Air Con

On September 7, 2016September 8, 2016 By rrainefioreIn Awakening, Teaching, Thailand, UncategorizedLeave a comment

Every morning when I get to school, I go up to my office and put my things down. Then I go to the main office to sign in and then to school assembly. This morning, same as usual. My office is a tiny classroom that I share with Robin. We teach the advanced students in there since their classes are small. The classroom is one of a few air conditioned classrooms at the school. Yesterday morning I was standing at assembly and Pat came up to me. The past 3 months or so, if Pat comes up to me, it’s usually not a pleasant experience and it’s not just to say hi and see how I’m doing. But this morning was a new experience for sure. She asked if I had left the air conditioning on over night in the class room. I said that I had not. (I just came from there. If the air conditioning had been on, it would have been on when I dropped my stuff off). She just laid into me about how I need to be careful. That I was careless, thoughtless and wasting energy and she was going to get in trouble, not me. She went on to tell me that she even took a student over to verify with her that the air conditioning was running this morning. She kept going and going and getting angrier and angrier until she was yelling at me. I ended up apologizing for something I didn’t do and she stormed off saying “I’m sorry is all you should say”. She was chastising me like a 6 year old. I have no idea what is really bothering her that she is now making up reasons to be mad at me. I am way too old for this game, what ever it is. On my way back to the classroom, I asked her who turned off the air conditioning since it was off when I got to school. She had no answer to that, but sent Q up to feel the room (which was hot, not cool). Noi is the only other person with a key to the room and she wasn’t even at school yet. I’m 46 years old basically being told to shut up and apologize for something I didn’t do. Where’s the door? I can’t wait to leave this school. Noi asked the janitor if he turned off the air conditioner and he said he doesn’t have a key to the room so he hadn’t been in there.

By now I am so annoyed I can barely teach class. Not to mention, I’m a bit scared. I have no agent. I don’t trust the company that placed me here as they have already showed that they will sell me out to make their agents happy. And the person who is the head of the department I work in, has now gone from kind of unpleasant to scary. All the people that are supposed to have my back, don’t. I feel stranded, alone and unsafe. Then I remember that I have Noi, Tip and Ging. I honestly thought of calling Tip and asking her if she could help me get out of here as I don’t feel very safe right now . But, I calmed down after Noi took me to lunch and told me quite a few times that I take teaching too seriously.

So, two points of inquiry come up from this. One is that I hear all the time about how Thai people are the nicest people in the world. But often, it is said by people that have left some other country to come live here and they say it in a way to imply that the rest of the world if full of horrible people. So, I wonder what their lives and experiences were like where they came from. My experience is that there are a lot of nice people in America. I have a delightful, kind, and loving family. I’m the crankiest person in my family. I have some wonderful friends that would bend over backwards to take care of those they love. And I have met so many kind and wonderful strangers along the way that were just kind because that’s who they are, not because they were my friend or family. What if Thai people aren’t any different than American people or European people or any other people? What if the entire planet has a fairly evenly distributed amount of nice and not so nice people? What if one day you are one of the nice people and the next you are not? What if this is just part of being human and not part of being Thai or Chinese or French……?

The other point of inquiry is that over the years I’ve worked on this issue where I feel the need for revenge. I want those that have wronged me to see that they wronged me and to feel horrible about it deep in their bones for the rest of their lives. I know where this comes from and I also know that life will never happen that way. Even if it did, it wouldn’t solve anything. The horrible injustice will never be undone with revenge or regret. It will never be undone – period. I cannot undo my past. Being here in a high school has brought this up often. I haven’t written about it yet because it comes up and I notice it and say, “hmmm, there it is again”, but nothing shifts. Nothing new has been learned yet that I could share. As all this drama is happening with Pat and I feel fear for my safety, this revenge thing comes up. It’s a reaction to not feeling safe. At some point, I realize I actually have the power to take revenge. This woman has set me up to fail many times. She is a huge part of why I’m not loving it here. She might very well be a huge part of why no Western teacher will stay here for long. I have the opportunity to point that out. I actually have the opportunity for revenge that would get the desired result. I would never do this because I do understand that she’s not setting me up to fail on purpose – she’s just in over her head and managing two Western teachers, a whole department and teaching is stressful. And, most people would struggle in her position. But, if I think back, I’ve never taken a revenge opportunity either because I understood it would do no good in the long run or because I don’t want to be the bad person or because my mother taught me to be nice. What if the reaction of wanting revenge whenever I feel unsafe doesn’t go away because I’ve never taken revenge? Sure, I’ve said mean things in anger and I’ve done a half-assed job of creating drama that kinda of looks like revenge. But, I’ve never committed fully to the point of irreparable damage. If I did, would I then be free of feeling the craving for revenge? What happens if I take this current opportunity handed to me? What happens if I don’t? The answer is that neither choice will change anything. Really committing and going all in on the revenge might cure me of ever wanting revenge again or it might not. We won’t find out because I can’t do it. Suck it up and pretend nothing ever bothers me doesn’t work either. I’ve been doing that my whole life. So, there’s a third answer. I can’t quite tell you what the third answer is. I can kind of see it. It’s just over there in a mist, a mist that keeps me from seeing it fully. But since things are shifting and dissolving in my life, I’m sure that mist will lift in the near future and I can share that third answer with you then.

Squeeky Shoes

On August 26, 2016August 28, 2016 By rrainefioreIn Teaching, Thailand, UncategorizedLeave a comment

This morning half my class was missing. Do I teach a class when half of them won’t get the lesson? How do I teach the other half later without boring the first half? I wasn’t sure what to do. Of course, they just wanted to play games instead of have class. Then I thought, I’m the teacher, I can do what I want. I don’t want to teach to half the class. So, we played scrabble and bingo. I had two classes in the afternoon and neither class showed up. Well, that means less lesson planning, but still, where were they? I texted Noi to tell her they hadn’t showed up since they were her classes too. She was at a seminar. She texted back that they went to join the mountain bike festival and they were all riding bikes all afternoon. She said I should have gone. They had enough bikes for teachers too. Then she sent me photos of the students and teachers riding. And this was the straw that broke the camel’s back. I am so over this place and the end of September is not soon enough to leave. There is nothing to do here. I work too much and when there is something to do, no one tells me. Pat and I talked about this in February and I told her I wanted to race when the festival happened. She didn’t see fit to tell me. Robin knows I want to bike, but he doesn’t see fit to tell me even though he’s already signed up to race in the road bike race. Noi tells me I should have gone with my class as if I’m some mind reader. How the fuck was I supposed to know my classes were doing this? Wouldn’t they learn more English by have an everyday conversation while riding bikes with their teacher instead of me sitting in an empty classroom by myself? How difficult is to send a text message – “no class today, go bike riding with them.”? And then everyone seems so surprised to hear I’m leaving. How is that surprising? Am I supposed to love living here when all I do is work or sit alone in my house? I would think people from a communal culture would get it.

Noi just kept sending me pictures of the fun I missed. I sat in the coffee shop crying for 20 minutes. I’ve been holding back so many tears. I haven’t been trying to hold them back, they just seem to hang out beneath the surface and never quite come up. I decided to go home and see if I could cry more. I felt like I could cry for days. I got home and no crying came. Huh, ok, so we’re done with that for the day. Then I decided to drive up to the dam and see what was going on. There was supposed to be a market and other festival activities. There was a massage tent set up and all four of the masseuses in town were there so I was able to get a massage from the man I usually go to on the weekends. There was a small child with squeeky shoes running around outside the massage tent. The shoes have squeekers like dog toy squeekers in them. She ran up and down the street for about 45 minutes. Squeek squeek squeek squeeeee squeek squeek squeeeeeeee squeek. There was also bad Thai music. So, I found some sort of relief in the fact that I had a massage to the sounds of bad Thai music and squeeky shoes. Then I found Tip and her family and hung out with them for a little bit. They went home kind of early (little children). I was intrigued by the shake that Dam (Tip’s son) got. It had condensed milk, some white cream I can only guess was white sugar in liquid form, ice and grape jello. She put everything in a blender and mixed up real good before adding the jello. That she barely hit the blender for so that it was still in chunks. Then she threw powdered ovaltine in the cup at the halfway mark and on top. I’m not sure if this would be good or horrible. I should have ordered one just to see what it was all about, but I didn’t. I have no idea how to order it now.

I ate dinner alone by the river. It was kind of sad, but also quite relaxing. I’ve had enough people for the day. The lights on the bridge lit up the water below. That brought lots of bugs and that brought lots of fish. The surface of the water moved an rippled as bugs moved on top and things moved underneath. It wasn’t fish jumping. It was more like snakes or river monsters gliding just below the surface. It was fascinating to watch. I vowed never to swim in the river – ever.

There was a beer garden and a stage so I went to check that out after eating. The beer garden looked very uninviting as it was only groups of people at reserved tables so I stood near the stage for a while. There’s no place to go hang out at night here so I was determined to hang out. A German guy walked by me and asked where I was from. He was kind of creepy and I didn’t really want to talk to him, but I couldn’t run away either. I told him I lived here and taught English as Sam Ngao Witt. He said that was a terrible school. He lives here and his son can’t speak English. I asked if his son could speak German. Oh yes. He told me about 6 or 7 times that that was a bad school and shook his head like I should leave school before I got killed. Ok, I’m not a fan of the school right now, but the fact that his son doesn’t speak English is just as much his fault as the school’s fault or his son’s fault and it doesn’t make the school a scary place. The conversation just got more difficult and awkward. Finally, he left and I decide that hanging out alone standing next to the beer garden listening to Thai music did not qualify as hanging out. I went home.

At home I wrote a facebook post about how frustrated I was and how, even though there are some wonderful things about living here, I’m ready to move on. I got a lot of responses telling me there’s no shame in giving up and moving on and a lot of “oh I’m sorry you have to suffer so much”. This is not the response I wanted. I don’t regret my decision to move here at all. I’m angry, but not suffering. I have no shame in moving on. I never mentioned shame. So, I realized that my facebook post did not paint the right picture. Or, people are so use to suffering and drama that they read what they want and use it to feed their need for drama. Or facebook is just not the right venue for such thoughts. So, I questioned why I wrote it in the first place. I know facebook works in this way. I know that most of the people reading it don’t know the rest of the story because they haven’t read my blogs. The people who read my blogs seemed to get it and respond in a way that showed they got it. I didn’t want the pity party or the “look on the bright side” or “here’s my advice because I know more than you”, but I knew I would get some of that. So, what did I want? Here’s what I figured out. 1. I was angry so I wanted to vent and there’s no one here to talk to. 2. I’m tired of people on facebook that say things like “oh you live in Thailand, how lucky” as if I’m sitting on a beach drinking Mai Thais instead of working my ass off and terrified of my own bathroom. I’m mad at these people. 3. I have friends that can’t be bothered to send me a text or email and say “hi, how are you?”. They only want to see me post pretty pictures so they can like them. I’m mad at these people. 4. I know I can’t confront Pat directly for the ways she has set me up for failure and for the fact that she can’t be bothered to spend 10 seconds to send me a text to tell me what’s going on. I know she doesn’t do it on purpose and that she is very stressed, but that doesn’t change the fact that I’m mad about this too. I can’t confront her because you don’t confront people here and it would do more damage than good. Thai people deal with negative feelings mostly through passive aggressive behavior. Most of them truly don’t have negative feelings, but when they do, it’s socially unacceptable to show them. So, I think I was also hoping she’d see the post and know how I feel. Punish passive aggressive behavior with passive aggressive behavior. Well, that’s a shitty plan. So, no more pity party and no more posting things on facebook other than the pretty pictures. I deleted the post. If you really want to know what I think, tune in here. You’ll get plenty of it.

It is wonderful to be able to have an issue, feel like shit, question it and go “Oh, I was angry, that’s what was going on”. Then it’s over and there’s no guilt, no regret, no beating myself up. I have spent a lot of my life beating myself up and I no longer do that. I didn’t think I shouldn’t have written the facebook post or I shouldn’t be angry or poor me. This is why I deleted the post. I figured out why it wasn’t working for me, because people want to see all this drama that I just don’t see. I was angry long enough to cry for 20 minutes and long enough to write the post, but then once I wrote the words, I’m not angry anymore and moved on. So, by the time I got the responses the responses didn’t fit the situation anymore because my view of the situation had already changed. It just seemed silly to leave the post up. So, in other blogs when I talk about where I don’t think enlightenment is something that happens once and then you live happily ever after, this is what I’m talking about. I still get angry. I still have feelings. I still think things should be different than they are. Then I notice that something doesn’t fit, something is off and I question it. Then I learn and the whole body/system/process or what ever you want to call it is reset to a new place of balance or a new point of normal. Then you do it all again and again and again. Over time this process happens faster and faster. By the time you read this you are thinking, “Oh poor Rraine, she is suffering so much” and I’ve moved on and am thinking “What are you talking about? I’m not suffering. That was a whole minute ago. Everything is fine.” Living in the present doesn’t mean not having feelings, it just means not buying into the concept that those feelings define you. It means not buying into the concept that something is wrong if your feelings aren’t always happy, peaceful or some other thing we define positive to be. It’s not buying into the concept that something needs fixing. There’s nothing to be fixed, because nothing is wrong. And my decision is still to leave here in October, not because I want to end the suffering or because I’m miserable, or because the grass is greener over there. If I left for any of those reasons, I guarantee you there would be suffering and misery over there because if there’s suffering or misery, I’m the source of it, not the situation or location. I am leaving because this is no longer where I need to be.

20160826_193739 — If you are a mother of a little girl, you probably have a unicorn in your purse

20160826_194600 — Yes, my face is this greasy 24/7 here

20160826_194740 — Fai is not loving the stationary bike

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The Future

On August 16, 2016August 21, 2016 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”.

The Unfolding No

On August 15, 2016August 21, 2016 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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Short Week

On July 24, 2016July 25, 2016 By rrainefioreIn Teaching, Thailand, UncategorizedLeave a comment

I came back from Chiang Mai with Noi and Chelon. We stopped in Lampang and I got to see some of Noi’s home there. After I got home, the rest of the day was laundry and cleaning. It was nice to have a short week – 2 days.

Somehow, Pat realized that I wasn’t the right person to be creating the curriculum for the Mini English Program and she assigned different parts to all the other English teachers. I will proof read what she writes though.

My MEP students did horrible on their tests. I didn’t think the test were that hard. Pat suggested I re-test them. In America, they would fail and if they failed enough, they would be held back a year. But, here, they help them by re-testing or giving them other ways to make better marks. I think I will re-test them, but then average the scores of the two tests.

I got home Friday and just decided to go to bed early. I slept 12 hours. I needed that. I know a huge part of why I don’t like teaching is that being in a school setting is reminding me how much I hated my childhood. It’s exhausting, but it’s also good to be facing it head on. I know that much of what I feel isn’t real. There is absolutely no reason to feel negatively about any of this – it’s old stories. I’ve known this for a long time, but it feels like I’m looking at it from a different angle as if I’m not actually feeling this childhood stuff, but watching myself feeling it. It is very detailed as if I am looking at it under a microscope. This is what most, if not all, humans do to themselves. We spend so much time feeling things that aren’t even real. They may not have even been real in the past the first time we felt them. But we keep pushing play over and over and over on an old recording of a bad feeling.

I notice that music helps break the cycle of old feelings. So, I’ve been playing music more often when at home.

Here’s some pictures and video of the students cheering and some pictures of Jetson, the village next to mine. Even though it seems run down, there’s so much beauty in this area.

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Recent Investigations

On July 3, 2016July 27, 2016 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.

Exams

On June 30, 2016July 27, 2016 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.

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20160629_112201 — One of these is the cannibal

20160629_145421 — Legal Items you can take on Holiday (mostly)

20160630_190011 — Pineapple, mango and longan

Sleeping

On June 15, 2016July 27, 2016 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.

The pineapple that will destroy your tongue

On June 12, 2016July 27, 2016 By rrainefioreIn Teaching, Thailand, UncategorizedLeave a comment

Friday Noi wanted to take me to lunch outside of school. We left early and the place she wanted to go was closed. There was a cone with a big light on it in the road so we couldn’t turn on it. As we drove by she said someone was dead. That was why the place was closed. How did she know that? She said she saw the tent. I saw a big awning coming from a house and covering most of the street in front of the house. I guess it’s like a reception where people come to pay respects to the family. We went to another place to eat. As with most Thai restaurants, it’s a covered area in front of a house with an outdoor kitchen. The lady that owned this one was real nice and quite happy to have us there. She had chickens and roosters running around everywhere. I had a hard time eating because I just wanted to watch the chickens. I didn’t have my phone with me so I didn’t get any pictures. I’ve never seen so many in one place. They were pecking at my feet. The roosters that would fight were in cages. Some of the roosters were huge. I asked if she raised the roosters for fighting. Noi said she didn’t. She didn’t mind if they died for people to eat, but would not have her roosters die for fighting. She could make a small fortune if she sold them for fighting. The health department in the US would fall over and die if they saw Thai restaurants. Yet, I haven’t gotten sick from any restaurant in Sam Ngao and the food has always been good. Maybe we are over cautious in the US.

Friday night I had dinner with Tip and did a reading lesson for her daughter. I wasn’t sure how to teach reading to someone that never read before, but I found some beginner reading lessons on line and Tip printed them. Fai did pretty good. I had hoped Ging would come over with her daughter too, but the timing didn’t work out.

My printer stopped printing even though I got the ink refilled. Maybe refilling the ink cartridges doesn’t work. I tried to get stuff printed at school, but it seems like a huge imposition to print color at school and I can only print black and white when I can find Noi in her office. Otherwise her office is locked. I feel frustration and a small amount of panic. This took me out of the state of indifference and has consumed most of my thoughts. I asked Noi if she would take me to Tak to get new ink. She took me yesterday and insisted that I bring the printer. I didn’t understand why I needed to bring the printer since I just needed to buy new cartridges. She kept asking about the ink tank. I kept saying that it didn’t have an ink tank and I didn’t see how the ink would get in the cartridges if they put a tank on it. Well, color me stupid. The printer shop in Tak put an ink tank on the printer and a thin cord that goes to the cartridges. Take that Cannon. Serves you right for trying to create a printer that goes through ink so fast and thinking we would have to buy expensive cartridges every month. This morning, I printed the rest of my lesson plans for this week. I keep getting the message that the printer is low on ink, but the prints came out fine. So, fingers crossed that this will continue to work. I relaxed a little.

My plan for this weekend was to get a week ahead on lesson planning, but the trip to Tak took all day so, I’m ready for this week’s lessons, but not ahead. We went to breakfast which was a delicious soup and chicken with ginger. Then we went to the morning market to buy more plants for Noi. I like the market in Tak. Then we went a few other places. One of them had tiny pineapple. Noi bought some and told me they were the most delicious pineapple. They come from Chiang Rai. They are the most sweet and juicy of the pineapple. There are pineapple that come from somewhere else in Thailand and they are bigger, just as sweet, but not as juicy. Then there are pineapple that come from Phuket. They taste good, but are so fibrous that you can’t eat too many. If you eat too many, they will destroy your tongue. The pineapple that will destroy your tongue. I enjoyed the non tongue destroying pineapple very much.

Then to Tesco to do the printer. Ice cream at Dairy Queen and the bank. I should have bought food in Tesco, but by that time of the day I was exhausted and just standing around was more my speed. The meat department has bins and bins of meat just sitting out and you grab tongs and a bag and pick what you want. Then they weight it and put a price on the bag. I was mesmerized watching people pick through bins of raw meat. I couldn’t even move to go look at the veggies. After Tesco we went for lunch at a noodle shop Noi has been wanting to try. The ladies working there were real nice and excited to learn about why Noi was with a Westerner. This was one of the first Thai meals that I didn’t like. The meat had a strange consistency and it was too spicy. I didn’t eat the whole thing because it just got hotter and hotter until I felt like my lips might melt off. It hurt for at least 30 minutes after. Am I allergic to chili? How do people find this enjoyable? How did the first person to try a chili think that this was a good idea to eat twice?

The subjects of conversation were religion (as usual) and politics. She has been told that the US has great welfare and that the government pays to take care of all old people and poor people. There are no poor people and no beggars in the US. In the US when people get old, their children do not help them. Thai children always help their parents. I tried to explain that some do and some don’t. This was difficult for her to understand. Americans are not helpful to other people. She wanted to know if Thailand or America had more charities. I have no idea. I find that most of what Thais think of the US is black and white. We are all one way or another. There is no concept of how huge our country is and how diverse it’s people are. There’s no concept that maybe it’s not that much different from Thailand and other countries. Everything that is a Thai way belongs only to Thais. For instance, Thai people are very nice. This is true, but I have met some not nice ones too. It is also true that I have met just as many nice Americans. Is it possible that a more true statement is people are nice? Then she asked what I was going to do later. I told her I was going to get a massage. She told me if I go once a week for massage I am addicted to massage. That made me laugh. I tried to explain why I thought it was important, but I just couldn’t. She asked about the lady who does massage. I told her sometimes it’s a man and sometimes his wife. Men should only do massage for men, don’t you think? I told her I was so glad that wasn’t true since he’s better than she is. She asked why I thought he was better and I told her he was more present. She didn’t understand. To her presence is the fact of being in the room and someone can’t be more or less present. They are present or not. I tried to explain presence from an energetic and spiritual sense, but I’m sure I didn’t do a good job of it. It’s too late in the day and my brain is already fried. Then that led to “Do you believe in heaven?” I swear we’ve had this conversation before. I said I didn’t. She proceeded to tell me about heaven and hell and doing good deeds in order to have a better life next time. Maybe I just don’t know the facts and that’s why I don’t believe. There was also an aspect where I’m from America so I must be Christian and I explained that I’m not Christian and not all of Americans are. There was also a conversation about fortune tellers. I said I didn’t believe in their predictions. I don’t think anyone really knows the future, educated guesses can be made, but no one knows. She educated me on fortune tellers, again, because I must not know about them or I’d believe. I find her questions so challenging, but also fascinating as well. With each conversation I become more and more sure that everything is just one. There is no good or bad and no right answer. There is no future to worry about and the past can no longer hurt me.

Then house and car stuff comes up and I lose the belief in no good or bad and no future for a little bit. The guy living in my house wants to buy it, but for $40,000 less than I think it’s worth. He want’s to buy my furniture, but isn’t willing to pay what I think it’s worth. So, I’m looking into moving my furniture out and now I’m contacting realtors. Money represents safety for me and thinking about it actually upsets me. In a lot of areas of my life I no longer fear for my safety or worry about how things are going to turn out, but with money issues, I still do. Maybe that’s why this appears to be so difficult right now. So, I can learn to release my need for money to safety. I remember childishly asking for life to provide me with some surprise money that would get me out of debt. Then I will believe that everything is ok. Of course that hasn’t happened. Still, last week I got a bunch of checks in the mail that I had forgotten Jay mailed to me. I was able to deposit them through an app on my phone. It was around $300 which won’t even make a dent in my debt, but the timing of it sure made me laugh. Of course, if surprise money in the amount of $30,000 comes my way, that will be ok too.

20160610_100301 — Mulberries someone gave me

20160611_112222 — Lemon Yellow Butterfly

20160611_112438 20160611_112733 20160611_113008

20160611_113225 — A lime the size of a grapefruit

20160611_140318 20160611_140741

A butterfly tried to kill me

On June 8, 2016July 27, 2016 By rrainefioreIn Teaching, Thailand, UncategorizedLeave a comment

Today my alarm woke me. It was way too early and I wasn’t ready. But, this is the first morning in a long time that I wasn’t awake at dawn. Usually I the birds wake me at dawn even though I have ear plugs and white noise. I don’t get up, when I hear them, but I grumble and try to go back to sleep. I’m not actually sure if I have slept until my alarm once since I moved here. Today, I slept until my alarm went off. I assume indifference is conducive for sleeping.

One of the biggest causes of motorbike accidents in Thailand is due to dogs. There are so many stray dogs here. I am very observant anytime I go anywhere, looking off to the side for any surprise dogs. I never thought that one of those sweet lemon yellow butterflies my be my end. Yesterday, I hit one while going to get printer ink. Or it hit me, I’m not sure. It hit me on the cheek and it’s wing hit my eyeball. For a few seconds I couldn’t see and was stunned. I swerved, but managed to keep the swerve minimal and regain my focus on the road. I thought, really? All these terrifying critters and my undoing would be a lemon yellow butterfly? Not today.

I mailed a package from Vietnam in March. It got to Colorado last week. Wow.

School was ok today. I was exhausted by the end of the day, but had my monk class tonight. I really just wanted to come home and crash instead of teach. Still, the class went by fairly quickly. I spent most of the day in the indifference place.

A week or so ago, I decided it was time to try some high tech pest control measures. I stuffed plastic bags in some of the suspect holes in the house. It seems like a useless attempt, but I have no other ideas. Then, I wasn’t sure if I was trapping critters in or out because I didn’t know where they were at the time. Tonight, I noticed that there seems to be a lot less rat poop on the floors (or is it tokay poop?). The bags have not moved. So maybe it’s actually working.

The school just hired a Chinese language teacher. He is now sharing and office with me, Mae, and the screaming cat. He’s real nice and is excited to practice English with me. I know they put us all in the same office because they aren’t quite sure what to do with us, but I enjoy having office mates. I got so much gift fruit today. I got two guavas, some mystery goo made from a fruit I’ve never seen before, dragon fruit, lychee flavored yogurt and 5 mangos.

Today Tip told me her daughter has lice. Oh lovely, do I have lice again? I used the straight iron tonight just in case – fry those eggs before they can hatch. My hair is finally getting longer. It’s hard to tell when it’s curly, but after I straightened it, it looks so long.

20160608_183312 — High Tech plastic bag pest control

	eaglegenuinec87d1476… on Going Home
	delicately4f6d967f14 on Going Home
	delicately4f6d967f14 on Icebergs
	delicately4f6d967f14 on ATV Tour
	eaglegenuinec87d1476… on Kluane

Rraine Drops

Tag: Oneness