Catch Up

To fill in the blanks on what’s been going on in my life since I went to the Philippines last October, here is a quick update.

I’ve been living with Bryan since the start of the new term, which has been the best thing ever. I love Bryan and he’s been one of the best friends I’ve ever had. We tell each other everything, and even though I get annoyed with how irresponsible he can be, he is the closest thing to a younger sibling I’ve ever had, and I love having him as a housemate. Bryan and I started to acquire a bit of a family when the new semester started. The first addition to the family was my boyfriend. I met BenTen through Kirk. I finally got to meet Kirk’s Thai roommate, P’Rong, whom I absolutely love, and their group of friends. BenTen, P’Rong’s closest friend, is my age, single, and cute- qualities that NEVER exist in boys in Sawankhalok. By default, we hit it off right away. Within two weeks, we were boyfriend and girlfriend, and he was spending every evening with Bryan and I.

I think Bryan and BenTen loved each other more than BenTen and myself. I loved going on trips, just the three of us. BenTen can’t speak English, and Bryan is still working on his Thai, so their broken exchanges were hilarious. Every night, if it was getting late and BenTen still hadn’t come over, Bryan would come downstairs and ask where BenTen was. Usually he was working or with his friends, and Bryan would always ask “but he’s coming over, right?” I felt like Bryan’s mom, and BenTen was his new beloved step dad. Then no matter how late, BenTen always came over, marched upstairs and knocked on Bryan's door, yelling "Bryannnnnn! Pom kittueng kun!!! (I missed you)" but he never said those words to me! BenTen showed us a lot of places around Sukhothai, always ready to be the tour guide. We went to Sri Satchanalai Historical Park, he met me at the Loy Krathong festival in Sukhothai, and took me to the Sri Satchanalai ancient times festival.


But the best part about BenTen is his HOUSE! He works for the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Thailand (which he kept telling me about, but I didn’t believe until I met the guy myself). BenTen is the radio DJ for the government radio station or something weird that I can’t really translate- but he has his own radio station on the grounds of the Minister of Foreign affair’s home, as well as his own little cabin house.

BenTen's home

the radio station

 In addition to his DJ job, which I’ve watched him do and is the easiest job known to man, he does a lot of upkeep for the Minister dude and little projects here and there- like hanging up 18 billboards throughout all of Sukhothai with a picture of the Minister’s son wishing everyone a Happy New Year. To me, things like this still seem weird, but everyone else in Thailand thinks it’s normal. I also got to meet the dude’s little brother, who is a big hot-shot that lives in Sawankhalok and loves to watch rugby. He was excited to meet me and have someone to watch rugby with, but I’m still waiting for him to call to invite me to watch a game. It’s been great hanging out with these really important people! They all speak to me in Thai (though I KNOW they can speak English. It’s the Minister of Foreign Affairs! He HAS to speak English). And they are very involved with the King’s projects. When the Minister dude found out I was working on my graduate application and it involved researching the floods in Thailand, he excitedly promised to take me to visit a “Monkey Cheeks” project, which is one of the King’s famous projects to help prevent flooding. Like his little brother’s rugby promise, I’m still waiting for this to happen…it will happen.

Anyway, this guy’s house is a tropical PARADISE on the outskirts of Sawankhalok. I was spending every weekend there, writing my grad applications in the middle of a bamboo forest next to a lake, being served papaya salad or BenTen’s homemade Sukhothai noodles which are better than any noodles in Sawankhalok. The downside to this paradise, is everyone loves this paradise, and by 3P.M., someone would show up with a bottle of whiskey and all work would stop to make way for the whiskey. Either I’d try to be polite and sit with them while they drink while secretly still typing away at my essays, or I’d hide in the radio station to continue working. But usually, my escape was Muay Thai, so I would secretly run away to go to train.

som tam lunch

A usual afternoon at BenTen's house

My daughter, nong Ploy, helping me teach

making Krathong for Loy Krathong at my house,
with Kirk, Bryan and nong Ploy

Around the same time I started dating BenTen, I met nong Ploy, an 11 year old girl that lives close to my Muay Thai training center. The first day she met me at Muay Thai, she started calling me P’Suay (Suay means beautiful, and P is used to address someone older than you, whereas nong is for someone younger) and followed me to Kirk’s house. The next night, she wandered to Kirk’s house on her own (she lives close to him), and requested he call P’Suay to come over. The next day, a Monday, she showed up at my school, asking students on campus where P’Suay was. She ran into the French exchange student, who was the only one at school that knew me by my new nickname, and he showed her where the English office was. And that’s where she came every day after school. Then we rode back to my house together, and I would either go to Muay Thai or do some grading. And then we would go out to dinner and I would ride her to the other side of Sawankhalok to her home. After a few weeks of this, I was exhausted trying to balance my time with nong Ploy, my new boyfriend (they hated each other by the way- nong Ploy didn’t think he was handsome enough for me, and BenTen hated that I was spending my time taking care of nong Ploy instead of getting my grading done), training for Muay Thai, working on grad applications, and getting my lessons planned and work graded. It didn’t really help either that Ploy’s family kind of gave her to me. Every night when I took her home, her mother said, nong Suay, you can just let her sleep at your house so you don’t have to bring her home at night! They also requested I take her on the weekends to teach her special English classes. I told them, just hanging out with the farang all the time is basically a 24 hour special class. But after weeks of being her mother, the only words she got down in English were "Ready Freddy? Ready Eddy!" (kudos to Dad), "Come On! Come On!" and "I love you". (My Thai got remarkably better between having a Thai boyfriend and a Thai daughter, who's only words they could say in English were "I love you")

Though exhausted, nong Ploy was just filled of so much love and happiness that I couldn’t help but take her in every opportunity I had. Eventually nong Ploy and BenTen got over their hatred for each other, and the four of us: Bryan, nong Ploy, BenTen and I were an adorable family. But par usual, I got stressed out over my work (and mostly my grad applications), so as the deadline for Berkeley was approaching, and nong Ploy was constantly on my computer playing games so I couldn’t get work done when I had the time to, I had to break up my new family. I told nong Ploy she needed to go home and help her mother. And I broke up with BenTen. Recently, I found out that nong Ploy got caught stealing from a gold shop in town. I don’t know the details, because I heard about this from my Muay Thai trainers when they were drunk on their after New Year’s party, which was a blast by the way. We all agreed that we saw this coming though. Nong Ploy is always wandering the streets with other kids whose parents’ work late, and is an experienced liar and conniver. Despite her loving laughter, nong Ploy had a dark side, and I wanted so much to keep her away from it. That’s why I let her take up every ounce of free space in my life during some of my most stressful weeks. But nong Ploy’s upbringing is stronger than the few weeks she was my daughter, and I haven’t seen her since that day I told her to go home and help her mother, except for occasionally when she stops by the Muay Thai center to say hello.

Thanksgiving at my house with Kirk, the French guy and nong Ploy

floating my Krathong

the light and sound show at Loy Krathong

To complement the stresses of this semester, I’m thankful that this is the semester of holidays, class trips, and not really teaching. That’s been a relief for me in the midst of my grad applications. I went to the Loy Krathong festival with the Thai teachers, got to see our students win in the longest-parade-ever, and was met by BenTen and his friends later in the evening for the midnight fireworks show. The King’s birthday on Dec 5^th ended up being a 6 day holiday from school because of other random disruptions to the rigorous school calendar. I joined my M4 students, a.k.a. the loves of my lives, to a trip to Chaing Rai and Mae Sai. Mae Sai is the northern most point of Thailand and borders Myanmar. The students crossed into Myanmar to go shopping, but I couldn’t because of my visa, so I stayed in Thailand and bought the same things on our side.

My M4 students in MaeSai

Nine, Pop, ME! and the French exchange student

 Then we went to the White Temple, which I had visited with Dave last year (wow….so long ago). Though I don’t particularly like this temple, I love its history and I admire the architect for being so ballsy. Wat Rong Khun, or the White Temple is a one hundred year long project in the making. The architect wanted to create a large attraction to bring more attention to Chiang Rai, which often gets forgotten being next to Chaing Mai. He wanted it to be something like the Taj Mahal, that it would be a reason for tourists to come to Thailand- to see the White Temple. Some say it is the most beautiful temple in the world. I disagree, but I think it is the most interesting. The architect makes it a point to never take money from any organizations or government, so he can keep the temple in his own vision and doesn't have to uphold any one else's input. He also vows that this temple will always be free so that anyone can come to visit. So, I have a lot of respect for the guy, I just don't like the temple, which made up the last stop of our Chaing Rai trip. '

My farang loves, Kirk and Antoine

The trip was super quick, less than 24 hours long, more than half of which were spent on a bus. But I had so much fun with my students and will sacrifice any number of uncomfortable nights on a bus to go on a trip like this with them again.

M4/01 and M4/1 on the bus ride home

Another great thing that happened this term was that my older cousin, P’Aut came to visit me. Over a year, and no one from America had come to visit. So when I found out P’Aut was coming to Thailand for a few weeks, I convinced him he had to make a stop in Sawanakhalok. And I think he fell in love. (Not with a person!! Just with my town). One of the teachers took us to both historical parks, which was exhausting to do in one day, and then at night we hung out with P’Rong and the gang, who at that time I was just getting to know myself. The night before P’Aut left for Phuket, we went to P’Rong and Kirk’s house after the bar and hung out on his roof until the wee hours of the night. It was so cool to have someone from home visit me, even though I’m not very close with P’Aut. Since his visit though, I feel like we’re real cousins now, and we talk all the time. And now I talk more and more with his parents too. Coming to Thailand, I had really wanted to learn more about and be closer to my family. It hasn’t worked in a lot of ways, but at least in this way it has.

Around the holidays, I was starting to get my first real bout of homesickness. I was jealous that Bryan’s family came to visit him from the Philippines (his mother, his younger sister and her boyfriend were visiting), and I was mad at myself for not letting anyone close to me. As I always do when I’m stressed, I had pushed away everyone I was close to: I pushed nong Ploy away, I pushed BenTen away, and I got annoyed with Bryan, my best friend, for having his family come to live with us for a month without properly taking care of them, leaving me to do it on top of the other things I was doing. I love them all from when I visited the Philippines in October, and I spent every free minute I had making sure they got to see the best parts of Sawankhalok. As we have learned, Bryan is not the best tour guide, so it was up to me to take them around, which was frustrating, time consuming, and made me really wish MY family would visit so I could show them how cool Sawankhalok is. So as the holidays came around and I had pushed everyone away, I felt really lonely. But my students saved me. I had to choreograph a dance to show for Christmas Day, which was just another thing I didn’t have time to do in the midst of everything else that was going on. I only had about two hours with each class to put it together, but we put on, I thought, an awesome show. I had three of M4 classes dance to “All I Want for Christmas is You” which was wild and had a total of about 120 students in it.

Then my M3/02 class, which is one my worst-behaved classes, requested to perform break dancing. So I put together a short dance to “That Girl is Poison” and my break dancing boys soloed while the rest of the class did an easy dance in the background.

Those performances were the best Christmas presents ever. Though I grumbled through all the practices, watching it come together was awesome, and reminded me that I love what I’m doing (and I love teaching dance!)

Then New Years came. We had another holiday from school that I was reluctant to travel for so I could focus on my applications, I was getting worried about my Muay Thai fight, and BenTen was making me cry. But my students came to the rescue. My M4/2 students wanted to countdown to the New Year with me, but I figured that they didn’t ACTUALLY want to do that, so we settled on a New Year’s party at my house instead, the weekend before New Year’s. I spent an entire day not on my MIT application, but instead on decorating my house and making pasta (they requested pasta, which I tried to make as accurately foreign as possible, but then had to add some hot dogs to make it a little appealing to Thais) with three of my students helping. At three in the afternoon on Saturday December 29^th, the New Year’s party commenced, and my students rolled into my driveway on their motorcycles, with gifts and snacks in hand. We had a gift exchange, a balloon popping contest (where you rubber band a balloon to your foot and you try to pop each others’ balloons by stepping on them), some other games, and of course some dancing. As the party trickled down, I was left with 6 or 7 students that didn’t want to leave my house, so we played apples-to-apples and listened to music for an hour until I shooed them out of my house so I could train for Muay Thai. It was, I think, the coolest thing I have ever done in Thailand. Training Muay Thai, hiking mountains, crystal clear beaches, have nothing on these students. I never thought I would be a teacher, but apparently I’m really enjoying it!