of things to do and questions to ask in Thai, I kept myself amused by making each plate’s fish face the same way, with hard boiled eggs making the same shape around the fin, and the cucumber salad and peanut sauce on the correct sides of the satay. Hehe. It was a very aesthetically pleasing display in the end. And it kept our guests entertained. Sometimes I like to blend in, but sometimes its fun to be “the fralang”, that does fralangy things.

So by 10 AM or so, many members from Kaiau’s family had shown up, maybe about 25 all together. I respectfully said hello to everyone that came in, then continued my business of lining plates with painful precision. When they heard Kaiau and I speaking in English, she told me her family was confused because they thought I was Thai! And they didn’t know what mysterious language we were speaking. Haha. I must be getting some sun here to be mistaken as Thai =) Though I didn’t quite sneak by the monks without being noticed straightaway as a fralang. At around 11, the monks arrived (another surprise!)

There were 11 of them, and they sat down and started to chant. I recognized some of the chants from the morning announcements that the students do every morning, but that didn’t help me gain a clue in what was going on. Regardless it was enchanting listening to their echoing chants. One monk came in with a goofy look on his face, obviously late for the offering, and then took over the chanting once he got settled in. We then interrupted my perfectly lined plates to bring the food over to where the monks were sitting, and watched and waited while they ate, as is the standard procedure when you present an offering. Monks, by the way, cannot eat after noon, so these offerings must happen in the morning. Once they had eaten maybe a quarter or less of the food that we had given them, we gathered their plates. Since women cannot touch monks, I stayed in the background taking the plates back to where the rest of the food was, keeping my distance from the monks. Then the one monk that came in late spotted me! And gasped, “fralang!”, to which all the other monks chorused “pasa angrit, pasa angrit” (English, English). The head monk then asked me where I came from, and if I like basketball. From then on, I was the center of his attention. When he came to splash holy water on us, he giggled before he splashed me, muttering something about fralang. Then as he was finishing up, and the monks were getting ready to leave, he came over to me and said, “I am a monk. Not monkey!” I thought it was the funniest thing I had ever heard, but maybe that’s because I was overcome by his awesomeness, and everything that he said to me I thought was hilarious. Once the monks left, we were able to make a small dent in the food that remained. Kaiau’s family slowly trickled out, and we were left with the piles of dishes. We cleaned and cleaned and cleaned, then napped. =)

Sadly, that was the last time I’ll be able to hang out with Kaiau’s family for a while because she had to go back to Bangkok to start school. I think meeting Kaiau is the coolest thing that has happened since I’ve been in Sawankhalok, and it’s fortunate I think for both of us that the flood closed her school for two months (well not so fortunate now that she is back at school and has to make up all the work!) But I have noticed an amazing improvement in her English from talking to me every night, and she gave me a family =) as well as drilled me with Thai vocabulary. She’s only been gone a few days now, and I already miss her terribly!

With my two extra days off from school this week, I decided to sneak up to Lampang to visit my friend Sarah. I really just wanted to go on an adventure on my own. It sounded really exciting to get on a bus by myself and go somewhere. Well, it stopped being exciting the second I stepped onto the overcrowded bus and had to stand for the first hour of the trip, and share a two-seater with two large people for the remaining three hours. But it was well worth the trip to see Sarah. We didn’t do much. She showed me around her school, and her beautiful house that I am uber jealous of, and we had mango somtam and talked for hoursssss. The next day, her host teacher, or rather her host mother, took us to a hot springs park about two hours away. I will talk more about the park next week, as I will incidentally be visiting the same park with the English department this upcoming weekend, and will hopefully get a better idea of how there could possibly be a geothermal hotspot in the middle of Thailand. After the two hour windy drive there, then back, I was really not looking forward to standing on another 4 hour bus ride back to Sawankhalok. I reluctantly waited at the crowded bus station, and rushed to be the first on my bus when it arrived (and when I say I rushed, I really mean Sarah’s host mom pushed me to the front through the crowd of people glaring at the fralang so that I would get a seat). In the rush of things, I noticed that my bus wasn’t purple like the one I took from Sawankhalok, but did say Sukhothai on it….well no time to worry about it, because the bus was already leaving- and I had a window seat! And no one sat next to me! I was amazed at how uncrowded the bus was, and had an uninterrupted ride home. Some of this uninterrupted time was spent in paranoia, telling myself I had probably gotten on the wrong bus for it to be so empty, and I would have to end up calling my cousin Muak in Sukhothai to crash on his smelly couch for the night. But things were going my way that day, and I made it to Sawankhalok, piece of cake, and caught a motorcycle taxi home. It must have been from all the merit I had made on New Years Day.

Now back to school. My task for the upcoming week: Man, my 11th grader that copies and cannot speak English has volunteered himself and the laziest/smartest girl in the class to be victim of my dance classes that I will be starting next week, that will culminate in a performance in front of the school on Valentine’s Day. You should witness the conversations I am trying to have with Man, discussing the music, the dance, and when we will meet up. These rehearsals are going to be great.