2/20/2001 - In Training

As of midnight Monday night/Tuesday morning (that’s noon Monday for those on the east coast, and 8 A.M. Monday for those in Alaska, the rest can do the math) we have been in Thailand for 3 weeks. Highlights of this last week included teaching twice in our 5th and 6th grade classrooms, developing a group of kids who come every night to learn English/teach Thai/play games, we made a long day’s journey to other provinces to test our skills in using the bus system, and we had our first “Thai night” of food and dance with our trainers.

We still have a relatively limited vocabulary, though we manage to successfully communicate where we are going and when we will be back every day. We believe we have been invited this coming Saturday to go with our family again to Suphanburi – we’ll see if that plays out this week. We have learned basic colors (largely due to playing a lot of UNO) and some basic words about transportation. We are beginning to remember general times of day (afternoon, as opposed to 2:00 P.M.) and days of the week. We are still using a very limited set of pronouns – we don’t know how to say “we” or you (plural) yet – and we’re pretty sure we’ve heard different words for these things. Pantomime, smiling, and being able to say (in Thai) “I don’t understand” help us a lot.

Our teaching sessions have been interesting. Denny was inspired to teach some geography in English, after he heard that Thai students were often lacking in geography knowledge. He found this to be very true. His 6th graders struggled to find well-known Thai provinces on their map of Thailand (labeling North, South, East and West in the room, and having them move to the part of the room where their province was found seemed to help them understand both the English words and the locations of the provinces). Denny is hoping to continue on the geography theme with his class (including local directions – i.e. I live behind the blue house and next to the corner store). If any of you have any suggested teaching resources in this vein we would be grateful.

Lisa is teaching occasionally in the 5th grade class. However, the 5th grade teacher has gone elsewhere to become a principal, and there has been no replacement teacher. It appears that the 4th grade teacher is teaching both classes (4th grade only has 7 students so the class is still pretty small), often with the classes together in the same room, but not every day. Some times the 6th grade teacher is teaching them, and sometimes they’re in yet a different classroom with no teacher (substitute teachers are nonexistent here). Lisa’s first lesson this last week was on the 14th, so she was going to do a cross-cultural lesson on Valentines Day. As it turns out, Valentines day is already pretty widely promoted here, so she got in a good lesson on vocabulary and pronunciation, but will have to try another time for a different cross cultural lesson. Both of us received copious valentine flowers from our students, and Denny got a collection of hand made valentine cards in Thai from his students. Hopefully we’ll be able to translate them before we leave Thailand (we’ve learned enough of the alphabet to sound most of it out, but we don’t know what it means).

The Valentines Day photo here is with a group of neighbor kids who have been coming over in the evenings and occupying much of free time (it’s fun, but Lisa is starting to crave time for herself). We have only seen the boys on the outside of the photo a time or two, and we’re not sure who they are. The 5 kids around Lisa make up the core of the group of kids who have been stopping by daily. Left to right, back row to front are Welaya, Jirapon, Chachai, Alapan, Lisa, & Wepapon. Chachai is 14 and goes to high school in U-Thong (a 10 minute bike ride from our town). Welaya and Jirapon are in Denny’s 6th grade class, and Allapan and Wepapon are in Lisa’s 5th grade class. They generally come over and Lisa teaches English to Jirapon while the rest of the kids teach Denny how to read Thai. As we said earlier, we can sound out a lot of written Thai, but we still don’t know what it means! They are constantly clamoring to learn new songs in English. We have taught them “You are my sunshine” and “Way up in the sky”, but we have run out of simple songs that we like enough to hear incessantly in our village. Any suggestions on this front would be appreciated as well. These kids are also catching on to UNO rather quickly – we’re going to try teach them hearts or some other card game with real cards when our vocabulary improves. We’ve already been told that they will be at our house again “wahnput bai ha mon yen” (Wednesday, 5:00 P.M.).

Our adventure with the Thai bus system was interesting. Lisa went to Nakon Prathom, which was a 2-hour bus ride away. There is a pagoda, called a chedi (shaped like a bell), there that is the tallest in the world. It was uncrowded early in the day, but became very touristy later. Her group used very little of the Thai they had learned on their journey, and they had a great time (though they never found the Pizza Hut that the Lonely Planet travel guide claimed was in town). Denny went to Saraburi, which took 5 hours by bus (we got to watch “Mighty Joe Young” in Thai on the bus) and then had another hour bus ride north to get to a Wat that is relatively famous. Unfortunately Denny got food poisoning from breakfast at the bus terminal and his breakfast came up by lunch time, abridging the trip for his group – we only saw our destination Wat from a distance as we drove by, and we never got to order the local food specialties. While Denny did not enjoy being sick, there was a silver lining to his malady– it had taken so long for us to get to our destination that there was no way to get back to our midway point in time to catch a bus back home. Fortunately we were spared the need to improvise a ride home – Denny’s traveling partners called the training staff who told us how to charter a private van and get directly home. The trip that took 6 hours in a bus took 2 hours in a van (but it cost 10 times as much), and Denny got back home before his diarrhea kicked in. The next day Denny was weak, but healthy – no more colds or bacterial infections, just one untimely day of food poisoning.

Monday night we had “Thai Night” with our training staff. They had each of us order a separate Thai dish (much more complicated and tasty than anything we’ve managed to get on our own), and we all ate together. Then we danced and had several skits/presentations from various groups of trainees about our experiences to date. It was a delicious and fun evening – our fellow trainees are a talented bunch of people who managed to put together some remarkably humorous skits about our training so far. Our contribution was Lisa’s frequent interruption of the our group’s skit to give everyone shots (by the time you read this we will have received a dozen immunizations), and a poem a la Dr. Suess’s “Green Eggs and Ham” in Thenglish (Thai and English both). This picture is us in somewhat traditional Thai attire for the night. Lisa is wearing a normal blouse, but her dress is a “Pa Sin” which is basically a tube of cloth that is tied in a knot to keep it in place. Women wear this as a dress and as a bathrobe. Denny is wearing a traditional shirt and pants (the pants are extremely loose, and tied around the waist with a strip of cloth), and with a “Pa Ko Ma” as a belt around his waist. Men wear the Pa Ko Ma as a belt, as a bath robe, use it as a towel, as a sling, as a hat, as a pillow, and as an all around cloth.

As an editorial note on the Thai Night photo – we weren’t sure photos like this would be possible after Wednesday (it was taken the following Monday). Denny’s water bottle spilled half of its contents into Denny’s bag, which sent the digital camera swimming. The papers were hard to dry in this damp climate, but the camera was expensive and we were concerned. After 3 days of sitting open in front of a fan, the camera appeared dry, so Denny stuck the batteries back into the camera, only to find that it still had blurry vision (there was water still on one of the inner lenses, and there appeared to be an ant crawling around inside). After two more days of sitting open, the camera seemed to cure itself, and it appears to be taking good pictures. We’re very glad it’s working again – we’ve no clue where the nearest camera repair facility is, and electronics (and therefore electronics repair we presume) seems to be one of the few items where pricing in Baht is pretty close to American prices in dollars. Food is less than 30 baht per meal dining out (75 cents), a nice man’s dress shirt is less than 200 baht ($5), and a Canon EOS Rebel is 14,000 baht (about $350 – the same as in the states).

We enjoy hearing from you, and we will try to respond to everyone who writes. If we forget to get back to you, please don’t feel neglected. Time is precious to us right now (the only time we don’t feel like we are working/learning is when we are checking email at the internet café, or sleeping) please be patient and we will respond.

Stay healthy, and count you’re blessings. And if you go to a Thai Restaurant, be sure to try Dom Ka Gai!

Denny & Lisa