English camp (in progress post)

Little things

This one’s a long one, 2 full days, one less full day, and 2 full evenings worth. When I attended my district’s orientation they mentioned that we’d be getting the opportunity to teach English in early December and I was very excited but it was a ways off. Now it’s here and passed.

It was a 3 day camp in Ayuttaya, and the age range was 12-15 I believe. Originally most of the exchange students had thought it would be for much younger kids, grades 2-4 maybe. As usually is the case, we spent a while asking very specific questions and trying to get detail and an understanding of what would be going on, but our questions were mostly ignored or they answered a different question and then just stopped talking to us when we tried to clarify. This happens A. LOT. as an exchange student though so by now I’m used to it. I’m never going to stop trying to understand more each time though. That’s going against my nature. We didn’t know what kind of place we’d be staying the nights in until about 5 minutes after we arrived at the hotel and the people in charge finally answered our repeated “Is this where we’re staying?”‘s with an affirmative.

Anywho, lets start at the beginning. The people who lived in Bangkok city all carpooled into a big van, which turned out to be two vans. I got up at some o’clock that my brain has forcibly erased from memory, finished packing, and then my host parents got up and drove me to Siam square to the drop off point. The drop off point was a Soi (road) 3, which appeared to not exist. We then found the only place to turn off the main road between Soi 4 and Soi 2, which was the entrance to parking for a big shopping mall. After some compiling and comparing of information with another inbound who was circling the block as well, we discovered that we were actually supposed to be meeting at a cafe. That information had not come up in either the emails or the group chat lines messages, nor even my queries directly to the organiser so I was skeptical but it turns out that that was in fact where were supposed to meet. My host dad knows the area, and where the shop is which was handy, except that apparently he knows of 3 of those shops in the same area. What??

Eventually we found one on the corner of Soi 4, and the other exchange student who had already arrived was out in front of it so we decided that this was probably where we were meant to be. The other exchange students were on their way and we waited for them and for the organiser in front of the cafe. It was only a quarter after 6, and the cafe wasn’t open yet. That being said, we had been told the van would leave at 6 and as far as we could tell it hadn’t arrived yet. My host mom had gone up to the big white van parked on the corner before “Soi 3” or the parking lot and asked if it was the one taking the exchange students to Ayutthaya, but it wasn’t. I really haven’t been able to figure out how central Thai people view timeliness. As close as I can figure the person who ranks the highest or close is allowed to be late to a given thing. Example: school. The teachers often arrive at class 5-10 minutes late, and end class 0-25 minutes late. If students arrive late to the morning assembly (which starts 15 minutes before school actually starts) and you are caught by a strict or grumpy teacher, you have to stand in a separate block of students and after the assembly older students will come around and write down your name and your class and your number in your class (students are assigned numbers in their class so that the teachers can simply call out numbers in order when collecting work or checking attendance or really anything else. It’s also way easier than Thai names) and then if the teacher in charge is particularly angry stand through a lecture that I’m sure is much more invigorating if you can actually understand it. Then you go back to your class and may have gotten to miss lining up in front of your room and praying and can go straight into the classroom. That being said, my host dad is nearly always on time or early and if he isn’t he calls ahead right away to tell you. It’s really nice and I still don’t know how he manages it, even though I’ve lived with him for just over 4 months now.  0.O Wow. That’s a long time huh? More than 1/3 of my exchange already. That actually feels about right. I want to spend 2 more times the amount of time I’ve already spent here in Thailand. And I /think/ I still feel that way after my friend told me that in Thailand’s summer season (April-May) It’ll get up to 40-45, with the highest temperature being about 47 degrees C.  Everyone said that now is when I’m most likely to get homesick, including myself, them because of Christmas holidays, me because 4 months is a long time and would possibly start to feel like a long time. Now I’m starting to think that summer here is when I will truly start to feel homesick. Wow. 45 degrees huh? Well, I’ve finally adapted to the point when the weather right now is cozy, and at the moment it is 33 degrees C with 48% humidity. If I can do that I can do anything, right? =/    Oh- the forecast is for 35 degrees on Christmas! That’ll be really different.

Little things

Little things

So almost all of the bathrooms in my school don’t have toilet paper, soap, or paper towel. This isn’t out of the ordinary in Thailand as many public washrooms use a bum gun or (I’ve just encountered a few of these terrifying contraptions recently), toilets with built in jets with buttons on a panel on the side to control them. This means that most Thai’s don’t wash their hands after using the toilet, just sort of rinse. Most foreigners carry around tissues (and often soap) to wash and dry hands with. I’ve given up on the dry hands part but I still carry around soap with me. Today when I was washing my hands one of the foreign teachers was washing her hands as well and offered me a tissue. Without thinking I said “No thanks I can just do the dance” and proceeded to demonstrate the “dance” that one of the monitors at my circus camp tried to use as an ice breaker for the newbies when we ran out of paper towels one time. The dance involves raising your hands palms out, elbows bent so that they are directly in front of your shoulders, then moving them back and forth vigorously when moving your shoulders back and forth less vigorously and taking steps every two or three back and forths of your hands, bending your knees so that you are a bit lower to the ground the whole while. I only did this for a few seconds as I walked past her to the door but the look she gave me will stay in my memory for a long time. XD

My excuses for stopping updating for a while- in the form of stories

Little things

I think my last post was right before the first semester final exams.  That’s because I no longer had easy access to a full desktop computers once exams had started for the other students.  I stayed home and was SUPER lazy for all of exam week.  After that we had the holidays, 7 days of which were spent “practicing for sport day”.  I can fill another post on that alone easily so look for that later.  I was sent my quarterly report right before that week and a half, but since sport day training is an event deliberately constructed to leave students too exhausted to study for other school’s high school entrance exams, I feel a lot less guilty about sending it in late.  I made plans with some of my friends for after exams; with one group I was going to go to the palace and then tour around to some other particularly picturesque parts of Bangkok.  Our plan was to spend all day doing this, but unfortunately the night before this, the king of Thailand died. Because of this, going to the palace was definitely out of the question since it was being used for the funeral ceremonies, and frankly no one in Thailand wanted to go out and do anything after that.

I found out from my host mom, about 2 hours before the news was officially released.  She had asked me to come to the bank with her that evening and about 20 minutes after she had said we would leave she knocked on my door, looking shell shocked, and told me “Actually, my king is dead.  This makes all Thais very sad.  Please be ready to go soon.”.  It took me a moment to realise what she was saying, and I was shocked that she would still be going to the bank in light of what had happened.  I think she may have been using the normalcy of the task to help deal with the shock she was in.  I actually had been fretting about this happening, because the king didn’t seem like he would still be alive next July after I left from everything I’d heard. As of then I had had no exposure to Thai mourning customs, and the internet only goes so far, especially when it comes to someone who the Thais respect as nearly a god. I had been trying to find a casual and non-disrespectful or rude way to ask about this for a while, but I’m pretty sure that it is considered bad luck in Thailand to speak of a living person’s death. Because of this I hadn’t yet asked, and now everyone was in extreme grief and I still couldn’t ask. I tried asking many times, a half hour after it had happened, an hour, etc. but my host mom was unable to answer. I conferred with the other exchange students in my district, thinking we could all collaborate on the information gathering and by doing so not burden our host parents with a full on quizzing right after their hearts had been broken.  Good in theory, but not good in practice.  I now know that there were certain aspects that were dictated by the government, and certain that were personal choice.  Since we have very little documentation of the mourning process for the previous king, the government had to do their best to guess and decide.  All outings already planned were cancelled, everything for the next year must be in less bright colours and must be less loud.  Weddings and other parties in the next month must be cancelled, and after that time they are still requested to play music in speakers instead.  All government workers were required to wear all black for 30 days and then either their uniform or black and white for one year after the day of the kings death. The government asked at first that everyone wear at least black and white for 30 days, preferably black, with jeans being the exception, but then changed that several days later because prices for black and white clothing rose drastically, and not everyone would be able to reasonably afford that. They said that people could instead wear a black ribbon on their left breast or shoulder. My host parents both decided that they would wear as close as possible to all black for 100 days. It really depends on the person. This meant that when I was conferring with the 30 other exchange students, we got about 10 different answers. All of whom thought they were answering the question of what should that exchange student do in their household, I presume. I’m still not entirely sure what I should follow- the mandatory period is over, and he wasn’t my king, but I did and do respect him greatly. Also my host parents wont be wearing colour for another 2 months. I think that for now I will wear either black and white or black and white with a little bit of pale or dark colour. Black pants and a dark green shirt for example. I think almost everyone in Thailand is still wearing black or white though, but some have added navy or peach or grey. It definitely isn’t anything like the sea of colour I was expecting.

The Sister’s Feast Day

Major posts

Let me start by saying that I know even less of Catholicism than I do of Buddhism.  And I don’t even know enough about Buddhism to solidly explain anything other than Lent to someone, and what I know about lent I learned yesterday.  So I had know idea what today would be.  I was told it was a feast day, and a ceremony for the sisters or mothers depending on who I was speaking to.  I kind of assumed this was an initiation rite for becoming a nun actually.  That we would have one of the teachers becoming a nun or something like that.  That being said- one of the other things I learned yesterday was that one of my teachers is Buddhist.  The school just doesn’t care or discriminate against religion, apparently in students or in teachers. Fun fact: It’s the law in Thailand that you must claim a religion.  At the very least you need to have one if you intend to complete any legal documents.  Also a Thai passport has your religion printed on the page with your photo.  I don’t feel very comfortable with that because not all countries are as non-discriminating about religion as the Thais are.  Back to what I was saying earlier- I just googled Catholic feasting days and apparently it’s the saint’s feasting day.  In cases where the saint’s death date is recorded and there are few saints days already designated for that day, that date is used.  In other cases a date is designated by a church, or the date when they were canonized.  Hey!  I actually do know that word!  I was just about to look it up- but DadE taught it to me when I was teaching him what cannons and ships were in reference to TV shows and the like!  Okay so anyways the ceremony was very hot and I hadn’t been able to keep my eyes open for more than a few seconds a minutes or two before it began, so I fear I looked rather zombie-like.  I think 3 or 4 teachers asked me if I was okay at some point during this.  All of the students stayed standing in our lines outside from morning assembly throughout the duration of the ceremony and singing.  Well, except for one who say half dragged half led away.  I really hope she’s okay!  The only upside to the experience is that I did get to see a real live Catholic priest, white robes, gold scarf and all.  Which is pretty darned cool.

Just a day, just an, ordinary day…

Major posts

That’s from a Vanessa Carlton song if any of you were wondering.  I’ve thought many times in the past week “oh- I should write about today!” and then completely forgotten what I did that was so special, let alone the whole day.  So today, I’m just going to write while I have a moment before lunch and try to jog my memory.  Later I’ll be posting about yesterday when I went to the park with friends, but right now I’m too tired to do it any justice.

So this morning I had to get up early (5:00) because I needed to be at school early in order to read a speech about… shoot what was it called again?  Sur- something economy.  Oh!  Found it- it’s “sufficiency economy”.  I didn’t have much of an idea of what this was even after looking over the script, but my host dad explained it to me in the car.  Apparently it the idea of an economy where each person grows what they eat, and distributes what they have in a pyramid shape.  Firstly, whatever they make/harvest etc.  goes to them and their family.  If they have surplus, then that goes to their neighbors.  If there is surplus even then it goes to the community, and so on and so forth in an ever expanding bubble.  My conclusion from this, and the speech’s talk of not buying into excess, is that it is proposing that the people keep Thailand’s resources in Thailand, use Thailand’s resources for Thai’s, and distribute goods and money more throughout Thailand.  I have no way of knowing whether or not that is accurate, but it seems like a good guess to me.  This system was developed by the king, and I think that the speech thing I did today is a way of promoting it maybe?  It turns out I wasn’t actually saying it during the morning assembly, but about 30 minutes before the assembly, as students walked to their classes.  Anywho, back to what I was saying before.  I was supposed to get up at 5:00.  I did, and then I promptly fell back asleep.  So I wake up at 5:45, and think: didn’t I already do this?  Maybe I’m just remembering yesterday.  And then I remember and check my phone for the time.  Now last night my host dad said we should leave at six, or maybe 6:15.  6:15 it is!  I didn’t have my school stuff together and had planned to do that this morning you see.  Luckily for me I actually do very little on Mondays.  I still managed to misplace the bag I was embroidering though.  I had to bring my apron to sewing class instead and work on it, which was handy because I needed to use said apron in third block.  I also misplaced my hairbrush after I picked it up.  Turns out I put it in my book bag.  What the heck??  My hair stays in braids all day and there is literally no reason why I would have put it in there.  Good job sleepy Aria.  Anyways I didn’t have it with me for when Bee would do my hair so I did my best with a comb :X .  I found out when I got in the car that she had been sleeping until my host dad called for her.  Sorry Bee!!!  From there we drove to school, traffic bad as per usual [fun fact: Bangkok has the worst traffic in the world.  Actually.] I got to school, realised I had no idea where I was supposed to go, saw my friend waving to me from the office and revised then said our speech into the microphone at the office.

That’s not a run-on sentence it’s a list.  Sh.

First period was sewing, and I worked frantically on attaching my elephant to my apron, and continued that during break with my homeroom class.  Then it was dance class time.  I have two dance classes during the week, one Thai dance and the other… I don’t know.  It seemed a lot like the dance unit during gym at my junior high.  The class was separated into groups of about 7, and then told to make a “modern” dance routine for this Thai song about nature.  It was just as bad as in Canada.  Our group did not communicate well, language barrier aside, and the dance moves were choppy, very repetitive, and only used our arms.  That is to say, none of the moves save kneeling, standing up, and making timid kicks off beat and out of sync for about 12 bars at the beginning and middle of the song.  During our break just before this class there had been 5 students screaming at each other in good-natured conversation and another 15-20 just shouting.  Break is 20 minutes long, not including the designated “homework” break right before, which had been basically the same thing so I was irritable and noise sensitive and actually felt ill from all the noise.  I did not have patience for trying to make out whispered English from the din of shouted Thai, and did not try very hard to do so.  My apologies to those of you who were trying to talk to me during that period of time for not reaching out and trying to communicate.  After that I had break, where I came up to the nice, quite, air conditioned library to start this post.  After that I had lunch and ice cream with a really fun group of people who remind me a lot of my friends back at home, and came back up here to finish this.  Gosh do they ever make me work for my free time though.  There are 7 stories in my school, with the gym my class uses and my music class being on the 7th floor, the library I am to go to during my free time being on the 6th floor, and the cafeteria being on the ground floor.  My home room is on the 2nd floor.  Today I have climbed 51 flights of stairs I believe, as there are two flights between each level.  I have at least another 5 to go for the day, since the teacher I go home with takes the elevator down after school.  After school I need to go find my embroidery, play with the dogs, and maybe clean my room since this mornings furious scramble revealed that I’m not nearly as organised as I thought.

Blaring.

Other

Theres a cold going around school and I don’t think I’ve cought it, but I certainly don’t have all the energy I might.  I also feel just a tinge queasy every now and then, but nothing more than a ghost of the feeling really.  I also forgot to drink as much water today as I should.  Anyways that all is just an explanation that you should take this post with much salt.  I am feeling persnikity and have a headache right now so some things finally got on my nerves.  Primarily:  Please stop assuming I am incompetent at a task just because I’m white!!! 

When someone gets inside my personal space and stays there to watch me complete a task, trying to grab it out of my hand or gesture at it/touch it, I get really tense and uncomfortable.  People at school keep assuming I don’t know what I’m doing, and even after I assure them I am know perfectly well how to do whatever it is many times and push or shoo them away they still hover uncomfortably close and take it away from my or try to do it for me etc.  They hover there, unblinkingly watching my work just waiting for me to take a second too long for one piece of it or generally prove my complete and utter incompetence to them once and for all with a slight miss-step so that they can swoop in and do it right. 

Now I know that outside of my headachy little bubble of no-reason, what is acctually happening is that they see me try to figure things that I don’t know out on my own and push them away in a similar fashion, and so they wait to see if I actually do need help (by watching intently of course which is completely normal), and then try to help me if it seems that I do.  Please don’t.  I am VERY good at asking for help when I need it, and even if I don’t know know exactlly what I am doing I generally like to try to figure it out myself if I can.  I learn much better that way.  Also, when there are five or more people crowded around me watching, I sure as heck am going to mess up, even if it is the easiest thing in the world for me.  And if you go leave crowding me to come back later and see how I’ve fared, which is completely reasonable, I probably still won’t be able to do it because now my head hurts and I am extremely anxious.  Case and point: Sewing.  Math.  And doing up my shoes. 

So to everyone at my school who is reading this, including if any of you are teachers, I will ask for help if I need it.  Either with my words or by wearing an exagerated expression of confusion and gesturing with whatever I am doing and showing you what part I understand, and where I get lost.  Please don’t help me if I ask you not too.  Thank you.

P.S. The other thing is that if I am not understanding you (probably because your sentances are just nouns and I have no way of guessing what the connection is between them – do you mean “this not that”?  Or “when this always that”?) please do not repeat the exact same thing over more than 3 or 4 times.