Earlier in the week, Thompien asked me to do something with her on Sunday, but I have no idea what.  Pat was trying to explain what it was and I told Pat I thought some of the teachers were going to Chiang Mai for the weekend.  Noi had told me we were going for a retirement party.  Pat then tells me that everyone is going to Lampang to visit a school and then to Chaing Mai.  I thought we were leaving after school, but now I find out there is no school on Friday and that all the teachers are going and leaving at 7:30am.  Thanks Noi.  I would have shown up for school at 8:00am by myself.  Also, Noi never told me I had to dress to visit a school or how many nights we were saying.  When I asked her about this, she laughed at me like I am stupid and told me she told me all this already.  She did not.  This thing where she’s nice one second and almost rude the next is getting a little old.  I keep trying to tell myself it’s just information lost in translation.

So, I get on the bus in the morning.  Noi gets there a little later and asks me why I didn’t sit up front.  She likes to sit up front.  I told her all the seats were taken.  She said I should have gotten there earlier.  Yea, off to a great start early in the morning.  Most of the teachers are giddy.  They are so excited about going for relaxation.  I doubt there will be any relaxation on this trip.  It’s fun to watch how excited everyone is. It’s also nice to see everyone in one place, not working.  Well, some of it is work.  We are going to visit a school that scores in the top ten for test scored every year.  Noi called it a study trip.  She asked if that was the correct thing to call it.  I think it would be called a trip to visit another school.  She didn’t like this answer so we are going on a study trip.

As soon as the bus took off, two teachers got on microphones and started talking.  At first I assumed it was to fill everyone in on the itinerary.  But they kept talking and laughing.  It sounded more like a comedy duo team.  They talked for at least a half hour, maybe an hour.  I got out my computer and started working on some stuff.  Noi couldn’t handle it and took off to the front of the bus.

It was interesting arriving at the school.  This school has over 5,000 students.  Ours might have 500.  It looks like a real school and seems so modern compared to ours.  We went into a conference room where we met with the directors of the school.  There was so much pride, excitement, and a feeling that something bigger is going on here.  They did introductions, speeches, a video presentation, and giving of gifts (with the obligatory photos, of course).  They served us coffee and a trio of gelatinous snacks.  Then we went off in different directions.  All those of us in the language department went off to the foreign language building.  They pushed me and Robin into a teacher’s office where there was one Westerner and they told us to go talk to our friend.  He was as unprepared for this meeting as we were.  The three of us chatted for a little bit.  The teacher had only been there a month so he didn’t have much information and I had no idea what information I was supposed to get anyway.  I left and couldn’t find anyone but Noi.  She was waiting in the hall for me.  We tried to find the others, but when we couldn’t we set off looking for the guidance department.  Noi is in charge of guidance at our school so she wanted to ask some questions.  The only people in the guidance department were students.  Noi made them pose for a picture even thought they didn’t want to.  Their students seem larger than ours.  Then the school fed us lunch and we got back on the bus.  Some teachers left with pamphlets.  There was no studying.  How could anyone have learned anything about teaching better from this?  How is this going to make our school better?  It was more like a “see how great our school is” trip instead of a study trip.  I know why their school does better – most of their “advanced” students came from international schools.  This school gets a lot of money from somewhere and therefore has better facilities – the science classroom I saw looked like a real science classroom.

Of course, the second the bus takes off it’s karaoke time.  We are on a two story bus and Noi comes up from downstairs and tells me I need to go downstairs because they are gambling.  She knows I use to work at a casino so not only do I know how to play cards, I know how to cheat too.  I’m not sure how that correlation happened, but I go with it.  Gambling is illegal in Thailand so this was surprising.  Downstairs was set up like a little lounge with a table and the seats all around it.  I sat there for a couple hours watching.  It took about 6 or 7 rounds of the game to figure out how to play the game, mostly.  This is far more fun that karaoke.  If people liked to I said I’d play with them later as we arrived at our next location.

We visited a temple.  We all had to take songtheaws from the place where the bus to could park up to the temple. There’s a big Buddha, some ornate buildings and a pagoda.  We walked by 3 gongs.  People were rubbing the gongs.  Noi read the sign.  Whatever your age, put that amount of money in the collection box, then rub the gong that many times and make a wish.  There were also bells to ring for good luck and flowers to buy for offerings and the big balls like I had seen at other temples.  Only, these balls, people were putting gold leaf on them.  I’m still floored by the amount of things to do or ways to give offerings at temples.  There was also ice cream so that’s where I hung out the rest of the time.

After the temple we went to the farang mall (foreigner mall).  It was exactly like an outdoor mall in Colorado with American stores.  I didn’t see many foreigners there, mostly Thais taking pictures everywhere.  I really had no interest going into any of the stores.  I’ll be moving soon and already have too much stuff.  They made me go in stores though.  In one store, it was all technical athletic wear (I love this stuff) and they were playing electronica music that I like.  Everyone was looking at all the funny shoes and clothes – of course, most Thais don’t like to exercise or be in the sun so water shoes you can hike in must look strange.  It made me miss home so much I almost started crying in the store.  I want to buy all the shoes and clothing and build a fort out of them and crawl inside and never come out.  I had seen a picture of lasagna so I then went on the hunt for lasagna.  I found an open air food court with no lasagna.  Pat was there and showed me the place her friend owns and said I have to buy something.  So, I got a salad to go for later.  Pat got a burger and insisted I try it.  It was horrible, but since it’s a burger, I should like it.

Then we went to the resort.  It’s a huge resort with tons of little cabins and many meeting rooms/karaoke rooms.  My roommate is Noi.  I tried to pre-eat knowing the food the place would serve would probably be too spicy.  Noi wouldn’t let me eat my salad because there would be dinner.  I tried to explain the concept of eating something I liked instead, but it didn’t work.  We got to the dinner place and the karaoke had already started.  There was a buffet with literally nothing except rice that was safe for me.  I think I’m getting less use to spicy food, not more use to it.  Can you have an allergy to chili peppers?  I was going to go back and eat my salad, but too late, Noi had already asked one of the servers to see if the kitchen would make me an omelet and soup.  They brought me an omelet and soup – enough for 3 people.  I went from nothing I could eat to way too much food.  Then there were speeches about the teacher that was retiring.  I find it odd that there are so many speeches, but that most people just have conversations at their tables during the speeches.  They don’t whisper or try to hide the fact that they aren’t listening to the speeches.  It’s weird to me.  One of the things that I loved was watching the teacher hug one of his best friends during his whole speech.  I think that is one thing we just don’t do well in America – male bonding with out all the strange heterosexual rules of proper behavior to make sure you don’t appear gay.

Then a ton of photos.  I avoided karaoke for a while sitting outside making phone calls, but I knew there was no way to just sneak off to my room since Noi had the only key.  At least 10 people had said “YMCA” or “Sing a song” to me so I danced for a while, sang YMCA and danced a little more.  Noi was having so much fun I didn’t want to drag her away.  I asked if I could have the key, but she said she was ok to go.  It was 11:30 and they were going to close the room down at midnight anyway.  Other than not letting me eat my salad for dinner, Noi made a pretty good roommate.  Our room had koi fish painted all over the walls so it looked like you were in a koi pond.  This was wonderful.

(c) All rights reserved Kimberly Fiore