September 1

It’s been so long since I’ve written that I don’t even know where to start. I guess I can start with the reason I haven’t written: School. It is BUSY. I’ve said this to many people so pardon the repeat if you’ve heard me say it, but I feel like I’ve just jumped out of a moving car and I’m pinwheeling every limb just to get my footing. Real-life translation: I can barely keep up with lesson plans every day, literally what to do with four different classes. I’m not so much overwhelmed by it, as I am just plain underwater. Sometimes I’m scrambling to finish planning the lesson as they’re walking in the door. I developed a nasty head cold last week, so by Friday, when I was feeling dizzy and shaky, I ended up showing a few videos here and there just to buy time. When anything new is thrown my way, it gets dropped. Fortunately, I have understanding co-workers. I am just starting to get my footing now. I’m able to plan a few days in a row for a few classes, but not all. 

Teaching here is interesting. What a difference. I graded a bunch of papers on Friday and I was able to give them so much more attention and feedback because the stacks were so small. I never felt like my classes in MA were unmanageably large (like the ones of 35-40 in Los Angeles), but now that I have around 11-16 kids in each class, I feel like I can do so much more with them and for them. I walk around while they work, and I can help them right away. Nobody falls too far behind. The downside of such a small school is the lack of resources. I taught geology with about a dozen rocks, and actually went out to the alley behind the cafeteria to look for more. The school is also pretty new, so it hasn’t had a chance to build up its science lab properly as schools do over time. But the kids are very receptive. I’m surprised that I’m enjoying the youngest ones (6^th grade) the most, since it’s been my experience that the older the kids are, the more fun they are to teach. Then again, I had some hellish experiences with 7^th and 8^th graders… bad place and time. My 6^th graders are adorable and sweet, no hormonal misery in sight. 

This post will likely be all over the place due to very frequent interruptions and woozy head. Bear with me.

 

…Such frequent interruptions that I wrote that top part on Sunday, and now it’s Wednesday. I have an endless pile of homework to do, but two out of my four classes are covered for tomorrow, so dammit, I’m going to write for a little while. At least the head cold is going away. I was starting to worry about Dengue fever because my headaches were painful enough to keep me from sleeping (not common with me), so feeling better is extra good news. 

One of the challenges I’ve noticed here is that we’re so remote, a lot of information about the area isn’t on the internet. Google maps usually sends us to the wrong places—WAY wrong, like clear across town. Most businesses don’t have websites, or signs in English. People who have lived here for years don’t know street names (there are only slightly more street signs here than in Massachusetts, where there almost none), and people still have to draw maps rather than give you an address to put in your GPS. Drawing maps! (or sending you the coordinates—seriously.) It’s charmingly old-school. It probably wouldn’t be charming if the city wasn’t so small, but it’s very manageable. 

I have to talk about the critters. I’m knocking on every wooden surface there is, because we haven’t seen anything too horrifying yet. I know it’s coming, because we hear first-person accounts constantly, usually involving oversized spiders or snakes. I saw one scorpion, but it had been flattened by a car. Still, it was black and shiny and a good four inches long, and when I rode past it on my bike (my mother can guess what happened next)… I turned around to go back and have a closer look. Oh yes I did. And it was cool. 

I kind of feel like Thailand has been kind to us in the critter department, only showing us the small stuff first and gradually giving us bigger guys so we don’t have heart attacks. I haven’t seen any spiders bigger than a dime. I’ve seen a few small snakes dead on the roads, and plenty of rats—both alive and as roadkill, but those don’t bother me. Mostly what we have are lizards. They are everywhere. The most common ones are tiny geckos about 4” long (head to end of tail). Sometimes we get babies which are like an inch long and adorable—Sophie and I got one to crawl on us one night! They’re a weird translucent fleshy color and they must eat mountains of bugs because THEY CRAP EVERYWHERE. Their little poop, which looks like mouse turds, is everywhere. Aside from the usual floor and stuck to the wall, I’ve found some on a pair of headphones, next to the printer at work, on our ironing board, on a pair of shoes and in our bathroom sink. It’s a minor nuisance. We’ve also seen a few big lizards. We have one called a Tokay gecko that comes around at night, and it’s a good 12-18” long with a dense, meaty body. It’s definitely a gecko, with those fat toes and wiggly bum, but I’ve read that they bite… the girls and I keep our distance. As they say back in Massachusetts, I’m all set with that.

Two other unexpected critters: One day I was walking past the computer lab at school, which has a sliding glass door, and a big THUD against the door made me jump. It was a stray cat. It was trapped in the room, and ran right into the glass in a panicked attempt to escape. There were two of them in there that had somehow gotten in overnight, and one had pooped on the floor. I went in to help the teacher but we could only get one out; we had to let the other one be, hiding behind a bookcase. Poor terrified things. Still, good for a giggle. (Housekeeping got it out later that day.)

Have I talked about school lunches? They are very, very good. Real plates and flatware. Thai food every day. Maybe once a week there will be spaghetti along with the Thai food, but otherwise it’s rice or noodles and several trays of different meat/veg combinations, a sort of salad bar, and some fruit. The food is great almost every day. Last weekend Nick and I ate in town at a place that had lots of food trays to choose from

(Edited: see? This is what happens when I write at home. That right there is my brain. No thought goes uninterrupted. I don't even know what I was going to say. I guess that it was as good as school food. Whatever, who cares.)

I discovered this incredible market right in town, so close to us. I’m going to post a video below, and the final shot is on a bridge over the river. We live on one side of it, and the center of town is just on the other side. Anyway, the market is in the video too, and when I went I was squealing OMGGGG inside my head the whole time. Anyone who visits is getting the grand tour. 

I took the girls to an even closer market (a block away) on Sunday, where we saw live fish, live eels squirming around in basins (we stared at those for a good long while—kind of mesmerizing), frogs for sale (um, to eat) with livers proudly displayed, huge horned beetles on little string-leashes attached to sugar cane (why? I don’t know)… I was so glad I wasn’t pregnant because the smells were, uh... By the time we found the mint, mangoes and bananas we went there for, we were over the show and ready to go home. 

In that shot of the bridge, I also mentioned a “not Buddha” statue. I thought it was Buddha, people refer to it as Buddha, but apparently it’s the Chinese god of mercy. Doesn’t make it any less gorgeous. It’s like 100 feet tall. It’s the one we can see from the school building, and the one we rode bikes to on that hot rotten Sunday when everyone threw a tantrum except me. I should point out that my camera panning skills need serious work. I’m usually way too excited to think about cinematography. Usually I’m thinking, I look like such a farang tourist with my phone and my wonder-bugging eyes, I’m a little ashamed, and I need to hurry up. Also, my mom saw the video and said my captions need to stay up longer. Sorry about that. I was trying to squeeze it into the length of the music, but didn’t manage to do that anyway. Ah well, I’m no Spielberg. Hit pause.

Okay. I’m posting. I’ve had just short of a thousand interruptions while writing this and I give up.