Category: Awakening

The Future

On By rrainefioreIn Awakening, UncategorizedLeave a comment

I notice that biggest thing standing in my way of being completely present is the future. I imagine this is a common problem.  I spend about 70 to 80 percent of my waking day present and the rest of the time I live in the future.  This is a huge improvement over the rest of my life where I probably spent 90 percent of my time or more in the future.  There’s a time for planning and preparing, but not at the expense of living now.  But, I think most of us live in the past, reliving good times or replaying horrible heart breaks.  Or we live in the future thinking “if the weekend would just get here”.  “When I get that better job, when I get that great boyfriend, when I make more money, when I get invited to that party, when I get to go on vacation…….then I will be happy”.  I know I have done this most of my life.  My childhood was very unhappy and sometimes just too much for a child to have to deal with.  The easiest way to deal with that was to live in the future, a time when life would be bearable.  These defenses we learn early on stick with us and get hard wired into our nervous systems.  They become the automatic way of being and it takes a lot of focus and concentration to see the automatic pilot, much less to get it to change.  In theory, it shouldn’t take a lot of work – just notice that you are not living in the present moment and shift your focus to now.  But, for most of us the automatic pilot is so strong that it takes time and work.  I’ve have worked on this for many years which is why it is much better than it used to be.  I use to also split my thoughts into 20 different directions at once.  If I’m having 20 different thoughts or story lines going on in my head at once, the one that is unhappy with the present moment can get drowned out by all the noise of the rest of the thoughts.  It’s a very effective method of protection.  However, I am not a little child and I don’t need protection any more.  Then the noise is just noise and it’s exhausting.  Through the many years of work, I have almost gotten rid of the different tracks of thinking.  At most, there is only 2 or 3.  I notice as I’m getting closer to the end of my teaching contract, my thoughts are running to the future more often.  I have no plan of what to do next.  This scares me and I feel like I need to have a plan by now.  It’s very difficult to just be here now and trust that something wonderful will happen and I will make decisions when they need to be made, not sooner.  So, I’m no closer to making any decisions because just thinking about the future is not actually helpful in making decisions.  I went through this strongly before I decided on living in Thailand and I’m going through it again.  It’s quite a battle – I’m in the future, I notice and bring myself back to present, then one minute later I’m back in the future, back to now, future, now, future, now.

So, I open my book and yes, you guessed it, the subject is the future.  And once again, I think Almaas describes the topic at hand so well.

“We are always going somewhere, internally or externally – to the store, the movies, the beach, the office, the restaurant, the television, the internet, the newspaper, the latest spiritual teacher to come to town, our partners, our children, our friends, our parents, our worries, our concerns, our fears, our hopes. And on and on. We are in motion, going after, seeking out, restless, never satisfied, never at peace. This seems to be the central dilemma of human life – that it is easier to desire what is over there than to appreciate what is right here. In fact, what is here seems to be so fundamentally inferior, less than, or inadequate compared to what is apparently over there, that it hardly seems worth the effort to look here. Why not just go over there?”

“Spiritual paths and techniques thus become ways of getting there – to the place where you feel real, where you will become all these wonderful things. So you meditate, attempting to empty your mind or calm yourself or focus on an image or let go of all attachment. Or you chant and dance to invoke your spirit. Or you say prayers and go vision quests. Yet all these techniques of finding your deeper self subtly imply that where you are now in yourself is not where you need to be. You are seeking some ideal of the spiritual self and using these methods to attempt to reach that. The result is that the spiritual search can evoke the same dilemma that all other aspects of your life do”.

(c) All rights reserved Kimberly Fiore

The Unfolding No

On By rrainefioreIn Awakening, UncategorizedLeave a comment

For a couple of months now, I’ve been getting periods of light headedness.  It’s usually in the afternoon to early evening.  I don’t feel like I’m going to faint or fall over, but I do feel like doing anything other standing, sitting or walking might not go well.  My vision goes a little blurry and I don’t feel equipped to make decisions or have conversations.  It was strong about a month ago, but doesn’t happen every day anymore.  Of course, my first though was, oh no, I have some horrible mosquito borne disease and I’m going to die.  Then I wondered if it was too much exposure to the bug spray I’ve used to kill house invaders.  It seems to kill everything.  Or, maybe I have a brain tumor and only have one week to live.  Once I’m done with the dooms day thinking then I settle on a new theory.  I think it might be a combination of stress, bad diet and nervous system changes trying to happen.  I think there is re-wiring going on in the brain and my body is trying physically to change the way it takes in and processes information.  Then the stress of what am I going to do next, how am I going to pay for it, teaching, what creature will I find in my house next, how am I going to pack up all my stuff, will my house sell, why is my car such a drama…….blah blah blah…..then all this stress stops the physical process from finishing.  Or maybe some of the stress is a result of the physical process.  Maybe the drama needs to be flushed out first.  So, now whenever I feel the light headedness, I just try to relax into it and just experience it instead of worrying about it.  I’m also trying to eat more veggies.  I would like to drink less coffee and eat less sugar, but I’m not there yet.  They are both very addictive.

As always, when I read one of Almaas’ books, he’s describing exactly what I’m experiencing.  I started a new book called the Unfolding Now.  I found it quite funny that when I opened the book in my nook (Barnes and Noble’s version of a kindle), it split the pages of the cover sheet so that the title of the book appeared as The Unfolding No.  I found this very funny.

So, I leave you with a quote from Almaas that describe things I am experiencing right now.

“In our work, each of us will encounter challenges; we will arrive at Crossroads where we have to make changes. These challenges and Crossroads will help us to develop. They will enable us to realize the life of Truth. The more of those challenges we have, the more chances we have to realize the true perspective. If your life is comfortable, if you are always getting what you want, you might think it’s great. You might think “everything is going wonderfully. Now I can do my spiritual work”. In reality, it doesn’t work that way. The more comfortable you are, the less chance you have to make the choice, and the less chances you have for the choice to be clear”.
(c) All rights reserved Kimberly Fiore

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Dis-identification

On By rrainefioreIn Awakening, Teaching, Thailand, UncategorizedLeave a comment

Not much new.  Lesson plans, teaching, market, too tired in the evening to do anything, sleep, repeat.

So, I leave you with another Almass quote that I read today.  I’m having more and more moments of feeling fuzzy and feeling like nothing is quite real.  I think this is dis-identification of the body.  So, of course, this chapter has perfect timing, again.

“We are continuously concerned about what happens to the body – about whether the body is comfortable or not, whether the body is getting what it wants or not.  Is the body getting comfort and pleasure, or is it in pain?  Is it secure from threat?  Is the body liked or not liked?  Is it thin or fat?  Tall or short?  All these are big concerns in our minds.  Our deepest issues are based on physical concerns, rather than concerns about whether we are loving, compassionate, or free.  Even though we might have these latter concerns, they are not as fundamental as our involvement with our physical body and our physical world”.

Oh, and random photos, I leave you with random photos.

(c) All rights reserved Kimberly Fiore

 

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Crepe Cake

Recent Investigations

On By rrainefioreIn Awakening, UncategorizedLeave a comment

Lately my spiritual investigation is about living in the future.  I find myself thinking about the future a lot.  When I’m living in the future, I’m missing now.  When your house scares you and your job overwhelms you it’s easy to assume the future will be better and to think about that.  But, then that adds stress too because I have no idea what I’m going to do in the future and I feel like I should have a plan since it’s only a few months away.  I can’t stop it from happening – my mind jumping to the future, but I can notice it when it happens.  Just the practice of noticing is helping me to bring my attention back to now.  I don’t want to miss all that is going on now.  I’ve been able to relax more.  I’ve been able to enjoy what I do like about here more.  I want to spend more time with my friends here and more time exploring Thailand before I have to leave.  And of course, I want to spend more time everyday present instead of in the future.  I already spend a lot of my time in presence, but little bit by little bit, it’s more time spent in presence.

Hand in hand with the future is the need for a to-do list.  I’ve always used a to-do list to keep things in order.  If I didn’t, I’d forget so much or I’d drive myself nuts trying to not forget.  I learned a long time ago that if I kept a to-do list I could relax more.  When I set out on this adventure one of the things I so looked forward to was not having a to-do list.  If I didn’t have a social life, an engineering job, and the the busy life I had in the US, the to-do list would disappear.  I would teach and in the evenings I’d read or sit and watch life happen.  The to-do list followed me here and it’s as long as it ever was.  There’s a lot to do to get my furniture out of my house, sell my house, deal with the car drama, make hotel reservations for next weekend, research how to get a book published, research possible jobs for the future, lesson planning, engineering work, this blog, laundry, cleaning, cooking, call mom, and on and on.  The list may be even longer because I don’t have much free time.  On one hand the list helps me not worry as much about the future.  On the other hand, it is the future.  Tricky…..

Movement helps.  I’m trying to find the time for conscious movement every day.  I try to get massage at least once a week too.  My fingers are still feeling numb.  I’m wondering if it is my diet or if I have some nerve damage from something.  No clear answer on that yet.  Massage is still so painful, but I think it’s getting slightly better.  Reading Almass helps the most though.  He still has a way of writing a long time ago exactly what I needed to write today.  He might as well be sitting across from me when I read his books.  I can’t read a whole chapter in one sitting because half way through a chapter I am no longer able to understand words.  My thinking brain no longer works and I am just here.  Nothing else.

Here are a couple Almass quotes that I liked this week.  In what I’m reading now he’s talking about how we take the physical world we see to be reality.  It’s not.  It’s all concepts in our mind and we’ve taken it to be reality.  Reality is more than just the physical world.  And as long as we believe that we are our bodies and our thoughts and the only thing that exists is the world we see, then we are missing reality.

“Reality is so mysterious, so amazing, so magical, that seeing it is bound to change us and change our lives.  Knowing what is real, we can’t continue to live in the same way”.

“Our belief in the fundamentalness of physical reality remain solidly entrenched in our souls.  In any authentic spiritual work, this conviction must eventually be confronted, shaken, and dismantled.  It must be shattered before we can perceive totally, completely, what is actually there”.

I feel like I’m in the middle of this shattering.  My body is holding on to being all there is to reality so tightly that all my muscles are so tight.  If I give up on the physical world being reality, I fear that it won’t exist at all.  Part of me knows this isn’t true, but the part that has that fear is what is in the process of shattering.

(c) All rights reserved Kimberly Fiore

Exams

On By rrainefioreIn Awakening, Teaching, Thailand, UncategorizedLeave a comment

All my free time in school to do lesson planning was taken up rewriting exams.  After I was told I needed 40 questions per exam instead of 20 I turned in my exams.  Then I was told I needed to re-format my directions and put a specific cover sheet on it.  I can’t have multiple choice A, B, C, D and E.  That’s too hard.  So I have to get rid of all the E’s.  Then I turn in my exams again.  Now I’m told I need to have an objective for each section of the exam.  But, if I have more than 3 objectives, it will make more work for me later when I have to do end of the semester reporting on my semester’s objectives.  So, why wasn’t all of this conveyed to me at the beginning of the semester instead of the middle?  I don’t think “Teach some English and get the hell out of Thailand” is an acceptable objective.  And they wonder why I don’t want to stay another semester.  I have now spent over 20 hours trying to write two 40 question exams.  It’s Thursday evening and I haven’t done one lesson plan for next week.  I really don’t understand how anything gets accomplished in this country.

The rest of my free time that wasn’t spent on exams was spent with students that want to come into my office and speak English with me.  Even though it makes it harder for me to get lesson planning done, that’s so important that I can’t say no.  Those are the students that will learn the most because they want to learn.  I can’t damage that desire to learn.  The students I was helping tutor to get ready for the English competition did ok in the competition.  They didn’t do great, but they were excited to come back Wednesday and tell me all about it.  They also questioned why I wasn’t there with them.  Good question.  Don’t you think the native speaker should be the one at the competition with them?  I just told them that I had to teach classes.  It was great to see that they wanted to come tell me about it.  One of them loves talking to me and spent a whole hour asking me questions.  He also asked if he could Line or Facebook me to practice English, even after I have left.

Last week, one day, everyone wore yellow again and no one told me ahead of time.  No one explained why, after the fact.  So, all I know is something happened and everyone wore yellow to memorialize it.  But, I’m getting use to having no idea what is going on. I spend quite a bit of time every day standing around having no idea what’s happening or what I should be doing.

I’m still at a loss for what to teach.  The information I think should be easy is not and stuff I think they should know, they don’t.  I have some lessons where they know what I’m teaching and I feel like I wasted all this time preparing for it and teaching it.  This week I taught what to say at the doctor’s and it was so difficult for them.  I taught giving directions a couple weeks ago and it was almost a total fail in every class.  Don’t get lost in Thailand, no one will be able to give you accurate directions.  However, if you ask for directions in Thailand, they will probably take you there personally.  Then I had one class that was introducing yourself and others.  This was part of the curriculum given to me for one of the older classes.  I thought, how do they not know this already?  This is too easy and boring.  They were laughing and cracking up the whole class.  My most boring class was a hit.  Then for the class one younger than that  I’m supposed to teach Illegal Imports.  So the older kids get “Hi this is my friend Bob” and the younger kids get “You can’t take products made from endangered animals into another country”.  wtf Thailand?

Before one of my classes, I was standing in the hall and watched a small bird take down another bird in flight, pin it to the floor and kill it.  Then after class, I checked, yes, the bird was dead.  Then after the next class, I came out to find the killer bird eating the dead bird.  I know that this is all just part of life – life, death, change, circle of life, etc.  But, I just can’t get it out of my head – bird cannibalism.  Why is ok when we eat meat or a lion kills for it’s food, but it’s disturbing when it’s bird cannibalism?

Speaking of food….. I discovered a delightful dessert.  It’s called Roti Sai Mai.  Tip gave me some a few weeks ago.  I found it at the market this week and bought it.  It’s a thin sweet crepe, so thin you can almost see through it.  Then you take this sweet stuff that looks like colored hair and put it on the crepe and roll it up.  The hair stuff is kind of like cotton candy with the consistency of fiberglass insulation.  Fascinating.  And very delicious.  And not dangerous to eat because there is no actual fiberglass in it.  Now longans are in season.  They are a clearish whitish fruit in a hard shell, kind of like lychee.  They remind me of lychee in that they kind of taste like you can’t tell if they are going bad or not.  I was given a bunch as a gift.  I decided I won’t buy them in the future.

I’ve been investigating further into what position I’m in when I wake up in the morning.  I stretch out and see if it changes my desire to get up in the morning.  I find that I’m not as curled up as I use to be in years past.  Some mornings stretching out helps.  Some mornings it doesn’t.  I’m half asleep and half awake from 5:30 when the birds start squawking to 6:40 when my alarm goes off.  I thought, maybe it would be more useful to just get up and start my day earlier than to toss and turn, not quite awake and not quite asleep.  I got up around 6:00 two days and did some of my conscious movement in the morning instead of after school.  The other mornings, I didn’t manage to get up early.   Baby steps….

The sale of my house is actually moving forward.  I received the start of contract paperwork last night and have been trying to work out moving my furniture out.  Fingers crossed that this goes smoothly.  It should close in August.

I’ve been investigating how I always have a long to-do-list that never seems to get any shorter.  I’ve also been investigating living in the future instead of now.  And, as usual, as I read AH Almass, he’s talking about seeing reality instead of the physical world we think is reality.  All fabulous stuff that’s not new, but is starting to shift and change as how I see reality is shifting and changing.  So, all that needs to be a blog of it’s own.  Hopefully, I can put some of it to words tomorrow night.  This type of spiritual work is very difficult to put into words.  And as I write this, I find my brain going all fuzzy because enough words have already been used for the day.

(c) All rights reserved Kimberly Fiore

 

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One of these is the cannibal
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Legal Items you can take on Holiday (mostly)
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Roti Sai Mai
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Pineapple, mango and longan

Teacher Day

On By rrainefioreIn Awakening, Teaching, Thailand, Uncategorized1 Comment

Yesterday near the end of the day Noi told me there were no classes today.  Ok.  Not sure why Pat didn’t tell me this.  It’s Teacher’s Day.  There are ceremonies in the morning and in the afternoon there’s Freshman Orientation.  It happens once a year in the first semester.

I got to school and all the teachers were wearing their government uniforms.  The students were all wearing their blue uniforms.  The students and teachers all had food.  I would have loved it if someone had filled me in on this first ceremony so I could have brought food too.  The first ceremony was to give the food to monks.  They had seats for the monks and they had their food donation bowls.  The teachers went first.  One of the teachers grabbed me and held my hand as I took her food offering and put some in each bowl.  After the teachers, the students followed.  As the bowls filled up, there were students that took the food and put it in bags and then took the bags to a pickup truck.  The monks got an entire pickup truck of boxed milk and junk food.  It was a touching ceremony, but also sad that junk food is the food gift of choice.  I hope they get better food on most days.  They eat entirely from food donated to them.  I think they go out every morning with their bowls asking for food.  Not sure where they go as I’ve never seen this, but have only heard of it.

Next was sitting in the meeting hall as the monks sat on the stage and chanted.  They sat in a line and had their hands out in front of them.  There was a string laying on top of their arms draped from one monk to the next.  At some point I asked Pat what the string was for.  She said it was holy string.  Oh, of course.  She pointed to a couple of students that had string on their wrists like bracelets.  Holy string.  After the chanting, one monk walked around the meeting hall with a bowl of water and a wand of reeds in his hand.  He used the reeds to spray water on everyone as he walked by.  Holy water, of course.  When he got to Robin, he took the reeds and smacked him on the head twice.  The monk has a sense of humor!  Then there was another offering of food which was in stackable lunch boxes.  This looked like real food and made me feel a little better.  Pat told me this was for the monk’s lunch.  They have to eat before noon.  Monks don’t eat after noon.  After noon they can drink liquids as long as they aren’t made from animals like milk.  But no food.

After the monks left to go have lunch, the Teacher ceremony started.  They moved chairs up onto the stage for us.  As they were making announcements, the teachers were all giddy and giggly.  They weren’t listening to the announcements at all. They were talking amonst themselves.  It occurred to me that maybe they were nervous being on stage.  The students had made the most detailed intricate flower arrangements I’ve ever seen.  They brought them up to the stage and bowed at the shrine and then walked on their knees to the Director and gave them to him.  I think there were two per class.  After that they moved us to the floor below the stage and the students came up one at a time and brought offerings of flowers and bowed at our feet.  This ceremony is the student asking the teacher to teach them and the teacher promising to teach.

After the ceremony I went to lunch with Noi.  We got lunch at a noodle place.  Largest bowls ever.  Then it was off to run errands.  She stopped at one point and pointed to some red berries and asked me what they were in English.  I have no idea.  They are manaou hoo.  Manaou is lime so they are sour like limes.  She mentioned that I had a great memory, but I told her I didn’t think so.  If I did, I’d be able to speak Thai.  She said maybe I didn’t have good memory with languages, but I did with calculations.  I thought, maybe not calculations, but spatial.  I have good spacial memory.  I see things spatially and I see and remember patterns and shapes.  I think this is why the butterflies are so wonderful to me.  We don’t usually pay much attention to air.  But there are so many butterflies here that you can’t look off into the distance without seeing butterflies in the sky.  My brain is use to seeing nothing in the air around me or it interprets it as nothing, but now that it is filled with butterflies, my brain picks up on the change in spatial input.  I’m now paying attention to the air, the space, the place where there was never nothing, but I wasn’t paying attention to it before.  The butterflies are shaking up the normal spatial perception and it’s like a fun game to my brain.  I think this is why I love the purple ones too.  There’s ground and my brain knows ground so it pays no attention.  Then the ground moves and changes colors and my brain has to switch out of automatic.  At this point, there’s no choice but to be completely present.

After lunch, the students did Freshman Orientation which I think is more like Freshman Hazing.  Each class created an activity for the freshman to do.  I’m not sure what the activities were as I used this time to work on lesson plans, but when ever I looked out the window I would see a bunch of students running by all covered in paint or white stuff.  There was lots of laughing, cheering and girls screaming so they were having fun.

Tip called me and asked me to meet her for coffee.  She and Fai were at the coffee shop when I got there.  I had ice cream and watched Fai color.  She had drawn a picture of me.  It’s so funny.  I have a giant afro in the picture!  Yes, my hair is curly and unruly, but this afro was bigger than my head!

(c) All rights reserved Kimberly Fiore

 

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One of the other English teachers, Tussany

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Manaou Hoo
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Manaou Hoo Face
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Home Depot – ish
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Dog eating the offering off a spirit house
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Guess which one is me

Sleeping

On By rrainefioreIn Awakening, UncategorizedLeave a comment

I had email conversation with one of the students in the current Awakening to Presence class about the way we sleep.  If we sleep in one of our character patterns or in a defensive pattern will that affect how we feel when we wake up?  We both think that it does. Over the years I have woken up not wanting to start the day.  I’ve gone through periods of time where I wake up with numb hands.  Awhile ago I tried to change the way I sleep.  I sleep on my side and use to sleep all curled up in the fetal position.  I was able to greatly improve the way I sleep and rarely get numb hands any more.  For quite awhile I didn’t wake up not wanting to start the day.  Every morning when I wake up now, I take a few minutes to straighten out my body and just lie there noticing how I feel and tuning into my body.  I’ve been doing this automatically, not thinking about it.  I do think if we sleep in a position of fear we will wake up anxious, in a position of collapse we will wake up feeling defeated or not wanting to start the day.  I don’t sleep anywhere near as curled up as I use to, but I’m wondering if I can uncurl more and see how that changes my mornings.  Of course if I had a bigger bed, that would help – my bed was made for a short tiny Thai person.

(c) All rights reserved Kimberly Fiore

Yellow and Ghosts

On By rrainefioreIn Awakening, Teaching, Thailand, UncategorizedLeave a comment

Today everyone wore yellow in support of the King who is very sick.  I had heard rumors that he died months ago, but what do I know.  I didn’t question it since there are serious consequences if anyone were to take that as disrespectful towards the King.  It was quite cool to see a sea of yellow at morning assembly though.

Not sure if I ever talked about this before, but the amount of sweeping that happens at school is amazing.  Every morning students are sweeping the driveways and sidewalks at school.  They sweep the sports court.  They sweep the classrooms when needed.  Just about every surface is swept.  There is trash thrown off to the sides of roads, but the school surfaces are swept.  I wonder how they decide who’s turn it is to sweep or do they just do it automatically?  They don’t use store bought brooms like we do.  They are all made out plants, bamboo poles and sticks.  I can’t even find a broom like we have in the US in a store.  They are all these natural material brooms.  They are very short too.  I have to bend over to use a broom.

I’ve been noticing that the students are more comfortable with me.  There are more and more students saying Good Morning, Hello Teacher or Good Afternoon than there use to be.  In fact, by the end of the day the words Good Morning and Good Afternoon no longer make sense to me because I’ve said them so many times in a day that they just sound like gibberish.  This is a good thing and it’s mind numbing at the same time.

I never use to have any reaction to coffee.  I think I’m starting to notice it now though.  Or more, I notice the absence of it.  I still don’t drink it and feel more awake.  I can still drink it in the evening and have no problem going to sleep.  What I am noticing is a craving when I haven’t had it in a day or two.  Then, I feel my system relax a little when I do have it.  I’ve had this calming reaction with sugar my whole life – no sugar high, but a calming of the whole nervous system after I eat sugar.  I’m wondering what this is all about.  I’ll fill you in later if I figure it out.

At lunch, Noi asked if I believed in ghosts.  I wasn’t sure how to answer.  I don’t know that I do believe in ghosts.  I’m not sure I don’t.  I hadn’t really thought about it.  So, I told her I didn’t believe one way or another and I didn’t much care if they were real or not.  She went on to tell me all about ghosts and that they were beings that most of us can’t see and that they live on different plane than we do (she didn’t use those words).  Since most of us can’t see them, we could be bumping into them right now.  Some people can see them so they have to be real.  She told me all this with the energy I didn’t know what ghosts were and if I knew, then  I would understand that they are real.  It was interesting that the question started off if I believed in ghosts like there was a choice and ended as if there is no question – they are real, I just don’t understand.  I still don’t care if they exist or not.

After school, I threw my laundry in the washer and headed to get coffee.  The weather was delightful today – warm but not hot and dry.  So, I went to the outdoor coffee shop that serves better coffee and is cheaper because I wanted to sit outside anyway.  They were closed.  So, I went to the other coffee shop which I like, but not as much.  Just before I was going to leave, Tip and her daughter came in.  Fai was so excited to see Aunt Rraine and came to sit with me and draw pictures for me.  Tip told me that just before they got to the coffee shop, Fai asked when she could see me.  Completely adorable.  It was nice to have coffee with them.  Well, Fai had ice cream, not coffee.

When I woke up this morning, my first though was “no I don’t want to”.  But after I got up and was more awake, I went back into the state of indifference.  I’m hoping this becoming a more natural state for me to be in instead of something that happens once in awhile.

(c) All rights reserved Kimberly Fiore

 

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Just Lesson Planning

On By rrainefioreIn Awakening, Teaching, Thailand, UncategorizedLeave a comment

Friday night I tried to work on lesson plans, but by 7:30pm I couldn’t keep my eyes open and I was real dizzy so I went to bed.  I slept for 12 hours.  And by sleep, I mean toss and turn, but that’s normal for me.  Wow, I never knew giving blood would put me down for days.

I did laundry and mopped the house Saturday morning.  I find that I have to mop every 3 or 4 days since there is all kinds of dead bugs, mouse and lizzard poop everywhere.  I hadn’t cleaned up after the termite invasion so it was good to mop.  I went to the coffee shop and worked on lesson plans all day.  I promised I myself I would leave by 4:00pm even if I wasn’t done with lesson plans.  I tried to leave at 4:00pm but it kept raining and it wasn’t a light rain, but a downpour.  So, I didn’t leave until 5:00pm.  It was still raining, but not bad.  I rode up to the massage place and the guy was in!  I’ve had massages from him and his wife.  She’s good, but he’s better so I was glad she wasn’t there.  Two hours of pain.  Everything hurts.  I really need this as part of my daily routine right now, but I just don’t have the time.  I feel like bodywork is an important part of working through some of the stuff that I’m trying to work through.  I’ve been doing conscious movement every day as well and trying to get my body to stop holding all this stuff it’s holding.  It feels like it’s holding more than usual, but I don’t think it’s actually more.  I think it’s just different stuff, stuff that can’t be worked through cognitively.  I wonder too, what taking blood and forcing my body to make a lot of new blood is doing.  It kind of feels like I had described before when I got sick and lost a lot of muscle weight.  I had felt I was at muscle zero and rebuilding from there was a good thing.  What if this is a rebuilding of the blood system?

Today, I went to the Sunday market.  I didn’t walk around for long, but long enough to run into the really nice guy that is always excited to talk to me.  He sells veggies.  He said he had missed seeing me at the market and was glad I was back.  I was going to cook today, but didn’t.  I spent the entire rest of the day getting all the lesson plans for this week in order.  I was hoping to get ahead of lesson planning today.  So, I’m a bit disappointed.  I’m also concerned that I will never be ahead and that I will spend all my free time doing lesson plans.  I’m also concerned that I might get behind at some point.  On one hand, I don’t have a ton else to do.  But, this isn’t how I want to spend the next 4 months either.  Everyone that offers me advice says stuff like just play more games.  But, I have to come up with the game and how does it teach English?  How does it teach English that isn’t too easy or too hard?  Half the games I’ve tried were a total fail.  Then people offer ideas that seem like they would be a ton more work and not actually make things easier.  Plus, people forget that the game has to be easy enough to explain with out using Thai. One person suggested I just go to Bangkok and buy some books.  With what money?  Bangkok is a 9-12 bus ride from here.  There is an overwhelming amount of information on line.  Half of it would work for kindergartners and the other half would work for university students.  The in between stuff is not useful.  I just hope that I get faster/better at this soon so that I can get ahead.  Or maybe sports week will happen again and I’ll have a whole week with no classes and I can get ahead.

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Trying to make Bali Cold Chocolate

Lesson Plans

On By rrainefioreIn Awakening, Teaching, Thailand, UncategorizedLeave a comment

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

 

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Fish

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More Fish
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Lime Trees

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Brilliant!  An escalator for shopping carts.

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