With Love,

Today's Thoughts...

A letter I just read tucked into one of the final exams I was grading from one of my Conversation 215 students to me. Almost made me cry.

To… Aj. Lauren

I so glad that learn with you. You so lovely. Every students love you so much. I thank you for everthing that you help me. You help me everything. I promise that I intend to study and good student. In the future I will to be good teacher same you. When have a chance I hope I will study with you again. Bye…Bye

[Insert a drawn box with: Sureeewan (hearts, hearts, hearts) Ajan Lauren]

The good teacher for me forever. From… Sureewan.

Maybe it wasn't just a fluke I landed this job after all. ::sigh:: The semester is over. Why do I feel like the year is flying by?


PS. I couldn't resist. This one almost made me cry for different reasons. It was also written on the exam by a different student about giving advice to a friend or family member with anorexia or bulimia:
"I can help her to show the picture of Victoria Beckam and Tata Young. And tell her I know it's very different but even the actress are not good shape. They have some people are fatty girl like you. You don't worry. I know you want some cake."

Now I Know My ABCs

Today's Thoughts...

What do sing-alongs and color relay races have to do with teaching university students in Thailand? Absolutely nothing and everything, I found out two weeks ago. You see, Elena and I were invited (read: coerced, dragged, and all but smuggled) to participate in a weekend English Camp for young kids in the city of Uttaradit, about three hours away. No big, right? Swoop in, teach some songs, play some games, and we’re good. Well, it sort of went like that. SORT of. The three hour ride was fun. Elena, myself, and three young teachers all crammed into one of the teachers cars and belting out the tunes to Toni Braxton and Backstreet Boys, we made our way flying down the highway, stopping once or twice for coffee, bathroom breaks, a light soup dinner, and fruit stalls for plump white juicy fruit called lang-sad that peels like a tangerine inside, but bursts with some sticky sweet deliciousness and sits about the size of a walnut. Munching and meandering down memory lane to 5th grade pop songs, we arrived around 9pmish at our hostess’s adorable wooden bungalow home. After standing on the porch for something like fifteen minutes, her wet and harried mother rushed to greet us and let us in, dripping in her bath towel. Her father sat in the next room in front of the cartoon channel and grunted some acknowledgement of his daughter when she entered. Now that I think about it. I never heard more than three words from him directed towards any of us, the Thai teachers included. Hmmmm…
That night, we stayed up a bit to prepare songs and games for the next day. Flash cards, color wheels, “I love you, You love me,” Barney-style sort of things. Exhausted and slightly hungry, Elena and I climbed into our sleeping bags and snored through the night. We woke up to our faces being tickled and trampled by the family cat who had taken a liking to the hair poking out of our floor mat nests. We got up, the front doors of the house having been thrown open for light, and showered fast to get ready for the day. Terribly hungry, I asked where we could snag some snacks for breakfast and was given a small cup of coffee. So I figured they just were a coffee loving bunch and too hardcore for breakfast. That’s when I first noticed the other two Thai teachers snacking on food they had stashed in their bags. Nibbling on the corner of a piece of pastry, I got into the car and headed to the middle school nearby. The children were fabulously adorable, all with their matching uniforms and matching haircuts—each little girl had a neatly coiffed bob and each boy, a close cut cropped top. We split them into teams—the Lion, The Bear, the Panda, and the Giraffe (their choices with the latter team instantly regretting their name when they learned the English pronunciation; they fondly referred to themselves as the Gee-laffs).

That was the easy part of the day, singing songs the other teachers were convinced we knew and grew up singing though I don’t recall ever learning “Hello my friend, we meet together” or “We Charge,” but okay. That day, those songs were my childhood favorites. We tried and unsuccessfully instructed them in a round of “Rain, rain, go away,” but settled for “Old Mc Donald” since the animal sounds thrilled them. Then, I spent two sessions teaching them to say black instead of brack, blue instead of brue, and gray. To my amazement, it appears that the phenomenon of mispronounced r’s and l’s and other common speech mistakes are not in fact products of an inability for the children to pronounce these sounds, but years of instruction by teachers who simply can’t. My kids had no trouble pronouncing anything correctly, but as soon as I listened to the other teachers instruct them on the same material, I understood instantly. I mean, when we’re listening to the kids being taught “Ten Litt’n Indians” rather than “Ten Little Indians,” a lot of things start to click. The day rolls on with claps of thunder, lightning, and the usual buckets of rain in the afternoon. We dine on an Uttaradit specialty of fish and rice and plough our way through the early afternoon. As a reward, we all decide to get massages, not quite the relaxing, existential experience some massages are, but the Thai knead-the-kinks-out-of-your-soul kind of massage complete with elbows in your groin and fingers poking your vitals. Afterward, I felt like I’d gone through a meat grinder, but true to the rep, I was smoothed out and not a kink remained.

Late as we were from getting our massages first, Elena and I, once again famished, hurried to see what food was left to eat. As it turned out, while we were being kneaded like old cookie dough, everyone else had managed to pick through what was set out for a “snack” as our host called it—the infamous Thai gataaa. Gataa (a grill with soup boiler that you cook yourself) is not quite our favorite as Elena and I have been positive each time we struggled to cook on the grill and boil our soup that we were actually ingesting ecoli, salmonella, and everything in between from half cooked meat we couldn’t manage to sizzle properly. We pretty much picked our way through the remnants, constantly pilfered by friends and family that sort of wandered into the abandoned classroom where the gataa was set up. I felt something like a cavewoman, hunched over my coals and raw meat, trying to protect it from the scavenging birds that swooped in and plucked the juicy morsels from the spit. Nibbles done, we went home with everyone else and waited in vain for dinner to actually happen. Our host had informed us earlier that our gataa episode was merely a prelude to the evening, an appetizer if you will. After a few hours at home and constant repetitions of why don’t you shower and get ready for bed? Don’t you want to shower off and get in bed? Elena and I slowly realized there was no food forthcoming. With the fish from lunch long since burnt away chasing after adorable children all day and the slim pickings from the gataa well on their way to edible history, we went to bed (squeaky clean!), with angry grumbling tummies.
The morning proved much the same and it was then that I realized that while our Thai teacher friends had stashed away munchies to last through the weekend, our host and her mother merely sucked and nibbled on lang-sad all weekend long, constantly remarking on this diet or that quick-fix weight loss technique. We were stuck essentially in the Thai version of The Biggest Loser and I wasn’t too happy about that. We woke up to the doors flung wide open once more, the cat still prowling over our sleeping heads, and five or six cousins, aunts, and uncles all gathered to watch the sleeping farangs (foreigners) and remark ecstatically when we woke and spoke to them in some Thai. I swear it’s like a magic trick and people just want to watch you do it again and again and again. Usually eager to put my Thai skills to the test, so hungry I could devour an elephant, I was in NO mood for charades and niceties., but I bit my tongue, smiled as is the Thai way, and growled my way to a calmer zen. Grumpy and yes, still hungry, we hit the road again after several hours of waiting while our host and her mother primped and fussed their ways to beauty. For lunch, apparently the meal of choice every day, we went to a gorgeous floating restaurant on the water at a nearby reservoir/river and munched our way into food coma.

Munched so much that Elena and I both felt sick the whole ride back to Chiang Mai from stuffing ourselves silly. Lesson number one million forty-five— eating is apparently optional when you’re dealing with divas on diets :)

Growing Up in Thailand

Today's Thoughts...

After riding my moto to the local Tesco supermart (think: Costco, Walmart with some Target style but mall-sized), I popped inside to purchase a desk lamp, lightbulbs, a towel, some hand soap, bread jam, shampoo, sponges, and tissues. Strapping it all down in my bike basket with bungee cords, tossing my high heels from work over one shoulder, and tucking my oversized purse under the other, I felt...like a real person. I don't know when exactly it happened, but I think I sort of grew up a little in Thailand...

Mountain Mama

Today's Thoughts...

Contrary to my colleague’s hours snoozing surreptitiously and…not so surreptitiously at his desk (hahaha, he’s gonna kill me), typically, I manage to find myself with roughly 37-40 hours of work per week between classes, meetings, office hours, tutoring, poetry contests, lecture readings; I don’t even know what all goes on constantly, but somehow about 90% of the time, I end up a part of it. For example, when it came about that a regional poetry contest was being held at a nearby university in Chiang Mai, a packet of poems and two students plopped at my desk and in about three weeks, I was expected to prepare them to recite with fluency, accuracy, and comprehension. Considering that most of my students have the same speech impediments in English (that becomes dat, vulnerable becomes wulnerable, change becomes shange), I had absolutely no idea how I was supposed to get these girls to recite Shakespeare’s sonnets and Wordsworth’s image-laden rhymes with even discernibly accurate pronunciation let alone a modicum of comprehension. On top of that, the head of the department insisted that I had to teach the girls rhythm and rhyme… for arhythmical and non-rhyming poetry. No clue. No clue whatsoever. I just shook my head and said okay. Well three weeks later after countless afternoons practicing “red leather, yellow leather” and “unique New York” and whatever other theater tongue-twisters and activities I threw at them, including a night trip to a café where the girls recited “O Captain, My Captain” as a three-woman skit for lookers-on, they were ready and off they went. I meanwhile, was thrown into a minivan and sent to Lamphung for the 11th annual speech competition to coach and cheer on our three contestants there. At the end of the day, the head of our department asked me to stay on teaching for another year, jumped out of her seat and at a grand 4’11 danced and jigged in the aisles, one of my students won 5,000 baht and 2nd place in the annual speech competition, and crowning joy, my very own coachee won first place in the poetry competition for a heartfelt and animated recitation of “O Captain, My Captain”! Needless to say, it was a day to celebrate.



And then we were sent to the mountain. Yes, a week later, Elena and I were terrifyingly coerced (no other word accurately describes the pouting faces, confusion and sheer power of peer pressure when fellow teachers thought for even a second that we WOULDN’T go) to climb Doi Khuntaan and camp out for a nice with first and second year students. All I wanted to do was sleep and sleep and keep sleeping for a weekend, fatigued as I was. Surprisingly and wonderfully, a large number of the students turned out to be my very own which was eye-opening. Nothing like a four hour hike, sweating, draining every body fluid imaginable beneath the burning Thai sun, to bring you and your students closer together. The most ridiculous thing neither Elena nor I could understand was why nearly ALL of the students chose to do the several hours hike in skinny jeans and make-up, even reapplying as they went! I mean I looked like road kill, and dying from heat exhaustion as they were, well…. they looked good. Some things just continually baffle me and this is one of them.



To block out the heat and exhaustion, I talked the whole way. Yep, that's me talking behind the camera as I take that shot. As is my custom (as anyone who knows me will readily attest to), I drowned out the pain with incessant palaver (sorry, Elena!), quizzing students about their lives, talking nonstop about my own, anything I could think of to keep thoughts of how many more kilometers we had to go out of sight, out of mind, gone, gone, gone. So we made the however many km trek and collapsed in hungry heaps at the top. Then the students spent the greater part of the evening playing all sorts of crazy summer camp games, some of which I dove in on foolishly, singing, crafting, eating, and in general loving life and this mountain. And it was a sight to behold. Beautiful, fresh air like we haven’t felt in Thailand and just as serene and soothing as you want to be.



When the day’s activities ended, we crowded into a cabin with the other ajarns and the real fun began. In the middle of the night I got up to pee and had to nearly choke myself to hold back the laughter and tears from streaming forth. Because Elena and I had been first to bed, we had not beheld the ritual of nighttime with the other teachers, but we didn’t need to. The remnants were right there in the room. I mean muu-muus, Superman PJs, Pooh stuffed animals, buzzsaw snores, swatting at invisible bugs, night masks, head gear-- I could barely contain myself. These were the same women hovering over the coffee pot in their sensible heels, none-too-flashy necklaces, knee-length skirts, blazers. Well, no more. It was another world and at 4am, I was there to witness it in a room full of dozing Thai women. Perfect. Hours and hours waiting in the train station and more hours on the train and we finally arrived back in Chiang Mai. Do I regret it? Not a moment.

Indo Supreme

Today's Thoughts...

The very next week after Pai, with a sudden lull in classes, I packed up and shipped off for post-tsunami zone—Banda Aceh in the far tip of Sumatra, Indonesia. I stopped over for a night in Medan where Dylan met me in the airport and after several illegal runs in and out of the country to procure cash for a visa-on-arrival and an investigation by plain clothes police (complete with backroom, brightly burning interrogation lamp, full investigation like I was in a black and white detective movie, and a very touchy body search by a giggly forty-something year old woman), I finally (legally) stepped foot into Indonesia. The airport was a bit rundown with taxi hawkers gawking and lingering nearby trying desperately to convince us that their sky-high rates were so good, so good. Luckily, our five-star hotel (oh yes) had airport service and swooped in like a hawk to save her babes from the vultures. The plush leather interior SUV drove us into the city with its coolly tinted windows so we could gaze open-mouthed at all we saw. In many ways, Medan reminded me so much of Lima (Peru), I couldn’t stand it. The same loitering men on corners, peeling billboards and posters half-heartedly glued to walls, garbage trucks, their wonderful aromas wafting in the breeze, women with over-sized shopping bags, grit, smoke, a distinct buzz in the air—the works. It was astonishing. The only difference as far as I could tell was the sudden explosion everywhere of women in hijabs, or jilbabs, as they are known in Indonesia. Somehow I had managed to forget that Sumatra is Indonesia’s most conservatively Muslim region.

Our hotel was beyond first-rate and for $30 each for the night, was superior. We stayed on the ninth floor with a walk out deck to the balustraded pool, little white cherub-looking stone fixtures ringing the edges. There was hand to mouth service all throughout the hotel with a bevy of eager faces greeting you to provide in any way they could whatever you might need. There were arrival mocktails, strawberry and bubbly, and a huge bed, glass-encased shower—we were in absolute bliss, Dylan especially after two months of life in Aceh, a different world compared to Medan. Our bliss was short-lived however, as we woke early to partake in the enormous Indonesian and Western breakfast buffet (followed by room service of our leftovers), explored the mall, dashed off to try to see Harry Potter, failed in that attempt, and returned in a bejak (tuk-tuk with a sidecar) with a driver belting Michael Jackson’s “Black or White” at us and telling us about his travels through America. In the blink of an eye, Medan was behind us and we were on a plane to Aceh.


Aceh is breathtakingly gorgeous. Sort of ensconced in a ring of mountains with the ocean along the edge, it is beautiful. The tsunami (of 2004) did not destroy that. Though the infrastructure leaves much to be desired, the city itself is still teeming with people, many of whom returned to their lives (sans homes) in Aceh soon after the tsunami swept through. You can feel it in a sort of pride in the people in their home, whatever the damages done. While I was there, we did the “touristy” things, whatever those might be in a still re-developing Aceh—we stopped by the unfinished Tsunami Museum, visited the mass graves, and circled around a huge steamer, drifted over two miles inland during the flooding. But that wasn’t Aceh, not really at least. Aceh is in the people and that was the most outstanding part about the place. Medan had its seedy underbelly with men openly hostilely staring/glaring at me, convincing me that anything would be better if I had just bought a jilbab myself. In Aceh, people at least waited until you passed before they gaped openly most of the time, despite the fact that women here were even more conservative than in Medan. I mean covered ankles to wrists conservative—I felt extremely out of place even with my shoulder shrugs, sweaters, and leggings.

Dylan’s roomies Andre and Oczie along with two friends, Dede and a girl whose name has escaped me, picked us up from the airport and raced through the night in a semi-broken down jeep-truck?, nearly splattering an unsuspecting cat on the road as we went. The guys I found out were real class acts, hilariously goofy and Aceh-style laid back. As proof of this, when we got to the house, Dylan and Dre showed me the remnants of “Star Wars,” an all-out ink battle with yellows and reds and blues splashed on the walls from the office printer (the office for Dylan’s NGO is based out of their house—“Basecamp”). Did I mention there’s not much shakin’ in Aceh?

At night, rather than frequent bars with booze since Aceh is dry to all citizens and expensive alc to all foreigners (bules), young people flock to coffee shops, Sumatra being known for some of the best coffee in Indonesia. We popped on over to two shops, the first a stop to meet Dylan’s army of Acehnese friends. I could only DREAM of having half as many Thai friends as he has Acehnese, literally. Most all of them work at NGOs or government organizations and LOVE to practice their English, not to mention the relative ease of learning Bahasa Indonesia (a bunch of which I picked up while I was there in like…two days, almost as much Thai as I’ve digested in two months). Whereas here, sometimes it can be like pulling teeth to get Thai compadres to even squeak out the countless words of English they know, ever fearful of somehow maiming a ridiculously complicated and complex language. I mean, really, five tones in Thai—I’m the one who sounds like a fool, not them. His friends were incredible and promptly cooed over me, friended me on Facebook, and invited us to join them for a camping trip the next day. Sadly, we had to decline because of my flight out, but I spent the rest of the weekend secretly mourning it.



So that’s Dylan’s friends. Dylan’s place is another story. Basecamp is a one-floor bungalow, fairly new as it was built right after the tsunami, a real boys’ bachelor pad. No furniture in the living room except a huge wide-screened TV and a coffee table. Dylan’s room was decidedly more posh (hahahaha, I’m dying just saying that) for which I reference, the twin bed (one leg missing so the end was propped up with his suitcase), two posters slowly detaching themselves from the wall, a dresser, a desk (which he has assembled himself by hand!), and a frosty AC unit that sort of chose when it would share its Arctic breeze or not. His bathroom consisted of a Western-style toilet (you dump in a bucket of water to wash the waste go down), a drain to serve as a sink after brushing of teeth, and a large water-filled cistern called a mandi for showering with icy cold waves in the morning. The mandi is an experience all itself. You have to brave the icy buckets of water to wet your body, soap down in a rapid lather, and then douse yourself again with the frigid liquid to rinse off. It’s sort of like a washing marathon—how fast can you douse, how quick can you lather, and how many minutes till you are back on the other side of the door, clean and cold. I considered it a triumph when I could complete the feat in under five minutes. Go team, go!

Aceh went by in a daze and once again it was time to move on but not before sampling some of Aceh’s “finest” (although in a way I much preferred the food stands). My second night, we were serenaded at a fancy over-priced Italian restaurant populated primarily by all the bule in town and were served sheet-thin crispy pizza. The day I left, instead, we partook in the ritual that is Pizza Hut restaurant style with a waitress and full menu and background music. Surreal, I’d say. What a world, what a world.

Bpai Pai (I'm going to Pai)

Today's Thoughts...

AGH! So it has been a MONTH of life that has disappeared on me. Quite unsure of where the heck August went, I find myself in September and in great debt to all my lovely loyal and Lauren-less readers ;P The past four weeks, I’ve felt like I’ve barely inhaled and all of a sudden—poof! Done. It started with a trip to the tiny town of Pai just a few hours away, continued with a special visit to Indonesia, then back to Chiang Mai where I was whisked away for a speech competition in Lampang, off yet again to Singapore to nurse a certain somebody back to health, and then up a mountain to Doi Kuntaan with a giggly group of students and my fellow Payap faculty. Relishing in the prospect of a weekend at HOME, I write to you now, a report from the frontlines and the past SIX cities I’ve been to since I wrote last. And so without belabored to-do….. PAI.

Jordan, a fellow PiA-er teaching itty bitty first graders in Chiang Mai, and I decided about a month ago that we desperately needed an escape from Chiang Mai. As much as we love this place with its constant stream of motorbikes and cars, honking tuk tuk drivers, spicy papaya salads, and late-night noodle stands, we were dying for the chance to sort of… run free. So we did. We ran (via minibus) straight to Pai, a small town and mildly touristy haven some three hours away. Fortunately enough, Pai was all but deserted given the low season, so for better or worse we had the town to ourselves. Now being in a quaint, mountain nestled town (everything is a mountain nestled town in No-Tho, my catchy name for Northern Thailand) we thought it’d be a swell idea to hop on a pair of bikes and ride out to a nearby waterfall when we got there. I mean, neither of us had really set foot on a bike seriously since middle school, but whatever. It’d be cute, idyllic even. Right. Hahaha. I wish. From the very moment we handed over our 50 baht, our trip to Pai was christened with one disaster after the next.

Okay, so we’re riding these bikes, right? Great. Beautiful mountain breeze (and mountain hills), gorgeous sunny day (and dampening heat), long stretches of peaceful countryside (and the accompanying roosters strolling along the street). Perfect. It really could have been a scene out of the Sound of Music. And then Jordan’s bike chain popped off with a loud squeal and crunch. No biggie; we popped it back on. A few strides later, it came off again. Annoying, but at least the bike was still moving. Now we were going uphill. And then it happened. For the second time in my Thailand days, I swear to you, heaven bore its wrath down on us both and all hell fell from the skies. In a matter of seconds, we were pedaling against pounding sheets of rain until we found temporary shelter under a large canopy tree. Passerby on their fast and speeding motorbikes waved and laughed openly at our foolish dripping selves huddling together horrified at the sudden turn in weather. After about twenty minutes, we tentatively ventured out, only to find that the tree itself had been dumping buckets on us and there was no more than a trickle outside in the open air. Of course. We pedaled on, our Lonely Planet assuring us that there was a whole slew of villages just above the next cresting hill…or the next…or maybe the next.

By the time we reached the farms outlying the town, small Thai children running out to gape and point openly at the foolish farang on bicycles, my brakes now having failed entirely and Jordan’s chain all but a forgotten fancy trailing beside her, our clothes were sticking to us glued by the rain and sweat that dripped down our backs and sides. We asked a small woman hoisting a bundle the size of several small children onto her back, which way to the waterfall (in Thai!) and she pointed to the top of yet another looming hill. Figuring that if this tiny woman carrying six times her weight could do it, we went for it, and….nada. So that waterfall? Was a clean 10-12 miles outside of town. So much for our maps. So much for our bikes. So much for an idyllic trip through the countryside. Laughing in tears, we pedaled back to our fortunately gorgeous and sinfully cheap bungalow “Aqua,” having logged roughly 10-12 kilometers in riding (about 6-7 miles uphill). Oh but of course we didn’t make it there without being chased by a pack of dogs, us DYING on these damn bikes, trying to outrace these street dogs in silence, neither shouting or screaming or panting or anything, just pedaling faster and faster in the dark to escape. By the time we collapsed in bed and endured the terrifyingly shocking visit of a cat who decided to crawl in from outside to join us in bed, we couldn’t stop the side-splitting laughter that rang through the night. (sounding oddly poetic…)

Bright idea. The next morning, we promptly returned the bikes and with four hours to spare until our bus back to Chiang Mai, decided to pony up and rent motorbikes. After arguing in Thai-glish for forever, we managed to secure a half day rate for the usual 24 hour rental. Then we were told that our deal would come only with a tank teetering dangerously on empty, with us on our way up yet another mountain to hot springs and elephant camps near town. As we rode, the bikes alternately shutting off whenever they saw fit or the exhaust pipes exploding whenever we stopped, we were once again amazed at the sheer beauty of Pai. Absolutely breathtaking fields and fields of crops, mountains, everything. We passed several similarly idyllic biker riders, huffing and puffing their way up the hill, and we smiled at their folly. Ha. Ha. Ha. But we made it to the top this time, and relaxed for what felt like an eternity in the medicinal hot springs, sloughing off dead skin, exhaustion, and just life. It was blissful. Racing back down (by which I mean coasting on neutral to save gas), we passed the elephant camps, their namesakes sunbathing with their sad eyes watching us ride by. And before we rightly knew what had happened, we were piled onto yet another minibus, not as good as the first, my seat threatening to plummet out the back of the bus every time we stopped suddenly or someone opened the trunk. Best worst trip EVER. So jerking and bouncing, we made our way back to Chiang Mai and then the craziness in my life really began.