So, Mae is leaving.  She is the Burmese language teacher I use to share an office/classroom with.  She is one of my favorite people here.  Even though she doesn’t speak much English, her ability to understand my sign language and gesturing is quite amazing.  I will miss Mae.  One of the most wonderful things I’ve seen happened this morning.  Noi interrupted my class and told me someone wanted to talk to me.  Out in the hall Chelon was waiting for me.  She had a piece of paper with what she wanted to say to me written out in English so she could invite me herself instead of asking someone else to get the message to me.  She did a great job of pronouncing what was written.  She told me that there was a small dinner party that night for Mae and she wanted to invite me to come.

The dinner party was at Chatchai Hill, the sheep farm, resort place.  On the way there the other teacher that was with us in the car wanted to ask me a bunch of questions.  So Noi translated.  She wanted to know who my best friend at school was.  Of, course, it’s Noi.  Noi was laughing with this.  When she asked my why, I told her that she is fun, has a lot of energy, teaches me about Thai culture and asks me very difficult questions. Noi loved that.  This teacher wanted to know about Pat.  I told her Pat was a very nice person and did a good job of taking care of me, but she doesn’t do things with me socially outside of school.  Then the teacher said she was so sorry she didn’t speak English better because she missed the opportunity to get to know me.  Oh, I understand this.  If I could speak Thai, I would have had a different experience and would know more about the other teachers.  When we got to Chatchai, Noi said they reserved one of the karaoke rooms.  It looked like there were 8 to 10 separate little buildings which I assume were all karaoke rooms.  But, since this resort is kind of in the middle of nowhere surrounded by the middle of nowhere, I think we were the only ones there except a few people in the dining room.

My drink choices were whiskey which I don’t like much or some red wine cooler like thing.  The red thing was awful – whiskey it is!  It was constant eating and constant karaoke the whole night. There was so much food and it just kept arriving.  Of course, most of it would try to take the skin off my lips, but I managed to find a few things that I could eat.   It was a lot of fun, although 4 hours of karaoke is too much.  I was the only one who seemed to think this so I kept that to myself.  The school director (principal) was there.  Hipster 0 was there.  Did I write about Hipster 0 in the past or just think about it?  I think I’ve found the original hipster, the one all other hipsters originated from, only he has no idea because he’s the only one here.  He dresses like a hipster without even knowing what that means.  The rest of the people there were other teachers.  Of course they wanted to know what song I was going to sing.  I was slow on deciding so they decided for me.  I had to sing ‘Have you ever seen the rain’ and ‘YMCA’.  There was one Thai song that attempted to be a hard rock song, but it fell way short and looked like a bunch of cute sweet women shaking their fists.  There was the throw dance where you did some cool dance move and then made a motion like you were throwing a ball to someone.  Whoever you threw the ball to then had to come up with a cool dance move and then throw it to someone else.  It took several rounds for me to get it.  Then I threw it to the Director who did a smooth move of leaning to the side and pretending the ball went flying past him so he didn’t have to do a dance move.  But, I do have to say singing YMCA with a bunch of Thai women as back up singers doing the YMCA motions was one of the best things I have ever seen, ever.

(c) All rights reserved Kimberly Fiore