And the craziness ensues

(June 2012)

It’s amazing the difference having one semester under your belt makes. I almost feel like a legitimate teacher! I felt it as soon as I walked into these classes this semester. Even though I am teaching my M3 goofballs that couldn’t sit still in my one hour a week class, for some reason the transition into M4 turned them into adults (how, I have no idea) and my two classes with them a week is a dream. An absolute dream. They do EVERYTHING I ask them to, and do it beautifully. Who knew Thai kids knew how to follow my instructions? This was news to me. And it is so awesome to walk into a class and know all their faces. I love love love M4.

Made by Bent, an M4 student. Kru Korin= teacher Korin
 and "mali" is my nickname, means jasmine

Now I’m also teaching the new batch of M3’s, Steven’s old M2 students. A lot of them failed his class, so I have painstakingly been retesting them for the past month so they can study in M3 (Thailand’s stupid rule that if you get a zero, you can retest and retest and retest until you pass, even if you don’t deserve to. Even if the teacher says you can’t pass, they can go to the office and they’ll pass you just for showing up for the retest). Though this terrible process of retesting 72 of Steven’s failed students made the first few weeks of the semester hell and I made two students cry, it has had its perks. First, I have a heads up for the students that can’t speak English. But also, they were terrified of Steven, and not scared of me, so they automatically love me. BAM! All the bad kids are on my side already. Thank you Steven! Som and Too, two of Steven’s worst kids, are my best friends now. And the ones that I made cry, are now taking special classes with me on the weekends.

TOO <3

SOM <3

This semester is incredibly different from the rest. The students are serious this semester (so far…) because it is the start of the new year. There are also way less holidays now. Only two so far. The first holiday was a Buddhist holiday to celebrate the birth, enlightenment and death of the Buddha 2500 years ago. The Friday before the holiday, the monks from my favorite temple came and we spent the morning giving them non-perishable food (rice, milk that magically doesn't go bad because its in a juice box, and ramen noodles)

and meditating. This was only supposed to take up the first period, but of course Sawananan has so many freakin students that this took ALL morning.

Just giving them food took two hours, then meditation for a half hour or so, then walking around the Buddha statue three times. By then, I only had one class left to teach that day, but they didn’t come because they were planting trees in front of school. I don’t know if that was legitimate or not. Knowing these students (my only M5 class, and the most difficult class to teach- these kids stopped caring about English a long time ago), they were watching their friends plant trees so they wouldn’t have to learn English =P

The actual holiday, Visaka Bucha Day, was on a Monday. On Sunday, I went with BaNee (the woman who sells rice porridge) and her friends to a temple in Thung Salium, the neighboring district, to pray and do Buddhist things. This was actually the strangest non-Thai gathering I’ve ever seen. First, everyone was dressed in white. That never happens! Thai’s love their colors. And it was also very organized. Also not Thai. Everyone seemed to know what to do…I suppose if I understood Thai, the unanimous actions would make more sense. Instead I just followed BaNee around to receive holy water from the monks, follow the crowd to the table of holy food that had been given as an offering to Buddha, and picked up the hot silver and gold that hardened into cool droopy shapes in the grass.

Very very strange succession of events. But it was followed by a delicious feast of kanom jin, masaman curry, pad Thai and coconut ice cream. Sooo much food. After the feast, we paid a visit to Ahjan Lampun, a very famous monk in the region. He was so adorable and so old. He wanted me to sit close to him so I could tell him where I was from, which made me so nervous because women can’t touch monks ever and it gives me constant anxiety whenever I’m near a monk that he might accidentally bump into me or something.
Don’t worry- no accidents yet, and I successfully told Ahjan Lampun what he wanted to know. After our fortunate visit with Ahjan Lampun, we were minding our own business, collecting little rocks that are unique to the region that make beautiful jewelry and are, I’m sure, holy, when Ahjan Lampun came outside to have the monks cut his hair. This apparently was very exciting, so we stopped collecting little stones to ask to receive some of his hair. We sat cross legged in a wai for a half hour while they cut his hair, so we could receive his cut hair. I don’t know what will happen with that hair, but BaNee said she is making something for me with it. Very exciting. Haha

My favorite monk from Wat Sawankaram
came to bless the students on Wai Kru

So that was Visaka Bucha day…like many Thai holidays, a blur of confusion and excitement with very little certainty about the meaning. The other holiday this month has been a lot more clear- “Wai Kru” day- is another teacher holiday. I got the meaning of this holiday- respect your teachers, darn it! America- and maybe every country in the world, you guys should probably get in on this. Wai Kru is the coolest, most joyous holiday I’ve ever heard of. On Wai Kru, every student brings a bouquet of flowers to give to the teachers. They hold an assembly in the morning, with prolonged prayers, a visit from the monks, and some words of thanks from the students to the teachers. Then, awesomeness ensues. All of the students are in rows in the entire gymnasium, separated with the boys on the left and girls on the right. Line by line, they scooch forward to sit in front of the line of teachers that are sitting in chairs, they bow their heads to the floor while the teachers pat their backs or heads and give them blessings, then they hand the teacher their bouquet of flowers, bow down again, and exit, allowing the next line of students forward. And again, since Sawananan has so many freaking students, this took hooourrssss. For the girls I knew (I was sitting on the girls' side), I smiled wide and told them I love them, or work hard, or good luck in English. For the ones I didn’t know, I didn’t really know what I was supposed to say, so I took pictures of them bowing down instead, haha.


And like any good holiday, no class for the rest of the day, as well as the day before: The day before because they had to prepare for Wai Kru day, and the rest of Wai Kru day because the students had meetings to prepare for the next holiday…sports week. That will be next blog post ;)

In between the holidays, I have been doing a lot of exploring of Sukhothai with the newly formed “F Team”. F Team totally rocks. The first weekend of school, we headed to Sri Satchanalai National Park. Kirk bought a motorbike, so now I can be accommodated on all the adventures since I can ride on the back of his motorbike. Tara also came back to visit cause she missed Thailand so much, so the four of us: Tara, Be, Kirk and I, went to the nearby rainforest. Yep. I live 30 km away from a rainforest. Did you know that? I didn’t until we went to the National Park. We rented a cute little cabin for two nights and had a hell of an adventure. The park isn’t very big, but has several trails to different waterfalls. We got there on Friday night and rented an adorable little cabin, which only had two twin beds, but has enough floor space for a full party. We had packed our dinner for the night: pork and sticky rice, dried fruit, and peanuts. On Saturday morning we woke up early, had a feast of a breakfast at the only restaurant for miles, and went on our day long adventure. The area around the cabin is very sculpted, with cut grass and a babbling brook. As soon as you cross the bridge, you enter the rainforest. The trail to the best waterfall was only 6 kilometers, but mostly uphill. And we hiked it in flip flops! Kirk loves insects and animals more than I do, which made the hike a lot longer because he kept stopping, but was awesome because he knows a lot about them (he used to work in a pet shop). So when he pointed out this really cool worm, I of course got really excited. It moved like an incredibly fast and efficient inch worm. It inched so fast! I was totally impressed. Well, only a few minutes later we realized why it was so fast and efficient. It wasn’t a worm…it was a leech. And they were all over the place!!! Those little suckers were really good at being leeches too, there were leeches on our feet for the rest of the hike.

But it was totally worth it!!! Killer centipede, river wading, constant leech attacks and three hours later, we FINALLY reached the top of the trail!!

The trail led us to a beautiful view of the cascading waterfall, but we didn’t want the view. We wanted to SWIM! So we climbed down to the bottom of the waterfall and tiptoed into the freezing water. We had to move through the water at a snail’s pace because the bottom of the pool was rocky and hazardous, but wonderfully refreshing.

After our swim, we laid out a mat and ate our lunch: fried rice and rambutan. As we were sunbathing before our hike back, we saw a huge family, 10-15 people, come running down the path to the pool. They flooded the waterfall, jumping all over the rocks, climbing to stand underneath the waterfall, then climbing higher to jump into the shallow water. I held my breath the whole time, expecting one of them to get seriously hurt. Here we were in our bathing suits, walking cautiously into the water, then this Thai family comes in their jeans and t-shirts, and dive right in, completely unphased by the sharp rocks. Silly farang. At least we hiked in flip flops.

Rain drops started to fall, so we quickly packed up and started to head back. And I’ll tell you, there is absolutely nothing cooler than hiking through a rainforest in the rain. It started to pour at one point, as we were wading through a river underneath the tree canopies. It made our trek back very quick! Though the Thai family quickly outpaced us, running past us, some ditching the hassle of wearing shoes, and leaving their flip flops behind. As we were reaching the end of the trail, the rain started to let up…and then I saw a sign for a cave!! Since we made it back in record timing, I begged to hike to the cave. The sign said only 2km, and we had enough time before it would get to dark. The hike was a lot easier that the hike up the mountain..because it was totally flat. Which was weird- we were walking through completely flat land- how was there going to be a cave if there were no mountains? We reached a sign that said 500 m to the cave, and then the path went straight up. Out of nowhere, there was a mountain to climb (I had to give up on the flip flops and change to sneakers because it was so muddy that my flip flops were just sliding right off). We climbed that thing for a long time. There was no way it was 500 m, and I thought we must have passed it except for the signs pointing to go straight for the cave.  After mud climbing at an almost vertical angle, we could finally see the cave. Ive been to a bunch of caves in Thailand, and the one in Malaysia before, so I was expecting a cave you could walk into. This cave was nothing like that. When you get up to the entrance of the cave, it is a sheer drop down into a cavern. It was HUGE! I think you potentially could climb down into the cave, but I was way too scared to. Who knows what lives in there?! Not to say that the past caves I’ve been to have not been real, but that was the realist cave I’ve ever seen.

We climbed back down the mud mountain and headed back to our cute little cabin as it was getting dark, taking a pit stop in the river to get just clean enough to get dinner. We headed to the only restaurant... our only hope for dinner that night. She had already closed her noodle stand, and hated us for inquiring, but eventually hooked us up with the most delicious bowl of pork noodle soup. Though she pretended to hate us, I think she secretly must have loved us because we gave her so much business. You would think being the only shop in town, she would have good business- but everything on her shelf was dusty. Even the whisky! That doesn’t happen in Thailand- everyone drinks whisky. Every night.

I can’t believe that it had taken me this long to get to the Sri Satchanalai National Park, but even more crazy that I hadn’t been to the Sri Satchanalai Historial Park, Sukthothia National Park’s little sister. So the next weekend, I was glad to make Kirk go on an advenyrue to the Historical Park, so I could accompany him there. I had been there once with Kaiau and her mother, but I hardly count that as a trip to the historical park, because it was “too hot” that day to go out and explore the park, so we did sightseeing from the car. Love Kaiau, and miss her terribly. But it was nice to go to the park with a farang. So the two of us packed a picnic, and headed to the park, a mere 13 km away from our home in Sawnakhalok. Totally pathetic that I hadn't been there on my own before. We rode around the outskirts of the park, in pure disbelief that this magical park was so close to our home. We went to the entrance of the park, ready to pay the 100 bhat entrance fee. The thing about tourist atttactions in Thailand is that farang always have to pay more than Thai people. It has never bothered me- I think farang should have to pay more. Thai people should totally get a discount for seeing things in their own country, but a lot of farang complain about this. Sometimes I try to tell the security guards that I’m half Thai, so I should only pay half price, but it never works, and in the end I will never really notice when I’ve paid 20 bhat or 100 bhat to see something so much more amazing than what 100 bhat it worth. So I’ve given up on the argument. So I hopped off Kirk’s mororbike to pay the entrance fee for us, and literally said nothing to the woman expect for “khop kun ka” (thank you) when she exaclaimed, oh your Thai is so good! Why can you speak Thai?!” So I told her I'm an English teacher at Sawananan, yada yada yada and as she is telling me her niece is a student in M3 (meaning that she is actually one of my students because I teach all of M3) she opens her drawer and starts handing me 80 bhat for me and 80 bhat for Kirk, saying that we are teachers and live in Thailand, so we pay Thai price. Wow! Being half Thai doesn't ever get me a discount, but being a teacher at Sawananan, sure does do the trick! Just call me P’Sonya. So we got in for the Thai price- 20 bhat, less than a dollar, to see the coolest park in all of Thailand.

The park is smaller than Sukhothai’s historical park, which makes it even more chill. With hardly another person in sight all day, it felt like we virtually had the park all to ourselves…well we had to share it with the millions of birds that have made the ruins their home. We started with the tallest hill to play on the tallest chedi that used to over look the old city of Sri Satchanalai. As we were climbing up the hill, it sounded like we had entered an aviary. We could barely hear each other because all we could hear were birds. I guess we entered their nesting grounds because there was nests in every tree we could hear, and bird poop galore! As we entered the clearing where the ruins of the chedi is, the sounds from the birds fell into the background. Except for one little bird. This little guy must have lost his mother- he was the most awkward looking bird- standing straight up like a penguin but had a bit of an ostrich roundish shape, and sounded like a duck gurgling water. He was so freakin cute. I named him Edmund. He wasn’t scared of us, or scared of being on his own, so he kind of just hung out by the chedi on his own, making awkward squawking noises, and keeping us company while we explored the temple.

EDMUND! 

After climbing halfway up the chedi, and seeing the park from the birds-eye-view, we searched for a place to eat lunch. We had packed some sticky rice for an easy meal, and scoped out a good picnic spot. We wandered through the park until we found a chedi hidden behind some trees in a hill. We plopped down in the knee-high grass and enjoyed our pork and sticky rice, while listening to the most awkward Donald Duck sounding birds. So pleasant. I think I want to rename this park- it’s not Sri Satchanalai Historical Park, it’s Sri Satchanalai Bird Zoo. As we were heading back to the other side of the park, we had to come to a hault at the top of the hill, because Edmund was hanging out in the middle of the road. There was a van coming from the other direction that had stopped, waiting for Edmund to get out of the way. Kirk and I screamed “Edmund” and burst out laughing when his goofy little headed popped up in our direction. I got off Kirk’s bike and moved him out of the way so the van could pass. It took all of my self control not to take Edmund back to Sawankhalok with us. He would have been the coolest pet!

We didn't explore the rest of the temples, telling ourselves that we will just have to come back to the park multiple times throughout the rest of the semester. So we spent the rest of the afternoon in Sri Satchanalai, checking out the coffee shops and markets in our neighboring town, and purchased the most stand-out farang hats that I love but will probably never wear. 

I like Sri Satchanali. It's a cute little town, but there are no restaurants! We biked around for I think an hour, looking for somewhere to eat dinner. There were some really scary looking clouds moving quickly in our direction, so we quickened our pace of finding a spot for dinner so we could find some cover from the rain. In our third loop around the town, we finally stopped at a noodle stand on the sidewalk as the rain started to fall. We took cover as we watched the massive storm roll through, and slurped our pork noodle soup. It was a very delicious bowl of soup, but I like the food scene in Sawankhalok better. As cool as Sri Satch is, I am definitely happy that I live in Sawankhalok and not Sri Satchanalai.