On Extra Credit

It's extra credit day: write 20 lines of dialogue to raise your grade 5%.
Seems pretty cushy to me.
It's scandal in the office: Nobody's familiar with "extra credit," but
I am MEAN!
I asked what the students are used to.
"Retest."
Same test?
"Retest, same thing."
But how do they learn?
She guffawed. "Learn nothing. If they are lucky, they pass the test."
Welcome to Thailand

Higher-res shots enroute to work

In America, this strip would be McD's, BK, Carl's, Jack's, Subway and Taco Bell-variations of the same gut bombs.
In Thailand, this strip is across the street from three different schools from elementary-postgrad and three blocks from the Airbase.  It has 10 places that sell fried pig/chicken with sticky rice, three of which sell whole-boiled chicken, two of which sell stewed pork leg, and a place with Vietnamese noodles

My usual breakfast stall.  Most days, I have boiled chicken or stewed pork leg.  Happy Friday: it's deep-fried pork belly. 

The front entrance

Shot from the hip while crossing the street.

An inter-community bus: something between a cattle truck and a semi, which can hold about 160 Thai businesspeople or 280 students

The mattayom building, where I do most of my teaching.

The bathroom I share with 600+ boys.  There's one more urinal and two porcelain-lined holes in the floor just off-screen left.  

G6 mugging in the cantene

More G6 kids

Oh, the excitement

What an exciting life abroad: in wild and crazy Thailand, just a hop south of the original full moon party, it's Friday night.

I'm pushing to make it to 8:00 PM so I can sleep past 7:00.

On flames and phoenixes

How to reflect on the last few months.  The last year and a half--graduation, Euro trip, heartbreak in the Chicago airport, the US job market c. 2009, moving, entering the corporate environment, being broken of a great many hangups, moving around the world, being broken period, catastrophic weight loss, job loss, the US job market c. 2010, the necessity of rebuilding after the necessity of bare-bones preservation occluded any thought of reconstruction.  

What do I have to show for my time here?

At the beginning of the week, I spent time substituting in the EP--"Teacher Ow, Teacher Ow, you need go eat, too skinny!"  

It would be really, really nice to trade my 7th graders for 4th and 5th.  

I have a list of questions to ask employers.  And I have a completely frivolous non-souvenir: a subwoofer with speakers.  I also bought two shirts and three pairs of socks and two towels.  

Otherwise, I've spent money on food, a couple of brief escapes, and training in Reiki and Thai massage.  

I had to throw away the pants that shredded with the last motorbike accident, but I am even more proud of my Ritz Carlton shirt now that it has the bloodstained road-rash hole in the shoulder (I would've thought the stain would come out, but not yet).  

What I really have is a degree of self awareness and honesty--for someone who's always fancied himself as strong and independent, it's hard to accept that I really need a close peer group to help share and validate my experiences, which can easily include a cell phone to reach the ready-made group back home.  I need to respect the institution paying me or the pay I'm receiving or my coworkers.  And I really, really need a cozy place to sit.  A kitchen would be killer, but the barely-padded-when-new auditorium chair with a hole under my left cheek does not help offset a long, rough day of teaching.  

What I do not think about is what is truly missing: mountains for hiking and biking, a wild world for fishing and hunting, water clear enough that you have to take a sip even after reminding yourself of giardia, the taste of evergreens in the air, the smell of wood smoke, work with immediate and apparent value--wood chopping, raking, gardening.  What I know is that I want to live in the mountains.  I can name half a dozen towns.  But that's not an option right now--as much as I'm resenting the festering tropics, I have a job that meets the needs I still carry around.  

I might have as little idea as ever of what to do once I get there, but I have a damn good idea of where I want to go, how little I actually need, and what I would like for reasonable comfort.  It took a helluva lot to get that far, but I guess it's better to know.

The truly invaluable lesson came in reflecting on reflecting: for the first time in my conscious life, I feel good about pursuing what living I can, rather than feeling guilty about being given what I haven't earned.  Damn straight I didn't deserve the mature and responsible parents who gave me as many comforts as I knew, even if I do envy those who grew up with an unshakable sense of a family unit.  And maybe I didn't deserve the opportunities that came my way.  But whether they came my way or I busted ass to get them, when I look at what it took, damn straight I've paid my dues.

Stateside, I loved sleeping on the deck in all weather and seasons.  Not just for the love of the outside air, but I generally tried to avoid a sleeping pad as, in retrospect, I tried to create some sense of austerity in an otherwise too-easy life (and even from the midst of a stomach-souring nervously-stressy collapse, I knew it was all mental and only a matter of what I was doing/asking to/from myself [again, only in retrospect]).  Now, I would love to sleep out in cold mountain air--Nepal here I come!--but it's going to be a long, long while before I turn down a soft mattress with a down comforter.  And I would have no shame in admitting it to anyone and everyone in the world.    

On the flight over, I titled a journal entry "Phoenix Rising."  I might not've been right about the rising part, but by the time the EMTs put me on an ER gurney, there was nowhere to go but up, and I was encumbered with just about as little--physically or mentally--as it's reasonably possible to do without.

So it might've taken longer than I thought, and involved more pain and trauma than I would've imagined enduring on a still-operating basis or ever hope to experience again, but maybe--God, karma, Vishnu, the Fates, or rotten luck willing--I'm on the trip up.  

So here's to life and the idea that guilt is for losing an opportunity, not for living as fully as life offers.  

And the hope that one day it leads back to the mountains.  

The Thai Mind

Warning: Bodily injury result from misuse of this Computer. 

I told the class to clear everything off their desks and passed out a test and an answer sheet.  I made a lap and had to tell each individual row of students to clear off their desks.  As I lapped back, I had to tell each row of students to write their names on the test.  In each class, one or two were ahead of the game and asked if they should start writing answers to the test questions on their answer sheets. 

After I fill the board with notes--which is to say, one sentence--I have to order the class to copy it.  Which is to say, "take out your notebooks!" *hold up an example*  Then, "Open your notebooks.  Copy.  Copy!"  Every day.  And when we go through that sentence or simple dialogue, and I erase it to put up another, it's the same deal--"Copy!  Notebooks are out, copy!"  Every single class.  Every. Single. Time.

It builds a lot of dead time into class--take the average lesson plan and cut it in half because it takes so damn long to get out notebooks, draw in margins, the date, and copy the board.  But it makes lesson planning that much easier, even if each sentence must carry that much more weight.  And it also helps with the lack of technology: writing long and legible sentences takes quite a bit of time I'd been accustomed to circumventing via projector/computer/copier technologies, but when the students have been habituated to sitting and doing absolutely nothing, it's easier to make the time go by.  In fact, the students are so accustomed to such a process that it makes my life extremely difficult to try to keep them moving through an entire class.  In the end, if I push them through an entire, full lesson plan, it takes days off the end of my life--not to mention what it does to my voice--and they don't absorb any more than they do when I take the easy route and teach as they're accustomed to learning. 

Here's the thing: it's a dynastic bureaucracy.  Those who have any power and influence inherited it and will bequeath it to their progeny, which makes it very easy to hold power and influence.  In fact, the most dangerous thing is a motivated and intelligent underling.  That must be avoided at all costs.  So of course Thai kids are trained not to think or act independently. 
And life would be much, much easier if I could just get used to it. 

Confluence

There was a fantastic confluence of cultures at the service.  

We're a heavily protestant school associated with a protestant church, but the officiant was a Catholic (either because he's the one who speaks English or at the family's request).  More on that later--there was much hellfire and brimstone, and the curious addition of a phallus of holy water.

But in front of the casket was a meditation pad and sticks of incense.  

And the casket itself had Hindi deities.  

Wild place.

A hard turn

So, this afternoon, I received a call that one of my coworkers was at a waterfall, slipped, and was killed and there would be a service of some sort tonight.  

The coworker who died was one of the most gregarious people I've met.  He was responsible for 9 of the 10 social invites I've had (or maybe 10 of the 12), and the hub of a great many of the social events in town, with a circle of friends and cronies spanning two provinces and encompassing this town, the next south, the next two north, and the islands.  

He also said, "I'm hired as a teacher, so I won't suck, but teaching is NOT why I came to Thailand."  I guess the most political way to describe it would be that his Thai life was lived without inhibition, restraint, regret, or disrupted by extended periods of sobriety.  

Really, I have the utmost respect--and not without a degree of envy--for someone who could live so completely and unapologetically.  

There was a gathering of a few coworkers, and I tried to figure out what happened.  

I am sad, of course, that someone would die young.  It is a great loss to the future networks and communities that will not be impacted or created.  

I am also curious what will happen in terms of the farang population--greater observation during excursions?  Greater safety measures--which is to say, rudimentary gestures at safety--at the waterfalls?  Would this blow into a lawsuit or public hoopla over safety or substance or scholastic regulations?  

I'm tempted to believe that the truly Thai reaction would be to sweep it under the carpet so any dealing that has to be done takes place out of sight.  The problem is that he was such a public figure, and his folks are university teachers flying in from Chicago.  

Depending on what happened, it could list any number of directions, so I'm curious how it was handled officially and what is expected tomorrow.

As I said, there was a small gathering of coworkers.  I asked questions as delicately as I could.  

On an outing yesterday, he slipped, fell in, disappeared immediately, and was swept over a waterfall.  It was fairly late, and the search was extended to today.  Yesterday, there were six people total.  Today, the director and his wife, wearing church clothes, were searching.  

I have been scowled at for my absence, and I apologized that only half a dozen of those involved had my number.  

And there will be a service of some sort tonight.  

I asked what might happen tomorrow.  

Explosively inappropriate.

WTF, how am I such a callus Fn so and so that I'm thinking about work after he just died.  

How could I be so uncaring and insensitive?  What's wrong with me?  

Maybe it's a chemical imbalance.  Maybe it's a streak of sadism.  Maybe I'm just a cold and heartless person.  Maybe it's that my grandmother died on Christmas, and there was the issue of what to do next.  Maybe it's that my other grandmother died when I had a quintet performance, symphony performance, recital audition, and thesis revision imminent and I had to figure out what to do next.  Maybe it's that these coworkers watched me drop to 76 pounds without saying, "what's wrong?" or "you okay?" or "how do you feel?" or "is something wrong?" [really-EVER] and I assumed that professional detachment was par.  

Well, no.  Not at all.  

It will be interesting to see what comes.