Thank Goodness for the Hair Dryer!

I had plans today about getting out of Bangkok and going to the beach, my hangover had other ideas! 

I eventually made it out of the house in late afternoon to go to the cinema.  It had been roasting all day so I’d just got a t-shirt and my fisherman pants on.  The pants (pants indeed – can’t you tell I spend most of my time around Americans!) are so comfy, light grey in colour and a very thin material – it doesn’t feel like I’m wearing anything while being covered up and respectable looking at the same time. 

As I made my way to the van stop I noticed very black clouds but thought I’d be ok.  Just before I got out of the van however it started raining, proper Thai rain where it comes down in sheets.  Got out of the van and ducked into a phone box for shelter, thinking I’d wait out the worst of it.  Twenty minutes later and it still hadn’t stopped, I decided to make a dash for it, after all its only a two minute walk from the stop to the cinema. 

Two  minutes is more than enough to send respectable looking pants completely see through!!  Fortunately my gym is in the same place as the cinema, I did my best to keep my modesty sneaking through the door and running for the changing room.  Thank goodness for hair dryers, half an hour later I reemerged looking once more like the respectable young lady that I am!

I’ve Come A Long Way

I’m sure its quite obvious by now that I’m feeling settled here but I don’t think I’d realized just how far I’d come in the last five months until this week when the new teachers arrived.

Last Sunday morning I got a knock on my door from my landlord (I was a very sleepy, hungover mess when I answered having been up at 4.30am the morning before for the run; and then going out that night, not getting in until 3am very drunk – I’m too old for days like that any more!).  He told me the new teachers had arrived. 

One of the girls is in the room next to me, I looked at her to say “hi” and could see the tears in her eyes.  It feels like so long ago now when that was me.  I found myself saying all of the same things I’d head……it’ll be ok when you clean it, put some things on the wall, it wont take long to feel like home, no its not as rough as it looks and yes it is a really safe neighbourhood…..

The next day in school it was really nice being the person that knew what was going on, making the introductions doing the tour, giving advice about how to cope with what I knew was going to hit them.  And then at the end of the day being the person offering up advice on how to cope and reassurance that it does get better and easier to the person crying at how horrible it was and how evil the kids were. 

I do think that its wrong that they were expected to go into the situation completely unprepared by both the course and the school.  That said it is exactly what I did and at first I learnt how to survive, then I learnt how to enjoy it, and now I love my job and wouldn’t want to do anything else. 

Looking back I can’t quite believe, firstly, just how bad I was when I first arrived, its one hell of a steep learning curve you’re on when you start. Or secondly, that I actually feel like I’m teaching now, I still have a lot of learning to do but I feel like a completely different person to when I started.  It may have taken me all of last semester to master my M3 class, but last week I loved it, I had them eating out of the palm of my hand……quiet, participating, learning…..

World Pink Fun Run 2009

I love, love , love the races I’ve done in Thailand.  I’m getting such a buzz with each one I do. I don’t know if its the general atmosphere surrounding the races; the goose bumps I still get when I hear the King and Queens song played before the race (not the national anthem, different songs, one of them being the song they play at the movies, with footage of the King, before the film is shown); or hitting the wall when I’m running and the sense of achievement I get from running through it – probably a combination of the lot I’m sure.   I don’t even mind that I have to get up at 4.30am to get to them on time!

Todays run was so much fun, I only wish I’d been there with someone I knew so that there was someone to exclaim to about the man in a bikini and grass skirt; or the man in hot pink tights and flower print hot pants with a back fan/flag decoration (also in hot pink with shiny silver writing), that put me in mind of a mini Notting Hill Carnival, Mardi Gras or similar.  And then there was the lady with the little dogs all dressed in their finest dresses! 

Its the third race I’ve done here and the third time I’ve wished I had my camera, next time I’m taking it with me!  There was a lot of publicity about this race though and official photographers and TV crews around the course, so hopefully I’ll be able to find something on line later and add the link.

I got talking to some English ladies at the end of the race, they mentioned that there was another race starting at 8am at Lumpini Park.  I was feeling quite energetic still (it had only been a 5km race) so decided I’d take a walk over to see if I could sign up for it.  I was a bit further away than I thought, it took me over an hour to get there.  The starting gun went off before I’d managed to find the start point.  Can’t say I was to disappointed though, it was nice to just wander through the park and watch the world go by.  It made for fascinating people watching.  The groups of people doing Tai Chi and Yoga, the old ladies using the exercise equipment, families out for a walk, people jogging, people praying.  I’ve never been there that early in the morning, but I’d go back, it seems like the nicest time to go. 

It blows my mind every time I see the respect that people in this country, both Thai and visitors, show for the King.  At eight o’clock, just before the race gun was fired, the national anthem was played.  Every single person I could see stopped what they were doing, joggers came to a halt, people on the floor got up and all stood still.  For two minutes Lumpini Park became a park of statues…….

Smoking – Yuk!

I hadn’t realised how much I hate the smell of ciggatette smoke until just now!  (Don’t they say ex-smokers are almost always the biggest complainers!)

Theres a guy moved into the room next to me, and I’m so happy he’s only here for a week covering until the new teachers arrive, as he smokes.  I know this because the smell comes straight into my room, over the balcony, under the door…generally through any crack going and in this building there are quite a few.  It’s really horrible.   I don’t know anybody over here that smokes, it seems like the norm not to so when the smell hits its a real assault on the senses, especially when its in your own house.  I think I’ll have to quiz the new people before they are assigned rooms and make sure I get a non smoker next to me because this really is vile!!

Oops….Who Forgot to Tell the Farang?

This week at work has really been a bit pointless to say the least, the students don’t start back until Monday and I really didn’t have anything to do.  My days have been spent, in the mornings, communicating, and getting angry with my estate agent in the UK, and in the afternoons, watching movies and colouring pictures.  It really made me think I should have just stayed in the UK for a longer holiday.

That feeling was further heightened today when I went into school.  It was eerily quiet when I arrived.  I thought that maybe everyone was in a meeting that I hadn’t been told about…….it really wouldn’t have surprised me the way my school seems to be.  I realized though that I hadn’t seen the kitchen or cleaning staff either.  I went to the offices and they were locked, at which point I looked out and noticed that there wasn’t a single car or any bikes in the parking lot.  Suddenly it dawned on me that no one was there!  (Yeah yeah it took a while, I know!).  I went to the security guard on the front gate to find out what was going on, only he doesn’t speak a word of English nor me Thai.  He did however point to the calendar in his hut.  It showed today’s date filled out in red……suddenly it dawned – today is a national holiday.  Shame nobody thought to tell the farang!!!!

It wasn’t all bad though, at least it meant a long weekend.  I actually think that me and Kim packed a weekends activities into one day.  It started with a mini adventure to the other side of the river, which we got to on the smallest boat in the world – I was a bit scared about both tipping it over and getting run over by one of the big boat on the river if they didn’t see us, but it was all good, we made it in one piece.  You’d never know you were a stones throw from central Bangkok; it was like entering a different world.  We rented bikes and spent time cycling around a forgotten park.  We then braved the roads, no traffic to scare us, just the dogs that chased barking at your ankles…..think I would have preferred the traffic!! 

Followed that by heading to the cinema.  Followed that by heading to the pub!  A little Irish place, which like all good pretend Irish pubs had a band on.  It was surreal, old Thai gentlemen singing the beetles!! 

Turned out to be a great day afterall, sure beats working for a living

Running – The Next Level!

So I’ve decided that I really want to do the run in Siem Reap on 6^th December.  Only thing is looking at the routes I don’t want to do the 10km as it’s 5km there and back on the same piece of road.  The half marathon on the other hand goes around all of the main temples, how cool would that be, talk about a run with scenery.  Looks like, even without my running buddy, I’ve talked myself into doing the half marathon! 

It’s  not like I’ve not done one before, I loved the Great North Run, and from what I remember I really didn’t do much training for it.  Infact the most I ran, at one go, in training was from where I worked in Newcastle center to where I lived – probably about 10km…and I only did that once!  I keep thinking that that means I should be ok for this………..until it hits me that when I did the Great North Run I was 21lbs lighter and 10 years younger!! 

Hmmm I guess that means I’ve got about six weeks to get from being just fit enough (and determined enough) to get round a 10km course in an almost respectable time, to being fit enough to survive going more than double the distance – eeek!  I feel lots of serious dieting and gym work coming on.  Wish me luck!

http://www.angkormarathon.org/en/course.html#2

Holiday, What Holiday!!!

I can’t believe two weeks is over already, where did the time go?  It really wasn’t long enough; a whistle stop tour of the UK.  Think I’m going home for a rest! 

Its been great catching up with friends and being introduced to two new little people – Connor and Lily, and one not quite so little person – Ella.  And then there’s the family, what fun I’ve had, if only I could combine the two sides of my life.  It was almost enough to make me question what I’m doing living on the other side of the world when Gwenna (my youngest niece) said “Auntie Julie…..I don’t want you to go back to Thailand”…………almost but not quite – the drizzly, grey English weather has me convinced I’m heading back to the right part of the world.

So here I am half way home, killing the last hour before my second flight.  I’d thought this nine hour stop over in Abu Dhabi would be hard but its proved to be really easy thanks to the $39 I paid for 6 hours in Etihads Premier Lounge, money well spent.  I’ve consumed lots of red wine and hummus while lounging on comfy sofas, watching ‘The Holiday’ and ‘Sex in the City’.  Just followed it with lots of water and fruit (my attempt at stopping a hangover) ready for my next flight.

Bangkok here I come………

Unhappy Westerners

Just thought I’d share a link to this blog, found myself nodding along in agreement.  In my experience what the guy says is so true of all places not just Vietnam.

http://hanoiscratchpad.blogspot.com/2009/09/unhappy-westerners.html

Reflections – Four Months of Thailand Living

So I’m sat in the airport drinking a beer with a few hours before my flight and thinking that in some ways it doesn’t feel like I’ve been here for five minutes and in others it feels like this is the only thing I know; not least because I’ve just changed the better part of a months wages into pounds, and don’t actually know what a £20 note looks like well enough to know if the ones I’ve been given are real or not!

I was feeling ridiculously happy about heading back to the UK earlier. I knew I’d made the right decision when I got a text from my brother that said “…we’re all looking forward to seeing you next week, Gwenna is counting the days every morning when she wakes up”, I thought the size of my smile was going to split my face in two!

It’s been a strange last week really, between the schools usual lack of organization, the kids finishing on Wednesday , the farcical end of semester exams, and watching Katie, Tia and Casey pack up to leave. Think I need a holiday, a break from my unreal, real life! I am glad its only a break though, and that although there are good-byes to be said its not me that’s leaving.

With time to kill I thought I’d go in for a bit of reflection of the last four months. On a side note I’ve just worked out that last time when I was away I’d traveled through Russia, Mongolia, China, Vietnam, and worked in Cambodia in that amount of time. Having a full time job sure cuts down on distances, but I don’t necessarily feel like I’ve seen any less. Does that mean I didn’t do as much as I could last time or just that you experience things in a different way? I think the latter.

So, ripping off a style that I read in a blog recently, here are my reflections and (to use my friend Nathans term) general brain farts. Its funny how quickly the normal becomes abnormal and vice versa.

• I wake up just before 6am each morning without an alarm clock. I’ve never though of myself as an early riser but it seems easy here. Maybe its got something to do with the sun rising through my balcony door at that hour, maybe it’s the thought of the gorgeous kids I work with, or maybe it because I’m so knackered after a day of working with said kids that I have very little problem falling to sleep at night.
• Its pitch black by 6.30pm and I don’t mind. I hated it in the UK when the nights started drawing in but here I don’t mind the dark nights. Maybe its being up and active early in the morning, or maybe it’s the general indoor out door lifestyle that means I don’t get back from work and feel like I’ve been shut in all day, but it just feels like it makes sense that its dark. It also doesn’t feel bad going to be at 9.30pm as its already been dark for three hours!
• I never hear the big groups of dogs that bark for hours through the night outside of my window. They drove me mad when I first arrived, I tried keeping the door shut, I tried ear plugs, I tied burying my head under the pillow; nothing worked. I don’t know when I stopped hearing them, and I know they’re still about because I fall over them every morning on my way to work, I just don’t hear them any more.
• I know I’ve acclimatized because…… I have to do something to sweat now. I remember getting off the bus in Bangkok after I’d completed my training in Chiang Mai and the heat hit me like a wall, within seconds and without moving I was sweating buckets.
• I know I’ve acclimatized because….. I feel cold and need to wear a cardigan in my classroom when its less that 25 degrees C. I’m a little concerned about how I’ll cope Newcastle is 20degrees less than here!
• I live life without a microwave, cooker and fridge. Truth be told, I’d love to have a fridge, I’m thinking about going out to get one when I get back from my holiday. But the other two – I can live without them. Who needs to cook when the streets outside are full of stalls of delicious food. There’s the fresh orange lady and the fruit lady for breakfast, and anyone of dozens of stalls for dinner; some great and some a little more questionable – like the live baby shrimp we had with the Thai teachers the other day, shake the bag to knock them out and then eat them – thank god there was so much chili, the burn distracted me from what I was eating!
• I do get sick of Thai food, but not very often. In most shapes and forms I love it. That said I went to a Sizzler restaurant the other day and just had the salad bar. It was amazing, chicken, cranberry and almond salad, waldorf salad, potato salad and so much more, I ate that much I thought they might charge me double!
• I miss the humble potato! And get very excited when school make a stew that has it in.
• I love cold showers (well on most days!). Since I try not to use my air conditioning in the house (I think it makes it harder for your body to cope with the outside temperatures) I wake up most mornings feeling quite warm. The cold shower is refreshing and wakes me up; on the odd times I’ve had the air con on over night I hate the cold shower, I wake up cold and feel positively freezing after it.
• I also like the late afternoon shower, when the sun has been on the tank and pipes all day and the water that comes out is somewhere between tepid and hot, it’s lovely just for a change once in a while.
• I rarely notice the things now that were so alien to me when I first arrived. Be it the elephant that walked down our street (I live in the outskirts of Bangkok, not in the country), or the blind people that walk alone along the streets with a music box and a microphone singing. I did notice one of the singers the other day though; she’s a lady that sits on top of the overpass near where I live every day, and normally like I said I don’t really notice her. But on this particular day the image of her left me feeling really disturbed and sad. On my way back from the gym a massive thunderstorm started, normally even when they happen its still warm, but on this day there was a really cold wind too, the thunder and lightening was crashing directly above and the rain was coming down that hard the roads were flooding. Running across the overpass to get home, there was the lady, same place as normal only this time with a plastic bag over her head and face to protect her against the elements. I wanted to help and still feel guilty that I didn’t, but don’t know what I could have done as if I’d taken her off the bridge to somewhere sheltered how would the person that took her their know where she was to take her home.
• I really enjoy my bathony (thats my attempt at combining bathroom and balcony!). I was surprised when I first moved into my room to find my sink on the balcony and my toilet and shower in a room accessed from the balcony. Wouldn’t have it any other way now, I love standing on my balcony in the morning watching the sun rise and the world go by as I’m cleaning my teeth. Being on the fifth floor I’m hoping I’m high enough up that I don’t, but think I must, give a few people an eye full through the night when I can’t be bothered to put clothes on to duck into the loo!
• Travel isn’t just something you dream about doing for most of the year and spend very little time actually doing. I’m not saying it’s all sunshine and flowers, it’s long hours at work but both the kids I work with and the off time is amazing. Whether it’s a weekend on a tropical beach; or trekking through the jungle; or planting rice on a farm; or running a race through the streets of Bangkok at a time in the morning when the tourists are still staggering back to their hostels drunk; or sitting on the floor at home with some truly beautiful people eating live shrimp and gambling; or just a day trip to the nearest beach and spending the day drinking beer, eating fresh shrimp and crab and just generally chilling out.

 

Can’t top that end note; what more is there to say? I’m loving my life here, and as much as some days there are a million and one frustrations I wouldn’t change it for the world.

A Bit More From Work Last Week……

So there was a few things that I thought I’d share because they made me smile.

The first happened around leaving time one day.  I was about to get ready to pack up and there were a couple of children in the room still.  The Thai teacher with me was leaving too so took them into the classroom next door.  She came back less than a minute later with Prai, one of the three year olds that I teach, in floods of tears.  She came straight over to me, so I gave her a hug and asked the teacher what the matter was.  She told me Prai didn’t want to go and wanted to stay with me….it’s nice to feel wanted!

The second thing was walking into my P1 class, they’re 5-6 years old, and I think I sometimes forget that they are so young because they are so much bigger than my Kindergarten classes.  They’re generally really badly behaved and this was made worse last week when their Thai teacher went on maternity leave.  I walked into class to see the substitute teacher sat at the back of the room looking like she’d lost the will to live and the kids running riot.  I decided to try out a technique that Katie had told me she used.  Without saying a word I went to the board and wrote team 1, team 2, team, 3, team 4, in line with the rows of tables.  The kids looked curious and went a bit quiet.  I asked which team could win and got lots of “teacher, teacher” with hands in the air.  Now I’d got thier attention I explained they would get for staying in their seats, working well, not too much talking, and for the opposite.  Which team would be the winner at the end of the class.  It worked like a charm, the kids mostly kept each other quiet and worked for more of the lesson than they have to date – brilliant!

Oh and one last thing that just made me laugh.  I think you forget as you get older just how active kids imaginations are.  I could never understand why some of the kids in my homeroom class (3 years old) would look so terrified if, when they were misbehaving, they were told they would have to go to teacher Buns room.  She’s the Thai KG1 teacher next door, really tiny but can sound scary when she talks, and she wears braces.  I finally asked one day why they were scared.  The answer came “the kids all say she eats naughty children!!”