Catching Up

So, we’ve been struggling a little lately. Of course it was expected. I have to remind myself that we—okay, I—wanted this, I wanted challenges. This pretty much sums it up:

"Culture shock" doesn't seem like the proper term here, because it's not like we're going "OMG, they do it like that here?" But maybe there is some truth to it. Case in point: I ordered some stuff from Amazon. We got a notice in our mailbox that said "Thailand Post" so we knew it was from the post office, but didn't understand anything else. By the time we figured out what to do with it, and had taken the slip to four different post offices, they had sent the package back. I was too disheartened to even bother re-ordering. Not at those shipping prices.

And about that picture... it is mildly disturbing that the deepest dip is around the 5-month mark. We've been here for two. Please know that although I am struggling, I am not regretting anything. I would still do this all over again. And in three weeks, we'll spend a week on a gorgeous beachy island.

I’ll bullet-point my stream of consciousness again, since writing a fully polished piece is way too daunting right now. Ignore any times mentioned (yesterday/today or whatever), because I started this on a Thursday and am adding to it now on Saturday morning.

I’ve had a cold for three weeks. Standard early school year stuff. I carry around coughing rags like an 18^th century TB patient. They double as sweat rags, although the weather has been slowly cooling off. Yep, that means I'm wiping my sweaty face with my coughing rag. I'm nasty. In fact, I just picked a little bug out of my coffee and kept drinking. What.

We still have that car. As we try to sell it and see the reactions we’re getting, my rage grows towards the woman who sold it to us. I’m wasting energy hating her (and wishing karma would do something horrible to her) but I can’t believe someone would be so deceitful. And of course, I feel stupid for trusting her and buying a car sight unseen, but I trusted her because she’s American, she hired us, and kept saying how much we were “just like them” a year ago—excited, packing, waiting to start new lives in Thailand. She overcharged us for a car that barely works, and when I questioned her on the price, she actually gave me a guilt trip about it. Said that the used car market was very different in Thailand, this is normal. There's a part of me that's glad that she moved away before we got here, because I would have to sharpen my confrontation skills, and ugh. Now when we ask the price we paid, we basically get laughter. Oh, I can feel blood in my ears again. Must change the subject. Must be Buddhist and not want to inflict pain. Must let it go, just like the thousand-plus dollars we will lose on this car (and could really, really use right now as we are getting nickeled and dimed from several directions). People are like "well, this is Asia," which I think is kind of a racist thing to say no matter how true it is or who is saying it. 

The house is still good. I am having a hard time finding some domestic help. Of course there are plenty of people (okay, women) who do it, it’s just a matter of finding them since most of them don’t speak English and don't have transportation.

Work is fine. I really, really enjoy my students. Of course there are a few knuckleheads, but most of the time it’s just youth and not bad character. They’re incredibly sweet kids who are receptive to just about anything I give them, especially the girls. The tough part-- and I'm going to go ahead and say that this is the toughest part of this entire move-- is the requirements we have for submitting lesson plans. It’s not impossible, and I’m gradually finding my groove, but it is a LOT of work. Lots of detail. I haven’t done this much work dissecting lesson plans since college. What is the overarching theme? How will I introduce the lesson? What questions will I ask the students? What will the students do? How will I assess whether they have learned something in that lesson? How will I conclude? What standards and which of the school philosophies are covered? For each lesson. Yesterday I estimated that I have 600 of these lesson plans to write, assuming I only do the upcoming lessons and I don't backtrack to write up the ones I've already taught. Six hundred. After I finished laughing, I sank into a mild panic and started to lose sleep. Our colleague's husband said yesterday, "We moved to Thailand to relax, and she's working harder than she ever has." I concur.

I’ve been so busy at work and so tired from this cold that I have briefly forgotten about Thailand. I was having a little whine to a colleague yesterday, and she was so calm and reassuring that it was infectious. She said she loves it here (she’s American but just moved here from Japan) and I needed to let this stuff go and enjoy this beautiful country. It was a small slap awake, one that I needed. So after school I took my bike out and rode around town. I explored side streets, parked, poked around market stalls, focusing on really seeing these places. The little shops. The stooped old ladies. The monks. The dogs. The motorbikes. All of the signs in Thai. I said before that I live in a National Geographic issue; I need to remind myself that it’s not just beautiful high-def pictures now. It’s right in front of me. I am HERE. I am here. It’s something I’ve been forgetting a lot lately, between work, bickering kids, coughing, housework, and bills. 

I bought myself some flowers (~3 dozen fuchsia roses for $3—you read that right), and olives and feta from a tiny deli. It was a lovely afternoon. I need to take my bike out as much as possible. It is therapy, and I can still do it with this cold (cough/sweat rag close at hand, of course). This morning Sascha and I rode to school and it was lovely. Warm and breezy. It was about a ten minute ride at a leisurely pace, and we got to see lots of paths cut into the jungle, cows grazing, food stands opening for the morning, dogs stretching out on sidewalks. We talked the whole time. It was such a lovely, calm way to start the day. I love that bike.

After I wrote that paragraph above, I went to bed and dreamed that I was riding my bike with a flat rear tire. I kept trying to ride, and it was pulling me back and making it difficult.

Oleanna Price and the Cake Mix

Last week was really tough. It was the perfect storm of physical issues (a cold on top of other TMI things) and the most demanding week at work yet. The stress was thick. Nick and I have gone through stretches of several years where we fought less than we did last week. We ate a lot of pizza, our “I can’t think of anything else” meal. I am tentatively saying that the worst is over, but it’s hard to know when you’re truly past a rough patch. 

I’ve mentioned this before, but I am constantly reminded of Barbara Kingsolver’s “The Poisonwood Bible,” one of my favorite books. If you haven’t read it, it’s about a Baptist missionary who moves his wife and four daughters to the Congo in the 1950s. There is a lot of culture shock and constant adjustments. The mother, Oleanna Price, had brought four Betty Crocker cake mixes so that each of her girls could have a proper cake for their birthdays in the coming year. When she goes to use the first one, the humidity from the rainy season had turned it into a solid, unusable brick. This is a final straw of sorts for her, and she loses it. 

I haven’t had a breakdown as big as hers, but I’ve come close. I think about all of the tiny straws that led her to that, and all the tiny straws we’ve had here. It took me a month to find bleach in a store. We have an order from Amazon (gel deodorant!) sitting in a post office we can’t find. We still have that blasted #@*&%ing car we need to sell. Just like straws on a camel, none of them are big, but they do accumulate. For me, a good ¾ of it has been the staggering workload at school. It’s one thing to be in a new school, and to plan lessons for a new class. It’s another thing to plan for four new classes every day (one which I am literally making up as I go along), and I am barely keeping up. I know it will get better, and we do have a killer island vacation just over a month from now, but we’re only three weeks in. 

Enough whining… Let’s do some Thailand Bullet Points. 

I found out that one of the students at our school is a verrrrrrry important person. He’s an heir of sorts in a politically unstable country, and I guess he’s going to school here because it is so remote and safe. Crazy, huh? There are videos on YouTube of him addressing stadiums full of people, surrounded by armed guards. It’s surreal. He’s just a regular kid at school (albeit a very nice, unusually self-confident kid with impeccable poise). I hope it’s okay that I’ve said this… I don’t think I’m giving away too much information. God knows there are plenty of politically unstable countries in the world. 

One thing I miss: my wood floors. Everything here is marble tile. It's cool to the touch, looks nice and cleans up easily, but it’s hard to stand on for long periods of time. And remember, no shoes in the house in Asia-- I’ve had to buy a pair of indoor shoes just for the cushion. The marble-floor moment I’d been dreading happened last week: Sophie dropped a plate. The sound it made was so loud it made my ears ring (hard crash plus hard acoustics). Painfully loud. I yelped like a stupid little dog and Sophie cried. Of course, the plate didn’t stand a chance, and the pieces skittered quite far on that slick surface. I’m glad it wasn’t a glass, but that’s only a matter of time. That was a great way to start the morning.

Nick and I have noticed that the sun rises very fast here. It seems like it’s 15 minutes from total darkness to daylight. It must be because the angle of the sun is more direct down here near the equator, but it is dramatic and noticeable. 

I have started to lose a little weight, but very slowly. Slow is good! It means permanent change! I haven’t made any special efforts, and I certainly haven’t been exercising at all in the last two weeks, but I found a scale in the science lab at school and I sometimes sneak in there to have a peek. Who knows how accurate it is, but when I saw 66 kg on there (hah! You’ll have to google that) I actually broke into a sweat of excited disbelief. Oh who am I kidding… I’m sure I was already sweating. I am always sweating. Everything I wear smells like a foot at the end of the day. Anyway, I think the weight loss is because I’m eating less sugar. Baking is a challenge here for many reasons. Actually, it’s a challenge for every reason, from finding ingredients and pans to oven size and heating the kitchen. I’m not sure how this is happening, but we used to buy 5 lb. bags of sugar and go through them pretty quickly. Here, I bought a small bag – maybe 2 lbs? We’ve been here two months and it’s about halfway finished. Almost all of that has gone into iced tea, which I don’t even make that sweet (nodding to all Yurkoskys here, I’m continuing Grandma’s legacy here in Thailand). I can’t remember why or how we went through so much back home. I don’t remember baking that much, but I guess I did. I used to buy flour quite often, and here I have one bag that I only just opened this morning for sub-par pancakes (and no syrup here). Yes, of course I still crave sugar, but sometimes it’s just not available. The convenience foods I loved, notably granola bars and Goldfish in Costco quantities, aren’t here. I am drinking, but both the beer and wine aren’t great, so that’s keeping me from going back for more (I’m one of the few people who drink more for the taste than the effect). Most of the candy or desserts here don’t appeal to me. I’m forced to deal. I am getting very excited about the next six months when the weather cools off and I get a handle on work, and I can work out more. Mama’s gonna be in awesome shape!

Of course, I am only at the very tip of that iceberg. I got a little Thai-style fat-shaming yesterday when I went to buy a t-shirt. She charged me more because I needed such a BIIIIG SIIIIIZE. *eye roll* I paid my four dollars instead of three and slinked away. The exact same thing happened about a month ago in a different market with a different shirt. Ehh, that’s what I get for moving my Russian beer-keg body into the land of tiny lotus-flower women. 

I was riding my bike around town yesterday and I kept getting blasted by some pretty rank exhaust from cars and motorbikes. I wonder if the air quality up here is worse because of that, or better because of all the thick jungle everywhere, underdeveloped for several hundred miles in every direction? Or is it a wash? I think about how careful I was back home with organic food and local meats, watching for chemicals in my products. Here, there’s almost none of that. I think it’s a chemical free-for-all. But on the flip side, all of the meat and produce is local with no Monsanto weirdness and plenty enough bugs in the produce to make me think they're not heavily sprayed, and the diet is almost entirely whole foods (like I said, I can’t get my daily Kashi chocolate chip granola bars… chia seed and sea salt… sigh), even though it is very meat-heavy. I wonder what the net result is. 

I gave my health class a project to report on foods of other countries, so to show them what I wanted, I made a report of my own on the US. Part of the report is to give a quick background of the country and how that has influenced its foods. I said that the US does not have the cleanest history, what with the Native American genocide and slavery (both of which are relevant to American cuisine), and I showed pictures of people on Rascal scooters (uhh, non-handicapped people) and families around Christmas trees all proudly holding their guns… all cringe-worthy and uniquely American things. But then I countered with pictures of rock & roll, baseball, old Hollywood, cowboys, muscle cars (that was a Steve McQueen picture in Bullitt)… We invented cool. As I was putting the pictures together, I cried. 

There are things I miss about the US, and I do get sad. We all do; Sophie is in a particularly fragile state right now. A few weeks ago I made spaghetti & meatballs and put on Pavarotti, which always reminds me of my father. When “Nessun Dorma” came on, I sobbed. I had to go in the other room just to clean up my face and get it together. But I recognize that being sad doesn’t indicate anything else. It doesn’t mean we made the wrong decision. It just means we miss people and things we love.

In the thick of last week, I wrote a bleating e-mail to a few friends who are like-minded about travel and wouldn’t say “well you shouldn’t have ---“ about anything. With all the things we’ve had to deal with-- sad children, sugar withdrawals, constant language barriers, lice, my still-itchy scalp, relentless sweating, the huge workload, a possible intestinal parasite (dude, I told you there was some TMI involved), critters, the threat of dengue fever—I still think it’s worth it. I have never second-guessed this decision. Is there something wrong with me that my need to travel still outweighs all of those things? Am I mentally ill or just pathologically selfish? What is it about traveling that has this strong a pull on me?

Yesterday I was feeling a little restless. I took off on my bike for an hour or so, just poked around downtown. It was an hour-long vacation. I got physical activity, mental stimulation and entertainment. Every day, all day long, I feel like I live in a National Geographic magazine. This occurred to me on Friday night as I watched the decked-out ladyboy smoking on the terrace of the pub where we had dinner. There was a split second where the smoke was curling around her mouth, the rain was behind her, and the colors in her clothes were bright. She had a happy but self-conscious look on her face. It was a perfect picture. I couldn’t grab my phone in time to get the picture so it will have to live in my memory, which has much better photographic skills than my hands anyway. I don’t know how to make my phone accentuate those vivid colors and soften the background. My photographer friends would lose their entire minds here. 

Living in National Geographic pictures is the subject for an entirely separate blog post, as I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about my position as a privileged, white observer here. These are people, not just beautiful photography subjects. Lots to dissect. I also want to write about some common threads I’ve noticed in the expats here, which I think are unique because of Chiang Rai’s isolation. It makes a great hiding place. That will have to be a very carefully written post…

One last thing. One of my friends who helped me back away from my stress ledge said I shouldn’t feel pressure to keep up the blog. I do feel pressure, but it’s from me! This is my journal, and there’s so much to write, I want to remember everything. I’m just letting you read my diary. I keep a list on my phone of topics I want to write about, and it’s cathartic for me to put words to my thoughts in a place I can save them. 

No pictures or video this time… sorry. Next time.

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.