Cast me on Survivor – or whatever show still exists– because this is my moment. (Note to producers: please set my season in Thailand, Japan, or China, as those are the only nations with languages I can utilize.)
Eating shoots, roots, and peculiar eats from the forest, warding off dangerous animals at every turn, powering through humid afternoons of 110 degrees, actually keeping attendance in my classes (I learned last semester that this actually has a lot to do with surviving…), warding off plagues of swarming flying ants…the list goes on.
I took a look at myself in the mirror post-run this evening. 3 exploded mosquitoes, wet with my dripping blood and sweat, clung to my face. I can’t remember swatting them, so the possibility remains: I am venomous to mosquitoes.
(For context, look back at previous posts where I explain in detail my obsessive theory about my pheromones/blood type/vegetarianism/non-allergic reactions in relation to mosquitoes….Okay are you back with me? Interesting, yes? Oh wait, no one wants to look that up?)
This week in particular, I’m the living GIRL VERSUS MACHINE reality show. I can flush any toilet (TRY ME…I live in the ‘Dit yo, where one gleans skills), fight off rats inside the washing machine, rejuvenate the aircon, fix electrical problems, and make dead fans come alive. I have the touch, and I’m so high on success.
Teaching moment gone wrong (like usual)
Upon walking through the school fields today (and we have numerous types of fields my friend), I hear boys yelling, “TEACHER TEACHER TEACHER COME HERE!” My little Mattayom 1 (=7th grade) boys perch on dead logs discussing reptiles and quiz me on corresponding Thai/English. Of their own volition! (To Thailand: my face is so big right now.)
“‘Crocodile’ baewa arai?” [What is ‘crocodile’ in Thai?] the little boys ask.
“Ja-ra-ke!” I say, beaming at their curiosity.
“‘I don’t know’ baewa arai? the little boys ask.
“Mai roo!” I say, beaming all the more.
“‘Fuck you’ baewa arai?” [What does ‘fuck you’ mean?] one little boy asks, without skipping a beat.
“WHAT?”
Instead of making this a teaching opportunity, I die laughing at this kid. And the best thing is that he asked completely innocently, and all the boys lean in to catch any words that might fall out of my mouth. ‘Okay, okay, we won’t say it,’ they assure me in Thai. ‘BUT,’ they add, ‘can you please tell us what ‘Fuck’ means, cuz everybody says it and we just don’t understand.’
I love my little ones so much.
Later this afternoon, I’m perched eating weird fruits on an older teacher’s desk, wondering whose idea it was to open and taste all these spiky fruits way back in ancient Siamese days. I’m contemplating the salat, a hard, small, spiky, bristled fruit that I doubt has an English name. Its layer of strong-smelling flesh surrounding a smooth pit reminds me vaguely of jackfruit. The peel is durian/jackfruit-esque.
After finding the sweetly sour fruits addicting, I announce that “Thai fruits are very peculiar.” I say this in Thai to the teacher, using the Thai word for ‘peculiar’ for the first time (the Thai word for peculiar is roughly pitsa-daan).
She simultaneously cracks up and violently hushes me. “Oh no no no no. Not pitsa-daan! I think you must mean naa asa jan jai – amazing and wonderful.”
I assure her that of course I mean amazing, but in real life in my real head, I’m thinking, um, I definitely mean pitsa-daan.
Leave it to Thai people to innately sub in ‘amazing’ for ‘peculiar’ when it comes to Thai food.
Power of Stamps, Homeroom teaching, Classroom battles
I felt pretty awesome about teaching this afternoon, mainly due to the power of stamps and stickers. I told my 7th graders I’d give them stamps if I heard them speaking loudly in their dialogue practice and teachers from all over the floor came to see what the heck was the matter in the classroom full of incomprehensible screaming children.
“Arai na!?” quizzes the gathering crowd standing at the door.
“THEY’RE SCREAMING ENGLISH!” I exalt!
School is pretty bomb, and I’m teaching all the 7th graders, 11th graders, and some 10th graders a mix of Biology and English. I’m also a homeroom teacher this semester for a 7th grade group: DISASTER for my poor victims. But mostly it’s fantastic because it means that while I may not actually be able to catch up any of the kids on what’s actually going down in the school every day, they can catch me up! WIN for me - Partial WIN for them because their game repertoire is ever expanding.
On the other side of school-fantastic, the need to cleverly and insistently manipulate people to do/get anything, including classrooms, never ceases to amaze me. Sometimes I’ve even taught outside. This morning, I engaged all forces in a battle to snag a room with a working projector for my biology class. The bio room’s projector is fun because it jumps incessantly through a rainbow of colors; fun, but utterly useless.
And you just gotta be there because it is a nerve-wracking thing when you try to get a classroom. “Why do you need a classroom?” “Why do you need a projector?” “Talk to that person.” “No, talk to that person.” “Go get the key from that person.” “Oh [10 minutes later] you’re right – that key doesn’t unlock the room, maybe go try that other person.” “Wait – why don’t you just teach outside?”
And on and on and on…Usually I fail, but today, I met unexpected success. I may (read: will) lose the classroom war, but at least I won a battle.
Oh, and then the beautiful question from a teacher who finally gave me the correct key: “Where are your students?”
Oh, dear one, don’t ask me ridiculous questions. No one knows anything like that in Thailand. If I ever knew where any students were, we could harvest entire rice fields in the excess class time cleared by me not chasing/hunting students.
Hunting is my sport.
Brief updates on Phajuk Zoo, aka my house:
Spider momma:
Two students, saving face and proving their manhood, trapped that spider momma in a plastic tub. I walked around school for 2 hours showing the spider and her egg sac to nearly every naklian in the place before releasing spider momma into the wild. Bon voyage and I hope your babies are okay.
Spider momma isn’t the only spider momma in our quarters…given the copious insect pickings, if I were a spider, I’d breed in my house too.
Rats:
A man came over to try and fix the washing machine. Found rats livin’ all up in its grill. No surprise to us obviously, but it’s affirming to have even a Thai dude tell us that we can’t live like this. And let me tell you – ain’t nothing like a weekend slaughter party (n=15).
Hundreds of ants on my bed last night:
Let’s just stop here, because there are few people on earth who love me enough to relive this moment with me.
Worms
So my beautiful Thai roommates love to leave food out – I mean, it has got to be a hobby – and usually it attracts the usual ant/mold suspects, but now we have a maggot and worm infestation. Which is just goooooood looking, people, gooooood loooookin’. Before, I washed their dishes. Now, I just put them outside and let the dogs do as they will.
Plagues of swarming flying ants:
Think Locusts in Exodus. Because I’ve never ever plagued out as hard as I have this week. Gotta love it when at 7 PM, your entire house is swarming with thousands and thousands of flying ants, getting themselves killed in all possible ways. Literally can’t move out of the bedroom without 20 stuck to my body. They die in my hair constantly. Any wet surface is full of them, struggling to lift their wings back up. Then they all die and the next morning ants stream in from everywhere to chow down on their corpses. This plague is just a seasonal phrase, something to do with the queen getting her wings and whatnot, but OH MY GOODNESS ENOUGH ALREADY.
SNAKE:
Snake #3 in the house since I got back to the 'Dit 3 weeks ago wreaked some havoc Friday evening. (The first 2 were small, dead, and ant-infested by the time we found them.) I returned to the house after school and smelled snake. I know what snake smells like (probs due to volunteering with the snake guy at a ranch in Arizona and him giving me a rattlesnake skin upon our farewell when he decided I was like his snake prodigy daughter he never knew he had). I thought maybe a snake shed its skin in the house and didn't think too much of it (after all, my house is the infamous Phajuk zoo). I left again and didn't come back for 2 hours.
Shortly after I return, I hear a scream downstairs. I run down, and one of my roommates, P'Poong, points at a tail protruding from behind our garbage can against the wall. I grab a broom and move in to poke it (as we taught our summer campers one year: SAFETY THIRD). P'Poong flakes at the last minute and decides maybe we should call some of the workers at the school instead of dealing with it ourselves.
4 men run over, as they were on campus eating dinner. They all have long rods or sticks. We assure them that they're over-prepared...it's probably just a little one.
The men chase it all around the kitchen, i.e. one dude pokes it once then everyone stands way back to see where it goes, and it slithers all over the ceiling and downstairs area (even in and out of my frying pan). Then that snake rears up to strike and we all think we're gone for sure before one of the men defies death and repeatedly smacks its head with a metal plate on a wooden rod.
The men said it was a good thing I didn't start poking it without a game plan (which was precisely my game plan with my broom in hand) because IT CAN KILL AN ADULT WITH ONE BITE. (This is coming from the same dudes who laughed when I showed them the burning swollen spider bite on my hand that is still getting bigger even though it's over a week old. They were slightly irritated with themselves when I understood what they were saying about its venom to Poong, clearly not wanting me to be scared.)
Shortly after I return, I hear a scream downstairs. I run down, and one of my roommates, P'Poong, points at a tail protruding from behind our garbage can against the wall. I grab a broom and move in to poke it (as we taught our summer campers one year: SAFETY THIRD). P'Poong flakes at the last minute and decides maybe we should call some of the workers at the school instead of dealing with it ourselves.
4 men run over, as they were on campus eating dinner. They all have long rods or sticks. We assure them that they're over-prepared...it's probably just a little one.
The men chase it all around the kitchen, i.e. one dude pokes it once then everyone stands way back to see where it goes, and it slithers all over the ceiling and downstairs area (even in and out of my frying pan). Then that snake rears up to strike and we all think we're gone for sure before one of the men defies death and repeatedly smacks its head with a metal plate on a wooden rod.
The men said it was a good thing I didn't start poking it without a game plan (which was precisely my game plan with my broom in hand) because IT CAN KILL AN ADULT WITH ONE BITE. (This is coming from the same dudes who laughed when I showed them the burning swollen spider bite on my hand that is still getting bigger even though it's over a week old. They were slightly irritated with themselves when I understood what they were saying about its venom to Poong, clearly not wanting me to be scared.)
So no big deal.
I think the snake probably came to pre-game the aforementioned weekend slaughter party.
The men say to be careful and then leave us to our home, joking about how I probably should go back to America if I don't want to die. Poong and I are both clearing out for a 3-day wknd tomorrow and Poong says quite sincerely that I should probs not move back in here because it's too dangerous. Haha.
I think the snake probably came to pre-game the aforementioned weekend slaughter party.
The men say to be careful and then leave us to our home, joking about how I probably should go back to America if I don't want to die. Poong and I are both clearing out for a 3-day wknd tomorrow and Poong says quite sincerely that I should probs not move back in here because it's too dangerous. Haha.
I took several pictures and emailed a random Thai herpetologist dude on the internet. In retrospect, I could’ve emailed my OEB herpetology profs from Harvard, but I always kinda wanted to email the random Thai herpetologist dude on the internet. I emailed him because after some research in Thai Google Land, which is a world unto its own, I didn’t think it was actually a venomous snake. Sadly. As it turns out, it's a copperheaded racer - Coelegnathus radiatus, a rat snake. It’s a bit feisty and will bite but it can only give you tetanus, as it has no venom. The Thai dudes found me today as well to reassure me that they had initially misidentified the snake.
The random Thai herpetologist dude on the internet displayed much curiosity in my nasty (spider?) bite, so he served as a great much-needed go-to animal expert.
The random Thai herpetologist dude on the internet displayed much curiosity in my nasty (spider?) bite, so he served as a great much-needed go-to animal expert.
Despite this softer ending to a snake story with harrowing potential, the entire school is now well aware of our house’s animal problems.
The assistant director laughs at our “Rats yuh yuh yuh yuh” [yuh=many]. According to my count, the grand total is nearly 15 rats, which I think calls for one fewer “yuh,” but, you know, not much room to protest…
In biology today, I finished the fossil fuel/energy in Thailand unit (world affairs people, making stuff relevant to the rising generation…now is the time to quiz me on renewable energy sources in Burma and Laos, and thank the Lord these kids are gold and respond well to my threats to take away their 5 minute break in the 2 hour slot (okay, for the sake of honesty, few kids take me that seriously…and they know I like to drink my soy milk during that break)).
BUT the point is not that; the point is that we started talking about food chains/webs/ecological communities. And Phajuk Zoo is an excellent example of an ecological community with a very complex food web. Their homework is basically to draw and describe the food web that is my home.
We hope, due to the fact that it's breeding season (i.e. the rats, geckos, spider momma in the shower, our roommate P'Ya) that the snake wasn't here with a mate...
We hope, due to the fact that it's breeding season (i.e. the rats, geckos, spider momma in the shower, our roommate P'Ya) that the snake wasn't here with a mate...
Because it still smells like snake…
Lampang
Chilled in Lampang this weekend with lovely Fulbrighters Megan, Katie, and Joey. We had a good time in the pouring rain riding good bikes eating good food in a good village full of good people.
Lovely Fulbrighters Megan, Katie, and Joey, however, took this opportunity to label me as master puttser (how do you spell that? as in someone who putts around all the time), who never saw a curb I couldn't sit on for at least an hour. Which is true. Born and raised in the 'Dit -- they've taught me well. It's what we do, minus the actually-have-curbs-in-the-fields part.
Seeing Megan's house was a little hard on me though, because it's now eminently clear that I have the absolute worst accommodations of any Fulbright, as the 'Dit is the new addition to the Fulbright provinces, and my school would rather spend money on topiary (we got some sick bushes) than livable conditions. I love it here, but whoa, it was a whole different experience being with Megan. I think it's good in the sense that I spend all possible hours out and about, but it's not good in the sense that I'm being poisoned by mold and whatnot. Her house was like a tourist attraction for me, so I might post a few pictures at some point.
Some of Megan's students were so excited about 4 farang in one house that they came over to observe us interact and we got to feed them peanut butter and twizzlers, which led one boy to go puke outside.
Pictures - My Recent Chronicles of the Natural Beauty of Uttaradit
Lampang
Chilled in Lampang this weekend with lovely Fulbrighters Megan, Katie, and Joey. We had a good time in the pouring rain riding good bikes eating good food in a good village full of good people.
Lovely Fulbrighters Megan, Katie, and Joey, however, took this opportunity to label me as master puttser (how do you spell that? as in someone who putts around all the time), who never saw a curb I couldn't sit on for at least an hour. Which is true. Born and raised in the 'Dit -- they've taught me well. It's what we do, minus the actually-have-curbs-in-the-fields part.
Seeing Megan's house was a little hard on me though, because it's now eminently clear that I have the absolute worst accommodations of any Fulbright, as the 'Dit is the new addition to the Fulbright provinces, and my school would rather spend money on topiary (we got some sick bushes) than livable conditions. I love it here, but whoa, it was a whole different experience being with Megan. I think it's good in the sense that I spend all possible hours out and about, but it's not good in the sense that I'm being poisoned by mold and whatnot. Her house was like a tourist attraction for me, so I might post a few pictures at some point.
Some of Megan's students were so excited about 4 farang in one house that they came over to observe us interact and we got to feed them peanut butter and twizzlers, which led one boy to go puke outside.
Pictures - My Recent Chronicles of the Natural Beauty of Uttaradit
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| DURIAN TREE - Classic 'Dit |
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| Banana Tree Trunk - you can eat the core in soup |
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| Thug Life in the field yo...is it any surprise that I love it here? |
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| These pics were mostly taken in the village/fields of some of my 11th grade students. |
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| When it rains, our house becomes an island |
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| snake!! |
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| snake! heading into my frying pan... |
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| that's my pink towel |
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| Thug life |
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