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
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