Kaffa <3
During the last days of the semester, in between being frustrated with my students that don’t do their work, I have had some genuine moments. Boss, the leader of the whining boys in my Monday class, but also my favorite student in that class by far, didn’t know what to say when he knew it was the last time he was going to see me for the summer. He waved and said, Bye bye techer! I said “bye Boss. Have a good summer.” I could see the panic in his face when he didn’t know what to say back, so he just blurted “I love you”. Oh Boss. I love you too.
This isn't Boss- but this is another one of my favorites. His name is Change, from M3/4- one of my 9th graders. Biggest clown ever.
Man and Sea had a great follow up dance performance at M6’s graduation. Valentine’s Day ended up being anticlimactic, and a bit of a disappointment (after all that work!) so I convinced P’Sonya to let them perform again. Though exhausted with grading, I was so happy to continue to work with them up to the end of the semester, and their second performance was even better than Valentine’s Day. Man and Sea’s class has turned out to be really great and so much fun. Even though I made their final too difficult for them, I spent hours chatting on facebook with them the night before it was due. We joked about the grade I was going to give them if they use google translate on their essay. Sitting at home by myself in front of my computer at 9 at night, I have never laughed so hard. Now the next question: why are these students on facebook for hours when they have finals the next day!?
One of the best things that had happened at the end of this semester has been starting a rugby team. I didn’t think I was going to get around to it because I was already involved in so many sports. Finally one day, I asked P’Sonya to make an announcement that we would play on Thursday’s free period, and 40 students showed up! Thank goodness Steven and Be decided to join too. What was I going to do with 40 students that couldn’t speak English and wanted to tackle each other?? With my best Thai and their best English, there was no way I would be able to teach rugby (though it would have been a fun experiment!) But with Be and Steven’s help, it was the most fun I think I have had at Sawananan. We split into youngsters and oldsters. The younger students (some girls even!) had a blast, but were alllll over the place. The older kids caught on quick (surprising, because most of them were from my Monday class (Boss’s class), and are never quick when it comes to learning English), and were begging me to teach them how to tackle within half an hour. These boys have learned that I don’t put my foot down often, but I told them flat out no. There was no way I was going to teach those troublemakers how to tackle. Unfortunately, every week since then has been occupied by testing, parties or preparations for parties, so we couldn’t have a follow up rugby session. But Steven’s M2 students run to the office every day after school and ask Steven or me to play. So we have a group of 6 to 8 boys practicing almost every afternoon. So exciting!
Other than my new rugby team, I was having some major success with takraw. One day, Kru Pet, the takraw coach told me during the morning announcements that he wanted me and Be to be on his takraw team, and that we were going to play in a tournament. His limited English didn’t tell me where and when the tournament was going to be, so I just agreed and crossed my fingers that he wasn’t expecting us to go to Sukhothai that day for the tournament. It turned out that the tournament was just a school wide competition, and students can create a team, and Kru Pet made one teachers team: KBBY for Korin, Be, Bon and Yodpet. When I asked when the competition would be, Kru Pet’s response was: whenever we felt like playing, because he was making up the schedule as we go. So when we weren’t ready to play on Wednesday because we spent the afternoon playing Petanque instead of practicing takraw, he moved the tournament to Thursday.
And who would have thought that playing in this tournament would have made a huge (positive) impact on my teaching? Well, not necessarily on my teaching, but on my relationship with my students. Even though I had to change into my takraw uniform during lunch, play for two hours, then change back into my skirt for teaching, it was so great to spend those two hours out by the court. It was embarrassing to walk around in shorts on campus during school hours, but in between games, I got to hang out with some of my worst students…the ones that skip (my) class to play takraw. On Thursdays and Fridays I only teach in the morning, so after I spent lunch playing takraw, I hung out at the takraw court and helped Kru Pet teach his classes. I make it sound like it was intentional. But it turns out he was using our tournament as an opportunity to teach his students about takraw. Kru Pet actually teaches the same students I do, so when they all showed up to his class, they thought it was great to have their girl farang teacher as the takraw demonstrator. This is when I fell in love with M3/6, my worst section of 9th graders. I jokingly told Kru Pet to teach his class in English, and was surprised when he went for it and started with “Today….today….today we learn Sepak Takraw”. There was an immediate chorus of “maaiiiiii!!” “pasa thai!!” “mai ao pasa angrit” and told him they weren’t going to take his test if he spoke in English. Hahah they’re so bad.
Weekends had been even less relaxing than my weeks at school. Sarah came down from Lampang one weekend, and I got to show her my amazing town. We spent the day at Sukhothai historical parks, rented bikes, and took our time through the park taking pictures and eating a lot of food…how life should be. I love Sukhothai Historical Park more every time I go there.
The weekend I decided to stay home and “relax” ended up being not so relaxing….Kaffa, an M6 student that has become my best friend, called me on Friday night to ask her to accompany her to Uttaradit, the neighboring province, for an interview. I had no plans for the day, so I said sure. She was so excited, and said Okay! We’ll pick you up at 6! Kaffa doesn’t speak English that well, so I was hoping that she didn’t actually mean 6 in the morning..until I got a call from her at 5:30 in the morning, her sweet energetic voice saying, okay Koriiiiin we are coming to you now!
So I spent the day in Uttaradit with Kaffa and her family. Her parents are really quiet (which is funny, because Kaffa is so talkative!!) and her little sister is a riot. Her name is Fang (we call her nong Fang, nong meaning little sister). She is four years old and is all over me all the time. While Kaffa went in for her interview, I entertained her sister…or actually she entertained me by singing to me “one little, two little, three little monkeys….” and taught her some words in English, while she unknowingly taught me words in Thai. Yessss, I have finally expanded my Thai vocabulary to that of a 4 year old. After Kaffa’s interview, we went to see the Queen Sirikit Dam (which is kind of funny, because when I first started hanging out with Kaffa it was on the M6 field trip to the King Bhumiphol Dam in Tak…why dams?), and we had lunch looking over the dam. It would have been a beautiful view if it wasn’t covered in smoke from burning palm sugar fields. I spent about a quarter of the time sitting down with the family, most of which was spent spoon feeding nong Fang, then the rest of the time chasing nong Fang around. She tries to race me to everything, and one step away from her destination she always trips and falls as she yells out "chanat!" (winner!), then her eyes fill up with tears, but won't admit she hurt herself. She hardly let go of my hand all day, and showed me around a gorgeous temple in Uttaradit. She even showed me how to pray! So cute.
Then the rest of the weekend was a literal disaster. I got back to Sawankhalok that afternoon, and started tackling my monster of papers to grade. I got a call from Steven later, telling me that Be and Tara got in a motorcycle accident…he didn’t know how bad it was, but he and Oom didn’t have time to come pick me up and bring me to the hospital with them. So I called Kru Pet, almost in tears, and spent 15 minutes getting the words: accident, hospital, Sri Samrong (the town they were in, about 20 minutes from ‘khalok) through in a mixture of Thai and English. As soon as he figured it out, he was in his truck ready to take me to see them.
Tara and Be were okay. They hit a truck that went to turn and didn’t see them coming on the motorcycle. The impact wasn’t bad. Their faces got scraped up, and Tara fractured a few fingers. And they were just both in a lot of pain. I felt more bad for them having a mountain of Thai people there, telling them what they should do, when all they wanted was rest. We didn’t stay long. In the morning, I called Steven to see when he was going to the hospital, but he was already there. P’Sonya was already there. And Kru Pet had already left. After several desperate phone calls, there was no one to take me to the hospital which was super frustrating. So I spent the day alone in the office, unhappily going through my mound of grading. I got through half ish, then got impatient and hopped on a bus to the hospital. I immediately was relieved to see Tara and Be, no visitors, and got to really talk to them about how they were doing. I stayed the night with them in the hospital, got some grading done, and slept on an empty patient’s cot. They were in a large room with many patients, no air conditioning, and lots of bugs. So sleep didn’t quite come easily, but luckily Tara and Be got morphine after dinner so were out for the night. I took the bus back to ‘khalok in the morning before school, which was actually really funny. So I am thinking we're catching a local bus that runs within the province. But no. There is ONE BUS that takes all the students from this town to Sawankhalok, and it is a tour bus that runs from Bangkok (7 hours south) to Chiang Rai (6 hours north)!!! And for the twenty minute ride from Sri Samrong to Sawankhalok eery morning, it gets packed to brim, like Tokyo subway style, with students. It's so strange there is no other bus that takes these students to school. And they ride that bus every day.
So Tara and Be’s accident has been the downside of my time here in Thailand. And you know how bad things always happen in threes? Well I think that happened. The following week, Kru Pet was going to visit Tara and Be, and his brakes on his motorcycle froze up and he flipped over his bike. He only scratched up his hands, and ruined his bike, but he was fine. That was strike two. Then the next weekend, I came to Bangkok early in the morning. I was taking a motorcycle taxi from the bus station to the sky train (DON’T tell my uncle I took a motorcycle taxi!!!). As I reluctantly got on the motorcycle, images of Tara and Be kept flashing through my head as my driver weaved in and out of traffic. Across the intersection, I heard brakes screech, then heard and saw the impact, as a taxi collided with a motorcycle. And the motorcyclist went flying. I could hear him screaming. It was terrible. My driver pulled over, and I took out my phone to call the police. He watched for a minute, then said “by tdi – means “go good”, which I guess means it’s okay to just leave. Terrified, I got back on the bike, as the driver tried to convince me he can take me all the way to my end destination rather than just the closest BTS station….really?! after seeing that accident? I should have taken it as a warning to NEVER RIDE A MOTORCYCLE TAXI AGAIN. But I didn’t learn, and took one this morning, after a motor taxi driver insisted that a motorcycle is more “sabai” than a taxi taxi. Bullshit. But it is 200 bhat cheaper than a taxi, which I guess is worth my life at 5 in the morning.
On a more positive note… as the hot Thailand summer is approaching, so is mangoooooo season. Oh my goodness. I have eaten at least one mango everyday for the past month I think. On a daily basis, I actually probably eat about three bananas and two mangos. Is that much fruit unhealthy? It’s so delicious. And with mango season has come maprang season too. They’re a cousin of the mango, but smaller and even more delicious when they’re unripe and sour. Now they’re ripe and sweet, and not as fun as when they were sour, but still amazingly delicious. I also eat multiple maprangs after my two mangos…every day. And now the durian is starting to come out. Hahah still haven’t tried that one…but everyone is talking about it.
maprang
And as my first semester of teaching English comes to a close, of course it’s no surprise that my circle of English students is consistently expanding. By the end of the semester, I was spending at least two nights a week at a new person’s house to practice “English”. This includes: an architect in Sawankhalok, who lives between me and the night market so if I am not having dinner with him, I pass by and say hello every night; the superintendent of the region who serves dinner with a bottomless plate of vegetables he picks from his garden just outside the dining area; all of the PE teachers; and of course the woman that sells jok, my personal favorite student.
Then one night, as I was doing an English lesson with the woman that sells jok, a Thai couple that was eating jok wanted to talk to me. The guy got my attention by yelling “hey! You speak English. I’m farang. Can you teach me Thai?” He said this in English, and I loved him already. Tdi and Chompu were surprised to learn I lived alone in Sawankhalok, and wanted to take care of me so invited me to dinner at their house the following week. They picked me up at 6 with their friend Toey, and we went off gathering food and sauces from different restaurants literally from every corner of Sawankhalok, our last stop at a small shop in the middle of town for a bottle of whiskey. Between Tdi, Toey and I, we drank the whole bottle of whiskey over our five hour dinner. It was great. Toey speaks English fairly well because he studied in New Zealand, though Toey prefers to speak to me in Thai unless I really don’t understand. Then he’ll tell me it in English and he is a total riot. Tdi and Chompu are the sweetest couple ever (except that the three of them keep insisting I come play golf with them…I really don’t want to play golf), and by the end of the night, Tdi told me several times that he thinks of me as a daughter. Wow, didn’t take long at all! And Toey has quickly taken on the position of my protective older brother. We had dinner again later that week with Tara and Be too, and the normal hilarity ensued. Toey and Tdi are an unstoppable comedic act, even though they differ in age by about 20 years. Sawankhalok is really filled with the most amazing people <3
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