ช้าง และ สับปะรด (khang leh saparoht): Just Say "No"

Do you speak Thai?

No. Just NO. Not nid noi, not "I try" just no. Sometimes you get cocky. You think, "I can tell someone 'Hello,' I can thank someone for bringing me my food, I can even ask someone's name and tell them mine." Well that, my friends, is not being trilingual. So, the next time someone asks me, "Kuhn puua Thai mai ka/krap?" (Or whatever that is in Thai) I'm just going to look them in the eye and say, "Mai puua" because if I don't, some little old lady may come over to me and start talking a mile a minute and look at me like I'm verbally assaulting her instead of what I'm really doing which is staring blank-faced and scared back at her.

I have just finished my first week of teaching English in Thailand! This is a huge feat. Although we've been groomed and prepped and trained and orientated for over a month, I never really thought the day would come when I would have not only my own school but my own students. It's humbling and down right beautiful to say the least.

On Wednesday, the entirety of Piriyalai School performed a ceremony for king. When I say a "ceremony," please picture Drumline with Nick Cannon; a field of marching people dressed in one of two colors in order for the inspirational words and adorable shapes to pop a little for the birds flying over. We were told to wear black and I merely assumed that it was just a continuation of the world of mourning that I have been living in. Little did I know that I was to be apart of the body spelling. You know, for the drone cameras.

I'm not kidding. There was a moment when all the kids were sitting on the pavement in front of a giant stage (complete with 30 x 50 foot painting of the king) and then all of a sudden they had moved to the soccer field. I really didn't know what was going on until all the teachers (identifiable by our black attire) were lined up and parading through a small maze of students (the ones dressed in white). I felt like I was reenacting a scene from Narnia- the one where Aslan (the late king of King Bhumibal) has died (must there be any more obvious parallels?) and all the animals gather and line up like they're loading onto the ark. There was no apparent rhyme or reason to the lines, but I think they probably got some good pictures out of it.

After a week of teaching here are some things I have learned...

1. When you have 800 students, some of them are going to suck. That is just the way it is. But, the good news is, when you have almost a thousand students a lot of them won't suck! Thailand is known for its kind, smiley citizens, but a high school student is a high school student is a high school student. It doesn't matter where they come from, the biology is the same everywhere. Of my 20 classes (I've only seen 18 because we started on Tuesday), there were some doozies, but it doesn't matter. I can still technically do my job even when no one is listening to me or when they are laughing at me for some unknown reason.

2. Ticky tac is not a teacher's friend. You remember this stuff? Whether you are a teacher or not, I'm sure you've used it or seen it in the past. It is either sky blue or white and it's for posting pictures on your "Wall of Shame" if you were one of those cool college kids. It's just a sticky puddy that, as an English teacher in Thailand, I unfortunately have to use daily to put the picture aids on the whiteboard. Basically, I waste at least 10% of my class trying to unstick the shit from the inside of my bag or to pinch of a small piece without the whole clump tagging along in a stringy, nasty mess. I hate it and I can't understand why there hasn't been a more convenient option invented for us. How many people have to complain about this crap before the great minds of the world provide an alternative? I can't be the only person who suffers from ticky tac tantrums.

3. Thai kids don't like frisbees. Well, I hope that's not entirely true, but from what I've seen, and maybe it's the novelty aspect, not only do my students dislike frisbees, they downright fear them. For introductions this week, I had each of my classes get in a circle and throw the frisbee around, introducing themselves to me as they went. This was theoretically meant for me to be able to take attendance in a fun way, but also for them to get up and play before we got down to brass tacks. What ended up happening however, was that every time the disc was thrown (the only one I brought BTW) the students on the recieving end went into a tailspin panic. Very few of them tried to catch it, choosing instead to either toss up their hands protectively or physically turn away. This, clearly, resulted in many, many Thai teenagers getting beaned in the face. I wish I could say that I felt bad but, COME ON! You know what is going on, so pay attention! Too harsh? It's like that T shirt though that says, "Sometimes I wonder, 'Why is that frisbee getting bigger?' and then it hits me."

4. To the same degree that Thai kids hate frisbees, they love the "Like/Don't Like" game. Two of my vocabulary concepts for the introduction week were "like" and "don't like," obviously represented by the Facebook thumbs up and down. To drive the point home, I made one side of the room the like side and the other the don't like side. I then asked, "Do you like ______?" using vocabulary that they should already know, and then they had to move themselves to the side that corresponded with how they felt. I then made them say it out loud as a group, "I like ______" / "I don't like ______." The key to this game, is to offer really controversial options so the students have no other choice but to move from side to side. The way to do this is ask, "Do you like Justin Bieber?" And then "Do you like Thailand?" in that order. Here's why: the grand majority of the students at my school are boys (lucky me) and apart from the lady boys (this is a common, loving, non-offensive, totally acceptable sexuality positive term for gay men in Thailand), none of them want to be caught dead saying that they like Justin Bieber so they all end up on the "don't like" side. However, not a single person in the entire country of Thailand would ever say that they didn't like Thailand itself (along the same lines as the Lése-majesté law) so asking that question next forces all of the students back to the "like" side. It may be a cruel little trick to get them to bend to my will but sometimes my last question is "Do you like Enlgish class?" so they get me back.

5. Thai students all have English nicknames. Most of them are just random English words like Boss, Couch, Donut, First, Boat, Mint, but when they tell me I think I'm hearing Thai and try to pronounce it just like them and that just makes them laugh their butts off. If 5 whole minutes of my class is spent fighting with the ticky tac another 5 minutes is spent waiting for the students to stop laughing at me. The pattern is always the same-
Me: What. Is. Your. Nick. Name?
Student: Fjidoagnfudiasng.
Me: Ok. Fjidoagnfudiasng.
All students: Laugh*
Student: M-I-N-T
Me: ...What?
My favorite nickname so far is "Garfield."

6. I am going to have to get used to being "waied" by all of the students all day long. Everywhere I go I hear, "Hello, Teacher!" and I turn to see little faces half hidden by praying hands. It's kind of sweet though.

7. Settlers of Catan knows no world boundaries. I have now played this game in 4 countries and 2 continents and it has become a bucket list item to increase these statistics. Yesterday, a student came into our office mere minutes before I had to leave and teach a class, asking us if we wanted to play a game. I was too taken aback and slightly confused to totally grasp the meaning of his request, but when I came back from my class, my entire world had realigned itself. They were playing Catan! I sat with them for over an hour (being Mathayom 6 students- equivalent to our "seniors" they have several open periods) and then when we finished, the leader-kid, Tam (I think), pulled out "The 2013 Edition of Clue." Apart from having a blast playing familiar games that I love, I felt like a super awesome English teacher because not only was I interacting with students outside of the classroom (didn't matter that they weren't my students), but they spoke English about 82% of the time. I have always fully supported the teaching of board games in a foreign language as a wonderful gauge of one's grasp of said language and these kids really impressed me.

So Tam, the kid on the right, mostly covered by my co-English teacher's hand, said that he got the game online (he showed me the website) and that he really wants to play SPLENDOR (I swear I couldn't make this stuff up!!!!) but he has to save up for it. I'm thinking... first paycheck purchase?!?! Oh hecky yea.

Look at the Thai letters on the card! Are you freaking out as much as I am? Or is this another one of those weird things only a linguaphile would appreciate?

Needless to say, school is teaching me a lot. I'm ok with gaining more knowledge than I'm imparting to be honest, it's Peace Corps all over again, but I do hope that I'm making some difference, obviously. It's clearly too early to tell!

Today, we went exploring around Phrae. What had started out just being a city with a mediocre apartment complex, a couple stores, cafe and school, has become a really magically place to live in only a few hours! All we had to do was take a left instead of our normal right. I'm not kidding, it was that easy.

To be honest, although we found a public pool which we will surely be visiting soon, the best part of the day was the hour long conversation we had with a Buddhist monk.

Allow me to set the stage...I hope I have established already just how abundant the Buddhist temples are in Thailand, and although Phrae comes off as this sleepy, boring place, as I said before, all you need to do is "make a left" to unearth some real gems. Usually, the big temples have a compound that you enter before the temple itself. These compounds are usually complete with many shrines as well as the main event. I wasn't dressed for a temple today. I unabashedly wore shorts because, well, IT'S HOT HERE, OKAAAAAY?!!? So I knew going into this adventure that I was sacrificing any opportunity we might encounter to visit a Buddha. When we came to one of these compound areas, however, I thought, I can just go into that part, surely. We were wandering around in the open area when we were beckoned into a closed in temple area. I quickly declined, gesturing to my offensively bare legs, but my concerns were immediately waved off by, Udong, an awesome monk with awesome English skills.

And so began a truly enlightening (pun not intended, I promise!) discussion about Buddhism in which I teared up, felt moved, and promptly made an internal decision to convert (although according to Amy I've always been Buddhist anyway).

Udong started off by asking us what we knew about Buddhism. He let us embarrass ourselves for a few seconds before diving in. He talked about how in our world we all know how to take care of our bodies (eating right and doing exercise aren't really big secrets) but Buddhists believe it is just as important to take care of our minds and this is achieved through meditation, among other things. It seems obvious, but I think mental health is not as sexy a concept as physical health in our world. We were taught about the 4 Noble Truths which I still don't totally understand but intend to learn more about.

What made my heart migrate to my throat was when Udong told us what Buddhists thought of the past, present, and future. Basically, 2 of the 3 are abstract concepts that literally don't exist. One guess which of the 3 is the only one that matters. It was me and my co-teacher there with Udong, but when he got to this part of our Buddhism training, I felt like he spoke directly to me. As he spoke, I had a startling realization that the exact opposite could be true. Past and future could actually be the only ones that were real too, like the present so quickly becomes past that it can't really exist, right? Clearly though, I prefer to accept the former option.

Also while we sat beneath a giant Buddha statue, next to, but not too close to an orange-clad bald man, I realized that the conversation we were having could be considered evangelism. But somehow, Buddhism has never seemed religiony to me and the more I learned about it the more I began to see how correct I'd been. Sometimes, "religion" has a strict and exclusive connotation, but Buddhism is more about spirituality. Everyone from any walk of life and, yes, any religion should hope to aspire to the universal kindness that the Buddhists do (kindness not just to people but to animals too, Udong told us) and the strife for peace of mind and healthy control of emotions and problem-solving skills.

Before we left, Udong introduced us to a friend of his who is a Thai English teacher at another high school. He invited all three of us to come to a meditation ceremony next Sunday. I can't express how overcome with relief and gratitude and love I felt at being included and accepted by this person today. It totally and completely made my week.