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
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
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