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. 

First day of school

Oh man. Oh man. There is so much to say, and it’s only 9:30. 

First of all, this is so surreal that I feel like I’ve been watching it happen from a distance rather than being a participant. My room is decorated, but otherwise empty. Someone brought me a stack of meticulously printed hall passes this morning, and I thought, “Oh yeah… passes… what else don’t I have? Why can’t I remember what I had in my desk before?” I can’t even think of what I need. I have a pair of scissors, one glue stick, and some poster tack that I borrowed from other teachers. I have a stapler and a roll of paper towels that I bought myself. And that’s it. I’m in a straight-up daze. I guess I’ve been in this game long enough to know exactly what I’m doing when the curtain goes up (this is my 18^th year, yikes!), so whatever happens, happens. Yeah, I’m going to go with that. I will literally improvise every minute of the next two days.

My schedule is nuts: Four classes, with two prep periods per day, plus a mid-morning break and a 45-minute lunch. On Mondays and Fridays I have three prep periods per day. With four different classes to teach, I will use that time for sure, but I’ll never need to take work home. Funny story: I was lamenting to Nick that I hadn’t gotten any class rosters yet, so I didn’t know who I have or how big the classes are. The only lists I’d seen were the rosters for each grade level. Then it dawned on me… Those ARE my class rosters. For my 6^th grade science class, I have the entire 6^th grade, and so on. And the biggest class is 15 kids. My brain is like, “boi-oi-oi-oi-oiiinnngg.” Dazed. 

When we got here this morning—and by the way, I set my alarm for 6:15, which is the time we used to leave the house back home; and it took us 7 minutes to get here—we took the girls to their classes, which were still empty because we were so early. I love the school uniforms. Sophie has been running around this school like she owns it for two weeks now, but today? In her smart little uniform? Perfectly behaved. Sascha is obsessed with hers. A couple of nights ago we were riding my bike around town and she kept pointing out kids in their school uniforms. Ahh, our little Lisa Simpson. After I write this I’m going to go downstairs and spy on her. What a luxury!

So far I’ve only had my homeroom. Mine is 8^th grade (entire class: 11 kids). We had an extra-long HR today so the kids could get their textbooks. We started with an all-school flag ceremony outside. With only 200 students from K-12, our director didn’t even need a microphone to speak to everyone. They played the national anthem and raised the Thai flag, and I could hear some of the younger kids singing along while I tried not to squeal from the cuteness. 

During homeroom, I had the kids introduce themselves, mainly to kill time (they all know each other). I started with myself. When I told them that their new English teacher is my husband, they went “ahhh” and applauded! Oh my god it was the trippiest, funniest, cutest thing to happen all day, which is saying a lot. They call us “Teacher,” so when they call me I don’t hear them. Not until they’re saying it for the 15^th time and they’re all giggling, I finally snap out of it and realize what’s happening. That will take some getting used to! I told them to feel free to laugh at the clueless farang teacher, because I always think it’s funny.

I think I was expecting little angels in perfectly trained lockstep, but they are still regular teenagers. They talked over each other when reading their introductions, the boys teased each other, they all took out their phones when we were finished. However, they are very respectful. One kid said “thank you, Teacher” when he left the room, which I only remember happening maybe two other times in my 17-year career, and I hadn’t even done anything! We were told that giggling girls were the worst problem we would ever see, and that there had been one physical fight here in all five years of the school’s existence. I think we had one or two fights a week back home! This is truly 180 degrees from my last job, and for the record, I loved that job. And I loved most of my students with their foul mouths and tattoos and serious, horrible problems (no sarcasm there, our kids saw things most people don’t experience in a lifetime, at least not in the US—so much death, illness, abuse, drugs, shocking dysfunction). But this is like a happy Twilight Zone. I keep wondering what the catch is. 

A few quick random notes before I go: 

I’m typing this in Word before I publish it, and the ruler at the top & side of my screen is in centimeters. I actually have to get my computer adjusted because a lot of the internet stuff is in Thai, like all of the wizards and right-click options. 

The Buddhist calendar is used here quite often. So the date in the corner of my computer screen right now says 13/8/2558. We had a jug of milk with a 3.8.58 expiration date on it. It’s very cool, but I did many double takes before getting used to it. 

One of the teachers here is a first cousin of Howard Jones (‘80s British pop star). All the 40-something women reading this will remember Howard Jones and maybe have a dusty little squeal in the recesses of their minds. Isn’t that fun?

The majority of the Asian students have long Asian names, and then a nickname. Some of the nicknames make sense; they’re shortened versions of their names. But some of them are downright amusing. We have Rifle, Stamp, Most, Boy, Brass, Monday, Punch, Mail, Film, Milk, and Great, to name a few. Take note, American celebrities. Rifle Punch Lohan has a nice ring to it.
  

I’m writing this last part later in the day, so now I’ve had a few classes. My students are great so far. There are a few big personalities, some jokesters. They all seem to be noticeably self-reliant. I think I’m going to have a lot of fun. I’m glad I switched all of my Power Points over years ago to a less text-y format (go Google Presentation Zen, it’ll change everything for you if you ever have to make Power Points) so it will be way easier to adjust to the different levels of English. We’ve also had lunch, during which I saw Sascha holding hands with two other girls from her class. Score.

I wrote this next part the next day: Another great day. I have somehow snapped out of yesterday's daze and now I'm on top of my game: cleaned up my desk, made up a long to-do list and started banging it out. The difficulties are starting to present themselves, like the vastly different levels of English language abilities in each class, and facing the task of creating mostly new lessons for four different subjects, but still... After our first class this morning, Nick and I both walked out of our classrooms and shot each other the same "can you believe this?" sh*t-eating grin. We walk into a room and the kids all say good morning. And did I mention the ridiculous view from our classrooms? Gorgeous steep mountains, covered in jungle and most of the time topped with fuzzy clouds. There's a temple or two on a few hillsides, which shine like jewelry when the sun is out, and from the end of our hall we can see a giant Buddha statue in the distance. I will never get tired of that view. After school yesterday, the four of us piled into the car (we're not riding bikes yet, but we'll get there), drove home, and peeled off our sweaty clothes. Even Sophie wanted a shower, and she hates showers. My feet hurt all the way to my knees from the stupid high heels I wore. I love the way they look, but man do I hate heels. After I showered I soaked my feet in our fountain until the afternoon thunderstorm started. We went and did a little shopping, then found the best western food we've had in a month! It's not cheap, but it was damn good. Burgers! Mac and cheese! Ale instead of lager! We all blabbed about our day (oh, there were still electronic devices at the table, it may sound good but we're still C-student parents), came home and crashed hard. And speaking of being a C student, I need to go plan some lessons. I should have been working on this for weeks but of course I waited around until the last minute. This, for me, is one of the hardest parts of the job. I can't just phone it in and open the textbook, I have to make each lesson great and enriching and entertaining and full-- for MYSELF. Ughhh. So off I go. Yesterday I had my traditional end-of-day-one thought. No matter how great the job is, no matter how happy and fulfilled I am, I always think... One down. 179 more to go.

Food, again

I went out this morning for groceries so I could spend the day filling our fridge for the week. First I went to a local produce stand (not really a stand, exactly-- it's a market of about 20 long tables) for pineapples & mangoes. I just wanted to jot down my thoughts for the day so I don't forget them.

There's a small Italian section at the grocery store. I realized one thing I haven't seen here at all is artichoke hearts. And I haven't seen any kalamata olives, although they might have those at the fancier store. I did see some made-in-Thailand feta cheese though, which was amusing! I'll be able to get sort of a Mediterranean fix here & there. I also realized that there are no tortilla chips (aside from small bags of heavily seasoned stuff), so to all of you Texans reading this, know that you wouldn't last long. I wonder where I'll be when I miss fish sauce and nori chips!

Rubbernecking in the store's seafood section again, it occurred to me that I can make cioppino. I used to make a lot more saffron-based dishes, some Spanish things and bouillabaisse, but there's no Trader Joe's here for affordable saffron. But cioppino! I can make that! Tomatoes are complete crap here (think of February tomatoes in the US-- hard, underripe), but they were selling big bags of decently red ones for pretty cheap at Makro, the local version of Costco, so I could cook those down into something respectable.

Just as I posted yesterday about the bananas, I saw huge bunches of them at the grocery store today! Still on the stem, not all that cheap, probably local, and innnnncredible. Gawd.

I made a big fruit salad with the pineapple, mango, some kiwi, and Japanese honeydew. I've learned to look at brown spots on fruit very closely, as it could be moving... I've found worms in bananas and a small neighborhood of ants in a piece of pineapple. This really isn't the place for the squeamish. Every mango I've tasted here has had a different flavor from the one before it, and some of them smell like flowers. I need to start buying more apples, since most of them come from New Zealand and it's their winter there right now, so they're in season.

I also made a batch of granola bars. Those were staples for us in the US, and I haven't found the kind we like here, so I make my own. Very easy. Now if could only figure out how to make goldfish, which was the other food we used to live on! I tried a recipe once when Sascha was a baby, and they were pretty awful.

I made about five pounds of tuna (bought a foodservice-sized can at Makro), and now I'm making some fiesta salad, which you'll know if you've spent any time with me in the past five years. Beans aren't common; had to buy dried and cook them. Peppers are rare too, but the green one I bought had a very rich garden-y smell when I cut it. We'll see how it turns out!

School, etc.

We’ve had a full week of teacher orientation/prep at school, so I have that much of a first impression. And so far so good! It’s a very small staff, so we’re getting to know each other quickly, and I like everyone I’ve met. I’m realizing the tremendous benefits to a small school. Collaboration is much easier. The other science teachers are constantly checking in with me to make sure I’ve got the right copy of the standards so we’re all on the same page. There’s a feeling that everyone has a stake. Nobody can hide in their classrooms or fade into the background. If you’re a hider or a fader, that’s bad news for you, but I like it. There’s also the common thread of being expats that we all have, which is very nice; everyone has traveled. It’s fascinating to hear stories of how schools run in the UK, South Africa, Japan, and so on.

The administration has said that they like to walk around the school and visit our classes, which I’ve always wished for, so hopefully they won’t be hiders or faders either! One of our two most immediate administrators is a very nice British gentleman who I would guess is about ten years younger than me. The other is a woman from Houston (and an Aggie!) with a Spanish accent so thick that “teaching” sounds like “dishing” and she’ll agree by saying “esssactly!” I think it is beautiful. It sounds like music. Physically, she looks like a woman who used to torment me when I taught in LA, but her personality couldn’t be more different. She is kind, funny and energetic, and I like her a lot. Both of them are new this year, and very open to suggestion. Naïve as it may sound, it feels like a good solid team. 

The building itself is fine. It’s only a few years old, but it doesn’t look very new. The AC in my classroom is currently not working, which makes me nervous—it was supposed to be fixed on Wednesday, and today I got notice that it’ll be next week. I’ve been trying to work in there, but after a while I start to feel like a baby left in a hot car. I’ve been able to get about an hour or two of work done in there before I’m soaking wet, cranky and sleepy. Right now the desks are covered with large scraps of colored paper for bulletin boards, and there are ants everywhere. I haven’t been in there when it wasn’t hot (well, it’s not blazing hot because it’s only been in the low 80s here lately, but it’s very humid and perfectly still) so the room does not feel like mine yet. It’s not a place I like to be.

My favorite part so far is that Nick is one classroom away from me (and the teacher between us is from Munich! Yes, I will be practicing my German as much as possible, surely annoying the crap out of him in the process—and confusing my brain which is trying to learn Thai), Sascha is one floor below us, and Sophie one floor below her. I already love being in the same school with the girls. The downside has been that they’ve had to come with us this week with nothing to do. They’ve learned their way around the school and made a couple of friends (other teachers’ kids), but they are bored, bickering, and in the way. There are only two more days of this, then we’re off on Wednesday, then school starts officially on Thursday. 

It’s all challenging, but it’s all good stuff. I have to keep reminding myself that this was exactly what I wanted—to shake up my routine. Of course it would be easier to be back in Woburn right now, not having to prepare anything because everything’s been in place for a decade, but this is much more… I don’t know if “fun” is the word, but it’s just… more.  

My schedule for this year is two things: really hard, and too good to be true. It’s a nice combination, I think. Really hard because I will be teaching four different subjects. But great because I’m given a ton of planning time, and each of the classes only meets four times a week. One of the classes is health and fitness, which I get to develop myself (this is the elective I mentioned before—they wanted health instead of the life lessons class I offered, which is fine). I found a great curriculum online for the health part, and the gym teacher wants to work with me to plan physical activity days. I am psyched!

I’m hiding as I write this, although hiding in plain sight in the teacher work room. I need to go back up to my class, which feels like it’s possessed by a heavy, sticky demon breathing its hot breath down my neck to “gehhhht ouuuuut.” Need to go be a brave little toaster. 

* * * * * * * * * *

I wrote that yesterday. Here is the "etc." part. 

Today is Saturday, so we took a little excursion. I decided to put together a video to collect the latest pictures, so it starts with a dinner that we had recently. Everything was so cheap that we thought the portions would be smaller, so we over-ordered. Then we had leftovers, and tried to explain to the waiters that we wanted to take them home. We thought something was up when they didn't take the plates, but they kept insisting they understood, and showed up with brand-new orders of what we'd had in takeout bags. Um... okay? We couldn't complain, because the food was so good, but we found out later that taking home leftovers just isn't a thing here. Aside from that one dinner, I've generally found portions to be smaller, and my body appreciates it.

I also took a picture of the standard restaurant napkins here in Thailand. They come in dispensers and are single-ply little tissues. We go through many of them! It's a minor nuisance. I didn't want to comment on it earlier, before I knew it was universal. They remind me of the "tissues" they had in my hospital room after having the girls. I'd be hormonal and sobbing over toast or something ridiculous, and trying to blow pints of snot into those little postage stamps. Thai restaurant napkins are responsible for cleaning up enthusiastic curry drool. It's not a small job.

One more completely random thing I haven't mentioned yet: both of the main grocery stores here smell like butter. They both have bakeries, and instead of the bread smell like in the States, they fill the whole store with a deep, intoxicating, sugary buttery smell. It is fabulous. Another random factoid: bananas are so common here that they don't even have them in the store. They're just sold on the roadside everywhere. The last ones I bought were some kind of very wrong variety, because they were hard and dry and not sweet at all. Good thing the whole bunch only cost a quarter. 

Back to today. We went to Chiang Rai's famous White Temple. I was gawking the whole time, even on the drive there. Pictures and videos don't do it justice. The detail! The tiny mirrors! However, it was hot and very crowded, so we didn't last long. Nick and I want to go back another time when they open at 6:30 am. 

We moved on to Singha Park, which has a trolley that takes you around to hang out with and feed giraffes & zebras (very open-air and humane), but we had to wait too long for the trolley after lunch. We got impatient and tired and went home to swim. We'll try the park another time.

Anyway, enjoy the video!