nicki helps ogee go to college

tash, maddy, and i tutor this boy, ogee, three times a week. we switch off, so tash takes mondays, i'm on tuesdays, and maddy's on thursdays. we started two weeks ago, but cuz of miscommunication and his fancy trip to europe, i just started today. when we got back from school at 5:20 (tuesday and wednesday we teach an extra smart class after school), he was already sitting outside yoo dee mee sook on his motorbike, ready to whisk me away to get some english learnin' in him.

"oh...i've never been on a motorbike before," i said a bit nervously before i climbed on.
"oh, haha. it's fun."

i awkwardly grabbed his sides and away we went. it was a jerky ride and that, paired with the fact that i didn't have a solid grip on him (no way was i gonna hug this high school kid's stomach upon first introduction), probably made me look like a fool. when we came up on the intersection, who do we see on the motorbike next to us but kanchana (my coordinator at school) and her husband.

i laughed because hey, there's my boss and here i am on the back of a motorbike with a 17-year-old boy and i'm not wearing a helmet and there kanachana is laughing at me and ogee together, so why not join in.

just when i got used to being passenger (i was just mastering the leaning techniques), we got to his house. it's HUGE. i'm used to the houses around here being more like modest townhouses that look a little weathered from the storm and well loved. but this house...i kicked off my shoes, entered through a sliding glass door, walked between leather couches and a big flat-screen tv, and sat down in a room that overlooked a porch with a pond on one side and maybe a fountain of some kind on the other.

these people must be loaded.

ogee's a tight kid. he's a senior in high school, looking to go to university to become a civil engineer. he wants to design houses. he's a master at math and physics, but can't get english down (when he told me this, i reassured him that he wasn't alone--math/science people are notoriously bad at english. no offense, math friends). but he knows that if he wants to pass the standardized test to get into university (think SAT, thai-style), he needs to understand a lot more english then he does now. he really wants to go to university. REALLY wants to. i told him that if he really wants to and really tries, he'll get there.

we chatted about the collectivist nature of thais vs the individualism all over america, about whether he wants to get married or not (one of the first questions he asked me was if i was single, not because he wants to date me, but because in thailand that's a normal introductory question), if he wants to have kids (he doesn't--like i said, he just wants to build houses), and he wants to live in suphanburi forever.

around 7 pm, his sister brought a plate of fried rice to me. i asked ogee if i should eat with them at the table (his sister and mom had just sat down to dinner at the table in the dining room), and he gave me this non-answer--of course, he's thai--so i just sort of said i wanted to eat with them, carried my plate to the table, and ate a fairly quiet meal with the three of them.

after dinner was through, he drove me home in his family's bmw. at least that's what it smelled like. that, or a cadillac. something grandparents own. thailand has imported that exact smell.