glitter

My school, like Thailand in general, likes to party. Every couple of months (at least), classes start being sporadically cancelled, or you'll show up and only half the kids will be there, usually a mostly male half. The poor little guys will tell you that their fortunate classmates don't have to come because they're dancing.

They're preparing for a celebration of some kind. The meaning is less important than the mode, which is always the same; take lots of little girls, doll them up Toddlers in Tiaras-style, and have them do an utterly Thai dance for a small gathering of the school's nuns, teachers, and a few parents. These shows are huge; the costumes alone must cost a fortune and take hours to put together, and the kids practice the choreography for weeks. Despite the intense effort it clearly entails, they appear to do it just for the kids and the photos; there is hardly ever any audience more than twenty people.

These photos are from the celebration of the 70th anniversary of the founding of the school, but they're pretty representative of Mother's Day, Father's Day, the River Spirit holiday and others.

First and second graders perform for the nuns

Coming offstage in a blur of pink and gold and fake eyelashes.

Some of the high school girls from the other campus getting ready in the teacher's room before the show.

Big silk scarves unfolded from their skirts in the finale, which came out all blurry on my sad little camera.

Some of my kids performing the dance their class prepared.

The whole elementary school performing the final number. It was cool to see from above, but I was one of maybe three people to go upstairs to check it out.

railay

Monday was Constitution Day, so a bunch of us took the three-day weekend to go to Railay, a beautiful bay with a touristy beachfront on the western side of the peninsula. We sat on the beach, went on a snorkling trip, saw fire dancers and Thai boxing, and had a great time. Here's some pics.

Alicia on the boat to our snorkel spot. We saw a two-foot sea snake and huge schools of colorful fish.

At one of the islands our snorkel tour guide took us to. This boat, and many others like it, was fitted with a full kitchen setup and sold a pretty extensive menu, drink and appetizers as well.

Why buy torches when all these empty beer cans are just lying around? This was the method one beach bar used to light a path. There were a dozen or so. Leo is a typical Thai beer, usually one of the cheapest a shop will have. It takes something like Bud Light, only pissier.

At Railay Bay. One of the more crowded beaches I've been to here, but still no rival to the hoards of southern Spain.

Catherine on the boat to the beach. It's located on a rocky peninsula and can only be reached by boat. Like many places in Thailand, these boats are longtails, wooden canoe-liked affairs with car motors rigged onto them.

Colorful riverboats on the way out to the sea.

Levi relaxing at the restaurant in the bungalow complex we stayed in. The design is typically Thai: colorful, wooden, with a charmingly makeshift Bohemian feel. Instead of chairs, many of the tables have floor cushions.

idiomas

I've studied Spanish and Portuguese for years and am reasonably adept at languages; I'm good at mimicking sounds and tones and have a decent memory for vocab. Thai is, of course, a far more complicated animal. I've picked up a little through osmosis, but I'm ashamed to say that I haven't put that much effort into learning it. It's such a daunting task that undertaking it for the sake of a one-year stint seemed silly to me, and laziness did the rest.

But I have enough for pleasantries, at least the initial ones. I can tell the cashier I don't want a bag and that I don't have a member card, and I can give her the correct amount when she tells me the total. These feel like huge accomplishments and I'm always rather proud of myself.

At this point, said cashier is super excited because it's rare that she meets a foreigner who speaks Thai. She compliments me on my skills (I know that one) then proceeds to say...some other stuff. She seems to be asking a question now...oh god, smile and nod...nope, appears not to have been a yes/no question...search purse for exact change...not what she wanted...abandon ship!

"I dont understand," I say, a phrase I learned within a day of arrival. I'm defeated. She's laughing hysterically. She says nevermind, tells me I have pretty hair, and gives me my change.

I scurry.

the job

I work at a gigantic elementary school. On most days I teach three classes, each with over fifty second-graders. I see these same kids for an hour every day, so I've gotten to know them pretty well. They are amazing.

 I walk into the classroom and one designated kid, usually of the suck-up variety, shouts "Stand up, please!" They all rise, their hands clasped in the prayer-like gesture (call a wai) used to show respect. "Good morning, teachah," they chant, their Thai tongues unable to handle that final 'R'. I say good morning and ask them to sit down, to which they respond, "Thank you, teachah." The second they're seated, the politeness drains out of them and they return to their noisy, misbehaved ways.

 Months ago, I divided each class into teams. These teams earn points by being reasonably good, and the reward for a certain number of points is a homework-free day. They like the incentive, but mostly they just want to honor of bestowing a name on their team for the day. They wrestle each other's arms down and squeal "teeeeaachaaahh,"  hoping to catch my attention. The kids I call on proudly shout "Team Angry Birds," "Team Amazing Spiderman," or, in the last few weeks, "Team Gangnam Style." One tech-savvy class once gave me "Team iPad," "Team iPod," and "Team iPhone." My kiss-ass class comes up with things like "Team Teacher Savi is Beautiful" and "Team America is Great." They know how to get extra points out of me. The same class once realized that I'd give out points for candy (I have limited integrity when it comes to points) and I spent two glorious weeks being showered in sweets and, once, an entire cake.
 

Maintaining peace in the face of violence

I start class with a game that gets them moving around, usually something that has them racing to the board to write vocab words. It's amazing how intensely interested they suddenly are when I throw in competition. Some kids get positively spastic. When we study animals, I have a few class clowns come up and act like gorillas or dinosaurs (T-rex arms are a personal favorite of mine). When we're doing adjectives, they come up and puff out their tummies for "fat" or have jumping contests for "tall." One very entertaining week on professions, I had the rowdiest boys posed as ballerinas and the daintiest girls aiming fingerguns as cops. At the end of class, I assign them homework and listen to their argument against homework. Alright, it's less an argument and more "teaaccchhahh noooo homework!" In the end they laugh and do it anyway.

When I see them around the school, they run up for high-fives and hugs. I'll occasionally see one at a store or restaurant and they freak out, waving and shouting "HELLOO TEACHAH!" until their parents hiss at them to show proper respect with a wai. They're still so small that seeing a teacher outside school is exciting enough to make them forget their manners.

Somedays they give me headaches, aggravate me with their inability to conjugate a verb properly despite weeks of practice, and I swear if I hear one more of them singing "Gangnam Style" I might lose it, but they are just awesome. I mean, look.

Pictured: pure evil

bad

I teach for two hours a day at Super English, an after-school academy. My students are three to six years old, but many of them have a higher level of English than the second-graders I teach in the morning. In my first class, I have the smartest of all of my students, a tiny five-year-old girl named Gun who is every bit as girly and headstrong as I was when I was a kid. She loves showing off her absurdly floofy dresses and raises her hand to answer every question. She's fantastic.

That class is now all girls, but I used to have a few boys, the most memorable of whom is Bamboo, a chubby five-year-old who is good at English but terrible at behaving himself. He's a fat little cannonball, just runs through life destroying everything in his path. Gun has no tolerance for his nonsense; she's always rolling her eyes at him, or shaking her head at me and saying, "Teacher, Bamboo is bad."

There's one central rule in my class: no speaking Thai. If they're not speaking Thai, they're not distracted, and generally listen and behave better. I'm strict on this rule.

So one day the kids are doing a worksheet. I turn my back for a moment and hear a smack. I spin around and Bamboo is hovered over Gun's desk, her Cinderella pencil case is in his porky fist, and her arm is raised. She quickly returns it to her lap and looks guiltily at me.

Bamboo launches into a wailing narrative in Thai, acting out what happened, clearly trying to tell me that Gun retaliated physically against his theivery.

Gun looks at him, looks at me, and waits. When Bamboo stops, waiting for me to punish his assailant, Gun purses her lips and looks me directly in the eye and says, "Teacher, Bamboo is speaking Thai."

No punishments were dealt that day.

blanca

In the west, we value a good tan. As a redheaded decendent of the pigment-challenged Irish, I am acutely aware of this fact. In our highly industrialized society, there's a belief that the working class labors indoors under flourescent lighting while the rich have the leisure time and money to lie on a beach. So a tan implies wealth, health and status.

Thailand, and apparently much of Asia, are different. The poor laborers here spend their time in fields, on the water, and on construction sites, where it's impossible to avoid a deep tan. The rich work in offices (speaking very generally). So here, a tan is a marker of poverty and low-class status. Much like being pale in the west, this is considered unattractive. Of course, this falls mostly on women and girls; perception of female beauty is largely dependent on skin shade. And as with our slew of bronzing, self-tanning, sun-attracting products back home, this insistence on an arbitrary feminine ideal gives rise to a really, really stupid industry.

I ran out of deodorant last week. I'd brought a few months' worth from Spain because I'm picky (that gooey roll-on stuff grosses me out and is ubiquitous everywhere I've travelled) but I finally exhausted my supply and went to the store. What I encountered was at least ten different brands of deodorant, each that messy goop, and each containing skin-whitening components. For my armpits. And to think, I had no idea! All those years of off-white armpits, all those sundresses and tank tops in which I flaunted them to my oblivious humiliation!

And it's not just deodorant. While your sunscreen prevents that disgusting tan, it's making your base-level white a shade lighter. Your dead-white liquid foundation will bleach your face for you. Moisterizer, lotion, shaving cream, cleansers, body wash, masks, powder--every skin product imaginable. For some of these products, like deodorant, it's challenging or impossible to find something that doesn't offer to make some part of your body porcelain white. Your face, your hands, your legs, your freaking armpits. This horrifying article discusses vaginal whitening wash. (After several attempts at a snarky remark on this subject, I've decided that it lampoons itself just fine without my help.)

Given no other options, I purchased the one with the least offensive packaging. It smells like bug spray and gets all over my clothes. But I'm sure no one will be able to resist me and my glaring white underarms.

moto

My motorbike, like that of every foreign teacher I know, is secondhand. Realistically, it's probably more like fifthhand, but it's impossible to say. The origin, age, and previous ownership of these bike is mysterious, at least to those of us who can't read the paperwork. The condition upon purchase is what you see; if you don't notice some grave problem in the course of the round-the-block test run they allow you, then it becomes your grave problem.

A secondhand dealer requires two things: your money and a signature. Not necessarily your own signature, either; registering a bike to a foreigner cost twice the registration for a Thai person, so it's best to bring a local friend. Hand over your cash, and the bike is yours (well, it's your friend's). They don't try to sell you a helmet, they don't ask to see a license, they don't brief you on the Thai rules of the road (as if there were any), they don't ask if you've ever driven a motorcycle or if you have the foggiest idea what you're doing on one. Just the cash please.

So we blunder through our experience with this unfamiliar form of transportation. I don't know what type of gas I need, so I assume the attendant got it right. I'm not sure if that noise is normal, so I do my best with Google and crossed fingers.

My current problem is a common one, at least for my rickedy Honda. The thing dies if I let it idle too long. It starts doing this every few weeks, and the fix is simple and cheap. Thing is, I don't have the faintest idea how to express that to a mechanic. So I can't bring it in until the problem gets very, very bad. Several times I've gone to the shop and sat there, the mechanic's ear to bike, waiting for it to die. Of course, like any piece of machinery under the eye of a hired expert, it chooses this moment to behave perfectly. He shrugs, and I'm defeated. I leave after a brief, awkward thanks. I'll be back in two weeks when it starts reliably dying at every stoplight.

sidestreet

There's a place on a dark sidestreet downtown with an English sign and a beautiful outdoor seating area. It's got a trendy hideout vibe to it and some European beer signs and it's close to work, so Levi and I decided to check it out. We got there before their dinner rush and enjoyed an empty beer garden. Literal garden: it was decorated in the jungle style common to Thai restaurants, with enormous banana trees, flowering bushes, hanging moss and vines. Lovely. We asked our exceptionally pretty waitress for two cocktails from the rather large cocktail menu, and were informed that they had only beer, and no imports. Alright, disappointing, but Thai beer it is. We ordered some food as well, to the apparent confusion of the waitress, who called over another gorgeous girl to confirm that this was ok.

They decided we could eat, and the two of them scurried off to the kitchen. As they left, we noticed they each had a ring of little bells tied around their ankles that jingled pleasantly as they moved. We also noticed the dangerously high slits in their matching form-fitting, strapless dresses.

The food turned out to be pretty good, and we were rather enjoying ourselves when the place started picking up. More of these beautiful, similarly-dressed women appeared to wait on the additional tables, which we came to notice were comprised almost exclusively of men, either on their own or in groups of two or three. Once these customers had arrived, we found it highly difficult to get the attention of a waitress; they all seemed exceptionally absorbed in conversation with the gentlemen at their respective tables.

When the waitress finally brought the check, I left the standard tip, which generally gets a grateful response from servers. She looked at it, looked at me, scoffed, and turned back to the solo diner at the next table, who said something that prompted her to show him her tummy.

We left hastily.

sangre

American expats don't tend to be the most nationalistic Americans you'll meet, but our distance from home leads us all to strange bouts of patriotic fervor on two occasions: Independence Day and Thanksgiving. I imagine we get all watery-eyed about these, rather than Christmas or Easter, because even our non-American expat friends can't relate. So we do silly things like launch fireworks until the neighbors fire off warning shots and call the cops (happened), and throw Thanksgiving barbeques where we improvise with local ingredients and drink too much beer.

Anyway, the latter happened the other night, at least for most of my friends. On the way to the party, a coworker crashed her motorcycle and woke up in the hospital in need of a friend. So Levi and I ditched the dinner and drove out to lend some moral support.

I'd only ever been to the private hospital in Surat. By western standards, it's extraordinarily cheap so there was never any reason to go to the public center. But for the typical Thai person, the modern, clean, centrally-located hospital is prohibitively expensive. Our routine visa health checks there cost 500 baht, which is only $15 for us, but for the average working person here living on 10,000 baht a month (a little over a third of what we foreign teachers make), that 500 baht is a healthy chunk of cash. With that money you can fill up your motorbike tank 4 times, or buy 15 meals, or take over 30 rides in a tuk-tuk to anywhere in town.

So when you get hurt and aren't awake to tell the medics where you want to go, they'll take you to Surat Thani Hospital, the publically-funded medical center. It's cheap, I'll give it that.

We arrived at the Motorcycle Accident/ER (yes, it's called that). A waiting room full of cracked plastic chairs was full of typically calm Thai people, sitting around patiently under the flickering florescent lights, watching infomercials and staring at the broken clock on the wall. Through this room a slow but steady stream of motorcycle patients was being wheeled in on rusty stretchers. Many of them were carrying their own IV bags. They were, on average, bloody messes, and they would stay that way for a while in the crowded, understaffed ward.

A receptionist pointed us in the direction of our friend, the only foreigner there. She was banged up and had fractured her collarbone and bumped her head pretty good, but was thankfully alright, awake and not in too much pain. As we waited for the results of her x-rays and then the sling they decided to give her, we watched the arrivals come in, more and more frequently as the night wore on. A doctor came over at one point to grab the oxygen tank stashed under my friend's stretcher; as he carried it off I noticed it was entirely engulfed in rust.

I was struck by the relaxed demeanor of everyone there, doctors, patients, and family. As another friend put it after his own serious motorcycle accident, Thai people have an incredibly casual attitude towards terrible injury. I seemed to be the only person flinching at all the blood and gore around me.

When we finally left, the bill was a little $30, x-rays, sling, and meds included.

rey

The Thais are a patriotic bunch. The king, the longest-ruling monarch on the planet, inspires more adoration and awe than any celebrity or leader I've ever seen. On Mondays, the weekday of his birth, a striking proportion of the population wears a polo with his crest, in yellow, his personal favorite color. His birthday is the biggest holiday of the year. His face graces (by law, I've heard) every business, every public building, and most houses in the whole of Thailand. There's a law in place that makes it illegal to do anything to an image of him that could be considered "defamation." People have been arrested for drunkenly painting on posters of him, placing pictures of other people above a picture of him on websites, and sending unfortunately intercepted text messages expressing distaste for him. I can't figure out if it's actually illegal, but the Buddhist taboo about feet, combined with the image of the king's face on the currency, means that it is completely unacceptable to step on a coin to keep it from rolling away from you. You may think this wouldn't be that big of a deal, but I'd bet you do it way more than you realize, and it's a tough habit to break. It also tends to happen when you're fumbling for change in crowded places with lots of witnesses. Awkward moments had by all.

Probably the most obvious manifestation of this legally-enforced lovefest is the national anthem. It's not actually called that, but referred to as "the King's song." It plays at eight am and six pm in every public place, every TV and radio station--everywhere. And it stops everything. Everyone drops what they're doing, however important, to stand at attention. No one walks or moves. Cars driving by the schools in the morning, upon hearing it on the loudspeaker, hit the brakes. A friend once joked, probably inappropriately, that if you ever want to wreak some unopposed havoc in Thailand, do it at eight or six.

Our neighbors have two little white puffball dogs, poodle mutts or something. They're generally pretty quiet and relaxed (very Thai), only getting yappy when we drive our motorbikes too close to their house or when a cat goes by. But through some weird training regimen that I can't fathom, their masters have gotten them into a habit of howling like maniacs ("singing," they insist) when the King's Song plays. They start when the music starts, and stop immediately after the last note. I thought at first that it must be a fluke, that they just barked when music played on the TV, but that TV runs all days, and those dogs are quiet as can be, except for 8 and 6. Like clockwork.

When I was reading about the king for this post, I found out that people have actually been arrested for remaining seated while the song is played before a movie at the theater. They don't bother with this for us foreigners at the English-language movies, but at Thai movies, they run it before every film, regardless of the time. My boss told me that he recently went to a movie with his Thai wife where they played not only the song, but a long and highly emotional slideshow of photos of the king, from his birth, to his coronation, to his present advanced age. My boss watched, bemused, as his wife and everyone else in the theater broke down in tears.

But my favorite King's Song anecdote came from a fellow teacher at Thida, the Catholic elementary school where I spend my mornings. The building is a gorgeous modern construction, a giant, domed circle lined with four floors of classrooms overlooking a tiled central courtyard. Every morning, the children line up in front of their classrooms, facing the center, to say morning prayers, do some calisthenics, and sing the song.

Like many Thai buildings, Thida has a wide open entryway to encourage much-needed airflow. This allows stray dogs to occasionally wander in, and since strays here are treated well and are therefore generally docile, no one bothers to shoo them. So one morning, while the children were lined up, two dogs entered the building and made their way to the center of the courtyard. After hanging about unmolested for a few minutes, they decided to make some puppies. Normally, someone would break this up quickly to avoid the awkward questions of the over 2,000 watching three-to-eight-year-olds. Unfortunately, this went down at 8:00 on the nose. No one could move. No one could do anything. The dozens of nuns, teachers, parents, janitors, administrators and lunch ladies were all frozen in place by a lifetime of twice-daily renditions. So for the sixty-second duration of the song, 2,000 pairs of little eyes watched as two muddy street dogs banged in the middle of their school, during the King's Song, right in front of a statue of the Virgin Mary.

My friend could barely tell me this story with a straight face. Thai teachers--less amused.

dishwashing

We don't have sink at our house. This generally proves to be less of a hassle than you might think. I brush my teeth in the shower or, on those days when the tank dries up, with a water bottle over the drain. We have a spigot in the bathroom for handwashing, and the trusty hose next to the toilet serves well for cleaning.

The only time this omission becomes particularly glaring is when it's time to do the dishes. We eat out most dinners and nearly all lunches, but breakfasts and the occasional carry-out meal usually create a pile of dishes at the end of the week. These dirties are stored outside, on a rotting wooden table furnished with two big plastic buckets, a drying rack, and a hose. The setup is covered in termites, ants, and the mosquitoes that breed in the water under the house. We do our best to rinse all the food out of the dishes and keep the table free of standing water, but the rain thwarts our efforts, and washing dishes is such an ordeal that there's no way we could do it daily. So the sticky stuff stays sticky, and the bugs go mad.

On Saturday mornings, I tackle this chore. The first step is to empty the buckets, with are undoubtedly full of rainwater and the resulting mosquito larvae. Lifting up the buckets usually reveals a termite smorgasbord; apparently weary of a wood-based diet, they've started working on the tough plastic, to an impressive degree of success. I rinse the little bastards away and get started on the ants, who, their feast on the crumbs under the table rudely interrupted by my assault with the hose, are now climbing angrily up my legs. I wash them off, often with some high-pitched squeals of which I'm not proud, and clean out the buckets. Both get filled with water, and to one I add soap. As I scrub and rinse, I'm doing battle with the swarms of mosquitoes; this "sink" is unfortunately located at the edge of the water, and they can't resist this rare bag of warm blood that has wandered into their realm. They're the bad ones, too, the nasty ones who fear no bug spray, so big you can clearly see the stripes on their backs and their horrifying needle-noses.

By the time I've gotten through the pile, I'm soaking wet, sweating, and covered in mosquito welts. A shower is in order. Sadly, the dishwashing process uses so much water that the tank is unlikely to contain any more, and I am often forced to sit in the house in filth until it is refilled by our landlord, the incoming tide, or the water fairy (it's unclear how the Thai water supply actually works). Thank god (vodka fairy?) for screwdrivers.

gac

Levi sipping a coconut on the porch

The landlords of our little jungle box are our neighbors, a family who live in two houses on our lane. The elderly patriarch of the family, a giggly, toothless, sun-weathered fellow, spends much of his time in galoshes and a straw hat, splashing around in the swamp and tending to his various crops of fruit, flowers, and the carcinegenic nut he chews as a stimulant. The result is the verdant setting of our weird, wonderful house, as well as a few treats.


Yesterday a member of the family dropped by with two coconuts. He hacked off the tops with a machete and instructed us to stick a straw in it. Yum.
 

Unripe gacfruit in our "yard"

A little while later, his sister sold us, for about 75 cents each, two bottles of the juice she and her husband have been squeezing from gac fruit, an orangey-red spikey thing that grows outside our living room window.The juice is a vivid red and tastes sweet and mild and fantastic. I threw some vodka and soda into it and enjoyed an immensely relaxing Sunday afternoon.

wc

Travel books will tell you all about the food, culture, and language of Thailand, but the nitty-gritty of daily life doesn't tend to reveal itself in these descriptions. For instance, nobody talks about bathrooms. This may seem like a weird blog topic, but the Thai bathroom experience is (to Westerners) bizarre enough to merit a walkthrough.

A typical Thai bathroom, whether in an average working-class home or business, is to Western eyes a truly horrible affair. First of all, there's often no toilet, or at least none that fits the American definition of that word. Instead, there's a porcelain bowl on the floor, elevated only a few inches. If you happen to be a man with only a brief bathroom necessity, the initial step poses few obstacles. However, for women and for men in need of a sit-down, this is a bit of a process. You have to straddle this bowl and, for lack of a less hideous word, squat. Not such an issue with skirts, but if you've got pants on you have the additional challenge of pulling them far down enough to be in the clear, but not so far as to interfere with the squatting action or to be on the (inevitably filthy) floor. The real difficulty here is getting through this without urinating on your own shoes or clothing.

Now that you've finished, you need to move on to cleanup. Thing is, the Thai sewer system is not nearly so advanced as to allow for the flushing of things like toilet paper. If you try, the results will be disastrous. You will therefore encounter one of two situations. You may be expected to use the provided toilet paper and deposit it into a wastebasket. This wastebasket will be full of the used toilet paper of previous visitors, and the room will smell accordingly. The more likely circumstance is the absence of toilet paper. In this case, it's bum gun time.

The bum gun, a space-saving cousin of the European bidet, is a three-foot hose with a head like those dishwashing nozzles you'll sometimes see on a kitchen sink. It's generally installed right next to the toilet (or squatty bowl thing, as the case may be). This is your TP substitute. If the water has run out, as Thai water supply is wont to do, you're simply out of luck. Should have checked that before you got started.

If you're lucky enough to have had water at a decent pressure, you're on to the flush. (No, you don't get to dry off. This is Thailand. You were already drenched in sweat and monsoon rain anyway.) Now, the mini-potty doesn't have a tank. It's nothing but a bowl set on top of a pipe in the ground. This means no handly flush button. Next to the bum gun there will be be a bucket full of water with a tupperware bowl floating on top. You scoop up the water with the bowl and pour it into the "toilet," effectively flushing it. Were you wondering why the floor is completely soaked? Were you concerned that it was urine that was soaking into your shoes and the ends of your jeans? Partially, yeah, it probably was. But it was also the spilled water that results when people get this step wrong. Because it will splash. On the floor, and on you.

You're done. Get out. No, you're not washing your hands, where do you think you are?

jungla

My first semester in Thailand, a brief and overwhelming maelstrom of spicy food, language barriers and runny-nosed seven-year-olds, has passed. The experienced has been mixed, the daily joy of the unsurpassed cuteness of a Thai elementary school tempered by a constant pollution cough and my inability to effectively coymmunicate or integrate, but finally, this dirty, weird little river city is growing on me.

After four months there, Levi and I opted to flee the dorm-style house our school provides. It's a fine place, newly renovated and well located, but with five new teachers moving in for the new semester, the appeal faded. So we moved to the lesser developed side of the river, a peaceful forest village called Ban Bai Mai.

The container

Our new house, recently vacated by two former teachers, is composed of two metal storage containers, each about eight by thirty feet and nine feet high. They've been welded together along their lengths, furnished with doors and windows, and wood floors, piped and wired, painted blue and stuck up on stilts over a creekb  inb a dense palm jungle. To the front we have a broad tiled porch, fruit and flowering trees bearing delicacies I've never seen and couldn't name, and our neighbors, a friendly Thai family with whom we share a gravel drive. To the back, only jungle; a thick ground cover of grass, vines, and pandan shrubs beneath banana trees with six-foot leaves and two-storey palms swaying on trunks no wider than my leg. In October the flood rains come to southern Thailand so there are fish and frogs under the house and every shade of green outside the window.

The view from our bedroom

Living room

So rather than try to wrestle pleasant travels out of so wet a season, we're spending our month of freedom in this gorgeous box. The mornings we devote to improvements, painting furniture, dusting, and scrubbing the metal walls clean of their accumulated dirt and mold, but the afternoons are luxurious stretches of movies (or in my case, admittedly terrible by nevertheless irresistible Spanish soaps), books, and watching the rain run off the banana leaves. The place is a respite from the chaos and grime of Surat, and with the addition of this much-needed hideout, I'm happy I came to Thailand.

enlaces

In lieu of an actual blog post (it's one of those days) here's some links to Levi's photos and a few articles I've written for our school's website. Enjoy.

Tai Rom Yen National Park
Chiaya
Weird Surat
Levi's Flickr Albums

rezar

Last weekend, Levi and I dropped a rather lare sum of money partying on a tourist island, so for this holiday weekend we were determined to keep it cheap. Levi took a look at a map and led the way to Chaiya, a town about an hour northwest from Surat. It's a beautiful drive on the motorbike, all palm groves and rice paddies. When we arrived, the tenth-century temple we were seeking presented itself to us with little effort on our part, along with two unexpected others.

The first was Wat Long, a largely ruined but beautifully geometrical temple across the street from a high school and pretty much in someone's front yard. Estimates place it in the ninth or tenth centuries, but it's uncertain. The second was Wat Phra Borom That Chiaya, a modern temple and monastery complex. Today is Mothers' Day in Thailand, deemed thus and particularly important because it is the queen's birthday. The place was full of families praying and laying flowers, presumably in her honer (granted, this is only an outsider's conjecture).

The third temple was the one we came seeking, tenth-century Wat Keaw, the Greet Temple. And green it is. At the threshold, the temperature plummets and the air is dense with centuries of moisture and decay. The seated Buddhas, now wanting for heads and arms, are dressed in thick layers of green moss and cobwebs. It's and eerie and beautiful place.
On my new little tablet, photo uploading to blogger is exceptionally tedious, so click the link below to check out the pics from today.

Chiaya

llegada

Culture shock is a manic sort of affliction. It brings you to the ecstatic heights of enchantment and exhilaration, only to drop you, and no more than an unkind word
or a food-order failure, to the miserable lows of anger, frustration, and irrational nostalgia for the now-mythological ease and comfort of life "in the States."

Since Thailand is my third foreign country of residence, I fancied myself, while not immune to this nasty bug, at least reasonably hardened to it. I've already lived with nightmarish tropical insects in Argentina, eaten Spain's often unappetizing food, endured ridiculous heat in both places, and learned to put up with the total loss of anonymity that comes with being an obvious outsider.

This was of course, a rather stupid line of reasoning, as Argentine culture is based on Spanish culture, which is based on Rome, on which my own culture is largely based. It's all just Western. Thailand is not.

It's been a rough landing. Our house, while totally acceptable and lent to us rent-free by our school, is a step down from our lovely Spanish flat. The food has been a puzzle, I can't effectively communicate with anyone, and Surat itself is a big, dirty, chaotic town with little of Zafra's beauty or charm.

Luckily, our little motorbike is fast, and only seventy kilometers from Surat's grey edges lies Khanom, which in the last few weeks has become a much-needed refuge of peace and beauty. It's the Thailand you've seen in tourism ads and on posters in restaurants, a curved, white beach dotted with impossibly tall palm trees, tiki bars, and hardly a soul in sight. At night, the tiny organisms that float out their lives in the surf light up in response to movement, leaving a trail of stars behind your fingers. Beers are a dollar at a reggae-themed bar on the shore where a tattooed fire dancer offers a free square of sand to pitch our tent, and a short walk up the beach there's a place that sells expensive but almost accurate American food. Just knowing Khanom is there alleviates the aggravations of Surat. When Monday comes and I'm back at work, I feel recharged and able to enjoy those hundreds of tiny faces screaming "Hello Teeeachaaa Saweee."

Levi at Ao Tong Yee--The End of the Road Beach

The aptly named "Reggae Bar."

Our ride to paradise

wheels

Surat Thani is a place with blistering sun and oppressive humidity, a place that makes you grateful for every breeze. The steaming bowls of spicy noodles do little to ease the burn. I find my brain and my limbs sluggish in this heat, every movement a great effort. As the sun sets and the waitress pours a beer over ice, the world clears up and my pulse quickens to normal.

Life is busier here than it is in Zafra. The streets wake up before seven every day, and rather than European microcars and pedestrians, they're crowded with motorbikes, SUVs, and smoke-belching pickup trucks. Food carts ring their bells as they pass houses and shops and cars and motorcycles blow past them. Lane markers are mere suggestions, to be taken or ignored according to the driver's whim or convenience; most choose to go where they see empty pavement, regardless of those yellow lines.

Frankly, I'm terrified of the streets, but it was too much of a hassle to be without transportation, so Levi and I bought a motorbike, a used teal Honda with some scratches and cracks, but she's got spirit. I haven't yet mastered the art of Thai driving, but I'm determined.

I'm getting the hang of my classes. Teaching little kids is like putting on a show. Since they won't learn if they're bored, the goal is to keep them laughing while tricking them into speaking English. It's not a difficult task; they're eager to please and highly excitable, and even if they don't understand a word I'm saying, they're quick to respond with cheers and grins. It's hard not to leave smiling.

whirl

It took 54 hours, a bus, three planes, and one panicked double-back to the airport to recover forgotten luggage, but we got here. Surat Thani is still a bit of a mystery to me, as we have yet to acquire a bike and it's not a walkable place with its traffic and unmarked backstreets and occasional lack of sidewalks. We've been riding around in tuk-tuks, little trucks with benches in the back who will take you anywhere for about 50 cents, but whose route and travel time are ever uncertain. So it's been a strange week, spent half in transit and half on the attempts to pull together a life--learn the job, set up the house, figure out what food to ask for and where to buy the various objects always necessary after a move. All I know for certain is that the food is delicious and everyone smiles. Once we buy a motorbike I'll figure the rest out.

In the mornings I'm at Thidamaepra School, a shiny modern ring of a building that encircles 2000 children and a handful of nuns. I teach three sections of Intensive English Program second-graders, fifty-five to a class. This week I instructed them on demonstratives and body parts while their Thai teacher menaced the troublemakers with a ruler. They give us free food at lunchtime and when we walk through the building dozens of little hands surround us for high-fives and "Hello Teacher!" comes at us from all angles.

In the afternoons I'm at Super English, the school that hired us. Here I have two classes of ten kids, aged four to six. Since I'm alone with them and they don't understand a word I'm saying, keeping the situation under control has been a bit of a challenge. But they have fat cheeks and call me 'Teacher Sawee" so it's pretty hard to get irritated. After finishing classes, it's a short walk to a one-dollar dinner of curry or noodles.

It's all still a blur of spicy food and sleepiness; I don't think it's really hit me that I'm here. This weekend we're shopping for a bike and I'm gonna get this place figured out.

PS I'll keep this blog at its current address, despite the fact that I am no longer anywhere near Europe.

f scott

'It was lonely for a day or so until one morning some man, more recently arrived than I, stopped me on the road. "How do you get to West Egg village?" he asked helplessly. I told him. And as I walked on I was lonely no longer. I was a guide, a pathfinder, an original settler. He had casually conferred on me the freedom of the neighborhood.'

I've just reread The Great Gatsby for the umpteenth time, having left it alone for an unusually long spell of two years, and this quote caught my attention. I had no recollection of it, and given my almost embarrassing level of familiarity with this book, I have to assume that it had always simply seemed too inconsequential to commit to memory.

But when I encountered it the other day, it struck me that I've experienced precisely this feeling in Zafra, where lost-looking tourists occasionally wander through empty streets during siesta hours and, in either desperation or ignorance, overlook the fact that I hardly have the face of a person who might know her way around a southern Spanish village. In speaking to them, I find I recognize their accents, that in their heavy esses and lispy dees I hear Madrid and Andalusia, not the mysteriously vague 'somewhere in Spain' I heard two years ago. Moreover, I know exactly where to send them. This is no great accomplishment, considering that they always ask for the central tourist sites, which are more or less concentrated within a small circle that also encompasses my apartment, but I can't help but indulge in a moment of self-satisfaction. It pains me a bit now to leave that comforting mastery behind.

Leaving always makes me sentimental. Just yesterday I spoke with a friend from college who is packing to move away from our beautiful campus town. As my flurry of reminiscence was reaching its crescendo she reminded me, quite truthfully, that it's not the place I miss, but the time. I was tired of Bloomington's spirit, of drunk freshman and pretension, and I'm tired of Zafra's isolation and immutability. But despite the cons list, it's hard to let go of such a great time.

el rollo de los visados

Getting a visa is a real bitch. In Argentina, the process included a thirteen-hour vigil in a sweltering warehouse-turned-public-office in a ghetto of Buenos Aires. To come to Spain, I made two trips to Chicago (a three-hour drive from my hometown) and spent weeks waiting for various papers with various official stamps from Washington, Madrid, Mérida and, inexplicably, The Hague. Upon arrival in Spain, I paid four highly stressful visits to the federal police station in Almendralejo (Zafra being too small to merit national police), where I spent hours arguing with one of the most arrogant, mean-spirited people I've ever encountered before finally leaving (half in tears) with my residence card.

So, when I read the website of the Thai embassy in Madrid and learned of the apparently simple and straightforward process, I should have been more suspicious. They wanted merely a package, delivered by a private messenger company, containing our passports, resumés, the paperwork from our Thai school, and a police background check. Since neither of us are registered with the Spanish police, we ordered this last item from a online company in the US and sent everything off with the required 55 euros each (because apparently in Spain it's cool to mail cash).

After a few days of radio silence, I called the embassy. No one there spoke English and the Spanish of the receptionist was broken and heavily accented in a way with which I was completely unfamiliar, so the conversation was...tricky. The background checks are no good, she flatly informed me. You've clearly just gotten these off the internet. We need something official, something with a stamp and besides, we can't read English. Get an official translation. That should also have a stamp. (Our boss in Thailand had warned us of this Thai affinity for stamps but I still had trouble suppressing my laughter at her insistence on this point). There was no swaying her, and my phone credit was spent, so I gave up.

Peter, our boss in Thailand, advised us to show up at the embassy to smile, plead, and if it came to it, panic and cry. So we printed off more internet background checks (the tab for the endeavour is over 200 bucks at this point) and caught the immensely unpleasant midnight bus to Madrid. After killing the early morning hours in a cafè, we rang the doorbell at the embassy.

The consular officer, a gorgeous Thai woman not much older than me, turned out to be tough and sarcastic and visibly furious with her lot--we'd had several phone conversations at this point and she was entirely fed up with me. 'This is from the internet again!' she exclaimed, her hands actually shaking in her rapidly-escalating irritation. 'I'll have to talk to someone else. Come back at eleven.' She flashed us an forced smile (or maybe she was just baring her teeth) and turned to the next customer.

From a café down the street, we sent a slightly desperate e-mail to Peter, who we calculated would be in the middle of his workday and probably too busy to help. We knew we needed help from someone who spoke Thai, and thought maybe if someone made a phone call to halfway around the world...right this second, preferably...a bit of a Hail Mary. The e-mail remained unanswered and as we walked back to the embassy in the pouring rain, I tried to whip up some tears.

As we waited in the lobby, my Spanish cell phone rang and Peter, who had been trying to call the embassy since receiving my e-mail, told me that his Thai wife would call me in a moment, and that I was to give the phone to the woman. She called, and I passed it to the baffled and aggravated receptionist. We were clearly making no friends here, but we had confused them into complacence and harassed them into a state of such profound annoyance that they wanted only to be rid of us. Send us this one more paper, my pretty amiga told us, and you can have the visas. Triumphantly, we left the office in search of wifi to thank Peter and his wife for their incredible helpfulness.

The visas arrived in the mail on Monday; everything is all stamped and official. Only twelve days left in Zafra.

hablar

On a rainy weekend in mid-April, Levi and I got on a bus with forty adult English students and rode to Hervás, a beautiful Medieval town tucked into the snow-capped mountains of northern Extremadura. The group of students came from the Official Language School in Almendralejo, a small city near Zafra. The activity was a three-day language immersion. Levi and I, along with four language school teachers and nine other native speakers, were to see to it that not a word of Spanish was uttered all weekend.

I had expected it to be formal, maybe a bit tedious, but we actually had a fantastic time. Every hour I met with a different group of three or four students to play games, take a walk, have a beer, or just talk. Saturday night everyone piled into a little rec center at our campground and learned some highly effective American drinking games, much to the displeasure of the rent-a-cops. On Sunday we took a hike into the village. We stayed in a cute little cabin with four Spanish guys, all of whom we've met up with since. It was a great weekend.

Borrowed from the internet because my pictures are on my crashed harddrive, but this is a good representative shot of the town

At dinner with our cabin mates

The whole group

pre-tailandia

In my experience with movement, particularly of the intercontinental variety, I've learned that it is entirely possible to be in two places at once, and in the case of life-altering relocation, I find it actually quite unavoidable. Three weeks ago, our contracts came in the mail from Thailand, a thick brown paper package with an elephant stamp, and ever since I've had my mind in Surat Thani while my feet remain stubbornly planted on Extremeño soil. Recent days have been full of paperwork and embassy phone calls, exposing me to the tricky animal that is Thai-accented Spanish and reaffirming my conviction that bureaucracy is the most maddening of all human innovations.

During classes I'm talking about my impending move with my students, who tend to think I'm a lunatic for going so far (presumably forgetting that I'm already over 4000 miles from my hometown). Between classes I'm making to-do lists and shopping lists--purchase shoes because apparently Thais have tiny feet and my size 8s will want for accommodation; call the embassy again because of something about visas and probably they want more money; now the airline won't take the credit card and they've made the dubious decision to handle customer service via Twitter, so spend the next few hours darting to the computer every spare moment to see if they've finally chosen mine out of the barrage of 140-character requests. My ever-tranquilo boyfriend is, predictably, relaxed and laughing at my frenzied state. But the truth is, I'm so excited that I'm loving the preparations. 

When not intensely engaged in logistical planning or Google Image Search daydream sessions, I'm making what I will (at the risk of being self-congratulatory) call a valiant effort at getting the most out of the remaining weeks here. My spirits have been only slightly dampened by the sudden appearance of the long-delayed rainy season, and I've been Spanishing it up with the best of them, all wine and campo and four-hour meals with friends. In moments of marinated pork loin, full-volume laughter in the plaza, and sunny walks through the freshly-bloomed wildflower fields, it hits me how much I will miss this place.

pascua

It's Holy Week, the eight-day culmination of Lent and one of the most important of the multitude of annual Spanish festivals. Every morning and evening from Palm Sunday to the day of the Resurrection, lavish, melancholy processions march down the streets. Somber-faced marching bands led by wailing horns and funereal snares are followed by groups of white-robed men in conic hats (who bear an unfortunate but meaningless likeness to an infamous group of American paraders). Children in hooded robes carry long candles, their partially-obscured faces eerily illuminated by the flickering orange light.

But when the procession pauses for a breather, the masks, hoods, and trumpets are lowered and the sinister effect vanishes. Mothers and fathers come forward to adjust robes while grandparents snap photos. Children in the crowd seek out their candle-bearing friends to add a layer or two to the balls of wax they've been creating for years. The atmosphere is noisy and festive for a few minutes until a whistle blows and everyone scrambles back into place. 

As they slowly tread forward, a float appears in the door of the church, at the tail of the procession. The base is about eight feet high and draped in a white cloth, under which shuffle the feet of twenty pallbearers. Atop the base is the image of a day of the story. On Palm Sunday, the carved wooden man of honor rides in on his painted donkey, followed by tiny Jerusalemites, who occasionally wander off course and are redirected by a nearby parent. On Monday, Mary floats above the crowd, surrounded by dozens of tea candles, trailing a fifteen-foot crimson robe, and crying enamel tears from her painted eyes. On Friday they bear Jesus through the streets bleeding from his cross, and on Easter Sunday he's triumphant, his crown of thorns replaced with silver. 

To be honest, the whole thing strikes me as pretty morbid. The pageantry is impressive and there's a certain emotional power in the mournful Mediterranean tunes, but the whole affair could do with less blood and fewer tears. Some of our Spanish friends love it, but others have described it as an annual annoyance that serves only to clog up the bars with tourists. One friend characterizes it as an opportunity for the hypocritical to express their faith in a public show of ostentatious and affected mourning. Having only been through it twice, my feelings on the matter aren't nearly so strong. But since we're all just celebrating nature's annual rebirth anyway, I think it's much more cheerful to do it with painted eggs and marshmallow peeps. 

But after the procession passes the plaza, the crowd disperses and the incense-laden air clears. The devout will follow for the duration of the four-hour procession through the town, but most scurry back to the cafe tables they've saved with scarves and purses, agreeing with enthusiastic nods that the spectacle was beautiful. Children splash up water at the fountain and chase each other around the palms. Little girls run among the tables, their white shoes flashing as they fly, hair ribbons trailing behind brown curls. Somewhere east, the procession is alive again, its tragic trumpets carrying on the evening breeze and mingling with the plaza laughter.

graduation goggles

We're on the cusp of spring. The winter clouds have dispersed to reveal that persistent Mediterranean sun, the storks have returned to their belfry nests, and the mountainside has begun sprouting its carpet of purple and yellow flowers. People walk down the streets dabbing their allergen-assaulted eyes, but not even the pollinated air can keep the heliophilic Spaniards from their plaza cervezas. They leap from bar to bar, chasing the afternoon sun as it slowly abandons the square.

Only eleven weeks left in Zafra. At the end of May we'll set out on the 50-hour journey to Madrid, Moscow, Bangkok, and finally Surat Thani, where we'll be moving into a big house with seven English teachers and enjoying the city life again. Surat's a bit bigger than Bloomington. It has fast food restaurants, shopping malls, and internet cafes. I can't help but laugh at the notion of leaving Europe to move to the modern world of the monsoon-plagued, pit-viper infested southern Thailand, but I guess leaving Zafra for most places in like stepping into the future.

I'll miss this little time capsule of a town, with its cold sunshine wine, its noisy, friendly, musical people, its ancient belltowers and terra cotta rooftops and cobblestone plazas. I'm excited to start something new, but as my time here winds down, I'm beginning to reflect on how wonderful this place has been for me. I'm a better person than I was before I threw away my law school apps and left my comfy Midwestern life, and I've got Zafra to thank for that.

rupestre

In a country as Catholic, carnivorous, and festival-happy as Spain, it's little surprise that Carnival, the four-day lead-up to the Lent, is something of an occasion here. They did what they are wont to do; lights when up on the streets in the town center, a stage was erected in the plaza and an MC hired. Then in they came, from Zafra and from all the quiet little villages, dressed as pirates and hippies and princesses, to shake it to those persistent Mediterranean beats until the cleaning crews moved in at 7am.

It's fun, but the repetition wears me down. When Friday dawned warm and blue, I decided to blow it off and spend my five-day weekend in pursuit of the history of the Castellar. A book I've mentioned before promised cave paintings, and really, you can only listen to so much Shakira.

So Levi and I spent every day walking the paths and scaling the rocks of the ridges, and what we found totally validates my decision to be anti-social.

I know sadly little about this stuff, but I'm looking into it. All of this stuff was found along the mile-long ridge, scattered among 6 or 8 different sites. I'll go back and map it soon. For now, here's some photos.

A pendant and a spearhead, found on the highest ridge of the Castellar. These we (obviously) took home with us.

Series of dots in a pattern I can't make out. Ideas?

Sun on the cliff face

Another sun a few yards from the first, this one with a dot in the center. Below it to the left is a stick figure animal.

Inside a cave on the ridge.The leaf is my personal favorite painting.

In cave 2.

Levi investigating. Above his head is a bull's eye shape and some animals; to the right a leaf?

On the cliff face

In the first cave we found

olas

An old friend of Levi's decided to visit Madrid last weekend, so despite the bitter cold, we went to meet up with him and explore the city we'd only briefly seen during paperwork visits. My previous impression had been a negative one, tainted by ugly bureaucratic buildings and 1960s commercial architecture, but I found myself pleasantly surprised by the beautiful, lively center of the city. We visited the famous plazas and parks, ate and drank in the exotic and varied sorts of places that don't exist in Zafra, and saw Picasso's Guernica at the Reina Sofia museum (it's surprisingly big). The highlight for me, in my ever-escalating nerdiness for the ancient, was a 2000-year-old temple, gifted to the city by the Egyptian government as a thanks for excavation assistance. It's a gorgeous little stone structure lined with miraculously intact hieroglyphics and altarpieces, dedicated to Isis and Amun and decorated by the Ptolemies and later completed by Augustus and Tiberius. I could have stayed in there all day.

We're budget travelers, (to put it gently; the more truthful description is that we cut every corner except wine and beer), so while Mike stayed in a comfortable, centrally-located hostel, Levi and I squeezed ourselves into the top bunk of a 20-year-old Romanian exchange student in a downtown expat neighborhood.

To explain:

Since moving to Europe, Levi and I have been couchsurfing, a strange and ostensibly reckless activity to most sane Westerners. The basic principle is simple enough: you put a facebook-like profile on couchsurfing.org, describing yourself and, if you are able/willing, offering up your couch or spare bedroom to complete strangers who might happen to be passing through your town. When you travel, you search for profiles of people living in your destination, and rather than paying for a hotel, you go sleep in their house.

While I recognize that it sounds like the beginning of a 90s slasher flick, or at least a desperate plea to be robbed blind, I've come to regard it as one of the best things the internet has to offer. In the ten or so times I've surfed or hosted surfers, I haven't had a single negative experience, nor have I met anyone who has. The system works on references, so when someone asked to stay with us, we can read all the things previous hosts have said about them, and thus far, all the references have turned out to be perfectly true. Even when we've taken the risk and stayed with a unreferenced newbie, it's been great.

I stayed with a group of happy-go-lucky Brazilian guys in Dublin and spent a great weekend with them and two German girls they were hosting. In Zafra, I stayed with a super hospitable Spanish woman who found us our apartment and would become a friend, student, and travel buddy. In Lisbon we spent 5 days in a gorgeous downtown apartment with a lifelong local who took us to his favorite restaurants and cafes. We've hosted twenty-somethings from France, the Czech Republic, Poland, Britain, America, Germany, and Austria; a Italian family with an 8-year-old daughter who knew only enough English to ask for juice, and a 70-year-old Englishman who had spent most of his adult life in Venezuela and skyped his son in Spanglish.

This most recent couchsurf landed us in Lavapiés, a trendy, bustling, international neighborhood a metro stop away from the city center. Despite the cold, the playgrounds, plazas, and sidewalk cafes were always alive with people speaking an incredible array of languages, moving in and out of the Indian, Mexican, Lebanese and Japanese restaurants. Our Romanian host lives in a small flat with a Polish couple, a French guy and a girl from Portugal. They are all students with Erasmus, a Europe-wide university exchange program, and they´re studying in English, although it's the native language of none of them.

The whole weekend was a perfect portrait of a modern, amalgomated European culture. Living in the very Spanish town of Zafra, it's easy to forget that this a globalized, progressive, diverse world exists here, and couchsurfing is a great lifeline to that world.

training

Zafra enjoys a regional reputation and an ideal place for families and thus, despite its relatively small size, it is positively overflowing with children and teenagers. Partially because of its smallness and resulting lack of resources, but primarily due to its utter Spanishness, these hoards of under-18s, organized into their lifelong cliques and bands, entertain themselves by walking. They meet up in the plazas and parks and wander the streets in groups of five to ten kids, stopping at every snack store for gummies and chips. They storm cafes and restaurants, where sympathetic proprietors leave jugs of water on the bar to hydrate the kids in their roving. A few stop for a joint in the park, and some of the older ones dress up and try their luck at the less scrupulous pubs, but most are content to simply pass the evening engaging in that most Spanish of activities: socializing in the street. Groups come together, kisses are exchanged, gossip and small talk traded, and then the groups divide and move to the next block, to the next meeting. They're not going somewhere; the point is just the going, always with the expectation of not-so-chance encounters.

In the winter months, when temperatures occasionally hit freezing late at night and rain is more frequent, this activity loses some of its appeal. The American answer to this quandary is, naturally, to go to a friend's house. The problem here is that the group of close friends of the average Spanish teenager is not limited to the eight or so kids who join him on his evening walks, but rather extends to every one of those dozens of members of groups he meets. I once asked an eighth-grade student why he didn't just have his friends come hang out in his sizable living room. "Well," he said, with a tone that implied that I was missing something very obvious,"there are thirty-five of us."

The solution is the local. These thirty-five thirteen-year-olds pool their allowances and rent an empty office. Presumably borrowing from their parents' houses, they stock it with furniture and spend the cold evenings there with their mob of friends.

My parents would have never allowed this (for good reason), nor would have any other American parent I know. It would never have even occurred to me to request permission for such a thing. And what landlord would open his property to three dozen unsupervised kids?

But all my students insist that although the privilege is occasionally abused, the true purpose is just innocent socializing, and seem honestly confused that I would assume anything different. The mindset is just different here. Socializing with every person you know every single weekend is the normal course of things here, and when the weather prohibits street wandering, why should your social life suffer? They don't seem to be abusing the old-fashioned naivete of their parents, but actually provide it to be sound wisdom. It's Pleasantville.

But I suppose it's a means of feeding that natural Spanish lust for socialization and bonding. From the very beginning, they have their group, and they're not ever to be parted with them, especially not for something so trivial as cold rain or insufficient space. Because later in life they will drift bar to bar with that same core group, stopping for a drink in each place with the same satellite groups, exchanging kisses and gossip and small talk before going for a snack at the next tapas bar.