The school had a seminar for the bad students a few weeks ago where they brought an expensive group of motivational people in to do a workshop. I’m not sure of the details. That’s the best I could understand from what was described to me. Ever since then, teachers are running around saying “I can; You can; We can!” I assume this was part of the motivational workshop. The other thing that’s new that I think came out of this is that most mornings at assembly, the students have to turn to the student next to them, high five, shake hands and then hug. This happens randomly between teachers or teachers and students too.
Tonight is another going away party for Mae. This is for all the teachers and school staff. It will be just like the one I went to last week where there is food, speeches, giving of gifts, tons of selfies and karaoke. I went home first and ate pre dinner which was a great idea. Then I could eat a little at the dinner, but not be hungry or eat just rice. When I arrived, Pat’s husband was excited to see me and asked for a hug. I think he’s trying to buy into the new motivational thing going on. It was super cute though. After all the speeches and gifts, it was karaoke time and I knew how it was going to go. There would be some Thai songs and then a half hour in or so, there would be YMCA. There was no use trying to fight it. So, instead, I got my phone out and documented it so I could share this thing of wonder with you. I’m sorry that the video is sideways. I have no idea how to flip a video. Even sideways, it’s pure gold.
So, Mae is leaving. She is the Burmese language teacher I use to share an office/classroom with. She is one of my favorite people here. Even though she doesn’t speak much English, her ability to understand my sign language and gesturing is quite amazing. I will miss Mae. One of the most wonderful things I’ve seen happened this morning. Noi interrupted my class and told me someone wanted to talk to me. Out in the hall Chelon was waiting for me. She had a piece of paper with what she wanted to say to me written out in English so she could invite me herself instead of asking someone else to get the message to me. She did a great job of pronouncing what was written. She told me that there was a small dinner party that night for Mae and she wanted to invite me to come.
The dinner party was at Chatchai Hill, the sheep farm, resort place. On the way there the other teacher that was with us in the car wanted to ask me a bunch of questions. So Noi translated. She wanted to know who my best friend at school was. Of, course, it’s Noi. Noi was laughing with this. When she asked my why, I told her that she is fun, has a lot of energy, teaches me about Thai culture and asks me very difficult questions. Noi loved that. This teacher wanted to know about Pat. I told her Pat was a very nice person and did a good job of taking care of me, but she doesn’t do things with me socially outside of school. Then the teacher said she was so sorry she didn’t speak English better because she missed the opportunity to get to know me. Oh, I understand this. If I could speak Thai, I would have had a different experience and would know more about the other teachers. When we got to Chatchai, Noi said they reserved one of the karaoke rooms. It looked like there were 8 to 10 separate little buildings which I assume were all karaoke rooms. But, since this resort is kind of in the middle of nowhere surrounded by the middle of nowhere, I think we were the only ones there except a few people in the dining room.
My drink choices were whiskey which I don’t like much or some red wine cooler like thing. The red thing was awful – whiskey it is! It was constant eating and constant karaoke the whole night. There was so much food and it just kept arriving. Of course, most of it would try to take the skin off my lips, but I managed to find a few things that I could eat. It was a lot of fun, although 4 hours of karaoke is too much. I was the only one who seemed to think this so I kept that to myself. The school director (principal) was there. Hipster 0 was there. Did I write about Hipster 0 in the past or just think about it? I think I’ve found the original hipster, the one all other hipsters originated from, only he has no idea because he’s the only one here. He dresses like a hipster without even knowing what that means. The rest of the people there were other teachers. Of course they wanted to know what song I was going to sing. I was slow on deciding so they decided for me. I had to sing ‘Have you ever seen the rain’ and ‘YMCA’. There was one Thai song that attempted to be a hard rock song, but it fell way short and looked like a bunch of cute sweet women shaking their fists. There was the throw dance where you did some cool dance move and then made a motion like you were throwing a ball to someone. Whoever you threw the ball to then had to come up with a cool dance move and then throw it to someone else. It took several rounds for me to get it. Then I threw it to the Director who did a smooth move of leaning to the side and pretending the ball went flying past him so he didn’t have to do a dance move. But, I do have to say singing YMCA with a bunch of Thai women as back up singers doing the YMCA motions was one of the best things I have ever seen, ever.
It was kind of a normal week except I was done with lesson planning on Saturday instead of Sunday! Whoa!
One of my M6 classes (12 grade) always wants me to sing or dance. They love music. So I brought in music related to the doctor since my lesson was on health. They went nuts and got up and started dancing. Then after the first song they wanted to play Doraemon songs. I knew Doraemon was a cartoon, but had no idea Doraemon also had electronic dance music too. Huh….Who knew? The other M6 class was a bit different. They sat on the edge of their seats watching the video that went with the song and had little interest in dancing. The first class was oblivious there was a video. So far most, if not all Thai music I have heard is horrible. It’s like bad walmart sappy love song lounge music. Doraemon throwing down the beats was a welcome change. When I told Noi about the M6 class loving to dance she said that was because that class had a lot of boy girls in it. I assumed this was like a very effeminate boy. It does seem that is true.
I’m still amazed by the restaurants here. It’s a wonder I’ve only gotten sick twice. Not one place I have eaten in since I got to Thailand would pass a health department inspection in the US. Yet, it all seems to be just fine. All of them in my area are outdoor kitchens. The number of chickens I saw running around kitchens this week alone was mind boggling. We went back to one of the places I wrote about before where there were so many chickens and flies. I’m now naming this food shop, House of Chicken. No food shops appear to have names and if they did, I couldn’t read the sign anyway, so House of Chicken it is. They were everywhere, pecking at a bag of food, playing in the sink of dirty dishes, pecking at the frying pan, running in the street. The kitchens are like camping kitchens. I feel like I’m just camping 24/7, but with a lot more chickens. Yet, no one seems to get sick, including myself so maybe we are just over paranoid in the US?
I went to Tak with Noi one day after school. I went to the bank to find out why I can’t transfer money on line. The lady helped me register for on-line banking, but I don’t know she understood my concern and I don’t think it changed anything. I also went to the store to buy cheese and cereal – both things I can’t get in my village and can’t live without. I ran into the western teacher I had met in Chiang Rai. That was kind of funny. We stopped at a teacher’s credit union / co-op type thing after the store. There was a younger kid in there. I assumed his mom was one of the ladies working there. All the ladies encouraged him and cheered him on as he tried to speak English with me. He asked my name and where I was from, my favorite food, and a few other questions. Very cute.
Of course there were no classes Friday afternoon because it was National Thai Language Day so there were speeches, dances and other performances all afternoon. No one told me until about lunch time. Oh well, that’s just one less lesson plan I have to do for next week. There was a going away party for one of the teachers after school. I was told about this in the afternoon. I felt funny going since I didn’t even know who was leaving until she got up after dinner for all the speeches and photos. But, I didn’t want to offend anyone by not going and I was curious what a going away party would be like. It had lots of Thai music, spicy food, rice, sugary sweet sodas, whiskey, speeches, giving of gifts, lots of photos, lots of selfies, and karaoke. I managed to find some food that I could eat. I probably should have tried the whiskey, but I don’t really like whiskey. I tried the atomic fallout green soda. It was quite delicious. They love to take photos of gifting. So there is a overly posed photo of every gift she received being handed over by the giver. Still, as I sat there and looked around, I felt very strongly like I was a guest at someone’s family dinner. This is a family and they truly care about each other. I did get a not so good video of my next door neighbor, Q, singing karaoke. A lot of people asked if I did karaoke, but I don’t know any of the songs and I can’t read the words on the screen.
I left my motorbike at school because it was raining so hard when I left. So, I walked up to get it Saturday morning. The janitor, Q, and some of the other male teachers were sitting in front of the school office around the drink cooler obviously working on the left over whiskey. They wanted to know where I was going. “Teacher Rraine, where you go?” They also wanted to know where I was going in October. Then the janitor proceeded to say he loved me about 7 or 8 times. “Teacher Rraine, I love you.” I’m going to guess he thinks that means he likes me or he will miss seeing me when I leave, not that he actually loves me, but who knows. He barely speaks English so I’ll chalk it up to that, that and whiskey.
The coffee shop was closed so I texted the lady that makes salads and burgers to see if she was open because I know she has coffee and wifi. She was open so I spent most of the day there. The tables and chairs were very uncomfortable, but there’s more than sugar on the menu so I got an egg ham and cheese sandwich was was delicious. A lot of students came in while I was there. It was a nice change of pace. I did massage yesterday too. It was one of the most painful yet. When he worked on my shoulders I cried. I was glad this was near the end of the massage because it felt like there was so much crying and screaming wailing wanting to come up. I just don’t feel safe letting that volume of emotion out in that atmosphere. After he gave me his phone number. I think he was trying to tell me he would work on me at my home or his or come get me if it was raining. He was either trying to give me a safe place to work next time or he was hitting on me. I really have no idea. I went home after and tried to release some of emotions I’m holding in my shoulders, but nothing came up. How can that be? I know it’s there. Even as I write this, I can feel so much crying stuck in there, but I can’t reach it. Maybe tomorrow….
(c) All rights reserved Kimberly Fiore
The best crispy pork is made hereThe Ping River from Crispy Pork RestaurantHouse of Chicken RestaurantHouse of Chicken RestaurantShe is cooking my lunch right now at House of ChickenChickenWhat? There’s a chicken behind me?This is a restaurant
I got ice cream on the way back from Chiang Mai. It was made from coconut milk instead of cow milk. This makes it extra delicious, but not as creamy. It’s kinda grainy. That would have been good enough, but there’s stuff on top of it, stuff that doesn’t need to be there. I picked the bright colored pink and green one thinking it was mochi or jelly. Nope, it was grainy tasteless chewy and extremely less exciting than it’s color led you to believe it would be.
The other food delight of the weekend was lasagna flavored chips. I have no idea why you would want lasagna flavored chips, but curiosity won. I assumed it would not taste like lasagna since I don’t think most Thais know what lasagna actually tastes like. They kind of tasted like lasagna if you made lasagna with taco sauce and chili peppers. Why does chili have to be in everything? It doesn’t belong in lasagna.
Oh, well I don’t need to eat either one ever again.
And yea, that thing that resembles a waffle is what I call Death By Waffle – It’s a waffle rubbed in nutella with coffee ice cream, whipped cream and chocolate filled marshmallows. And, yes, I ate the whole thing.
The night we got into Chiang Mai the Sunday night market was going on. It was so close to our hotel that the taxi couldn’t take us to our hotel. It just dropped us off at the market and we had to walk the rest of the way. However, after we checked into the hotel, this made it easy to run back out and wander the market. I saw a fortune teller and remembering previous conversations with Noi about fortune tellers, I decided to have her read my cards for fun. Something about headaches, lots of work, lots of money, making jewelry, true love (but not until next year). As with most fortune tellers there was a lot of vague things that seem to be unique to me. We’ll see what happens…..
We had a day in Chiang Mai before Andy headed back to Singapore. I looked up museums in Chiang Mai and we found the Insect museum. We decided that sounded unique. It was. We got up to a house and there was a sign on the gate that said to ring the doorbell. A lady came and opened the museum for us, charged us the fee, and gave us some water. The museum was full of fossils, bugs, rocks, elephant statues and all sorts of other interesting things. The insect collection was incredible. Incredible and creepy all at the same time. There were also many many many signs about love, life and loving the world around us. The couple that started the collection were both malaria and mosquito researchers and this collection is part of their life long passion for their work. The woman who let us in, was in fact, Dr. Rampa Rattanarithikul herself. The highlight of the museum was getting to read all about her and her husband and then meeting her.
After the museum we took a taxi to a nearby waterfall. It was rather underwhelming. After the waterfall, we found a man selling bugs and Andy decided it was a good plan to buy and eat some bugs while I videoed it. I don’t know how he did it. It grossed me out just videoing it. He said they were horrible. We walked through the arboretum and then found some lunch. I’m not sure if I am ill or what, but I’ve been feeling tired and dizzy a lot lately. This hit around lunch too. The heat probably added to it too. So after lunch, it was nap time.
In our search for things to do we saw an advertisement for a cabaret show. That sounded fun so we went to the night market, found the show and bought tickets after dinner. The theatre/stage looked like we were going to see a cabaret in someone’s backyard/garage. The show was very armature, but it was also fun and cheap. So, overall, I’d say we got a good value for our money.
Tomorrow Andy is heading back home to Singapore. After he was so nice and introduced me to his friends and showed me around Singapore, it was nice to be able to show him around Thailand a little. Andy, Ivan and Judy should be back in Thailand in October. I am hoping I can meet up with them then.
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
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.
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
There’s a bullfrog (or I assume it’s a bullfrog) near where I live. He is so loud and monotonous. I can even hear him when the ac is on and I have earplugs in.
There’s always one fly or gnat flying around me at all times. It doesn’t matter where I go or what I do, there is always one.
At school, the guy that sells homemade ice cream at lunch serves it over colored rice or some other substance. Today I tried it. Mine was over some gelatinous thing and a pumpkin like squash. Why is this good? Ruined my ice cream. But the prize goes to – Ice Cream Sandwich. I watched him put four scoops of ice cream on a hot dog bun and give it to one of the kids.
I think I have lice again. Started doing the shampoo again.
At my house there are hundreds of butterflies with grey on the outside of their wings and purple on the inside. This creates an amazing effect. As I walk up to my house I cannot see any butterflies because they are sitting there with their wings closed, but as I step I disturb them and they flutter. The ground shifts and turns to a sea of fluttering pale purple. I usually walk up to my house, back to the street and back to the house a couple times. I assume these are from the worms that drop from trees. Well done Mother Nature, well done.
I went to the market and walked up to the guy that sells popcorn. He remembered that last week I got two bags of popcorn and immediately prepared two bags for me when he saw me. Two bags of popcorn cost 20 baht ($0.57). Maybe next time I should get 4.
There’s a sign on the main road that is a picture of a cow. I remember back in February when I was deep in culture shock and I first saw the sign thinking, “I bet if were to see a cow on the highway right now, it would make me happy”. There are no random cows on the side of the highway. Today, I came around the corner to see 4 cows on the side of the highway. No people, just cows walking along the road. My prediction was correct, seeing cows on the side of the highway does make you happy.
(c) All rights reserved Kimberly Fiore
Board in an English Classroom – Where’s the English?
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.
Rraine Drops 