currently listening to...

genius.

"you know when i'm down to my socks it's time for business, that's why they call them business socks."

a particularly good weekend

...means that i had no time at all to do laundry. is it weird that i find it satisfying that i was so busy that i now have no clean underwear?

on saturday i went with my co-teacher and her husband to the neighboring village of Ban Don (where i had a good community day last month), Ban Nattai to visit homes/parents of students. this was yet another community that FELT like a community. small streets in between houses, generally a more "neighborly" feel than my street. curiously, i thought a visit to the students' houses would mean talking to the parents about the students' progress in school. not so. my co-teacher had a questionnaire that she filled out by asking the parents questions such as "where do you work? how much do you make?" and the students "do you help around the house? what do you like to do when you're at home?"

In Japan, they did something similar, but homeroom teachers visited the parents of their students. Here, the visit was split up by neighborhood and teachers may have interviewed students they have never met before. It was interesting.

Ban Nattai is a 50% Muslim community so there were kids wearing traditional garb:



they wear regular school uniform at school though. there were lots of cats at Ban Nattai:


this one i wanted to take home with me, but seeing as how i only manage to feed myself dinner about three days out of the week, i figure i probably shouldn't take on another living being. here's kitty playing with my camera strap:

afterwards, i got to see how rubber trees are sapped. the major crop down here in the south is rubber. i learned that 1 kilogram of it is 20baht (or 40. memory is hazy) but either way. jeez. how are people making money??

process: the bark is cut diagonally halfway around the trunk. this allows the sap to leak out and drip down into the coconut cup.
this is done at night when it's cool because otherwise the rubber will harden in the heat.


after that, had lunch with my co-teacher and her husband. went home to sleep away the food coma. got called down to the school at 5 where there is a wedding reception. still waaaay too stuffed to eat, however.

the reception ends at around 7, and pawaw his wife and i do our weekly thing of going to the saturday market. it's a small outdoor market and vendors sell everything from food to CDs to clothes to piercings. a few weeks ago, i saw a girl getting her tongue pierced. right there. in the middle of the stall. in the middle of the market. i prayed that the needle had been sanitized beforehand... and thought of audrey.

spent the night at pawaw's for my weekly homestay. this was something we had agreed upon when i did my site visit back in march. pawaw told me to come and do homestay at his house on the weekends. i wasn't too excited about this at first, but now i look forward to spending time with them and chatting, playing cards with my host brother Nine, and sleeping in my own air-conditioned room with big comfy mattress.

it's really nice to have a set routine. it especially helps when i'm having a slow weekend. i find that i get bored really quickly and it's nice to have the homestay to look forward to because it helps break up my boredom.

good weekend, part II

that post was getting too long.

so. sunday:

a long and tiring hot day that started by rolling out of town at 6:30 in the morning to drive into phuket. attended a man-becoming-a-monk party (the now-monk is part of my extended host family), lots of shopping in the middle, and finally rolled back into town around 6:30 in the evening.

note that i climbed into the car while talking to my mom (another weekly ritual) still groggy not knowing why we were heading into phuket or how long we were going to be there. it's the farang (foreigner) in thailand way. we just let ourselves get thai-napped and hope that we'll come home in one piece.

the monk party was more than just eating. the one other monk party i had been to, there was inappropriate dancing by scantily clad girls (pelvic gyrations! booty shaking! a pyramid with a girl doing both at the top!) and whiskey flowing all around.

this monk party served us food, and then got down to the actual rites of becoming a monk:

there was a procession around the wat (temple) with musicians leading the group. [they played the same beat that myself and the other trainees played at our goodbye party in sing buri. i failed miserably at the gong.] the new-monk followed the musicians and we (the friends/family/random farang taking way too many pictures) followed the new-monk. we clutched his robe as he walked. if you couldn't reach the new-monk's robe, you touched the person behind the new-monk who was holding onto the robe. i'm not sure exactly what this symbolized, perhaps connectedness? supporting each other? but ignorance aside, i participated and got prime spot behind new-monk:


we held on like this and circled the wat three times. after which, the new-monk prayed and became official.

blimey!

not surprisingly, i have a cockroach infestation. surprisingly, i have a cold. so tomorrow i'll be spraying the roaches and hoping the fumes clear up my sinuses.

care package

i'm sitting here surrounded with the reason why americans are fat ... and loving every sweet second of it.

my bff (apparently there are people out there my age who use this. thought i'd give it a whirl) jennifer lui sent me two kinds of licorice, a small fistful of honey sticks, some unidentified bulk bin candy, a package of dove smooth milk chocolate with almonds (hey, thanks for remembering i hate dark chocolate!). mmm. i plan on gorging on it all, attaining a hyper sugar high, possibly mopping my house and then crashing. it's going to be a good evening.

J.Lu also sent two shirts (and thank god. i've been depressed lately trying to find stuff that fit and failing miserably at the local market) and a "grow your own luck" lucky horseshoe. awesome!

it reminds me of the time when my underwear was stolen right off my clothesline in japan (the perv left one face towel swaying in the wind) and jennifer sent me some new victoria's secrets.

thanks jennifer, for brightening my day :).

a week in the life of..

now that i've got a semi-regular schedule, i feel like i can put it up.

MONDAY/TUESDAY
i work at a kindergarten through elementary school. 500 students. my host father is the principal, my host brother Nine is my student (4th grade) and so is my host cousin Book (5th grade). I co-teach grades 4, 5 and 6. my host cousin Bill is in the 3rd grade so will teach him starting next year. my host aunt is a science teacher. during my site visit in march, i spent a lot of time at this school and came in a few times during summer break during my first month at site. it definitely feels like home and i'm comfortable with the students and the teachers even though i still haven't been able to memorize all their names yet.

WEDNESDAY
my community day. your community day is what you make it. i've only had two so far and i've been using it to get to know people and to slowly understand my community.

THURSDAY/FRIDAY
i work at a kindergarten through grade 9 school. a little over 400 students. here, secondary school is called matteyom. our middle school grades 8-9 is their matteyom grades 1-3, from now on abbreviated as m.1-3. I co-teach m.2/1 (matteyom grade 2, class 1) four times over two days, m.3/1, and m.3/2. it's taking me a bit longer to find my rhythm at this school. i get very stressed and exhausted and on friday, i definitely rejoice the weekend. on the positive side, most of the kids are eager to learn. and the teachers like to chill and hang out.

this is the very short and sweet version. i'm feeling challenged by the work i see before me and i hope that i can make a difference.