Friday night Noi texted me to see if I wanted to go to the market on Sunday in Tak.  She said it was a big market with a lot of plants.  I need to go to Tak to go to the big Walmart like store so I said yes.  Then she said “See you tomorrow at 7:00”.  So I texted her back to see if she meant tomorrow or Sunday.  She confirmed Sunday.

Saturday morning I decided to sleep in and they I was going to spend the whole day working on lesson plans.  No such luck.  At 7:20 I heard yelling and horn honking.  It wasn’t real loud over the fan I had on, but I heard it and realized that Noi had meant Saturday, not Sunday.  She has probably now woken up all the teachers.  I ran downstairs and asked her to give me 5 minutes.  I threw on a pair of shorts, a t shirt and a hat and ran out the door.  The market was on the street next to the river and had a nice breeze coming off the river.  It was a very comfortable temperature until 9:30.  Then it was as if someone had thrown me in an oven and it became so uncomfortable.  The market was fun.  It had every fruit tree, plant, herb, and fish you could ever want.  It also had a lot of clothing too.  It was fascinating watching Noi try to decide on anything.  It took about 20 minutes for her to pick out 4 lime trees, going back and forth with the man selling them.  It took her about just as long to pick out three shirts.  After the market we went to Tesco Lotus and I bought granola, cheese, salad dressing and a bunch of other things I can’t get in my town.  We had pizza for lunch.  She let me order since pizza is not her thing.  I  ordered a pepperoni pizza.  She ate it, but I don’t think she liked it much.  On the way home we stopped by a big temple in Ban Tak.  We didn’t stay long.  I’ll have to go back sometime.  By the time I got home it was 2:30 and I had done no lesson planning.  I was feeling overwhelmed by the amount of work I have to do and by the money problems I’m having.  Life just felt impossible.  So, I turned on the air conditioning and took a nap for an hour.  I never nap because I usually feel worse after a nap.  I still felt bad, but I got up and went to the coffee shop and worked there until they closed.  I felt a lot better once I had started working on the lesson plans.  I went and got a massage after that.  All the yuck I had been feeling is definately being held in every part of my body.  I got home around 9:00 and went to bed.

Today I spent most of the day doing lesson plans.  I took a break to have lunch with Tip, but probably should have just kept working as it took way too long to get lunch with her.  I had hoped to get this week’s and part of next week’s lesson plans done this weekend, but only got this week’s.  Still, that was the most important part.  My mood was much better today even though I didn’t get as much done as I had hoped.

A guy I had been matched with on Tinder when I was in Chiang Mai contacted me and we texted back and forth a bit.  He’s riding his bike from Chiang Mai to Phuket.  He left Chiang Mai on Friday.  Since he will be passing pretty close to here, he’s going to come visit me.   That should be on Tuesday.  Still no one on Tinder in my area.

Of course I keep questioning why I don’t like teaching or living here.  In theory, it shouldn’t matter where I live or what I do.  One piece of the puzzle that keeps coming up is that I don’t like the concrete walls that are around schools and government buildings here.  Something about concrete, heat and walls reminds me of my early childhood.  I have no idea what happened, but this is not the first time I have had this memory.  And by memory, I don’t mean that I remember what happened, but that I have the felt sense memory of being lonely and unhappy, hot and something about concrete.  Then I had the thought that I was pretty unhappy through most of my childhood.  And now I’m teaching teenagers.  Huh….

Now I’m just listening to something crawling around in my ceiling and wondering how I’m ever going to sleep.

(c) All rights reserved Kimberly Fiore