6.20.12

By the way, I was wrong about the rainy season having started. It was just a weekend rain storm. Has barely even drizzled since then.

And I found out that the double green striped “wen” is only 28 baht instead of 30 baht. Another 2 baht saved on transportation. Boom!

I have heard that you feel bad for a couple of days after a massage. And that Thai massage is particularly brutal. The areas she focused on the most definitely feel bruised. Neck, lower back on the right side, and right hip. Blah, blah, blah, toxins being released. Blah, blah, blah, not used to it. I will see how I feel in another couple days. I’m game to give it the good old college try and go again, but I’m not giving it too many more chances.

So, today was actually practice for Teacher’s Day. We did go to the assembly in the morning for a few minutes. They spent a lot of time on getting the students in to straight lines. Phil was able to translate. When we walked in, Pi Len was lecturing the students on their inability to form a straight line in a timely fashion. The lines looked pretty straight to me. At another point, she said something and Phil started laughing. She had just said, “Fat girls, you need to stand up straight.” Wow.

Spent about 20 minutes in the office and then they told us that we would, in fact, be teaching for the second half of our first class. Glad now that I had worked up a lesson plan. This class tended to be a little tardy, so once I took first role call, I locked the door so no one could just slip in unnoticed. Only a couple people were about ten minutes late. They apologized and I continued with my lesson. They had said for us to just play games since we had a short class, but I didn’t want my kids to get behind. This was the only class I had with them each week. And I needed to give them a quiz next week. With about 15 minutes left to class, I was writing some practice sentences for pronunciation. One of the students unlocked the door and two of the boys who were missing from class tried to mosey in. Nope. I stopped them at the door and said, “Absent.” No way was I going to let them show up to class 30 minutes late (when class was only 45 minutes long today) and get marked as late instead of absent. I would let Pi Len know about it later.

Successful lunch! When we got to the door and walked inside, we asked if they had food before we did anything else. Sure enough. The cook was back. Pat ordered tuna salad and I ordered a chicken sandwich. I don’t know if they actually had to kill and clean the chicken, but it took about half an hour to get our lunch. And we were the only ones there. I would hate to eat there during a rush…

The students spent most of the rest of the day on the ground floor making their floral arrangements for the following day. I don’t know if this is taught as part of their culture, but, wow, they are better than what you can get at most florists in the States. Works of art. Very impressive.

Patricia and I have determined that we will make a decision about housing by Thursday night. We are inclined to stay in Songkhla. Made a pros and cons list for both cities. Really the only thing that Hat Yai has going for it is closer proximity to the school. And that’s not a good enough reason to live there. Work isn’t the be all, end all.

At the end of the day, one of my students, Mike, brought me a rose from the displays they had been making. I’m not sure that he meant it for me originally, but he happened to be in the office with it while I was there. “Teacher, I have for you.” He is flamboyant and a drama queen and I love him to death.

A student named Ket drove me to the mini bus today. On her pink and white scooter. And she doesn’t even have any of my classes. I think they like to be able to help the teachers out when they can. I will need to think of some ‘thank yous’ for them.

It was a street-meat-and-fruit kind of night. I love that pork so much. It really is more like thick-cut, fatty bacon. And so delicious. When I got to the fruit stand, I introduced myself to the girl there. Her name is Nan. And her English is pretty good. I only got ‘wa-wa’. Yeah. So, I need to train my ear better. I got clarification on the fruit. It’s ‘guava’. Yes, guava. I had never had it before Thailand, so I didn’t know any better. And I expected it to be tart. And the ones they sell are unripe. I looked up ‘guava’ on Wiki and found that the kind they have here is referred to as the Apple Guava. Well, that makes sense. It is also the same word in Thai as ‘westerner’. “Farang”. The reason the word is the same is because guava are not indigenous to Thailand. I have heard that the Thais find it funny when they see a foreigner eating guava. “Farang eat farang!” I haven’t experienced that particular situation yet.