The going's on so far...
Flippin’eck, it’s been ages.
Where does the time go? One
minute I’m donning my school shirt and prepping my first lesson of the term and
the next I’m planning a mid term holiday.
They say time flies when you’re having fun and, although I’ve mostly been
working, I can say that is absolutely true!
So far the school term has been buckets of fun, the little people have
been keeping me on my toes and I’m pretty sure I’m losing weight from the belly
laughs. I finally feel like I’m making
progress with being a teacher, I’m starting to see the benefit of my lessons on
the kids. When they repeat something
they’ve learned in the playground, it feels like I’ve struck gold. On occasion I found myself woop wooping them,
much to their own confusion. Teacher be
crazy…
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| Wan Wai Kru floral arrangements on display at the school |
This term we celebrated a special day for teachers, called Wan Wai Kru, which, as far as I
understand, translates as ‘day to respect teachers’. The kids make floral arrangements, similar to
lois used during Loi Krathong, to
present to their teachers in a ceremony that takes place at school. The kids present their flowers and bow before
the teachers. I expected it to solely
concentrate on the Thai staff who work tirelessly, not only teaching the kids
for the majority of the school day but also writing daily reports, prepping
crafts and general duties within the school.
On the day the foreign language teachers all lined up as spectators, but
when our classes were rising to present their bouquets we were too called up to
receive them. At first I felt
uncomfortable having the children bow before me but it was a humbling, yet
special experience. At home we don’t
have an event that shows gratitude to teachers, so it was an alien concept to
me to thank someone so ceremoniously for doing their job. However, since becoming a teacher I’ve wondered
what the kids I teach will take away from their kindergarten experience and I
look back at mine and remember, not the details of each day but rather the
feelings I felt whilst being there. I
felt safe at kindergarten, I forged my first friendships with peers, my teacher
was a familiar face and I trusted her enough to leave my Mother every day. Kindergarten was my first experience of
feeling secure outside my family and my teacher played a huge part in giving me
that sense of security. So, school
syllabus aside, I think a teacher plays a vital role in a child’s life. You’ve got Mother’s Day, Father’s Day and
even Grandparent’s Day, so why not ‘Teacher’s Day’? So, I started to accept the bowing and left
the school hall feeling all warm and squishy.
Then, in my afternoon lesson, still feeling the love, I got puked
on. Warm milk puke. All over me.
Swings and roundabouts.
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| Finish line! |
For the month of June I got stuck into a training schedule
in preparation for a 10k run. I was
feeling a bit rootless and aimless, one of the side effects of living a
temporary life in a foreign culture, so I signed on for the run and got my arse
down to the gym. I was on a strict diet
of yoga (at which I am spectacularly rubbish, I am convinced that Thai people
are mostly made of elastic and I am mostly made of concrete), swimming,
walking, weight training and, of course, running. I started out pretty awful, with my thighs
screaming at me to slow the hell down. I
blame Florence and The Machine, you
run to that and you’ll find yourself in Cambodia by sundown. Not surprisingly I limped my way around Sawan Park
for most of my runs. I tried a selection
of stretches I found on the internet and spent my evenings lying on my tiled
floor contorted around a skipping rope. Luckily
my flatmates are imperturbable. Anyway
my regime was successful and, not only did I complete the run in a respectable
time, I raised some dosh for a worthy charity and now my skirts fit better.
I was feeling elated, and excited about stuffing my face
with a proper English breakfast, when disaster struck. My ‘carb loaded’ dinner of seafood pasta from
the previous night came back to haunt me and I found myself with food poisoning
that floored me for the rest of my celebratory Sunday. I tentatively ate a 7Eleven toastie on Monday
afternoon and started to feel vaguely human again. On Monday morning one of my colleagues
queried if I was “mai sabai” which means unwell, and I nodded meekly. I since learned that ‘mai sabai’ can also
mean ‘hungover’ so I may have mistakenly earned a bad reputation amongst the
Thai members of staff. Moral of the
story: if there’s a chance you may be allergic to anything don’t take your
chances with it the night before a 10k run.
I should know this by now, but that’s another story…
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| Breakfast view, pretty even in the rain |
On the following weekend the country celebrated Asarnha Bucha Day, which to my knowledge
is the celebration of the Buddha’s first public sermon. Thai people flock to their hometowns to visit
their local temples and farangs flock to tourist destinations to take advantage
of the cheap low season rates. I ventured
down to Kanchanaburi, which isn’t very far south of Nakhon Sawan, but the route
is to go way south to go back north again so I spent almost 8 hours trundling
along the highway with broken air con. I
arrived feeling the onset of a sinus infection (honestly, I’m like the geek we
all knew at school who was constantly sick) which slashed my plans of hiking
and swimming in glorious waterfalls. I
checked into my room and went foraging for food and found a cute little
restaurant where I had a western meal and a glass of wine. The waitress brought the wine down in a
coffee mug and explained to me that because of the holiday it was forbidden to
serve alcohol. After my gruelling
journey I almost hugged her for getting around it and I enjoyed every last sip
of that wine before hitting the hay for the evening.
The next morning I woke up bright and breezy, and headed out
to find a breakfast with a view and boy, did I find one! A guesthouse on a neighbouring street had an
infinity pool with a view of the River Kwai with mountains melting into the
distance and free coffee! So I settled
in with my book for the morning and ordered the softest most fluffy pancakes
known to man. After hours had been
whiled I wandered down the main street towards two of the big tourist attractions
in Kanchanaburi, the Death Railway and the JEATH War Museum.
I had no knowledge of the impact of WW2 on this side of the world but my
saunter through the museum gave me an insight into something that I think most
countries at war fail to see, when you get down to basics, we’re all the
same. Whilst I pored over the personal
items that belonged to the various soldiers stationed in Thailand I
noticed we all have the same aspirations, fears, hopes and daily routines. The old typewriters, shoes, bicycles, grooming
equipment and kitchen utensils housed behind glass all echoed the ghosts of the
people who once used them, people like you and me, and I wondered to myself, “why
the hell were they all bombing the shite out of each other, weren’t they all the
same?” It seems that some things never
change.
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| One of On's other students cooking Tom Yum |
Feeling hungry and in need of a more positive life affirming
experience I turned to food, naturally, and took a Thai cookery class. I met with On at On’s Thai Isaan, a vegetarian restaurant on the River Kwai Road (Mae Nam Kwai). I chose three dishes from her menu to learn,
Pad Krapow which is a rice dish with Thai basil and anything you want to add (I
like crispy pork – Pad Krapow Moo Glop), Pad Thai and Penang which is a yummy
curry with coconut milk. Once each dish
was cooked I was escorted into the restaurant and invited to eat the whole
thing while On prepped for the next dish.
You can imagine how I felt after the third dish. The words ‘beached’ and ‘whale’ easily come
to mind. After my three dinners On
showed me how to make an extra dish, my favourite Thai dessert, mango and coconut
sticky rice. It was like Christmas
dinner, Thai style. How I wished I’d
worn elastic waisted trousers! I rolled
back to my room via a bar that was serving beer out of takeaway coffee cups, getting
around the ol’ alcohol ban again, although it’s pretty obvious what’s going on when
you see a bar from across the street filled with jolly people drinking out of
takeaway coffee cups. Got to love the
Thai ‘let’s try it til we get told otherwise’ approach to problem solving. In a way I think they’re rather like the
Irish in that respect, many times I’ve heard at home, “Ah sher, 'tis grand, we’ll
change it if someone says anything” and really meaning, ‘then we’ll change it
back once they’re gone’. From one rebel
city to another.
I finished off my weekend away at a quirky little
establishment that I was very excited to visit, a 10 baht bar, which was one of
various stalls set up on the street comprising of a little bar packed with
bottles and hugged by stools lined up along the pavement with a makeshift table
on the road made of a 2x4 and some paint can stools. Most of the drinks were 10 baht, some costing
20 or 30. I decided to be classy and
went for the mid range 20 baht whiskey and coke. None of the cheap stuff for me, I have my
standards. They had homemade fruit
flavoured mixers which were either tasty or my taste buds were numbed by the
incredibly gross Blueberry flavoured shot I sampled. Alcoholic stereotypes aside, as an Irish
person, who once spent the best part of a tenner on one drink (a G&T in Dublin, never again), the
chance to go to a bar and spend 46 cent per drink is an exciting prospect and I
partook repeatedly throughout the evening.
On the plus side, the drinks are presumably watered down as I managed to
journey back to Nakhon Sawan hangover free, or ‘sabai’ as they would say here,
and with some cash still in my wallet.
http://onsthaiissan.com/
Images: Sinéad Millea & 10k shot courtesy of Cassidi Hunkler.
