Party Bus and Christmas

On Friday Wang Yang elementary went on a field trip to the city of Nong Khai and I joined along. With absolutely no english speakers on this trip I had no idea what was in store and ended up being fun because each place we went to was a surprise. The day started early with me waking up around 4:15am and being picked up at 5am to load onto the bus. In total there were around 60 students and teachers going on the trip however our only bus (which was so ghetto I can't believe it was still running) was seated for around 45. This meant that the students had to basically sit on top of each other for our 9 hour bus ride there and back to the city. It looked extremely uncomfortable but my students were so excited for the field trip it didn't matter. Next came the issue of who I was going to sit next to on the bus. Many of my teachers at this school are very nervous and scared to talk to me so who was going to have to sit next to me was a big deal. They kept pushing teachers near my seat but nobody was willing to take the plunge and was a little awkward to for me I felt like some scary creature. Ultimately it came down to my principle being the one who got stuck sitting next to the strange farange. My principle is extremely soft spoken and just only spoke his first words to me the past week(after 2 months!). The trip ended up being a good forced ice breaking time for us and I think after our time spent together he is much more comfortable in approaching me. In total we made 5 stops in Nong Khai seeing the highlights of the city. The first was the Aquarium which was filled with many strange exotic fish. Second the Thai-Lao bridge. For this we got to walk to the very boarder of Thailand only being a few hundred feet from entering Lao.

Third, a beautiful temple.

Fourth, a sculpture garden featuring many famous Buddhist symbols and gods. It was amazing to see the shear size of the sculptures there. Finally a free for all walk through the Riverside market.

Some interesting occurrences during the day were how my co-teachers (only some) decided to start cracking open beers on the bus at 8am. This continued throughout the day which lead to a finale of buying a 30 pack of Leo for the long ride back to PlaPak. The bus drivers assistant also decided to join along buying a 40 oz to sip on the way back.Crazy! I was pretty shocked by this but it seemed perfectly acceptable to everybody else. Next was the full out dance party on the ride back. The bus driver blared the music, turned off some lights and the students filling the aisle of the bus jumping up and down screaming and singing to the music. This lasted for a few hours and my head was throbbing from the volume of the music and down right exhaustion from the day. We arrived back in PlaPak around 10:30pm and I was happy to make it through my first field trip.Wheww

The next day was Christmas! Honestly I woke up and for the first hour I forgot that it was even Christmas. I quickly remembered I needed to prepare my veggie dish for the volunteer Christmas party that afternoon and evening.

The Poinsettia was the perfect tree!

Overall the Christmas party was a huge success complete with a fierce white elephant gift exchange, Secret Santa, and Potluck dinner consisting of everything from Mashed potatoes to vietnamese rolls to Mac and Cheese.

We had quite a spread!

After dinner a few of us walked over to the catholic church that is near Rita's house to catch a Christmas Mass. I was mainly just interested to see a church in Thailand and what it was like! We had a surprise treat afterwards of Fireworks that we lit off at the field that were actually pretty good! We ended our party with a movie of the traditional story of 'How the Grinch Stole Christmas'. Snuggled up together on the tile floor we called it a night and went to bed.

We got woken up first at 5:30am by the "village announcements". This consists of usually the village elder on a loud speaker echoing throughout the village blabbing away about what was happening today or what farmer has the best veggies. This is accompanied by Thai music blaring at 6! We all tried to sleep a little longer only be be woken up again at 6:30am by Ritas principle walking into the house full on sleeping people (him being completely aware of this) trying to talk to Jes. Thai people don't know the courtesy of being quiet if people are sleeping or waking you up. Anyways after eating left over fried rice and cinnamon rolls a few of us headed out to the road to flag down a bus to drop us near where our sawng tao can pick us up on it's route to PlaPak (this was a little bit tricky but we made it!). Finally arriving home I logged onto my skype account to catch Christmas dinner at my family reunion, perfect timing! Its been nice not having christmas shoved in my face here so you don't really know what you are missing. Seeing the red wine being poured and christmas food made me a little homesick, but I know this is only one of the many many Christmas' that'll miss! Having the worldteach fam around helps too!

Here are some pics of my students as we celebrated Christmas in english class!

The Daily Commute

I haven't really explained much about what a "typical" day looks like for me at my schools. This however is hard to define because each day seems so far from typical and there isn't really a normal either. This is how my day is suppose to look and on rare occasion turns out. My ride to school comes from either Pi Khem (Wang Yang days) and Pi Tok (PlaPak Noi days) who are married and work at both of my schools as the computer teacher (although computer are rarely used at Wang Yang ) and Pi Tok as the 5th grade teacher. Anyways Pi Khem picks me up at 8:20 in front of the highschool gates, this usually ends up being 8:30-40ish though due to "Bai Tueyyyy, sorry late No gas, No minute on phone, or some other morning errand" On PlaPak Noi days I bike to Pi Tok's house now because she was always late due to "Shampoo hair". Everyday she tells me that she wakes up at 4am and verry very work hard, which just confuses me on why she is late if she is up at 4 and doesn't get me till 8:30 haha. Her house is only down the street and I'm not exactly sure how this cuts out time to get to school and its a little bit of a hassle to load all my teaching materials on my bike but oh welll. Sometimes my favorite part of the day (besides my students of course!) is my commute out to PlaPak Noi.

It is only a few kilometers away but its out to the poorest part of the village through the "forest" as Pi Tok calls it which is actually rice fields that many of my student's parents own and work in all day. As we drive or sometimes motorbike to school ( with me side saddling on the back of the motorbike and grasping onto my teaching supplies) we pass our usual obstacles which include chicken with a trail of chicks. I always catch Pi Tok glancing in her mirror to see if she hit any of them sometimes saying "no die". Dogs who don't budge from their comfortable resting spots. And my favorite the hurd of water bufflo which we serve through on the motorbike. When passing the buffalo Pi Tok always exclaims, "many many cow" this has also been a marker on how late we are to school of where the cow are in their hurding journey. I arrive at school usually with only 15-20 minutes to arrange my materials for the next 4 hours of teaching different lessons. While I'm getting ready my students are doing morning assembly, cleaning the school, and gardening

(I'm going to do another post of the typical thai student day). My classes start quickly and I

do my first 3 hours, grades 3-6, have an hour lunch then my last hour of my Kinder,1,2. I usually have an hour and a half after my lessons are over to play with my kinder through 2 graders, hang or create any necessary material or help my students with their garden. Around 3:30-4 students are dismissed and I'm on my way home exhausted!

Lately I've been thinking about what my "daily commute" was before I went on my journey to Thailand. I was living at home with my parents working 40 hours a week at a place with a horrible work environment, and my least part of the day dealing with the jammed packed traffic from all the corporations in the silicon valley. People cutting me off or speeding illegally down the carpool line just to get a minute ahead of the next person and I slowly inch along highway. I'm not going to say Thailand's roads are any safer than the US since there are absolutely no traffic laws here and many drunk drivers but the main difference is people aren't stressed when they drive. There could be a motorbike going the wrong way while a car in the opposite direction is trying to pass someone but the driver doesn't seemed phased at all and somehow knows that they'll all fit by each other at once. My commute is peaceful and also exciting as we interact with wildlife and smile at the elderly lounging in front of their houses. Everytime I'm overwhelmed,homesick, or frusterated with the culture I always think back of what my life would probably be like if I stayed in the states this year and what my morning commute was like there and I realize how grateful I am.

Alright this post is starting to stray to different topics but I'm excited for the next few days of Christmas activities that I'm going to be doing at my schools, a school field trip on friday to Nong Khai and for our Christmas Party that is being held at fellow volunteer Rita's house this weekend complete with Secret Santas and a White elephant gift exchange! Hope everyone is enjoying the holiday season!

Khon Kaen Travel

Last week was a fairly easy week of teaching, only 2 days due to holidays on monday and friday and then a Worldteach meeting in the city on thursday. Both of my teaching days fell on PlaPak Noi elementary school days which contributed to a less stressful week. However I was very sad to learn on Tuesday morning that a computer, printer, and radio was stolen from the school. The robbers cut a square hole in the metal gate protecting the lower outside classroom taking the school's valuable equipment. I know they don't have money to replace these items since I can already see they are in desperate need of a new chalkboard, desks, chairs...basically everything. Currently one of my students has to sit in a 3 legged chair holding up the corner with a missing leg or my students have to squint at the chaulkboard when I write because it is so badly damaged. I've been in contact with worldteach and I'm hoping soon I can set up some sort of fundraising effort with them for those of you who might be interested in helping out.

This weekend, due to the 3-day offs, I decided to travel to a neighboring Issan city of Khon Kaen with 2 other volunteers, Kaitlin and Jackie. It is located about 5 hours south-west of Nakhon Phanom. We caught a bus early friday morning and started our ride to the city. Every so often the bus would stop to pick up passangers on the side of the road or let someone off. Only about an hour into our journey after stopping at the sakhon nakon bus station (another city) the bus became full with passangers lining the aisle way (emergency exits don't exist!). I had the aisle seat meaning I was next to the people standing and learned it was perfectly okay for the standing passangers to take over and plop down on the outside arm rest. As you can imagine that means their back and lower half are basically in my face. In Thailand and most other countries personal space is not an issue. Actually living alone or even having alone time is something that Thais seldom have. Many volunteers especially living with host families seem to struggle sometimes to have a few hours of time to themselves. Back to the bus ride. I end up having a lady with extremely long hair perched next to me and her hair for the next hour is flinging into my face. Luckey due to more passangers loading she is moved farther to the back and is replaced by a man with a bag jetting out in the middle of my seat..mai bpen rai. A little after 1pm we arrive, head to get some vietamese spring rolls and after consulting our lonely planet book decide to stay at the hotel across from where we were eating.

For about $6 each we share a room equipped with air conditioning, hot water, and a comfy king-size bed! luxury. For the next 2 days we explore the city on foot seeing its main attraction of a lake where we rented a paddle boat for a $1, did some shopping of the local silk and tourist center, and wandered the night market. By the end of the 2nd day we had mastered the city, mostly meaning we knew the sawng tao (public transporation) route and what color and number goes where. At night we were so content with our hot water showers and cool comfy room that we took the time to relax and unwind with some reading. Early on sunday we caught the bus back into the city and safely arrived in our home city Nakhon Phanom, which lonely planet describes as "sleepy". NKP doesn't have the hustle as the other Issan cities and contains far less foreigners, which sometimes I enjoy.

*pictures of Khon Kaen lake paddle boat, and most dec-ed out motor bike

As for this week of teaching, it is "sports week" at my 2 elementary schools. I found that out today after being at school for over an hour waiting for my 6th graders to show up. Finally a teacher came in and told me "students play sport today...no teach." So that got me thinking... why did you pick me up for school today and what has been going on for the past hour...I have learned by now not to try and make sense of issues like these. I also learned that "no school tomorrow and next day..sport." This is the typical Thai way of letting us know what is going on and when. Trying to figure out any kind of schedule is basically impossible, you just learn to go with the flow. Good news is I have the next 2 days to make teaching materials and lesson plan. I'm attempting to construct some type of christmas tree and will be having my students make cut out snowflakes for the classroom next week :) This is kind of ironic though because today was 90 degrees and extremely humid. It is only suppose to last for another day or two but is giving us a little taste of what is in store for us come hot season!

Picture of "Issan" northeastern Thailand and it's cities. Nakhon Phanom is far upper right on boarder. Also you can see how thailand is broken into 5 sections North, North-East, Central, East and South.

Happy 83rd Birthday to the King

On December 5th, The King turned 83. Ongoing celebrations for the past week or so and ceremonies have ensued. Friday afternoon my small school of PlaPak Noi held a ceremony where they constructed a huge banner saying "Long Live the King" along with candles and ensense burning. After some buddhist prayers were said each student had to approach the King's picture and bow. It was a really sweet ceremony and shows even in the smallest, poorest parts of Thailand how much the people universally love and honor their king (its even against the law to speak poorly of him!). PlaPak Wit asked Amanda and I to perform a Thai dance at the festival that they were putting on. A little hesistant we agreed not knowing exactly what we were getting ourselves into. From wednesday to friday we met with the dance teacher from the high school to learn our routine. It is a fairly simple routine but we definitely lack the grace of a Thai dancer. At a very young age they start training to thai dance bending thier fingers backwards to look more elegant. Anyways the highschool team was already gearing up for their performance the same week so we went a little scant on our practice time and basically hoped for the best!

The day had arrived and around 1pm we started the very long process of getting ready. I was a little nervous on how they were going to handle my curly hair since they have probably never dealt with it before but they assured me all will be fine. First they started brushing out my curls which just made a huge fro and then backcombing it, basically turned into a giant frizzed knot... worried. Using lots of hairspray and bobby pins they created a bun with a lot of poof...I was impressed! From there make-up started where they literally put layers of white make-up on me, a thick foundation and powder. Next intense drawn in eyebrows, dramatic pink eyeshadow, and painted on red lips! I turned asian in an hour. when I finally got to peek at a mirror after they finished I didn't recognize myself. We had a little break, which is when we learned that we weren't dancing at PlaPak Wit but at the city pavilon and not only the whole village of PlaPak was going to be there but also the surrounding villages...grrrreat.

At 5pm we started to get dressed. They wrapped and pinned us up in traditional thai outfits complete with about 10lbs of silver sparkly jewelry. I even got a huge tiara to stick around my bun. We were definitely Thai'd at this point. About now I really wished we could just walk around in our outfits and say Hi to people and skip the whole dancing in front of 100s of people part.

Yes, I was wearing all that jewelry at once!

As soon as we arrived we became the local celebrities at the festivals. Photos were being snapped every few seconds and people ushing their children in and out to get photos with us. I'm pretty sure this will be the closest thing for me to be a celebrity. There was a candle lightening ceremony for the King and before you know if we were up on the stage. I'm pretty sure my mind went blank at this point and looked at Amanda shaking. There were several video cameras on us and flashes going off with everybody silent and looking. I made it through the performance which I barely remember now because I was so nervous (thank goodness for Amanda!) . Of course everybody was sure to tell us we did wonderfully even if it was terrible ahaha.

The stage we performed on

From there we took more pictures with important people, hung out with Amanda's PawAhh, and watched Thai boxing. I wasn't so keen on watching the boxing and my heart was clenching as I watched tiny 10 year old boys enter the ring but Thai's are allll about boxing. It was hard for me to watch but I tried to go along with it. I even got to go up to the ring and present the boxers with a flower lay before the fight began. We ended the night by saying multiple times to the PA that we were very very tired after being ushered around all night and needed to go sleep. Rambo, our police security guard, escorted us out of festival even pushing people out of the way to make sure they didn't touch us. To both Amanda and I this was a little much since the whole night we mainly wanted to go hang out with our students but too tired to deal with it we smiled and moved on. It took a good 15 minutes of scrubbing to get the make-up off and handfuls of conditioner to untangled the hair-sprayed knot but I would say it was worth it. That night I will always remember. Everyday I'm still amazed at the generosity of Thais and my village. Just being a foreigner is such a big deal here and they are the most welcoming people. I'm hoping to get the newspaper article about us and video recording that was put on Thai Tv!