Loy Krathong & letting go

The only time I am one hundred percent certain of the date is when I log onto my blogspot account to write. I know today is November the 18th because the small text at the bottom of this post says that it is. Otherwise, it could be June or July or February for how well I am able to mark the passing of time here.

My body is so used to detecting the shift of months by the changing seasons that it hardly knows what to do with itself. This is goosebump season and thick sweater season and scraggly naked branches poking at the sky season. This is the beginning of the holiday season when everything is dull orange and maroon and then white and bright with gold and red. This is blue season and icy-water-stains-on-leather-boots season. This is what my body knows to be true about November and so it's struggling a little bit to understand how November here could be thick jungle leaf and warm rain, how the only water stains on any of my clothing are from sweat, not snow. It doesn't really make sense that it could be November 18th, but it is, and so I add it to the lop-sided pile of days that has made it nearly two months here.

It is quite the pile, though. A month of that pile spent feeling weird and awkward and then comfortable in Bangkok. The most recent stack, this new beginning in Yangtalat, in which my date-confused-silly-putty body has been twisted and turned and crammed into a series of strange-looking moulds and schedules all crafted by unknown hands. But learning to find some wiggle room, escape routes into the nearest cities, plotting months with visits to my silly-putty friends in their plastic-egg-shaped towns, and even managing to plan for and teach four classes a day to students whose abilities range from not being able to pronounce the word math to playing hangman with complex sentences.

But even for its beauty and even for how I'm learning to navigate this life, there are moments when I feel more stressed and worried than I ever have before: am I teaching my students the right things, are there right things and wrong things to be teaching, what role will my English teaching serve in their lives here, what difference can I feasibly make, is there a difference to be made or is it just about continuous exposure, what even does sustainable English education look like in this country? And to add to these classroom stresses, the obvious stresses about aching for creature comforts from home, of missing the playfulness of English and communicating with people in a way that doesn't feel like a tight-rope walk in which either party could at any moment lose their footing and fall into a misunderstanding nearly impossible to work one's way out of.

A lot of things to worry about, and I list them here more directly than I normally would because this past weekend, a group of us made an excursion to the ancient city of Sukothai to celebrate Loy Krathong, a festival in which thousands of people from all over Thailand and the World gather in various Thai cities to release small krathongs (boats made of flowers and banana leaves with candles lodged into their centers) into bodies of water. The lit krathongs look beautiful, small pocks of light floating in rivers and lakes, but people do not celebrate Loy Krathong simply for its beauty. It is a day of giving thanks to water, for its ability to not only accept change but to learn how to flow with it rather than fight against it. The release of the krahtong, then, is a symbolic releasing of one's own problems and fears, any negative energy that prevents you from living deliberately and gracefully in the present. Like the water, you're born anew, fresh, able to move on without the weight of things you cannot change.

The perfect holiday and reminder for a group of stressed and fitfully worried ETAs who may or may not forget to reflect on the importance of casting some things to the wind, to the river, to a yesterday whose date you might not be able to remember. Our presents, too chock-full of their own catastrophes to worry too much about things that have already drifted around the bend.

Below, some pictures from the weekend. As a Thai person raised in the Southern United States might say, sometimes you just gotta let go and let krathong (modified from Let go, and let God for you yanks).

A week left of teaching and then a nice chunky break for Thanksgiving with the fulbright crew in Bangkok, which thank goodness because I could use a bagel and some friendship.

Cody

The first week

It’s been a week since I moved to Yangtalat. Never has a week felt so large before. Large with emotions, changes. Even of the great first weeks of my life (moving into Stew at Middlebury, settling down in my new apartment in Madrid, orienting myself to Bangkok), this one is certainly significant in a distinct and separate way from all the others.

This week, I began my first post-graduate job as a High School ESL teacher. I moved into my first house, small and yellow with pink wood trim, sparsely decorated save for the quick moving splashes of green gecko that streak across the walls after mosquitoes or dark corners. I received my first worker’s ID number and scanned my thumbprint to clock-in and clock-out on an 8-4 schedule. I wear ties and ironed shirts every day. I feel like I am caught halfway between actually being an adult and playing some elaborate game of dress-up, in which I dress like what I think an adult teacher would wear and I say the things that I imagine they would say. A solid impersonation, probably just below my New Zealand accent for believability.

My school

 And of course with the grown-up-person’s job comes the grown-up-person’s solitude, going home after the school day to find that it is just that: me and the geckos. I live a three-minute walk from the school, so when school is not in session, it is deathly quiet. Well except for the screaming geckos and the rooster who lives on my roof. And the street dogs, but for the most part the only noise I hear is myself softly (…loudly) singing Whitney Houston songs or practicing Thai or reacting to American Horror Story. But I like this solitude. Every decision is wholly my own: what I eat, when I shower, if I shower, what I do after school is over. I’ve lived my life in places of great noise—to turn that down for a while seems like a happy escape. Or maybe a delusional experiment. I’ll have to keep you updated on that front.

My house

 AS far as teaching is concerned, my schedule seems manageable. I teach three-four classes a day to different levels of 10^th  (M4) and 11^th (M5) graders. Each grade of ~300 students is divided into 9 different levels of ability (1 being the worst, 9 being the best). So if I have a class labeled 4/1, that means I’m teaching a class of 10^th graders who are not very proficient in English. By whatever standards of proficiency my school’s English teachers have established as “fluent,” which of course is up to great debate since many of the teachers don’t speak the greatest English, BUT I DIGRESS!

They’ve been well behaved and a little quiet so far, but I imagine they’re probably a lot zanier than they’re letting on. Which is good, because so am I. This first round of lessons has focused on introductions (Hello! My name is ____. I like to _____. I don’t like to _____) and getting to know me. I’ve got about half of them on board with calling me Kru G (Teacher G). The other half stares at me blankly when I ask what my name is, a silence I can only seem to alleviate with a vigorous pointing at my chest, after which point they say “…teachuh?” “YES TEACHER VERY GOOD!”

I know if someone yelled at me in Thai I would react in the same way. I know this because people are constantly yelling at me in Thai here. In response, I smile and they laugh and hold my elbow or pat my shoulder. This is how I’ve met almost all of the staff at Yangtalad Wittayarkan school. They are all very kind and are constantly asking me things like “You happy?” or “Do you love it?” to which I smile and bow and then they clap and walk away. Most days, I feel like a circus hippopotamus, waddling around in a bright pink tutu—hard to miss and always fun to laugh at. It’s hard to get used to what a laugh means in Thai culture versus that of its use in American culture—in the United States, if someone were to laugh at you when you spoke, you’d feel ashamed or embarrassed, but here it’s a sign that they think you’re doing a good job and that they appreciate you. 

Me 

And really, it is clear that a lot of teachers are going out of their ways to make me feel welcome and included into this new family, either by attempting to speak English with me or bringing me delicious rice dishes for breakfast or treating me to winding lunches of grilled shrimp and Som Tum. I can’t wait until the day when I’ve learned enough Thai to have meaningful conversations with all of them—they seem fascinating but because of the language barrier, it’s near impossible to delve very deeply into any of our histories or reasons for being where we are.

For now, I am content to be where I am, with supportive teachers and a group of fellow ETAs that are just a quick bus-ride away from Yangtalat. After spending a lot of time talking about how I’d be a teacher when I grew up, suddenly I am one, with attendance sheets and discipline issues and sweet smiles of young kiddoes trying to digest everything I say.

It’s weird, but I think I kinda like it. 

Cody 

New Home & November starts

Halloween passed me by and I didn't even notice. It scampered away on its spooky little feet and before I knew it, I found myself in November. A new month and a new home, this time a few miles north and a crook east of the last one. This one, a bit more permanent than the last, as I am finally in my village in the Kalasin Province of Isaan. For those who haven't yet seen (or maybe just forgot), here is a visual aid for those wondering where in the sticky-rice-buddah-heaven my one-year-home Kalasin is located...

I arrived in Khon Kaen (a major city of our region) Wednesday on an early flight from Bangkok with the three other ETAs working in the area. Upon arrival, we were all quickly whisked away to our villages where we were stuffed with Isaan delicacies such as som tum and sticky rice and spicy p'laa (grilled fish). Every time I took a bite I was greeted with hearty applause from my teachers who thought me something pretty special for being able to eat so much food, especially considering its spiciness. Conversation was minimal given my lack of Thai and their lack of English, but I managed to pepper the silence with what little Thai I know (the color yellow, numbers 1-20, what is this?), which kept things moving at a crawling pace.

I can already tell that much of life here will be this crawling. Crawling to better understand this place and its people with its language and geography and culture that is so vastly different from all that I've experienced and thought I had learned in Bangkok. Like the regions of the United States, the provinces of Thailand are wildly different in regards to customs, beliefs and even dialects, which has made this first week a topsy-turvy one in which I find myself searching for any sense of balance. 

But already I see this process beginning in small moments: dinner at a roadside open-air restaurant where I ate grilled pork over hot coals with my neighbors late into the night, visiting my host teacher's home where I tried on traditional Isaan silk shirts and even met the women who made them. Life in Kalasin is so green, with leaves thick and wilting over the small winding highway that snakes its way past colorful kite stalls and men selling sweet potatoes from stands made of straw. There is music everywhere and chatter and roaring engines and the small song of geckos through bedroom walls--even if the noise would be considered mute next to that of Bangkok's, it is no doubt utterly symphonic. 

Tomorrow, I take my first adventure in Isaan, that of trying to navigate my way from my village (Yangtalat District) into the big city of Khon Kaen to reunite with the other ETAs here. It's only been a few days but it feels like forever since I've seen those falang ragamuffins and it will do this salty heart some good to speak some slangy English and maybe even eat a bagel or two. Then Sunday with lesson planning, Monday with an abbreviated campus orientation and then Tuesday, my first day of teaching secondary school in Thailand. 

If it sounds scary, that's probably because it is. 

BONUS SOME PHOTOS OF ME SINCE ARRIVING: 

Until next time,

Cody