Dear America,

After about a seven-week process of drafting, writing, sending, and waiting for letters from across oceans and continents, between Nan, Thailand and All-Over-the-Place, U.S.A., my 6/2 students finally got to open their mail from America today.

They tore into those envelopes like Christmas presents, and spent the better half of class time analyzing every word on the page. "Aj. Caitlin, Jennifer is a boy or woman??? How old is Mary Paul?? WHAT is a lawyer? Is this you in this picture???" (pointing to any and every white women who showed up in letter-writers' enclosed photos).

Many thanks again to everyone who wrote!

Positive Attitude, Works Well With Others

Author's note: in honor of Hannah "Pipes" McDonald-Moniz's arrival in Asia this week, this post contains an inordinate amount of "listing."

This past week was Report Card Week. Our first semester grades and report cards were due, and I spent the majority of my in-between class time entering grades on my computer (PS: four years of college and I still have no clue how to use Excel) and giving students behavioral "comments" in the form of 4 (Always) 3 (Usually) 2 (Sometimes) and 1 (Never). But this week also involved a lot of self-inflicted self-evaluation, as I reflected on how I shaped up my first semester as an ajaan. Examples:

CP's Report Card

• Slightly partial to cuter kids and the girls who swoon, "Ajaan Caitlin BEEOOOTIFUL!": 4 Always
• Remembers to copy the correct number of worksheets for class: 3 Usually
• Can distinguish between students (in the same class) named Bank 1, Bank 2 and Bank 3: 2 Sometimes
• Sticks to original lesson plan: 1 Never

So, there's some room for improvement next term. I can definitely say, though, that while I'm looking forward to the upcoming three week vacation, I am by no means sick of teaching English. I still look forward to singing off-key "Good Morning" songs in Kindergarten, and I continue to get a kick out of 6th graders' English essays ("Americans in Thailand" by Ka-noon: Uncle Bob hates the hot weather. Sally not like spicy food ..."Save the Environment" by Cake: Don't throw away things that can digest in nature!). 

I put away grading and report card-ing Saturday to enjoy the first weekend of the Nan Boat Races. For a week now, the whole length of the riverside near our apartment has been converted into a carnival-festival-street fair bonanza, with hoards of vendors selling random crafts, food, clothing, toys and fried insects. The four of us have visited the fair every day since it went up, and I've probably purchased at least one thing from every vendor there (save the fried cockroaches). 

I'll pass on the insects, but gimme some meat on a stick!

Things I've Purchased Lately That I Don't Need:

1. A hula hoop
2. Flats made out of rain boot material (just in time for the end of Rainy Season...)
3. Exorbitant amounts of 10 baht noodles
4. A 6th and 7th pair of cheap sunglasses
5. Nine different versions of colorful cotton "Thai grandmother shirts" (they're soooo comfortableeee)
6. A back scratcher

A glimpse at the races

Needless to say, I spent a lot more time under the tents this past weekend than out watching the actual races. The bits I did see, though, were very exciting. Each neighborhood in Nan has their own racing team, and this weekends' races determined which heat they will compete in for the rest of the months' races (we think). The boats are huge - some 50-70 feet long - and they are painted in bright colors with elaborate dragon heads attached to the bow. And woooowee, they can go fast. 

The fair has brought a fair number of out-of-towners to Nan city, including people who can only be described as Thai carnies. Traffic is crazy (since normally "traffic" doesn't exist here), and there is now a "shanty-town" set up along one of the roads near the riverside, where whole families appear to be living under a tarp in their trucks while they stay in the city. It might be nice to be getting out of Nan in the coming weeks...

The Carnies have landed

I've been spending a lot more time with Lak, our Thai friend and resident Guide to Delicious Food in Nan. Lak was born and grew up in Nan, and befriends the PiA fellows - as well as a host of other Nan farang - each year. She is one of the friendliest and most charismatic people I've ever met... she is constantly smiling, seems to know everyone everywhere we go, loves to show us interesting sites and new restaurants in Nan (our inability to read Thai menus normally limits our choices), and can pack down a truly incredible amount of food given her tiny size. Lak's husband, Matt - also a very friendly and fun-to-be-around person - is American, and has lived in Thailand "too long to remember how long." 

Friday night, Emily, Nicole and I got into an interesting discussion with Lak and Matt over a delicious northern-Isaan meal. Following a conversation about our upcoming trip to southern Thailand, and reminders to be safe and be wary of going out alone, Lak told us that she thought "80 percent of Thai men were bad." She explained that most of her friends and relatives have been in terrible relationships or marriages with Thai men - men who beat them, cheated on them, impregnated other women, and then refused to sign divorce papers for years. She said over and over that Thai men "want only to control their wives, to make them cook and iron clothes and stay at home," and that Thai men sober are very different than drunk.

Matt was quick to defend the Thai male population, pointing out the Lak's sister is dating "one of the nicest guys I know." Lak's comments, however, fascinated me. It is impossible to ignore the fact that nearly every non-tourist westerner here is a 40- or 50-something white man with a Thai girlfriend or wife half his age  For months now, I have been admittedly judgmental of white men we've met in Thailand... Their relationships with Thai women always felt a little creepy, their reasons for staying abroad in Asia for so many years (or decades) seemed sketchy at best, and we'd heard countless stories about white men who were never-really-cool-back-home trying to re-invent themselves in land far far away. But Lak offered an entirely different perspective on this "foreign husband" phenomenon. It's a fact that once a woman has been married and divorced with kids, she is "damaged goods" to most Thai men. A western husband or boyfriend is an escape - a welcome relief - for someone who has been abused and abandoned in other relationships. Still, Lak's independent lifestyle and Matt's sincere adoration of her may be an exception to the rule... most Thai-Western couples we've met here feel just plain uncomfortable. (A recent NY Times article on the topic here).

Things that are coming soon:

1. October vacation travel details
2. Recent photos on Facebook

A Fruit Called Lamoot

This week on "Over Fruit," Emily and I discuss la moot - (also called sapodilla) - a potato/pear/kiwi-like specimen that has just started appearing at the market this month. 

I hope you enjoy the clip more than we enjoyed the fruit! 

Metaphorically Speaking

Recently I made up a "Poetry" unit for my 6/1 class. We read some Shel Silverstein classics, practiced rhyming words, and deciphered and wrote figurative-language sentences. Rhyming in English turned out to be pretty difficult for a lot of the students, but similes and metaphors - they aced it. Some highlights below:


At 11 years old, Jeffy already has the instincts of a worried parent:

Being big-boned, Tay bore the brunt of 6/1's creativity:

Cake speaks to college undergrads everywhere. Luckily, Art is pretty chill:

When science and sentiment combine:

Khoonsuek used the "example" metaphor off the board, but the illustration made up for it:

I guess this is hyberbolic in Thailand?

The Work Party

A group of teachers at Bandon Sriserm are being promoted this semester, to "higher level" teacher positions. To celebrate, one of our coworkers hosted an ajaan fiesta of sorts at her house Friday night... complete with a full karaoke set-up and catered dinner of delicious Thai dishes.

It turns out that when you combine a continuous supply of Spy wine coolers, a series of mispronounced obscure-1960s-American-songs, and two very loud microphones, Thai teachers become a lot like 20-year-old sorority girls at their spring formal. Every time a new song came on - and the lyrics appeared next to cheesy graphics on the projector screen - someone new would grab the mic while the rest of the (female) crowd coo-ed and caw-ed in perfect unison: "ooouuu...eeeeeeeEEEE!" In between dinner courses, the teachers got up and danced around the tables. My K2 co-teacher, Aj. "Lips" Warunee - who loves me even though we can't understand two words from one another - grabbed my arm and pulled me out to dance with her. Like the other ajaans, she moved gracefully, with her arms swaying and hands perfectly arched in traditional Thai dancing style; meanwhile I swung clumsily side-to-side, smiled and shouted over the music, "I have no idea what I'm doing!", and cursed Spy's 2% alcohol content.

The school director, creepy ol' Mr. Sukda, told us at school that day he loved CCR, and we quickly learned he wasn't kidding as he belted out back-to-back solos of "Have You Ever Seen the Rain" and "Born on the Bayou." Mr. Sukda also told us at school that day that he wanted each of us to sing at the party. We laughed awkwardly - as we usually do in response to his comments (..."do you drink whisky?"... "I have never seen you in shorts"... [and this morning to Anna]: "you looked beautiful at the party but during school not as beautiful"). Half an hour into the party, however, we found that Mr. Sukda wasn't bluffing on that count either. The four of us were ushered to the microphones while "Hotel California" began playing from the speakers. Hopefully horrific singing (all 6 minutes 30 seconds of that absurdly long song of it) is one of those things that gets lost in translation.

Anna, me, Emily and Nicole
Some sing to remember... some sing to forget.

Saturday, Aj. Prakop invited us to cook lunch at school with her again, and we made a delicious batch of red curry and pad ka pow (ground beef, garlic and basil leaf) (I've got the recipes if anyone's interested!). After we ate, Prakop casually asked what we had planned for the rest of the afternoon. We said we had no plans, and she thought a moment and said, "Okay, how about I'll take you to the national park?" Aj. Prakop called her husband, Aj. Hanou - who apparently dropped any plans he might have had to drive us around all day - and we were piled into his truck and on the road an hour later. Prakop and Hanou took us to Nan's Srinan Naitonal Park, about an hour outside of the city. Aj. Prakop rode in the bed of the truck with us in between sites, sliding about (while laughing hysterically) as the car climbed and descended steep hills. The views from the top of the mountains were stellar.

Naaaaaaaaaaaaan

The rest of the weekend was spent lazily, reading - and finishing! - my book at our new favorite coffee-dessert shop, The Milk Club (not to be confused with D-Milk), and visiting with Cho and his wife Orm (the couple who own the coffee shop next to school). Orm is probably in her early thirties, and had Aj. Prakop as a teacher when she was in grade school. She is slender with a cropped haircut and an endearingly crooked-tooth smile, and like Cho, has this effortlessly laidback way about her that makes her very easy to talk to. We had brought Cho and Orm the leftover curry and rice from our lunch feast on Saturday, and in return, he bought us two cakes at the local bakery. (Cho had called me earlier in the afternoon: "Kate? Where are you? Please come by my store later when you are on your way home. I have something for you."). It was one of those typical cyclical-Thai-gifting scenarios, this-for-that, but it also felt like a seal of friendship (if I may be so corny) - the first out-of-the-way offering between recently-formed acquaintances.

Orm told us about a free Chinese opera Sunday night, which was being held inside a large open-air building next to Nan's Chinese temple. We eagerly told her we'd love to check it out, and arrived early to get seats. It was fantastic, and ridiculous, and incredibly trippy all at once: enormous bold-colored and glitter-covered costumes, bright neon lighting and stage backdrops, facepaint so thick and distorting it looked like clay masks, and loud musical numbers interrupted by a dramatic gong repeatedly hit backstage. One scene involved two characters in (actual) masks, doing a trick where their masks would change color and shape as they danced to the music. I had an aisle seat, and when the performers came out into the audience, I was taken by the hand by one while he whisked his cape to the side, and watched as his mask changed from bright yellow one to a differently-patterned green one. Even from that close, I couldn't tell how he was doing it!

The Chinese Opera: hold on to your seats.

All in all, it was one of those Oh-My-God-I-Want-To-Stay-In-Nan-Another-Five-Years type of weekends.... and it's nice to think that after more than 3 months here, those are still plentiful.

Zen and the Art of Copy Machine Maintenance

9 out of 10 days, my morning starts with 1 jammed copy machine, 62 copies of a worksheet to make, and 5 minutes left before class. How's that for a math problem? If I won the lottery, I would donate brand new copiers to Bandon Sriserm School, and chuck ours out the third floor window (I have a hate-hate relationship with it). 

Last week, lack of copied worksheets led to skit writing, rehearsing, and performing in my 6/1 class. I was pretty impressed by the final products, especially by Khim 1's group, who created a play about a girl named Olivia and her cousin Brian trying to find a girl named Gloria's orchard. I didn't fully understand the story after reading their script - especially where they came up with the word "orchard" - but they went with it, and it turned out hilarious. My favorite characters were Flook as "Ray the Fisherman," who makes Brian sell his watch for a ride across the river, and Fon as "old woman," who can't hear anything anyone says. Fon even broke out the baby powder for her hair to get in costume:

Fisherman Flook and Old Woman Fon 

(In other 6/1 news, I found out today that three of my 6/1 students, Khim 1, Fam and Cake placed 1st, 2nd and 3rd - respectively - for 6th grade in all of Nan Province. One of Emily's 3rd graders did similarly well, and one of Nicole's 5th graders placed 25th in the entire country. We are proud ajaans).

Last Friday night after school, we visited a sprawling street fair outside Wat Phumin in the center of town. It was packed full of street vendors selling everything from coconut ice cream and fried quail eggs to pet bunny rabbits (complete with matching bunny sweaters). We also watched a skit that was being put on for the whole crowd... we weren't sure what the story-line was, but it involved characters in wigs parading signs that said "NO SMOKING ALCOHOL!" and a main character who was impersonating a farang (white person). It also included some pretty hilarious song and dance numbers.

We were told about the street fair earlier in the week by Cho, our friend who runs a coffee shop and art supply store next to school. Cho got my number a while back to call us for events like the fair. The other day - fed up with the English office's disgusting instant coffee sludge I have to down every morning - we decided to visit Cho before class and throw down some baht for real coffee. At 8:00 am, however, the shop was closed up... Cho's wife was at the counter in their supply store next door, and said he'd be back in ten minutes. We walked back to school, and as soon as I sat down at my desk, my cell phone rang. "Hello? Did you come for coffee? What do you want? I'll bring it to you at school." I gave him our orders and assured him he didn't have to hand-deliver our drinks, and that we could be back at his shop in 2 minutes. Now that's some friendly neighborhood service. 

I learned today in Kindergarten that Pee has officially changed his name to "Yellow." I can't tell if he's aware of the irony, or if he simply found a new favorite color... When we did worksheets in class this morning, he ran up to me with a yellow colored pencil and danced around while saying "My name is YELLOW, my name is YELLOW!" Pee also caused to me to burst out laughing in the middle of leading the Alphabet Song, when I looked over and saw him trying to lick his Ikkue's ear. (Ikkue was oblivious). Never a dull day with this kid...

Tonight we went to the Asian version of Souplantation for dinner: choose your own meat (or squid balls), choose your own noodle. The live one-man band at the restaurant sang "Country Roads," which is a very popular song here but never ceases to feel out of place in Thailand. We watched as the kid at the next table over created his own version of an ice cream sandwich at the dessert bar: two scoops of green ice cream plopped inside two slices of white bread. Mmm?

Emily, Nicole and I went a different route for dessert, stopping by D-milk for an evening snack. The woman there knows our orders by heart (Oreos inside the milk!), and stops to say hello whenever we see her around town. In America, I might feel embarrassed about this fact, but in Thailand I only rate food on a scale of WTF? to Delicious.

 If I come home morbidly obese,
D-milk will be the culprit... but I will have no regrets.

Right now, for the first time in 3 months, the shutters to my bedroom windows are wide open and the A/C has been off for 48 consecutive hours. Writing this will probably jinx it, but we may finally be seeing cooler days in Nan. In any case, I'm excited to wake up to natural sunlight tomorrow, ready to face a big cup o' instant coffee and a broken copy machine. I can't complain. 

Flood Warning

First of all: SEPTEMBER?!? This week marks 3 months in the land of congealed chicken blood soup and kids named Bank. I am already feeling nostalgic about time passing too quickly.

Given that it is rainy season in Nan - and "rainy" is the understatement of the year for the relentless state of downpour we've been experiencing lately - it came as no surprise that flood warnings circulated around school yesterday. The river floods at least once a year in Nan city during the rainy season, due to runoff from heavy rainfall in the mountains. We were told by a co-teacher that one year, the school -  which is very near the river, but further from it than our apartment - flooded so badly that there was water up to the blackboards on the first floor.

I stopped by the river after school to take a look yesterday, and it was incredible how much the water level had risen in a single day. Normally, there are about 15 big stone-and-dirt steps on the river bank, descending from the "boardwalk" to the water itself; yesterday, there was only one step showing above water. The opposite bank of the river was already consumed by water, with whole trees nearly submerged. I was a little concerned at first by all the commotion yesterday afternoon - kids being pulled out of school early, ground level classrooms being cleared out, traffic and crowds gathering around the riverfront - but on the whole, everyone seems to be treating it as the routine, annual occurrence that it is.

Actually, everyone seemed sort of excited about it. I guess potential mini-natural disasters tend to have that effect on people... there's something exhilarating about the possibility of no school the next day, seeing familiar places rendered completely unfamiliar (like water filling a riverside basketball court, as it did yesterday), and finding yourself dangerously close to emergency.

(One might ask, though - since the flood does happen every single year - why build so many restaurants, schools and homes right along the river? But then, such logic wouldn't make any sense in Thailand).

I wasn't sure what to expect when I woke up this morning - would I bike or boat to work? - but so far, our apartment and the school have stayed safe and dry. However, not all parts of Nan escaped flooding last night. A ton of kids were absent from school today, held home either by an inability to get out by bike or car, or to help their families deal with water damage. In Kindergarten, about 20 kids were missing from each class.

With only a small handful of kids to teach, I ditched my lesson plan and decided it was a perfect day to introduce "Duck, Duck, Goose." The game was a huge success, particularly in K2.2. The Thai teacher for K2.2 is Aj. Warunee, a new teacher at Bandon Sriserm who wears bright pink lipstick everyday (we called her "Lips" for a long time) and who, at every school assembly, somehow winds up singing poorly-pitched tunes on the microphone. She doesn't speak a lick of English, but is always excited about my activities in class. When we play the "Alphabet Name" game (I call out a letter and students have to raise their hands if appears in their name), Aj. Warunee raises her hand the highest for the W's and E's, giggling to herself. When we sing "Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes," Warunee's voice bellows above the rest, even adding extra syllables where she sees fit.

Needless to say, that same enthusiasm shone through during Duck, Duck, Goose today. Since we were short on players, Warunee and I joined the circle. The kids caught on to the rules pretty quickly, with the exception of Tangmo, who kept running the wrong direction and thought she had to check in with me first before calling anyone a Goose. Aj. Warunee caught on pretty quickly too, except she didn't quite get the pronunciation. During her turns, we were playing a round of "Duss, Duss, Goop." I guess every children's classic needs an alternate version.

Last but certainly not least: Volume 5 of "Over Fruit," featuring the purple mangosteen. It is our very best yet - with a brand new intro! Enjoy.