Best. Birthday. Ever.

I had just come back from Bangkok the day before my birthday. I walked up to school late (I don’t have to be there at 8 anymore, but everyone else does, but I didn’t think it would matter if I came in at 9) and walked into a meeting I didn’t know was happening. Of course they had been waiting for me...did they even know I was in Sawankhalok? I never told them I was coming in that day. I walk in, and they say, “Oh! This is Korin, she is the Fulbright”. And this group of 4 white people chorus “ohhh you’re the Fulbright!” Great job Korin, way to make Fulbright look good.

These four white people were from Wisconsin and came to Thailand for 3 weeks for an exchange program with our school. And they were getting the coolest tour of Sukhothai. For the first day of their trip, they were being taken to Thung Salium, the neighboring town. I took the liberty of tagging along, self-appointing myself as the American ambassador that can help with explaining Thai cultural intricacies in the education system that may interest American teachers. Really, I just wanted to go to these temples in Thung Salium I had never been to! We went to three incredibly different temples- one is the oldest in...the district? The region? I’m not sure what the superlative is, but I AM sure that there is a piece of Buddha himself encased in a relic thingy in the museum. For real. When Siddhartha Buddha himself was incinerated, I guess his ashes had been preserved and spread to various temples (mostly still in India), and Thung Salium has a tiny share! I think we fought over it with Burma for a while, as seems to be a common theme with important Buddhist objects (ahem. Emerald Buddha), but now it is safely tucked away in an unprotected random museum in the middle of Thung Salium that nobody visits and I’ve never heard of. I feel like this is a big deal, and I really don’t know why I just found out about it. I also just found out that we have BAT CAVES!!! in Thung Salium. Like really popular ones that are supposed to be really cool. And I would have been able to tell you all about them, but as we were leaving the third temple, we got hit by the biggest storm I had ever seen in Sawankhalok. Well, I haven’t seen any storms in Sawankhalok- because it hasn’t rained since I moved here. We had all just donated some money to the temple to participate in a prayer of dropping 108 satang coins into little cups (don’t know what the action meant, and why 108, but it was really fun), and we were getting ready to head to the bat caves, when it started downpouring and lightening and thundering like crazy. I guess they thought this was a “mai bpen rai” situation and continued to drive through the storm when the car in front of us (the director’s workers who were carrying our picnic dinner) almost got crushed by a falling tree! The tree fell inches in front of them, and blocked the road to the bat caves. Almost in unison, all the Thai teachers exclaimed what great luck! It’s because we just gave a donation to the temple and prayed to Buddha. I thought that was fantastic- makes me love Buddhism. So we took our good luck and picnic dinner to the director’s (incredibly huge) house, and enjoyed Som Tam, Gaiyang and Khao Nieow, while watching the sky outside turn amazing colors as the sun was setting through the storm.


I didn’t have any expectations for my birthday. All I wanted to do on my birthday was go to a temple and give an offering to the monks. When my dad grew up in Thailand, that is what he did on his birthday every year. I didn’t really know how to actually do it, and Tara and Be, being the wonderful people they are, said they would come with me, but they didn’t know what to do either. We bought the basket of food, candles and flowers, but weren’t sure what to do from there….and no one else was being particularly helpful. So I asked Kru Pet to take us (I always feel like he helps us the most, so I always ask him last- I feel bad always asking him, but then he’s the only one who ever actually helps us). He picked us up in the morning, and took us to Wat Sawan Rusaaraam (something like that…) on the other side of the river. None of us, including Kru Pet, had ever been there, but it is closely affiliated with our school. Thank goodness Kru Pet was with us. He casually strolled into the temple, found the head monk eating breakfast, prayed to him, and told him we were teachers from Sawananan and came here to see him. The monk was so so happy. He spent over an hour talking to us, telling us the history of the temple and about the monk who founded it, who also founded our school, and told us that he was so lucky to have three foreigners come to him that day. He assumed that we were Christian, and was so happy to be able to expand our prayers to Buddha. He told us, you we pray in a Buddhist temple, your right hand prays to Buddha, and your left hand prays to the God of your choosing. When you pray in Buddhism, you can pray to any God. This is a very rough translation from the monk, to Kru Pet who said it in easy Thai for Be, than from Be to us, and then from my memory. So don’t take what I just said for fact. In any case, the monk was really happy we were there, and gave all four of us an amulet of the monk that founded the temple and our school. I thought Kru Pet was going to explode with joy- especially because this monk doesn’t usually give out amulets this special. Kru Pet estimated these amulets cost about 500 bhat each, and it is infinitely better to receive them from a monk than to buy it yourself. Chok tdi mak. AND THEN Kru Pet told the monk it was my birthday, so he gave me another extra cute little amulet! SO exciting! So I gave him my offering, and then we poured water into a cup while he gave us a blessing. We took the water outside, and watered a banyan tree. COOLEST EXPERIENCE EVER and was so much more than I was expecting. He also told us if we ever need to go anywhere, we can come to the temple and borrow their van. Then he had one of the monks accompany us to the museum across the street that has all the history of Sawankhalok and Sri Satchanalai, including many ceramics from an 1974 excavation, and many of the belongings of the monk that founded our school. Who else can say they had a monk as a body guard to a museum? Soo cool.

We finished our wonderful morning with lunch at my favorite noodle restaurant on the Yom River. Oh my gosh, such a great day. Then in the afternoon, I went to the market to find a cake to give to the johk lady, at her request (I told her the day before that it was my birthday, and she asked if I would eat cake. I told her no that I don’t like cake, so she told me to bring her my cake and she will eat it. So I bought her and her workers little cakes). I found a lady boy selling cakes, and he/she said hello to me in English, looked at me curiously and said to me in Thai, you're half Thai, aren't you? NO ONE ever guesses that I am half Thai. Ever. I actually got mistaken for Italian at the bar last week in Bangkok watching the Wales v. Italy rugby match. Sorry, but I would never root for Italy. Wales won by the way. Anyway I was so excited that the lady boy recognized me as half Thai. And so I have a new English student- he/she wants me to come visit him/her regularly so he/she can practice English.

That evening, Kru Pet offered to bring us to his home in Sukhothai and have his parents make us dinner. So he picked us up that evening and we headed to Sukhothai. It was too bad we missed sunset, because his 800 rai (about 400 acres) of rice fields would be so beautiful in the sunset. It was already dark when we got to his parents’ farm, but that didn’t stop us from going out to see his brothers harvest the rice. After driving down a windy road in the pitch dark for about 15 minutes, I think never leaving his parents’ property, we finally approached signs of civilization. There was a monster tractor pacing back and forth, ingesting the grains of rice while tossing aside the reeds. And when I say monster tractor, I mean it really looked like a monster! Or an alien. Maybe a monster alien. It’s two distinct headlight eyes were surrounded by a rainbow assortment of lights all over (every vehicle in Thailand has an array of colorful lights…even tractors), and it had multiple limbs coming out to do various functions, and it glided over the rice field with such ease that it was really hard to believe there was someone hiding in there driving it. So eerie- so awesome. So picture that, and then look up in the sky and see endless constellations. Amazinnnggg. Then the monster tractor came to where we were standing to unload the grains of rice into the truck. One rai of rice paddie supplies roughly 80 kilos of rice. Wow.

So after that little slice of heaven, we drove back towards his eldest brothers house, and they cooked us dinner. His house, though still under construction, is built in the old Thai traditional style- made out of wood and on stilts. You climb up to the balcony, then enter into one very large room, which kind of makes up the entire house. The room didn’t have any furniture…and it doesn’t seem like they intend on getting furniture, so dinner was served as is I think is typical in Thailand: on the floor with us sitting around it in a circle. They made us a wonderful local feast: pak bueng (morning glory) from their backyard, laab gop (Thai style salad with frog) I think also from their backyard, an omelet, and pork and cabbage soup. So yummy! We spent most of dinner talking about farming, and they were so excited to hear about my home in America- about my dad’s tractors, my mom’s organic garden, what we use as fertilizers, etc. Who would have thought it would be these moments- talking about fertilizers and tractors over my birthday dinner, that I would miss home the most.

The rest of my time since school has ended has been much less exciting. For Fulbright, I have to intern for the month of March. I was very lucky to find an internship with an American Fulbright research grantee that came here to study solar cell lifecycles in Thailand. So this month we are working on writing a paper together on the energy policies of Thailand, and where solar fits into the energy mix. It’s been really easy so far, I can work on the internship from anywhere really, which has allowed me to spend a lot of time in Sawankhalok. The guy I have been working for, Noah, is really brainy, and I think he’s never had someone work for him that gets as excited as I do. Everything he asks me to do is like, the coolest thing in the world. And I feel like I’ve already learned so much about Thailand’s energy policies, though I have barely done anything. The one (huge) annoying thing about this internship is that I have to take frequent trips to Bangkok.

Now, you know you’ve been to Bangkok too many times when: 1. Sunrise traffic jams are beautiful. 2. I routinely give myself three hours to run a small errand, because that is probably how long it will take. 3. It’s no surprise to see your bus driver fall asleep while waiting in traffic. By the way, between him and the young kid driving the bus with his head phones in that neglected all forms of traffic laws, I totally prefer the old man that falls asleep at the wheel.

Can you tell I’m starting to feel a little fed up with BKK? During my last trip to Bangkok, I probably spent at least half of my time in a vehicle trying to go somewhere. Actually, my last day there, I unintentionally went to every edge of Bangkok on several errands. By the time I boarded the night bus back to Sawankhalok, I was so bored that I decided to tally how many forms of public transportation I had taken that day. And now I will bore you with the details. I made 12 transfers that day, taking 5 different types of public transportation, NONE of them being a taxi (public bus, free van, motorcycle taxi, sky train, and tour bus to Sawankhalok). And the entire day, I only spent 217 bhat on transit. Not bad, eh? This included starting from the most eastern part of Bangkok, to the Northern tip where the regional bus station is, and then accidentally getting on a van to Bangkhuntian while trying to meet up with Noah in Bangmot on the western side of Bangkok. I didn’t know this Bangkhutian campus existed until I got there. The van driver entered the campus via a road that was basically built on top of lakes, which should have been my first sign that I wasn’t in Bangkok anymore. I got to the campus, called Noah and spent 30 minutes on the phone with him trying to find him looking for me. When I finally figured out that Bangkhutian does not mean the same thing as Bangmot, I panicked. Almost in tears, I exclaimed, “Noah…where am I?!” He casually responded, “Okay, so if you look at a map of Bangkok, Bangkhutian is below that…you’re basically at the Gulf of Thailand.” Oh great. At least the hour-long bus ride was free, and I was able to take another free van back to Bangkok to meet Noah. What a mess of a day.

Sawankhalok is such a treat coming back from Bangkok. We just started our Mamuang Mapraang Festival, which from what I have heard are all over Sukhothai. The festival celebrates the mamuang (mango) and maprang season- and the police station gets packed with vendors from all over Thailand, selling everything you can imagine (yes, pet rabbits, squirrels and parrots included) except mango and maprang. It’s kind of the ongoing joke- every one goes to the mamuang maprang festival…but there is no mamuang or maprang! But my fridge is already overflowing with maprang, after Kaffa’s father gave me a kilo from their house, and I went maprang picking at another one of my student’s houses in Sawankhalok. His father has 20 maprang trees, and it is like walking into paradise. He doesn’t use any chemicals, so you can just pick a maprang off a tree and eat it right there. Ah, why can’t it be hotter in America so we can have maprang trees?!
After going to meditation one day with Kaffa and her boyfriend’s mom, we went to the festival together with nongFang. I guess everyone else was scared of heights, so I got to take nongFang on the Ferris Wheel =) But after the Ferris Wheel, she wanted to go on the slide and carousel. Her dad said no, and she was in tears for the rest of the night. Poor nongFang.

The next night, Tara and Be and I went to check out the rest of the festival- and we had a feast! Pork satay, oyster omelet, Chiang Mai sausage with sticky rice, that dish with the crispy pork ball that is mashed into a Thai style salad, some weird fish soup, and other unnamable goodies. Soo much good food that we never get in Sawankhalok, with an equally exciting array of snacks to take home.

This week, all of the bad students at Sawananan school had to go to disciplinary camp. I had never heard about this, except once when P’Sonya casually mentioned it. She didn’t tell us that all the bad students at Sawananan get sent to a three day boot camp in Phitsanulok where they have to roll around in the dirt and eat food with their dirty hands while getting screamed at by a drill sergeant. Kru Bon told us about it one night when we were all hanging out. Kru Bon took all of us (Tara, Be, me, Kru Pet and Kru Soot) to the Sawankhalok dam to take pictures. I had been there once before with Kaiau, but he wanted to go take sunset pictures (Kru Bon is an art teacher at Sawananan). So we piled in the back of Kru Pet’s truck, and headed to the dam, stopping for beers along the way. It felt so high school, hanging out at the dam, drinking beers from a pick up truck. But instead I was with Thai high school teachers. Weird. Kru Bon told us all about this camp he has to take the kids to the next day, and asked if we wanted to come check it out. I had to work on internship stuff, but Tara and Be decided to go. They came back with horror stories about the kids passing out, having to run into the forest at command, and being beat with sticks.

The next day, Be had to get his visa renewed in Phitsanulok. He can’t drive because his arm is still sore from the accident, so he asked if I could drive him. Kru Pet lent him his truck, and I jumped on the opportunity of driving a stick shift Toyota pick up truck in Thailand. We took the back roads to Phitsanulok, passing miles of rice paddies, some still immersed in water, others just being harvested. It was so funny driving Tara and Be around. They both look Thai, so we got a lot of great stares when someone would see two Thai people being driven by a farang girl.

After Be got his visa stuff done, we had to drop off some bags that got left behind at the disciplinary camp yesterday, so we headed to the military base. We were a little worried coming in, practicing my speech in Thai that I was a teacher from Sawananan and I needed to drop off bags for the students. We pulled in to the first security gate, and the soldier didn’t even blink at the farang driver, he just nonchalantly opened the gate, saluting us as we drove through. We burst out laughing- really?! That is how tight the security is?? We got to the second gate, same thing. Are they even curious about a farang is coming into their military base? They’re probably too scared to speak English. We got to the camp to see the students lounging around, buying snacks, grinning widely. Tara was like, “What?! This is so different than yesterday. This is no fun” They drilled the kids a little bit while we were there, but the big afternoon event was ziplining into the river!!! I think the second day of the camp was less discipline, more adventure camp.
So Tara and Be and I climbed to the top of the three story tower where kids were ziplining from. It looked soooo fun, I was so jealous. The best were the lady boys- the drill sergeant was pushing the students off the edge, and when it came to the lady boys, they would squeal all the way down. I wasn’t gonna jump, but the drill sergeant saw me trying to leave, pulled me back and took a zipline hook and life jacket from a student in line. He insisted the farang jump with him, and so we cut in front of all the students in line and got set up to jump. For how much the lady boys squealed, it wasn’t really that scary. Half way down the line, the drill sergeant let go and leaned back, holding on with just his legs. I tried the same, but then fell off once we hit the water. Haha, He made fun of me for that.
The water was warm from the sun shining on it all day, but still felt refreshing after this heat wave. Tara and Be jumped together after me, so the three of us were soaked for our sunset drive back to Sawankhalok through the rice paddies.

A whirlwind of a semester comes to an end, with the beginning of (another) new family

The end of the semester has been a nightmare combined with a constant party. Last week was the last week of classes, which was conveniently combined with M3’s standardized testing, M6’s graduation, then M3’s graduation, and a concert on campus every day for almost a week, or just any day there wasn’t some sort of testing. I swear, between the testing, and the random activities, how do the students learn anything to be tested on? Unfortunately, I couldn’t partake in any of the activities, because I was stuck in the office grading…and grading…and grading. I did attend M6’s graduation, which was adorable. Every single one of the 500 students had an enormous bouquet of flowers, was covered in pins made by their classmates, and had presents galore.



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

Pen pals

I had my genius 9th graders write letters to "pen pals" that I will send to my cousin's students in America. This one was my favorite =) Hope you can read it.

Rak maak: Lots of love!!

With Valentine’s Day quickly approaching, the last few weeks have been filled with lots and lots of love.

Starting with the Takraw coach confessing his love for me. I haven’t figured out if he was being serious or not. I think/am going to pretend he was kidding. Good thing Takraw season is over, and the coach doesn’t show up to football practice. If the boys win this football tournament, they can totally thank Be and I. We have fully taken the reigns on this one. My 9th grade boys love it too. Last week, they spent the majority of the class not doing the assignment that I asked them to do, but drawing a map of the school to show me where the other football field is to meet them for practice. I got there (late) and of course only one of my boys from that class was there. But there are plenty of my students on the team, so I can demand when they tell me when the next practice, to tell me in English.

I don’t get to spend as much time “coaching” them as I like, because Man and Sea have gotten really into this dance performance they are doing for Valentine’s Day. They have come after school every day, and work for at least an hour, and come to me every free period they have. If only they worked this hard on their English homework! It’s going to be really hard to give them B’s in my class. But Man’s confidence in my class has grown exponentially, and he doesn’t break out in sweat every time I call on him. Last practice, we went to a studio with a mirror. I was working with Sea, while Man was checking himself out in the mirror. I had been calling his name to come help Sea with a move, and he looked up distractedly, saying “sorry teacher, I’m just so handsome”. At least he said it in English.

Though Chinese New Year isn’t as big of a deal in Sukhothai as I thought it would be (we even had a full day of school!) it did mean my boyfriend who teaches in China had a week off from school, and could finally visit Thailand! He came up to Sawankhalok and got to surprise the students (a REAL farang!) Of course they were all angels for him, even the boys who have never spoken asked questions. Some classes were shy, and others asked “How long you love Korin?” “Will you marry Korin”.
(My incredibly tame 11th graders)
I had to prep my lowest level 9th graders the week before by almost directly giving them 10 questions to write down. Once they asked the only 10 questions they had, they had to combine forces to come up with another question in English. After lots of yelling across the room to each other in Thai, they came up with “What do you think about communism?” They can’t even ask what your favorite sport is, but they can ask about communism. I think they are all just faking- I know deep down they can really speak English.


(My out-of-control 9th graders)

We sat with some of my students one of the days for lunch in the canteen. I actually never eat in the canteen, but Dave wasn’t going to meet these girls from my Wednesday class, and so they asked if we would eat with them cause they wanted to talk to him. I was overwhelmed with love for these girls- they were so cute and happy to talk to him. I had started a diary exchange with this class (where they write a diary entry, and hand it in, I read and it and write a message back, then they respond, etc.) and after that day, this is what some of them wrote in their diaries:

“Today it very happy I was sitting at lunch and eat with the teacher
Korin and Boyfriend. Very excited because I do not think thai people
eat pretty and cool person. This meal feel very tasty. Enough to tell
mother that I had lunch with the teacher I’m very happy. I will
remember this day for life, A happy day. I love Korin Rue very very….
–Oil

"at monday; It was a very good day for me same :) :) It is very happy.
I eat lunch food full quick because I full heart. feel warm and
acquainted with you much. the first time in life for me.
I miss to you and your boyfriend. because you boyfriend. he must back
Chinese city :( for make work. I pray give you boyfriend. travel
convenient and not meet danger."
-Pop

My heart almost burst with love for these girls, even though I am pretty sure they were using google translate. It was still so cute. So much love!!

After Dave’s two day tour of my school and town, I had the rest of week off from teaching because all the junior high students were going camping, so I took Dave to see the north. We spent (a lot of time on a bus and) one night in Chiang Rai, mostly because I wanted to see the White Temple, a masterpiece in the making. It was probably a poor choice for Dave’s first temple, as this is the most un-Thai un-Buddhist temple ever. The entire temple is obnoxiously bright white, with an entrance over a moat of reaching hands, supposedly symbolizing desire, but feels more like they’re reaching up from hell. Then you walk into the temple, which is still only half way painted. The main wall is covered with modern scenes that represent rebirth. The collection of images is so odd: I spotted Spiderman, planes crashing into the twin towers, Avatar, and Neo from the Matrix.

So that was probably a waste of time (though I thoroughly enjoyed it) and becoming more and more Thai every day, I continually debated and asked for Dave’s opinion on how to commence our journey. I probably reassessed the next steps every couple of hours. Poor Dave. We decided to go for Chiang Mai, which ended up being the best decision I had made the whole trip. He loved Chiang Mai (who doesn’t really, Chiang Mai really is the bomb) and I have been there just enough times to be able to get around really easily. Though we only had 24 hours until we were going to fly to Bangkok, we certainly made the most of it: Dave got an abbreviated tour of all the best temples in the city, an accidental visit to the three brothers monument (which I made up the history to, but shh don't tell Dave), a taste of Kao Soi (my favorite noodle dish that is supposedly the most delicious in Chiang Mai, where it originated…though I still think it is more delicious in my town), a view of the city from the riverside bar, a visit to Pong and Charin’s restaurant, AND a visit to my favorite sister temples: Wat Doi Suthep and Wat Suan Dok. Whew. Oh and we went shopping.

So I think it’s safe to say Dave left happy, and got to see so much of Thailand in less than one week. When I dropped off Dave in Bangkok for his flight to China, it was conveniently the same day as a rugby touch tournament in Bangkok that the team I play with had organized. I got to play a fullllll day of rugby (after having not played in months) and though I was very rusty in the beginning, by the 6th game I was back in the swing of things, exhausted, but played well enough to impress my teammates. They invited me to break the rules and play in a tackle tournament in a couple weeks. But considering I would be the ONLY girl among all mens teams, I think I may just come to watch.

Back to Sawankhalok, and finally a full week of teaching. Now that I haven’t seen half of my 9th graders since New Years (no joke), it’s time to start thinking about finals. So what do I test my students on if I haven’t had class with them since midterms? It didn’t help that P’Sonya asked me to attend a conference on Wednesday about teaching English in Thailand. I told her I didn’t want to miss my classes, but she said it’s okay. Just give them a worksheet (which I did, and they didn’t do, haha). So I had to miss my favorite class with my 10th graders. I got a stack of diaries back on Thursday back from my girls, saying “I not happy because I miss teacher Korin” or “I hope Korin has good holiday. I miss study English with her”. This diary project was secretly started not to improve their English, but as an ego boost. Then there are my boys, who don’t really understand the diary thing. While Grace and Pop are drawing me pictures, or even better printing out photos from their weekend and pasting them in their diaries, my boys are standing outside in the rain, “waiting for girlfriends”. I don’t know if they were waiting to find girlfriends, or if they were waiting because their girlfriends were coming. I didn’t ask, I just took that as a sign I should walk away so teacher Korin doesn’t cramp their style.

After so much travel over the past few weekends, all I really wanted this weekend was to stay home and sleep. But I did the exact opposite. For some reason I was the only teacher P’Sonya deemed available to take Tide and one of my students, Pleng, to a spelling bee, in BANGKOK. Ugh. And it really would not have been bad at all, if Tide hadn’t been at soldier camp all week. So he hadn’t slept all week, didn’t have a cell phone, and didn’t know what time he would be getting back to Sawankhalok on Friday. He finally got back at 6 in the evening, leaving us to arrive in Bangkok at 2:30 in the morning. I felt so bad for Tide. Then with four hours of sleep, they had to compete in the morning. There were 200 hundred students at the competition, most from private or special English schools. We were the only school from Sukhothai province, so that was exciting. But they only took 50 students from the first round, and we didn’t make it. I thought Tide would have made it, I have definitely seen him spell some of the words they announced. But neither of them wanted to move on to the next round, and I didn’t really want to either. We all just wanted to go get ice cream. I told Tide, if we don’t make it past the first round, we’re getting ice cream. And he said, okay...let’s go now. So we were all secretly happy (or not so secretly actually) that they didn't make it past the first round, and we headed to the nearest Swensons for chocolate ice cream.

After two solid days of being in that van getting to Bangkok and back, I had to wake up early on Sunday to go a wedding. Kai-au’s sister, who I have met on several occasions was getting married. I think the wedding would have been a lot more exciting if I wasn’t so darn tired. I had used up all my excitement cheering on Tide and Pleng in Bangkok. But of course it is always so great to see Kai-au’s family. I got to the hotel early in the morning for the offerings to the monks. Mint (Kaiau’s sister) was dressed in traditional Sukhothai fabrics, and took part in the food offering ceremonies. After the monks ate and finished their portion of the ceremony, everyone formed a line to pour water onto the hands of the bride and groom.


Then there was a lot of picture taking before they changed into western style wedding attire. Then they continued the ceremony in a mix of western traditions mixed with a talk show style presentation. It was strange. But Mint looked fantastic, and I absolutely love her husband. And Kaiau dressed in a bright purple sequence dress.




Freakin love her. Though I was exhausted, it was still an exciting event.

the Fralang in town

I’ve decided (multiple times) that Sawankaholok is the perfect size for me. Since we sit between two large, but less frequented, historical parks, we get a decent share of foreigners- maybe one or two a month. That’s great for me, because I am not the ONLY fralang everyone has ever seen, but I get to play THE fralang in town, when I chose too. When I want a night to myself, I can easily stay home and no one will bother me- except my neighbors. But that is always always welcome. (One night when I went to their house for dinner, their friend called and asked what they were doing. They were so excited to say "speaking English yuu" and put me on the phone to say hello). And when I want to be social, I can just bike to the night market, and it will take me at least 40 minutes to get one thing-because I make multiple stops and talk to all of my “friends”. And I am slowly (or not so slowly really) becoming everyone’s English teacher. Really. Everyone. Even on nights when I have dinner at home or have eaten already, I sometimes go to the night market to visit the woman that makes rice porridge. Her face lights up every time I come by, and she practices over and over again "Hello, how do you do? I'm good, thanksssss. What do you want to eat? Korin very pretty!" (I swear, she asks me how to say these things, I didn't just teach her that last one for fun). And every time I visit and don't get a bowl of soup, she sends me home with a little mini-sized bag of rice soup!

And really, where else but in Sawankhalok can I put together so many pieces of my childhood? I’ve been able to play soccer with my students, while teaching other students how to dance ballet. And then have delicious Thai food three times a day! Am I really being paid to live here?! I just need my family here, and my life would be complete! (and maybe some pets- I really want a Beta fish…)

Last weekend, I took my second trip to Lampang in one week, when the teachers all went for a retirement party. It wasn’t anything special, except for the eight hour bus ride there (Lampang is only two, maybe three hours away), with a stop at the MeMo power plant on the way. This was my favorite part of the trip because it explained how the natural resources in this region (coal) will run out in the next twenty years. They didn’t elaborate on what they plan to do when that happens, but they did elaborate on the multiple districts that rely on MeMo’s coal power plant. Oh, and did you know that this part of Thailand borders a tectonic plate? I certainly did not. And that may or may not be the reason there is an extinct volcano somewhere in Lampang and/or the reason for the hot springs in Jaeson, our next destination.

But by the time we got to the fabulous hot springs park (that I had just explored with Sarah earlier in the week), it was already dark. And since we would be leaving early in the morning, we basically got to Jaeson, hiked up to our cabins with enough snacks and drinks for a party four times our size, hopped in the hot springs for 10 minutes, then headed to our cabins for the night. Worth the eight hour bus trip? Questionable. But we did have a karaoke party (of course) and lots and lots and lots of snacks. Despite the endless stomachs of my co-teachers, we ended up hiking half of the booze and snacks back down to the bus in the morning, as we hopped aboard for the eight hour trip back. We stopped at a temple, and some European style house/museum, and for food several times, before getting back to Sawankhalok. This was the epitome of a Thai trip: lots of getting off and on the bus, and never really feeling like we have reached a real desintation until we get home. But I did have the most delicious duck noodle soup for lunch on the way back. That was probably the second highlight of the trip.

The students started their midterms during the week, which means I had to sign in and be present on campus, but had no classes or official duties other than to entertain myself. Since I had so much free time, P’Sonya assigned me to take some students to an English competition at another school in Pitsanalok. That meant my favorite student that’s not actually my student (Tide!!!) was going to compete, along with some other familiar faces. I coached the spelling bee students all week. We spent almost an hour every day reviewing words before I had my dance rehearsals with Man and Sea (which have been going amazingly, by the way). It was quite a busy week! Even on Thursday morning, as we were on our way to Pitsanalok, I was quizzing them the whole two hour bus ride there. So when we got there, we were surprised (angry) to find out that the competition was for lower lever students, M1-M3 and elementary school students. So the students I had been training (M5 and M6), could not compete. I also had my students from M3 (who I didn’t know were coming until the night before, and I felt bad for never coaching them, as they are actually my students), so they could compete. Oom explained to me that it was our (P’Sonya’s) mistake. No other school made the mistake, P’Sonya just read the sheet wrong. I apologized profusely to the older students that couldn’t compete. I wanted to cry I felt so bad for them. They missed their midterms to be there! One of the girls just whispered, “It’s not your fault. We all know whose fault it is. Ahjan Sonya did this to me last time too”. Apparently this isn’t the first time P’Sonya has sent the wrong students to a competition. She didn’t complain to me, but I could hear in her voice how upset she was about it. But we stayed and let my M3 students compete, while Tide and them went off to study somewhere. Our students did great, considering our buzzer didn’t work for the quiz section, and we were given obnoxiously harder words for the spelling bee than any other school. But we won first place for the spelling bee! (after having to spell cinematic and wholesome…who uses those words?!) and second place for the quiz section. Oom was still appalled at how poorly and unfairly the whole competition was executed, so she announced that we were not staying for the free lunch that the school provided, nor were we going back to Sawananan for the last midterm. We are going shopping at Central. So we got in the van and headed to Central and had McDonalds and Starbucks. Haha.

Following all that drama, we had another three day weekend, because Monday the 16th is Teacher’s Day. I decided to stay in town instead of traveling for the three day weekend, because an English teacher told me the football players wanted me to play with them for a tournament on Teachers Day. Up until then, I thought the men that have been playing with us were just random people from the community. It was somewhat relieving to know that I’ve been playing with teachers this whole time. So they recruited me to the team, thinking if they have a farang on their team, they will win (Seriously, that is what the English teacher told me).

Up until Teachers’ Day, I actually had a surprisingly eventful weekend. Oom’s parents took Steven and I to Sukhothai city to see an orchid festival on Saturday night. There were hundreds of species of orchids on display, including a competition showcasing orchids from around the world. Some were really strange, some miniature, and others taller than me! After browsing for a few hours, we went to their favorite restaurant for a well-deserved feast: laab, tom yum, grilled chicken, this amazing shrimp yam, mixed vegetables, and a very spicy fish. And yes, we ate it allllll.

Then on Sunday, I actually went back to Sukhothai! But this time to the old city. I had run into one of the teachers I play soccer with at the night market, and we started talking about what all people like to talk to me about: how I like Thailand so far. And he told me he wanted to take me and my friends to Sukhothai to see the ancient temples. Well, I don’t have friends, haha, so I made Tara and Be come with me. Be plays soccer too, and knows all the teachers pretty well. So my new teacher friend, Golf, picked the three of us up in the morning and took us to Sukhothai. I realized when I got in his car that this looked oddly like a double date. This is what happens when I pretend I can get by with my Thai and try to arrange things myself with someone who can’t speak English. But I swear, Golf had told me that two other teachers were going to come too, but they didn’t show. (I found out the next day that I was supposed to invite them myself, and they were offended that I didn’t! Woooops) But it turned out to be a really fun day. We rented bikes and wandered around the ancient city. I have been to the ancient city on two occasions, but this was the first time it was at a leisurely pace, and I really got to explore all the temples. I think we all had fun, even Golf who was stuck with three Americans, enjoyed saying things like, “turn left, turn left”, and asked me how to describe everything in English. Once again, always the English teacher.






One funny thing about the park... they were putting up these strange windmill kind of things as we were getting there. We couldn't figure out what the occasion was, but by the time we were leaving the park the central area was covered with these windmill things. And they made the eeriest sound in the wind, it sounded like aliens were coming! It had a really cool effect...but was kind of creepy.



We concluded our adventure, of course, with a trip to Big C, the department store in Sukhothai. Big C is always a big deal, because they have KFC and Swensons (ice cream). One of my students actually wrote in her journal about how for her birthday her dad took her to Big C. She wrote, “but I have bad news. They sold out of mashed potatoes! So pray for me, that next year for my birthday I will eat mashed potatoes!” I didn’t get the mashed potatoes, but I did have long-anticipated mocha almond fudge ice cream!

Teachers’ Day was exactly what a teachers day should be. This is what I was expecting: start playing soccer at 9, like the teachers said, play our three games, if we win, play one more, and be done by noon. This is what happened:

So I went to the school where the tournament was being held at 9:15 to an empty football field, then went back again at 10, then again at 10:30, still waiting for people to show up. Finally around 10:45, I got a call from Tara and Be that they were with the other teachers. I met up with them, and they cracked open the whisky. No joke. Be and I were dressed in our sports clothes, ready to play football, and all the other teachers were dressed casually. Were we really going to play football? We spent an hour or two drinking whisky and eating the free food provided by the school, all the while not really sure if we were actually going to play or not. We were given whisky by the regional superintendent, who makes his own whisky. The teachers had a fun time explaining the “infinity” of whisky that he has. Later, the superintendent came over to drink with us, (keep in mind, this is all before noon), and the Takraw coach introduced us to him, as Kru Tara, Kru Be, and Nangfaa (angel). He has given me that nickname. Then he says to the superintendent (and this is in English), “She nangfaa. For me”. Tara and I burst out laughing, and actually laughed about it all day. (When I first met the Takraw coach, he asked me to teach him English. When I agreed, he kept saying a word in Thai I didn't know. He asked one of the students to translate, and the kid blurted out "angel". I had told Tara this story, and we figured it was just a mistranslation, and joked about it. But apparently that really was what he meant to call me!)

By 1:00, I wandered towards the football field to see if there was actually anything going on. The Sawananan female teachers spotted me, and dragged me over to play chairball. I hope this sport doesn’t exist outside of Teachers Day because it is really stupid and does not deserve to be a real sport. It’s like basketball, except on a field rather than a court, and you shoot into a basket that a person standing on a chair is holding up. They made me practice with them last week. I figured I’d play with them, since I wasn’t doing anything else, and drinking whisky in the middle of a hot, sunny day before playing a sport quickly lost its appeal. The game nonchalantly started while I was still sitting down putting my shoes on, but they threw me in anyway, just shouting “Not rugby! Not same!” I am pretty sure I won the game for them, which was not surprising considered I was playing with a bunch of older women, the youngest maybe 40 years old. I feel like it was kind of cheating having me on their team. But they kept having me play…all four games.

We ended up winning the championship, though the last team we played was pretty good. My team wanted me to cover the other team’s best player, while playing forward center- which meant I had to sprint across the field every time there was a change of possession. But it worked- we won. Meanwhile, the boys finally started to play football. Their game started during a chairball match, so I could only play with them for the last five minutes of a game there was no way they could recover from. And that was it! They lost the one game and couldn’t play again! I would say that they lost because they were taking shots of whisky up until the game, but my chairball team was drinking beer between games too. I wonder what Teacher’s Day in America would be like.

Festivities to Welcome a New Year

So two weeks ago I had Man in my 11th grade class who copied word for word from another students journal. Okay, well in the same class, I have one student who always writes extremely well. I was reading over the journals this week, and I came across hers and I wanted to cry because it was so cute! I started reading it to Steven, and three sentences in he says "its from the internet". I ignored his pessimism, and kept reading, thinking that he didn't know what he was talking about. I got to the second paragraph, and I realized there was no way she really could have written it...so I reluctantly followed Steven's advice and typed it into google. She totally copied it! So I made a big deal about it in the office, saying how disappointed I am in Pair, she always writes so well. And then!! This is the best part. I write a big zero on it, and put her notebook aside, and out falls a piece of folded paper! I open it, and it was the quote she found online, printed out. Can you believe it?! Haha, Steven and I died laughing. And she didn't even copy it down correctly. She wrote "even" instead of "eve". Too funny. So I stapled the print-out in her notebook. Oom says copying is in their genes. I am starting to believe it.

I’ve spent an exceptional amount of time with my neighbors this week, possibly due to so many random cancellations of things around town, like aerobics, any sort of after school sports, and well, school itself. They discovered my newfound love for Takraw, and I was excited to learn that the guys play every day after work. We finally found a day I could join them to play. We got to the court, but unfortunately no other people came because everyone is off doing New Years preparations or traveling. So the four of us played badminton until it was too dark to see. They picked up some fallen coconuts on the way home, and cracked one open for me. After cleaning up a bit, we headed to dinner at the night market. I had had a delicious dinner the night before at their house that the wife, Waen, made. I can’t name anything, but there was a dish with barbeque pork, some raw shrimp to dip in a green chili sauce, and something really really spicy. The food from the night market doesn’t stand a chance to Waen’s cooking, but it's a treat spending time with them anyway. Then they took me to play snooker- a Thai billiard’s game. The rules and the balls are different, though not confusing. I really don’t like this game. My score at the first game was minus 11, and I topped that the next round with a score of minus 17. Too bad it’s not golf. But I was happy to be part of their evening adventures.

Even though I spent the same hours on campus last week as a “normal” school week, I taught 4 ½ of my 12 classes. And oddly, I still felt really busy. There was a lot of running around preparing for New Years. Every class at the school had to prepare a table to sell something for the New Years festival on campus, even the 7th graders! They had to sell something to make back their money and some profit, with pretty much no money from the school to help. A good exercise in entrepreneurship…as well as child labor to make money for the school. Some were really great- my 11th graders grilled their own banana bread snacks, and my 9th graders made coconut ice cream. The best was the lowest section of 12th graders, Mattyom 6/9. These kids stopped caring about school a long time ago. We walked past their empty table, and burst out laughing at their sign: “M6/9??” How perfect. P’Sonya teaches this class, and in the beginning of the semester there were a good 15 students that came to class. I peak in now when I teach after her, and there is an average of 3 students that now show up. I’m sooo glad I don’t have to teach Mattyom 6.

But I do love hanging out with them.


I spent Friday (the day before New Years Eve) bouncing between my 9th and my 11th graders and my neighbors, then New Years Eve I pretended I was in M6/1 all night. And I found out, Tide can dance! And he can dance really well. After his routine in “Sawananan’s Got Talent”, I was having dinner with all the M6/1’s. Tide came over, and asked, “Teacher, awesome mai?” But he said “awesome” in a Thai accent, so I actually had no idea what he was asking me. I had to ask Gafae what he was saying. It took the third time for me to hear “awesome”. Poor kids can’t win with me, I can’t understand when they talk to me in Thai or in English!

I watched the high school bands and talent show performances all night, and stayed at school till midnight. I did countdown with M6 kids (though countdown was at 11:52, instead of midnight. Why of all things in Thailand is this the only thing that has been early?), and we set off sparklers together, released a candle lantern, and took many many (many many many) pictures!


We even had a semi-impressive fireworks display, set off from different parts of campus. I loved watching the bands play- because it made me feel like I was in high school. As I was leaving on Friday night, I ran into one of my troublemakers, who yelled “Hello teacher!!!!” as he ran to join the mosh pit in front of the stage. And I am pretty sure right then I witnessed Thailand’s version of ska, and it was great. Ah, it made me miss Kate Tomaskovic so much!!!

On New Years morning, I joined my new adopted family to “make merit” as they kept calling it. They explained that on New Years morning, you should “make merit” to the monks, and invited for me to join. I anticipated that we were going to a temple, but as with many experiences with Kai-au’s family, it was a day of unexpected events. They picked me up early, and took me to Kaiau’s grandfather’s house where there was enough food out for 100 people. Her mother was already there, putting out dozens of plates of food. I didn’t know who the food was for, but I helped put out six servings of each of the 8 courses onto a mat. By the way, one serving was like 12 satay sticks, or a whole fish with two boiled eggs… basically more food than one person could eat in a week, I think. And there was pleeeeenty left over. Some of the other courses were chicken soup, chicken yam, pickled cabbage, coconut custard, and lots of rice. When I ran out of things to do and questions to ask in Thai, I kept myself amused by making each plate’s fish face the same way, with hard boiled eggs making the same shape around the fin, and the cucumber salad and peanut sauce on the correct sides of the satay. Hehe. It was a very aesthetically pleasing display in the end. And it kept our guests entertained. Sometimes I like to blend in, but sometimes its fun to be “the fralang”, that does fralangy things.

So by 10 AM or so, many members from Kaiau’s family had shown up, maybe about 25 all together. I respectfully said hello to everyone that came in, then continued my business of lining plates with painful precision. When they heard Kaiau and I speaking in English, she told me her family was confused because they thought I was Thai! And they didn’t know what mysterious language we were speaking. Haha. I must be getting some sun here to be mistaken as Thai =) Though I didn’t quite sneak by the monks without being noticed straightaway as a fralang. At around 11, the monks arrived (another surprise!)

There were 11 of them, and they sat down and started to chant. I recognized some of the chants from the morning announcements that the students do every morning, but that didn’t help me gain a clue in what was going on. Regardless it was enchanting listening to their echoing chants. One monk came in with a goofy look on his face, obviously late for the offering, and then took over the chanting once he got settled in. We then interrupted my perfectly lined plates to bring the food over to where the monks were sitting, and watched and waited while they ate, as is the standard procedure when you present an offering. Monks, by the way, cannot eat after noon, so these offerings must happen in the morning. Once they had eaten maybe a quarter or less of the food that we had given them, we gathered their plates. Since women cannot touch monks, I stayed in the background taking the plates back to where the rest of the food was, keeping my distance from the monks. Then the one monk that came in late spotted me! And gasped, “fralang!”, to which all the other monks chorused “pasa angrit, pasa angrit” (English, English). The head monk then asked me where I came from, and if I like basketball. From then on, I was the center of his attention. When he came to splash holy water on us, he giggled before he splashed me, muttering something about fralang. Then as he was finishing up, and the monks were getting ready to leave, he came over to me and said, “I am a monk. Not monkey!” I thought it was the funniest thing I had ever heard, but maybe that’s because I was overcome by his awesomeness, and everything that he said to me I thought was hilarious. Once the monks left, we were able to make a small dent in the food that remained. Kaiau’s family slowly trickled out, and we were left with the piles of dishes. We cleaned and cleaned and cleaned, then napped. =)

Sadly, that was the last time I’ll be able to hang out with Kaiau’s family for a while because she had to go back to Bangkok to start school. I think meeting Kaiau is the coolest thing that has happened since I’ve been in Sawankhalok, and it’s fortunate I think for both of us that the flood closed her school for two months (well not so fortunate now that she is back at school and has to make up all the work!) But I have noticed an amazing improvement in her English from talking to me every night, and she gave me a family =) as well as drilled me with Thai vocabulary. She’s only been gone a few days now, and I already miss her terribly!

With my two extra days off from school this week, I decided to sneak up to Lampang to visit my friend Sarah. I really just wanted to go on an adventure on my own. It sounded really exciting to get on a bus by myself and go somewhere. Well, it stopped being exciting the second I stepped onto the overcrowded bus and had to stand for the first hour of the trip, and share a two-seater with two large people for the remaining three hours. But it was well worth the trip to see Sarah. We didn’t do much. She showed me around her school, and her beautiful house that I am uber jealous of, and we had mango somtam and talked for hoursssss. The next day, her host teacher, or rather her host mother, took us to a hot springs park about two hours away. I will talk more about the park next week, as I will incidentally be visiting the same park with the English department this upcoming weekend, and will hopefully get a better idea of how there could possibly be a geothermal hotspot in the middle of Thailand. After the two hour windy drive there, then back, I was really not looking forward to standing on another 4 hour bus ride back to Sawankhalok. I reluctantly waited at the crowded bus station, and rushed to be the first on my bus when it arrived (and when I say I rushed, I really mean Sarah’s host mom pushed me to the front through the crowd of people glaring at the fralang so that I would get a seat). In the rush of things, I noticed that my bus wasn’t purple like the one I took from Sawankhalok, but did say Sukhothai on it….well no time to worry about it, because the bus was already leaving- and I had a window seat! And no one sat next to me! I was amazed at how uncrowded the bus was, and had an uninterrupted ride home. Some of this uninterrupted time was spent in paranoia, telling myself I had probably gotten on the wrong bus for it to be so empty, and I would have to end up calling my cousin Muak in Sukhothai to crash on his smelly couch for the night. But things were going my way that day, and I made it to Sawankhalok, piece of cake, and caught a motorcycle taxi home. It must have been from all the merit I had made on New Years Day.

Now back to school. My task for the upcoming week: Man, my 11th grader that copies and cannot speak English has volunteered himself and the laziest/smartest girl in the class to be victim of my dance classes that I will be starting next week, that will culminate in a performance in front of the school on Valentine’s Day. You should witness the conversations I am trying to have with Man, discussing the music, the dance, and when we will meet up. These rehearsals are going to be great.

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