so long, farewell...

t minus 5 hours and counting.

this will be the last post for awhile. in a few hours i'll head into bangkok, to alex and nithya's apartment. then around midnight tim will arrive (hopefully!). then its all fun and games for 10 days.

i submitted my final report to the principal yesterday. we had a 10 minute meeting in which he appeared to not pay attention. half of the 10 minutes were spent discussing my travel plans and talking about how his son is a pilot. so, who knows if it made any impact. although at lunch just now he thanked me for the report and said there were many things they could improve. so i guess he read it, at least.

last night was the farewell party with the biology department. the food was delicious. mostly everyone else talked in thai and i just sat there... just like the last 3 months! today i'm alternating between packing, some final internet business (like this post) and not really doing anything.

so, have a good couple of weeks without me. i'll let you know when i'm back in the states. don't forget to write!

i can't leave

this morning i about had a heart attack and fell out of my chair. ok, the heart attack is an exaggeration, but i really did almost fall out of my chair. and not because i'm clumsy. i went to the northwest airlines website to look up my flight itinerary for flying back to the US so i could tell michele when i'd be arriving for my 6-hour layover in portland. according to northwest, i had no flight reservations. that is when i almost fell out of my chair. i looked at that reservation maybe a month ago and changed my seat so tim and i would be sitting next to each other! what happened to it?? then i went to a website for the thai travel agency that the school used to purchase my ticket and tried to find my reservation there because that was supposed to work, too. that site also said i had no reservation. that's when i about had a heart attack.

so i went down to the office, walked in and said, "i have two problems." (i didn't tell you about the second problem yet.) having a problem is pretty much the only reason i visit the office, so i don't know why i announced it but i did. so i told them my flight problem and khun sujin said, "but you have a reservation." well, but, they don't think i do. that is my problem. but she got right on the phone and made some calls and told me they are working on. ok, on to my second problem. last week i asked to get my last payment early, on tuesday (yesterday), so i could go with someone to the thai bank and transfer money to an american account and not have to deal with cash. "oh, but everyone got paid yesterday." but not me. so sujin calls over to accounting people. apparently i'm not getting paid until next week because officially my last day is october 1. does that make any sense??? no. plus, i won't physically be here and always before they've had me sign something saying i received the money. apparently nothing here can be easy or logical for me. but maybe they'll arrange for me to be paid before i leave on friday so i can sign the thing. i hope so, i don't particularly want to leave without getting my last payment.

then someone called sujin and one of the other ladies in the office offered me some tea and cookies. i needed them because i wanted to cry, i didn't have a plane ticket home and they didn't pay me! so we had some snacks and somehow sujin did some magic and my plane ticket got fixed. my reservation was deleted or something? it didn't really make sense, but it was fixed so i didn't complain. but i still want my money.

it was not a good start to the day. and i had to go to the immigration office to extend my visa so i'm legally here after next tuesday, so i was just hoping nothing else went wrong today. the immigration office was totally packed. we sat there for maybe an hour and they had called half of the people in line in front of me (you get a ticket with a number and it also tells you how many people are ahead of you in line). nathan and lisa needed to go to the vietnamese embassy by 4 and were waiting for me. so then p-ahm (lady at school who deals with all the legal stuff for the foreign teachers) just went up to one of the worker ladies and said something, came back and got my papers and crumpled up my ticket, and we were out of there in about 15 minutes. it was pretty sweet. well, there was a moment of worry when she brought back my passport and the lady had stamped it so that i could stay until september 9. i said, "oh no, not september! october!" and p-ahm made a funny face of shock and went back and the lady changed it.

i was much more relaxed after that all worked out. but i still want my money.

the beginning of the end

i've got a busy social schedule this week, farewell dinners tomorrow night and thursday night. plus trips during the day to the immigration office, the bank, and a meeting with the principal. so tonight i suggested to nathan and lisa that we check out this intriguing place down the street since its my last chance. its a "pub and restaurant" called vintage. we've been wondering about it for the past couple months but hadn't gone. so we met up around 6pm and headed down the street (part of the reason we haven't gone before its that its kind of far down the street, maybe 10 minutes walk, and this walk requires you to risk your life since there are no sidewalks or anything.) we got there and it was empty except for some workers in the back. we looked around and finally lisa went to ask if they had food, because it sure didn't look like it. they said they were closed until 7pm. the decor was interesting, lots of red and black, and the music was really loud.

since we were hungry we went to an italian-style place nearby. i ordered something called napolitano that had no description in english. it was spaghetti with a sweet tomato sauce (sort of bbq sauce-like) and mushrooms and tomatoes. it wasn't bad, but i wouldn't order it again. after our dinners we had ice cream. it was delicious. i got rum raisin. (i couldn't resist the raisins, especially since they were all plumped up with rum!) i haven't had much real ice cream here, if i get any ice cream its usually an ice cream bar from the minimart and its not even made of real ice cream. so it was a good treat.

then we walked back by vintage to decide if we wanted to go in for a drink. we decided against it. there was no one else there! and nathan had said during dinner, "when i went in, i felt like it was a place that might have vampires." or something to that effect. it was a strange place. but at least we went in. maybe on a friday night it would have more people. i hope for nathan and lisa's sakes that it turns out to not be sketchy, so they'll have something to do once all the other foreigners leave. i feel bad for them that it will just be them and all the thai teachers, but not bad enough to want to stay a minute longer.

and, just so you'll know what i'm missing when i leave, here is a picture of the head biology teacher's desk. the desk i sit across from every day. all day.

homesickness

i haven't been too homesick here in thailand. its not like i've never been away from home before, i guess having experience helps some. not that i don't miss anything, but i can generally deal with the loss and longing or whatever it is that constitutes homesickness. i've never HAD to have something you can only really get in the states (or bangkok). but i've decided there are 2 broad categories of things i miss.

category 1: things i know i miss.
these are the things i have more or less missed since i left. tim, luna, family, you who are reading this, my good pillow, good bread. i miss these things, but i do my best not to think about it because there's no way luna's coming to visit, and generally i ignore the missing and do ok. but every now and then, something happens to make me really miss one of these things. i've missed luna more since little cats have started hanging around school. they are so little and cute, and i pet them until they are done being petted and go about their cat business. then i miss luna the rest of the day. and i spent this weekend with my good friend alex and his wife nithya. now i really miss all my old friends. i've gotten to be good friends with lisa and nathan, 2 americans who teach english here, but its not quite the same as friends i've known for a long time (alex for 11 years now, hard to believe)...

category 2: things i don't know i miss until i re-experience them.
then there are the things i never thought about missing until i had them again. at dinner with alex and nithya on saturday, we had a dish with raisins in it. i couldn't stop eating the raisins. they were so good! i think alex thought i was a little crazy, eating all the raisins, but i couldn't help myself. who knew i missed raisins!?!? who knew anyone missed raisins? but apparently i do, and i'll be glad to have a large container of them available when i get home. i know there are other items in this category, but i can't think of them right now...

so, what did i do with alex and nithya this weekend? not much. on saturday we checked out their temporary apartment, mostly to find out where it is because they'll have to commute from there to the US embassy every day. its a nice building and all, but kind of inconvenient relative to the embassy since they'll have to walk to the skytrain in their suits. then we went to one of the malls, where there was a member of the royal family doing something. i thought it was going to be the king because they had the yellow (mercedes) cars all lined up outside, and some thais told me that only the king goes in the yellow cars. but it turned out to be one of the princesses, i think. we thought maybe the queen (it was definitely a lady but from a distance its hard to tell 50ish from 70ish) but one of the thai teachers told me today that the queen basically never goes out these days. so much for the color coded cars. then we went to eat a place called eat me, where the raisin revelation happened. then i went home and they went to their hotel.

on sunday i showed up at the hotel, we watched the end of pretty in pink and 2 episodes of entourage on HBO, then went and walked around lumpini park (the central park of bangkok, i guess). there was a strange interaction with a lady who wanted our empty water bottles. then we went back to their hotel and hung out by the pool for awhile, it was quite relaxing and nice. the weather was beautiful, not too hot and a good breeze. then we had some pizza. thais eat their pizza with ketchup on top, and even though this was a swanky western hotel chain they served the pizza with a bowl of ketchup. i abstained. alex tried it and declared it delicious, but maybe he was just showing off how he's so accepting of this new culture he has to live in. nithya went to take a shower (she had actually gone in the pool) and alex and i just hung out and talked. a delightful evening. then i went home and they went to bed because alex had to go to work this morning. (apparently the people in his office usually work 7am-4pm. i don't think i'll be joining the bangkok embassy staff.)

and, TODAY WAS MY LAST MONDAY. only 4 more days to go. well, 2 full days and 2 half days because i have to go to the immigration office and the bank.

thai talent

last night was a school talent show. i guess that is the word for it. it was mostly a karaoke competition, if you ask me. this was the 3rd talent show of the semester. the first one was karaoke with songs in english, the second was thai folk songs, and last night was thai pop songs.

it was interesting. and long (5:30-9pm). other than that, words sort of fail me. there was a lot of screaming on the part of the audience (probably at least half the kids in the school), and performer's friends would run up to the stage to give them flowers and stuffed animals and half-drunk bottles of water in the middle of the performance.

anyway, i'm posting some videos of it for your amusement. the sound isn't great, due to all the screaming, but you'll get a general idea. sorry, the files are big.



ok, sorry, this is the only video i can upload for some reason.... maybe more later!

weekend excitement

well, another weekend in bangkok. it was interesting. yesterday i went first to a really touristy area (had to pick up train tickets for when tim is here). not my favorite part of bangkok, but what can you do. i got hit up by a classic scam, but i'm so savvy i didn't fall for it. then i was headed to the big weekend market on the north edge of town. to get there, i took a khlong (canal) taxi over to the skytrain station. the khlong taxi is really more like a khlong bus, there's a big boat you got on at specific stops and it drives you down the canal. its actually really convenient, fast, and cheap. definitely the best option for where i was and where i wanted to be. you have to put up a tarp along the side of the boat, though, so you don't get sprayed with nasty canal water. and you sort of have to jump from the boat to the "pier" when you get off. but its an adventure and mode of transport i recommend for east-west travel in bangkok.

then the weekend market. they have everything there. i got some souvenir stuff and food. it was exhausting, as always. too many people and things and too hot. but i did speak enough thai that some of the vendors would answer me in thai, and usually i understood. because i just asked how much did something cost. then i took the metro to the nearby train station, and then train back to school. i'd only been to that train station before when i was already on the train, but i was able to talk to understand when the guard asked me if i was going to hua lumpong (the main train station) and tell him no, i'm going to salaya. and he understood and sent me to the right place! it was a proud day for me and my thai skills.

today i went into bangkok again. i was supposed to meet the other american and one japanese teacher for dinner. first i went to a mall noted for cheap electronics because i wanted some new headphones. in the atrium part of the mall, there were just sort of stands all over, not real shops, more like a market. they sell all sorts of stuff. and then there were some real stores... all the stuff i looked at was clearly fake--i'm pretty sure Sony doesn't have major typos on their boxes--but i bought some headphones for about $6 anyway... at least they stay in my ears, even if they aren't real sony. and they work, so...

now, i'm pretty used to seeing weird stuff every day. i saw two very interesting new weird things today. first, people eating ice cream off of hot dog buns. the mushy, wonderbread, 5 bags for $1 kind of hot dog buns. with scoops of ice cream where you'd usually put the hot dog. i just can't imagine how that tastes good. and then, at one sausage/meat ball stand (pieces of sausage and/or balls of meat on sticks), i saw what appeared to be a corn dog! i couldn't believe it! but i was on the far side of the sidewalk and it can be hard to navigate and really i needed to get into the mall to find the bathroom. so i missed out on the corn dog! its not really a weird thing, a corn dog, but its the first such thing i've seen in thailand. sure, sausages out the wazoo (some are gross, some are good, i am pretty good at distinguishing now). but never a batter dipped sausage on a stick!! i should have gone back, but then i was running late.

and then dinner. we had mexican food! who knew, mexican food in bangkok! surely there's not many mexicans here... it was actually tex-mex, it said on the door. which isn't the same. but they did have quesadillas and burritos and chimichangas and enchiladas... it was alright, i can't rave and i don't know that i'd recommend it except for a serious mexican food craving when you've been without for several months. there was cheese on the quesadilla, but i'd like more and i can't really verify its authenticity as cheese other than that it was not american cheese. and the sour cream...grainy. but it was an experience.

my friend alex and his wife arrive on thursday night! i'm sooooo excited to see them! they better be ready to see me, because i plan on visiting them in their swank hotel (your tax dollars at work, i believe) all next weekend. and sure, i'll show them my limited knowledge of bangkok. at least i can show them shopping centers and movie theaters. and tex-mex food.

10 days of work left.

the power of positive thinking

as of right this second, i have approximately 2 weeks of work remaining. i should have a party! but its still 10 days of trying to think of something to do with my time. well, maybe only 9 days because one half day is another "inquiry teaching" workshop and one half day will be required to extend my visa at the immigration office. and maybe an additional half day taken up to go to the bank and transfer money to my US bank account. so that's really only 8.5 days! now i really should have a party. i can see how well this positive thinking business works.

so, keeping on that positive note, i have created a list of things i will miss when i go back to the states:
-witnessing 2 people, neither of whom speaks english well, try to have a conversation in english. (it sounds mean, but it really is quite interesting, seeing how they use the language and how different it is from real english.)
-fresh coconut milk
-most of the fruits
-the food in general
-rain (it might be a good many months til there is rain in phoenix again)
-being able to completely ignore everything that is going on around me because i have no idea what people are saying

ok, that is all i came up with. but i think its a pretty good list. the fruits are interesting... i haven't figured out why thais like to eat some fruits before they are ripe. ripe guava = delicious. unripe guava, the only kind you can get here, is hard and flavorless. like a pear that's not ripe yet. i know they are really good for you and all, but i just don't like them. you shouldn't have to dip your fruit in sugar+chili flakes to make it tasty. also unripe--the oranges! there's lots of little clementine-sized oranges at the market, but they are green! maybe they taste alright, i've never actually tried them. and a more recent appearance--pomegranates. the outside of the pomegranate is yellowish, and the seeds on the inside are basically white. that can't taste like much, can it? i think not. i personally like the ones that are really red.

Avast!

ahoy, mateys!

ye best be preparin' yer poop deck... it be TLAPD next week! ready the grog, scalywags and wenches, or ye be walkin' the plank!

iron ethel.

news you can use

groundbreaking science here

nasty #2

today at lunch i picked up what looked like a tasty dessert, sticky rice with what i thought was some spice and coconut milk. turned out the spice was powdered fish. who comes up with these ideas for desserts????? and why does anyone need to eat powdered fish??? luckily i could just remove the top layer of rice that was contaminated, and the rest tasted just fine. sticky rice and coconut milk, can't go wrong.

on a completely different note, i'm watching a movie called "vampire bats" at the moment. who i imagine will be the heroes of this bad horror movie are both biology professors. the man is teaching ecosystem ecology (he used the phrase 'ecosystem structure and function' and i almost swooned), and she teaches animal behavior and evolutionary biology. how can this be a bad movie?? i can't possibly imagine! i can't tear myself away! i can't predict what is going to happen, especially since a student already got drunk and disappeared! you need to go out and get a copy of this movie right away, move it to the top of your netflix list.

i give up

update on the workshop last week: went ok, better than i expected i guess. the teachers didn't talk when i was talking, but i tried really hard to make it so i never talked more than 5 minutes without asking them some kind of question so they could talk. i was assimilating their cultural ways and all into the structure of the whole thing. how considerate of me. it did go like 30 minutes over time, but it wasn't my fault. and i think they learned something, even though they seemed utterly shocked at my suggestion that they should focus their teaching on scientific processes (e.g., basics of experimental design, how to draw a graph) rather than on the minute details of specific methodology.

then this weekend was camp. i was cautiously optimistic about camp. they asked me to design two "experiments" but gave me absolutely no idea of how camp was structured or what sorts of things are typical "experiments" for such a camp. so i came up with 4 ideas, presented them to the boss, and she said they all look fine so i should just write up 2 of them. so i wrote them up, directions, data sheets, questions for the students to answer, the whole shebang. gave them to the boss to look over, said she should change things or have me change them if they didn't fit with the plan. to my knowledge, nothing was changed.

so we left at 6am on saturday morning for the 3 hour drive, which was followed by a full day of activity with like 30 minutes of rest scheduled. holy crap, that was brutal. because of course we were running late. so my first experiment was scheduled for 2pm. we started that part i think at about 3:30. this experiment was supposed to look at ant diversity in different habitats. each group was supposed to get pork balls and some jelly to put out to attract ants (or whatever) and then the students were supposed to collect whatever came, compare and contrast among the different habitats. well, they were given 4 sugar cubes and i think told to put them wherever they wanted. pork balls are not hard to come by!!! and i gave you a weeks notice that i wanted them for this!!!

my second experiment was basically an excuse for me to hopefully see some cool insects. we set up a blacklight after dark. but my understanding was we didn't have an extension cord, so our options for placement were extremely limited. so i put the lamp in a crappy place and crossed my fingers. it totally sucked, basically nothing came. there was better stuff out by a huge floodlight on the field across from the cabins. so mostly we collected stuff there. then i found out, low and behold, we had several extension cords! oh i was so pissed, why did they tell me i could only plug the lamp into the outlet???

so it was a totally crappy time. it could have been so interesting. but like so many other things here, it seems to me that they like to just do things for the hell of it, with no real plan for what the learning goals are or anything. and totally inconsiderate of whatever i planned or asked them to do or anything. sooooo frustrating. not to mention that someone's alarm started going off at 5:30 in the morning and they just kept hitting snooze. oh, they just ooze the respect for other people that they pride themselves on.

i won't even go into what we did on sunday. suffice it to say, it was perhaps the most boring morning in my life. absolutely dreadful. the whole time, i couldn't keep myself from thinking, "i should be watching elephant polo right now." because i could have been. i was supposed to be. and how could it not be interesting???

i'm ready for this to be over. only 18 more days.

mental list i made while bored out of my mind--things that make me excited to go home:
-pizza (especially chicago style)
-cornbread with honey (just sounds good right now)
-bread (not the wonderbread style you get here)
-people will talk to me (it sucks when almost everyone you know tries to avoid talking to you because it means they'll have to speak english)
-having a sense of expectations and knowing what is going to happen
-cooking for myself so i'm not surprised when a whole chicken leg appears in my green curry (**clarification--by "whole chicken leg" i mean the whole part from the claws to where the feathers start growing, not the drumstick and thigh**)
-not having to answer the questions "can you eat spicy food?" and "do you like thai food?" (have you ever met anyone who doesn't like thai food?)
-my pillow (why did i not bring it? its awesome.)
i think their are other things i forgot. its hard to remember things when you are soooooo bored.

culture shock 2.0

sometimes i think, "why do i bother?" about my work here. no one else seems to care what i do, so why should i? its somewhat frustrating, especially since they do want me to be in the office all day (they come looking for me if i don't show up). some days are fine, i just entertain myself all day. today is a frustrating day.

a few weeks ago they told me (with less than 2 weeks notice) that i would be presenting a workshop on inquiry teaching. that was all the guidelines i was given, its a workshop on inquiry teaching. in less than 2 weeks. oh, and there would be a second workshop 2 weeks after the first one. so i worked pretty hard the next 10 days to put something together that would be useful and informative and educational and not too boring, etc. 2 days before i was scheduled to give the workshop, it was moved back a week. too bad for me, i was ready and wanted to get it over with! but good for them because i had given the teachers a test to take that assesses their scientific inquiry knowledge (topics like what is an appropriate control, why is replication important, how to interpret a graph and draw conclusions from it). they originally had 5 days to complete this test. i figured that was a decent amount of time since the test is in english and they are not so good at english. (bonus: practice your english reading skills!) so they ended up with 12 days to take this test. it took me about 40 minutes to take the test. 12 days should be no problem for anyone. right? (i won't even go into the disturbance i caused by telling them they had to answer the questions on their own, no copying off each other, but could ask other people for help interpreting the questions/answers.)

well, the workshop is tomorrow (wednesday). they were supposed to turn in their tests on monday. the head teacher wrote a note on the board on friday reminding all the teachers to turn in their test. who wants to place a bet on how many tests i have received?? come on, it will be fun! well, i will just tell you. the answer is 2. 2 out of 12. wow. what the hell do i do with that? sure, its hard. sure, it takes time to take a test and you have other things to do. but give me a break here, folks!! i didn't do this just for my own amusement! YOU TOLD ME I HAVE TO GIVE YOU THIS WORKSHOP AND THE TEST IS PART OF IT. if you can't complete an assignment, what kind of model are you for your students?? (ok, so you can't fail your students, but still.) there is clearly a reason that none of the students has decent critical thinking skills! and i am not going to get started on how poorly they did on this test. holy crap. some of it can be chalked up to poor english, but sure as hell not all of it.

so, i'm totally irritated. but what exactly can i do? nothing. god forbid i freak out on them and embarrass myself. well, i have no problem yelling at them or chastising them, but they'll sure have an opinion of me since its such a sin to "loose face" here by freaking out. but i feel like someone needs to knock some sense into these people. i can't believe that some of them want to go to universities in the states for masters or phds in education. they take zero advantage of me being here to practice and improve their english, they can't follow simple instructions, and they ignore deadlines. boy are they in for a shock if they go to the US.

and do i feel any desire to really help them when they treat me like this? no. especially since thais love to talk about how their culture is so great and so respectful of others, especially those with more training or higher rank, etc. i really just can't get over the amount of hypocrisy here. its unbelievable. so, i'll do the workshop tomorrow but i don't know that i can put any enthusiasm into it. and i'll have to say something about the low test return rate. i can't hold back.

AAARRRRRRRRRRR.

cooking school

this weekend i took 2 cooking courses. if you are ever in bangkok and in need of a cooking school, i highly recommend Silom Thai Cooking School. its owned/taught buy nusi, who is a very nice thai man who started a master's degree in ecology but decided he liked cooking better. who can blame him? not that i've been to other cooking schools (there are many in bangkok), but i imagine the others to be much more institutionalized. this was more like if i went over to your house and you showed me how to cook something. the classes were small, too--6 on saturday and 3 on sunday. the cooking school is actually in his apartment building, on the top floor. we cooked out on the porch using 2-burner propane stoves. it was awesome!

first we went to the market and bought all our ingredients. then we learned how to prepare the different dishes and make curry pastes. we talked about how to cook white rice vs. sticky rice, and learned how to make coconut cream and coconut milk (n.b., coconut milk is just diluted coconut cream!). on saturday we made pad thai, tom yum koong, green curry with chicken, a chicken salad (no mayonnaise here) and rubies in coconut milk (rubies = water chestnuts soaked in a red liquid, you can use water+food coloring or red fanta or anything else you like that is probably made with red #5). we also made our own tamarind paste for the pad thai. on sunday we made chicken with cashew nuts, tom kha gai, red curry with chicken, spicy glass noodle salad, and fried fish cakes. oh, and we ate everything we cooked. i ate so much! it was so good!

so what i learned is that thai cooking is easy as long as you have good ingredients. hopefully i can find fresh things back in the states. i know the chilies shouldn't be a problem! (our friend shu-ching is growing many chili plants) the fresh coconut milk was awesome, let me just say. but i don't know where i can get someone to shred coconut for me right when i want it.....

anyway, below are some pictures of my creations (i didn't take one of everything, i was too busy eating!)

all our ingredients...
tom kha...
chicken with cashew nuts...
fish cakes...