Sorry for the unannounced hiatus, folks. Beginning 4th of July weekend my computer got a virus, and they shut off the internet to our building for the weekend. Then, after the virus was removed and the wifi restored on Monday, my computer's network card remained blocked by the school's firewall for another full week, until I was able to find Mr. Beer in his office to get him to un-block me.
So, this post and my triumphant return to the interwebs in general is brought to you in part by Mr. Beer, "Olympic Computer Master" (or something like that, wrote a student of Mr. Beer). I shant try to cover everything in a single post. My hope is to cover up to the 4-day weekend and then to complete another post later encompassing the holiday through now. Here goes:
To celebrate the 4th of July, we went on Saturday afternoon to the KIS school in Bangkok for an Independence day fair-ish thing hosted by the American Embassy. There was pretty good, but expensive food (I had a cheeseburger, chips and guacamole, apple pie, and free DQ ice cream--Did I mention I'm a fatass?), yet beyond that it was generally kind of boring. Then the rain came. While most fled for cover in the gymnasium or under the awnings of the booths, Sophie and I started running around in the rain. We discovered the tug-o-war rope had been abandoned in the field and we immediately picked it up to challenge one another in a feat of strength. We were quickly joined by two fellow krous/ajarns farangs and then by several of our friends. The parents--who I imgaine were hoping to prevent their children becoming mud-soaked, grass-stained ragamuffins--could finally no longer refuse their children's pleading, given our example, and we were joined by a dozen or two kids, 7-14 in age. We even managed to entice a few adults onto the "field of battle." When the thunder and the heaviest part of the rain had passed, they turned music on and the mud battles turned into a misty rain and mud dance party for all. It was so much fun!! I like to think that Sophie and I are solely responsible for saving the Independence Day celebration and that the US Embassy owes us a debt of gratitude. I have yet to receive their "Thank You" note, but I'm sure it's just lost in the mail.
That Sunday our usual group woke up and went touring Bangkok. We visited a few wats, went to the small and sketchy "Monk Bowl Village," and most importantly consumed "ice cream sandwiches." This Thai delicacy(?) consists of several melon-ball sized coconut ice cream scoops served over sticky rice and topped with corn all atop a smallish sub roll. You can check out the picture on Facebook. It is surprisingly delicious!
The following week, apart from the usual teaching and unsuccessfully stalking Mr. Beer, we had our dance performances on Thursday. Our Thai dance was so much fun and more fun was getting costumed for it. The makeup, hair, and costume were fabulous (again, pictures available on Facebook)! We all had bright pink lips, gold fake eyelashes, and really intense eyebrows. I definitely taught the rest of the day in my regular uniform with that makeup. It was hilarious. The actual performance went well, a little iffy on the timing at the end, but it was as good as we'd ever done, so I was pleased; and I was bound to have a blast anyway because I love dance an inordinate amount compared to the majority of the human population. The group doing American dance did a fabulous job as well! I think Miss Pat was a little worried at first, after having seen the first run-through during rehearsal; but, they greatly improved during rehearsal and killed it (for them) at the actual performance! Some groups of students performed at the same event and they did fantastic boy-band lip-sync/dance performances! Some did breakdancing. They were in upper middle school/lower high school, so they had the sort of I-think-I'm-awesome-but-I'm-self-conscious-and-awkward-at-the-same-time vibe to their performances. I loved it! Ashley, Nick, and I hosted a quick quiz for the students and then a few students sang songs. They had a similar performance style to that of the dancers because of their ages, but they were quite talented all the same.
During that next weekend, on Saturday, I (along with Meryl, Lisa, Nick, Dan, and "The Student Club of St. Gabriel's College") went to a nursing home for elderly women that was run by an order of nuns.
Allow me to use this venture as an example of how things work at St. Gabe's: On Friday morning, Miss Pat asked me to see if I could get a couple of foreign teachers from the secondary office (so obviously me) who would go to do "charity" for "homeless" elderly folk on Saturday (the next day). She told me the bus would leave at 7:30am, we were going about an hour outside of Bangkok, and we'd be back by 3:30pm. Were students going? What exactly would we be doing? How were we supposed to be of help when we can't even speak to the people? None of these questions I knew the answer to. Here at St.Gabe's you just say okay, go where you're told, and ask questions as you go.
So the next day we go outside at 7:30am and mill about a bus that's being loaded with food etc. for awhile. We try to ask the bus driver if the bus is going to help the homeless and after we responded "yes" to his question of "charity?" we we established that indeed it was. We boarded the bus and waited until a St. Gabe's teacher got on board and politely asked us to relocate to the "wan." In the 15 passenger "wan" we talked to some of the older students, four of which were my students so I was able to learn the names of four of my students (Pai-5/6, Non-5/1, Boss-6/4, and Scott-6/3). We had hilarious conversations about how Thai is a really hard language to learn if you come from a non-tonal language and about how it is silly that they all speak great English there, but are afraid to speak to me in school and all say "Good Morning, Teacher" really oddly as a group at the beginning of class (probably because they had been reciting the same beginning of class, monotone greeting since Primary 1). That was great. When we got off the "wan" we found ourselves at an elderly care center and a nice, breezy, shaded, open one at that. I imagine that since the place was run by nuns and accepted donations, it was for elderly people whose families could not afford to care for them, but that is not the same as the connotation "homeless" has in English. Only when we arrived there did we get told what we would be doing. What was that exactly? Why being paraded around as farangs of course! I jest, but it is not entirely untrue. We were to stand in front of the group of elderly women and perform exercises with them. At first one of the Thai students gave the directions ("Head"-they touch their heads, "Shoulders"-they touch their shoulders, "Knees"-they touch their knees) in Thai while we followed along at the front with one or two Thai teachers. Then, it was our turn to do the same thing in English (we added "Up," "Down," "Left," "Right," and "Nose" to the mix) while the students--there was one student seated/kneeling on the floor in front of each of the women--translated into Thai and also demonstrated the movement to help out. Then a few of the old women sang songs (fabulous!) and then they were read simple stories with mental math problems embedded as a means of mental stimulation. Prizes (aka boxes of cake snacks and milk boxes) were awarded to those who excelled in exercise, correctly answered the questions, or performed, and then everyone who hadn't gotten a prize already also got one. After the performance/exercise session (which I actually loved), it was lunch time. We were to help the ladies with their lunch. Again, because of the significant language barrier this basically consisted of the boys helping them with lunch while we milled about, smiled pleasantly, and felt awkward. We, each of the girls in this case, held the hand of one woman who had her student helper ask us. Meryl was the first to do it and it was incredibly awkward because the woman started crying (like really crying) while holding her hand and Meryl had no idea why or what was going on. The boy later explained that the woman was crying because she missed her daughter whom, presumably, the visit of young women put her in mind. The woman didn't cry for either Lisa or I, so it was much less awkward. It was not even that uncomfortable considering I don't really like to be touched; it felt rather nice to know that you were keeping someone company and brightening her day even though you couldn't communicate. We did help by clearing plates and bowls and the like which put me much more at ease because I could actually be helpful and not feel useless (This puts me in mind of Colonel Brandon's line, "Give me an occupation or I shall go mad."). Then, it was our turn to lunch. It was fun to kind of just hang out with the students in a less formal environment. They're very funny boys. After lunch we just took the wan home and pretty much everyone but me passed out almost immediately. It was a good day overall despite the lack of info at the start. (Oh I forgot to mention that we didn't actually leave until about 8:30am and got back at 2:30pm. Classic St. Gabe's.)
On that Sunday all I really did was clean my room--really clean it. I had once over dusted the room when I first arrived (the rooms had rather apparently not been cleaned in between residents, so one's room was only as clean as the resident prior had left it), but I had yet to scrub the bathroom or the floor. It was disgusting. I don't want to go into too much graphic detail, but suffice it to say I discovered the toilet was an entirely different color than I had thought (white, in fact). I washed my hands about 8 times in a row afterward. Upon discovering the extent of the filth I may have been a little too liberal with the cleaning product seeing a bunch of skin peeled off my hands in the days following.
The next week (last week) was a short week because of the holiday which began on Friday. It was a good week though. I started swimming everyday after period 8 for a little over a half hour until the pool closes. It's been great. It's only a little awkward because women in this country don't really exercise, at least not publicly, so one frequently gets weird looks. I do the best I can to respect the cultural modesty--it's not as though I'm strutting in in a bikini to float about during the most crowded pool hours. I show up for the last half hour of the pool's opening hours when few to no people are there clad in a racing one-piece, cap, and goggles to dive in and swim legitimate laps. I think the few gym teachers who are there all the time the pool's open are getting used to my showing up and becoming unphased by my presence. Anyway, swimming last week made me feel really energized and healthy, and I'm disappointed that it's been rainy all this week during the swimming hour, so I've been unable to go.
Also last week, I was grading a plethora of writing. For M5 I finished grading the formative exams. The scenario given in the passage was that "Steve" was on a cruise ship which caught fire and needed to be abandoned. Steve's lifeboat was overcrowded and beginning to sink. There was an injured man aboard who wasn't going to survive no matter what, so Steve throws him overboard into the sea. The first question asked was whether Steve's behavior was morally wrong and the second was what you would do in the same situation. The responses were sometimes hilarious and always in varying degrees of coherent English. One of my favorite's was a student who said that in the same situation he would shoot the injured man in the head with a gun and then throw him overboard. He added that it would be easy because the injured man, being injured, would be unable to fight him. Great! Another student included as the last two sentences of his second response, "If Miss Panasawat was on the boat, I would save her. I would help Miss Panasawat immediately." Too bad for him it was I and not Miss Dee who was grading the exams.
I've also been grading M6 essays about Mother's Day which are all awful because the students blatantly put almost no time into them. Largely they are all hyperbolic in their glowing praises of their mothers, or if not, I teach many a Momma's boy. When I finish grading them all I will post highlights from any standout works should I come across any.
Also, this week I've been recording the vocabulary books. This entails me reading hundreds of words some of which are repeated others of which are misspelled. I am fairly sure I pronounced more than a few incorrectly due either to my lack of knowledge of random specific science terms or because I only after realized that "conduct" had been designated as a verb though I had pronounced it con'-duct (not con-duct') as if it were a noun. Oh well, close enough. The whole process is actually exhausting. One day I felt like I was putting myself to sleep while reading. I'm sure that will be a great audio CD.
To conclude this post, I will share one of my favorite things about Thailand (other than that everything comes with a straw or the prevalence of chocolate milk boxes): People tell you are beautiful so much more often here! One day last week my co-teacher told me that some of the ladies (also Thai teachers) in the M5 office said I was beautiful because, he contributed, it is true! Love Bence! Also, twice now, on the street strangers have told me and those I was with that we were beautiful. One of my Period 8 students said I was beautiful and that was how I was going to win in Unreal Tournament (we had a fun day in class; I can explain the game to those of you who are unfamiliar with it upon request) but he was intentionally trying to curry favor at the time. Anyway, it is hilarious and makes you feel great. I'm fairly certain that I haven't gotten better looking since being here, but people here just contribute unsolicited compliments much more often than Americans do. I love it! When it happens it immediately improves your day. So, I hope you all go out today and tell someone they're beautiful, even if that person is a stranger and foreigner you see on the street!
