a few of my 9th graders came up to me after class this morning.
"teacher, you know dublin high school?"
dublin high school? seriously? did those words just come out of your mouth?
"yeah. in california?"
"yes. you know?"
the ghetto known as scrublin? DUH i know it.
"YESSS! it's very close to my house! i run to there! it's so close to my home. why do you know it?"
the group of girls giggled and pointed to one specific girl.
"her kik!" (kik=not quite boyfriend, more than a friend; also a "little thing on the side," especially for married men)
the one girl shook her head no no no, everyone squealed, then the group of girls started to leave. i called the girl who knew dublin high school back.
"wait, wait. why do you know dublin high school?"
"my neighbor."
"ooohhh. yes, it's really close to where i live."
"ohhh, can i come to america with you?"
"yeahhh, sure! we'll go to dublin high school."
and with that, she was off.
dublin, california. whodathunk. so you san ramon friends, if you see a thai kid walking around, say sawatdee kaa/krup. (kaa=girls, krup=boys...whatever, the kid will be shocked if you even say "sawatdee")
29.1.10
28.1.10
ants in the office
they're ferocious beasts at school. if we leave food out--sometimes even wrapped candy--the ants find their way to it within an hour. they form a strong line from the food on the table to god knows where and march march march. they must have the most incredible communication system. "hey, guys! they left some cake out on the table! let's gooooooo!" i swear, at least twice a week we have to clear off the table and toss out a good chunk of food cuz of these blasted little creatures.
this morning we came in and there's a line of ants going down the aisle way between the desks (our office has six rows, four desks in each row, with an aisle going down the middle). i think there were a million ants there this morning, filing from noon's desk in the first row to tahsh's desk in the last row. noon put something scrumptious in her trash can and they must've found it over night. tahsh had nothing aside from papers on her desk, but the ants were determined to find something--anything. the little guys were really determined an hour ago, marching in what looked like pairs all the way down the aisle. but now they're looking distracted--they're breaking into groups and investigating their own situations. people started stomping the floor, but other than looking at the ants and wishing they weren't there, we don't seem to have a good solution to the problem.
lol. now lois is dropping water on them. that's not a real solution, lois.
this morning we came in and there's a line of ants going down the aisle way between the desks (our office has six rows, four desks in each row, with an aisle going down the middle). i think there were a million ants there this morning, filing from noon's desk in the first row to tahsh's desk in the last row. noon put something scrumptious in her trash can and they must've found it over night. tahsh had nothing aside from papers on her desk, but the ants were determined to find something--anything. the little guys were really determined an hour ago, marching in what looked like pairs all the way down the aisle. but now they're looking distracted--they're breaking into groups and investigating their own situations. people started stomping the floor, but other than looking at the ants and wishing they weren't there, we don't seem to have a good solution to the problem.
lol. now lois is dropping water on them. that's not a real solution, lois.
25.1.10
you're sunburned
i'm gonna get into some samet stories but first i have to tell you what just happened to me.
at 12:40, the bell rang for 6th period. here they just have one bell to both end one period and start the next, so there's no passing period. this means class starts around 10 minutes after the bell rings, depending on the class (they're grouped by intelligence here, so the smarter classes generally like to start earlier, but the less smart/generally more naughty classes are still filing in 12 minutes after the bell). so it's five minutes after the bell, and i have no students in the classroom. ten minutes after the bell and still not a one. i start to get a little worried, but not too bad--it is the period just after lunch, so i'll give you some time to clean up lunch and pee and whatever.
but then it's 12:55 and not a SINGLE student out of a 40-person class has shown up. a similar thing was happening to tahsh, so we went back into the office and joked with the thai teachers about how late the kids were, but eventually her kids showed up. and mine never did. so i went back into the office to actually find out if anybody knew where these kids were. after some fussing and shuffling through lists, i heard the signature "ahhhhh" sounds out of two of the thai teachers.
"they cook last night. no come today." ohhhh. there's this big week-long festival (don chedi) and every night, some students go to the festival to cook/sell food to raise money for the school. they stay until midnight. this late night apparently warrants an entire day off of school. so i'm not teaching this period.
koh samet
i know i'm not supposed to say this, but i think samet's been my favorite island so far. it's just what i've been wanting in a thai island--porcelain white sand beaches, glistening blue water, just enough waves to make that signature ocean sound, perfect temperature water (the water's a really big deal to me, apparently). phi phi had plenty of things that were nice and were legitimately beautiful, but samet...ohhh, samet. it's a smaller island and, if you're up to it, seems completely walkable (though we took song taus a lot cuz the walk from our hostel was quite far from the main beaches on the east side). lexa, ally, maddy, ian, sam, and i shacked up at baan puu paan on the north side of the island on ao noi na, and it was just great. our rooms were right on the ocean, so we woke up to the little waves breaking on the shore and a lovely view of the gulf of thailand.
ohhhh and we could actually see stars! we hardly ever see stars in suphan (i have no idea why because we don't have clouds either...maybe something about humidity? i don't know, science is hard). it was no shocker that both friday and saturday night ended on the pier staring at the sky.
it rained on friday and a little bit on sunday, but lucky for us, saturday was completely clear and stunningly beautiful all day. we walked down to tubtim resort's beach on the east side and parked it for hours. we swam out to a floating dock, took about a thousand pictures with maddy's underwater digital camera (his name is toby and i think he's becoming one of my best friends), had some delicious food/drink, and had essentially the quintessential beach day.
you know how i know it was a classic beach day? i got this intense sunburn. it's not a smooth one all over my body; it's all blotchy and weird and only on certain spots of my back. yes, i put on sunscreen. yes, i reapplied my sunscreen. (stuff white people like: pointing out other white people's sunburns.) my newest theory, after looking at a picture of myself from the back, is that i sweated off my sunscreen, which is highly possible because i sat and read my book in the sun for about 45 minutes and perspired the whole entire time.
anyway, lots of us got our fair share of sun, but nbd. we went to the west side of the island to watch the sun go down (see fbook for about a million pictures of this), then went back to the hostel to shower up and regroup before the night.
and oh, boy, did we need some regrouping before this night. we didn't know it at the time, but we did.
we went to naga bar on lizzy's recommendation. lizzy is the owner of baan puu paan, and she's scottish and absolutely wild. she's loud and loves to shout anything to you, appropriate or otherwise. when we saw her around 7 pm on saturday night at the hostel, she was already wasted and repeating herself.
you can imagine what state she was in when we saw her at the bar three hours later. she had a bottle of vodka and all the guys at the bar--including george, who had to be at least 90 years old--were loving her. professionalism is not wholly required in thailand. did i say i love this country?
the next day went pretty smoothly and after a quick speed boat trip from samet to ban phe (OH MY GOD i love boating), a long van ride to bangkok, and an unsafely fast van ride to suphan, we were home in our apartments by 9:30 pm. i'm ready to do it again.
p.s. a french guy ended up tagging along with us, and hearing him speak french made me miss the language. it's so much prettier than thai.
at 12:40, the bell rang for 6th period. here they just have one bell to both end one period and start the next, so there's no passing period. this means class starts around 10 minutes after the bell rings, depending on the class (they're grouped by intelligence here, so the smarter classes generally like to start earlier, but the less smart/generally more naughty classes are still filing in 12 minutes after the bell). so it's five minutes after the bell, and i have no students in the classroom. ten minutes after the bell and still not a one. i start to get a little worried, but not too bad--it is the period just after lunch, so i'll give you some time to clean up lunch and pee and whatever.
but then it's 12:55 and not a SINGLE student out of a 40-person class has shown up. a similar thing was happening to tahsh, so we went back into the office and joked with the thai teachers about how late the kids were, but eventually her kids showed up. and mine never did. so i went back into the office to actually find out if anybody knew where these kids were. after some fussing and shuffling through lists, i heard the signature "ahhhhh" sounds out of two of the thai teachers.
"they cook last night. no come today." ohhhh. there's this big week-long festival (don chedi) and every night, some students go to the festival to cook/sell food to raise money for the school. they stay until midnight. this late night apparently warrants an entire day off of school. so i'm not teaching this period.
koh samet
i know i'm not supposed to say this, but i think samet's been my favorite island so far. it's just what i've been wanting in a thai island--porcelain white sand beaches, glistening blue water, just enough waves to make that signature ocean sound, perfect temperature water (the water's a really big deal to me, apparently). phi phi had plenty of things that were nice and were legitimately beautiful, but samet...ohhh, samet. it's a smaller island and, if you're up to it, seems completely walkable (though we took song taus a lot cuz the walk from our hostel was quite far from the main beaches on the east side). lexa, ally, maddy, ian, sam, and i shacked up at baan puu paan on the north side of the island on ao noi na, and it was just great. our rooms were right on the ocean, so we woke up to the little waves breaking on the shore and a lovely view of the gulf of thailand.
ohhhh and we could actually see stars! we hardly ever see stars in suphan (i have no idea why because we don't have clouds either...maybe something about humidity? i don't know, science is hard). it was no shocker that both friday and saturday night ended on the pier staring at the sky.
it rained on friday and a little bit on sunday, but lucky for us, saturday was completely clear and stunningly beautiful all day. we walked down to tubtim resort's beach on the east side and parked it for hours. we swam out to a floating dock, took about a thousand pictures with maddy's underwater digital camera (his name is toby and i think he's becoming one of my best friends), had some delicious food/drink, and had essentially the quintessential beach day.
you know how i know it was a classic beach day? i got this intense sunburn. it's not a smooth one all over my body; it's all blotchy and weird and only on certain spots of my back. yes, i put on sunscreen. yes, i reapplied my sunscreen. (stuff white people like: pointing out other white people's sunburns.) my newest theory, after looking at a picture of myself from the back, is that i sweated off my sunscreen, which is highly possible because i sat and read my book in the sun for about 45 minutes and perspired the whole entire time.
anyway, lots of us got our fair share of sun, but nbd. we went to the west side of the island to watch the sun go down (see fbook for about a million pictures of this), then went back to the hostel to shower up and regroup before the night.
and oh, boy, did we need some regrouping before this night. we didn't know it at the time, but we did.
we went to naga bar on lizzy's recommendation. lizzy is the owner of baan puu paan, and she's scottish and absolutely wild. she's loud and loves to shout anything to you, appropriate or otherwise. when we saw her around 7 pm on saturday night at the hostel, she was already wasted and repeating herself.
you can imagine what state she was in when we saw her at the bar three hours later. she had a bottle of vodka and all the guys at the bar--including george, who had to be at least 90 years old--were loving her. professionalism is not wholly required in thailand. did i say i love this country?
the next day went pretty smoothly and after a quick speed boat trip from samet to ban phe (OH MY GOD i love boating), a long van ride to bangkok, and an unsafely fast van ride to suphan, we were home in our apartments by 9:30 pm. i'm ready to do it again.
p.s. a french guy ended up tagging along with us, and hearing him speak french made me miss the language. it's so much prettier than thai.
22.1.10
fortune tellers
in class last week and this, both my 9th graders and 10th graders have been making cootie catchers/fortune tellers (why did i always grow up calling them cootie catchers? they don't catch cooties at all). what a great opportunity to practice the future tense and learn about life, right?
most of the kids write something like "you will be beautiful" or "you will be rich" or "you will get a boyfriend" or "you will meet your true love." (except with more grammatical mistakes.) but one 9th-grade girl had something different....
girl 1: "pick a color."
girl 2: "pink"
g1: "p-i-n-k. pick a number."
g2: "seven"
g1: "pick another number."
g2: "five"
g1: "pick another number."
g2: "four"
g1 (opens the flap of her fortune teller and starts laughing hysterically and a bit maniacally): "you will be mexican!! hahahahah"
me: "what, is that really bad?"
g1 and g2: "yesssss!"
and i thought being racist toward mexicans was america's own special thing.
p.s. going to koh samet this weekend. i'm only really bringing books, games, bathing suits, flip flops, and my sarong. it's all i'll need.
most of the kids write something like "you will be beautiful" or "you will be rich" or "you will get a boyfriend" or "you will meet your true love." (except with more grammatical mistakes.) but one 9th-grade girl had something different....
girl 1: "pick a color."
girl 2: "pink"
g1: "p-i-n-k. pick a number."
g2: "seven"
g1: "pick another number."
g2: "five"
g1: "pick another number."
g2: "four"
g1 (opens the flap of her fortune teller and starts laughing hysterically and a bit maniacally): "you will be mexican!! hahahahah"
me: "what, is that really bad?"
g1 and g2: "yesssss!"
and i thought being racist toward mexicans was america's own special thing.
p.s. going to koh samet this weekend. i'm only really bringing books, games, bathing suits, flip flops, and my sarong. it's all i'll need.
21.1.10
the joy of packages
this week packages from nat AND my fam came. there's nothing better than a good package from home, or even a handwritten letter in a real envelope and everything. a couple times i've gotten mail on a particularly rough day and it absolutely made everything better. getting little bits of love from home helps me remember what a phenomenal support system i have back in america, which i desperately need from time to time. so to everyone who's sent me anything with any amount of postage on it, thank you. i appreciate it more than you know (or than i can express).
oh god, you guys, that was a sort of emotional paragraph wasn't it? GROSS. actually, in all honesty, i feel like i'm more emotional over here than i was at home...or maybe it's just because i'm not as busy, i have more time to actually stop and dwell in those emotions for a while...who knows. just be reassured, people who thought i was an emotional robot, that i'm apparently not.
in a completely non-thailand-related note, "just dance" will never be overplayed and it will always make me want to be in downtown sb on a thursday night.
p.s. you know how i know i'm becoming a real thai person? i messed up some labels on my calendar and i reached for some liquid paper (wite out).
oh god, you guys, that was a sort of emotional paragraph wasn't it? GROSS. actually, in all honesty, i feel like i'm more emotional over here than i was at home...or maybe it's just because i'm not as busy, i have more time to actually stop and dwell in those emotions for a while...who knows. just be reassured, people who thought i was an emotional robot, that i'm apparently not.
in a completely non-thailand-related note, "just dance" will never be overplayed and it will always make me want to be in downtown sb on a thursday night.
p.s. you know how i know i'm becoming a real thai person? i messed up some labels on my calendar and i reached for some liquid paper (wite out).
20.1.10
happy and rich or beautiful and poor?
body image is a tricky subject over here. i'm not sure if it's because i work at a mostly all girls school, or if it's because my office is made up of about 20 women and one man (poor, poor man), or what it is, but it seems like people have a very strict sense of what a beautiful body type is, and they're really aware of what is not beautiful.
stick-skinny girls are beautiful. if you have some fat on your arms, if you have some round cheeks, if you squeeze your big butt into your pants, if you have a little roll hanging over the top of your skirt, you are in danger of being labeled "the fat one." seriously, if we're referencing one thai teacher in our office with another thai teacher, they have no problem going, "oh, are you talking about the fat one?"
my students will sometimes call me over just to point out how fat their friends are (thai students seem to be notorious for throwing their friends under the bus and embarrassing the hell out of them whenever they can). they'll point to the fat ones and go, "ugly! ugly!" i don't know if i've ever heard a thai person call anyone even slightly overweight gorgeous (save for white people...we're always beautiful to them).
i was doing would-you-rather questions with my 10th graders a while back, and the question was "would you rather be poor and happy, or rich and sad?" out of probably 400 students, maybe 20 said the poor/happy option. today i read this article about happiness with my smart 12th graders, and it posed a similar (but more detailed) would-you-rather situation. out of the five girls that were there, three definitively chose the handsome, rich, lonely, stressed situation over the ugly, poor, surrounded by friends, happy situation.
in all cases, these students made their choices not based on money, but on looks. when i pushed the kids for why they picked what they did, they all went, "you get to be handsome! drop-dead gorgeous!"
i've been trying to figure out a way to do a lesson on beauty and confidence, and how any body type can be sexy if you just own it, but i can't figure out a good way to make it interesting and not just nicki lectures her students on how to be better people. *sigh*
stick-skinny girls are beautiful. if you have some fat on your arms, if you have some round cheeks, if you squeeze your big butt into your pants, if you have a little roll hanging over the top of your skirt, you are in danger of being labeled "the fat one." seriously, if we're referencing one thai teacher in our office with another thai teacher, they have no problem going, "oh, are you talking about the fat one?"
my students will sometimes call me over just to point out how fat their friends are (thai students seem to be notorious for throwing their friends under the bus and embarrassing the hell out of them whenever they can). they'll point to the fat ones and go, "ugly! ugly!" i don't know if i've ever heard a thai person call anyone even slightly overweight gorgeous (save for white people...we're always beautiful to them).
i was doing would-you-rather questions with my 10th graders a while back, and the question was "would you rather be poor and happy, or rich and sad?" out of probably 400 students, maybe 20 said the poor/happy option. today i read this article about happiness with my smart 12th graders, and it posed a similar (but more detailed) would-you-rather situation. out of the five girls that were there, three definitively chose the handsome, rich, lonely, stressed situation over the ugly, poor, surrounded by friends, happy situation.
in all cases, these students made their choices not based on money, but on looks. when i pushed the kids for why they picked what they did, they all went, "you get to be handsome! drop-dead gorgeous!"
i've been trying to figure out a way to do a lesson on beauty and confidence, and how any body type can be sexy if you just own it, but i can't figure out a good way to make it interesting and not just nicki lectures her students on how to be better people. *sigh*
18.1.10
i can shop for hours
i really really can. and at the same stores, too. i think i can actually be pretty annoying to shop with, because i like to think for a really long time about a product before i purchase it. i'd prefer to pick it up, inspect it, really debate my needs vs. my wants, think about how much money i have, think about what i want to spend my money on that weekend, think about what i want to spend my money on in life, think about what i want to do in life...you get it. i like to put a lot of thought into most of my purchases, especially when they're for myself (i have no problem spending money on other people. i have no idea why). but when i shop with other people, i try to limit this because 1) i don't wanna be that crazy annoying friend and 2) it's not a form of shopping that's particularly conducive to hanging out with friends.
but luckily, this weekend in amphuwa was all about my semi-neurotic form of shopping. the plan was to get to amphuwa on saturday in the early afternoon, shop in the market for a few hours, go see some other stuff, come back to the market to shop/eat stuff, go sleep, come back to the market to shop/eat stuff.
perrrrrrrrfect. we probably spent seven hours in this mile-long (ish) market, and i was lovin' it. the atmosphere was laid back, there were snacks everywhere, coffee was abound, and there was SO much girly stuff (as in shirts and jewelry and decorations, not tampons and bras, as a friend guessed).
in that other "see stuff" time, we took a boat ride to see some fireflies--my first time ever to see the bugs with the light-up butts. ally and tessa were shocked that maddy and i had never seen'em. only in disneyland (55). anyway, they were excellent. by the time we got on the boat, we were exhausted from hours of shopping, so the relaxation of the boat tooling along the river probably added to the goodness of the experience. actually, in retrospect, though i rave about the shopping, that boat ride was probably my favorite part of the weekend.
WAIT. the monkey. the monkey was a really great part of the weekend. so we stayed at this guesthouse place about a 10-minute drive away from the market, so it was a little bit away from the hustle and bustle of everything. we were surrounded by houses, so while we were wasting some time on saturday, we went next door, which was just some lady's house. (or maybe she was actually the owner of the guesthouses, and i just never knew. someone who was on the trip, please correct me.) she and her family said they had a pet monkey, but it wasn't around when we came over. after a tour of the house, lo and behold, the monkey came out. he noticed he was the center of attention and maaaaaaaaaaan did he take advantage. he started swinging from tree branches, doing flips, flopping on the ground, playing with/pulling on the pet dogs, kicking it with the talking bird, and generally proving the point that monkeys would make awesome pets. he would even take breaks to go hug his thai family.
our goal is to get back to amphuwa just to stay at the monkey house and befriend the monkey.
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