Competitions

Last week Chelsea, Mel, and I got to leave school for two days and go to Chiang Mai for part of English Competition Week. ECW isn’t really an official thing, it just so happened that a bunch of competitions for our students took place last week. These competitions are for speeches, spelling, math, science, dance, and potentially more. Mel and Chelsea have been coaching a 6th grade boy and a 3rd grade girl in speech competitions since about week two of their time in Thailand. I just started coaching a 6th grade girl in spelling about three weeks ago. For no necessary reason, our “coaching” skills allowed the three of us to accompany our students, other students, a handful of Thai teachers, and the school’s sub-director to the competitions in Chiang Mai. 

So Tuesday morning the three of us (plus Chelsea’s visiting friend Elise) packed our bags, did some last minute coaching, got to wear jeans to school, prayed for about 30 minutes to different Buddha statues around school, and then hopped in a van to drive four hours to the competitions. The actual competitions didn’t start until Wednesday morning, but we arrived the day before and got to spend the night. 

Side note: I like to play this game called “How Would This Go Down in America?” where I think about crazy Thai situations that are completely normal here and then picture them occurring in an American school. Most of the time, if the situations happened in America the result would be jail time. 

The spending the night situation was so different from what it would have been had this been in America. In America, if you took elementary-aged students on an overnight outing, I would imagine the children would be accompanied by their parents or there would be one adult of the appropriate gender in every hotel room. In Thailand, during this overnight excursion, there were no parents, but there was at least one adult in every room, however, gender did not matter. First of all, our accommodations were not really a hotel. It was a room of four beds and two shoilets (shower + toilet = shoilet). In our room, one of the toilets was completely backed up with whatever had happened in it from the guest before, so we were down to one shoilet. There were dead bugs on the walls and potentially in our beds too. None of us ended up using the “comforters” at the foot of the bed because some were stained and most looked filthy. I slept with a towel for a blanket that night. And not to be super first world-y, but there also wasn’t air conditioning. Now this is not something I would complain about in the states, but when the low of the day is about 82 with ridiculous levels of humidity, no AC is a game changer for comfort. Anywho, back to the student/teacher ratios. In the room next to us was our 3rd grade speech girl, two middle-aged female Thai teachers, and the 6th grade boy. When our 6th grade boy told us his room accommodations, he said it with pure nonchalance in his tone and didn’t even look up from his game of Angry Birds. Apparently mixed genders of students and teachers in a room is a-okay in Thailand. Just one example of when “How would this go down in America?” ends in jail time. 

The next day at the competitions, I split off from the other English teachers and went with my spelling girl, Um (I didn’t have a random mid-sentence language lapse, her name is really Um), and the Thai teacher Nongnoot. My purpose during competition day was to quiz Um beforehand on spelling words she often misspells. This lasted about five minutes and then it was competition time. The competition took place in a room of 44 students from all over Northern Thailand. The room was just a regular classroom with an entire front wall of windows. Plastered against the window wall was about three dozen parents and teachers snapping pics and recording videos of the room of spelling students (quality video that they’ll totally care about in the future). I stood back and looked at my poor little Um, the shiest girl I’ve ever met, who looked sick to her stomach sitting in the middle of the classroom. Round one consisted of a British woman reading 20 spelling words aloud and the students writing them down. They provide a sample sentence, but in all honesty it probably didn’t help whatsoever since these kids are memorizing machines, not English proficient pros. After each round, Um would emerge for a brief break and Nongnoot would immediately go into hounding her with more words to practice spelling out loud. Noot would turn to me and tell me to say words to Um from the spelling lists. It was ridiculous. Um was already nervous and knew as much as she was going to know at that point. I felt so bad for her. In the end, Um made it through seven rounds of spelling out loud and beat out a good portion of the competition by coming in 7th place overall. I was proud, but no one seemed to care because everyone was too distracted by our 6th grade speech boy who got 2nd place and will now be moving onto the nationwide competition in Bangkok (woot!). 

Overall it was a really weird experience and very unnecessary for us whiteys to be there, but I think the school gained some cool point for our presence and we all had a really good time.

Embracing Embarrassment

I experience moments of embarrassment pretty much every day in Thailand. Sometimes these moments are voluntary, like when I opt to mimic Gangnam Style in front of my classes, but other moments are so very not voluntary that I can only laugh to keep from bursting into red-faced flames. Monday was by far my most embarrassing moment to date in this country...or perhaps anywhere in the world. 

During the morning assembly each day, an English teacher is required to stand on stage in front of all the students and faculty and sing a song or do something English-y. I normally miss the morning assembly because I help a 6th grade girl practice for a spelling competition instead, so I’m fairly out of the loop when it comes to the routine of the morning assembly. On Monday, it was my turn to be the English representative and since it was the start of a new week I figured I would introduce a new song. I chose “The Itsy Bitsy Spider” because they know the song and motions in Thai and because I’ve already taught it to two of my classes. I figured it would be kind of awkward, but manageable. It was manageable, but more than kind of awkward. 

As I stood facing the flag, listening to the children sing the King’s Song, one of the head English teachers came over and told me it was time to go on stage. My friend and fellow teacher, Mimi, offered to come up with me and sing the song as well. This turned out to be more than necessary because as I reached the stage I was handed a microphone, and everyone knows you need two hands to perform “The Itsy Bitsy Spider.” Without much thought and with a small intro statement, I just started singing Itsy Bitsy Spider into a microphone in front of thousands of kids and dozens of teachers. I honestly couldn’t tell you what the kids or anyone in the audience was doing. I simply sang like it wasn’t weird and like I didn’t have a fear of public speaking, let alone public singing. Then the head English teacher guy whispered in my ear to hold the microphone closer to my mouth. That’s when things went downhill (not that it was going well before this moment). As I went in for round two of the song, Teacher Mimi was doing the motions next to me and accidentally bumped the microphone. I couldn’t help but to chuckle considering I’d nearly taken an elbow to the face, which resulted in me singing the lyric “Down ca-a-a-ame the rain” in a jolted, man-ish laughing voice. I’m not sure if other people laughed, or if the kids continued attempting to sing along, but I am sure an unnatural shade of red overcame my face. I pushed through one more round of the song, said good job to the students, and bowed out before I could even ask anyone how bad it was. 

Despite my public butchering of the beloved childhood song, I have continued to get requests from all of my students to practice it with them during class. Turns out nobody cares how poorly you perform things around here, as long as it’s in English it automatically gets 1800 cool points. 

Universal Camping

This past weekend marked the end of my third week of teaching, so of course all of us English teachers decided to get out of town. On Friday at about 3:00pm, the Sub Director of the school waltzed into the English department office and asked if any of us could stick around to teach on Saturday. Psh, yeah right. Though we were not traveling together, literally every English teacher besides just one was planning to leave town within the next two hours. That one guy got screwed. The rest of us hopped on buses and split town. 

My old friend Chelsea and my new friends Mel, Leah, Mimi and I decided to go camping for the weekend. We took a four hour bus ride to Chiang Mai, slept in a less than comfortable but more than affordable hostel Friday night, and met up with four of Mel & Chelsea’s English teacher friends who teach in Chiang Mai and Lampang on Saturday morning. The group of nine of us headed to the top of the tallest mountain in Thailand to get our foreign camping on. After a few glitches in transportation and some hours of fumbling to find accommodations, we finally found a campground to stay at for the night. Three more girls joined our group (friends of friends of friends), making our grand total for the trip twelve farangs. We rented four tents, twelve sleeping bags, twelve sleeping mats, and got ready for a good time. 

At first glance, camping seems to be pretty universal. The moment we found the campground, I felt like I was at home. Not San Ramon home, but camping home. There was a wooden welcome station, tall pine tree-type trees, a road that wound throughout the campground, less than luxurious bathrooms, and tents everywhere. That was the first difference between American camping and Thai camping, the tents being everywhere. There aren’t really campsites, but rather it’s a fairly flat area spotted with trees and you can put your tents anywhere you want. We made kind of a half-circle village out of our four tents and then set up our mats and a few towels outside to mimic a campfire pit. We couldn’t have an actual campfire because we didn’t have anything to separate the flames from the ground, but this wasn’t a problem because the campground had floodlights on all night. It was like nature illuminated with street lamps. Around our makeshift campfire, we played games and swapped stories and slipped into our own little camping world. Another difference from the kind of camping I’m used to was that this place had a convenience store/shack. This place was a saving grace. We didn’t think ahead enough to plan out food, so we all ate snacks from the shack for dinner Saturday night. You could also rent comforters from the store, which seemed random, but turned out very necessary because it actually got cold up there. I never thought I would get chilly in Thailand, but sure enough I had to pull my sleeping bag up over my head that night to fend off my shivering. That store also had the best morning surprise to complete any camper’s experience: hot chocolate. It was one of the most satisfying cups of cocoa I’ve ever indulged in. At random points during the weekend, we would look at each other and acknowledge, in a bit of awe, that we were actually camping in Thailand. 

After a not so great night of sleep, but an overall fantastic experience, we packed up and returned our rented items. Then another adventure began: getting off the mountain. If you think about it, it’s really not common to go camping without a personal form of transportation. In the states, you’d never take a taxi out to a campground. But in Thailand, we had no other choice. We had to take two songtaos up the mountain, and that was uncommon. So on the way back down we had a wee bit of trouble finding rides. We had such trouble that we resorted to hitch-hiking. It started out as a joke, but once a pickup truck filled with a Thai family on a day trip pulled over, they became our real solution. The family was so kind and more than willing to help us out, so we packed nine of us (the other three girls had their own motorbikes and had already left our gang) into their truck bed. Their only request: don’t crush their freshly bought mountain vegetables. All nine of us and our backpacks were very careful to squish into each other without squashing the veggies. Several minutes into the crammed ride, the family pulled off down a side road in order to do some sight-seeing. We weren’t in a huge rush and they invited us to join with encouragements of allowing them “just few minutes” to look around. We wound up in a beautiful garden where a wedding photo shoot was taking place. It was gorgeous and very random. Afterward the family packed back into the cab and us farangs into the bed of the truck. Once we reached a bus stop, we ended our time with the friendliest family ever by taking group photos, as per their request. It was an unpredictable way to end an unpredictable weekend, and I wouldn’t have had it any other way...well, maybe I could’ve done without the permanently wind-blown hair after the truck ride down the mountain. 

On Display

I no longer harbor any childhood dreams to become famous within the public eye. Since coming to Thailand, I’ve had my picture taken more times by strangers than a monkey in a zoo. It’s like the freaking paparazzi over here. 

A few examples...

The old town night market: 

There are street markets going on all the time around here. There are at least two nightly markets and then every weekend/week there seems to be an excuse to have several more. Whether it’s the first of the month market, or the vegetarian festival, or a full moon celebration, there’s always something to explore. It’s usually a really good time, unless the market is located in Old Town Phrae. The area around our school seems to be used to white people walking around. Students all yell out, “Teacha! Teacha!” and request high-fives from us. But the farther we get from school, the more looks we get, especially at the market in Old Town Phrae. The other day we were strolling down the street--all eight of us farangs--and a woman stopped two of the girls from our group and asked them to take a picture next to a dried fruit stand. Then everywhere we walked on the street she would stop us and make us take pictures with either her or the merchandise stand/food cart. Then once she started doing it other people appeared with their cameras and got in on it. It must have been a great time for them. For us, it was mostly just hilariously weird. 

The Assembly: 

This past Sunday we had to work. Lame. It was an open house type deal, but it was nothing like open houses in the United States. Instead, the director sat at a table on a stage in front of all the parents and literally read from a packet--a packet which all the parents had in front of them--for more than an hour. This assembly could have easily been replaced by a newsletter. All the English teachers were placed off to the side in a group in front of the assembly. Randomly I would hear the director say “America” or “farangs,” but for the most part it was over an hour of Thai whipping past our ears (actually, it was directly in our ears because they placed the speaker next to us). As we sat there, two teachers and multiple school photographers snapped photos of our presence. Then, at the end, they made us English teachers stand up, introduce ourselves, say where we’re from, and which grade/subject we teach. Then we had to go sit in our classrooms and wait for parents to come talk to us, which they never did. The director continued talking, and once he finally stopped all the parents wanted to leave because that meeting was most likely boring even if you understood it. As far as I could tell, we were there strictly to be seen by the parents and for documentation for future pointless assemblies. 

Gate Duty: 

Every day a Thai teacher and an English teacher stand at the front of the school and greet the arriving students. Last Friday it was my turn to be the English teacher up front. It was 45 minutes of me saying “good morning!” in a sugary sweet tone with a smile pasted on my face to the point of pain. The kids are just too stinkin’ cute to not smile and wave at. Also, if there’s any Up fans out there, my school is filled with little Russells. The boys either wear khaki shorts with their button-up uniform shirts or little tan boyscout outfits. Adorable. Sometimes I actually lol at their uncanny resemblance to the Pixar character. 

Along with greeting the kids just outside of the school, all of us farangs are like celebrities within the gate. We are regularly high-fiving and shaking hands with kids of all grade levels. In the mornings, it takes us only about five minutes to walk to school. After school, it takes nearly three times as long because we’re constantly being stopped by kids who want to utter their few standard English phrases, and as English teachers there’s no way we’re going to stifle this desire just to get home a little faster. 

All in all I feel like a celebrity here...sort of. No one knows my name or anything about me, but they sure do like to take pictures and shake my hand. 

Halloween in Thai Town

Halloween tends to be one of my least favorite holidays. I figured one of the benefits of teaching English in Thailand for these few months was that I could skip all the hoopla of the holiday this time around. I was wrong. In fact, this was quite possibly my most active, engaged, and public Halloween to date. 

Acknowledgement of the day began the night of October 30th. One of the American English teachers suggested all the English teachers dress up and put on a skit in front of the school on Halloween. I thought, “Ok, well, I’m not doing that.” It’s not because I’m a party pooper, I just thought it would be hard to achieve and awkward if successful...alright I’m kind of a party pooper. But, because I was in the wrong place at the wrong time, I became oddly involved in the developing of the skit and the planning of the costumes. At about 8:30pm the night before we’re supposed to “perform” two other girls and myself were shopping at Big C (like Walmart for Thailand) and found absolutely nothing in the way of face paint or costumes, which, of course, makes sense since Thailand doesn’t celebrate Halloween. As we were exiting the store with our heads hung low, all of a sudden a little boy comes strutting through the automatic doors in a full on Spiderman costume. We frantically asked him and his mom where they got the costume. Luckily the woman spoke a little English and was able to tell us this one bit of Halloween gold was from Tesco Lotus (the other Thai Walmart, maybe Thai Target). It was getting late and we were on our bicycles, so we decided not to explore that option. Instead we brainstormed and decided to print out masks from the internet, because, let’s face it, the internet solves most of the world’s problems. 

The next morning I arrived to the school at 7:05am in order to print out a variety of scary masks. The rest of the teachers trickled in to print, color, cut, and finally tape the masks to our faces. The American English teacher in charge of the our Halloween festivities came prepared with themed tattoos, those were a big hit all day. An older English teacher from America came in with an entire devil/vampire/scary dude costume, face paint and all. Apparently his Thai wife and her family had some supplies stockpiled. Once we all got masked-up, we exited the teacher room walking like zombies down to the morning assembly. We waited for our cue and ran out into the crowd of 1st-6th graders growling and screaming “boo!” at them. They were confused, terrified, and above all else delighted. Then we hopped up on the stage for our Halloween skit. Two of the teachers held bags of candy and pretended to be home owners awaiting trick-or-treaters. Chelsea and I got to be the trick-or-treaters. This was awesome. Chelsea and I joked how we thought our days of trick-or-treating together were long over, and yet there we were mimicking the American tradition for 5,000+ Thai children. After Chelsea and I received our candy and the skit ended, one of the teachers threw the rest of the candy into the crowd of kids. I’ve never seen such utter chaos. The students, who normally sit with perfect posture in the straightest of rows, broke into sprints & threw elbows to get some of the coveted candy. Afterward we all agreed that was a bit dangerous, but also really entertaining. 

The rest of the day I revolved my lesson plans around Halloween. I had my students play hangman to guess Halloween vocabulary like ghost, zombie (they super love zombies), vampire, witch, pumpkin, and Jack-o-lantern. Then I had them trick or treat to me at the front of the room. The would knock on a desk, I would make scary creaking door opening sounds, they would say “trick-or-treat, trick-or-treat, give me something good to eat,” I would ask them which of the vocabulary they were dressed as, they’d answer & sometimes act out zombie or vampire, and then I’d give them candy. They had fun with it and I loved that it was a super easy lesson. Also, Halloween lasted about three days for me because I had to be fair to all my classes and teach them each about the holiday, but I don’t see all my levels of classes on the same day, hence my three-day celebration. 

Overall it was a great Halloween and my party pooper attitude was turned completely around by the end of the experience. This is a contender for my best Halloween yet and it definitely takes the bag of candy for most unique. 

Oh, and Thai fun fact, everyone at the school and around town calls it “Halloween Day.” So I’d go to get my iced coffee in the afternoon and they’d wish me a “Happy Halloween Day!” It shall forever be known as that in my mind.