basura

The Madrid trash workers are on strike. They´re facing wage cuts as the city tries to trim down it budget in light of the current economic crisis, and they are clearly unhappy about it. We´ve gone over a week now without trash collection. The ever-growing piles of bagged garbage are fine. Unsightly and stinkier every day, but I can live with it. The people who keep this city clean don´t deserve to have their salaries cut, so fine, let it pile up.

But they decided not to just let it pile up. Apparently afraid that simple heaps of rotting trash wouldn´t make a strong enough statement, the angry workers took to the streets on the second and third day of the strike to tip over gabage cans and dumpsters, scattering their contents far and wide.

The city center is a distaster zone. It looks like a tornado has ripped through the place, somehow managing to leave the buildings in tact but obliterating every trash recepticle in its path. The Lavapies plaza, the heart of our bohemian little barrio, already a touch shabby under the best of circumstances, looks positively apocalyptic. Every breeze kicks up torn newspapers and candy wrappers, and passing dogs have lefts trails of half-eaten, rotting food on the sidewalks. Even the pot dealers on the corner and the drunks on the benches look a little uncomfortable in their newly disgusting surroundings.

The newspapers say the strike may go on a while. God help us.

back

After only fifteen months away, here we are again in Spain. I couldn´t be happier. Thailand was a great experience, but it certainly taught me that I would just really rather live in the developed western world. Our little flat in the center of Madrid has hot water, high-speed internet, a flush toilet located in a bathroom inside of the dwelling itself, an oven, sinks in the bathroom and kitchen, sufficient and comfortable seating...after Thailand, and especially the jungle container, it´s pure luxury. Three months in I still emerge from every hot shower amazed at how fantastic it is to have a hot shower. I´ve been cooking elaborate meals in my fully-equipped kitchen and haven´t once had to scrub mold off the walls. Life is good.

I´ve also been struck by how much easier this transition has been than any of the previous moves I´ve made. My study abroad time in Argentina was six months of culture shock; I never fully adapted because I couldn´t speak the language well and it was the first time I´d really experienced a culture other than my own. When we moved to Zafra, it took me months to being truly understanding the accent, and adjusting to small-town life was difficult and often frustrating. Living in Surat never stopped feeling insane--just when I would start to feel at home, a spider the size of my hand would scuttle across my floor, or my neighbor would proudly present me with an entire octopus and wait expectably for me to eat it, or my school would throw an enormous celebration (the motivation for which I was never once able to fully understand) in which the students would dress up in traditional Thai dance costumes and drape Buddhist scarves around a statue of the virgin Mary, or ceremonially give me a bath towel with a bow wrapped around it. There were days when it was just wholly, insurmountably foreign.

This move hasn´t been like that. I understand what people are saying. The things they do make sense to me. I can get everywhere easily, whether my bus or metro, without walking miles through unmarked village streets or risking my life on a questionable motorbike. I can buy any food I need or want. With three years under my belt, teaching is a breeze. The challenges I face every day are normal life challenges, not ´´I can´t figure out how to order food without chicken guts´´ type challenges.

Happy to be back.

leaving

I haven't written in a while because I've been a bit gloomy and didn't want to put any of that negativity in words. I've been feeling stuck--I was ready to leave Thailand a while ago but the way things worked out, we decided it was in our best interests to stay still September. So I've kind of put my head down and powered through.

But now we're two weeks from out of here, and I'm starting to reflect on my time here. It hasn't all been great. It turned out that Thailand isn't a good fit for me, or, more fairly put, that I'm not a good fit for Thailand. I didn't adapt well to the tropical heat, or to the frustration of the language barrier, and I have never come to feel at home here. But the thing is, despite the downs, I've never for a moment regretted coming. I don't wish we'd gone somewhere else instead, or that we'd stayed in Spain, or even that we'd left sooner. It's been hard, but I think if it hadn't been so hard, I wouldn't have learned as much.

Leaving always makes me look more positively on a place--In my last weeks in Zafra, the claustrophobia of small-town life stopped bothering me so much. Right before leaving Bloomington, it sorta seemed ok that hipsters and hobos regularly pissed in the alley five feet from my bedroom window. So now that we're on the verge of departure, I'm coming out of my grumpiness and starting to remember why I came here in the first place.

Thai food, while something of a minefield of weird animal parts and peppers that set your mouth on fire, is some of the best stuff I've ever had. I'm to the point where I always crave curry breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I hit this vegan place every day for tofu green curry, mixed vegetables and sauteed seitan rubbed with red curry paste. It's honestly one of the best meals I've ever had. The red curry and penang and Sweet Kitchen, a riverside restaurant that Levi and I visit two or three times a week, is extraordinary.

The jungle that surrounds our little container house really is breathtaking. I've never gotten tired of just staring into the tangles of trees, flowers, and vines. I spend Saturday and Sunday mornings laying on our bed with the container door flung open, reading a book and watching the palm trees sway in the breeze, electric blue birds and butterflies the size of my palm floating by, the occasional thunderstorm rolling in, bending the palm trunks at  incredible angles and pouring rain on the tin roof.

And the people here, both my coworkers and the locals, are fantastic. It's been pretty rare that I've encountered an unpleasant person. It's the sort of place that lends itself to a laid-back attitude, and seems to attract that sort of person. So even in my occasional irritation with Surat, I've been happy for the opportunity to get to know some really great people.

So we're off to Madrid in two weeks. We'll be there teaching for a year, and if all goes according to our current plan, Levi will continue teaching and working on his photography (which is getting more incredible all the time) while I do a year-long masters program in archaeology at a university in the city.

I'm thrilled to be going back to Spain. Oddly enough, it took a teaching job in Thailand to make me realize that what I really want to do is live in Spain and eventually quit teaching. I'm also happy to be moving to a big city--it will be fantastic to have international restaurants, import-stocked grocery stores, museums and live music at our fingertips. Madrid is well-connected by public transportation to the whole province, which has several beautiful cities and national parks to explore.

I'm ready.

en route, old friends

Katie and a coconut.

 My friend Katie, the very same Katie who spent two weeks with us in Spain about a year and a half ago, just departed from her visit here in Thailand with a promise to see us again in our next destination. She's amazing. A day after her arrival, we left town to spent three days on Koh Phangan, an island off the coast of Surat province famous for its landscapes and parties. Our time on the secluded beach of Haad Yuan consisted largely of drinking beer in the sand and reading on our beachview terrace, but the journey there, in retrospect a dark foreshadowing of the rest of Katie's Thai experience, was....arduous.

The view from our bungalow. Nice place. Bad, bad bathroom.

Getting to Haad Yuan, a beautiful (albeit touristy and way too boho) beach on the west side of the island, entails the following: Drive motorbike to bus station. Park in slightly sketchy enclosed lot near bus station. Take minibus on a one-hour ride to the port. Wait at the port, normally for less than an hour, but for nearly three if they happened to have changed the departure times that day without telling anyone. Play cards and eat overpriced food to pass the time while grumbling about the Thai inability to keep to a schedule. Board the ferry and sit for 2.5 hours, during which time you will be incredibly hot and dealing with various waves of unpleasant smells. Nice views though.

Katie and I on the taxi boat. It's much nicer in the daytime.

Arrive at Koh Phangan at sunset. Pile into tuk-tuk with several European strangers and embark on thirty-minute ride of terror through the hilly, curvy terrain of the island, at the mercy of a driver who appears to have consumed a dangerous dose of amphetamines. Arrive at Haad Rin, the party beach. Walk ten minutes through the garbage of last night and the crowds of the young evening to the shore, where you will hire a taxi boat. It's a wooden longtail with a car engine strapped to the back. The driver will go at a speed you judge to be way too fast for nighttime along a rocky coast, but you've just gotta trust that he's done this a million times. Arrive at destination, find an available bungalow, sit at beach restaurant and order beers immediately.

Western luxuries in tourist paradise.

But after we had gotten through the trials, and with Katie now familiar, on her second day in Thailand, with about seven forms of Thai transportation, we enjoyed ourselves relaxing on the postcard of a beach. Levi and Katie even woke early one day and walked to the bar, where zonked-out hippies were still raving in strobe lights to nineties trance music well after dawn. Quite an experience. And our ride home was much smoother; we even had the luck of an air-conditioned ferry. We rested up in Surat for a day before embarking on our next journey: Thai New Year. More to follow soon; it deserves a focus of its own.

gang som and salt fish

Thai food is some of the best stuff in the world. Pad thai, rich coconut curries, spicy stir-fries and sweet, milky iced tea--amazing. All of those are wonderful treats, and the versions you get in Thailand are superior to the sanitized, less-flavorful versions available in the west.

But here's the thing: it's the best of Thai food, sanitized though it may be, that made it to the other hemisphere. The rest of of, quite justifiably, has no market where a European palett reigns. That coconut curry the waitress sets in front of you smells amazing, but stir it up a bit before you dive in--it's probably full of chicken feet and bits of intenstine. Anything you'd call spicy would be tasteless to a local, so the dish is so full of chilies that you've got tears streaming down your cheeks by the third bite. The shrimp in your pad thai is whole-vein, head, and all, and the chicken is full of gristle and fat. Your otherwise delicious noodle soup is full of what appears to be black tofu, but turns out to be balls of congealed pig's blood.

If you know where to look and know how to say "mild" in Thai, you can eat pretty well. Some of the best food I've ever eaten has been right here in Surat. But during the school year, while I was working at the elementary school, I would often stay and eat the free lunch that the school generously provides to the teachers. Some days, it was something simple and pleasant like fried rice or sweet curry, but every once in a while, after already committing to a plate and a drink, I'd find myself face to face with the unholy combo: gang som and salt fish.

Gang som is, from what I've gathered talking to Thai coworkers, a favorite dish of southern Thailand. It's also the most disgusting thing I've ever tasted in my life. It's a watery curry of a strange grayish yellow-green color, full of fish and bitter vegetables, with a sour/sweet/deadly spicy flavor. I can't compare it to anything because I've never tasted anything remotely like it. The cafeteria cooks generally saw fit to serve it with another Thai delicacy that turns my stomach: salt-cured fish. It's an entire fish, cold and crispy and highly salted all the way through. There's no way to really separate the meat from the bone, so you just do your best and get the occasional sliver stuck in your throat.

After being burned a few times, I had to just admit to my Thai coworkers that I hate the stuff and excuse myself whenever it was served. They laughed at me for my lack of fortitude, but even they had to concede that it isn't for everyone.

libros

I'm teaching prepositions to my second graders, making it visual by stacking kids on top of one another, balancing notebooks on their heads and having them stand on, next to, behind, in front of chairs. I make a couple kids squeeze themselves under a desk and have one hold a chair on his head. I swear this is educational.

I pull one kid's desk out of his row and into the front of the class. I tell him to stand on it. He breaks into a huge, gap-toothed grin when he realizes what I'm telling him to do, but before he jumps up on it, he presses his hands together in front of his lips and bows to the desk, the wai gesture that Thais use to show respect.

As I continue bringing up groups of kids to stand in various silly formations with each other, furniture, and their school supplies, I notice that every kid wais the desk before standing on it. I'm confused; I've only seen this gesture used to show respect to people, temples, and other things that you would naturally assume garner respect. Not pieces of furniture.

So after class, I ask my Thai assistant teacher about it. She tells me it isn't about the desk, but what's inside of the desk.

Education is highly valued in Thailand. Teachers are very well respected; in Surat, if you're being treated with the rudeness usually reserved for backpackers, dropping an "I'm a teacher" in Thai will turn things around. This respect carries over to books; as the tools of education, they are treated with care and reverence.

So my students, before putting their feet (the most unholy part of the body) on the desk, were showing respect for the books.

crash

Thai driving is mad. As I've discussed before, Thai drivers, especially those on motorbikes (who seem to the the large majority) weave in and out of traffic, drive on the wrong side of the road, blow red lights, and generally behave as though there were no one else on the street. Generally, it works out. In my experience, it often seems to be a more efficient driving style. If every one of the katrillion motorbikers in Surat followed the rules of the road and behaved the way cars are expected to (stay in your lane, don't weave to the front of the line at a traffic light, don't drive on the sidewalk...) traffic would be nightmarish and no one would get anywhere. The roads just aren't big enough for it. So to some extent, I get it.

But there's no avoiding the obvious fact: motorbiking here is really dangerous. It's liberating and relaxing and fantastically fun, but it's really dangerous. You're probably going to crash at some point. You need a helmet.

But Thai people, apparently fifty-three percent of those who regularly drive motorbikes, don't wear helmets. Anecdotally, it seems to be at least that high. Considering that many people only put one on when they see a cop, or ride around with the chinstrap unbuckled (rendering the helmet entirely useless in preventing anything but a fine), the number of people who are effectively without a helmet must be much higher. This is why Thailand has the world's worst motorbike fatality rate, with eleven thousand people dying annually because they didn't want to mess up their hair (or whatever-no excuse is a good one).

The worst is the kids. Fine, you're an adult, do you thing, but your seven-year-old needs a helmet. End of story. But it's actually pretty rare to see kids wearing them. Pretty much daily, I see passengers holding entirely unprotected infants on the back of the bike, or a parent in a helmet (presumably only to avoid a ticket) ferrying two or three kids on the back without a helmet between them. It makes me shudder to think of what could happen if they hit a bump.

It's not only helmets, either. Thailand seems to have a general lack of concern for safety. You'll see ten people in the back of a speeding pickup truck, one seated on the rusted and precariously attached tailgate. Boats shuttling tourists around and between the islands will brave absurd waves, and occasionally you hear a story with a tragic, rocky ending. Children crawl around the front seat of the car or ride on the driver's lap.

People more intimately acquainted with Thai culture have told me that this cavalier attitude towards danger in rooted in some fundamental elements of the national character. Thai people are generally, about all things, very relaxed. They just don't worry about possible negative outcomes the way most Westerners do. One expat, here for a decade and married to a Thai woman, told me that they tend not to think in terms of cause and effect; if you crash your bike while not wearing a helmet and get a concussion, they will tend not to blame the concussion on the lack of a helmet. Since you couldn't have forseen the accident, they assume you couldn't have prepared for it, so there was nothing you could have done to avoid the injury. It was out of your hands.

That's another piece of the Thai psyche: superstition. You don't need a helmet, or a seatbelt, or to not get on that old wooden boat in a storm, because you won't die until it's your time to die. When it's your time, there's nothing you can do anyway, so why worry. They hop on the bike and trust the universe to do the job of a helmet. 

While I admire the Thai stress-free attitude towards life and embrace it in matters of work and play, I can't get on board with this one. Seeing my five-year-old students roll up to the school on the back of a motorbike, their tiny heads unprotected, makes it hard to smile at their parents. The universe won't help you out here. Put on a helmet.

Stats source

bass

We moved to this quiet jungle village for the "quiet jungle" part of it, and usually that's exactly what we get. But we've got this neighbor. And he's got this sound system.

I'm not usually bothered by loud music, even when it's really, really shitty music. In Zafra, we lived right next to the plaza, where week-long festivals pumped out the same Shakira songs hundreds of time. In college, I shared a wall with a bar that regularly featured drum-heavy hipster bands. No big deal.

This is something entirely different. This is madness.

The guy has a pickup that looks like a half-finished Pimp My Ride project, and instead of putting the truck bed to any socially acceptable purpose, he's decked it out with speakers, with the volume eternally cranked up to 11. His small but diverse collection of scratched cds ranges from the Black Eyed Peas to Spanish house to sappy Thai pop ballads. When he gets going, my house shakes. The paintings on the wall rattle and the floor vibrates beneath my feet. I can't listen to my own music or watch TV. Ear plugs are futile. I once tried just putting my head under a pillow, but I could hear Fergie through the mattress.

The other neighbors, all much older than us, are even more distraught at the situation that Levi and I are. But Thais are not confrontational people. They shy away from any negative interaction, and when forced to have one, they'll smile the whole way through. Our landlords, a Thai woman and her Kiwi husband, are the only ones who have had the courage to go tell this guy to shut the hell up.

But this started four years ago, they say, and nothing will stop him.

The Kiwi has gone to the police various times. He's talked to the village leader, and to the leader of the next village over.

But apparently there's no such thing as a noise violation here, at least not outside of the city. The police can't fine him or confiscate his system or penalize him in any way.

And the village leaders are his family. Most of the village is, actually, except us and our landlords and their family, the unfortunate few who live near enough to suffer bass-induced headaches. His family won't do anything, apparently as convinced as he is of his fundamental right to deafen us all, and in fact ceased to be friendly with our landlords' family a couple years ago, when the cops were called in to give the asshole a stern (and fruitless) talking to.

Our Thai landlord, a very sweet woman, told us all this with apologies in her eyes; there's nothing to be done, she said.

So we just have to deal.

These are the moments when I find myself clashing against the culture. This would not be an issue in America. This guy would have been fined too many times for his behavior to be economically feasible. Even in Spain, the cops would have shut him down years ago. But here, the channels have been exhausted. The cops are useless, and two families couldn't talk it out, so it's over. I'll just have to spend the next seven months listening to stuttering drum machines and fantasizing about taking a baseball bat to that truck.

anuban

Once a week I teach Anuban 1, which would be, in the American education system, pre-pre-kindergarten. They're three years old. But here (and in Spain, and as I understand, in much of the world) at three years old you're off to school. At Thida, they even put you in a tiny uniform. Since you can't yet handle the whole tucked-in thing, your shirt is actually attached by a series of buttons to your skirt/shorts, but apart from that and your extremely small stature, you look just like the big kids.

They're not at the point where you can do a full, 55-minute lesson, complete with bookwork and writing, so it's just a half hour of "conversation." Sarcasm quotes because, let's be honest, these little guys don't even really speak Thai yet. So on my first day with them, I wanted to keep it simple. I walk in and their teacher has them, all 45 of them, seated on the floor in neat little columns. They all scream "HELLO" and wave frantically as I walk in and take a seat on the miniature chair at the front of the room.

We practice "My name is," which they can sort of do. "My name is Teacher Savannah," I say. A couple brave ones shout "SAWANNAH," but the rest are silent, their big black eyes rolling in their heads as they take in this strange new pale addition to their surroundings. I call up the first one. She slowly stands and, prompted by her friends, timidly approaches me. They've given her the smallest possible uniform, but the short-sleeved shirt still covers her elbows and her skirt brushes her toes. She's tugged her pigtails into lopsided tangles and one of her feet is bare. "What's your name?" I ask. She's nervous, looking around at her enthralled peers for assistance. It's too much pressure to say it aloud, so she leans in and whispers, "My name is Aung-ing." I offer her a congratulatory high five, which she accepts with enthusiasm before scurrying back to her seat, where her friend returns her missing sock.

Next up is Tang Mo, who is also in my after-school class every day and thus suffers no shyness in my presence, although she's not the reserved type anyway. Her name, directly translated, means 'watermelon.' This is a food-focused culture, and fruity names are fairly common, but sometimes a likeness can turn a cute name into adorable comedy. Tang Mo is a fat little watermelon, with round cheeks and a chubby belly and limbs of rather melon-like proportions. Before I can even get the question out, she shouts "Teechah! My ay it Tang Mo," and demands her well-earned high five. I tickle her instead, and she collapses to the floor in giggling spasms. When I stop, she's suddenly very serious, holding her hand resolutely a few inches from my face until I consent to high-five it.

I go through the entire class, one by one, coaxing their names out of them, cheating occasionally with a whispered word in Thai, hoping it will ease their nerves. One kid has his finger buried up to the knuckle in his nostril for the duration of our interation. One girl grabs my hand and examines my nail polish closely for several moments before declaring it pink. One boy bursts into tears.

Twenty-five minutes in, we stand up for a song. Thai kids are universally familiar with "Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes," for some reason, so I just roll with it. But the coordination required to touch different body parts in rapid succession proves too much for most of these little ones, and a good number simply collapse in the effort. Their friends pull them to their feet, rumpling their uniforms and mussing their carefully-braided hair. One tiny one goes to touch his head and applies a bit too much force, landing on his forehead with a SMACK. It's a bloodbath. I ask them to sit down to end the carnage, but they've lost their columns and don't know where to go, so they do the next logical thing they can think: start tackling one another to the floor in extremely slow-motion wrestling matches.

Half an hour's up, sorry teacher, your problem now. I wave goodbye and go to the class next door to do it all over again.