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.