Bangkok (now with pictures!)

So I just had the worst class so far. They were a class of my 4s in which half were absent to begin with. Of the other half, about half spent the time trying to goof off. One boy in particular spent his time trying to pick on one of my ladyboys (named Bambi), and I eventually had to kick him out of the class after Bambi asked me for about the 10th time for help. I say ask, really he would just say "Ohhhh! Teacherrrr!" and look at me pleadingly with big brown eyes as Palm sat there poking his sides, or trying to copy off of his paper, or steal his eraser. I tried to give Palm a chance. I had him move seats, and when he kept moving back, I moved the desk beside Bambi forward. When he would crane around to reach towards Bambi, I stood in between. That just wasn't practical, I needed to move around the class to see what they were doing, and now that I think about it I'm really not sure what prompted me finally just saying "OI! You! Sit outside!"
I had to fuss at the class hardcore, too. I was trying to go over family members, and I drew mine. When I got to asking about various ones (the daughter of my uncle is my...?), they would not say a word. I must have asked the same question about 10 times in a row, obviously looking for a response. Nothing. So I laid into them for about 10 minutes. "I am not here for me to speak, I am here for YOU to speak! I know you're not stupid or mute, but you don't speak! If you don't want to learn, get out of my class!" All of which I said as slowly as possible while I was angry so that they might understand. They at least understood I was angry, and some of them began to respond. As they were working on their in class assignment (drawing their family trees), Bambi called me over. "Teacherr! Um... The, um... information is, you are popular!" Later he also told me I was smart and beautiful. Not sure if he was sucking up or if he actually meant it. My other ladyboy in that class, named Song, told me I was beautiful later, too. They get extra credit! The best part about both of their family trees? They drew themselves like girls, one with long hair and the other with his stomach hangin out and a big bow. Song called me over specifically to show me his. "Is me, teachaa, is meeeee!" So cute!

So last weekend passed pretty well. The weeks are seeming to fly by. I can't believe that I've been here a month already.
We went to Bangkok for a concert by Stanford Chorale and Stanford Taiko. Ben, Alli, Char, MC and I got on the train Thursday evening at 430. We got to leave school early! We bought beds on the train because we knew it would be a long trip.

Our ticket said the arrival time was 630am Friday, but we learned the hard way that train is a very time-consuming way to travel. If you think Europe is bad, oh boy. When we told people that we were taking the train, they laughed and didn't bother asking our arrival time. For good reason: we got in at 930. To top it off, Char's iphone was stolen from the table in our berth as we slept. She got on a tuk-tuk for the Railway Police station, and the policeman came shortly after to get the rest of us. That didn't take long, and the men at the station helped us get a taxi to our hotel.
We stayed at the Florida Hotel on Phaya Thai Rd. After the hotels in Lampang I was nervous, but this was really nice! Kushy duvets, big bathroom, the works. The only down was that Nirund didn't pay for wifi this time. Can't have everything.

We checked in around 1030 and decided to go exploring, as we weren't expected at the concert until 4. The BTS Skytrain was just outside of our hotel. We climbed up the stairs and headed to Siam Square. We explored the malls for a bit, just kind of wandered around. We thought the Bangkok Art and Culture Center was a museum, it was not. More a mix between an office building and a set of galleries. There were two interesting exhibits, one a series on pollution awareness, and the other a schools-wide art contest for dengue fever awareness. Some of the kids, in about 5th grade or so, were crazy good artists. I regretfully got no pictures of their work.
We ate lunch at a massive buffet in one of the malls. There was so much food it was really hard to choose: Japanese, Chinese, a Korean grill, Indonesian, Greek, American, seafood... there was more but I think you get the idea. It was expensive but worth it. After we ate we found our way to Jim Thompson's house. It was a pretty cool place. He was a fashion designer in the early 1900s that went missing in 1967 on his 61st birthday. He was responsible for reviving international interest in the Thai silk trade, and his house was very traditional. He collected antiques and some of the pieces that made up his house were over 200 years old.

We got back to the hotel around 330 and started getting ready to head to the concert. Since nothing has ever been at the time they have said ("Thai time" is a very real thing, and it is at least an hour after the time they say), we decided, rather wisely it seems, to be late. We got there around 5 and still waited around with nothing to do. The concert itself was alright, I could have done without the chorale. I don't mind a capella music, but I was not a fan of their set. In addition, a stage light shone almost directly in my face so I spent the whole time looking down in my lap, hoping it would go away soon.
The Taiko, however, was really, really cool. They're an entirely student-run group. They write their own music, build their own drums, even sew their own costumes. It was impressive. I'd never seen taiko before, but I definitely want to again.  I was an old lady when everyone else went out to the club after, I just stayed at the hotel and went to bed.

Saturday after breakfast, Junior, Ryanne, Alli, Jessica and I set out to explore and sightsee around Bangkok. Alli and I had thought the plan was to be back in time to go to the second concert, that day at two. Apparently that was not the plan. We saw Wat Pho, which is a massive temple next to the grand palace. It houses the Reclining Buddha, which was really huge. It was a really interesting statue, and Alli and I got lost in the rest of the Wat trying to find our way out. Wats here are so intricate and decorated everywhere. There were rows and rows of Buddhas lining the walls. In addition to the Reclining Buddha, there were little buildings with other Buddha statues, like the Buddha of Saturday and others.

Buddha of Saturday, also called Healing Buddha

After Wat Pho, we tried to go to the Grand Palace. I had on a tank top and we decided it was for the better that we just skip it for the time, because renting a covering was 200 baht and on top of that it would have been 500 baht just "to thank the King" for us to get in.
So instead, we found a ferry across the river to Wat Arun, the Wat of the Dawn. We could climb about halfway up and see great views of the city, it was really a beautiful place. There was a lot of tile work and it made me feel like Gaudi must have been to Thailand at some point for inspiration. The coolest part, to me, was that you could tell that most of the flower designs were made from old saucers or dishes.

We went to the mall after that because we were going to watch Man of Steel, but since the soonest showing was in 3D, Alli and I decided to skip it. We had an extra luxurious dinner from McDonald's (don't you judge me!) and went back to the hotel. Everyone decided to party it up that night, so we got ready and headed out with Pong, Ong, Jane and a couple other Thai assistants to a dance club. It was super fun! I had a great time dancing with all the fellow TTC peeps.
Sunday, Alli and Char and I decided on a girl's day. We went to Chatuchak Market, which is the biggest market I have ever seen. I'm talking a market the size of Mercer campus, maybe bigger. It was so overwhelmingly huge. We found a little booth with 100 baht dresses. They had just about everything you could think of, with so many twists and turns and ins and outs... cannot wait to go back.
We ended up taking a bus back to Lamphun, it left Bangkok at 830. Definitely the way to go as far as punctuality. We were scheduled to get in at 630 and were in Lamphun an hour early. Just in time to get ready and go teach! I got decent sleep on the bus, too. The seats were pretty roomy and actually comfortable. So here I am, back in Lamphun. Still not a "normal," week; I havent had any of my 4s because they're all involved in "activity." We think it's an anti-drug assembly/competition kind of thing.
Anyhow, bedtime now. More later.

Chiang Mai weekend

So last week passed by pretty much without a hitch. My 4s were happy, my 1s were happy... I still don't feel super confident about this teaching thing, but it's getting better.
We had Chiang Mai to look forward to this weekend, with some folks from Lampang coming up. Chase and Amanda were moved from Sukothai to Lampang, so they're now with Nabil and all three came to see us on Friday. We took them to walking street on Friday night (I finally got my sushi! 5 baht a piece, delicious!) for dinner and wandering. When we got back to the motel we had our now weekly hangout with the hotel manager's son, Eak (pronounced Ek) and his friends. It was a lot of fun! We had a beer run, a drink delivery, another beer run, and a snack delivery truck. By snack delivery, I mean dried flattened squid, various fish, and very thinly sliced crispy orange strips of what Eak told us was also fish. How it got to be that way is a mystery, but it was delicious. The little delivery man had a tiny charcoal grill that he used to heat the skewered squid, and then he ran it through a flattener. Really strange and interesting. It basically tasted like squid jerky.
I made a new friend that night! Eak's best friend's sister came this time, and she is a Thai kindred spirit. Chick loves to party. She ended up being our impromptu bartender, and we talked about places to go in Chiang Mai. Too bad we'll be in Bangkok this weekend, or we would be hanging out again this Friday night.
All of us got up around 930 and ate breakfast at one of our favorite places by the 7-11 before catching a songtao to Chiang Mai. We actually got off around TaPae Gate this time and began the trek to our hostel. It was a long, hot walk. We finally found it, checked in and regrouped for a bit. We caught a songtao back over to TaPae Gate and split up for a bit. Ryan, Char, Alli and I decided to hunt for food while the rest went shopping. We finally found Mexican food!
We ate at a little hole in the wall called El Diablo's Burritos. Their margaritas were almost straight Cuervo. Tried to get guacamole, learned the hard way that Thais just don't know guacamole. Nachos, however, they've got down. Obviously with homemade chips that were super thick in a delicious way.
We wandered around the rest of the day and ended up by Wororot, basically Chiang Mai's Chinatown. Lots of stuff for cheap. I bought another couple pairs of pants, one a pair of harem pants made from a pashmina scarf and a pair of cropped pants, not harem but I'm not sure what to call them.
That night we went to a bar right by TaPae Gate called Rooftop Bar. It was definitely on a roof, but it was not like the rooftop bars in Europe. You climb up all these stairs, and there was a little bar with a few more stairs leading up to a seating area. It felt like climbing on a really, really stiff trampoline, and we just sat by the wall and had a beer. The walls were painted with blacklight paint, and it was really interesting. There was a DJ, too, playing what I would normally think of as club music. But it wasn't a club... no dancing, just floor seating around a bunch of squat tables.
After that we caught a songtao to a bar/club called Warm Up Cafe. It had about 6 different rooms, and we started off in one of the techno/dance rooms. I started getting a headache from the endless crazy strobe-y lights and left the room, and I am super glad I did. About 10 minutes after, as I was standing beside one of the other bars, a band started up. I thought at first from her voice that the lead singer was a man. She also had her hair covering her face for much of the first song so it took me a little while to decipher that she was just a deep/slightly raspy voiced chick. I have no idea what the name of the band was, or anything she said in between songs, but their entire set was Kings of Leon, MCR, Two Door Cinema Club, Nirvana, etc. Truthfully, I'm not sure of what she said during most of the songs either, as between her engrish and the band being loud, she was a little drowned out. But the band was so good I really didn't care and just sang along.
We made it back to the hostel around 3, I think. The next morning, we all caught a songtao over to the Irish Pub that James took us to last week. Well, almost all of us did. Heather and Mariah were off petting tigers, and Nabil decided once he got on the songtao that it would be a good idea to jump off as it was moving because he thought he forgot a charger. The rest of us had a great breakfast in which we realized that getting used to Thai food meant we were no longer used to heavy American/English food. It was delicious though!
Well, that was my weekend. Will post more in a few days before we head to BANGKOK!!!!

Head, shoulders, knees and foot

So Ben and I get to Lampang Saturday night and meet up with the people that are there. We end up at the weekend market because that is the thing to do in any town in Thailand. Char, Ben, Alli and I came early so we could hang out with folks but it ended up that they all went to bed and we stayed up with Kera. Who went home on Sunday night :(.
Anyhow, we get up Sunday hoping to hang out then, but everyone just kind of sat around and nobody really did anything. Finally, Ben took Kera to the elephant conservation one last time and MC, Char, Alli and I went with Nabil to the Central Plaza, which is like their big mall. There was a huge show for Doraemon, which I have never seen. It's some kid's show and they had a huge stage with folks in suits and all. The best part was the big blow-up of Doraemon that we saw all the kids taking pictures with, and decided that we absolutely needed a picture with it too. They also had Burger King style paper hats with a pop-up Doraemon that we managed to find and wear around the mall for a bit. MC wore hers all day. She may well still have it on.
The day itself was fairly unremarkable. We did find Skippy peanut butter, though. The very best kind. That night proved to be reason to never visit Lampang again. Dr Nirund had told us to come back whenever we liked to visit and that they would have a room in the townhouses on campus (Yonok Foundation is housed at Nation University in Lampang). Apparently that means there will be a mattress or maybe couch that you can sleep on, which may or not be covered in rat/mouse shit just like the room around it. You might have a fitted sheet on a mattress, but you also might not. I unwrapped the mattress I slept on Saturday night from the factory plastic and hoped that the pillow from the bed next it would not give me some crazy tropical disease. Sunday evening we walked into the living room and there was a pile of fitted sheets and pillowcases on the floor, which I hoped were clean as I had to put them on the bed I was sleeping on. And use a fitted sheet to cover myself for the night, because I hate not having a blanket.
Monday was also fairly uneventful. We went to the labor department, where literally all we did was sign our names. Huzzah, work permit. Then we were all taken back to Nation University, where Dr Nirund treated us to lunch in a little log cabin-y restaurant on campus. I got some driving practice in with the moped, but apparently not enough because I still managed a mini-crash. The damned thing has more get-up-and-go than I anticipate from full stop. It's super sensitive and can get right up from under you in nothing flat. So I went to start it and turn around a tree after lunch, and ended up running it (read: my leg) along a low concrete wall. Holy concrete burn. And now it's slightly infected. But I'm working on that. Cleaning every few hours with iodine, peroxide, and triple antibiotic ointment stuff. Hopefully my leg doesn't fall off. If it isn't better in 12 hours, I am going to the hospital. I know there are germs and bacteria here that my body isn't used to. The only reason the tailpipe burn I got last week didn't get icky is because it was essentially cauterized, which cleaned it pretty much instantly. This scrape? Open and not cleaned the whole hour and a half ride back to Lamphun.
On our way back to Lamphun yesterday we decided to stop at a Wat along the way. There's a huge golden statue of a monk that we had been seeing from the road, so we decided we would check it out. Still have no idea who the statue is, but the temple was really cool. I think it was some sort of religious happening, because there were a lot of people coming and going. There was even a band on stage, and a guy singing stopped and said "Hello! Welcome!" when he saw me and Ben walk up. The temple itself was absolutely gorgeous. There were flowers everywhere. I really wish I could read Thai or that some of the signs were in English, because I have no idea how old anything was, but some of it looked pretty old. There were dog statues guarding what we think were the original stairs and there was crazy lichen and rainspots on them.
Today was back to teaching. I taught my 4s body parts (wrist, elbow, thigh, calf, etc.) and sicknesses (sore throat, toothache, sniffles, etc.) It helped using myself as an example, at least for ankle, because i have injuries on both mine. Way to go me.
My 1s had a blast learning the time. I explained the basic concept of a clock, and then drew two big blank clock faces on the board. I would shout out random times and whichever team got it fastest got a point. The whole class was getting involved, yelling and screaming at the team member drawing at the board. I think it was a great time. I need more classes like that.
Today was club day, and I am one of the advisors for Spelling Bee club. Suffice threw those kids for a serious loop. They kept trying to spell it s-e-r...and ...i-z-e. They are super smart though so they ended up getting it after I helped them break it down. I need to ask when the competition is, I get to chaperone which I am actually already looking forward to...
So that should catch us all up, I think. See you in a few days with a new report.

Wai who?

The first week of teaching was crazy. At first I was thinking that it was clearly not what I am meant to do. Now I still think it may not be what I am meant to do, but then again maybe...
I have the equivalent of 7th and 10th graders. Some classes are smarter than others so the year should be interesting. And the Monday and Friday classes will unfortunately suffer due to the crazy holiday schedule here. For example, there were no classes after 2 today, which we didn't find out until about 1pm. Although that could partly be because we were in Lampang again today, getting our work permits.
I mostly did greetings and class rules with my classes this week, although I did discover that they love both hangman and the first letter/last letter game (in which you think of a word, then the next person has to come up with a word that begins with the last letter of that word and so on...). I hope to be able to continue to think of games for them to play, although it's safe to say I can repeat games (for different subjects) about every 6 weeks. Easy peasy. Now to figure out how much they know already, because I can't teach them from the book I was given. Apparently they have this book from the Thai English classes they also take (mostly grammar classes), so if I teach from them they'll tell me they already did it. And if I get ahead of where they are with the Thai teacher, when she tries to teach it they'll do the same to her, which I am sure will not be pleasant for me. So it's more of a guideline for what they might be learning, because nobody really has even told me where they are for sure in this book to begin with.
The other bothersome thing is the condition of our classrooms. The thai teachers have really nice tiled floors, new desks for the kids and a new desk for them, a computer, nice bright walls and lights, a microphone, speakers, a projector, A/C... My classrooms have filthy concrete floors, no projector, shitty lights, fans that might work but no A/C, old old old desks... at least I have a whiteboard and not chalk. Small favors.
So there was a Wai Kru day on Thursday, also known as Teacher Appreciation Day. There were no classes on Wednesday and all of the kids sat around (with zero adult supervision!) making these crazy elaborate floral arrangements. Pictures will be posted on Facebook soonly. They presented them in a big ceremony to the teachers Thursday morning. The teachers would go to the stage and the students walked on their knees, flowers in hand, to bow down and present them to the chosen teacher. It was really interesting to watch.
Saturday we all caught a songtao (song=2, tao=rows, it's basically a pickup truck with bench seats on either side and an open back. We went to Chiang Mai (for 20 baht, less than a dollar and it's 60km or so away!) and met up with James, one of the other English teachers at our school. He took us to an Irish pub where we had cheeseburgers and coffee. Real coffee, not this iced starbucks stuff that is absolutely everywhere. Don't get me wrong, I am grateful to have some form of coffee but sometimes you just want a nice hot cup of joe and that is harder to find around here. After that James took me and Ben to his friend Jan, where we have now rented a motorbike. Read: suped up scooter. Yay freedom!
We drove from Chiang Mai to Lampang after that, about 130km. Will post more on that tomorrow, as it's almost midnight here and I am exhausted and have to get up and go to work. Grumble grumble.

In which we finally have a home in Lamphun

So there has been some excitement since the fire, although thankfully nothing so terrifying or hospital-visit-inducing. We had somewhat of a Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) orientation, although since none of us knew what age group we would be teaching it was kind of pointless. Also, we don't have to turn in any of the work from it until July 1. Which makes it really hard to care knowing it's continued irrelevance to any of our classrooms.
On the other hand, we did learn some useful resources for teaching, between rubistar and pinterest education and things like that. And the couple that ran the workshop were really sweet and funny so it wasn't as boring as we all feared. That took two days, and we basically just hung around Lampang and explored in the evenings.
One of our number went home a couple of days ago. I pulled my shoulder and my back trying to help her one night and spent one of the orientation days a little loopy. I got impromptu acupuncture from Maaw Pet! She saw that I was in pain and asked if I wanted acupuncture... since I've never had it done, of course I said yes. So she just pulled me out into the hallway, sat me down, and reached into her bag for a little packet of needles she had on hand and started finding knots and shoving in needles. There was a little pinch from them and then it felt amazing. She left them in place for about 15-20 minutes and then took them back out. The circulation definitely improved and I got sleepy and relaxed and just wanted to take a nap. Maaw Pet mentioned not having her long needles, and now I really want to find both a local thai massage place and a local acupuncture place. It felt so crazy good and my muscles were looser afterwards. Yay Eastern medicine!
Yesterday was our orientation field trip day. We visited a local temple and then went to the Royal Elephant Conservation. I got to see elephants painting pictures of elephants! It was especially interesting to note that they always paint elephants from the side or behind, never from the front. We also got to see them do other tricks like pulling logs around, balancing on them, playing catch, shaking hands (trunks?), so many things. They're so gentle for being so humongous it's really captivating to watch. And they're so beautiful in person! I am an elephant fan for life now. I found out I can pay a few thousand baht and go to mahamout school (because I can't just go work or volunteer, sadly)... I think I just might go for a 2 or 3 day course. I wish I had three thousand bucks to shell out for the 30 day mahamout school, but alas.
I finally got some art paper! I spent the past week looking for art stores on our walks to no avail. But at the elephant conservation, they make paper. It's elephant poo-paper, and I whole-heartedly approve. They recycle elephant poo for biogas and Elephant poo doesn't smell and it's all fibrous so it's perfect. They just let it dry, squish it up in some water, and spread it on a silkscreen to dry. I bought four different sheets in a few colors (they dye it before it is squished) and I'm planning an elephant oil pastel piece that I want to send to the people that took care of me at the hospital.
I also bought more clothes, in the form of a pair of pants that I already absolutely love. I'll try to post pics with blog soon, syncing everything up and then making sure it all Wi-Fis is a pain in the ass. Signal here is notsomuch. Tried skyping my awesome sister today for it to just freeze in the most flattering facial expressions. By most I mean not in the least. But we could talk sort of okay.

Ben, Charlayna, Allison and I have now found ourselves safe in Lamphun at the Chakkam Khanathon School. It's a huge government school of about 2,000 students, so I'll have 19 different classes of about 45 each.


Wat.

I'm a little terrified when I see it that way, but I'm also really looking forward to it. I have 7th and 10th grades, normal kids. I'm a little disappointed that I didn't get more advanced kids like Ben or Allison but on the other hand I can play a lot of simple vocab and conversation games. I hope that these kids will have a lot of fun while they're learning, because who doesn't want that?
We got to Lamphun around 2-3ish today and came straight to our apartments. We have our own little half-furnished studios on the bottom floor of a place called How To Hotel. It's a few minutes walking distance from the school. We have restaurants and a 7-11 close by so we really won't want for much.
The school looks small but there are 6 different buildings for all the kids, and I'm sure it will be a clusterfuck when the kids are actually there. I'll be in building 5 and travel between floors for classes. I'm spending all this week just having syllabus days, basically. Lots of meet and greets and icebreakers and figuring out exactly how much english they know and feel like sharing.
On that note, it's past my old lady teacher bedtime, I've got to be up around 6. Praying that there is a coffee shop that opens before 930, which has been all we've found.