Monday, December 26, 2011

A Merry Christmas in Thailand!

Though most days I am very happy with the English level of my students, there are some days I walk out of the classroom (or away from Takraw practice) and wonder what in the world they have been learning all these years. Most of the boys I play Takraw with don’t say anything in English, except “good!!” every time I return the ball, and “bad!!!” every time someone else touches the ball. Except for one day, where the potentially creepy coach told me he is also a swimmer, in addition to being the Takraw coach and Thai kickboxing coach. He asked if I wanted to go swimming, and was trying to ask me what the word for “swimsuit” was in English. I think this is what was happening- it was all in Thai so I am never really sure. Then one of the students yelled from across the court, “do you have a one piece or two piece?” How can they not respond to me when I ask how many years they have been playing Takraw, but they know one piece or two piece swimsuits? Silly boys.

Even my 11th graders are sometimes questionable, even though they may be the smartest high schoolers in a three district radius. “Man” is one of the lady boys in my class that has never been able to answer a question in English, and when I have asked him to read his work aloud, he just comes to the front of class and holds my hand and says “I love teacher. My teacher, my friend”, then sits back down. So he has yet to hand in a homework assignment to me. He finally handed in a journal assignment last week, which was the replica of the student’s assignment on top of his, except he changed “Uttaradit” to “Chiang Mai”. I gave them both zero’s, and handed their journals back this week. Meen, one of the better students in class, completely broke down. She came to my office with the translator in the class, i.e., the only girl in the class that is courageous enough to carry a conversation in English with me, and told me she didn’t know he copied. The next class, Man handed me a not that said,

“I'm sorry teacher
Next, I will not do it
If teachers will deduct points
Let me break points alone.
She did not know”

First of all, this was the most English he has written all class. And secondly, I thought this was the cutest thing ever, and I felt so bad for him. I told him I would give him a zero for this one, but he can make up the rest for half credit. I’m pretty sure he didn’t understand, and probably won’t make up his late homework anyway, but he was so happy and just said “thank you teacher” three times before retreating.

There are several other students like Man in my other 11th grade class. I try to help them as much as I can, as the rest of the class sprints through every essay assignment I give them. One particularly bad student’s nickname is Bomb. He would be a student that could easily be overlooked in any class because he hangs out with the students that don’t do well, doesn’t participate in class, writes boring essays, and doesn’t have a funny haircut. The only reason he stands out to me is because of his nickname. I totally don’t mean to do it, but every time I take attendance, or force his participation, I always shout his name, and make an exploding motion with my hands. It just happens automatically. The funny thing is, I don’t think he notices, and the poor kid will always get so much more attention from me than his friends because he has a goofy nickname.

And then there are my genius 9th graders that can speak and write better than my smartest 11th graders. For two weeks leading up to Christmas, I have been working on a Christmas “show” with my best 9th grade class. I don’t really know how or why this started, but our department wanted to do something for Christmas. All my students wanted to do is sing, but I somehow convinced them that a dance and a play should accompany the song. So I took Oom’s class time with them and rehearsed “Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer” and “Santa Claus is Coming to Town”, which they knew better than me anyway, and we had quite an act going. I really didn’t do anything. They came up with everything on their own, I just got their costumes together. So Friday finally came and we had a half hour to give our school Christmas. I didn’t realize that they idea originally was to have one of the Japanese, one of the Chinese and one of the English classes sing “Jingle Bells” in their respective language. This became evident after the Japanese and the Chinese class went and sang Jingle Bells, and then my class of 15 year old geniuses blew everyone out of the water with a full on Rudolph and Santa musical. We performed during the morning announcements (and of course into first period, during which I was supposed to give a midterm. Christmas is more important anyway), and Steven and I got to host the whole thing in English to the confused student body. We even had some Christmas trivia, and gave out folders as prizes, though all the students that answered were either mine or his students. Our show ended with a real, live Santa. Be and Tara dressed up like Mr. and Mrs. Claus and rode in on their scooter with bags of candy that they threw to the kids. It was kind of awesome. I never really get into the Christmas thing, but this was too much fun.



For Christmas this year, I kind of received a family. Over the past three weeks, Kaiau’s family has swiftly adopted me into their family. It started when I went to Kaiau’s grandfather’s house for the day a few weekends ago. I thought we were just going over for lunch, or to hang out, but apparently there was more planned than that. Kaiau can speak English fairly well, as well as her father and sister, but her mother doesn’t speak a word of English. So the whole day just ended up being a bunch of surprises, and I just followed whoever told me where to go next. Kaiau’s mother wanted to take me to the Sukhothai Historical Park, where I had gone for Loi Krathong. The park is huge, and will require several visits, so I was excited to see more of it. After some amazing Sukhothai noodles for lunch, we were on our way to the park when Kaiau’s mother remembered she had a funeral to go to that afternoon. I thought we were on our way back to her grandfather’s house, but we ended up going to the park anyway, with countless apologies from Kaiau’s mom that we didn’t have enough time to enjoy the park. We only drove through the park anyway, not because of lack of time, but because it was too hot to be out of air conditioning. Haha. So I had a lovely tour of the park from inside the car before we headed back towards her grandfather’s.

We hung out there for the afternoon, took a long nap, had some snacks, then ended up helping cook dinner. We made steamed fish stuffed with pork and vegetables, and it totally put my Gaeng Som from the night before to shame! We brought dinner up to the balcony, and ate under the stars. It was actually very cold out that night, but the freshly steamed fish kept us somewhat warm, though we quickly packed up everything after dinner and went back inside!

The next weekend, Kaiau’s mom wanted to take us to the Si Satchanalai Historical Park. This park is thirty minutes in the opposite direction from the Sukhothai Historical Park, and is another place I would like to visit a few times while I am here. It has many temples from the same time period, about 700 years ago, but has many less visitors. I love these temples because they have very much remained untouched. Though the grounds between the temples are well maintained, the temples themselves have had, I believe, no renovation work. We climbed up a set of scarily steep stairs to the top of one of the temples, where we were met by an old beggar that gave us very rare stones carved into a Buddha figure. Kaiau knew why the stones were rare, but could not describe it to me, even with her new Thai-English dictionary constantly open. She doesn’t even look up when she is walking anymore, she is constantly just looking in her dictionary, and trying out a new word…that usually doesn’t make sense.

Needless to say, Kaiau has become my best friend here, and if I am not at school, 80% of the time I am with her. On Wednesday, Kai-u texted me and said that she couldn’t meet me for aerobics because she was going to a dog and monkey show. I didn’t even ask. Well, I didn’t have to, because she later called me and asked if I could go with her because she didn’t want to go by herself. I thought it’d be worth the experience. So we showed up at the temple surrounded by, no joke, a ton of brathom kids in their pajamas. And we settled down next a family, and enjoyed the show. I really think they call it a dog and monkey show to attract people; it is really a dog a show, with some people magic. The monkey took up maybe two minutes of the two hour show, and his tricks were lame. The opening magic show was really cool, and then the dogs performed for over an hour, and were great! Mostly due to the narration, and one fat dog that was always falling behind the other dogs.

Then came Christmas weekend. Kaiau’s family wanted to a do a variety of things, like camping in Chiang Rai, shopping on the Burmese border, go to the Night Safari, and the flower show in Chiang Mai. The plan changed at least once a day for the two weeks leading up to the trip, but ended up being a much more abbreviated adventure than their original plans. I was just happy to be part of it. It was really exciting to have a family for Christmas, even though they kept forgetting it was Christmas, and really had no intention of taking me on this trip because it was Christmas, but just because it coincided with Kaiau’s brother coming home and they wanted a family vacation.

We left for Lampang early on Saturday morning, and visited a gorgeous 400 year old temple and took many many many family photos. Kaiau’s brother told me about the history of them temple, and the religious reasons for many of the rituals. This must have been the first time I have gone to a temple in Thailand with a Thai person that speaks English well, because I have never really gotten any explanation for anything. I think that includes P’Muak as well, he didn’t really tell me anything about what we were doing when he took me to a shrine in Sukhothai. It is nice to know what I should be praying for, why I am supposed to walk around the chedi three times, and why I light candles and incense.

After the temple and adjoining market, we continued our journey to Chiang Mai. I still wasn’t sure what the agenda was, but I think Kaiau didn’t know either. I don’t think anyone did. And I wonder if it took us so long to get to Chiang Mai because they were still deciding where to go. I love this family.

We had lunch (Lanna style Som tam and Gai yang, so delicious!!!) and made many stops to go shopping. Many many stops. I was never exactly sure where we were, and there were only certain parts of Chiang Mai that I recognized from previous visits, but we stopped at some of the most amazing stores that had beautiful antiques for incredibly cheap. Kaiau’s mother loves antiques. Loves, loves, loves them. It made me want to live in Thailand, so I can collect all these beautiful works and not have to pay a million dollars in shipping. Finally we ended up at the Royal Flora Festival; Chiang Mai’s annual flower exhibition that lasts three months. I wonder why they don't just make it a permanent exhibition, but I think its because it takes the remaining 9 months to put it together. It is nothing like Philly’s flower show, maybe because of its massive scale and being outdoors. It is about the size of an amusement park, and has an international section, a kid’s section, a greenhouse section, a royal something section, and many things in between that I am sure I missed. Trying to conquer it in a few hours was a mistake.

Kaiau was so disheartened because by the time we got there, it was going to be too dark soon. And as soon as we entered, we learned there was a famous person somewhere in the park. It was the crowned prince’s wife and son. Kaiau was so excited to hear this, and we had to stop and wait to see her pass. We sat for half an hour outside of an exhibit, with hundreds of other people, waiting for her to exit and drive past. After half an hour, Kaiau was getting worried that it would get too dark to take pictures, so we left just as the prince’s wife was exiting the exhibition. The rest of the flower exhibition was really interesting, though we literally sprinted through it, Kaiau continuously depressed that the pictures came out too blurry. At every exhibit, she let out a deep sigh and apologized that we couldn’t take better pictures. As we were trying to see the last of it before the park closed, we were met by a security guard that whispered that the prince’s wife will be passing. So we stopped in out tracks and waited as her trolley approached. We didn’t have to wait a half hour this time, and we weren’t surrounded with hundreds of people like last time, as there were only a few people around the area at this point. Her barrage of police passed first, then three trams full of ordinary looking people passed, followed by more police. I was all ready to curtsy as she passed, but I couldn’t even find her! She had passed without me even knowing! And I was busy scanning the passing vehicles that I didn’t even notice Kaiau curtsying as the first tram passed that had contained the prince’s wife.

We concluded our day at the Chiang Mai walking street, so Kaiau’s mom could do some more shopping, and I got to eat Okonomiyaki- one of my favorite Japanese street foods I haven’t really had since Japan. Yum yum! And I got to embarrass Kaiau by ordering ice cream that I didn’t really want because she thought the guy selling it was cute. Of course she was too shy to talk to him, but was delighted when their hands touched as she took the cup of ice cream from him. We finally went back to the hotel, completely exhausted! It was a very long day. Kaiau turned on the TV, and Center Stage was on! A movie about dancing my sister and I used to watch over and over when we were kids. I was so excited!! I hadn’t seen the movie in so many years, and it made me miss dancing and my sister so much! Kaiau thought it was really weird that I didn’t shower that night, but I couldn’t when Center Stage was on! That was better than watching A Christmas Story over and over on Christmas Eve.

We woke up on Christmas Day with about as much of a plan as we had the night before. I gave Kaiau’s family Christmas cards, then we embarked on our day of aimless driving and seeming confusion. We ended up going to the Queen Sirikit Botanical Gardens.

You would think we would be sick of flowers, but it was actually really cool to see the gardens after going to the flower show the day before. The botanical gardens were obviously a lot less crowded, and the exhibits were a lot more natural. There were beautiful displays occupying a series of greenhouses, including a lily pad greenhouse. We spent the afternoon downtown by the flower market, actually close to where Pong and Charin live. We got some of Chaing Mai’s famous sausage, and had a delicious lunch of sausage, sticky rice and fried pork.

Its kind of funny, for how many times I’ve been to Chiang Mai, I still haven’t had Kao Soy, a curry based noodle dish that originated in Chiang Mai. My students rave about it, but I have yet to try it in Chiang Mai, even though Kao Soy stole my heart away the day I stepped into Sawankhalok, and I have yet to recover from it. (Though unripe mango with chili peppers is slowly taking over Kao Soy’s place in my heart). Well, funny enough, when we got back into Sawankhalok that night, we went to the night market and sure enough, I had a bowl of Kao Soy. And I bet the day I finally have Kao Soy in Chiang Mai, it won’t be delicious as my Kao Soy in Sawankhalok.

Even just leaving for a couple days, it always feels to come back home to Sawankhalok. I had an amazing moment this week with my neighbors. I think Waen, the wife, originally wanted me to have dinner with them, but I got home too late to join them. So she saved a bowl especially for me, and I had a full conversation with them about going to play Takraw with them, and what I was doing this weekend. I was so excited at that moment, and I wanted to call Steven or email Dave or call my mom to tell someone how awesome my neighbors are, and how it was one of the most exciting accomplishments of my life. But instead I made some rice and had a super delicious curry with lots of chicken body parts. When I came back from Chiang Mai, I gave them some Christmas cards and some popular regional foods I brought back for them. I think they really liked that, and they came home a couple hours later with a Santa Claus to hang in my window. So cute. I love them.

I think that is as good as Christmas could possibly be while away from home. Merry Christmas to everyone at home!! Missing you all <3

Friday, December 16, 2011

The Gaeng Som Experiment

Last time I went to the organic market at the temple, the woman I bought vegetables from insisted I buy fish from her, even though I only wanted vegetables. Because of her, I asked Dad what I could do with an electric wok and a fish. The answer was Gaeng Som Bplaa. It's a southern style sour curry, also called Gaeng Luang, or yellow curry. So last Saturday morning, feeling a little homesick, I thought it would be a good day to try it, so I could report the results to my dad. With my partner in crime, Steven, I set out on my mission to get the ingredients together, which took us about half the day plus lunch. Between Sawankhalok’s two markets, I was able to start my Gaeng Som experiment. Essentially, this blog entry is for my dad.

Step One; buying the ingredients:
-Fish. Preferably from the lady at the local market at the temple, because she is the reason I originally wanted to make this.
-Gaeng Som powder. From the lady at the indoor market. She was very intrigued by what I was planning on doing with Gaeng Som powder, seeing that I was farang. Luckily Steven was there to tell her I was half Thai, to which she replied, oh that is why she can eat rice.
-Tamarind to make tamarind water (from the same lady)
-Vegetables from the lady that when you point to vegetables and ask what it is out of curiosity, the woman says pak something, says something really fast in thai, and then says Gaeng Som, Gaeng Luang. Bingo. Resembles microgreens
-Cilantro and scallions, because they go on everything.
-Snack to eat while you cook. Cause if you’re like me, it takes a little while to figure these things out.

Step Two: Make up the steps to making Gaeng Som
1. Make tamarind water using the crushed tamarind. Put maybe a tablespoon in a bowl of boiling water to make tamarind water. I really have no idea what is appropriate.
2. Maybe make some rice before hand. (which I now have down to a science in my electric wok)
3. Make the soup! Bring water to a boil (I think I used too much water), and add gaeng som curry powder. Add vegetables: don’t use pumpkin leaves- they suck! But pumpkin works, and then the vegetable that woman unintentionally sold me on was great too. I cut up the fish, keeping it on the bone (removing the bone would have maybe been a better idea), and added it to my soup. Once the fish was cooked, I went through the painstaking process of trying to figure out how to flavor my soup, having never had gaeng som. It’s supposed to be sour, so I think you’re supposed to use a good amount of tamarind water. I used too much. Too sour! Then a combo of sugar and fish sauce to your liking. Supposedly, it’s supposed to taste sour at first, then a blend of sweet, spicy and salty following. Mine were none of the above, but I was getting close. (I know, I know, I should be measuring these things so I do better next time, but this is hard when I don’t have any sort of measuring instruments.)
4. As per Dad’s recommendation, make an omelet on the side to have with the curry, with fish sauce and scallions.

End result: total failure. But a good experiment. I have enough ingredients to try it again before the vegetables wilt, so version two may be attempted again this week.

Biggest success/bummer: In the midst of my experiment, I took out the trash and said hello to my neighbor as she was cooking dinner. I asked her what she was making, but could only make out “tot”, or fried, and it looked delicious, whatever she was frying. Then I think she asked me to have dinner with them, but I told her I was already making dinner. My new goal then was to make a delicious soup and be able to bring it over to their house and share with them, but that would have been way too embarrassing with what my soup ended up being.

Lesson learned! Just get dinner from Soi bpet. It’s easier. OR try again =)

Saturday, December 10, 2011

Happy 7th cycle Anniversary (aka Happy 84th birthday) to King Bhumibol Adulyadej

Reasons to love Thailand.
Reason One: The King


His Majesty The King’s birthday is celebrated as “Father’s Day”, and the Queen’s birthday as Mother’s Day. So Monday Dec 5th was Father’s Day across Thailand. The King is turning 84 this year, or reaching his 7th cycle (a cycle is every 12 years). If you don’t know much about the King of Thailand, they say this King has been the best in history. Thailand’s monarchy is really amazing, because it seems to work so well, and the current King is actually the longest reigning monarch in history. The Kings in the past have been wonderful leaders, and want to do everything they can for their people. This King has been a magnificent example, having visited so many of his subjects in person and caring deeply for them. He has even put forth some of his own money to help many projects in the countryside and in Bangkok.

I had a rough week preceding the King’s birthday. I have been missing classes left and right for things like Thanksgiving dinner in Bangkok, English tournaments and class trips. Sometimes my classes don’t show up, or lately the boys don’t come because it’s “soldier day” and they have to practice. Or, the morning announcements would take so long that first period class is ten minutes long. That happened last week too. I was getting very frustrated with my lack of teaching, and then went to my 11th grade geniuses, and they asked me if they could have the period free to work on a project for another class! I was so sad! It has actually been several weeks since I have taught that class because of Loy Krathong, Thanksgiving, soldier days, and now The King’s birthday. But mai bpen rai. This is Thailand.

On Friday I only teach one class, and I was able to reschedule my class and have the day free to join the 12th graders on their field trip to Dtak, the neighboring province. P’Sonya organized the trip, and I get bored on Fridays, so I thought it would be a fun adventure. I thought it was only going to be a visit to the government building in Dtak to meet with the governor, the mayor and the sheriff of Dtak who are all graduates of Sawananan, and of course used to be students of P’Sonya. Turns out that was only for half the day. After that, with plenty of snacks along the way, we went to the biggest dam in Thailand, and to see some petrified wood from a tree that grew 800,000 years ago.

We boarded nine double decker party buses (I kid you not, these party buses are legit) and had a two hour ride of very loud karaoke on the 2nd story of the bus, complete with strobe lights and lots of 12th graders dancing. The trip was fun; I got to bond with the 12th graders.

None of them are my students, but Tide, my spelling bee prodigy, is in the highest section of 12th grade. For some reason all of the students dressed in their gym uniforms, maybe to be more comfortable...except for Tide. The space cadet wore his normal school uniform. I couldn't help but laugh at him every time I saw him stand out from the rest of his class. The trip took the entire day, and involved so much food! After the buffet lunch, I didn’t want to eat for the rest of the day, but our next stop had free ice cream. And the stop after that, some juice and pastries. Good thing I was stuffed full on the trip, because after that I was meeting Muak to drive up to Chiang Mai, and I knew we wouldn’t be stopping for food.

Because of the King’s birthday, school on Monday is closed (more classes to miss…) so I decided to go up to Chiang Mai for the weekend. Luckily Muak was going too, and let me ride with him. We got there pretty late at night, but Pong and Charin are the best and were fine with me coming in late. The trip to Chiang Mai was exactly what I needed after having such an annoying week. Even though I woke up early every morning to help them around the house, and stayed out late, it was still a very relaxing weekend. We went fishing on the Ping in the morning, which really consisted of Charin chatting away and not catching any fish.

And Pong, the wonderful tour guide that he is, took me around to see some new things around Chiang Mai. My friend Sarah that has been teaching in Lampang came up to meet me on Saturday along with some of the other ETAs. We checked out the Chiang Mai nightlife on Saturday and Sunday night, including trying a fish foot spa!


and gossiped about Fulbright and how weird of a job this is compared to what we are all used to. Talking to them was great, because it made me realize how awesome of a school Sawanana Wittaya is, and I am really lucky to be there. Even though classes are cancelled all the time, my kids are much more studious than at many other Thai schools. A lot of my friends here would never assign homework, but I give my kids homework and classwork every day. I think it would also be nice to just play games all the time, but I like that my kids are beyond that and are capable of writing essays and reciting a speech. It comes with extra hours of grading, but I don’t mind it….so far.. =)

Reason 2: midnight snacking



(Rachel and Sarah, amidst the Sunday Walking Street in Chiang Mai)

After our nights out, Sarah and I walked home from the bar and stopped at the night market for Som tam and sour mango. They were the perfect midnight snack! I never thought I would like unripe mango, but it is my favorite thing now. And now there is a lady at my night market in Sawankhalok that sells unripe mango every night. Yay! On Sunday night, Sarah, our friend Rachel and myself wanted to meet at the Sunday Walking Street, Chaing Mai’s famous weekly night market that shuts down the city’s busiest streets. It is a huge event, and more crowded than the subways in Tokyo. Sarah and I spent two hours trying to find Rachel, but it really only took that long because we were buying many things along the way. Our second night, Sarah and I were looking for a tuk-tuk home, and were surprised by a tuk-tuk that stopped right in front of us as three ladyboy-turned-women were getting out. We told the tuk-tuk driver where we were going, and after some discussion with one of the “women”, “she” insisted “she” should come with us to make sure we got home safe. Writing this now, it sounds like somewhat of a threatening situation, but “she” was harmless, and really wanted to make sure we got back to Pong’s okay. The best part was this all happened in Thai…very slow Thai, but in sloppy Thai nonetheless, and I was proud of me and Sarah for actually ending up at Pong’s house.

Reason Three: the festivities


Muak brought me back to Sawankhalok early on Monday for a day of festivities. I got to Soi 8, our night market for the parade that was supposed to start at 4. Well, maybe it actually did start at 4, but at the pace it was going, by the time it got to us just a few blocks down it was almost 6. The parade was massive! I was really confused, because it was in my little town, not the city of Sukothai, and I don’t know where all these people came from, and how there were people left in the town to be walking around and watching the parade. I am actually fairly certain that there were more people walking in the parade than watching the parade, and I wonder where else in the world that happens. Most of the parade was made up of schools from our district or a neighboring district, with their marching band then a bunch of random people in pink polos following the band.
It went on like that for….maybe an hour. Then came our school, and we totally rocked it. The section for our school was huge, and each class basically had their own section. I saw so many of my students, it made me so happy! And the parade was moving so slowly, so I got a picture with every single one of them. And every single one of Steven’s students. (pictures are on Steven’s camera…coming soon) We were in the spot with the lull, and we often were where the students would put their instruments down, fix their makeup, or sit down and text message their friend, before resuming. And then entered a Chinese dancing dragon! Steven warned me that a few months ago they had the same dancing dragon at Soi8, and it was a disaster. Dancers tripped over each other, the dragon frequently got dropped, and then the dragon climbed a pole and they set off fireworks from its mouth. So I got a little nervous as the dragon approached Soi 8, and they brought out a pole.

The dance was terribly choreographed, and hilarious. There was a while where the dragon was eating or scratching his tail…I asked Oom why it was doing that, to which she replied that maybe his tail had an itch. After chewing his tail, the dragon proceeded towards the pole, already staffed with ten dancers. The pole was about the height of 5 people on top of each other. The dancers stationed on the pole passed the dragon up so that it slithered around to the top of the pole. And alas, they set off fireworks, basically right into the audience. I have never been so close to real fireworks (I don’t count the ones I set off with my neighbors), and I’m pretty sure the kid on his dad’s shoulders in front of me hadn’t either. And I’m pretty sure he didn’t like that. It was quite an exhilarating display, nothing like I’ve ever seen.

The parade was followed by a candle lighting for the King. Everyone from the parade, participants and observers, gathered in the public school’s (the other, less cool than Sawananan school in Sawankhalok) football field where there was a billboard size poster of the King. We lit our candles and they turned off all the lights as we (as in everyone but me) sang the King’s songs in Thai, then chanted what I think was Long Live the King. It was kind of epic. Another fun thing they’ve done for the King’s birthday is set up a temporary festival market outside of our night market. They sell everything, including tons of snacks, cheap clothes, kitchenware, and BUNNIES! (alive, not to eat). Oh, but they do sell insects to eat, which is not uncommon in Thailand. Our night market sells them too. I went to the festival market with Mint one night, and she insisted I try one. We had a selection of I think fried worms, maggots, cockroaches, and I’m not sure what else. So Mint got 20 bhat worth of maggots, and assured me it tasted like fried chicken. So I tried one, and it did not taste like chicken, nor was it delicious. There might be one food in Thailand I will never like.

The day after the King’s birthday, the festivities continued at school. The day started very serene and slow. The school sat by the Buddha statue in the middle of campus, and we sang songs for the King and prayed several times. This was followed by giving food to the monks. There are 50 or so students from our school that are being ordained as monks (explains some of the absences), and are about in the middle of their 2 week ordainment. I didn't get a clear explanation on the process, but I recognized some of the students (I can now say I am friends with a monk on Facebook), and saw them on campus this week. The director made them go to school after they had missed the first week, even though they can’t eat after noon, you can’t call them by their name, and you can’t point to them. I didn’t have to teach with any monks in my classroom, but Steven did and it was really confusing when they would raise their hand, because you can’t really call on them. I don't know how I would have handled that. It feels really strange just to “wai” my students and they think it’s hilarious. So after we gave the monks a variety of ramen noodles, uncooked rice and dried anchovies, the morning ceremonies were basically over (one thing I learned about monks that Steven told me is that they often receive too much food that they end up giving a lot of it to the poor. That made me happy, and feel less guilty about only giving them ten packs of tom yum koong flavored ramen noodles. I hope they get vegetables from someone too).

You would think we would resume classes after our morning ceremony, but no. We had “Sawananan Wittaya’s Got Talent”, which is a free for all talent show. And a Battle of the Bands in the cafeteria. This lasted well into the afternoon, and I lost hope on teaching for the day. There were classes, but nobody went to them except for some teachers that tried to get through a lesson with staggering attendance and compete with the loud music. The talent show was fantastic though. The best were the lady boys; there were at least two groups of lady boys that put on quite a show. They dressed in high heels, wigs, and provocative clothing and mimicked promiscuous American pop culture more convincingly than I thought possible for Thai boys. Steven and I watched in disbelief, doubting that this should be allowed at our conservative school, and displayed in celebration for Father’s Day of all days. We convinced ourselves that this was only allowed because they’re boys, and if girls tried to put on such an act, it would be stopped. Well we were proved wrong, as a group of 12th grade girls followed with a chair dance. Oh Thailand, you are full of surprises.

The rest of the week of course pails in comparison to the festivities for the King. We decorated a Christmas tree…I actually have never felt so American. Not because I was partaking in the decoration (they put on way too much tinsel!), but because there were three people working on the tree, and about ten of us standing there, watching. For like an hour! I got impatient and walked back upstairs, escaping to do something more productive. Haha.

Reason four: My students


I still haven’t seen my 11th graders in full, as we had another soldier day this week and I had no boys again. I am slightly concerned (well to be honest, more than slightly concerned) because they have midterms in a couple weeks, and I have nothing to test them on. I haven’t taught them anything! I haven’t even really seen them since before Loy Krathong! And we are approaching another 3 day weekend, which means I won’t see them again….But I can only be a little upset. I see Noom and Fifa, two of my 11th graders, after school almost every day, and they update me on when they will and won’t be in class. Every time they tell me they won’t be in class I get so sad, and they tell me not to worry. That it will be okay. On Wednesday, I went into my last period class totally deflated from the holidays, and discouraged about not teaching enough and missing my students. Then I remembered why this class is my favorite. This two hour class has me laughing almost the entire time. Even Boat, the trouble maker in the back of the class, is an English genius, and can speak English better than my smartest students, but usually isn’t awake for long enough to do so. The worst students in this class try the hardest, and finish class by following me into the office, quizzing me with my Thai, and pretending to give me their participation dollars when I get a word correct. Just when I was losing inspiration and feeling disheartened, and a little homesick, my amazing 10th graders reminded me why I love being here.