Tag: Thailand

Scout Day is Long

On By rrainefioreIn Teaching, Thailand, UncategorizedLeave a comment

The weird day kept going.  One teacher came up to me and asked if I wanted to help make bamboo rice.  Sure.  I watched them cook the coconut milk, put sugar and salt in it.  Then they put rice in the bamboo shoot.  I helped pour the coconut milk in after.  Then they take a large leaf, roll it up and stick it in the open end so the milk and rice doesn’t come out.  Then it’s grilled.  After that we went to another area of the school and had a teacher’s meeting about what was going to happen tonight.  Huh?  I started at 8:00am and it’s now 4:30pm.  The meeting went for almost two hours.  The best I could tell is there were 15 stations.  I was going to be at station 4 with Q, my next door neighbor.  They brought out dinner.  Pat said all the food was spicy and sent me off with her husband to get dinner at a nearby restaurant.  We got back at 7:00pm and the scouts were meeting, getting the lowdown on the activities for the evening.  Q and I went to our station.  It was about 10 strings of barbed wire near the ground.  Each group of scouts had to figure out how to hold up the barbed wire high enough for students in the group to crawl under the barbed wire.  This is what I did all night.  I have no idea what the other stations had.  One was definitely a short zip line because I could see it off in the distance when a group shined their lights on the person zipping.  One station was at the top of a very high hill and involved singing.  We did this until 10:00pm.  Then we went back to the main meeting hall and had rice soup while they spoke to the scouts again.  I got home around 11:00pm.  Breakfast is at 7:30am tomorrow.  I wonder what the day has in store tomorrow – more scout stuff.  My missing helmet was sitting next to my door when I got home.  Sleepy.

(c) all rights reserved Kimberly Fiore

Not sure what happened

On By rrainefioreIn Teaching, Thailand, UncategorizedLeave a comment

Today was weird. I was supposed to go out with the military students to do military training. But when I got to school it was all scouts, no military. The scouts raised the flag and sang the national anthem twice. Then they had announcements or meeting or who knows.  After that a bunch of the teachers got together with drums, microphones, and cymbals and sang Scout songs. They gave me a set of symbols. While the teachers were singing the scouts went through a tunnel and then got their face painted with mud. Then the Scouts headed out to go trekking. Just as I was about to go back to the house to get my computer so I could work on lesson plans, a couple of the military students came by to pick me up. They took me out on a motorbike.  For about an hour we went down trails that a mountain bike shouldn’t even be on.  The student driving me was a good driver.  At some point we came across a bunch of other military students all with black painted faces. They dropped me off with them and we hiked for a little while. Then we came to a lake where most of the other military students were.  I’m guessing the ones with the black faces were the new military students and the ones on the motorbikes were older.  I watched as some of the military students took a metal tin and some hay and used it to cook a chicken. They had coconuts and opened one up for me to eat . Just about the time the chicken was done, a car shows up with some of the teachers and the rest of the food.   After lunch, they asked if I wanted to go back by car, motorbike or walk. I said it didn’t matter. Somehow between that and trying to find my helmet, I ended up on a motorbike with one of the students. We drove to a small coffee shop and got coffee and then I got in the car and they dropped me back off at school. Now I’m sitting here not sure what to do.  I have no idea where my helmet is.

(c) all rights reserved Kimberly Fiore20160211_08214620160211_08254420160211_08372520160211_09105720160211_11173620160211_11225420160211_113652

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The cooked chicken is to the left of the two boys

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Chicken on a plate
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These were at the coffee stand

Sticky Rice

On By rrainefioreIn Teaching, Thailand, UncategorizedLeave a comment

Back to teaching.  My lesson that I planned for this week was way to easy for the M5s (high school Jr).  They have a great grasp of English vocabulary.  They do great repeating if I give them a dialogue to say.  Then, if I have them try to come up with sentences or dialog on their own, it breaks down.  I have to come up with ways to get them to try experiment/play around with what they know.  Now, I feel dumb.  How do I do that?  Then I think, I can’t say in Thai what I’m asking them to learn in English.  It’s hard to wrap my brain around that.

After school yesterday I did an English class for the teachers that were interested.  There were 6 teachers.  I had no idea how many would show up and how much they would already know so I basically didn’t prepare anything and hoped it would go well.  I started with “How are you”?  They know this well, but the answer always is “I am fine”.  I tried to show them that the answer could be good, great, not good, hungry, cold, hot, etc.  They came up with great questions, like what is the difference between “How do you do”? and “How are you”?  I had trouble explaining that someone could be funny or fun, but if you answer “How are you” with “I am funny”, it might not mean funny ha ha, it might mean funny not right.  I didn’t quite explain this one well.  They had questions like what’s the difference between cool and cold.  My favorite was what’s the difference between “I’m thinking of you” and “I miss you”.  I pointed to my head and said in a calm tone “I’m thinking of you”.  Then I pointed to my heart, collapsed around my heart a little and said with feeling “I miss you”.  They got it.  I’m also trying to show them that there is formal/polite ways of saying things, but we don’t use them that often.  “How do you do”? is more formal, but hardly anyone says it.  There is a common way of saying things that isn’t as personal as just with friends, but isn’t as formal as what is usually taught as polite.  Then one of the teachers took me and another teacher out to dinner.  I’ve only been to one restaurant here, 3 times, taken there by 3 different teachers.  They all love that restaurant.  It probably was one of the best Thai meals I’ve had yet.

Last night I was woken up several times by a lot of noise coming from the kitchen.  It sounded like someone was throwing plastic water jugs around.  I’ve heard this before and wondered what my next door neighbor was doing in the middle of the night.  My next door neighbor isn’t home.  Crap, something else is making this noise.  It was a rat.  I don’t know what the heck was doing to make that noise, but I came downstairs to find him in the kitchen looking very confused as to why I was there looking at him.  It didn’t appear that he had been in the food.  wtf was he doing to make that noise?  Why do I have to have so many visitors?  I’d rather have the frog back than a rat.   Today Pat took me to get “chemicals” that rats don’t like the smell of.  They look like moth balls.  I plan to put them around the kitchen floor and see if they work.

Today was similar where I just don’t want to get out of bed and I just don’t want to do anything, but go home.  But, by the end of the day, I feel better.  I wish I could get rid of this morning dread, but I don’t know how.  It’s not a new thing.  I had it for years when I lived in the US.  I’ve had it off and on for most of my life.  It had disappeared completely over the past 3 years so I figured I had worked through it.  I thought it was part of the not wanting to be here issue from a young age, being adopted.  So, either I still have more work to do on that issue or it’s something similar, but slightly different.

The afternoon market is Tuesday and Fridays.  We went after school.  I like the market.  I love the idea of buying food from the people that grew or cooked it.  I much prefer this to a grocery store back home.  It also has fascinating and weird things which I like too.  For instance, tonight I saw 5 lizards tied together so they couldn’t run off.  They were alive and for sale for food.  On one hand, I find it gross, on the other, I find it sad and yet so fascinating.  I asked Pat if she eats lizards.  She said no, but some do.  I saw two catfish jump out of a bucket and try to get away.  They got pretty far before someone scooped them up and put them back in the bucket.  I saw what looked like pig skin, but the entire pig head.  I have seen them cooking stuff in bamboo and heard it was sticky rice.  You see the bamboo grilling and you want it even before you know what is in it.  Tonight Pat’s husband bought me one.  I had it with dinner.  The rice was sweet and had black beans in it.  If I have to eat rice, I vote for bamboo sticky rice.

I am probably just as interesting a sight at the market.  I tower over everyone.  I have to duck constantly because I am taller than the fabric they have hung between the food stalls.  One kid about 6 or 7 almost fell over staring at me with a confused look on his face.  I often get this stare from younger kids.  Some people don’t pay attention to me.  Some look surprised and delighted when I smile or wai.  Some come up to Pat and tell her they want to talk to me.  One guy always wants to talk with me and has pretty good English.  Tonight he told Pat he didn’t want to talk to her he wanted to talk to the other teacher (me).

(c) all rights reserved Kimberly Fiore

Restaurant Cat
RraineThai – Sausage salad and sticky rice
Sticky rice

Finally, I’m Excited

On By rrainefioreIn ThailandLeave a comment

One of the most frequent questions I received from people before I left Colorado was “Are you excited”?  No.  I rarely, if ever, was excited.  The enormity of what I’m doing was too much.  What am I doing?  Who’s decision was this?  Oh crap, it was mine.  All along, I’ve known I would be fine, but if I can’t imagine myself living in Thailand, I couldn’t find the excitement.  Plus, there was so much to do to get ready that it was hard to see past the to-do list.  Tonight they took us to a Thai market, not one foreigners go to, but one where Thais go.  It was hot and crowded and there was so much food.  I had no idea what 95% of the food was.  We broke up into small groups and each group had someone from Xploreasia with them to help us with what everything was.  And we tried to order food in without using English.  I loved it and I was so excited to try so many things.  I can see myself going out in the evening and wandering around, finding my dinner, and just sitting on the side of the road people watching.  This is the first time this has felt real in a way where I can see myself living here.  It feels good.

(c) all rights reserved Kimberly Fiore

 

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Minor Scam

On By rrainefioreIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

Well, today was much much better than yesterday.  I got to the hotel around 1:00am, slept until 6:00am when my body decided it was time to get up.  Later in the morning I met up with 6 of the other teachers in my program and we headed out check out parts of Bangkok.  We went to the Chatuchak Weekend Market which boasts to be one of the world’s largest markets.  It was pretty big, hot and crowded.  But there was coconut ice cream so I was a happy little kid.

We wanted to go to the Grand Palace after and couldn’t figure how to get from the train station to the Grand Palace.  A couple of tuk tuk drivers showed us where it was on the map, but it was closed due to a holiday.  They suggested we do a boat tour instead and see a different temple.  Apparently this is a common scam where someone will tell you where you want to go is closed and then take your to their friend’s place to spend your money instead.  Still, the tuk tuk ride was fun.  The boat ride was fun and interesting, but longer than I would have liked.  It’s very interesting how some people live in big houses and next door is a tiny shack that looks like it might fall into the water at any moment.  And then next door to that is a glittering temple.  The temples are amazing, ornate and beautiful, even the smaller ones.  We ended up another Temple, Wat Pho, that has the largest reclining Buddha statue.  It was so large, I couldn’t get a picture of the whole statue.  There were many temples all within the grounds of Wat Pho, but unfortunately we didn’t have enough time to explore a lot.  Then we got into way overly priced tuk tuks to go back to the hotel.

We had a meeting with Xploreasia that evening to introduce everyone and get the general info on tomorrow and the weeks ahead.  By the time we were done with the meeting, I was ready for bed, but needed to eat.  Most of us went to a night market for dinner.  The food was great.  Then I went to bed early.

Overall, it was a great day and I feel so much better about my choice to move abroad.  I’ve always known it’s going to be great, but the fear of the unknown has been very big lately.  The fear has retreated quite a bit today!  Yay!

(c) all rights reserved Kimberly Fiore

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On By rrainefioreIn Moving Prep, ThailandLeave a comment

Ok this is scary.  I’m putting my passport in an envelope and entrusting it to the USPS.  I’m sending it off to the Royal Thai Consulate in Portland Oregon to request my Non Immigrant B Visa.  Apparently other Thai Consulates in the US don’t like to give out visas and deny most of them for little to no reason.  I think I’m not going to Antarctica.

(c) all rights reserved Kimberly Fiore

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My half-sister, Carly came over to help me pack today.  It was nice to spend time with her.  I posted on facebook that I needed help packing.  She responded yes and my friend CJ responded that she couldn’t, but wished she could.  My other friend Cynthia came over when I first put the house on the market and helped.  I find it interesting that if I put up a negative post, a lot of people comment.  If I put up a picture of a fox in my yard, it gets hundreds of ‘likes’.  If I ask for help, I get 3 responses.  What does this say about me, my friends, facebook?  I blame facebook.

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WTF

On By rrainefioreIn Antarctica Job Search, Awakening, ThailandLeave a comment

Tonight I went down to my room after the workshop was over and listened to my voicemail.  There was a message from someone at PAE asking if I would be interested in the Construction Superintendent job at McMurdo.  This is the job I really wanted in Antarctica.  I am well suited for this job.  The job would start in January.  I had assumed I was going to Thailand and worked through my disappointment over not going to Antarctica.  At first I felt angry and frustrated.  I’ve been waiting for this since March.  Why wait this long?  Why now?  I’ve packed most of my clothes.  I’ve paid $1400 in vaccinations.  I have a plane ticket to Thailand.  My deposit for my TEFL class is paid.  I paid for international health insurance for a year.  I told everyone I am going to Thailand.  What the fuck?!  Now I might have to make decisions.  I told Wendy, Michael and Ed and they are all excited for me.   I don’t feel excited.  I feel chaos and stress.  Michael said “Oh, does life support Rraine?  This is what you want”.  This is what I want, but it didn’t come in the package I wanted.  I spent years knowing I was quitting my job and doing something else, but not knowing what that something would be.  It was so uncomfortable not knowing, not having a plan.  I felt weak, indecisive, terrified, and stupid.  Then when I finally made a plan to go to Thailand, it felt solid.  Now I may abandon my plan and I’m back to feeling all those things again.  Fuck you life, I can’t make this decision.  So, I broke it down – why am I upset?  I will lose all the money I have already spent – ok, it’s just money and there will be more money.  I may appear flakey to the TEFL company and they may not want to postpone my class.  Why do I care what they think?  I’m afraid all the people I told I was going to Thailand will judge me.  Again, why do I care what they think?  I’m not even close most of the “they”.  Those that are close to me get it.  It’s my judge.  It’s my inner mom telling me I have to finish what I start.  I have to do what I said I would do.  It’s fear of not having a plan (code for control over the situation).  Without a plan, I will have nothing and won’t be able to take care of myself and then I’ll die.  I feel unstable without a plan.  I feel extra unstable if I abandon the perfectly good plan I had.  I’m upset because this will add more to my to-do list and it’s already ridiculous.  These and many I didn’t list are the surface reasons I am upset, but they are just there to distract me from the base issue.  The base issue is that if I get this job, the one I wanted, I will have to accept the fact that Life does support me.  This is contrary to everything I have ever believed.  My entire life and much of my personality is based on the belief that there is not enough for me.  This is what I’ve been working on so hard.  I want reality to flip and to really get it that life supports me.  I will have to live from the new truth, to not know and trust and change – forever.  It’s so silly that this is so hard.

(c) all rights reserved Kimberly Fiore