christmas in thailand

i typed up an entry yesterday but somehow i lost it. when i find it i will put it up :)

its the day after christmas here and at school they are having a ceremony for the monks. which at first seems odd considering a christian holiday followed the next day by a holiday dedicated to buddhist monks. but then i thought about it. maybe i was wrong and that christmas is not just celebrated here because of consumerism and westernization. it is a holiday that the "westerners" brought here yes, but it does have meaning for thai people other than putting up christmas trees and buying gifts. it is about karma and giving and receiving. it is the same thing that they are doing today for the monks, they give the monks offerings of food, etc. the monks only survive in this country because the thai people give them offerings, the monks have no possessions and are not allowed to touch money. the thai people give them offerings because it helps build their merit. the monks, being monks benefits the whole community not just their own life. giving to the monks means giving to help keep the peaceful community that you live in. and this is the same way for christmas- it promotes a sense of community and keeps it close-knit and peaceful. the communities here survive by everyone giving and helping each other. the act of giving gifts to others gains yourself merit, good karma, good luck, however you want to think of it. but thinking of giving gifts as gaining good karma for yourself will not gain good karma for yourself at all, it has to be selfless, genuine giving. christmas (in the sense of gift exchange) is a good holiday for thais because right before the new year they want to have good luck and good merit to start off the next year on the right foot.

thats my random thought of what christmas means to thais.

1 day til christmas..

so the hedgehog "disappeared" from school. and the rabbits had 5 baby bunnies.

christmas is tomorrow but it doesnt feel like it. today is wednesday which means i dont have to work so ive been preparing for my laos trip- i have it all planned out. however i dont have a way to get there yet... all of the trains and buses are booked because its new years. so i have to either go to the bus station and be on a waiting list or take a 6000 baht tourist visa bus tip maybe.hmm.

im going to vientiane, and luang prabang in laos.

frustrations

as much as i love thailand. it makes me sick. - i get sick all of the time. i am still sick, for almost 3 weeks ive had a fever, sore throat, cough, body aches, etc. and this weekend i spent the whole time in bed- sleeping. i wanted to go to the big market in bangkok but i couldnt. well first i was waiting for them to install the hot water- which i guess they are doing right now. but then i ate some food from a restaurant that made me feel really sick so i went to bed and couldnt get out of bed in the morning because i felt so nauseous. i finally got out of bed and felt horrible, so i decided to go to the doctor again. they said i just had tonsilitis and gave me more antibiotics. hopefully that will work now. but then i got home and threw up. too much info i know, but yuck. so i still feel that way today. the food that one day just made me sick i guess.

i didnt want to go to school today but i made it here and made it through the day even with a 100.2 degree fever.

ive been told by the school and pat that i have to go to laos on december 27th and then stay there until the 3rd or the 4th and then come back to thailand so that i can stay in the country until april 16th when my plane flies out. that means i have to spend new years alone, in a different country while the other english teacher friends are partying at the island.

the school decided not to give me the working visa cuz they said it was too much paperwork, so now i have to do border/visa runs every 30 days, which gets really expensive. all of my border runs will have cost me over 300 dollars- which is a lot. when a working visa would only cost 90 dollars. so it is 300 dollars plus a pain in the butt cuz i have to leave the country and come back all of the time, and do things like miss new years and have to be alone. sad. :( and with the working visa i would have health insurance-which i was promised- now i dont have that, but it sure would be nice as each doctors visit has been 1,000 baht.

i wish that they would follow through with everything they were supposed to do. but this is thailand i guess. and mai ben rai everything. im a farang, im white, that means i am rich and have ample money to spare. right?

sick still :(

well im still sick with some sort of cold-it seems like it is getting worse now, or maybe ive just caught something new on top of the old one. i guess being around snotty nosed kids all day doesnt help anything. i found a bakery today while i was walking home that has chocolate chip cookies-so i bought some-they were really expensive though and not worth it. i miss the cookie company back home.

tomorrow is wednesday which means i dont have to teach, but i still have to be at the school from 7am-5pm. i have to get stuff ready for the christmas show and i am teaching them a christmas skit along with other things.

on tv i was watching a soccer match between indonesia and thailand. it was 1-0 with thailand in the lead in the first 7 minutes. they are pretty brutal in their soccer playing- they had so many fouls just in the first 10 minutes. but when thailand scored, there was no loud GOOOAL! like in spanish tv. i had to double check that the ball actually went in.

update: so last night i went to the pharmacy to get something for my cold. and he was speaking broken english. he gave me a prescription anti-histamine, and an antibiotic to take. he wrote funny things on the prescription too. like 'Ii will drowsiness' and 'anti-running nose'. haha. i hope i trust the medicine more than his english....

the first day of teaching...

so i forgot to talk about my crazy first day of teaching.

so at the school there was an english teacher from the philippines already. she was still there when i arrived. i talked to both the admin and the filipino english teacher and they both told me that we would be teaching together-which seemed weird to me. she was going to teach half of the lesson and i would teach the other half. so we did this for day 1 until the last class when she was called out of the room by the head of school.

they fired her. she came back in the room crying and talking to her husband on the phone. i didnt know what to say. i had talked to the head of school earlier in the day and she was saying how parents were complaining because the filipino teacher wasn't teaching english correctly-since it was not her second language and she had an accent, etc. the parents were noticing their kids pronouncing things wrong. also the admin did not think she was a good teacher apparently. they want me because i am a native speaker, etc.

but wow. so i was still sitting in the english room when she came back and was crying. i didnt know what to say to her. i saw it coming. but she had no idea. so then i was on my own. i had to prepare for english after school club in 20 minutes because she would not be here to teach it.

the kids were then asking where she was the next day. i told them she went home.

that whole thing messed stuff up for a while, but now they are on track.

the parents are happy now because they have a white, american woman teaching their kids english. pressure's on me!

no voice!

teaching without a voice is not much fun. well i had a little bit of a squeaky, sparatic voice, but it was pretty ridiculous. well ivebeen teaching for 4 days now. the first two were rough, but now im getting the hang of it. the 2nd day in my k3 class, the bully kis went out of control from the moment he came in. his name is kong, and he's a bigger kid. he started hitting a student so we put him in time out and had him sit outside to cool off for a while. he came back in and picked up a chair and started at the students, so the whole class was scared and didnt want to learn english. or anything. it was crazy but we made it through the day.

yesterday was a holiday. im not sure what holiday it was. but i should. i got to rest my voice and now i can talk-almost normally. i downloaded skype onto one of the computers at the internet cafe, so i will try to give all of you a call before christmas and say hi. i have internet at school but not wireless. so i have to use the computers the kids use-which are slow!

i have been taking pictures and will put a link up for those of you who dont have facebook.

at the school it is hard sometimes because all of the admin and teachers only speak thai and i dont know all of the expectations because they dont tell me! they only tell me if i have forgot to do something. like i guess i was supposed to have homework for the kids today - i had no idea. and im sitting here waiting for my k2 class to arrive and they are apparently on a field trip- no one told me. they know that i know some thai and we speak it together, but i dont know enough! i need to learn more!
everything is organized somehow- but im still trying to figure out the structure.

at the school we have a pet hedgehog- an albino one- and bunnies. the thai word for hedgehog is "men". thats how u pronounce it. funny huh?

back from hua hin

well i spent the weekend in Hua Hin with some of the other english teachers. we stayed in a bungalow that sat right on top of the water- it wasnt the nicest place but it was 5 dollars a night and close to the beach.

i took the public buses from my apartment to the bus station and it took me 5 hours! that was just going through bangkok. it was crazy, there was so much traffic. but it was because of the holiday. it was the kings birthday this last friday so everyone was leaving town. our bus would be stuck in unmoving traffic for like 15 minutes and not move a bit. i was on a non-ac bus and there were so many people on the bus i was standing up and holding on above. everyone was coughing and stuff.... i ended up getting sick. we will get to that later.

so finally after taking a wrong bus for a while, i made it to the bus station. i got there at 9:10 and the last bus left at 9:30, so i booked tickets for me, lindsey and jen (who were on their way also on the other buses). but the good thing was that at least i was stuck in traffic on the bus instead of a taxi. it only cost me 30 baht on the bus. but with the taxi it would have been 500 baht or something.

we got on the bus to hua hin and i started feeling sick- like flu-ish. we got to the city late at night around 1am and walked around a bit and i went to bed early. we thought about staying in the hilton, but it cost 7000 baht a night. it looked super nice though. we were gonna all pitch in so we could swim in the pool there, etc. but the bungalow seemed like a more reasonable option.

we ate at a seafood place there, and i had the best chicken with cashew dish- i dont like seafood so i didnt eat it. i was feeling so sick, and i talked to my friend lindsey about it and she said it sounded like i had malaria. because i had flu symptoms and they got worse at night but during the day i was fine and i had a fever, etc. she had malaria before so she said i should get checked out. i went to the doctor and 1400 baht later, i am fine. i just have a throat infection.

the king was unable to make his speech for his birthday because he was also sick with a throat infection. but he is much sicker- he is on a fluid diet. i think me and the king have a connection, ha. there was a light festival in hua hin for the kings birthday so we checked it out. i took photos.

apt. issue

so my apartment that i got-looked really nice. but then i realized after we got it that it doesnt have hot water and it has cockroaches everywhere.... hmm... so im going to try to get a different place. probably.

nonthaburi

i am in nonthaburi now at an internet cafe. i have an apartment now and ive met the school and the principal. it is a very nice and cute school. the program seems like it will be fun, and the kids are adorable.

crazy story: one of the people in our english teaching group was sleep walking one night and jumped off the balcony and did not wake from his sleep until he crashed through one roof, he woke up as he was crashing through the second roof and grabbed on for his life. he is fine though. just scrapes and bruises. crazy though. he could have died.

im going to go eat now from the market nearby. i had 20 hours of bus travel the other day in 24 hours. i slept a lot on the bus but somehow i am still tired.