I'm Hugely Enormous. Also Fat.

Overall, I Love Them And Want To Take Them Home With Me. . .But Sometimes. . . .

Nothing really attracts me about Buddhism except the meditation. Overall it's kind of a cold, detached faith. But they sure know the value of sitting silently and breathing deeply. Like this; hmmmmm. . . .hoooooo. Hmmmm. . . .hoooooo. Hmmmm. . . hooooo.

That's me taking long, slow, calming breaths, in case you were wondering. Because nothing can be quite as enraging as 8-year-olds, as any parent or 3rd-grade teacher knows. One of my Prathom 3 students actually suggested I smack his classmate with a bamboo stick today, that is how out-of-control they can be.

I would never hit a child. I don't think I physically could without making myself sick at my own horrible-ness.

But for the first time ever, today, I knew what it was like to really, really want to.

Please Notice How I Avoid The Profanity. . .

There comes a time in every expat's life when they must draw the cultural line. Of course, when living in a foreign country, one wants to mesh as well as possible with the culture, the rules, the norms and values of that society. That's part of the reason we move there. Eating the food with a smile on your face despite the slow painful death that is likely to follow, learning as much as you can of the language, no matter how difficult, and trying to observe and follow the unspoken rules of a society can make up the most satisfying part of your stay abroad.

But there is a point in the career of an expat when one must find the limit to what they feel comfortable doing. It varies for everyone, but it always happens. The point at which one must stand up and say, "It is effing bloody hot today, I AM WEARING A TANK TOP AND THAT'S FINAL!"

I Have the Best Fam Damily in the Whole World! Nay, the Universe!

Yesterday afternoon, as I trudged past the reception desk on my way to another evening of lesson plans and Sprite followed by a 9 pm bedtime, one of the reception girls called my name.

"Lo-laagghh!"

Since the reception girls seem to resent the existence of. . .well, of people in general, I was a little startled. But I turned around, and, lo and behold (despite the fact that I am not sure what it means to "lo" something), Reception Girl is holding out two packages!

That's right, one TWO packages! On zero ONE day! (Okay, that one didn't work quite as well.) But anyway, there were TWO! Dos! Song! (That's two in Thai, genius.) Just that might have made my day. . .but there's more!

There was stuff IN the packages!! Hooray!! The smaller one was from my poo-poo Mommy, containing a refill of my vitamins- my Thank God Tom Cruise Isn't In Charge Or Else I Would Be Dead Right Now vitamins- and some sour belts from Sweet Factory. I love that poo-poo mommy. She knows not to get those crap generic sour belts from the drugstore. . .she gets the proper Sweet Factory kind. Because she is my POO-POO MOMMY!!

The other package, a delightfully large square box, was from my Daddy-O and related fam, and was, if this is possible, EVEN BETTER. I was tempted not to open it, in order to give myself time to savor the beauty that is a big care package from family. Alright, that was a lie. I wasn't tempted at all to leave that sucker unopened. In fact I nearly slit my own throat in my haste to slash it open. Inside was a pound of sour gummi worms. . .that's right I said ONE POUND. . .and a bag of parmesan goldfish, otherwise known as Pepperidge Farms Must Be Located In The General Vicinity Of Heaven Crackers. And, even BETTER, if you can conceive of such a thing, was a little square box in the corner. . .containing the coolest thing in the Universe if you are far far away from home. . .something I never dared hope for in my wildest dreams, and they get pretty wild when no one speaks your language. . . .

. . .wait for it. . .

A TALKING PICTURE FRAME.

Now I have a picture of my brother Sam and sisters Sophie and Mimi, and when I press a little button on the frame I can hear them say "Hi Laura! This is Sam. . .and this is Sophie. . .and this is Mimi! Happy New Year! We love you!"

Can you IMAGINE anything better?

Maybe It's More Like "Doo De Do Dee". . . .

You know those twilight-zone moments? When you see something or hear something, and all of sudden the world is weird and you see everything differently? Where "doo doot doo doot doo doot DO" plays in your head for a second, and some kind of trippy truth hits you with a strength it's never hit you with before?

Well, I had one of those this morning. I was sidesaddle on the motorcycle taxi on the way to school, speeding along at a our usual gut-twisting speed (especially considering the shit condition of the roads) when we got stuck behind a slow-moving pickup truck. This truck was going painfully slowling in the left lane (the slow lane), probably because the bed was filled with Buddhist monks in violently yellow-orange robes. The sat on benches on the sides of the bed in sandles and sunglasses, all with shaved heads, chatting casually.

And all of a sudden it hit me. I'm in Thailand.

This is practically a QUANDRY

This just in!! (from the Totally Unimportant News agency, via the Yeah, But This Is My Blog So Deal With It newspaper.) Of the 5 nominees for Favorite American Blog at the Bloggies, 3 are among my most favoritest blogs, which are linked on the sidebar . . .that would be down and to the right. . .blogs that I just luuuurrrvvv and you should too, if you have any aspirations to impeccable online taste, like moi. Check out Dooce, Go Fug Yourself, and PostSecret for some quality entertainment. And yes, I'm aware that I just outed myself as a nerd on the scale of Urkel or similar, but I don't care. I'm still proud of myself.

Plus now I've flooded the market with my autograph

I've found that my energy, endurance, and patience expands and contracts to cover only what is absolutely necessary. Meaning that by 3:30 Friday afternoon I could not take one more nanosecond of work. Just one more rapid Thai question when I've told them 8 bajillion times I don't speak Thai, one more totally blank stare (Thai children are masters of the blank stare. It's like an art form here.), one more "Teachuhhh byootyfull" and I will go completely blinking bonkers. Bonkdaddy. Bonk-a-doodle-doo. Bonk-bonk-bonkarooney.

Well, I could always take another "Teachuuh byootyfull." But NO MORE BLANK STARES!

This week "friendship books" have materialized in all my students' backpacks. These are like the autograph books of old, though I'm unclear about why. It isn't the end of the term, and I can think of no other sane reason to force near-strangers to write inane good wishes, along with phone numbers, in overly-illustrated cardboard books. But sanity does not seem to be highly valued here.

Students were nearly frothing at the mouth to get me to sign their friendship books after school today, which was sweet. If it had been Tuesday, or even Wednesday, I would have thought it was adorably idiosyncratic, another charming anecdote to relate with just the right touch of amusement tempered by fondness.

But it wasn't Tuesday. It was Friday afternoon, and I was very very tired, and very very sweaty, and very very much over being surrounded by giggling incomprehensible conversations, being offered really gross candies/flour-covered rat pellets, and pantomiming entire scenes from Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. I just wanted to go home.

But no, the kids wanted a farang message in their friendship books, and a farang message they would get. I'm not so much of a humbug that I could refuse a cheap pink book covered with teddy bears and sayings like "Friendship is the good of heart love!" and "Don't leave for friends with no love!" (My favorite was clearly written by someone with a large vocabulary but a small dictionary; "Friendship is the sharing of prejudice of the existence!" Classic.)

So I signed a lot of "friendship books." How many? Well, I have 372 students at this school, and my right hand feels like at least 80% of them wanted a farang signature. I wrote some variation of "Keep up the good work!" more times than I would have imagined was possible. And the books just kept coming until I felt the shriek well up in my throat.

"I ain't yer friend, biatches! I'm a goldurned English teacher, in a position of authori-tay here, so SIDDOWN and SHUDDUP!!!"

I'm awfully glad it's the weekend.

And 'nit noy' will only take you so far. . . .

My Thai speaking ability is not progressing at all as I had planned or imagined. While conveniently still in America, I had imagined that three months in the country would find me able to stumble along in more or less complete sentences, and AT LEAST able to ask the way to the alcohol. Alas, it is not so. And I've figured out why. It is impossible, as a speaker of a language that is, well, not Thai, for me to visualize anything.

What I mean is, you can't even translate Thai into a Latin alphabet because the sounds are as different as me and. . .well, as different as me and someone very sober, sane, and interested in working hard. One just can't put most of the language into letters. So one has to memorize a random sound, and one is not very good at remembering anything that isn't written down. For example, Monday thru Wednesday I teach at a school that is rendered in English as "Pakklong." But it isn't "Pack-long," like it looks. In reality you kind of emphasize the "pack" but it's more like "pach," with a bit of throat-breathing, and you kind of skip the "l" in the "long." It's more of a suggestion of an "l," not really articulated. The "g," too, is a soft g, so it's not really "long," it's more like. . well, I can't really explain. And "Sawatdee kha," which is a polite "hello," isn't really pronounced like it looks. The "t" is sometimes written as a "s," but neither is really correct. You kind of say both, if that makes sense, which I know it doesn't because it didn't to me at first. And you drag the "kha" out a ways, and sort of lilt up at the end (that's if you're a woman. Men say "khap."). The point being, you just can't render most Thai words into a recognizable vocabulary. So you have to either learn the Thai alphabet or memorize these very difficult random noises, and both require the kind of extra brain space that I just don't have.

Or I have but is earmarked for useless celebrity gossip, names for future children, and decorating of future ginormous mansion/penthouse/yacht.

P.S. New photos! I managed to more or less fix my camera using the aforementioned very useful tweezers and a little elbow grease (which I think is a totally disgusting expression, reminding one of eye boogers or similar). I say more or less because sometimes it requires me to take pictures with the camera's battery door open. Not sure why, but who am I to argue with the almighty Kodak LS743?
P.P.S. These pictures are mostly from the Students' Day fair at Wat Khodtimtaram. Basically this fair consists of dressing up in insane colors and playing insane games in the insane heat. Most of the kids pictured are my Prathom 6 students from Wat Khod school, which, despite the name, is not very near Wat Khodtimtaram ("wat" basically means "temple," but most schools are affiliated with, and named after, a temple. So you often have schools called Wat something.)

I Was Thinking Today. . . .

Tweezers are the perfect tool. One can completely dismantle, clean, and re-mantle one's digital camera with them, and afterwards, do a little clean-up work on one's brows!

Brace yourself, Bridget. . .this is a long 'un

I've been told I talk too much about boys and food and sleeping and not enough about what I actually, um, do. So here is. . . . A Typical Day In The Life Of A Lazy But Idealistic English Teacher In Thailand.

6:45- Alarm goes off. I've cleverly put it across the room so I have to actually get out of bed to turn it off which I do quickly because it is the most annoying noise in the world, even more annoying than that shrieking noise Jim Carrey makes in that one scene in Dumb & Dumber that he calls the most annoying noise in the world. Then I moan and groan and rub my eyeballs and stretch and yawn and do my best to avoid wondering if my stuffed-up nose is bad enough to call in sick. Fail to avoid wondering if my stuffed-up nose is bad enough to call in sick. I ain't gotta lie to kick it, this is the worst part of my day and the only time wherein I seriously consider quitting this shit job and living on my parents' couch.
6:47- Turn on the BBC.
6:50- To the comforting sound of British accents describing car bombings and Kazakhstani elections, I hop in the shower. Actually, I turn on the shower and then wash my face and take my pills and vitamins while the water warms up. 35 years later, as I'm sending my youngest child off to college and cashing in my 401k, the water achieves lukewarm status. I shower to the music of my own shrieks and yelps. Have you ever shaved a goose-bumpy leg? It isn't very pleasant, especially at 7 o'clock in the morning.
7:05- Breakfast while watching BBC. This is usually a croissant from Tesco which isn't warm but is doughy and good. Sometimes some raisins too. Or a yogurt. And apple or grape juice. I've also recently discovered guava juice, which is quite good but takes a little getting used to. I like pineapple juice too. Any juice, come to think of it. Except tomato.
7:15- Clothes, hair and makeup. Much, MUCH faster than it was at home because it's too hot to wear a lot of makeup, I have to wear my hair up, and I hardly have any clothes. Tinted sunscreen, lip gloss, a swipe in the general direction of my lashes with waterproof mascara. Hair in a bun. Conservative button-up blouse or polo, just-below-knee-length skirt. I have become Condoleezza Rice. The BBC continues.
7:45- Down to the lobby for a cup or two of disgusting Nescafe with enough sugar and cream to send an elephant into insulin shock and a glance at The Bangkok Post, the only English-language newspaper around. Rarely anything more than vaguely interesting, but I'm following the unrest and flooding in the south in a half-hearted, look-I-do-TOO-care-about-the-plight-of-others kind of way.
8:00- Down the road to grab a motorbike taxi to school (Monday-Wednesday). Thursday and Friday I teach at a school right across the road, so I manage to walk. The motorbike taxi costs 30 baht, which is about 75 cents. This is approximately the time at which I start to feel less like the Dreaded Droopy Bog Monster and more like something kinda human. I'll admit it, even though you know I hate to prove my mother right about anything, once you get going, early mornings are not THAT bad.
8:30-11:30- Teach, usually two classes of an hour each. Monday is Prathom 1 and 2 (roughly equivalent to grades 1 and 2), Tuesday is Prathom 3, Wednesday is Prathom 4 and 5 (across town at Pakklong School), Thursday and Friday are both Prathom 6 (across the street at Wat Khot). Not a ton of work, but it's tiring. All that standing and yelling and playing and mostly, trying to explain things and searching for synonyms they might have come across in their schizophrenic and unpredictable previous English classes. I've had to overcome my anal urge to find the best, most correct word and started saying anything vaguely related to the word I'm trying to communicate.
11:30- Lunchtime, which I eat in the canteen with the other teachers. Cold rice and a variety of Thai dishes, sometimes delicious, sometimes inedible. It's hit or miss. Much using of hand signals, although I can say "mai pen" which means not very spicy, "nit noy" meaning a little, "mai hiuw" which is not hungry (if the food looks particularly heinous), and "arroy" (with a rolled r) which means delicious, as well as the general words for rice and stuff, and when paired with lots of smiles and nods or inquisitive tilts of the head, that more or less gets me through the meal. (I originally typed "inquisitive head cocks" but that made me giggle at the naughtiness of it all, so I changed it. And they're trusting me with the leaders of the future.)
12:30-3:30- Teach, usually another two classes for a total of four classes a day. Again, not a ton of actual work time, but it's draining. Draining but exhilerating (did I spell that right? I don't think so, but that's one of those words I have never been able to spell and, at 22, will probably never learn.) You know the feeling - you're tired and short-tempered and just want to go home but still full of ideas for the next time, still preoccupied with plans and improvements and problems.
3:30- Catch a songthaew, which is the Thai version of a bus. It's a pickup truck with benches in the back and a canopy over them. Costs 8 baht (otherwise known as an amount of money so small that in the US, I would probably throw it away rather than carry it around), and there are no stops. You just flag one down as it zooms by and bang on the window when you want it to stop. I catch a blue one outside my school, which takes me to the bus station where I grab a purple songthaew to my apartment complex, which is called Wiang Wallee. Love to say that. Weeee-ang Walleeeeeee. Sometimes I go grocery shopping at this time instead of going straight home, but that's boring even to me, so I won't go into it.
4:00- Enter my room, number 428. In quick succession, or sometimes all at the same time, I turn on the AC, take off my clothes, turn on my laptop, and open a bottle of Sprite.
4:04- Put already half-empty Sprite on the nightstand, flop backwards onto bed with a "whew."
4:05- Bitch aloud to self that bed is about as comfortable to flop backwards onto as a sidewalk, NOT that I've ever flopped backwards onto a sidewalk. That would indicate intoxication, wouldn't it, and I have never been intoxicated in my entire pure-as-snow-that-is-driven life.
4:06- Turn on some music and play a couple card games on my computer. Maybe write in my journal-DON'T-call-it-a-diary. Check if there's anything on the 6 English channels I get. There never is. Settle for the BBC because even if it's boring, British accents are scrumptious and do something nice to my insides.
4:40-Berate myself into at least pretending to work. I'll get out anything that needs to be graded + my grade book, or the nifty little lesson plan forms I invented and am inordinately proud of, and half-work, half-watch TV. Or play Solitaire.
6 or 6:30- Dinner time. I recently purchased an electric griddle thingy, which excited me beyond all reason. So sometimes I make noodles or some fish or anything that can be cooked in either a frying pan or a large-ish pot. Lots of soup. Sometimes, more frequently I think, I go to one of two restaurants; the one in the lobby of my building which has a seafood dish thingy that is de-lish, or one a few blocks away that has a vegetable-oyster sauce dish thingy that is also de-lish. I like going downstairs because I usually run into either Kristin or Bill, the other American teachers, and it's such a relief to speak normal English. I also like Sally, the Thai woman who is Queen of the Restaurant, because she teaches me Thai. Of course it all leaks out of my brain within minutes, but it's fun while it lasts. If I have no planning to do or I've finished it, I'll go to one of the street markets within walking distance. The outdoor markets here are amazing. They have everything. I've recently purchased a navel ring in the shape of a skull and crossbones (with pink stone eyes)(which I've wanted for ages), a pair of men's camouflage shorts (sooooo comfortable), and a compilation of Beatles love songs. At the same market.
7- Back home, more work. I let all my anal instincts run amok and usually plan my lesson to the smallest detail, along with possible problems, alternatives/backups, skills used, blah blah overachiever blah blee bloo. There's usually a movie in English on either channel 40 or channel 19 around this time, so I watch and work at the same time. With much shifting and bitching because my bummy bum bum gets numby numb numb. That is how hard my mattress is. I also often take this time to go for a walk, now that it's cool enough. If my walk just happens to take me behind the temple across the street, and if there just happen to be a little colony of homeless puppies there, and I just happen to have some dog food with me. . .well then, I'll feed and play with those freaking adorable little flea-ridden mongrels for an hour or so.
10:30- Time for beddy bed bed. Hopefully I'm done with all planning, worksheet creation, boring work-related matters. Wash face, brush teeth, etc etc. Take 1/2 a sleeping pill to keep me asleep all night. Me and sleep have a very volatile relationship. I need drugs to beat it into submission.
11-Lights out!

Lather, rinse, repeat.

Because whiskey makes me a drama queen and rum just makes me tired. . . .

Some of you may remember the epic suckiness of my New Year's Eve last year. It sucked on an enormous scale, comparable only to maybe Chernobyl or similar. As Bart Simpson (with some editing) said, "I didn't know it was physically possible, but it both sucked AND blew at the same time." The new girlfriend of a guy I had dated FOR LIKE 5 MINUTES got her panties in a wad over my presence, and I got left in downtown Santa Cruz. Alone. And completely smashed, natch. It was what is commonly known as awful, horrible, depressing, and sad.

AND THIS YEAR TOTALLY MADE UP FOR IT.

I made a last-minute decision to get the hell off the farm, and went down to Ko Samui in the south of Thailand, where my old buddy Graeme, currently nicknamed Ye Olde Graeme because he just turned 34 and I'm sorry, but that's old to me, was on vacay with some Olde English buddies. It was an epic 24-hour journey by bus with fellow American teacher Kristin, nicknamed Belinda because Graeme could never remember her name and now you know I struggle to call her by her real name. Thankfully at our most lost point some college-age kids rescued us. They really did save us, as in I'd probably be in Burma or Malaysia right now if they hadn't taken us under their collective English-speaking wings. In the process they took us to an amazing temple in Nakonsri Thammarat (approximate spelling there), which has a steeple-type thing made of real gold which allegedly does not cast a shadow. I'll believe that when I see it, which I didn't get to, it being cloudy that day. But it was a gorgeous temple, with hundreds of bells attached to the terrace near the steeple that rang constantly- discordant but beautiful.

After arriving on Samui we speed-boated across to Ko Pha Ngan, which is pronounced pon-yawn and, no, I don't know why they spelled it to look like pa-n-gone. But I don't really care because Pha Ngan is the place I want to spend New Year's Eve for the rest of my life, or at least until am completely bedridden by the cirrhosis of the liver that will surely strike me if I spend that much time there. Picture thousands of people, from every country and ethnicity imaginable, dancing, talking, drinking, and shooting off fireworks on a wide, curved, sandy beach. Ringed with bars.

And best yet, those bars all serve JAGER!! I hadn't spotted my drink of choice yet in Thailand, even in massive liquor stores, so I was pretty darn excited when I discovered that, not only did all the bars offer Jager shots, none of my companions had ever drank it so I got to introduce them to the joy that is a Jager shot chased with a light beer.

I got maybe a little too excited about that for my own good.

Found some Aussies, or maybe they were Kiwis, to kiss at midnight. Not alone, Kristin helped. Good times. Then we drank some more, and danced some more, and after that it gets a little hazy. The next thing I clearly remember I was trying to call someone with the crumpled wad of money from my pocket. Unsure who I was calling, where my phone went, or why I thought money might substitute.

Round about 8 am the party pretty much died. . .and by died I mean everyone suddenly dropped in their tracks, having collectively reached the point at which no amount of drugs or alcohol can keep you awake. I caught a ferry back across to Samui and went to sleep. And no, Mother, I did not do any drugs because I don't ingest things unless I know precisely what is in them. You never know when a tomato might sneak up on you.

The rest of the weekend passed exactly how all weekends should pass- broiling like rotisserie chickens by day, drinking in funky beachfront bars by night. Kristin had to teach on Wednesday, so she took a bus back on Monday, which meant, although sad she was leaving, I had a nearly-beach-front bungalow to myself. Good times. Met lots of nice people, although relations with Western menfolk can be strained as nearly all of them have picked up a Thai girlfriend somewhere, and Thai girlfriends are not above making death threats to all Western girls in the general vicinity of their men. Thai women and Western women have an odd relationship, one that is not entirely amicable. A lot of Western women look at Thai women as seductresses, exotic temptresses that seduce all their men away with mysterious and intimidating sexual power. Thai women see in Westerners the women their man will most likely leave them to marry. Obviously, this is a ludicrously broad generalization, but in many instances it's held up.

But I don't really mind because the last thing I want right now is some kind of romantic entanglement. Boys are all well and good, don't get me wrong. You KNOW I love me some man candy. But currently every spare brain cell I have is occupied with the 600-odd students I am trying to keep straight and keep under control and oh, yeah, teach English.

Came home by bus, again, on Wednesday which meant I arrived back in Rayong on Thursday morning. I was surprised by how much I looked forward to getting home, and surprised how Rayong had, in my head at least, become "home."

Back at school today, back to the daily grind. One nice thing about teaching is that no two days are ever, EVER, exactly alike. Or even somewhat alike. It's hard work, but it definitely isn't boring.

P.S. They showed a DVD of "King Kong" on the bus back from Samui. You gotta love a country that shows illegal pirated DVDs of new releases on their overnight buses.

P.P.S. On New Year's Day I refused to get out of bed. As part of his many creative tactics to get me moving, Graeme dumped the contents of my (large) black suede hobo bag onto the floor. Succeeded in getting me out of bed, but unfortunately my newly usable camera was dumped along with everything else, and now refuses to work. It doesn't appear to be cracked so I'm hoping I can figure out what is wrong, but that means no pictures, again, for a little while. Don't blame me, blame the old bald English dude.