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.
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