It's Ajarn Kirsten, Miss Marathon if You're Nasty

So when we were at PiA orientation, they warned us about making one student the “tall poppy” – the tallest flower that gets cut down by the lawnmower first. They told us how Asian culture is generally communal and not about standing out in a crowd.
I have yet to find that to be true. Between the number of English competitions we have helped our students prepare for (by listening to the same speeches or stories about 4138419 times) and the number of assemblies we have attended at school, showing what you are good at and performing to the best of your ability in order to win is perfectly acceptable. And Steph and I found out that the same rule applies to aerobics when (as I mentioned in a previous post, declinations are considered rude) we got roped into agreeing to participate in an aerobics competition/mini-marathon for the Queen’s birthday without having the slightest clue what it actually was. The only information we were provided was what day it was (Sunday, August 12) where to go (a department store parking lot), what time to be there (5:30 pm), and what color to wear (light blue – the Queen’s color). As luck would have it, Steph found out on the morning of the competition that she couldn’t get a bus ticket back to Nan from Chiang Mai, and I was left as the lone farang to compete. I was more nervous than I was on my first day of teaching, but I put on my blue shirt and headed to the parking lot.
Turns out an aerobics competition/ mini-marathon is when you wear a number (mine was 039) and do aerobics for 2 – 3 hours straight in the rain while people watch and judges decide who deserves prizes. It also turns out that when you’re the only farang competing in an aerobics mini-marathon, people stare at you even more than usual and stand 3 feet in front of you videotaping you, the people handing out water are too shy to approach you, you realize how much English your instructor has been using for your benefit, and you’re a shoe-in for the Miss Marathon prize. And that’s how, on August 12th, I became Miss Marathon, complete with a 500 baht prize. And now strangers come up to me on the street and ask, “You go aerobics?”

Around Nan

i posted some pictures of temples, or wats, around nan. they're one of nan's main attractions. you can check them out here:
http://princeton.facebook.com/album.php?
aid=2045157&l=836da&id=1102188

Fun with Statues a.k.a. My Vacation in Ko Samet

So Buddha is very kind and decided that his people should celebrate the start of Lent on Monday and Tuesday, and because there is no such thing as separation of church and state here, we got July 30th and 31st off from school! In honor of this momentous occasion, we took Friday off (my first real grown-up job vacation day!) and headed to the beach. The rainy season ruled out Phuket and any other beaches in the West of Thailand, so we decided to head to Ko Samet, an island not far from Bangkok.

Getting to Ko Samet was no small feat. We left Nan at 7.45 pm Thursday night on the overnight bus to Bangkok, which took about 9-10 hours. Thanks to having a single seat and the blanket, pillow, and air conditioning they provided, I got a pretty good night’s sleep. Then from the Bangkok bus station, we hopped on a bus to Rayong, which took about 3 ½ hours. Then we took a songthaew (think converted pick up truck with 2 bench seats along the sides and a roof) to Ban Phe, which took about half an hour. When we got to Ban Phe, we realized we had just missed the ferry, so we chartered a speed boat to take us to Ko Samet, which took about 10 minutes. And at at our island paradise, where we were instantly overcharged by the songthaew drivers and forced to pay a national park fee for being foreigners.

Unlike most other places in Thailand, Ko Samet has bungalows rather than guesthouses. So we had a whole little bungalow with a private bathroom about 100 meters from the beach for only 600 baht a night for the 3 of us (34 baht = 1 dollar). It was a wonderful weekend filled with American food, lots of reading, cable TV, and a very special night where we found a bar that sold microwave popcorn. The beach where we were staying had white sand, was as warm as bathwater, and was pretty much paradise on Earth.

On our return trip, we spent a night in Bangkok to break up the traveling. Bangkok is awesome. They have a sky train and more American food and movies in English. I ate Subway and Starbucks and ice cream that was basically Cold Stone and saw Harry Potter 5. The movie theater was similar to home except when we had to stand up before the movie started for the king’s song and a little video montage of his life.

I’ve found a better place to post pictures, so if you want to check out pictures of my vacation, click here. If the view of the beach doesn’t make you all want to come visit me, I don’t know what will.

blogger isn't letting me post this link, so sorry but you will have to copy and paste this to see it.
http://princeton.facebook.com/album.php?
aid=2044134&l=60904&id=1102188

Little things

so there are a bunch of interesting/funny things about my life that i don't know how to group together in a rational post, so here they are in list form.

1. only teachers wear shoes inside of school buildings. the kids all stop and take their shoes off before they go inside. however, it is also acceptable for me to take my shoes off in my office in the english resource room. in fact, it is more acceptable for me to be barefoot in my office than it is for me to wear flip flops.

2. almost everywhere else, i take my shoes off before i enter a building, even the copy shop where i make copies or the internet cafe.

3. thai people clap for a much, much shorter period of time than american people. if something really amazing happens, they clap maybe 10 times before stopping.

4. the ants here are insane. they are normal ants until you try to kill them, and then they freak out and run faster than i have ever seen any ant run. they are also very smart. i once dropped an m & m, and by the time i bent down to pick it up, they had swarmed it.

5. everyone here is very comfortable using a microphone. in fact, they tried to get me to use a microphone in class. i politely declined, which i did just by not using it. see #7 for more on declining.

6. nodding your head also means no. i am scared to think about all the things i have done after people have told me no by nodding their head at me.

7. thai culture is much more subtle. if you say you are going to the bus station that afternoon, that actually means you are asking the person you are talking to for a ride. if you say you like their necklace, that means that you actually want them to buy it for you. if we eat less at lunch than we normally do (we get served western versions of the thai food the teachers eat for lunch), the director of the school (basically the principal) notices, tells the kitchen staff to make us new food, and has an english teacher ask us if the food is alright. it is more acceptable to lie and make up an excuse than it is to tell someone the real reason why you can't or don't want to do something. my default answer for no is "next time."

8. it turns out that "kir" sounds like the thai word for eyebrow, and "sten" sounds like the thai word for dance. my 5/1 class has taken to teasing me good-naturedly by calling me "ajarn eyebrow dance."

9. i broke up my first fight. 2 sixth-grade boys started fighting by the bathrooms one day. at first, i thought they were horsing around but they got really angry and started fighting for real. they were punching and kicking each other and i wasn't really sure what to do because i didn't want to get punched or kicked. i just yelled "hey!" a bunch of times really loudly and stepped in between them, at which point (luckily) they stopped.

10. all of my students have nicknames because i can't pronounce their thai names. i think their parents pick their nicknames when they are little. their nicknames are words you would not normally think of as names. for example, some of my students are nut, poop-pup, bible, bonus, warm, dos, champ, oat, own, ice, etc. my favorite nickname: god. yes, god. i have a 6th grader whose nickname is god. last week in class, he volunteered to read something, and when he finished, i said "good, god!" i almost laughed out loud. next time he raised his hand, i made sure to call on him so i could say it again.

4th of July, Thai-Style (A month late)

so steph, katie, and i decided that a great way to introduce our kids to american culture was to celebrate the 4th of july with them. and what is the best way to celebrate the 4th of july in thailand, you ask? by having our kids make silly newspaper hats, teaching them "yankee doodle", and feeding them lay's potato chips, oreos, and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. nothing says america like trans fat. and yes, interestingly enough, i can get lay's and oreos here, as well as kit kats and raisin bran and skippy peanut butter and various other american foods.

anyway, 4th of july fell on a wednesday this year, and i only teach 3 classes on wednesdays - kindergarten and 5/1. there was literally no hope in trying to explain the 4th of july to 5 year olds who don't speak english, so the 4th of july celebration only took place in 5/1. 5/1 is my favorite class because i see them 7 hours a week and they are so smart and sweet. they are also my smallest class (other than kindergarten) at 32 students. i took pictures of them in their paper hats.









and here is a photo of the whole class. this is in the 5/1 classroom. note the picture of the king above the blackboard. they are crazy about the king here and his picture is everywhere. also note that i taught them about new jersey, as you can see from what i've written on the blackboard, because there is no way anyone can learn about america without learning about new jersey.



and here is a horrible picture of me, but it's with the class, so i thought it would be cute to post.



and later that night, in grownup land, we celebrated 4th of july with beer, corn, and baked beans. and we celebrated with other americans! much to our surprise, despite the stares we draw everywhere we go and the cries of "farang! farang!" (thai word for foreigner) we hear everywhere we go, we are not the only white people in nan. there are about 10-15 foreign teachers here, as steph and katie found out by following a white guy around until he sat down and then pouncing on him for information. he was kind enough to pass their phone numbers to some other americans, and they came over for fourth of july. unfortunately, with only our small bathroom sinks and a rice cooker full of baked bean remnants, clean up required a bit of creative thinking. here's steph demonstrating an alternate use of the bidet hose thing in our bathrooms (thais don't use toilet paper).



however, the clean up was worth it because we had a great time, and our new friends invited us out that friday. turns out the cool thing for foreigners to do on friday nights is go to a bar called verrachun, where they play live music. we met some more people, checked out the entire night scene in nan (3 bars), and finished up the night at some sketchy, sketchy discotheque where i danced with a ladyboy. our new friends also knew a guy who lives with a thai woman, owns his own glass-blowing business, and has potluck barbecues at his house almost every saturday with the farang in nan. turns out he also has a ping pong table and a pool table and that his girlfriend is a delicious cook. we had a fun night, and there started our social life in nan. we now have a community of people to hang out with and a place to go on friday and saturday nights.

i'm bad at blogging

ok, so i'm not so good at this blogging thing. but that is because teaching is keeping me ridiculously busy and i found a social life here! but more on that later.

let's travel back in time to my first week here. i spent the week meeting my students one-by-one, shaking their hands, and teaching them introductions in english. ("hello." "hello." "i'm aj. kirsten. what's your name?" my name is ..." "nice to meet you." "nice to meet you, too.") i was sooooo nervous, but i just did that lesson all week, so it wasn't too bad. the only exception is my 5/1 class, top-level fifth graders, who i see 7 hours a week and therefore have to make 7 lesson plans a week for. i don't even remember what i did with them - i think probably a lot of worksheets. the worst class of my first week was my first day with the kindergarteners. one of the kindergarten co-teachers was absent (i have a thai co-teacher in every class to help with classroom management and sometimes to translate instructions into thai), so instead of teaching 2 classes of 25 kindergarteners for half an hour each, i had to teach one class of 50 kindergarteners for an hour. and i was told i wouldn't have to teach them that day, so i had nothing prepared. 5 minutes after that class was supposed to start, my boss threw some alphabet flashcards into my hands, i grabbed some stickers, and she rushed me to the kindergarten classroom. at one point during the class, i sort of looked to the co-teacher for help because i was so unsure of myself, and she just looked back at me, waiting for me to do something. i think that was the first time it hit me that i was actually a teacher, that i was the one who would have to run the show in the classroom everyday, and that the fact that i had never done it before was no excuse. that class was pretty rough, but i think any class where you have to hold the attention of 50 five year olds for an hour is just always going to be hard. luckily, i have not been faced with that situation since then - only, ironically enough, on my first day with the kindergarteners.

it just so happened that a holiday celebrating teachers (they take teachers very seriously here and it is a fairly high profession) fell on the thursday of my first week. so that thursday morning, i attended a teacher appreciation assembly. the whole school attended.


the kids, or really their parents, had made these banana leaf bouquets with flowers and grass and incense, all of which had a symbolism that was lost on me but was supposed to say something about teachers. the only thing i caught was that the grass was sharp like a teacher's mind.




the teachers sat in the front of the auditorium, and the grades were called up one-by-one. the kids basically prostrated themselves in front of the teachers and presented them with the bouquet. and because i was (technically) a teacher, i was presented with many, many bouquets by children who knelt in front of me and bowed so that their head touched the ground.




....this was day 4. that is the only thought that ran through my brain during this whole thing. "this is day 4." it was just so surreal.

then we threw away all the bouquets and went back to work.

and that was my first week of teaching. there is obviously much more to catch everyone up on, but it just started raining here and i need to bike home with my laptop before it gets any worse.

hope all is well back home. love and miss you.

Pic-o-rama

It's Sunday evening here, which means I've officially survived my first week in Nan and my first week of teaching.

I took some pictures of my life here, so here they are:

First, we flew over the North pole to get here!



Second, I had my good luck charm (courtesy of MGalla) with me for the flight.



Here's view of the Chiang Mai Airport.


And here is a view of my house. This is the hallway that connects my room, Katie's room, and Steph's room.


My room has an entryway.



Inside, I have a bed, a desk, a bureau, and a bathroom.




I have unpacked and rearranged since these pictures were taken, but you get the idea.

At the end of the hallway, we have our makeshift kitchen, which is basically the entryway to Steph's room.


See that window in the background of the above picture? On the other side of that window is our deck, where we spend a lot of time hanging out and reading.


Our deck overlooks this:


And this is the view of our front yard:


Except now it's the rainy season (there was our first storm since our arrival, complete with monsoon-like rain, on Friday night), so it looks more like this:


This is what a Thai broom looks like:


This is what Thai aerobics, my new love, looks like:



This is what a Thai sunset looks like, complete with Katie, Ajarn Prakop (our boss), and Steph.


This is what some of my fifth graders look like:


My Internet time is running short. I promise I will post more pictures and give a proper update soon.