There is a very big YMCA camp near where I live. They have cabins, lodges, horseback riding, a sledding hill, a Nordic ski center and so many other amenities. I have gone cross country skiing there a few times. The sledding hill is near the Nordic center. Today it must have been part of spring break as the amount of kids on the hill was 4 times as many as I’ve seen before. Usually, I enjoy the quiet of being out in nature or at least the sound of my skis on the snow or my jacket rustling as I move. Today, you could hear laughter, squeals, giggling, screaming and general chatter. It filled the air and traveled quite a distance. If you closed your eyes you could just see the smiles on all the kids faces. The sound of happy was everywhere. It was such a nice change from the quiet and much better than listening to music through ear phones.
Tag: YMCA
Mother’s Day
I’m done with grading for now. It was a very convoluted process, and I will have to do it again in a month, but it’s done for now. There was no sports day this week like Pat had told me there would be. But, did she tell me when it changed? No. I had to just wait and find out. Good thing I planned lessons for this week. For some of my classes, I am doing a lesson on song lyrics. I did Let It Go from the cartoon Frozen. And I did Firework by Katy Perry. I was quite struck by how beautiful our language is, not so much that it sounds beautiful, but that we have so many different ways to say something. There are about 5,000 words in the Thai language and over one million words in the English language. No wonder our language is so difficult to learn, but beautiful. The basic message from the song Firework is that if you feel alone, unloved, unimportant, fat or ugly, that you are not. You are wonderful and unique. I know that getting the meaning of a song would be difficult for the students since it’s all analogies and idioms, but when I wrote on the board “Do you feel alone, unloved, unimportant, ugly…….”, they answered “no”. I wonder if they don’t feel these things because their society is more communal and accepting than ours or if they just answered “no” because they don’t show negative feelings. It was an interesting experience though.
There were two more parties this week, both for another teacher that is leaving. I managed to get away before YMCA for one of the parties, but not the other. The second party was nice because it was at the teacher’s house in a different village. Her house was right on the river and there was a nice breeze out all evening. But, I just don’t like karaoke that much and it’s constant. My brain hurts just writing about it. At some point some drunk guy from the neighborhood wandered up and tried to join in the festivities. I could tell by the looks on people’s faces when he tried to talk to them that he was not invited. It was wonderful to watch Q take control and mitigate the situation. He found a chair for the man and got him a soda to drink. Q sat him in front of the karaoke stage and sat next to him with is arm around him so the man might feel welcome, but was also kind of restrained from bothering the singers.
Thursday was Parents Day so everyone wore light or turquoise blue in honor of Mother’s Day because, you know, that’s what you wear. I was told to wear blue, but not told the shade of blue so I kinda fit in. The parents came to school in the morning. There was traditional Thai dance, speeches and a lot of moving the Westerners from one place to the next. And of course, posing for 10,000 photos. They take so many photos at every event. I never see these photos. I’m not sure where they go. I was expected to give a speech, but no one told me before. I think I know less Thai now than I did when I got here so giving a speech in Thai was impossible. Then after I spoke they asked Robin to translate for me. I think he got the short end of the stick. At some point we had to go plant trees. This involved standing next to a new tree that someone else planted with a watering can in hand.
Tomorrow is Mother’s Day so we have the day off school. It’s a big holiday here to celebrate the Queen’s birthday because she is the mother of Thailand. I think celebrating your own mother is a second thought after that.
Most of my furniture was moved out of my house and into storage this week. One room of bedroom furniture wasn’t moved because the room was locked. I was livid when I got up in the morning and found this out. A few emails and phone calls later, the issue is resolved. My friend Jay will meet the homeowner at the storage place and move the rest in later. Still, it shouldn’t be Jay’s responsibility to do this. I am so thankful for all his help.
Xploreasia won’t work directly with my school because they don’t want to cause problems with the agent that assigned me to this school in the first place. That’s understandable, but then they offered to call the agent and my school when I informed them that my school would not be able to afford to work with that agent anymore. The agent is punishing my school by charging them more than they can afford next semester. Why would you call the agent? This is exactly how we got into this drama in the first place. That agent is not a reasonable person. If they call her she will just get angrier. She’s not going to suddenly become a reasonable person. Hopefully my school can find a replacement for me another way.
In other news: I booked my trip to China and now I have to get a visa. The frog in the bathroom is back.
(c) All rights reserved Kimberly Fiore
YMCA
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.
(c) All rights reserved Kimberly Fiore
4 Hours of Karaoke
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.
(c) All rights reserved Kimberly Fiore
Rraine Drops 