Teacher Class

I'm going to miss my Teacher Class! I've already told them that we have to find a good time next year when we can meet again. Teacher Class has been fun because I get to teach about whatever I want. Kate, Ryan, and James each teach one of these classes too, and we all work together for our curriculum, but mostly we just talk about whatever our "students" want to learn. On the last day of class I gave them a really cool phonetics lesson about how to pronounce all the sounds in the English language and some tongue-twisters, which was really fun.

the library: the only room where teachers have to take off their shoes like the students do

They surprised me on the last day by bringing me some gifts! I really wasn't expecting anything, and I would have done the class for nothing because I've really enjoyed getting to know some of the teacher from other departments this year.

Early on in the semester they had asked me if I liked Thai food (probably one of the first questions you will always be asked when meeting someone for the first time in Thailand) and I had mentioned how much I loved mango sticky rice. Remembering this, on the last day of class, they brought boxes of mango sticky rice for everyone, and two fresh mangos wrapped in newspaper for me! They also gave me a Thai cotton backpack that I can use when I'm traveling and a really nice candy dish.

The art teacher is a really cool guy. He really wants to learn English, so he takes all four of our classes and even has a weekend tutor. To show his appreciation, he made me a painting of a purple Thai flower (in honor of this year being HRH Princess Sirindhorn's 60th birthday). When I asked if he painted it, he told me that he "imagined it onto canvas"!

so cool!

I really hope I'll be able to teach the teachers again next year. We only started doing this around December, so maybe next year we can have a full year of classes. Knowing teachers from other departments has been really great, as they can tell me more about the goings-on and the inner workings at the school.

The (Second) Last Week of School

How far things have come in one year!

This is the last week of school! Next week the students will take their final exams.

It's unbelievable how quickly this year has gone by. My second year at the school has turned out even better than my first. I got to pick some of my classes and rosters this year, and ended up with a schedule of fun classes and generally great students. I've bceo more familiar with Bangkok, the culture of the school, and Thailand in general. I've been given a greater degree of responsibility, and am looking forward to even more next year. Additionally, I'm no longer a new teacher. While I'll admit that there are still times when I feel like I have no idea what I'm doing, at least I'm not completely new in the classroom. Even when our colleague had to leave and go home in the first semester, James, Ryan, and I were able to pull together and cover her classes fairly competently until we could find and bring in a replacement. We make an amazing team. I am going to miss my colleagues next year! I hope the new teachers are good, but it will be hard to recreate the brilliant dynamic of teamwork that James, Ryan, and I have achieved.

the M6 Writing team

Thursday was the last day of M6 Writing class. That's been one of my favorite classes to teach this year, because the classes are small and I get to work closely with a great team of co-teachers: Ajarns Ryan, James, and Suzie. We've been working on a huge research paper project all semester, and the students have had to turn everything in this week. I've been proud to see how well they have progressed in their writing skills this year; our class certainly wasn't an easy one. We tried to teach it as much like an American English class as we could, and James and Suzie brought their experience from writing masters theses and I brought what I remember from that one Technical and Professional Writing course I had to take in university.

Naturally, no last day of school in Thailand is complete without "picture time". Instant cameras have become really popular among Thai teenagers recently, and I had to pose to have my picture taken with many of the students. Then they wanted selfies, pictures of the teachers, pictures with the teachers, class pictures, group pictures... saying goodbye is hard, especially when you've studied with the same friends at the same school since you were three years old in A1. 

The students each brought one of their uniform shirts to sign, like we sign yearbooks in the USA. I signed a few. I didn't teach M6 last year, so this is my first group of students that I'll have seen graduate. I was asked to write several letters of recommendation this year, which is fun for me, partially because I get to use the official school stamp. I wish them all the best and hope that maybe one of my letters can help the students get into the university of their choice. After finals week, we will get to see them once more on the senior trip and at graduation, so that will be nice.

M6 Writing

And just because they aren't graduating this year doesn't mean that the other classes won't want pictures on the last day of school too! This is especially true for my M2 class, who I taught for the last time on Wednesday. Last year, rowdy M1 caused me so much distress every Friday that I changed my schedule so as not to teach M1 this year. On the last day of school last year though, they totally won me over by telling me how much they had enjoyed studying with me all year. In the end, this class of students have become some of my favorites. 

the last day of M2 class

My M2 Main class has been especially awesome. Once this year we had some American, British, and Australian visitors from some sort of educational institution touring the school. For some reason, the powers-that-be at the school decided that it would be a good idea for these important guests to observe my class. I was informed of this just before they were to arrive. 

In a panic, I told the students,

"Look, we are going to have some important visitors and I need your help."

The students in this class had always been nice, but super loud and chatty and hard to control. I was worried about looking ineffective and incompetent in front of these experienced educatiors. I was worried about embarrassing myself, my boss, and the school.



M2 Listening and Speaking Class

When the visitors arrived, my class snapped to attention, and turned in their seats in unison to greet them with a perfectly proper and respectful wai. They sat attentively while I launched into one of my finest lectures on grammar, and they even raised their hands and asked questions... questions about grammar! All the while, the visitors paced the room, trying not to be intrusive while taking notes and photos of the class. My students sat in their seats quietly and uncomfortably, trying not to laugh at the awkward situation.

When the visitors left and were well out of earshot, my lecture trailed off and we all got quiet.

"That was terrifying," I confessed to them.

Then the whole class, myself included, started laughing. I gave them the rest of the period for free time as my way of saying thanks.

After that day, I was in with the students. They had had my back, and I had theirs. We had solidarity. I am really going to miss that M2 class and the friendly and kind students I've taught this year. I'll teach some of them in M3 Listening/Speaking next year, but not all of them.

M2 Listening/Speaking guys

It would be an understatement to say that I've learned some things about teaching in the past two years. I have to look back at myself on the first day of school and laugh at how incompetent I was. I've changed a lot. I never used to get grammar- not a good thing for an English teacher to admit, right? Now I've become a huge grammar nerd. My first-ever class (M4 Reading) went so poorly that a student actually told me "it's okay, we are very kind", because I must have looked like I really needed some reassurance. Now, while I won't say that I have total control over my classroom, at least I think I know how to get the students to like me. As a teacher here in Thailand, that's important. If the students can have fun and enjoy class, maybe they'll learn without even realizing it.

My M4 class last year went on to become my favorite due to the attitude and enthusiasm of the students, as exemplified by the one who told me that their class was very kind. He was right! I spent a lot of time with that class last year, because I taught M4 for both Reading and Listening/Speaking class. I specifically requested to change my schedule to be able to teach M5 Main this year.

I'll teach some of them next year, but not all. I only teach M6 for Writing class, and each class only has about 14 students. This class is honestly one of the big reasons that I'm staying on next year. They have encouraged and taught me so much, and have moulded me into the teacher I am today. Of course, we had to take pictures. As I was leaving class, many of them asked if they could be in my class next year. "We love you!" they said.

It's traditional for teachers to give a pep talk and bestow luck upon their students before exams. The students will listen very seriously to your advice, and wai deeply as they receive the blessings of luck. I rarely know what to say. This time I told them, "study hard! This has been a great year. I want to see all A's, alright? Right now our class average is like a half a point higher than Teacher Ryan's class, and I really need us to win that. Good luck on my exam and on all your finals. Make me proud!"

As I walked out, they made the sign-language ILY sign. It's a little over-dramatic, since I'm not actually going anywhere and will see all of them next year, but it was really touching and meant a lot to me.

After four years here, the students listen to and respect James. Hopefully if they see me as more of a "real" teacher and less of a temporary teacher who comes on a one-year contract and leaves, they'll think of me in the same way. Here's looking forward to an even better third and final year at Chitralada School.

Ajarns James, Kate, and me with our whole M2/1 class

Year of the Goat - 羊年

 恭喜发财
Gong Xi Fai Cai

It's the Year of the Goat! Well... to be more (or maybe less) precise, it's the Year of the 羊 (yáng). It's caused some confusion this year, because in Chinese, "羊" actually refers to anything sheep-like including goats and rams. To add to the confusion, in Vietnam, this is definitively the Year of the Goat, whereas in Japanese it translates to "sheep" and in Korean as "ram". To avoid confusion, let's call it the Year of the Goat. Anyway, the Year of the Horse is over.

display at Siam Paragon

The Year of the Goat is actually my year! I was born in 1991, two cycles ago. I was kind of excited at first that it's going to be "my year", but I've been told that in Chinese culture, it's actually not good luck to be in one's Chinese year... But I'm also told that Goat Year is an inherently lucky one, so that's good. Not that I particularly believe in any of that, but it's fun.

making merit / posing for a Thai-style photo-op

Maybe I've mentioned before that Thailand loves a reason to celebrate. In fact, they recognize three new years here: Gregorian New Year, Chinese New Year, and Songkran (Thai New Year). In any case, Bangkok has good reason to celebrate Chinese New Year, Bangkok has a pretty substantial Chinese-Thai demographic. For whatever reason, culturally, my school is actually pretty Chinese. At least 90% of the female teachers wore Chinese-style dresses this week, and many of the men have been wearing red ties.

The morning assembly featured a short play put on by the students about a scene from "Journey to the West", one of China's most famous works of classical literature. After the assembly, we were encouraged by the Chinese teachers to go out of the assembly hall to where two small shrines had been constructed to make merit for the new year. The first shrine was an ancestral shrine, and the second was to the Chinese Taoist gods of heaven and earth.

This ended up being a major photo-op, as most things in Thailand are. To be honest, I've gotten used to that and have come to like this aspect of the culture. The Chinese department likes to take pictures of the farang teachers participating in Chinese culture, and as a matter of fact, I even appear in this year's Chinese Department calendar (in the month of March).

New Year Gifts: an orange and a chocolate coin for luck

Happy New Year for the second time from Bangkok, Thailand! I wish you all a very happy 羊年

Pattaya

Last Saturday, my friend Pinky took me on a day trip to Pattaya to visit the Ripley's Museum and see the floating market in town. I've been to Pattaya a few times before. Overall, the town has a little bit of a bad reputation of being dirty and way too heavily populated by Russian tourists, but it's only two hours from Bangkok, and has quite a few hidden gems that the tourists don't know about. Ripley's was fun, and after a seafood lunch overlooking the sea, we went to the Pattaya Floating Market.

Entering the center of the market, we came to a pavilion housing housing a shrine to Ganesh. To the left was an alcove with a shrine to Buddha, and to the right, Guanyin.

"I should pray", Pinky said, and purchased a silver tray with incense, a candle, two cups of water and a red liquid respectively, and a chrysanthemum garland, which she offered to the shrine. Then she got two pieces of silk, yellow for me and pink for her (luckily for someone with her name, she was born on a Tuesday!), which we tied around a post at the shrine.

Floating markets are quintessentially Thai. They always show up in the guidebooks as one of the top highlights of things not to miss. They are really fun! It was hot, but we got some coconut ice and walked around. The Pattaya Floating Market was actually kind of hard to get to without paying a driver 10X the usual cost to get there. Luckily, I was traveling with a Thai, and she could get us around on the city's public transportation songtaew network.

It was evening, and we headed back to Pattaya beach for dinner. We got kebabs from a street vendor, and as we sat on the boardwalk overlooking the sea, I thought about how Pattaya has grown on me. It's got plenty of nice places around, if you know where to look. The tourists spend their time in a few small areas, and the rest of the city belongs to the Thais. There are a lot of really great places that the visitors just don't know about. The best part is, Pattaya is only two hours and 99 baht away from Bangkok, and makes for a really fun and easy day trip.

Pattaya Beach

Valentine's Day

It was almost Valentine's Day, which meant that in addition to it nearly being the end of the semester, there was no way we were going to get the students to focus on Friday.

Valentines from some of my M2 students

Valentine's Day is different in Thailand than in the USA, at least at school. Instead of buying packs of pre-made cards, the students all hand-make their own little cards (during class time, of course) to give to their friends and teachers around the school.

We were really surprised to find a mysterious package outside our office when we came back from lunch that afternoon. The only clue was a brown paper envelope marked "Q" and a small pot of dirt.

Inside the envelope was a letter from "Qupid", a secret society of M6 students who give gifts on Valentine's Day. The letter explained how they were giving us a tree. They wrote that they appreciate their teachers who nurture them with knowledge, like you nurture a tree with water.

Fifth Cycle

Thailand is gearing up for the special occasion of HRH Princess Sirindhorn's Fifth Cycle (60th) birthday. That means that in addition to the normal yellow and blue flags for Their Majesties the King and Queen respectively, everyone is flying HRH the Princess' purple flag too. 

the spirit house at my apartment is adorned with purple flags too

We are welcome and encouraged to wear purple as we feel like this year. That's fine. I like purple, and actually have several purple ties that I wear to school whenever I feel like cheating on the colors of the day (usually on Thursday... Orange day).

Last week at school, each teacher was presented with a lapel pin in honor of HRH's birthday. The pin is purple, of course, and bears her monogram, and the Thai numeral 60. We will wear these at graduation, and at other special occasions throughout the year.

Tak

"Tak!", Geoffrey exclaimed. "What are we getting off here for?" Dek, Geoffrey's driver, was at the wheel, and Geoffrey didn't like not being in control of where we went.

"To take pictures," was Dek's cool reply.

"Tak... lovely place to go when you want to be bored", grumbled Geoffrey.

We pulled into Tak.

Tak is a small city on the River Ping, the provincial capital of Tak Province, of which Mae Sot is also a part. It's a very quiet town, it seems, but I'm told it's popular in the hot season when people come to play in and relax by the river. It's also known for its old wooden buildings.

Ban Chin Alley is especially famous for its well-preserved wooden houses. Walking down the street feels like stepping back in time. The houses are all over 100-years old, and made of teak in the traditional Thai style.

Tak, being fairly rural and remote, seems very removed from the modernization of Bangkok. The air was fresher and cleaner, and there didn't seem to be anyone around. I wouldn't have minded spending some more time there.

Eventually I headed back to the car, parked outside the provincial government building, which was flying the purple flag in honor of HRH Princess Sirindhorn's upcoming birthday. Geoffrey had stayed with the car to work on his crossword puzzle. At his urging, I took the car out to practice driving the square around the government building. It was a little confusing, because Thailand drives on the opposite side from the United States, but not too bad. Geoffrey suggested that I drive back to Bangkok, but I don't have a Thai license though, and anyway I'm not comfortable driving on the busy streets here yet.

Father's Shrine: The Chicken Temple

Though we  made it to Mae Sot in record time, returning to Bangkok was more leisurely, with a few stops along the way to see the sights and experience the things that rural Thailand has to offer. Just out of Mae Sot, we pulled over at a small temple in view of some dramatic mountains.

Monday' Buddha

It was very quiet. Visiting rural mountain temples like this one is much different from being at the big "city temples" like Wat Pho. In fact, it seemed that except for some guy sweeping the steps, we were the only ones there.

The moment of tranquility was broken by what sounded like rapid gunshots, making me jump! It was just firecrackers. Someone had set off a bunch of them as a merit-making act in preparation for the upcoming Chinese New Year.

"wish you prosperity and wealth"

The temple was nice, but fairly average, except for one thing that really made it stand out... the chickens. The temple seemed to be decorated predominantly with chickens.

I don't know the significance.

After 45 minutes or so, we were back on the road, and heading towards Tak, the provincial capital.

many spirit houses

Mae Sot III: Another Trip North

I was out of town last weekend on a very last-minute one night trip to Mae Sot, my third time there. I'm not sure I really need to write about Mae Sot every time I go there anymore, but I feel like each trip there is unique and memorable.

As always, the day started with an early morning pickup by Geoffrey and his hired car from Thai Rent-a-Car. The car arrived at his apartment early, and he was at Lat Prao to collect me by 4:45, getting us on the road by 5am. We were well out of Bangkok by the sunrise. It was a very foggy day, and after a brief stop to visit a strawberry farm in the misty northwestern mountains, we arrived.

We met up with a Dutch couple, Martien and Gerda, friends of Geoffrey's whom he had introduced to Mae Sot a decade ago. After retiring, they now spend five months of the year in Mae Sot. Besides traveling around the country and surrounding areas, they've become very involved with the school and  the plight of the refugees there. They've got a long-term room on the ground floor of the Erawan Place hotel (where we always stay) and they invited us to sit down for some tea while they told us about the computer lab they have been working on getting started for students in Mae Sot.

Shortly, we all drove to the school. Gerda is an animal lover, and brought flea powder and food for the dogs who live at the school. Stray dogs are a huge problem in Thailand. Because of the Buddhist philosophy of reincarnation, euthanasia is highly discouraged, so especially in rural areas, there are lots of sick and malnourished animals.

We brought a huge bag of donated supplies that Geoffrey had collected from his apartment building and from people at the school. SCB, the "Purple Bank", had given Geoffrey a number of canister-shaped coin banks. Although the kids don't have any money to put in them, Martien had the idea of putting 1baht in each to make a sort of shaker that they could play with. You would be amazed at how delighted the kids were by something so simple.

Walking through the dump sight in the bright afternoon sun, we got a bit lost. A group of the kids tried to lead us out, but ended up taking us further in, until finally we were rescued by another older British man who's working with the refugees building a small community, and who knew Geoffrey and pointed us the way back to the school.

Back at the hotel, Martien and Gerda took us for lunch at a noodle shop on the corner, then went inside to rest before dinner. Geoffrey and I went to visit a border trade fair which had been set up just down the road, and where people could sell goods for the free-trade economic community in ASEAN (important in a border town like Mae Sot).

Then we headed to the border market for our traditional coffee, where we sat and looked across into Burma.

the border; Burma is just on the other side of the water

Dinner at "KFC" was followed by an early night at the hotel. The Dutch couple were so interesting to talk to. Martien had spent 36 years in the Dutch army, before they retired part-time to Thailand. Gerda is really into Thai cooking, and I asked her how to make good sticky rice (something that I had some trouble with last time I was home). They had recently gotten back from a motorbike trip across Laos, and had lots of stories to tell about that.

When we got back to the hotel, I was a bit dismayed to find out that there was a police party going on in the lobby. It was very loud with the sounds of laughing and bad karaoke. Though it was early in the evening, whiskey was flowing.

"When you are as white as we are, you are always invited to the police party", Martien joked, "it's always good to be friends with the local police." I was too tired though. The one-day trip there is exhausting.

Ratcheda Night Market

The other night, my friend Pinky took me out for dinner at the Ratcheda Night Market in Bangkok. Our mission was to find a food cart which was famous for their huge and cheap bowls of noodles. We finally found the long line, but it moved really quickly. The two of us could barely finish the small bowl! I imagine that the large size must be able to feed four or five hungry people.

the "small" size bowl

Lukchup

A couple of weeks back, before the New Year holiday, our boss asked us foreign teachers if we would teach a Conversational English class to the other teachers at the school. To be honest, we weren't thrilled about the idea at first, not only because it would add an hour to our weekly schedules, but the extra time planning an advanced class for adults without any cirriculum was going to take some time as well. But of course, we couldn't say no. We know our place in the social hierarchy at the school. We were each given a list of suggested topics (eg. "discussing classes", "telling someone about your school", "planning and having meetings", etc.) and four sign-up sheets (one for each ajarn American) were posted around the school. I thought I was being really clever for scheduling my class for Friday afternoon after lunch, but in the end I ended up with the biggest class!

After the first week's meeting in the library though, I was happy to be teaching this class. It's very different teaching adults who really want to learn, and it's been fun getting to know some teachers outside of the English department. One day in class, I mentioned something to the teachers about how I had had some sort of really special Thai snack at Loi Kratong. All the teachers began talking amongst themselves, then told me that they would teach me how to make it at our next class!

Lukchup

I'm really lucky that many of the "students" in my class are the cooking and home-economics teachers, and they were really excited to teach me how to make Lukchup. The next week, we all met in one of the art rooms, where they had everything prepared, including the recipe typed in both English and Thai.

I didn't find out until later that this recipe had actually caused quite a bit of commotion around the office. That morning while I had been in class, one of the teachers had apparently brought the Thai recipe to Nat, a Thai English teacher in our office, to translate. She was stressing out about it, because the directions were very Thai and included steps like "make coconut water" and "prepare bean paste", which a non-Thai wouldn't understand. She eventually enlisted the help of Ryan, and the two of them spent all morning trying to translate the recipe into English. Later that afternoon when I returned from my "Teacher Class" with a bowl of Lukchup, they couldn't believe that they had been working so hard all morning just to type a recipe that my class was going to show me!

"You mean we spent all morning doing this for Michael!" Nat exclaimed in mock disdain when we figured it out.

It's actually pretty simple to make, once you know how. You take a small ball of mung bean paste and mould it into the shape of a fruit (usually a tropical Thai fruit), then paint it with food coloring to be the proper color. After that, you take the little lukchup on skewers and dip them into clear gelatin three times to get a solid coating. Last, decorate with small leaves to make the fruits look more realistic.

They showed me how to make mango, papaya, rose-apple, orange, cherry, mangosteen, and (my favorite design) corn!

The week after, the class taught me how to make somtam (spicy papaya salad). They seem to be much more interested in these things than in the topics that the school had suggested, and I'm perfectly happy going off the lesson plan to make a more interesting lesson. Next week we are going to have a lesson about cooking instructions, ingredients, etc.

It's fun teaching this class, because it gives us a chance to meet other teachers outside of the English office. Actually, I think that's part of the reason that they asked us to teach this class, so that we can become more involved around the school and get to know more of the teachers who are sometimes not completely comfortable speaking in English.

Thai Desk Graffiti

There's a room at my school called the Multimedia Room. This name is a bit inaccurate, because although the room looks like it's built to handle all sorts of cool technology, none of it actually works (although we did recently get the speakers working again). There is some sort of sound system that looks like it's supposed to be connected to the student's headphones, but at some point in the past, all the computer desks were removed and replaced with normal desks that the students love to write on for some reason. 

I never see the students actually writing on the desks in my class, but this room seems to be a magnet for desk graffiti. Why the students write in English is beyond me, but I like to go around the room when the students aren't there and see what pearls of wisdom I can find. It's sometimes sweet, usually silly, and very often bizarre. And now: The Best of Thai Desk Graffiti!

wise

teenage drama

#not end

And my all-time favorite, the classic:

my forever love