I am no longer a homeowner. My house sold. It was stressful with last minute drama, but it sold. I am no longer a homeowner. I will miss living there. I loved how quiet it was and being that much in the mountains. I loved the wildlife and the lake, the neighbors and being able to hike out my back door. It was a peaceful house. But, it’s time to do something else. I have no idea what that is. I cried a little over it twice, but didn’t really let the loss go completely because there is always someone nearby. I’m surrounded by student and teacher housing. I can hear every word people say, even though I don’t understand the words. There is no sound privacy here. My car is back in Colorado, but appears to have a lot of mileage put on it. I keep getting speeding tickets. I’ve asked to have a mechanic look at the car, but that hasn’t been done yet. Hopefully it’s in good condition. I’m not sure what happens next. But, I guess if I come back at the end of the year, I’ll have a car to drive.
For those who might be following international politics, big things are happening in Thailand. A vote on a new constitution is tomorrow. There is much controversy over it and the results in either direction might cause big changes in Thai government. I don’t want to go into it much as it can be illegal to express opinions on the subject. But, I don’t feel I am in any danger as I don’t live in a big city where there might be protests and I’m not planning on travelling in the near future. But, the near future should be interesting if international politics interests you.
The rest of this week I think I lost a lot of brain cells trying to figure out this grading system. Everything Pat explained to me is different from what Q explained to me and Noi spent hours translating the forms into English for me. Still, I have 11 indicators that I am supposed to teach to and grade the students on. I just received these yesterday so now I have to figure out how to fit my previous lessons and exam to indicators I should have had before making lesson plans. Logically, none of it matches so I’m just going to wing it. But, by the end of Friday as Noi was trying to explain it to me again, I just couldn’t take it any more. My head was spinning and nothing made sense. I had a mini melt down. This is so much work and it’s all bogus! I guess a lot of jobs have stupid reporting processes. I’ve heard teachers in the US complain about similar things.
Thursday after school, I saw a bunch of students with sticks and one of the teachers with a sling shot standing around a tree and bush. Robin explained to me that a large snake (ngoo) had just dropped out of the tree and they were trying to get it out of the bush so the teacher could eat it. Great, remind me that snakes can climb trees. I knew that, but that fact was safely tucked in a back fold of my brain. Now it’s been brought up to the surface and every time I see a tree I’m wondering if a snake is going to fall out of it on me. There are billions of trees here. The students poked at the bush with the sticks and finally the snake came out. Two wacks with a stick and it was dead. The teacher rushed in and grabbed it and threw it in his motorbike basket and drove off. This all happened in about 3 seconds.
The closing date of my house got moved up a week. I’m not sure why there is a huge rush on this, but that means moving my furniture out has to be moved up a week. I awoke Friday morning to a bunch of hectic messages on the subject. I thought it was very unfair to put all of this on my friend Jay who is just helping me out, but it seems like it’s all a go. Next week I will no longer be a homeowner. Unfortunately, I will be a car owner. The car is supposed to be in transit to Denver, but hasn’t arrived yet.
This might seem like a small victory, but I’m quite happy about it. I did laundry and it dried that night. Some of those clothes had been washed 4 times already because it’s been so humid that I hang the clothes to dry and 3 days later they are still not dry and they smell moldy. So, I successfully washed and dried a load of laundry this week!
I think I posted about it before, but Q has been working turning this shack near our house into a mushroom farm. It use to be four posts and a roof, but no walls. Now it has black fabric walls. Today I heard a lot of commotion. Q and Noi were helping a guy unload plastic bags off a truck. I went to investigate. The mushroom house now has a gravel floor and shelves. They are putting plastic bags of soil and mushroom seeds (?) on the shelves. The guy was watering them with a hose, but a drip irrigation system has been installed in the ceiling. One of the bags even has a mushroom coming out. I’ve never seen mushrooms grown before. It’s fun to watch it come together.
Here’s some random photos for you:
(c) All rights reserved Kimberly Fiore
“grocery” storeRestaurantFrom one of my studentsWaiting for a snakeSnake in handSneaky speaker that blares monks talking at 3:00amQ in Mushroom HouseMushroom HouseAlready have some mushroomsTruckfull of MushroomsFrom Mae’s Going Away PartyFrom Previous Going Away Party
My lawyer demanded the car be sent back to Colorado because they were in breach of contract. They said they would send the car, but not pay for anything. So, now I have to pay to have my car sent back to Colorado, pay for insurance and make the payments. The car has not been sent back yet and I have no idea what condition it will be in. I have no idea how I will be able to afford the car payments. I’m not sure if we will sue the lease company or not. It probably depends on the mileage and condition of the vehicle. Tune in later.
On a good note, the house sale should close on August 16. There do not seem to be any big hurdles for that. Trying to organize getting my furniture moved into storage has been a hassle, but hopefully that goes smoothly too. Fingers crossed.
I’m still not sure what I’m doing after I leave here. I’m definitely going to travel for October and November, but unsure past then. I asked Dave, the guy I met on Tinder, if he wanted to / was able to travel. I figured I’d be traveling alone. If he says no, I’ll still be traveling alone. So, what’s to lose. He doesn’t know if he will be able to or not, but asked where I wanted to go. When I told him that the only plan I had so far was to be in Thailand for Loi Krathong, he asked why I was coming back to Thailand after going home. Huh? I never mentioned going home. I think maybe he hasn’t actually been paying much attention to my texts. Oh well. I am looking forward to Loi Krathong as it is the one thing I didn’t want to miss while I was here. So, if anyone out there wants to join me in November, let me know!
Not too much happened on Monday. School all day, came home exhausted which makes it hard to do anything. Grade worksheets and get ready for the next day’s classes and then it’s 10pm. How does that happen?
Tuesdays are my busiest teaching day. I only had one hour free all day and it consisted of being told by several teachers that I needed to move into my new office. Then I had to go home and get my printer since it wasn’t working and one of the teachers was going to try to fix it. She was able to fix it! At the market I bought some doughnuts. I’d seen them every time I went to the market, but since they aren’t my favorite type of sweet, I never bought them. But, today I wanted cake. The cake seller only had chocolate, but directly across were the doughnuts so I decided to try them. I went up to the gardens by the dam to read and eat doughnuts. There was a lady there in her workout clothes doing stretches. I felt kind of bad eating doughnuts while she was exercising, but not bad enough that I was going to not eat them. And, of course, as you might guess, one of the doughnuts had a hot dog in it. Because…..Thailand.
Today, more of the same – school – tired – lesson plans – tired. I was very light headed today. I think my body doesn’t like the lice shampoo, or I’m fighting off the flu someone else had a week ago, or something is shifting in my nervous system or I have a strange unknown illness. I feel like I did after giving blood. Yea, my head started itching again so I did the lice shampoo again. I tried a different shampoo, but it didn’t seem to help so I went back the one I had done in March. I did this on Monday and haven’t felt quite right since.
The guy living in my home wants to buy it. He offered $35,000 less than it was on sale for last summer. I had another realtor do a price evaluation for me this week. He came back with the same number the renter offered. So, it doesn’t make sense to put it on the market and risk it not selling and go through the stress of waiting. So, I’m going to sell it to the renter. I now need to coordinate getting my furniture out. I’m waiting on the sale documents and what ever comes up if he has someone do a house inspection. Hopefully, it’s not too bad. It feels so overwhelming to try to do all this from here. But it also feels good knowing it’s going to sell. I love that house, but I am ready for it to not be mine.
I’m posting a couple of pictures from Teacher Day last week. This week, some of my lessons were on body parts and I had them draw monsters and then tell me what body parts their monsters had. I’m also posting some of my favorite monsters. Each monster was drawn by 4 different students so that is why some look disjointed. There are certain body parts I didn’t teach, but they ended up on some of the monsters anyway. I even got my monk class to draw monsters (and put post-its on themselves test body part knowledge.
For my first class yesterday, the Thai co-teacher, Q, was nowhere to be found. The rest of the other teachers were in a circle meeting. Sometimes they have circle meetings after morning assembly, literally, standing in a circle in front of the school. I don’t usually go to these as no one tells me about them and I wouldn’t know what they were talking about any way. So, I am sitting outside a locked classroom wondering what is going on. 13 year olds are running amok all over the second floor of the language building. Mostly, they are running and sliding across the wood floor trying to knock each other down. I would have loved to join them, but I wasn’t wearing socks and I think this might be one of the things I’m too old for. It might be like the last time I tried slip and slide. It looked fun, but it wasn’t, it was just pain. I was sitting on a bench and at some point most of my class came and sat on the floor in front of me. They started asking me questions. Some of it was in English and some in Thai. Some, I have no idea. They wanted me to sing. They wanted to see my eyes without glasses. Why don’t I wear contacts? Then they had me repeat things in Thai. I think they were having me say student’s names, but I’m not sure. I could tell if they were trying to get me to say something not nice, because the girls would giggle, act all offended and hit the boys. Even though most of it was me not understanding them and them not understanding me, they sat there for at least a half hour completely engrossed in everything I said or did, until Pat came up and opened her room for us to use.
I have half of my lesson plans done for next week. I have high hopes that they will all be done by Thursday so I can get ahead. I’d like to be ahead by a week. I think I can, I think I can, I think I can.
The monk I am teaching two nights a week has just such sweet energy. He is smiling ear to ear when he comes to class. You can tell he is excited to be learning English and thinks I’m silly. I try to be as silly with them as I am with the kids. I have an hour between school and the Monk’s class. I decided to stay at school and work on lesson plans. That hour seems to go so slowly, but then class goes quickly.
Today was my busy day with only one free period so I’m wiped by the end. My second to last class is 16 year olds – over 50 in one class. It’s insane. They were 15 minutes late. I can’t keep their attention for more than 30 seconds. You’d think it was kindergarten. Noi is my Thai co-teacher for that class and she stepped out half way through. The rest of the class was a total loss. How are you supposed to teach speaking to 50 students in 20 minutes? I was talking to Pat about it and she said that they know I can’t hit them so they think I can’t punish them. Thai teachers hit their students to keep them in line. I’ve witnessed it so many times. It’s difficult to watch. They are so much better behaved when a Thai teacher is around. My new plan of attack for most classes is – not good = no game. For this class, it will be no game and homework.
It’s market day so that helped me feel a little better after a long day. I didn’t buy much, but something about the energy of the market makes me feel more balanced. Or maybe it’s something about the day to day activity of shopping that does it. I have been finding quite a bit of enjoyment out of the “mundane” day to day activities like washing my motorbike, shopping for food, cooking, cleaning, etc. I like the lack of thinking.
Tonight I talked to a realtor and the rental agent for my house. The realtor is going to take a look at my house and work up some numbers. The rental agent is very helpful. I don’t want to have to put the house on the market, but I can’t just sell it to the current renter wondering if it’s really worth $30,000 to $70,000 more than he’s offering. He offered $30,000 less than it was listed for last summer. I also am looking into moving my furniture out of the house and into storage. All of this house stuff has been weighing heavy on me lately and I try to not let it bother me, but it does. I know it’s stupid because something will happen and it will be fine. Even if it doesn’t sell and I try again next summer or move back in, it will be fine. After talking to both of them, I feel so much better. I’m not sure if I’ve really started to let it go or if this is a lull in the worrying. My next door neighbor is the one who recommended the real estate agent and I like him. Yay – a real estate agent I like for a change!
It’s been much cooler lately which is a relief. It’s very humid which almost undoes the benefit of cooler. But, at least it’s not hot and humid. Instead it’s very warm and humid. One advantage of the daily rains is that there are more lemon yellow butterflies. There are more butterflies than I’ve ever seen – more than the butterfly pavilion in Denver or the butterfly garden in Singapore. Everywhere you look the sky is moving with yellow.
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.
Yesterday I felt very overwhelmed with lesson planning. I don’t like lesson planning. I don’t mind the actual teaching, but trying to figure out what and how to teach is just unpleasant. I got text books for my advanced classes and was looking through one to get ideas on what to teach this week. It seems like that would be easier, but the activities in the text book are so disjointed and difficult to follow. They are also way too hard for these students. So, it just makes me sad a the the Thai system that they hold the students to such high standards, but they just aren’t there. I don’t want to be a teacher anymore. Ok, I can’t say when I wanted to be one except before I was one. This is hard.
After school yesterday I went to get coffee at the roadside drink place. The lady there is so nice and remembers what I like. It’s cheaper than the coffee shop too. Since it wasn’t too hot (it was medium hot) and there was a nice breeze, I didn’t mind sitting outside. Then I went home and washed my motorbike. The thing still looks like a complete disaster, but I know it’s clean. Well, as clean as is possible. This made me content. Then I made dinner. I think I could stay here longer if all I had to do were mundane everyday things. I’m actually enjoying those. I feel very peaceful and don’t care that I don’t have a big social life or wild and exciting things to do. I’m completely present. Until I think about lesson planning or my car not being paid on time in the US or what if my house doesn’t sell, etc.
Today I woke up feeling completely horrible. Last night I looked at my US bank account I am running real low. I had to have some repairs done to the house so this month I won’t receive any rent so that will be a big hit when the mortgage bill comes in. After that, I won’t even have enough money to buy a flight home if I wanted to. The last I heard, the renter no longer wanted to buy the house. I still have over $30,000 of debt not including the house and car. The person leasing my car is still paying late every month. So, I woke up with this weighing heavy on me. I’m trying to trust that everything will work out ok, but I just couldn’t this morning. Most of the day I just wanted to leave, but go where?
I’ve had several teachers ask why I am leaving in September and if I was going home. Q, my next door neighbor asked if I was coming back after I went home for awhile. He also asked if Robin was going with me. I found that odd. Just because we are both westerners doesn’t mean I’m bringing a 20 something year old from England back to America with me. Robin’s on his own. I’m not even sure I’m going back to the US. Judging by the questions people asked me, most of them had no idea this was just temporary to begin with. They seemed to think I moved here for good. I find that heart touching and I felt a bit guilty. I questioned why I felt guilty though. I never planned this to be long term. I just don’t want to disappoint people. Guess I have to let that go.
The loud obnoxious skinny mangy school cat had kittens. They are so cute, but it’s sad because the mother just begs food and now she has kittens to feed too.
By the end of the day, I felt like I did yesterday. Just content. I went for coffee and a walk in the gardens with Tip, Ging, and their daughters after school. Then I came home to cook. I should have been working on lesson plans but I plan on doing that all weekend. I probably should be figuring out a financial plan, but I’m not sure what I can do other than move numbers around and get more depressed about it.
Noi came by and brought me lychee, mangosteen and a pair of pajama pants. She wants me to have long pants (although they won’t be long on me) to help keep off the mosquitos because rainy season is coming. I love this woman.
I also love mangosteen. I may have mentioned it before, but if I didn’t, these are the best fruit ever. And I am obsessed with them now. They are just starting to come into season here so I am happy about that. Lychee and rambutan have just come into season too. I like lychee, but only a few at a time. Rambutan is delightful to look at. They look like a shaggy monster. They are lychee’s hairy cousin. They taste way better than lychee too. I tried a new vegetable today. I was told it was like a not sweet melon and it is boiled or fried. So, I fried it with some squash, ginger and onion. It was very unexciting. The squash, ginger and onion combo isn’t too bad though.
It took all day, but everything but the furniture is moved out of the house and it’s all clean and ready for the new person to move in. I thought I’d cry all day as I said goodbye to my house, but I didn’t. I got back to Jay and Deana’s and they asked if I felt like a huge weight had been lifted, but I didn’t. I just feel blah.
Oh such relief! I signed the paperwork to rent my house today. I met the renter and feel very comfortable about him living in my house. There’s a great chance he will want to buy it in six months too. I leave for Thailand in three weeks and was feeling so overwhelmed with how I would be able to afford it. I still have a large amount of debt that I’m not sure how to deal with, but at least the mortgage is going to be paid every month. I’m still not excited about going only because three weeks doesn’t seem like enough time to finish getting ready, but I think I can do it!
They started a facebook group for all of us who are going to be in the January TEFL class. I went and looked at the people that are in my class. I am probably the oldest by 15 years. It feels weird, but I think it’s going to be very interesting.
Rraine Drops 