The drama of the day is who will drive me to the highway to catch the bus. I had asked Noi to drive me after class and she said she would. Then Pat told me the school driver would take me because Noi had to be in a meeting. Noi said she had plenty of time to take me. So it became up to me to decide. Oh jeeze. I decided to go with the school driver. Pat seems so stressed lately, I think she might implode. I don’t want that.
I had to leave school at 3:00 since my bus is at 4:30, which means I get to sit at the side of the highway for over an hour. I don’t understand, but this whole thing is ridiculous already so I just went with it. The bus was late so I ended up sitting on the side of the highway for 2 hours. This is why you never go anywhere without a book to read. I got stared down by a stray dog for at least a half hour of this time. The bus ride was ok except that the road from Tak to Mae Sot is terrifying. It’s full of steep switchbacks. There’s construction going on. There are huge drop offs to nowhere. There are tons of construction vehicles and large double semi-trucks taking stuff to the border. Most of the semis struggle going uphill which makes the bus driver go around them, pulling blindly into possible oncoming traffic. The bus driver seemed to have a mission to make up for being late. I’m not sure how the bus wasn’t struggling with the hills, but it didn’t. It must have turbo drive or nitrous or magic. There are lines on the road to tell you where to drive, but he didn’t see them, maybe because he was going so fast. He road down the centerline a lot and spent quite a bit of time on the shoulder very close to the edge to nowhere. But, now I’m safe in Mae Sot. My hotel room is nice and I’m waiting for a burger, fries with ranch dressing and a milkshake. Yes, ranch dressing – I’m quite excited.
(c) All rights reserved Kimberly Fiore
The stare downSee that pavement, that’s the part of the road we should be driving onSome serious dedication to farmingWe are supposed to be on the other side of that yellow lineHuge hotel roomNo one is getting into my hotel room…..
Today two of my three classes were canceled. I completely could have gone with Noi to Mae Sot. That just refueled my being annoyed. I’m not quite sure why this annoys me so much. What part of me can’t just let go? It serves no purpose to be annoyed.
Today after school it was raining real hard. I don’t mind a little rain, but this was intense. So I figured I had 3 options. 1. I could go get my umbrella and walk home. 2. I could go get my umbrella and ride my motorbike home. That’s the way the Thai teachers would do it. I’m not quite sure I could pull off driving a motorbike with one hand and holding an umbrella with another with a purse and a computer bag throwing off my balance. 3. I could wait and see if the rain stopped or let up to a reasonable amount. So, I chose option 3. Then I saw all the minivans driving up to the school to get the students. Usually they wait outside school for the students. And all the students not riding minivans came running out heading for their motorbikes. Ok, so I hadn’t thought of option 4 – Fuck It just run! I got bored of waiting and walked home. The rain never let up until sometime in the night. I was supposed to go to Ging’s house for coffee, but I had to cancel as I now didn’t have the time and didn’t think riding my motorbike in that much rain was safe.
I’m really annoyed. I need to do a border hop every 3 months, leave the country and come back in in order to keep my visa valid. Pat told me the school won’t take me to Mae Sot to do my border hop, that I had to do it on my own time on a weekend. Then when Noi found out what I was doing this weekend she asked why I didn’t ask to have the school driver take me. I told her that I was told I had to do it on my own time. She didn’t believe me and insisted that the school driver could take me. Then she said I should have told her. She’s going to Mae Sot on Thursday to take students for a field trip and I could have gone with her. How was I supposed to know that? I already booked and paid for a hotel. Then I find out Robin has to do his border hop next week and the school is only taking him because he has a different visa than me and has paperwork the School Director has to sign at the immigration office. Why couldn’t I have gone with them? I’m trying to tell myself it will be fun to get to a bigger city for a weekend, but it’s not working. I’m just annoyed. Pat said she’d call and order my bus ticket, but every time I ask her about it, she acts like I’m asking her to drive the bus herself. She’s so busy and this is such an imposition. She offered and I’m paying for all of this myself so that I may stay in the country three more months to work for them. How am I the bad guy in all this?
I’m almost caught up on lesson plans for next week and Pat comes to me with a task to write the curriculum for the MEP (Mini English Program). This will be submitted to Bangkok and will determine if they get to have the MEP program next semester. What? How am I qualified for creating a document for school policy and programming? This is a job for school administration or the head of the language department. She gave me an example another school wrote. I pretty much rewrote a couple sections and reformatted it since it was so badly formatted it didn’t fit on the pages. But, it took up all of my free time the rest of the week. Next I have to create a class syllabus, but I have no idea what that entails or what it should look like. It’s half way through the semester and now I have to create the syllabus for what I’m going to teach? I guess half of it will be easy since I’ve already taught it. I’m pretty sure “I’m going to wing it and hope that what I decide to teach is new and useful information since I have no idea what they already know or what the country would like for me to teach them” is not a good syllabus description. So, I’ll have to come up with something for the second half.
My monk class is so much work to prepare for and by the time school is done, I’m exhausted and I don’t want to do it. But, it always ends up being fun and the looks on everyone’s faces makes it more fun. They are really enjoying learning English. Ging has decided to join the class. She made me dinner tonight and brought it to me at class. That was so nice and so much better than what I was going to try to scrounge up at home since my refrigerator is almost empty.
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.
Friday by the end of school, I was not ahead on lesson planning. Oh well. I went over to Tip’s to help Fai with reading. She’s not too interested in reading, but I think some of it is starting to stick. And she made a great effort at it. But, she got bored quickly. The rest of the evening was spend going through flash cards with Tip and Ging. Then Ging whispered to me that she loves (really loves) The Voice USA. It was one of the cutest things I ever saw. So we spent the next hour looking up performances on the show The Voice. I had no idea there was a Thai version of the show too. I imagine there are different shows in different countries. It was a fun evening. It was nice to not be doing lesson plans or working on other stuff. It was nice to just relax and spend time with my friends.
So, the final paperwork for the sale of my house cannot be signed electronically. I’m annoyed that this other realtor is involved much less in charge of the paperwork and it’s her title company that is the problem. So, I had to call my lawyer and get her involved. A few emails later and it appears to be a big drama. Why can’t this go smoothly. So, Friday evening after I got home I had said I’d call my lawyer. I anticipated that she was going to tell me everything that was wrong with the current situation and that I had to fire the rental company and get the buyer to ditch his realtor, none of which I’m sure is possible. So, I took a few deep breaths and reminded myself that it doesn’t have to be drama and it doesn’t have to be difficult. This could go smoothly. She’s not happy about the rental company and the realtor being involved, but she’s a smart lady and knows how to deal with this situation. She summarized her concerns and I told her mine and it’s all in her hands now. No drama. Not difficult.
Yesterday was a full day of lesson planning, but it’s all done for next week so that’s good. I’m not as ahead as I’d like to be, but I’m not as far behind as other weeks! It was massage day too. It was so painful, but maybe, just maybe slightly less than in the past.
Last night I went to dinner with the other Westerner in town. He suggested the restaurant at the golf course. I had never eaten there so I was happy with that. It’s not a ton different than any other restaurant in town. The staff was doing karaoke when I got there and there was only one table of people eating. One lady was so excited to see me and try to help me. She was in my face in a second and it was quite uncomfortable, actually. I tried to explain that I wanted to eat so she gave me a menu and asked what I wanted. What I wanted was to sit down and wait for Robin and then eat there. She didn’t seem too concerned with getting me a table or chair to sit in (there were no tables or chairs in the restaurant at this time) just concerned with whether I wanted pork or chicken. I tried to explain that I wanted to sit and wait for my friend. It took awhile, but she got it and tried to give me a table in the rain. Then found another table and chairs when I shook my head at sitting in the rain. Then Robin arrived and everyone there knew him and they were all excited to see him. All through dinner, the one lady kept coming up and trying to talk to us. I had no idea what she was saying and Robin knew about half of what she was saying. It was obvious to me that she thought we were on a date even after Robin explained that we worked together. I’m twice his age and he has a girlfriend that the lady has met. It was nice to have dinner with someone and to have conversation, but overall, I found the whole situation awkward and I’m not in a huge hurry to go back there.
Today I did some shopping and engineering work. Nothing exciting, but not lesson planning!
(c) All rights reserved Kimberly Fiore
Sugar Overload (waffle, syrup, banana, ice cream and whipped cream)
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
One of these is the cannibalLegal Items you can take on Holiday (mostly)Roti Sai MaiPineapple, mango and longan
So, I found out I need to make two mid term exams. When am I going to do that? Ugh. I’m exhausted and working on lesson plans all the time as it is now.
A friend of mine is traveling in Asia and is in Chiang Mai this weekend so I went up to hang out with her there. Friday after my last class, Noi took me up to the highway and dropped me off. I’ve never left late in the day before, but was told it should not be a problem getting a bus. I got to where the lady who sells bus tickets usually sits and see her stuff there, but not her. Noi had called ahead and said I could get on a 3:00 bus, maybe sooner. A small amount of questioning set in as I wondered if this would work. I had to remind myself that it always does. A little later and the lady rides up on her scooter and says “Teacher Chiang Mai”. She makes a phone call and before I can pay her she motions me and this other guy to hurry. All three of us run across the highway to the median. We pay her there while we wait for the bus. Not sure why we had to rush as the bus didn’t come for another 20 minutes, but standing on the median of a highway is as good a place to wait for a bus as any place, I guess. I decided that would be the name of my book, “Standing on the median waiting for a bus”. It was a long bus ride, but I got most of one exam written.
I got to the hotel in Chiang Mai and went out to eat with CJ. It was great to see a friendly face and have good company and conversation. She had been traveling in Myanmar and was still quite in shock over the poverty and living conditions she saw there. She says she is going to write an article about it later. I’ll post a link to it when she does.
The next day, after breakfast, we went up to Doi Suthep which is a temple and large shiny gold thing on a mountain. As is typical with temples, there were a lot of steps, some dragons, a lot of shiny gold things, and a bunch of people. It was definitely one of the prettier temples I’ve seen. I enjoyed it. We came back down and did lunch and wandered around Chiang Mai the rest of the day and evening. CJ tried the fish pedicure where you put your feet in a fish tank and the fish eat the dead skin off your feet. I’ve seen this a lot, but I’m still not sold that this is something I want to try. I opted for a body scrub since I never feel like I can get clean here. After dinner we went to the night market. I bought a funny eye mask at the night market.
Sunday was breakfast with CJ and then we parted ways. It was real nice to spend that time with her. I went shopping for cheese and cereal, which I can’t get here. Then off to the bus station to make my way home. I finished my exams on the way home.
Today I learned that I need to ask 40 questions on each exam, not 20. That would have been useful information before. So, I spent all my free time today working on exams again. I’m still not done.
CJ noted how calm she thought I was so, I guess some of the changes I’ve made are becoming permanent if other people can see it. Now, I need to find time from all the lesson planning to start exercising again. I haven’t felt well lately and I’ve lost so much weight. It’s time to get back in shape so I can feel better. I don’t feel sick, but I get fuzzy brain easily, I feel weak and I feel tired a lot.
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.
Earlier this week, Pat came to me and told me we needed to tutor a student to help him get ready for an English competition in two weeks. So now one free period a day for the next two weeks is taken up doing this. I’m exhausted thinking about it, but how do you say no to that? We met with him on Friday. Still, I feel bad for him as he didn’t have any more notice than we did and the school he will be competing at has known for over a month. He has to do an impromptu speech on any number of subjects he might draw from a hat. It’s not very impromptu as they have given us the subjects and most kids just memorize all the possible speeches they might have to do. The speech is 5 minutes. I’d have trouble talking for 5 minutes on any of the subjects…. The other category is storytelling and a girl is doing that one. She was memorizing an Aesop’s fable. I read over it and it was grammatically wrong. Ugh, Thailand.
I’m caught up on lesson planning for this week and one ahead for next week. I was hoping to a whole week ahead, but I had some engineering work available so I worked on that most of the weekend. It pays better. I think I can get everything done for next week before the weekend. I’m going to Chaing Mai next weekend. One of my friends from Colorado is on vacation and will be there. It will be nice to play tourist for the weekend. Plus I will get to try my hand at catching a bus on the side of the highway late in the day on Friday. I’ve only left in the morning. Fingers crossed.
I did another reading lesson for Fai on Friday night. She really doesn’t want to do this for more than a half hour. I can’t blame her. She’s in kindergarten, drawing and coloring is far more fun than reading. But I did learn how to tell the difference between a girl dragon and a boy dragon. The girl dragon has a bow on her head. Similar for boy and girl cars – the girl car has the bling. Just in case you were wondering.
My sink has decided to pull away from the wall and looks like it might fall at any moment. I was told maybe someone would come look at it on Saturday. I stayed home most of the day and no one came. I gave up and went to get a massage in the afternoon. I got there and the guy was in and no other people. I’ve been lucky lately. Well, he’s been working on me for a month now and I’m still just as tight. I think he decided he’d had enough of it. He got out the oil (traditional Thai massage doesn’t use oil) and dug so deep into my lats that I thought he might snap my spine. Then he went to town on my calves. It was so painful and even though I cried, he didn’t let up. He did ask if I was ok. He was going to work the knots out of my calves no matter what. I could barely walk last night and it’s still difficult when I first stand up today. I almost fell just getting out of be this morning. Then he worked on my diaphragm and psoas. I’ve never had Thai massage that worked on those muscles directly. OMG those were tight. As painful as it was, I found it fascinating to watch him basically go “ok no more fooling around, we are going get down to business”. I also feel even more confident that he knows what he’s doing (not that I didn’t already), but knowing that the back of the hips won’t relax if the calves and the psoas are tight….. I think that maybe the shoes I’ve been wearing to work are part of the problem. They don’t have a huge high heel, but they have a heel. They are very comfortable so I don’t notice they are making my calves tight. Then add on top of that that I’m not loving my job and that stress probably gets transferred to my calves and is getting stuck in there. Some teachers wear slippers in the classroom. I have slippers. I’m going to try wearing them this week and see what happens.
I had a conversation this weekend with Xploreasia about the whole agent issue and I feel much better after that. Also, they will help me find a job somewhere else next semester if I want. I don’t think I want to teach anymore, but if I haven’t figured something else out, I’ll see what options they may have and decide then.
I don’t want to say it out loud in case I jinx it, but the weather was comfortable all weekend. Between the cooler weather and the butterflies, I’m a fan of the rainy season. Now we have orange butterflies too. Triple the butterflies! They are so pretty, but it does make for quite painful motorbike riding. I did find a very large dead yellow centepede under my table in the kitchen. I saw it, shuttered, sprayed it with bug spray just in case and decided to deal with it tomorrow. It seems like a task for the daylight hours.
(c) All rights reserved Kimberly Fiore
One of my advanced classes and one of the math teachersmosquitoes 😦The girl dragon has a bowThe girl car has bling, although the boy car has hearts and flowers?
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
One of the other English teachers, Tussany
Manaou HooManaou Hoo FaceHome Depot – ish
Dog eating the offering off a spirit houseGuess which one is me
Rraine Drops 