Another Privilege

Last week I had a really interesting conversation with one of my Thai friends, Ton, about speaking English as a first language. The conversation started with him asking me one simple question, was thankful to be born into an English speaking family? I literally paused for 30 seconds before I answered the question. I said I have always been thankful for so many things in my life, but it has never occurred to me to be thankful for having English as a first language. He then proceeded to tell me how lucky I was to understand English because it gives me the power to travel and communicate with so many different people. I guess I had always understood that, but never really appreciated it until now.

Growing up, especially in a private school, there was always an underlying pressure to learn a foreign language. I decided to take French. I vividly remember people giving me a hard time for not taking Spanish, assuring me that in my lifetime all the street signs in America would be written in both English and Spanish. I was a fool for not learning the language that was growing so quickly in the US. Additionally, as a traveler, especially an English speaking traveler in a non-English speaking country, arrogance was always tied to speaking English and not attempting to speak the native language. I always felt it was something Americans were judged for, the reliability of using the English language. For that reason, it has legitimately never occurred to me to be something to be thankful for.

Then I looked at it from Ton’s perspective. If he wants to do anything outside of Thailand, from traveling to doing business, his native language becomes obsolete. He has to rely on a second or third language. At that point I realized just how lucky I am. I know no matter where I go in the world I will most likely run into someone who speaks at least a little English. That by no means gives me an excuse to not learn another language, especially when traveling, but I know if I ever really get stuck I can fall back on speaking English. Ton doesn’t have that luxury.

On top of that, the Thai government is now putting a huge pressure on students to learn English. They are bringing in native teachers, like us, to teach in schools across the country and they are including English language tests on all their University entrance exams. Ton told me whenever a Thai person sees a foreigner (like me) in Thailand; it is their responsibility to make me feel comfortable by speaking English. I was shocked by this statement. I told him it was 100% my responsibility to speak Thai because I am living in Thailand, but he refused to accept this. So I said if he comes to America, will I have to learn Thai to make him feel comfortable? He thought about this and then said no. He said speaking English is the most important because it is so universal, so it is language we will use everywhere.

Now as a slight disclaimer, Ton is dating Allie, who is an American teaching in Suphan right now. He is surrounded by foreigners who he wants to communicate with, giving him more incentive to learn English then many other Thai people. However, I do believe this conversation with him has brought to light, at least for me, many of the advantages of having English as a first language. I can see it now as something to be thankful for, instead of something that makes me arrogant or unwilling to learn. So now I owe Ton a huge thank you, for again making me realize just how lucky I really am.

Valentine's Day

I just wanted to write a quick post about Valentine's Day because it is a huge holiday in Thailand. Everyone, adults and children alike, seems to enjoy celebrating a day that to most Americans is merely a Hallmark holiday. Thai people 100% hold up their reputation of being so kind hearted and loving, and Valentine's Day is just an over the top, extremely enjoyable, outward expression of these characteristics.

In school in Thailand they celebrate a little bit differently. The biggest difference was that no one handed out cards. Most of the schools in Thailand are far to large to hand out cards to all your classmates, so instead they use stickers. They all buy different heart shaped stickers and stick them on the shirts of people they care about. Let me tell you, if you're ever feeling down on yourself, be a teacher in Thailand on Valentine's Day. There is already an infatuation with us because we are foreigners, but that emotion is put on turbo drive on Valentine's Day. All the students want to put a sticker on your shirt and, if you're lucky, give you a rose (real!) or chocolate. Everyone is always wishing you a happy Valentine's Day or showering you with the few words of affection they know in English...teacher we love you, teacher you're so beautiful, teacher is too cute...and so on. It really was an amazing day to be a teacher.

Here is a picture of Andrew and Me after they day was over with our stickers and roses.

After school was over I was lucky enough to spend the van ride home with my favorite Valentine. He is around 5 years old and is in our van every day we come to and from school. If the van ever gets to school before we come outside, he runs out looking for us. Here are two pictures of us enjoying what turned out to be probably one of the best Valentine's Days ever.

Culture Shock

Yesterday, for probably the first time, I experience intensive culture shock. Obviously when you move to a country that is so far away from your home you expect to encounter a culture that is very different. I came here with an open mind, ready to learn new things and take a view at life from a different angle. But this was something I never expected...

I get paid a salary monthly, all in cash. At first I didn't mind this because it meant I always had cash on me and I have safe place to store it in my apartment. But Ciana and I have been trying to save up for our travels and we realized we would rather not go around SE Asia with that much cash on us. Plus, we have started to buy plane tickets online for these travels, and we want to use our Baht, not American dollars. So we decided to open bank accounts. Our coordinator took us to the bank the school uses, and after two different trips we finally got the accounts open.

First difference between banks here and at home: if you want to get an ATM or Debit card, you have to pay for it. It was 400 Baht for us to purchase a debit card, but we figured it was worth it to be able to use it online. So we get our cards and the lady at the bank tells us the accounts are ready to go. We get home that afternoon and go to book our plane tickets to Vietnam, and Ciana's card gets denied. I figured it was probably just a time lag in setting up the account even though she said it would be ready. So I tried to buy the tickets on Sunday, and my card was denied. We are trying to buy these tickets on Air Asia, which is a very finicky website (it won't accept Bank of America) so we decide to try and book a hostel with it. Surprise surprise, it gets denied again. So yesterday we tell our coordinator and she takes us back to the bank.

We get to the bank and go straight for the ladies that were helping us last time. We tell them, through our coordinators translations, that we can't set up online banking and we our cards aren't being accepted online. This conversation probably takes 20 minutes. Our coordinator is getting confused on what the problem is and the bank lady is asking questions that I think our coordinator was finding hard to translate. She keeps telling us we need to enter the number on the back of the card (like 10 different times), and we are like WE KNOW we use online banking all the time. Then they told us we should enter our account number instead of the 16 digit card number. We were like no...it doesn't work that way. Then another lady comes up and tries to help us. She proceeds to ask us if it's a place that accepts visa...OF COURSE IT'S A PLACE THAT ACCEPTS VISA! Then she said it probably doesn't work because it's a debit card, and again we say no because we can use our American debit cards online all the time. Finally, this new lady understands that we are talking about using it on the computer (somehow she thought we were talking about a store) and goes oh no no no, while laughing, of course it doesn't work on the computer. This happened probably an hour and a half after we walked in the door.

Then the culture shock sets in. It is basically unheard of in Thai culture to buy something online. They always use cash and buy things at the store. Ciana and I were shocked. Our coordinator started asking what kind of things we buy online and how it gets to us if we don't get it in a store. She was seriously befuddled at the thought of buying something online. Who knew that something we consider so basic, so much a part of everyday life, would be so foreign to them and create so much confusion for us.

This was probably the first time I was legitimately frustrated since I've been in Thailand. We had one simply question, why doesn't it work online, and no one seemed to be able to answer that question. Eventually we realized that was just the beginning of a huge cultural schism.

We did some research when we got home about Thai banks, and it turns out we could only find ONE that says the card will work online. So now I think were going to close the bank accounts we have now and switch to this new bank. Wish us luck with this crazy endeavour!

My January Travels

So this is my attempt to catch up on my blog in one post. January, as you all know, has been a very hectic month for me. First, Phuket for New Years. Ciana, Olivia, Allie and I headed down Thursday night on an overnight bus. When we arrived Friday morning we were a little bummed because it was raining. We decided this wasn't so bad because it would save us from the sun and dehydration before the crazy night ahead of us. We checked into our hostel, got some food, did some shopping and took a much needed nap. Our evening began with a party our hostel was throwing for all of its guests, which included dinner (free AND delicious!) and different 'getting to know you' games. After it was finished we headed to the beach with some new friends and partied the night away. It was a perfect way to ring in 2011.

Ciana, Me, Olivia and Allie on the beach

The rest of the weekend was spent tanning, shopping and eating delicious Mexican food. We left Sunday night, arriving back in Suphan Monday morning. We 'taught' class on Tuesday, but really took a trip to Ayuttaya to finalize our work permits and check in with immigration. (As a foreigner living in Thailand you have to check in with immigration every 90 days, no matter how long you've been here.) Then Tuesday night we were off again, heading north to Chiang Mai to visit my friend Riley who I met studying abroad in New Zealand. We arrived Wednesday morning and spent the next two days exploring and relaxing. Chiang Mai is a very artsy/hipster/university town that is unlike any other place I've been to in Thailand. It was amazing getting a glimpse into Riley's life there (she's a teacher at Chiang Mai University) and comparing it to my own experience. It was also really refreshing to see a city for the first time from an insider perspective and not as a tourist. We had a great time eating so much food (especially ripe mango and avocado), riding around with 3 people on a motor bike, meeting Riley's friends and exploring a new town.

An average street in the Old City of Chiang Mai

The sunset from Riley's apartment

Ciana, Me and Riley at her impromptu birthday party

After four great days we headed back to Suphan, arriving Sunday morning. We had to teach Monday and Tuesday and then it was off on our final adventure, Koh Phi Phi. Koh Phi Phi is where Leo filmed The Beach and arguably the best beach in the world. After having been there I can attest, it was the most beautiful beach I have ever seen. Plus, the entire island has been developed for backpackers (it immediately became a must see for backpackers traveling around SE Asia after the movie premiered.) So basically this is my heaven on Earth. A stunning beach filled with people from all over the world who just want to explore and meet each other. The cherry on top? It has some of the best dive sites in Thailand. As soon as we arrived I knew it was going to be very hard to leave. We spent the next 4 days tanning, exploring Koh Phi Phi Don (where we stayed), Koh Phi Phi Le (a neighboring, uninhabited national park) and smaller surrounding islands, meeting lots of people and eating and drinking a little too much. It was the perfect way to end our little vacation stint and I cannot wait to go back!

The beach on Koh Phi Phi

A beautiful lagoon on Koh Phi Phi Le

The sunset at the end of our boat tour around the islands

Side note: This is merely the spark notes versions of our trips. It seemed too daunting to write full blog posts for each trip, and a sure fire way to guarantee that I never caught up. If you want any more details just let me know, I would be more than happy to talk about them!

The rest of January has been spent relaxing, re-cooperating and teaching two full weeks (the first time that has happened this semester). It was a little harder then I imagined to get back into the swing of things, but I think I'm finally there. Now it's off to Kanchanaburi for the weekend!

Jim Thompson Farm

Here is my desperate attempt to catch up on my blog posts. Hopefully I will have two posted between today and tomorrow so I can be on track before our traveling madness starts. First, let me explain our traveling extravaganza. This Thursday night I will be on an overnight bus down to Phuket to celebrate New Years with three other girls from my program. We will be there until Monday morning when we return back to Suphanburi. Ciana and I will teach classes on Tuesday, then leave Tuesday night to head up to Chiang Mai (our Wednesday-Friday classes were cancelled because all of our students are taking exams.) We will return on Sunday, teach Monday and Tuesday, and then leave again Tuesday night mostly likely for Koh Phi Phi (again our Wednesday-Friday classes were cancelled because the students are going to scout camp.) Soo basically if I don't catch up now I feel like I will forever be behind, so here it goes...

The weekend of December 17th a bunch of us decided to stay in Suphanburi to save money and relax a little bit. Friday was the first truly cool day we've had since we got here, so when we went out that night we had the pleasure of being comfortable in jeans and a cardigan (it was amazing!) A bunch of us went out to dinner then headed to two different bars around town. While we were at the first bar, I had the opportunity to try dried squid. The picture says it all...

(Olivia loved it, I thought it was disgusting, haha)

All in all it was a nice night out on the town. Saturday we relaxed, ran some errands and went to bed early to prepare for our adventure the next day, the Jim Thompson farm. This is an organic farm our coordinator wanted to take us to. Jim Thompson is a famous British artist in Thailand, many people go to see his house in Bangkok, who incorporates art into his organic farm. It is only open 3 weeks out of the year to tourists, and it happened to open that weekend. So Sunday morning we were picked up at 5am and started on the 3 hour van ride to the farm. Let me tell you, Thais do road trips very differently then we do in my family. We literally stopped every half an hour to get food or walk around or get gas. This made sleeping very difficult. Then, once we finally get going and are almost there, the van breaks down. We end up pulling over and up to a roadside mechanic. They jack up the van (with 9 of us in it) and proceed to work on it for an hour. So now we are all stuck in a stuffy van for an hour while they figure out whats wrong. Finally they fix the problem and we are on our way again. Once we get there we immediately realize we were foolish for thinking it would be like an organic farm in the states. It is basically patches of flowers or pumpkins and a bus that takes you between them all. The whole set up is geared for tourists and displaying art, not at all for farming, so we were a little disappointed. Regardless, we decided to embrace this touristy farm and take some pretty ridiculous photos...in true Thai style.

The bus that drove us around the 'farm'

Loving relaxing on the hammock...it was underneath a house on stilts, one of the many art installments

Ryan (a teacher who came with us from Suphanburi) and me playing in the pumpkin patch.

(Thai people, for whatever reason, LOVE putting pumpkins on their heads)

Olivia, Ryan and me relaxing on a bean bag pumpkin

H.M. The King's Birthday

As I have come to learn in my 2 months of being here, Thais love a good celebration. The semester thus far has been littered with holidays and time off, which have turned into opportune travel times. December 5th was the Kings birthday and also a national holiday. However, because it fell on a Sunday, the holiday was celebrated on Monday which meant no school for us. (In addition to no school on Monday, we had no classes the Wednesday, Thursday or Friday prior so our school could throw an exhibition to celebrate the King.) After much deliberation, we decided our first three day weekend was a perfect time to hit the beach. We knew we couldn't travel too far, so our destination became Koh Samet, an island in the Gulf of Thailand that is close to Bangkok. It is a big tourist spot for Thai people in Bangkok because it is close, but has the beauty of a lot of the beaches down south. We left after school on Friday, traveled to the ferry town of Ban Phe, spent a night there, and arrived on Koh Samet early Saturday morning. We spent two and a half glorious days in the sun, relaxing and celebrating.

Playing an English quiz game about the King during the Exhibition

Olivia relaxing on the beach at Koh Samet

Everyone at dinner

On Sunday night, at midnight, everyone was handed a lit candle as they played the King's song over loudspeakers. They also lit a huge sign on the beach that said Long Live the King. The song played and everyone sang until the large sign burned out. It was a pretty amazing opportunity to see such devotion in all these party-going Thai people. They really do love their King and I'm so happy they let us join in on the celebration.

We returned home from our mini vacation with a short, 3 day week of school. December 10th was Constitution Day, another national holiday, so we didn't have school on Friday. After our crazy weekend on the beach we decided to take it easy and head to Khao Yai National Park to do some trekkinng and adventuring. Let me tell you, it was an adventure. We got there late Thursday night, so we spent Friday morning relaxing. Friday afternoon we had a half day trip where went swimming in a natural spring, explored a cave, and right at dusk watched something like 3 million bats leave their cave for their evening feeding. It was insane.

Olivia, me and Chelsea swimming in the spring

A short portion of the never ending line of flying bats

Afterwards we headed home and to bed to prepare for our full day of hiking. We woke up at 6am on Saturday and headed into the National Park for what promised to be an adventure.

Chelsea, Olivia, me and Ciana

We were driving along the windy road and then stopped it was seemed to be a very nondescript area. We then headed into the woods. No trail, no nothing. We were lead by a Thai guide named Jib, who was amazing. He has been leading tours for 10 years and knew the woods like the back of his hand. We looked at many different bird and plant species, working our way to a thundering waterfall. Once we got there, he assured us it was safe to jump, so I took the plunge. It was amazing!

After climbing up along the side of the waterfall, we all enjoyed a snack and then keep trekking. We were traveling along the river and let me tell you, it was not easy. We were jumping between rocks, climbing up rock cliffs and assuring each other this was, in fact, something we could all do. On the way we were lucky enough to see a Gibbon! This is one of our closest primate relatives and are not easily spotted, so I was SUPER excited to see one. We also made pit stops at two more waterfalls along the way, the second of which was in the movie The Beach. It was so beautiful, but filled with tourists, so after our photo opp we decided to leave.

Literally scaling the side of a small rock cliff

Gibby the Gibbon!

Us at the second waterfall

The whole tour at the waterfall from The Beach

Afterwards we had lunch in the park and relaxed for a little, before starting our elephant siting adventure. Jib warned us that the likelihood was low because SO many people were in the park that weekend, but we would try anyways. Sure enough, after about half an hour, we spotted 4-5 elephants along the side of the road. We slowed down to drive by, when one of the elephants starting charging our car. It was nerve wrecking to say the least. But then, we turn around and try to drive by them again! There is now a traffic jam of all the cars that are too afraid to pass, but we pass them all and head for the elephants again. And what do they do? They charge...again. Our driver threw the car in reverse and started backing into all the other cars. Once we joined the other cars the elephant hung back. Finally a ranger car came and drove straight at the elephant, which forced it off the road, making it safe for us to drive by again and return back to the hostel.

The elephant before it decided to charge our car

All in all it was an exhilarating and exhausting day, and I would do it again in a heartbeat. I look forward to going back sometime later this year.

Loy Krathong, Thanksgiving and an English Competition

So I know these posts are a little behind...but I'm working on it! On the 21st of November was the holiday Loy Krathong. This holiday is all about thanking the water god for the ability to use water and also asking for forgiveness for any misuse of water over the past year. The celebration is usually held at night when people release Krathongs, which are usually made of bread, leaves, flowers and a candle, and made previously that week, down the river. You typically release a Krathong with your significant other. Side note--we learned from our coordinator that it's a very popular night for teenage couples to loose their virginities. In addition to being a holiday of thanks, its a holiday of romance, second only to Valentines Day (which they take VERY seriously here.) So Ciana and I spent the evening with our coordinator along the Suphanburi river watching all the festivities.

A Krathong

Krathongs floating down the Suphanburi river

A float of various images to celebrate the holiday

The following Thursday was Thanksgiving. It was my first Thanksgiving away from home, and let me tell you I definitely missed the food. We tried to put something resembling a Thanksgiving dinner together, but it wasn't quite the same. There were about 12 farangs, or foreign white people, that gathered together at Lin's, which is the restaurant across the street from our apartment. We had chicken, rice, stir fried veggies and KFC mashed potatoes and gravy tying it all together. Leave it to American fast food to save the day. We all went around the table and shared what we were thankful for and then dug in. The meal was topped off with fresh pineapple and Chinese donuts dipped in sweetened condensed milk. Not quite the same as pumpkin pie, but delicious nevertheless.

Chelsea, me, Ciana, Andrew, Christie, Peter, Laura, Chris, Cassie, Olivia and Jenny all enjoying our Thanksgiving dinner

Family style veggies, rice and chicken

KFC pulling the meal together with gravy and mashed potatoes

The Saturday after Thanksgiving was our first English competition. As I have learned, these students are basically in school every day. They oftentimes travel into Bangkok, or nearby cities, on Saturdays and Sundays so they can go to class. This is obviously so they can improve their education but also, I swear, so they can win more competitions. It seems like almost every weekend there is a different competition in a different subject. On Saturday a school near ours hosted a competition with 85 different participating schools. The students had to express knowledge of many different subjects in English. My competition in particular was technology and English. The students had to read an entry that was about a page long, answer 5 questions about the entry, then send their answers to us via Skype. Why Skype? I have no idea. I don't know anyone who uses Skype to send files...but that's what they had to do. Afterwards, they picked a topic out of a had and had 10 minutes to prepare a 2-3 minute speech. They had to deliver their speech to us by calling us on Skype. This task seemed like a little more appropriate, but it still seemed bizarre that we were all sitting in one computer room but had to listen to the student speak through the computer. Oh well. In the end we actually had a pretty good time and it was interesting to see exactly what a competition was like. I'm sure it will be the first of many.