Phufa, the Little Drummer Boy

I could write a compelling profile of many of my students at Anuban Songkhla, and I feel so fortunate to be interacting daily with such a fun, caring, interesting, intelligent group of kids. I suppose at the end of my time here I'll write a little something about each of them because they're such a dynamic group, and I want you all to get at least a peek into a Songkhla child's life. But there's one student of mine who I'd like to dedicate a whole post to, though he certainly isn’t a good representation of a “typical” student. But I’ve spent a lot of time with him over the last five months, so I'm going to step-out of my usual recounting routine and put my creative non-fiction training to work for a post (shout out to Dr. Rick Barot for weaseling your way into my head during times like these).

Phufa (pronounced Poof-uh) Somchanakit is seven years old and would like everyone to know that he has a real job every Saturday and Sunday. He works at a place called Blue Smile Cafe where they make really good pizza and have a lot of different kinds of drinks and there's a Canadian guy named Paul who cooks in the back. Phufa even has a shirt and everything. One time his mom hadn't done the laundry so his shirt wasn't clean and he couldn't go to work, because everyone knows you need your uniform to go to work. He was sad about it, but being professional is very important to him. Phufa would also like everyone to know that his favorite food is spaghetti.

“My mom says I’m fat and I need to go on a diet,” Phufa says, looking disappointedly down at his stomach then to the chocolate milk in his hand. “Maybe I’ll jump rope a bit.”

We’re in my office during lunch time, and I keep the PE equipment (four plastic balls, five jump ropes, and one hula hoop for 35 kids) behind my desk, so he trades me his milk for a jump rope and sets to work as I continue writing. He’s not fat—true, he’s not stick-thin like a lot of my kids, but he’s short and compact, an energetic and jolly “little drummer boy” one of my coworkers fondly started calling him around the Christmas season. I doubt Joe was envisioning the cute little selfless lad going to play for baby Jesus—think a little more along the lines of the energizer bunny.

I was warned by coworkers back in October about Phufa before I'd ever met him. Yes, he speaks English like a little native child and can translate anything you want to the whole class, but he's such a handful, it's easier to run the class without him. He's dramatic. He's a baby. He believes he deserves special privileges because of his English skills. He probably has the English vocabulary of a native speaking 9-year-old but he bursts into tears and bangs his head on the desk when he breaks his pencil. All of these things turned out to be true. But I've since learned there's quite a bit more to him than that.

More than anything, Phufa just wants to talk to people. In English. There are four Filipino and two other native English-speaking teachers at my school, but somehow, I’m the one who Phufa really hit it off with. It may have had something to do with the fact that I knew all the weird American TV shows he was obsessed with and need chocolate on the daily almost as much as he does. So, mid-November, Phufa started buying two chocolate milks at the student store every day during lunch. Like clockwork, he appears in my office at 11:45, and we kick back in our plastic blue chairs, sip our chocolate milk through those ridiculously tiny straws they glue to the side of the carton, and we discuss the latest topic of interest. Our conversations range from Pixar movies to greatest fears, from the technicalities of piano playing to Phufa’s unsuccessful dating life (“She just, didn’t even return my note”). One day, Phufa spent lunch telling me all about the bot fly, which is some parasitic, absolutely disgusting creature I now know much more about than I really wish to. When we can’t think of anything to talk about, we tell jokes, because Phufa loves jokes. Sometimes I find a website online and we take turns passing my phone back and forth and reading them to each other, though sometimes such jokes have punch-lines that utilize words like “canoe” or “hipster” or “Noah’s Ark,” and we decide to just make up jokes ourselves.

“Okay, I really have to use the bathroom, can you finish interviewing me later?” Phufa asks, throwing down his jump rope and inching towards the door.

“Only if you take your toothbrush with you, dude,” I say, holding up a plastic bag with a green case in it. “This is like, strike 13. Teacher Joe’s started a tally.”

“Ah, c’mon, no way!” Phufa laughs, snatching his bag from me. “I remember it most of the time.”

“Uh huh, sure, Phufa.”

“Oh my god!” Phufa doubles over, holding his stomach and laughing hard enough to be in a scene of a soap opera or silent movie. Half the time I don’t know why Phufa’s laughing, but it always makes me crack up too.  

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Phufa's mind is a fascinating smorgasbord of American and Thai pop-culture references that never ceases to confuse, concern, and entertain. One time, after discussing the finer points of the TV show, Adventure Time, Phufa asked me, "Do you want to go to heaven or hell?" I sort of cocked my head and thought for a moment, since I was apparently being given a choice in the matter. "Well, I guess I'm not sure," I said. "Why don't you make a solid case for me? What do you think they're like?" Phufa elaborated as follows: "I think that in heaven you can eat whatever you want—you can have KFC every day! And ice cream! In hell, there's a big pot over a fire, and you don't want to get in the pot, and if you call out for your mom and dad, they won't hear you cuz they're in heaven. Yeah, I think I would chose heaven, Also, you get to meet all the gods in heaven--like Zeus and Jesus and Buddha...that would be so cool! Not Satan, though--I don't want to meet him. I've seen pictures, and he's freaky." I decided to agree upon the Satan point and let the rest go. 

Although his world collides and combines in interesting conversations like these, sometimes it seems like Phufa is living two lives. After weeks of begging, Phufa finally convinced me to come visit him at Blue Smile Café one Sunday. Blue Smile is a hip, friendly café with murals painted on the outside and art for sale on the inside. It’s owned by a Thai woman and her Canadian husband, so you can get amazing massaman curry AND Belgian waffles with real maple syrup. I have to give Phufa the credit for making me a regular, but who can resist a place that has Jenga, Wednesday movie nights, fresh baked goods, and a rooftop lounge?

El, one of the co-owners of Blue Smile just laughs and shakes her head whenever I talk to her about Phufa. The boy had been hanging around so much after they first opened that she’d told him he was going to have to work there if he kept showing up. Phufa, of course, didn’t realize this was a joke and was elated by the idea, despite El’s reactionary skepticism. “What can you do?” She asked Phufa. “Like, can you serve, or cook, count the money?” Phufa shrugged his shoulders and said enthusiastically, “I can be an entertainer!” So, he showed up every Saturday and Sunday religiously to bother Paul—the other co-owner—in the kitchen, El, whose English is very good, or anyone else who will talk to him in his special language. The only times he didn’t show up was when his official t-shirt wasn’t clean, because, as aforementioned, he didn’t feel he could go to work without it. After learning that’s why Phufa hadn’t shown up one weekend, El sat him down and told him he didn’t have to work at Blue Smile; he was welcome to just come and hang out. Unfortunately, Phufa thought this meant he was fired. He didn’t show up for two or three weeks and was inconsolable until El went to his house and cleared the miscommunication.

Being at Blue Smile Café is a sort of extension of Phufa’s English life at school with me and the TV shows and YouTube videos he watches at home. He can say things like, “Holy sweet mother of god!” when he’s really surprised (when he found out my dad and sister were visiting Thailand in December) or “That’s a damned lie!” (can’t remember, pretty sure it was aimed at Teacher Joe). But after our third meeting at Blue Smile, Phufa dragged me down the street to his house, where he isn’t wonder boy, he’s not an over-the-top cartoon character, he’s just another boy who lives in Songkhla.

El told me that when Phufa speaks in English, he’s brash, full of energy, and dramatic—he emulates what he sees in his favorite American TV shows. But when he speaks in Thai, he is very quiet and polite. I really experienced that for the first time when I visited his home.

Like most Thai homes in Songkhla, Phufa’s house is connected seamlessly with the building next to it, so you almost miss the gate that lets you in. One of his two high school-aged brothers let us in, and led us through a dimly lit patio space where we took off our shoes and entered the house. Phufa greeted his mother and explained in Thai who I was, though I’m sure she knew exactly who I was, seeing as white girls don’t just show up at your house very often cuz there are only like six of us in Songkhla. She was short, like Phufa, and had the same round face and smiling eyes, but she looked much softer. She clearly wasn’t one of those moms that wears the fashionable sunglasses and skinny jeans, cowering under their umbrella to keep their skin from darkening by the sun, so I liked her immediately. Also, she gave me watermelon, which is always a way to win me over.

She and Phufa exchanged some words, Phufa explained to me, “She doesn’t really know English,” and he translated to me that she apologized for how messy the house was. I told him there was no need for her to apologize, and it was perfectly fine she didn’t know much English because he knew how rubbish my Thai was. He just laughed and let me into the living room.

You wouldn’t guess by Phufa’s house that his father is a fairly well-off engineer. I’ve learned that Thai’s spend their money on technology, nice cars, and their children’s education, so I wasn’t surprised, but somehow it did seem odd to see Phufa living in such an average space. The light-blue room we found ourselves in was small and crammed with piles of papers, stacks of books, an electric keyboard, a computer desk, and a couple of chairs. There was hardly room for the two of us to sit on the floor. We found a space right by a wooden staircase where Phufa keeps an enormous stack of English board games. He showed me a few science games in English on his ipad and then pulled out his favorite board game, a sort of fairytale mix-and-match storytelling game, which we actually played for an hour and I really enjoyed. But as we laughed over Red-Riding Hood losing her shoe at the ball and falling down a beanstalk, I couldn’t help but wonder—who plays all these games with him when I’m not here?

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While I know how to interact with Phufa outside the classroom, in class, sometimes I’m stumped. He doesn’t always understand that our private conversations can’t carry on during class time. He also assumes that because he speaks the best English, he actually has a right to talk to me more than the other 34 students, and this drives me insane. I’ve recently found a balance, where, for example, Phufa will write out the symbol to about 15 periodic elements and every time I walk by him to call on a student or show a flashcard, I’ll point to one and make a guess. He’ll then check and either add or subtract to my tally as I continue on with the rest of the class. But every time we play a game, and I don’t call on him, he yells out in his distinct countertenor, “Oh, c’mon!!” and pouts. Usually it won’t go beyond that, but Phufa has become known for his royal-sized temper tantrums in MEP 1, which make me look pretty good as a 7-year-old, and I was almost as dramatic as Phufa.

One of Phufa's famous outbursts took place during the PE lesson where I introduced jump ropes to the class. I guess it's been a while since first grade, because I dumbly assumed everyone in MEP 1 would know how to jump rope. To be fair, there were some kids who really had it down, and then there was Nut, who would flop the rope in front of him, pass it with one hand around his back to the other, jump, and call it good. Phufa tried and failed. Multiple times. He couldn't quite swing the rope over his head correctly, and frustration turned into tears which turned into wailing and stomping and yelling, transitioning into flailing on the ground. The rest of the class just looked on with a sort of quiet, all-knowing sobriety in their faces, as if they were watching a beached whale. Pang nodded to me and said very observantly, "Phufa very angry." This was a statement she would find herself repeating to me on several occasions. 

The next day, when Phufa arrived in my office at lunch, and we'd spent a few minutes drinking our chocolate milk in silence, I noticed him looking at the jump ropes in the corner. "Do you want me to teach you?" I asked. "No, I just can't do it," Phufa whined with a grimace. "Not with that attitude," I replied (Eric, be proud). "You have to practice. Come on. We'll go step by step." Phufa whined some more but stood up when I put the jump rope in his hand. 

We spent the next ten minutes perfecting his stance, positioning, hold on the handles, and swinging technique. I wouldn't let him jump at all. Finally, when he could consistently get the rope to arrive at his toes correctly, I had him step over the rope slowly and repeat. We progressed to jumping fifteen minutes in. By the end of lunch, Phufa could jump 20 times in a row without a single mistake and the next week of lunch he spent at least 20 minutes straight jump-roping behind my desk until he collapsed in a puddle of sweat on the chipped, linoleum tiles. I am now proud to say that Phufa counts jump-roping as one of his "top skills." Along with English and saving the earth. 

The story of Phufa and the Jump Rope illustrates one of the major reasons why Phufa can be so difficult; he's used to everything coming easy to him. He can't handle failure because he hardly ever has to handle it. The other reason he is difficult is because he's been spoiled beyond belief--he's the youngest of three, he's coddled by the school and community because he makes them look good, and he's told on the daily he's special because of his unique linguistic talents. I had a class interrupted one day by eight members of Anuban Songkhla's administrative team who came in and proceeded to praise and interview Phufa in the back of the class about his regional English competition win the weekend before. They were literally petting him for twenty minutes. During my class time. I couldn't teach over that, because of course all my kids were trying to get in on the action, and I was furious. But this is where his entitlement stems from, this is why he says, "Oh, she can't solve that problem--she's not very smart--I'll do it!" during a demonstration in math class. This is why the concept of focusing on where your hands and feet are before you jump was so foreign to him. 

As much as his ego frustrates me, it worries me even more. 

On one of our lunch dates in Blue Smile Cafe, Phufa asked who my best friend was. I told him about a couple of my closest friends, and he asked about their jobs and what they looked like. So then I asked him who his best friend was. "Hmmm....well, you, I guess!" he said with a big smile. I wish I could say I returned the same innocent smile, but I had to grin through clenched teeth and a breaking heart. "Really?" I asked. "Definitely," he said confidently. "Probably you and this guy I know on the internet from Malaysia who I think is 10." I thanked him, and probed a little bit more until he admitted that his best class friend was probably Porpeang, who is a student I really like, but who I doubt returns as much friendship to Phufa as my little buddy assumes. 

I watch the way the other students in MEP 1 interact with Phufa. They know he reads English better than Thai, and they know he'd rather talk to me than them. They know he watches The Simpsons on YouTube in his free time instead of playing with them outside. They tell me to call on him during games even when they so desperately want to be called on themselves, because they'd rather see him receive special treatment than deal with his wrath if he isn't chosen. In fact, they expect him to receive special treatment, and this is what ostracizes him from them. Phufa's too young to know it, and his classmates are too young to understand it, but unless his attitude changes, he's on a lonely path to success through abandoning his culture for mine.

The ego and elitism that come with Phufa’s preening and success scare me, especially because he’s still young enough to possess an innocent sweetness, love of learning, and sense of humor that makes him truly fun to be around. He’s the only Thai I’ve ever met who’s seriously concerned about recycling because of what garbage can do to the environment. After listening to Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf in music class, he declared it “totally EPIC!” and made me write down the composer’s full name for him so he could Youtube him later and listen to other work he wrote. And whether I’m there or not, there’s always a little plastic bag on my desk with a chocolate milk in it at 11:45.

For Christmas, I had my dad send me a joke book from Barnes and Noble for Phufa. Phufa unfortunately came down with Dengue fever, and was out for two weeks, but after the New Year’s holiday, when he was feeling better, he showed up for lunch and I pulled out the wrapped gift. He stared at me with his huge brown eyes and said, “Is this a Christmas present? For me?”

“Ummm no, this is for my invisible friend Frankie,” I said. Phufa doubled over, laughing, as he does. “No, silly, it’s for you.”

“Oh my god,” Phufa said, regaining composure but immediately shifting back to shock. “I’ve never gotten a present before. This is my first present! OH MY GOD!”

Birthdays are very different here than in the states, but I was still shocked that Phufa had never received a present before. I handed him the package and he just sort of stared at it with an emotion that made elation look almost like it was bordering on fear.

“Do I open it now?” he asked tentatively.

“Yup,” I said. “Go for it.”

Phufa carefully peeled off the tape and unfolded the corners of the cheap green wrapping paper I’d picked up at 7/11 that morning.

I wish I knew how to capture in words Phufa’s face when he saw the book. But I simply can’t. It was on par with watching Charlie discover the 5^th golden ticket to Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory.

I’m pretty sure he said “Oh my god!” at least nine times, and “A joke book? It’s a joke book!” at least three. Then he said, “Am I dreaming? Because if I am I'm going to be so angry!" That one made me laugh, and I assured him that he definitely wasn’t dreaming. He flipped the pages back and forth and said, “I think I'm going to cry!”

So before he could, I turned the book to page 1 and we told jokes for about 35 minutes until I almost made him late to class, but didn’t, because I’m not a crappy teacher like that. So I watched him skip off to show all his friends, who I knew wouldn’t understand a single word of the book, but who I hoped would at least be excited for him. 

Nut (left) and I had an unfinished conversation about Star Wars one day, so he followed Phufa (middle) up to my office during lunch to confirm that Jabba the Hutt was indeed the best bad guy in the series. 

The Ins and Outs, Ups and Downs of Teaching in Thailand

Well, it's been over a month since my last post, which makes me a pretty terrible blogger, but my lack of posts certainly is not a reflection of a lack of interesting subject matter. I do realize I've not actually spent much time on here talking about the main thing I do--teach--so I've decided to enlighten you all a bit on that subject today.

I'm not going to lie: teaching in a country where you lack the proper language faculties to communicate beyond simple commands and requests is extremely difficult. It has made me realize that my main sense of authority and ability to take control of a group of kids--or anyone, for that matter--comes from my ability to use language. I've realized this because it's a luxury I don't have in Thai classrooms. Back home, I could be handed a rowdy bunch of seven-year-olds at camp and keep them fairly well contained and quiet for as long as was necessary. Here, I have no such ability. If my students are running wild, I have two options: yell at them and bang on desks (which is what all the Thai teachers and my agent tells me to do) or bribe them with stickers and candy. Neither are ideal, but what else can you do in a room of seven-year-olds who don't know your language and who know that the government sanctions that all students (no matter their performance) will receive passing grades? The communication barrier gets less severe the older the students, but with my second-graders in particular, I feel totally helpless sometimes. Just last week, I yelled at my second-grade class for running in and out of the room and paying absolutely no attention to me, and all of a sudden I had a girl crying and holding her head, with a student gesturing and roughly translating that I pushed her into a desk. Obviously, I did no such thing and the girl had been complaining of a headache since the beginning of class, but I think because I yelled particularly severely--at her in particular because she's usually a good student and I was frustrated with her sudden lack of interest--she was upset. All of a sudden I had the whole class accusing me of hurting Grace and telling me, "Teacher, say sorry! We call mother!", threatening to tattle on me since at age seven that's about the worst thing you can do to a person you're angry at. A conflict that could have been resolved in five minutes if we spoke the same language took forty minutes. Even after finding a Thai teacher to translate (she looked like she told the students, "it was an accident, get over yourselves") they certainly didn't trust me. It was probably the most frustrating class to date simply because it made me realize how powerless I am in an atmosphere I am used to reining supreme in. (As a positive side note, by the next class, Grace was hugging me and blowing me kisses as I left at the end of the period, go figure.)

That being said, I am very lucky to be spending only 2 of my 19 hours teaching classes like that without an assistant, and the other 17 are spent with just two classes of students--a first grade class and second grade class--who are enrolled in a special English program that gives them access to materials and assistance the other general classes at my school don't have. These students tested in with a base knowledge of English, want to learn, care about doing well, have a smaller class size, have a Thai assistant to translate when needed, and most importantly, are in love with me. Because I don't have to stress about class control or being misunderstood, I can relax, be my goofy self around these kids, and let them adore exactly how dorky I am while also learning. And being dorky is possibly the most important skill I possess in this job, so thank god I'm a natural. Why? Let me do some explaining.

Thais are naturally very friendly and hospitable, but quite reserved. Expressing strong emotions is not done in public. Passive aggression is epidemic. As a foreigner, if you blow up or start crying in front of a Thai, they may not talk to you for weeks out of fear because they simply don't know how to deal with you. Americans in particular are generally assumed to be dramatic, loud, and alarmingly open, with very little control over their emotions, which I can't really deny. However, at school, I am embraced by staff and students alike for my unique set of skills. While negative reactions and emotions are terrifying to them, the over-the-top, shameless attitude in which I conduct myself in the classroom is what my Thai coworkers find so amusing and apparently endearing about me. Teachers are highly regarded by Thai society, and this respect translates into how classrooms are typically run; there is always order, cleanliness, regimented activity, and a controlled environment. Teachers are strict and composed, though usually revered by their students. As a foreign teacher, I will never be able to gain this level of respect, nor am I expected to act in such a way as to gain it. My job is to be the "fun teacher." The leader of my TESOL course once told us, "In Thailand, they could care less how good you are at teaching; what they want you to do is be engaging and fun, and if they like you, then that's all that matters." That's not entirely true here at Anuban Songkhla, where the MEP program has a challenging curriculum and parents with high standards, but at the end of the day, it's true; I'm so successful here not because my teaching of concepts is producing the highest scores (though I think I'm doing okay, all things considered), it's because I can get my students involved, acting, laughing--you name it--with a snap of my fingers. I am an entertainer extraordinaire first, educator second. At the end of the day, this means my kiddos will always call their Thai homeroom teacher "their teacher," and will run to her as first priority and authority. They idolize me and crave my attention, but I'm still placed in a different category. Sometimes this saddens me. However, it allows me to let loose in a classroom in a way a Thai teacher never could, and I absolutely love that.

I teach in a whirlwind of chaos, messiness, and improvisation. PE with Thai teachers is students in a military-style block doing independent exercises. PE with Teacher Mel is playing bowling with water bottles, balancing games with bags of ramen on our heads, and wheelbarrow races. Science with Thai teachers is showing pictures of different kinds of soil and having students repeat words and phrases over and over again. Science with Teacher Mel is seeing the soil samples she brought in, squishing them between our fingers, and drawing what we see. Art with Thai teachers is pencil drawings. Art with Teacher Mel is finger painting. We use all five senses in my classes, we never stay seated for more than 15 minutes at a time, and we're total clowns when we need to be to remember words and illustrate concepts. Because how on earth am I supposed to explain good/bad posture and electrocution and "sharks eat fish" any other way?

I am serious when I need to be. The communication barrier is still difficult in MEP when it comes to classes like science and health where I have to teach concepts that can be hard for first and second graders to even grasp in their own language (teaching about electricity and different forms of energy SUCKED folks). But sometimes these are the classes where all those games of Charades and Cranium in my youth pay off because you can't hold up a flash card of "soil gives plants nutrients and support" or "cold-blooded animals need the sun to regulate their body temperature." So you have to get a bit creative and sometimes leave your comfort zone, especially when a vocabulary word in Health Class is "diarrhea." Besides, it's much more memorable if your teacher dramatically flops onto your desk and plays dead until someone pulls on your shoulder and asks, "Teacher Mel? Teacher Mel okay?" than it is to write the phrase "I feel concerned" in your notebook.

I love being unconventional in the classroom, but I do find myself doubting my abilities at reaching long-term goals because, as an outsider, I have very little authority and no ability to enact change. The textbooks we use are written in Singapore, where English is spoken at a much higher proficiency than in Thailand, so they're much too hard for my kids, but I'm required to teach by them. I cannot fail any of my kids, even when some of them drag the whole class down because of how far behind they are. My PE supplies consist of three plastic balls, four jump ropes, and one hula hoop. I'm not allowed to let my students use paint in first grade Art Class because it is "too messy." I'm not allowed to play any rhythm games in Music Class that involve any motion besides clapping because they are "too loud." Good thing I don't have any access to a single musical instrument because they'd probably be too loud too.

I do wonder if I'll ever be able to teach back in the states and feel comfortable doing so. Nothing is regulated here, students are punished physically, your body is free game for anyone to touch anywhere (I despise this), I teach private lessons in my one-room apartment, students see me on the weekend and invite me into their homes to play board games with them, random parents offer to give you rides home from school (this is common courtesy, not creepiness), and a stray cat sometimes wanders into my second grade class and curls up on an empty seat. This is a country where cows are loaded into the beds of pickup trucks and 80-pound pet pythons are kept in wooden bird cages. My classes went on a field trip to a planetarium to watch an animated video about chickens and then a fish hatchery to feed small fish to big fish who my assistant told me in all seriousness would eat a child if they fell in the pool. It's an odd place, but that's what makes every day so exhilarating (and sometimes exhausting). In the US I couldn't tackle wriggling, giggling first-graders playing "strong currents can make you drown!" or have everyone pull out their ten baht coins and eraser collections so we can learn the difference between buying and selling. Then again, I probably wouldn't have students who tried to eat their concoction of raw eggs, sugar, and fish sauce we were using to demonstrate actions in the kitchen either.

I've barely scraped the surface of my experiences teaching, but I guess that just means I have more than enough material for another time. I feel I've rambled on long enough for one night, so I think I'll sign off for now. If you have any questions, or want me to expand on specifics of any of my given experiences, please mention so in the comments below. I write what I think is interesting and what I remember, but that's only about 3% of what occurs on a daily basis. So don't be shy :) Happy Groundhog's Day, everyone, and to all a good night!

 Off on a field trip! On a luxury bus wooooo! The kids couldn't see over the seats so they stood pretty much the whole time to watch the cartoon playing on the TV up front.

Everyone wanted to sit next to me. Luckily, Thai children are typically small and the seats were huge, so we fit me plus three kiddos in on pair of seats pretty easily.

                                                               My first grade class.

                                                                My second grade class.

                                                            Tonkaew and Si being dorks.

Singing some Karaoke on the bus ride home, because Karaoke is an essential part of any Thai event, be it a birthday party, a wedding, a funeral, or a field trip.

They are just too cute. 

Christmas in Thailand

I was warned by many that Christmas would be the hardest time of year to be away from home. There certainly is a lot to be said for being with family and in a familiar, sentimental place for the holidays, but I honestly can say that I think I had one of the best Christmases I have ever had this year. In a lot of ways, it didn’t feel like Christmas—it felt more like some other holiday was being celebrated, the distance and differences making it unlike the usual yuletide festivities while not being

a totally foreign experience. Either way, the 25^th of December, 2014, was a wonderful day, but perhaps my elation and thankfulness on that fateful day was due primarily to the truly wild 24 hours that preceded it. Story time, everyone.

On the 22^nd of December, I made the realization that the stamp on my passport was due to expire on the 25^th. No matter the type of passport you have, as a foreigner in Thailand, every 3 months, you have to check in to an immigration office, fill out some paperwork, and pay for an extension to keep you in the country for another 90 days. This is all well and good, so my agent tells me she can take me to Hat Yai (the biggest city in the south of Thailand, about 45 minutes from Songkhla) in the afternoon of the 25^th after the Christmas festivities are over at school. I was not keen to do that because it could screw up my Christmas plans for the evening, and if anything went wrong, I would be stuck because I’d be out of days to deal with the extension. So I convinced her to let me go on my own the morning of the 24^th. This was not ideal because it meant me going alone, but it turns out that I would have been absolutely and totally screwed if I’d gone on the 25^th, so it’s a blessing I went when I did.

I successfully found the immigration office in Hat Yai, filled out my paperwork, no problems, then I go up to the desk and show them my passport. I have a year-long non-immigrant B passport, which means I’m allowed to work in the country, but back in the states I also chose to make my visa “multiple entry,” as opposed to “single entry.” Single entry means you only get to go into Thailand once, and you have to apply to go out and back into the country. Multiple entry means you can come and go across borders as you please. Sounds like multiple entry is the way to go, right? Well, here’s something they don’t tell you about multiple entry: it also means that every three months, when your stamp time is up, you can’t just go to an immigration office within Thailand, you have to leave the country. Every 3 months. So, they tell me this in the Hat Yai immigration office, at 10:00am on December the 24^th, after asking me for my agent’s number so they can call her and tell her all that in Thai so she can translate it back to me. “You just have to go to Malaysia,” my agent tells me. I sure as hell don’t know how to get to Malaysia, but I know the border is only about an hour from Hat Yai, so I try and remain calm and tell myself it can’t be that hard to get there. They assure me at the office that I just need to go through immigration at the border, walk into the country, then turn right back around and walk back through. I can go and come on the same day and head back to Songkhla that afternoon. Okay, okay, I’m cool, I’m calm, I can do that! Still don’t know how to get to Malaysia…

This is where we enter into the part of the story where I know I’ve started adjusting to life in Thailand, because if I was back in the states, or even if this had happened 3 months ago, I would have been so stressed I probably wouldn’t have been functional. Yet somehow, though I was concerned, I can’t say I actually was that scared or even stressed. I found myself sort of just going with things, which is a sure sign I am slowly losing my inner American.

A woman had walked into the immigration office bringing what appeared to be a Christmas present to the main lady who was helping me out in broken English. The two of them chatted for a while merrily while I sat there, waiting for them to reprint the slip immigration had given me at the airport when I landed in Bangkok, a slip I’d managed to lose back in Hua Hin (believe me, they were not pleased upon hearing that—I feel very fortunate to have received a second chance on that one). When the officer came back to me with my passport, I asked her how I could get to Malaysia. She turned to her friend and the two of them spoke in Thai for a couple minutes and motioned to me frequently. Then the officer said, “My friend will take you to the station. She must first stop by her office but then she will take you.” So I was like, “Okay,” and followed the kind stranger to her car and met her coworker and we proceeded to drive off to who knows where. At one point she called someone and tried putting me on the phone with them, but I couldn’t understand what they were saying, so we just kept on driving, and I was really hopeful that the continual conversation between the woman and her coworker wasn’t about me and how they had no clue where I was going either. We never did stop at an office, but we did stop at a bus stop at one point and the woman got out to ask a taxi driver a question. We eventually made it to the main van and bus station and the woman motioned for me to get out. She grabbed me gently by the arm and led me around the station, asking attendants lots of questions and finally stopping in front of one van. “This one! This one!” she said excitedly, so I paid 58 baht (that’s under $2), got in the van, and hoped to god it was taking me to a border.

Miraculously, it did! About an hour later, I was kicked out of the van at a very clear border crossing. I waited in a line, got my passport inspected and stamped, and boom! I was in Malaysia. Okay, that was easy. What do you know? I’m feeling good, I buy a mango, and I meander over to the opposite side to go back through immigration and into Thailand once again. It’s about 12:30, so I’m thinking I can make it back easily in time for a run before dinner. I wait in line, make it up to the passport stamper guy, and he looks at my visa, looks at my stamps, then says, “No, no, no, no, no. Come with me.” Well, that can’t be good. I follow him into the immigration office, he leads me to a woman who takes my passport from him, then says, “Ah, you entered today? You cannot enter and leave the same day.” I told her I was told very specifically by both Hat Yai immigration and my agent that I could, but she said, “Cannot! Cannot! New rule. Must stay one night in Malaysia, come back tomorrow morning. Bye bye!” And without further ado, I was shooed out of the immigration office. I couldn’t call my agent because my Thai phone only works in Thailand. I have no change of clothes, no phone charger, no form of entertainment, no Malaysian currency, no knowledge of a single word in Malaysian, and no idea where anything is in this country. In a bit of shock, I walk about a half mile through no man’s land, get my passport stamped one more time at a checkpoint and walk another quarter mile until I find a tourist information center, thank god. The woman inside was very kind and spoke pretty good English. I found out the border opens at 6:00am Malaysian time, 5:00am Thai time (I also learned there was a time difference between the two countries). She gave me a brochure for the closet hotel, told me where I could exchange my Thai baht for Malaysian Ringgits and directed me outside to a taxi driver. The taxi driver was also very nice, and spoke even better English. He took me to the place where I could exchange my money, pointed out where the good food was along the way, and brought me to the GM Hotel where they luckily had an available room. Actually, it was a really nice hotel. When you walk in and there’s a koi pond in the lobby, you know you’re in a good place. The bed was WAY nicer than my own bed in Songkhla and there was a real shower. Like, with a divider that separated it from the toilet and everything! Crazy! So I relaxed in my plush bed and watched some Malaysian movie about a girl who is gifted with a pair of magic chopsticks that have healing powers and also the ability to do things like make frogs the size of bears and turn tigers into kittens. It was kind of weird but also amusing.

After a couple hours, I venture outside and towards one of the restaurants the taxi guy pointed out: Yasmeen’s. Yasmeen’s was a fairly large, covered but open air cafeteria style restaurant with an array of sauces and meats and vegetables to chose from. When it was my turn, I just sort of looked at the guy serving and he was like, “Chicken?” and I was like, “Yeah. Chose for me.” So he chopped me up some fried chicken and chose a couple sauces and some cucumbers to put on my rice, and handed me the plate. So I have no idea what I ate, but I will tell you this; I have had some truly excellent meals in Thailand, but this meal blew me away. Easily one of the top 3 best meals I’ve had since being on this continent. It was some sort of Indian style curry—very different from Thai curry, clearly a different set of spices, and it was much more subtle in terms of heat—and the chicken was prepared perfectly. Considering I hadn’t eaten anything except a yogurt that morning and a mango at noon (it was about 3:30 by this point), I couldn’t have asked for anything better. All of a sudden, my unexpected journey was worth it!

With a happy stomach, I stopped at an ATM to take out some more money in preparation for paying for an extension at the border in the morning, though I was pretty certain I didn’t have to. I certainly wasn’t going to risk it though. Then I freaked out because I realized I made a transaction with my US Bank card in Malaysia without warning them I was leaving Thailand, imagined them canceling my card and envisioned myself stranded at the border with no baht, unable to pay anyone to get me back to Songkhla for Christmas. So I panicked and called US Bank, told them I was in Malaysia, felt better, and wasted about 50% of my iphone’s battery on the hotel’s wifi (I should probably explain I have a cheap burner phone I use in Thailand as well as my iPhone, which I only use for internet and international texts via imessage). Then I watched some random Australian cooking show that featured Christmassy food, so I was once again reminded that it was indeed Christmas Eve, and even though the food was good, the people were nice, and the bed was awesome, I really, really just wanted to be back in Thailand. I felt good about my chances of getting through immigration and back into Thailand, then back to Songkhla before the big Christmas celebration at the school at 9:00am the next morning, but based on today, I realized I really couldn’t predict what tomorrow would bring. So watched Spongebob in Malaysian and tried not to think about the morning. 

Of course, around 1am, my Thai phone died. This was my alarm, because my iPhone was at 40% and I wanted to keep the battery for the morning for GPS purposes and as an emergency outlet if I needed to call anyone. Also, my iPhone has this nasty habit of turning off randomly and I missed my wake up one too many times to count on its reliability for such things. But I had no choice, so I turned it on and set the alarm, praying it would go off in the morning, and waking up about every half hour in terror, realizing each time that only another 20 or 30 minutes had gone by.

Finally, 6am, which felt like 5am, arrived, I checked out, got a taxi, and made it to the border. I waited in two long lines, walked through no man’s land in the pitch dark while everyone else road by in buses and cars (that was a little sketch, but I wasn’t attacked by wild animals jumping out of the surrounding jungle, so that’s good), and finally held my breath as the man behind the desk asked me where I was from and what I did in Thailand. Then he stamped it, updated my expiration date to March 24^th, and said with a smile, “Merry Christmas!” I couldn’t have asked for a better present.

Managing to find someone to take me all the way to Songkhla at 6:00am, immediately, was a whole other ordeal, but needless to say, I managed to convince a van driver to take me there (1,000 baht later). I didn’t even care about the price because I didn’t have to pay for an extension, and god damn it, it was Christmas, and I was just pleased as punch to be in Thailand, headed to my school to see my kiddos perform.

I give my van driver mad props for taking every back road he possibly could have at top speed to get 

me back to Songkhla by 8:30, despite rush hour. I dashed from the van into my apartment, changed clothes, ran to my school, and made it about an hour late, but about 20 minutes before the official program started. I was greeted with an excited chorus of “Teacher Mel! Teacher Mel!” from my two MEP classes, who were all dressed up in little red Santa costumes. I was a mess—my hair was crazy, I hadn’t showered, I was sweating like a Swede in Guatemala, and so my kids were like, “Teacher run?” And I replied with an out of breath, “YES! From Malaysia!” That thoroughly impressed them. And somehow, despite it all, they still said, “Teacher beautiful!” There was absolutely no where I would have rather been.

Then began the day of Christmas programs. There were four in all, because the whole school wasn't big enough to fit in the main hall for the assembly. My MEP kids had to be there for all four so they could perform at each, though, so I just spent the whole day with them up front. Each program consisted of various performances by groups of students--sometimes whole classes, sometimes just four or five students--and then games and songs MCed by a Thai teacher who frequently called us foreign teachers up to help. English teachers are the embodiment of Christmas here because it's a major association with our culture, so we were ushered around and given "Christmas food" (hot chocolate and some sort of green custard cake) and told on the spot to lead the whole assembly in a song. Luckily, the students have a repertoire of only two Christmas tunes--Jingle Bells and We Wish you a Merry  Christmas--so it wasn't hard. However, once we were called up to dance. None of us were too keen to do that, but we didn't exactly have a choice in the matter. MEP 1 was on stage after having finished their choreographed dance to Jingle Bells, and the MC told us to do the dance with them this time. Problem was, we were lined up in front of the stage so we couldn't even see the students and we certainly didn't know the dance. So we looked like absolute idiots, turning around every 10 seconds to see if we were doing the right moves. The kids thought it was hilarious, and we were definitely all laughing pretty hard. About two times through the song, I just sort of gave up and started free form dancing in front of the stage. The kids went nuts, and pretty soon all us foreign teachers were just jamming. It was awesome. 

Both MEP 1 and MEP 2 performed very well, but on account of the music being quite loud, it was hard to hear them singing. In the classroom they're ridiculously loud, but on a stage, with the music turned up, some of them didn't even have their mouths moving. Ah well. I felt kind of bad for them because they had to sit through a whole day of performances and speeches, so I sat on the ground with them and played games with them during intermissions (games involving fist-bump and high-five combinations, rock-paper-scissors, and any sort of mirroring are their favorites). They loved just having me sitting next to them, so it was quite easy to keep them happy.

After the last performance, I went home, took a much needed shower, and got ready for the staff party that night. Some of the teachers had rented out a ballroom in a nearby hotel, and were throwing a big Christmas and New Year's party. I went with two other foreign teachers who have recently been hired by my agent, and when we walked in, I was excited to see that the MEP homeroom teachers and their assistants had claimed a table with some extra seats. I work with those women every day, but it's not like we ever really get the chance to socialize, so it was really nice to see them out of the classroom, even if we can't understand each other very well.

The party started out with--what else--karaoke, the number one Thai leisure activity. The director of the school even went up and sang a song. The singing progressed into dancing, and the MEP 2 assistant took it upon herself to insist I go up and dance. I protested immensely, and argued that I would only go if she did, but somehow I was unfairly pulled from my seat by another Thai teacher and dragged to the dance floor. Feeling extremely inept and extremely in the spotlight, I watched the teacher's feet and slowly bumbled through the five-step dance and managed to get pretty okay at it before the first course of dinner appeared. Relieved, I ran back to my seat before anyone else could grab me and pull me back up there, and complained jokingly to the MEP teachers as they applauded my efforts. But right after the second course entered our stomachs, I was pulled kicking and screaming onto the dance floor again, this time with my foreign teacher friends, to learn a dance EVERYONE seemed to know--I don't know what it was called, but based on how many times the song launched into a chorus of "Chai-ya!" I'd guess that's the name of the song. This dance involved moving in a circle and doing some twisty things with your hands where your thumb and index fingers had to come together, then rotate out to the side and open up to the sky. Sometimes there was back and forth movement. It was very complicated and I felt and probably looked like a total idiot, but no one seemed to care, and me and my friends were laughing pretty hard and thoroughly enjoying ourselves. Can't say it felt like any other Christmas party I've been to, but can't say I'd trade it for any I've been to in the past!

The three of us foreign teachers excused ourselves after about an hour and a half--after about 5 courses, a raffle, and a skit and dance performed by some of the younger teachers that everyone found hilarious except us foreigners--and we headed over to one of our fellow teacher's house to experience an authentic Filipino Christmas. The multitude of cultures I experienced in this 48-hour period were pretty extensive, but I can assure you that none were lacking in the department of delicious food. We were encouraged to eat as much as possible, so we did (we'd been careful not to eat too much at the staff party), and by the end of the night, it really did feel like every other Christmas of my past based on how satisfied and simultaneously uncomfortable I felt from how much I'd eaten.

Well, that's probably the most interesting Christmas story I'll ever tell, but I dare say it's a damn good one. I'm going to go sleep now :)

MEP 1 showing off for me.

Everyone's best Santa impression.

Some of my MEP 2 girls.

MEP 1 prepares for their performance.

Santa Nine 1 and Santa Bill hand out presents to "all the good children" (I know which of you actually deserve said presents...)

My Christmas snack, provided by the English department.

Me and my MEP coworkers! Love these ladies :)

Elephants!

Riding out elephant through a river!!!

Bathing our elephants in the river!!!

 Our guide wrote our names in Thai on our arms in blue marker. Combined with the outfits, it made us look kind of like prisoners, but it was still somehow cool.

 Sliding off and into the river.

 Feeding the elephants bananas.

Kirsten and I and our elephant.

 Yeah, Kirsten is standing on an elephant--no big deal--and I'm just having a Titanic moment....

Practicing some directions in Thai.

Kate, Kirsten, and I with our baskets of bananas!

Yup, this is the prettiest picture of me EVER.

The gorgeous elephant training camp.

Temples in Chiang Mai

 Okay, I know, these last two pictures aren't temples. They're some of the dishes I made in my cooking class! Seafood coconut soup, spring rolls, and Chiang Mai noodles! So tasty!