Yellow Shirt Day

First, today is Yellow Shirt Day, as is every Monday in Thailand, and also, to a lesser extent, as is everyday in Thailand.

It's to honor the king. They usually say "Row Rak Mailuang!" which means "We love the king!" They really dig him. It's kind of weird. But he doesn't make them do bad stuff and he likes jazz music and tries to help out hill tribes, so he's ok in my book.

Thai Holiday Sparks Yellow-Shirt Craze

That article is from June, but the trend is still going strong. And don't worry, the shirts are back in full supply. They're sold everywhere. Yesterday I even saw a rock hand sign (pointer and pinky fingers up with the thumb holding down the middle two fingers) with the word for "The king" as in "The king rocks!" It's really strange. I'm going to try to get the 2 dudes from my class forced to wear yellow by their significant others and the little Thai reception boy at the school.

Also, I just got a 0% FAT FREE yogurt from 7-11. I don't think that's what they meant to say. I understand they were going for "0% (fat), Fat free" But to a Western mind it looks kind of funny. I'll take a picture.

Bangkok - Week 2, Part 2

1. I changed settings so that anyone can comment.

2. This was from Danny -
What's the city of Bangkok like? You go out much? Any bands? Show where you are in relation to the city using Google Maps plz. Address to send stuff? I think Animal Collective is playing Bangkok soon, you should hit that up.

The city of Bangkok is big, lots of cabs, noisy, humid. It's nothing impressive. There are a lot of temples that I haven't seen. But I mostly feel like it's really just a lot of office buildings. And then bars in some areas and that Khao San Road, which is this whole other world.

I don't go out much. Huai Kwang (Or Huey Kwang, Huet Kwang or anything else you want) seems to be the area for Chinese men looking for prostitutes I think. There are a lot of kareoke (sex) bars, massage (sex) parlors and um, entertainment (sex)establishments and all the signs have Chinese on them too. It's weird. So I don't go out around here at all. There are a couple of going out areas. They take a while to get to so you have to be really motivated. Last night Lisa and I went to one of the areas and went to a movie. We saw The Break Up. I think all Thailand's money goes into their movie theaters. It was nice. I went out two nights before the course and then last Friday with Jeff and Tanya and then last night to the a movie.

There are Thai house bands at a lot of bars but they're all cover bands and then when they take breaks they play the originals. I don't think it's on purpose. I think they just don't know that much music. Kelly Clarkson, Black Eyed Peas, Maroon 5, The Beatles, The Eagles. I have yet to see a band play original music.

I'm staying at The Discovery Lodge. http://www.discovery-lodge.com/ It's primarily past, current and future Chichester students, some with their Thai girlfriends. It's a very strange little community. There are some people who come just for a night or a week but a lot of people are there longer term. In the beginning Lisa and I were friendly with the people who had just finished the course and we hung out with them. They went to Burma for two weeks, but will be back this Wednesday I think. Besides them we haven't really hung out with the rest of the people. It's kind of awkward. We can all say hi to each other, but that's about it. Oh, and we found out at 1) an old Irish guy who took home some Thai girl who stole all his money drank himself to death there and 2) some Thai girl met up with a crazy Pakistani guy she met on the internet and he took her there and then killed her. We were told this by the Atlanta teacher who we ran into on the subway last night. He stayed at Discovery Lodge for 5 months and now lives a block away. I think the company that runs Chichester runs or at least helps in running the English programs at a bunch of schools too so a lot of the teachers we see are Chichester grads and still around. The Atlanta guy does private tutoring also, set up by Chicester. While this is all pretty cool and makes it easy to get a job in Bangkok, it doesn't' really help me out at all with Chiang Mai. One of the instructors said he knows someone at a school in Chiang Mai, but that's it. So that would have been an advantage to a Chiang Mai TEFL school. But oh well. If I ever decide to teach in Bangkok I'll be very well prepared.

I think Animal Collective is coming after I'm gone.

My class last night went well. It was an intermediate class so they were pretty good! I taught them how to use any- (where, one, thing) and (where, when, what, who) - ever and as.... as statements.

Highlights included the ideal game and the superpower game.

I split them into groups and had them come up with the ideal boyfriend, girlfriend and kitchen. I had more options but there were only 6 people. That was fun. My example was my ideal ice cream shop "it would open WHENEVER I wanted, it would have WHATEVER flavors I wanted, it would deliver ANYWHERE I needed and I would never gain weight."

Their answers were cute. "She would stand by my side WHENEVER I needed her." "He would buy me ANYTHING I want, ANY TIME." The pair who had the kitchen were having a hard time so I suggested they get a robot and then make the robot do everything. They dug that.

And then at the end I had them say what they would be able to do if they had a superpower. My answer "I would be able to be invisible WHENEVER I wanted to be!" They said, "I would be able to go WHEREVER I wanted, ANY TIME." Sounds good, right?

It was fun. And I got a good evaluation, so that's always nice. The primary school we visited earlier that day was chaos. It was nuts. In one class the teacher was trying to teach months of the year, got to June and gave up. He sat down and read a book as the kids started fighting, throwing chairs (plastic) at each other, break dancing, jumping off chairs onto each other, and hitting each other with stuff. I didn't see that class, two of the other people in my class did. Apparently the kids are really well behaved in their own classes but "English" classes were supposed to be fun and not structured so there wasn't a curriculum or anything, so it was all chaos, all the time. Steve, one of our instructors, who works with that school, said that what we saw was actually the result of 18 months of hard work and it was actually a vast improvement. One class we saw was good and the teachers were making an effort usually. He said this school is one of the extreme cases of the madness of a primary school and there's another one he works with where all the students are well behaved. Or at least more well behaved. It was good exposure though.

So it's Saturday, I'm at school pretending to do work, but actually just sitting on the internet reading about Chiang Mai. But now they're closing.

Lastly, I have a phone number +66 4 9418215 (Thailand number). There's no voicemail, but you can leave a voicemail at (914) 595-5386 (USA number)if I don't answer.

Thailand is 11 hours ahead of New York and 12 hours ahead of Madison.

Oh and the temperature is either disgusting (hot and humid) outside or freezing (way too air conditioned) inside. The "rainy season" is kind of a joke. It's only rained 3 days since I've been here. New York and Madison sound like they've been going through a lot worse.

Bangkok - Week 2

So tomorrow I guess I'll be starting my third week in Bangkok.

It's been really interesting. The TEFL course is from 8am - 1pm, Monday to Friday. Once a week we have to give a 15 minute peer lesson, and then teach an evening class once or twice a week.

For the peer lessons, last week we got to pick our topics so I taught everyone how to make balloon animals, this week we have real topics, so I have to show them about countable and uncountable food nouns as if they were an elementary level class.

For the night classes, last week I had taught one lesson to a group of 8 adults. It was about how to ask "do you" questions and then how to follow up that question with a "Wh-" question. The class was fun I think. One of our teachers observes us during each class and my biggest problem was not explaining things in simple enough English. I used too many words. And then when they didn't understand I would use more words to explain the same idea, not less, making it more confusing. And I talked too fast.

But overall it went well.

My second night class was last night. It was a group of 12 pre-intermediate students (10 business people and two 13-year-olds). The hardest thing I've found is knowing what they'll get and what they won't. I didn't like the stuff in the book, so I made up my own stuff and since I felt like my class the previous week was bored with what I had prepared, I tried to prepare most stuff and make sure it would be challenging. I got a little bit carried away and ended up not having enough time to get through all the stuff I had planned, but they learned everything they were supposed to. Maybe. This lesson was on describing clothing. So I taught them dress shirt, dress pants, business/suit jacket, long sleeve shirt, short sleeve shirt, button down shirt, striped, plaid, polka dot, floral, and some other stuff. I think the class had fun. I had cut out some pictures from the newspaper and made a worksheet to go with the pictures where they had to fill in the blanks about what the people were wearing. I also did a group activity where each person had to read a description of a person and then the group had to find that person on the page and write their name. Since I came up with it I got to choose the names, so that was really fun. I tried to leave out difficult ones (Beau, Alki) but I forgot about Zach. So when we were going over the answers they said it exactly how it's spelled. So I got to teach them about how sometimes ch = k but I don't know why.

So for each night, I teach for one hour and then I observe for the second hour. I was really interested to see how Lisa would do with the 12 people, and then 10 of them left and only the 2 teenagers stayed. I want to teach 2 teenagers. I also teach on Friday. I'll be with an intermediate class and the lesson is "Feel free." It's about words like wherever, whenever and as... as. The book suggests a final activity of describing your ideal version of something - like job, shop, car, parents, etc. That should be cool.

So in addition to the peer teaching and the night teaching, we also go on excursions once or twice a week. Last week we went to a university. The professor was really good and the students were really bright and talkative. It made me not hate the idea or working at a university. And because I had a skirt, a shirt and fancy shoes and they just had black skirts, white shirts and sneakers, I felt like they might even take me seriously as a teacher. Right now I just got back from a middle school and a high school. We saw two middle school classes and one high school class. The school has 5,000 students. It's like a village. They even have a convenience store!

The first class was an American guy from Atlanta and his class was a ton of fun. The students had a good time, he had a good time. I would definitely try to have a classroom like his. The second class was taught by this old British lady and I kind of hated watching her class. She said actually said, "I need two brave boys to go take care of the girls." And a ton of other super old British lady sounding things. And she had examples like "He is handsome. He has blond hair and blue eyes." Now, I don't want to sound super PC, but there must a been a better example than that for a class of dark haired, browned eyed kids. The only blond hair, blue eyed person was Lisa, the Dutch girl. And then I tried to get over it and another example was "Britney is pretty because she has long, blond hair." Oh come on. They weren't even talking about describing people, it's not like the hair or eye colors mattered. And then she did an activity based on Star Wars and spelled Leia and Wookie wrong. And I've never even seen Star Wars. Ugh. I didn't like this lady. The third class was the high school class that met once a week. His class was like the first guys but a lot more tame. I liked the first class best.

So school (learning, teaching, observing, planning) takes most of my time. Other than that, I don't know. I went to the American Embassy and got extra pages put in my passport. That was exciting. It came out really neat and looks really good! The embassy was nice for American citizens. Kind of chaotic for Thais trying to get visas to come to the States. After that I tried to find my way back and got lost in a park and ended up talking to two 40 year old men for a while. It was half English/half Thai. That was fun, but exhausting. They want to learn English so badly, and if they see a young foreigner, not in grungy backpacker clothes, they say, "Oh! You English teacher!" And then I answer, "uh, kinda." That was fun. They told me about the music they like (Richard Marx, Celine Dion, Scorpion, and all the other big love songs) and I got to try to speak Thai.

Another Thai friend I've made is the security guard at the guesthouse. He's this skinny guy, maybe in his 40s, and he really likes trying to speak English. He helps me with Thai too. I really like that I can read Thai. I can't understand it usually, but if he's saying something or pointing to something, he can write it and then I'll get it better. So that's cool. Sometimes though, he'll see me when I'm sitting outside with other people and get really excited and yell something in Thai with a huge smile and I won't know what to say. The persistence is pretty admirable though. I have a book that I was thinking about bringing outside to help translate stuff from both ends, but he got into the drawing and acting out so I just let him stick with that. And I also had to make sure he didn't stick around for hours. So I have no idea what I'm actually learning, because it's both of us guessing what the other one's trying to convey. But I'm sure it's all helping. I also learned the sentence "Monkeys like bananas. The translation from Thai would be "monkey (no singular/plural rule) like (no verb conjugation) banana." Grammar!

So one of the big parts of TEFL is making you aware of what kind of grammar (and English as a whole) we take for granted and what we'll need to know how to teach when we're teachers. We don't go over every single grammar term but just kind of ideas and how to figure out how to teach it. But this whole grammar thing has just been blowing my mind! And I feel amazingly lame for working in a language learning lab for AN ENTIRE YEAR and not paying any attention at all.

We also had a little lesson on the phonetic alphabet! I thought that was so cool. There was a crossword we did to practice and I got to a work that I pronounced as "loft" but there were 7 spaces. It was an British worksheet! Laughed. Gggrrr.... But good English dictionaries have the phonetic pronunciations for American and British English, which I think is really cool.

Last thing, one of the teachers here (who was the university prof we observed) likes to play music as the class is coming in and yesterday, when we came in, guess what she was playing?? The Cat Empire. No joke. I walked in, heard Two Shoes, and asked, "Is this on the radio? Did someone put a CD in?" and she said, "Oh , it's a band you've never heard of." Ha. I think I said, "It's The Cat Empire, I know. I've worked for them for two years." My description didn't come out right and I ended up sounding like a super-fan who joined their street team, handed out a few postcards and now says "worked for." Oh well. So that was interesting.

So I've got to work on a lesson plan for my peer teaching tomorrow. I've made it so that I get to ask the people in class about Oreos and pizza. And my night class on Friday.

And to those of you that donated money to my PEPY/CCF thing - I raised the most money in my group of 10, so THANK YOU!!!!

Bangkok

I don't like this computer so this is going to be fast.

1) The plane ride wasn't half as bad as I thought it would be. The seats were comfortable, the food was good (I even tried a spicier dish), I watched Kath & Kim, or Kim & Kath, I don't remember which name came first (an Australian comedy TV show), Joey (yes, the spin-off of Friends), The Benchwarmers and even got to use a Berlitz Learn Thai computer program. I tried to sleep too. Seventeen hours. Damn.

2) When I got to the airport I was picked up by Nina who runs The Discovery Lodge (the website says it's two English speaking dudes, but I've never seen them, only a lot of Thai girls). She tried to make it comfortable for me in the truck so she turned the AC on all the way, pointed them all at me and changed to the "Metropolis 107!" the English language radio station playing Sweet Caroline, Take it Easy and Delilah by Tom Jons. The place is kind of a parking lot with apartments in it. Not exactly what the website looks like. My suite is two rooms and a bathroom. The living room has a loveseat, a 10 inch TV with maybe 2 English stations that seem to only play informercials, a mini fridge, and a fan. The bedroom has a bed with a sheet on it, a dresser built into the wall and AC. I have to pay the electric bill. The bathroom has a shower with no hot water but it's at least 90 degrees and humid all day so I haven't minded yet.

3) I keep feeling crappy about every purchase. It's really hard to know what's reasonable and what's ridiculous. I have to dress in fancy clothes for the class so I bought a pair of shoes and I'm getting two skirts and three shirts made. I'm having a hard time deciding when to believe people about quality and deciding how much I care and all of that. Pretty standard decision making stuff but when you feel like everyone around you thinks you're an idiot it adds a whole new level.

4) The place I'm living is far away. It's on a subway line that connects to a skytrain line which can take you to the official downtown area. But that's not the touristy areas really. So it's good and not good. Yesterday the only foreigners I saw in my neighborhood were other people at my guesthouse. I took the skytrain and the subway but the foreigners disappeared after the first couple of stops. It's kind of strange. And everyone is always dressed really nicely (hence, I have to dress nicely too). The backpackers in the backpacker mecca (Koh San Road, the same as Haad Rin in Koh Pha Ngan but in a city and therefore without a beach, and internet is cheaper) are all wearing backpacker clothes and using cheap internet and eating banana pancakes.

5) Food has been difficult. Around me there aren't really food places, it's all street food vendors lining the streets. Most of it smells bad or looks scary but yesterday morning I tried what looked like bananas on a skewer. Seemed simple enough, and not diseased. It was 5 baht (12.5 cents), but it tasted like crap. I don't know if the bananas were old or had just been sitting there a long time. Really bad. Last night I finally made it over to Koh San Road to meet up with a kid I went to high school with who happened to be in Bangkok. We then met up with a friend of a friend of his at an Indian restaurant her brother owns. Her brother had bought a bag of grasshoppers and asked me if I wanted to try one. I ate it. It was spiced and crunchy and if it wasn't for the wings I probably wouldn't have had such a hard time swallowing it. The wings were really rough though. But I can now cross "eating an insect" off my list of things to do.

6) So I'm kind of hating Bangkok. So far I've seen two very distinct worlds - the fancy (by fancy I mean business clothes, I know they're not supposed to be the same, I just associate business with fancy)dressed Thais in most of Bangkok and the foreign backpackers in their quasi hippie costumes.

7) I NEED A FRIEND. Preferably a girl, or at least a guy who didn't come to Thailand in search of a Thai girlfriend. I've met some English dudes staying at the guesthouse who just finished their TEFL course at Chichester and they were nice and asked me if I wanted to go out to the bars with them my first night there. I said sure, trying to beat jetlag, be social, see Bangkok, etc. Then when we got to the bar it was ALL BEAUTIFUL THAI GIRLS HANGING ALL OVER WHITE DUDES. At one point a Canadian came in, sat down at the table and when I was talking to him he said, "Uh, this part of town isn't really for Western girls." I said, "Yeah, Sam didn't really mention that when he asked if I wanted to come out." Just really awkward.

Last night I had a hard time getting to sleep and read The Lonely Planet Thailand (from a used bookstore in Koh San Road) about Chiang Mai. I really can't wait to get out of Bangkok. I think Cambodia will be really interesting for two weeks and then Chiang Mai it is. It's touristy, sure, but not in the way that KSR is. And the Thais in Chiang Mai aren't as business-ey as the Thais in Bangkok.

I do realize that these are huge generalizations I'm making after being here 48 hours, but I'm hot, sweaty, hungry and tired.

Oh, one last thing - there are a lot of Muslims in Bangkok. The first night we went through the Muslim neighborhood to get to the lame bar. Women in all black coverings everything but their eyes and men in huge white um... mu-mus? I don't know what they're called. I try to think about them when I'm complaining about sweating in shorts and a t-shirt.

My first step into Angelina Jolie-ianism

So as you already know, I'm going to live in Thailand for a year NEXT WEDNESDAY (July 12th).

Ahh!! In August however, I'll be going to Cambodia to build a rainwater harvesting system for a public school outside Phnom Penh with this totally cool group called PEPY (Protect Earth, Protect Yourself) .

Just a quick reminder of current health conditions in Cambodia...

ABOUT 80% OF DEATHS STEM FROM WATER-BORNE DISEASES!

Ahh! I know! Not so surprising though; most Cambodians have to choose between arsenic contaminated tap water or polluted river water. Bummer, eh?

Anyway, I'm going to Cambodia and building a rainwater harvesting system at a public school so these kids can take home a bottle of clean water to their families every day.

This is going to be huge. This project is in partnership with Cambodian Children's Fund, which is an organization that runs TWO school/orphanages for the poorest kids in Cambodia.

When I say "poorest" I'm not kidding. Most of these kids come to the school from Phnom Penh's municipal garbage dump. They wander the garbage dump picking scrap metal to sell for about $0.50 a day. This interview explains the living conditions these kids are living in.

At CCF (and CCF 2) children learn English and Khmer (language of Cambodia), eat healthy meals, and the children who live there are taught about Khmer culture at night. They even have a Khmer dance troupe now! Older children are provided with computer and vocational training. It's a really amazing place; This page has some really nice (dare I say, inspirational?) success stories.

In addition, PEPY raised money to build The PEPY Medical Center at CCF and are looking to do it for CCF2! The Medical Center will provide doctors visits, treatments, medication, vaccinations and dentistry to these kids.

So I'm writing to you for two reasons. First and foremost, I can't believe what I'm learning about (the good, the bad and the ugly) and I wanted to share it with you. In all honesty, I would hope you let me know about a project like this if you were doing it. It's quite a situation over there and it seems the more people who know about it, the better. And I'm really excited about what I'm going to be able to do.

Second, I've pledged to raise money to go DIRECTLY towards the rainwater harvesting system and PEPY Medical Center and thought I would see if you were interested in helping me out. (I've already paid for all personal and travel expenses; your donation goes straight to the projects.)

It's super safe, fast and easy. Just go to firstgiving.com, give a credit card number and make just sure you mention me in the comment line so they can keep track. If you want to send a check that's cool too. Just let me know and I'll tell you the specifics. Whatever you can give ($10, $20, $50, $7,359) will help tremendously. (Technical note: CCF and PEPY are both registered 501(c)3 not-for-profits and therefore, all U.S. contributions are fully tax deductible.)

So thank you thank you thank you for reading through this post. If you can give - awesome! If you can't - that's ok! I really appreciate you reading this. I'll have a blog soon and I'll continue to post pictures on flickr.

I love you all, and I'll see you when I get back (or when you come visit!).

-Beth