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. 

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.