thailand 09.

2009-09-03T18:46:00.000+07:00

Week 9, Do a Rhyme, Its Test Time, I go to the hospital... time

2009-08-02T22:29:00.005+07:00

The week started off stressful, and it ended stressful. But my faithful followers (mom,dad) already know that from the previous post. Ryan was sick so I had 8 classes to teach. It was review slash test week. I cant believe i just typed "slash" instead of just putting "/". For the kids who show up to class, the last week of the month is test week. For the other 75%... they take it the next week, maybe the week after that. Depends on what kind of mood I'm in and if i like the kid. If the students a nice kid and tries a bit and isnt disruptive, ill let them retake it. But if the kid's a total rabble-rouser (and i mean it in the meanest of senses) they cant take it.

I dont know what school system says "yea sure you can make the test up within the next 2 weeks if you want". Theres not much discipline there. Its weird to think that they enforce tucking your shirt in and wearing the proper shoes to school but not much with coming to test days. You better tuck that shirt in or else youll get a whack of the bamboo stick or a swift knee to the stomach. Oh you come to 30% of class and dont come to the test... take it at your leisure. I dont care if you were smoking in the bathroom in lieu of trying to figure out how to spell sneakers...even if youre writing sneakers next to the picture of a hat.

I even switched up the friendly "horeshoe" desk set up in the room. Supposedly thats the most effective set up for teaching. Its also pretty effective for cheating because the desks are so close to eachother. So i spaced them out, separated the bad kids (if they showed up) and weaved in and out of the desks.

Teaching is stressful and all but you know what makes it a bit fun only because I'm a loser. Pretending I teach at Hogwarts. No I'm not yelling "Lumos" when i turn the lights on in class or prettending im playing Quidditch on my Firebolt whilst sweeping the mess at the end of the day.

For the tests I like to put on a Professor Snape demeanor; storm into the room barking out rules magically slamming the shutters over the windows. I'd also have the ability to change the student's page from across the room which would be most helpful. Students would fear me. I can make them do the exercises on the board too with a simple "Imperio" giving me control over the student.

For the classes I like, I try to be friendly like a Dumbledore. He lets good students such as Harry get away with anything. The kids who joke around in class lighten the mood and if silence them itd only be bad for my image and the class. So they can joke around a bit, answer their phone if necessary, fly the flying car into the whomping willow, drink butter beer, and venture up to the 3rd floor corridor.

This blog entry is totally weird. Maybe its because of all the pills i am. About 4 types to be exact. I'm hopped up on the C (Cipro), and the R (Ropermide), and the Scales (Librax), and these pink ones that dont have a name. (Get it... Libra, astrology, the scales, nevermind). So my stomach hasnt been feeling too good for the past few days and it turns out that I got what Ryan had before. But as far as hospital bills go, mine wasnt what Ryan got before. I went to the same place (Mission Hospital), but seeing that it was packed wall to wall with masked asians (not ninjas in this sense) I decided to go somewhere else. I went to Bangkok Hospital in Phuket today (Sunday). Which is like saying the California hospital in Rhode Island. Anyway the place was gorgeous. It was like the taj mahals of hospitals. If Bangkok Hospital was the taj mahal, Mission Hosiptal was a blind surgeon who bought a PhD certificate off of Koh Sanh road (which is possible i believe). I might trust this hospital over the budget one. The budget one might tell me i have cholera and dysentary and that they need to remove my appendix.

I got 5 medication things and a whopping bill that my insurance didnt cover because of what i understood as "gnome on we foreign paintin's". (only for in patients)

"....I didnt catch that. So I do have to pay the 2,800 baht?"

"Yes yes, pay pay"

"F#@k f#@k, sh*t sh*t"

Dont worry, they dont understand swear words, although my students have a better understanding of swear words than the concept of they and we.

My weekend and Monday drug testing hijinx

2009-07-27T21:54:00.004+07:00

8 weeks down, 8 to go. we just passed the halfway point. We celebrated a bit on friday via going to the Timberhut. Its a two story bar with some locals and westerners. DJ until midnight, live cover band until...whenever. Some random thai guys we sat next to were quite friendly so they gave us some johnnie walker. they even gave us a ride home... the one who wasnt drinking the johnnie walker. This is not how you get kidnapped, this is how you get a free ride home.

We saw Johnny Depp in Public Enemies on Saturday. A few thoughts:

1. It was long; 2.5 hrs long

2. It was shot weird. Intense HD, almost too realistic for a film about 1934. Plus the camera was shaky.
3. I want to rob banks now.

4. Johnny Depp is a good actor.

5. Christian Bale is a horrible actor.

Sunday, Jill and i explored Kata beach. We didnt go to the beach but we did go in some backroom where a lady was selling DVD's. I got 4 of them for about $7. I bought Burn After Reading, Bruno, the new Harry Potter, and finally...The Beach. After going to where it was filmed twice and finishing the book on the boat over there, I finally found a copy of it that works. Previous attempts have been unsuccessful. One illegal DVD didnt play and made my computer sound funny. One legal copy from iTunes was just a gray screen with no audio. So i finally got a working copy and it wasnt that great. The scenery was good, the story wasnt exactly the same as the book (which is always the case (so im told, i dont read books)), and the screenplay kinda sucked.

Now im not a professional movie critic. Nor am I the movie goer that thinks Transformers 2 deserves 15 oscars because of explosions and Megan Fox. I just thought Public Enemies and The Beach couldve been better.

Anyway back to why I'm really in Thailand. The teaching. Theres always a chance of an eventful day. Today was pretty eventful in my book.

Ryan was sick yesterday and couldnt come into school today. so i covered for him. That means i got no lunch and had extra kids in my classes. I gave two tests which most people tried to cheat on, I tried my best to limit it. There was what we believe to have been drug testing. The director of the school tried to explain to us what it was. But through his broken english and most hindering, his swine flu mask, we didnt really understand what was happening. He said check body....(incoherent words)....heroin. So sure, lets assume it was a drug test. They were testing the younger kids though; 15,16,17 years old. Im sure the older kids in my classes that have marijuana leaves on their bags and bracelets wouldnt pass the test. Well they would pass the test meaning its bad... because failing it would mean you're clean. Ah, if only those kids in my classes would pass my tests.

I had strawberry yoghurt covered cracker sticks for lunch when i spotted 4 girls creeping on the balcony outside my window. They laughed and i just neverminded them but then i saw them in the next room trying to evade someone. They tried to explain to us that they didnt want to be somewhere and what makes sense is that they didnt want to be drug tested. This is just us assuming again. We tried to take a picture, not for evidence, just because it was funny. Then they ran off and we didnt hear of them again.

Sixth period i played a reading game. Yknow, read the acticle answer the question right for your team, get a point. I pinned my class against Ryan's class thinking mine would be OK, at least theyd try. The score was 14-7.5. 1.5 of my class' points were pity points from the other team. Half of the 30 kids in the room werent paying attention, but half of those were mine, half of those were Ryan's, so it was fair.

Seventh period, only 19 kids come from a 40 kid double class. I just have them do a review. These are mine and Ryan's worst classes. The good kids showed up leaving me to assume once again that the trouble makers and rabble-rousers all got caught with meth, coke, heroin, and PCP and couldnt come to class. A big assumption but at least they werent in class.

Eight period, no one shows up. Maybe they're getting drug tested. Jill and I play pictionary on the whiteboard.

Good thing we didnt get tested, we wouldve been positive for Teaching Enhancing Drugs. (insert laughter here). TEDs is what theyre called on the streets.

Links to my photo albums

2009-07-21T21:47:00.002+07:00

So heres a list of my photo albums from facebook. its a lot easier than posting pictures on the blog. plus ive gotten lazy and writing takes too much time. i focus more on the visual things. so no books or writing for me. just pictures and videos. just click the link (the blue underlined text). well heres a bunch of albums, this should keep you busy for awhile m&d.

5/10

5/16

5/16

5/17

5/29

5/30

Elephants and Sunsets

5/26

Small album of the Night Market

5/?

Trips to Kata Beach

5/21

Teaching Practice - Govt School

5/24

Teaching Practice - Phuket Technology College

6/21

Kamala Beach and Sea Gypsy Village

6/22

7/9

7/9

7/9

7/19

Second Trip to Koh Phi Phi

Random Observations about Thailand

2009-06-08T23:26:00.000+07:00

10/06/09

Day 7 on the job. My first week done and I feel as though im getting into a rhythm. The first few days were stressful though, I felt like I needed to make an impression and really plan the lessons. I did make an impression and I did plan those lessons to a T. But I learned that the lessons you plan don’t go… as planned. You need to think on your feet and have a back up plan. Your exercise might go horribly wrong because they don’t understand it or they just don’t want to do it.

My “getting to know you exercise” of 2 Truths 1 Lie doenst always go over so well. So I model the exercise in front of the class, explain what truths are, and what lies are. “My name is Paul…TRUTH”. “My name is John…is my name John? No… that is a LIE”. They go “Ok, Ok”. I do an example of my 2 truths 1 lie on the board and I think itll be easy from there. I have kids come up and write theirs on the board. First person writes theirs. OK, I am a student, I play football, and I like banana. “Which one is the lie class?”. The three kids participating raise their hands for different ones. I tally them up and then ask the student, “so which one is the lie”. He looks confused so I point to each one asking, “is this the lie.. is this the lie”. He goes “No… all truth”. Alright, note to self, student on right hand of class follows directions well. My directions probalby werent good enough, teacher remodels exercise…. Some kids had some elaborate lies. One kid wrote “I play football for mansheter u”. So either this kid plays soccer for Manchester United or hes lying. I think the whole class saw through that one. The best lie though, hands down was this one kid in my Hotel class. He wrote “Today, I no come to school”. On closer consideration, I realise that I already wrote about this in a previous post. And on further consideration, from now on Ill use the British spelling of words like realise and organise because I am no good at typing the “Z” key. Plus they write in British spelling anyway over here. But behaviour and favourite can be nixed.

So I’ll take the time now to touch upon some subjects from school. Upon writing that I realise the subjects would be about the students and I wouldn’t want to touch upon the students; that’s wrong and it violates the Teacher-Student relationship. But awkwardness aside, here it goes.

Homosexuality

It seems to be quite the norm here. Its not that it is just accepted, it seems to be cool. Kinda like a fad thatd be weird to look back on. Like in elementary school, “Hey Paul, remember when Gameboy and Tamagachis were cool”. But itd be weird to say “Hey, remember in high school you were gay?”. Everyone knows that Thailand is famous for their lady-boys. I don’t ask for their life stories or the details of their weekend. Although I do have writing exercises about their weekends, but they keep it PG. Now I’m not knocking being gay or anything, they can do whatever they like, but it is just very different to how it is in the states. They are very open about it. They do their mascara and make up in class and they have all the standard mannerisms. The boys usually sit together and the gays sit with the girls.

Not only do the gays have purses, every guy in Phuket Technology has one. Now they are not the standard purses you might see in the states but more like bags. Theyre square cloth bags with a small shoulder strap that is worn high up. Man bags is what I call them, or European Carry Alls. “Its not a purse, its European”. Why I know seinfeld references and don’t watch seinfeld is beyond me.

The weirdest part about them is that they all flirt with me. Ok, awkward 1. im your teacher, 2. inappropriate, 3. it’s the middle of class. They call me pretty and always go out of their way to say hi to me around school grounds. I dropped my white board marker once and I bent over to pick it up, I think one of them had a field day with that. Now if only I got that much from the female persuasion in the states and who werent in my class.

Thai Nicknames

So naturally I cant pronounce anything in Thai right and do not want to butcher as personal as a name. I feel bad for taking roll call at the beginning of class. I always empathise with the teachers, who on the first day of class, took attendance and said “Im really sorry if I mispronounce anyones name”. Luckily they have nicknames, right? Wrong. I don’t know if they made these up at their previous english class or if they just wrote some objects in a hat and picked one out. Or maybe they took a bunch of letters and put them together. I don’t know the method to their madness, all I know is that they all get a good laugh as I mess up at least 3 a class. I have to write notes to myself on the attendance list.

So looking through my class list. Okay, some normal ones, Sara, Lily, Jay, Mario, Pepe, Don. Fair enough, some legit English names, some with an Italian or Spanish flair but that’s fine. Moving to more questionable names we get: Bell, Yam, Mad, Nun, Touch, Art, Koy, Bum, Paint, Cat, Boot, Day, Gun, See, Breez, Marina, Boat, (maybe boat and marina should date) and Ben. Oh you think Ben’s a normal name, Ben’s a girl, so… not that normal. I got about 150 students, I got more names don’t you worry. Questionable names level 3: Kaow, Af, Beuk, Oh, Gif, Mook, Da, Yeen, Opor, Pu, Nood, Ju, Nop, Nu. By the way Nu is a spelled with an umlaut over the U. Yknow, the two dots used in the German language.

And the best nicknames in my classes are Aoun (pronounced more like Ow-in), Aod (pronounced more like odd which I mess up everytime and the students love it so I just yell OWD all the time which makes them laugh). Ple (pronounced Pun… yea that’s beyond me), Pupay (pronounced poopay, a little toilet humor), Nompeung (that’s Nompeung’s nickname), Muvy (pronounced Moi). My all time winner is Kwan. That’s how you pronounce it, I cant even spell it in MS Word. It is spelled on my sheet “K-M-(backwards N)-Y”. I need to download the Russian characters for Word if I want to spell this name correctly.

I have a lot of students, its hard keeping track of all of them and its even harder when I cant remember or pronounce them. Some odd ones stick out and I remember their faces. The ones that participate and say hi to me I remember too. I try but its hard with so many kids.

Thai Laziness

Thais are lazy. I don’t know if were just on island time because im on Phuket or its this way nationwide. Theyre just standardly lazy, not just the kids but the adults. The only thing theyre not lazy about is hassling you for a taxi or their low priced product for me. The school system doesn’t give homework because they know they students are too lazy to do it and if one person does it they all copy it. Well maybe the reason kids in America are the slightest bit disciplined is because were made to do homework and theres consequences if we don’t do it. The teachers cant say, “eh, theyre not gonna do it anyway so why give it”. They’re never gonna learn that way. I think the teachers are just lazy, they don’t want to grade anything.

One Thai lady was telling a story about how someone had to go to the hospital. The injured person sent a person to call the ambulance but instead left to go gossip about something. I don’t know what the injury was but I could imagine. “No its OK. Wait you said who got voted enough American Idol? No, go on with your conversation, I’m only imploding”. A sense of urgency wouldn’t kill you, but lack of it might kill someone else.

Don’t get me wrong, the kids are disciplined but just in a different way. Today the 10th, was a discipline-ful day. My coordinator tells me I wont have 7th period because of the police coming to give an assembly. Apparently a teacher arrested a student (can I do that?) for smoking in his class room. Now the kids smoke in the bathroom, im sure they all know that, but I guess smoking in the room is different. After the trek to my first period class, I look down to the basketball court. I see students in formation getting yelled at. Is it like back in elementary school when you lined up to go in after recess and the best behaved line got to go in first? Well no one wants to leave recess, no one wants to leave class so I can see why that would happen.

But the consequences for them are much more severe, consequences that would bring a law suit and CNN coverage for months. They hit kids with canes or bamboo sticks. There was a line outside my office for people to get hit in the ass with the bamboo. One by one they would stand in front of their classmates and stand perpendicular to the teacher, he’d hit them and they’d go off to class. I also saw at multiple times during the day kids doing jumping jacks in the sun while the teacher sat in the shade twirling a bamboo stick. Its hot out, I have to walk up about 5 floors to get to my room and I think that’s torture enough.

A bunch come in late to my first period class, I realise that most of them were being disciplined so I don’t mark them late; I don’t want to add insult to injury. Unless it becomes a problem then Ill mark them late. The kids do need to be whipped into shape so theyre not so lazy, but not litterally whipped.

My Diet

So I havent lost weight like the rest of my friends here but theres a reason for that. A simple equation does the trick. Lack of regulated food + busy days + too hot to run + everything has sugar in it = a stable weight. So I guess Id be losing weight if I just had the chance to run. Im just so tired after work that I usually nap.

But the Thai food here is weird. Its like you love Panda Express at home and say “wow I bet the Chinese food in China is a million times better”. Its not the same here, at least not in my mind. There are some good places, but no places that really just blow my mind. The foods good, but it is literally the same everywhere you go. I like the street food because its cheap and I feel like Im on a Travel Channel show. So envision me as an Andrew Zimmern or Anthony Bourdain without the large gut or nicotine habit. If you havent watched their shows I highly recommend to. The street food seems that it would be purely Thai and not like the made up restaurant stuff. But the food is all the same, youd think that everyone worked for a chain. Theres chicken on a stick, fried chicken with the same spices at every stand, some sort of meat balls on a skewer, meat rolls, and sometimes theres noodles. Seriously every “meat balls on a skewer” are the same meat balls. They have the same products, same deep fryer, same display case. Im starting to think theres a Food Stand Start-Up kit at the Thai Walmart down the street. The chicken on a stick is very standard and they even have the same hot sauce at every one. Its that bright red sauce you see if you order spare ribs at a chinese restaurant back home.

The street food is all on stands that are attached to their motorbikes. I think anyone can start up their own food business with the right materials and a little engineering to attach it to their motorbike. So if anyone has the will to start one, they can. That means no license is necessary. The FDA would have a heart attack if they came here. Last week I saw a rat run out from the sewer and to the area where all the street food was. (I ate at the same place this week). No regulation. I shouldve known, theres no real laws in Thailand. This is the land of the free, unless youre getting hit by a cane. I stay away from the fried chicken unless it comes from KFC because the oils not regulated. I heard they use the same oil day after day without cleaning it. Im pretty sure that’s the opposite of healthy. We can save you the effort of consuming the chicken by directly injecting the dirty oil into your blood. I just ordered rice from one of these places and they topped it with fried chicken scrapings. To health!

The standard chicken on a stick with red sauce

“The food in Thailand’s really spicy”. I heard that advice multiple times before I left for here. There was a tie with that quote and “watch out, some of the girls there are really dudes”. So two valuable tips that I already knew. Two tips that you could probably write a Thai travel book around. But anyway the food is spicy. They make it pretty bland for us westerners because they know were not used to it. But there is some spicy stuff out there, the school food is all so spicy.

Octopus on a stick

So its either really spicy or really sweet. Today I had pad thai and they have some fixings on the side like peanuts and chili flakes and sugar. Sugar? On noodles? Yea, I think its their equivalent to how we use ketchup. But everyone gets sugar on their stuff. Everything’s so sweet here or so spicy. I think that Thai people have diminished taste buds thanks to evolution. They need extreme tastes to get some sort of flavor. I hope I get used to the spicy foods and go home eating whole chilis. I don’t want to brag, but back home I could eat a Volcano Taco from Taco Bell no problem.

First Day of School

2009-06-02T22:26:00.009+07:00

It spells "P-Tech"

2/6/09

You can only wear pink on Tuesdays. And you can only wear your hair in a pony tail one day a week… it looks like you choose today. If you break any of these rules, you cant sit with us” – Mean Girls

That quote summed up the clothing style on my real first day of teaching. So not really the pony tail part but you can only wear a pink polo on Tuesdays. And if you wear it another day, you have to change. The pink polo needs to be a King’s polo; a polo with the King’s emblem on the chest of it. I knew the rule ahead of time, but I didn’t know that EVERYONE of the P-tech staff wore one on Tuesdays. Sidenote: Mean Girls is a funny movie, you should pick it up at your nearest Netflix retailer or wherever fine movies are sold.

The snooze button got some more attention on from me this morning. It was set for 6:38am and I slept until about 6:55. Random times I know. I had to wake up early the morning before and I ran and I just wanted to sleep, teaching English can wait. Eventually Jill knocks on my door all dressed up and im still in my shorts. Hold on. I change in the flashiest of flashes and meet them at our favorite meal place…. 7-11. I just get a green tea.

It’s exactly a mile to the school, I mapped it out on mapmyrun.com. The suns not so intense but when we get to the school, Ryan looks like Ian did yesterday. His blue shirt has now become dark blue and his hair was dripping. We sign in and sit back down in our AC office. Last minute check to see if I have everything. Book, CD, whiteboard marker, student list. Good, now to conquer the steps to my classroom.

I have to climb those steps everyday to the 2nd to top floor.

723, that’s where all the learning and fun takes from now on.

Maybe 721, 722, and 724 because those are Jill’s, Ian’s, and Ryan’s rooms respectively. First period, 8:30 to 9:20. 50 minutes of teaching? Here come the kids, game face Paul, game face. Gotta be the serious teacher now. The class is DV Tour 101-1. That’s diploma level tourism 101 group 1. The diploma level kids are in black trousers or skirts with white tops. The certificate level have blue ties or bows, and blue skirts. The blue is not the standard Royal blue, but a lighter hue. It would match my newly purchased sheets but since you cant see them, think of a shade in between navy blue and baby blue. Got the visual? Ok. These kids look more like business professionals and are older than the kids last week I taught.

I start off by introducing myself. “Hi, im teacher Paul, good morning class”. A few good mornings are said in return to mine. Ill just chalk the lack of response to the fact that im the new guy and its early. I tell them to pass around the attendence sheet and write their nicknames down on it. It circles the class and comes back to me with names like Ali, Gif, Nood, Pai, Manow and Ben. Ali doesn’t sound weird, but it’s a guy; its pronounced like the boxer. Ben doesn’t sound odd but its for a girl. I write a few lines with blanks on the board so we can do some introductions. But first I have to explain what an introduction is. I have each person come up to the front of the room and introduce themselves to me and the class.

The format is: “Hi my name is _____”

“I am from_______”

“I like to _______”

“After graduation, I would like to ________”

Big mistake throwing the word graduation in there. I made them repeat it a bunch of tiems and explained it as best I could. I said that “after graduation….like after college, after you are done with college”. I was introduced to a lot of students that had big dreams after college. They said “after grashuaton, I would like sleep”, “after gradua…., I study”, “after graduashoon I want to go home”. Obviously they misunderstood what graduation was, I didn’t mean the time after 3:30pm Monday through Friday. T remodels for Ss. (that’s a little shorthand from my training course) Teacher remodels for students if necessary. So like an old house or the old lecture halls at UConn, some remodeling was definitely needed. They eventually understood and the rest of the intros went smoother. The rest of my lesson was all about introductions, how are you, im good, nice to meet you, nice to meet you too. It was the first page of the lesson I was supposed to teach, they apparently are good at that but not much else.

The rest of my lessons go pretty much the same; getting to know you game and then an introduction lesson. One of the getting to know you games was “2 truths and a lie”. That’s where you write just that, and the rest of the class has to guess which is the lie. Nice little way to learn about your students. But I had to explain truths, and lies, and give many examples. Some kids got the concept better than others. I applaud some of their lies though. One kid said he played for Manchester United. But my favorite lie was “today, I no come to school”. A real toughie, unless the lack of sleep is playing tricks on my brain and youre not really writing that on the board.

Ryan and I combine classes later that day because I have 5 kids in mine and 4 in his. Ok 9 between 2 teachers. Time to do introductions and 2 truths and a lie. As the class which was so cozy and manageable goes on, more kids start pouring in. They were all late by at least 15min. They came in waves. You know how I hate waves… and by 30min into the class, there are about 35 kids. Trying to play 2 truths and a lie was hard with them, so many repeated instructions. The class was definitely too big.

Next class was Business Communication. These kids were wearing that shade of blue, theyre the younger kids. The younger kids, the Certificate level get the books for free. The Diploma level kids have to buy the books. So naturally no one from the DV has the book. I don’t get the system, I feel like the smarter, older kids should be given the books. Anyway, I just play “introduce your friend” with the young kids and then move into some quick listening work. Class is over before I know it.

Alright, 6th period, my last class of the day, its another DV class. These older kids seem way more lazy now that I just met with the younger kids. These kids ( I call them kids but theyre anywhere from 18-24, theyre still my kids) just don’t seem like they care. It’s the first day so I let anything slide. I play a quick reading game with them. I split them into teams and ask them questions based on some photocopies I gave them. They seem to be more attentive now and less lazy. All they needed was a game to wake them up. The game was in a deadlock at 4 points each, I had to come up with a tough tie breaker. One of the companies from the reading was about Oregon. So I made sure that they knew the cardinal directions; north, south, north-east, etc. and went from there. “Ok who can tell me where Oregon is in the US”. A lot of “huhs?” are heard and no one is scrambling looking for answers now. They just guess blindly. Team 3 guesses NW first off but changes it. The others guess N and S. I tell them to try again. I get E, W, and NW. Team 3 guessed NW again and they won. The group of 4 girls just screamed. Calm down, you just won a meaningless game in my English class by guessing where Oregon is on the map. You just got excited about oregon, people from oregon don’t get excited about oregon. But the class is over now and I finished on a high note.

Hard at work.

Its 1:50, alright my day ended early. ehhh, my classes ended early but I have to stay at my desk until 4 oclock. Time to get some lesson plans done. I open some books but am just so wiped from the class that I cant bring myself to write some. I just zone out for a bit and then look at the chapters in the book. Theyre not gonna have the book anyway… zone out. Well now I have to come up with something new, so im gonna…..zone out. I’ll wait until im home, nap then work when im energized.

Do you think I stuck to my plan?? No, I went home, got a red bull (which are illegal in the US because they have amphetamines here) to stay awake, got some chicken on a stick with rice, went back home, layed down, used the internet, ran with what energy I had, cooked a ramen, got a water and chocolate milk, and then started lesson planning by around 8pm. Can you tell im tired and I don’t feel like writing anymore? Its 11:09pm and im tired. Is this what the real world’s like? Waking up early, working, going home from work and working, being too tired to do anything, and then going to bed before midnight? I sure hope not, I’ll try to spice up my routine. Don’t say spice, my stomach cant handle any more.

Ok well over and out, im getting delerious so im gonna hit the hay, or hit the rock because my bed is absolutely horribly stiff. I got 6 classes to teach tomorrow, wish me luck.

My First Job... Teacher

2009-06-01T23:55:00.001+07:00

Horrible picture of me on my first day. Its 7am, give me a break.

1/6/09

Today was my first day of my first job out of college. I didn’t actually teach today but it was more of an orientation. I was shown around the school. My desk, the computer room, the library, and the canteen.

We left at 7:15am from our apartments, Phuket Place. We nix the first 7-11, its flooded with locals. The next ones just down the block,we’ll try that one. Jill and Ryan get a coffee that’s 60% sugar, 5% coffee and 35% water. “I’ll never get this again” Ryan says as he grimaces and takes a sip. Its quite common for everything to be chock full of sugar. Leave it to the Thai to make something healthy unhealthy. The fruit juices at the stores are all sugar, even their dishes have sugar in them. Theres a jar for sugar along with the chili flakes and fish sauce on the table. I get a green tea that’s also too sweet and a butter croissant. You gotta pick your battles at 7-11. Hopefully the 15min walk to school will help me walk off the crap I eat in the morning. The walk isnt too bad at 7:30; im not sweating profusely. By the time I get to the hill up to school I start to sweat. All the kids are hanging out by their scooters and along the way up to our office. The stares don’t help my attempt to stop sweating. Ian is in a worst place than I. Patches of his white shirt have become see through. He obviously didn’t wear an undershirt. First impressions are important, and I didn’t want to be known as the sweaty teacher for the rest of my time here.

I’m allowed to wear shoes in the office despite the fact some teachers around me arent wearing any. An extactic “Welcome, welcome!” is thrown at us from Belline (or Billy I think actually is now). So Billy takes us out of the air conditioned room and outside towards the basketball court/ampitheater area to watch the morning assembly. The kids are lined up youngest to oldest, right to left. The older kids are wearing black and white instead of the white and ocean blue ive been seeing most of the time. The loudspeaker rattles off some announcements that I obviously cant understand. I just make up some random standard morning announcements. “The chess club will be meeting after school promptly at 4:00pm. The cheerleaders will be having a bake sale to raise funds. If you have a red scooter, your lights are on.” I don’t know whats going on, but Billy tells me that the national anthem is up next. Two girls slowly raise the red white and blue up the mast as a girl sings the anthem into a microphone. The crowd of 1800 behind her chimes in at certain parts. No “Lets go Huskies or Yankees” interupting this anthem. The songs quite short and the two girls hoist the flag up faster to match the ending of the anthem.

Theres a quick prayer for Buddhists and Billy says we don’t have to be out for that. Plus he can see were very hot and he says we can sit in our AC office. Thank God, or thank Buddha… I don’t know but at least we’re cooler now. Ian needs a fan bad. Jill holds one up to his back to cool him off. His shirt becomes opaque once again and Billy summons us for a quick tour of the place. We walk infront of the 1800 kids again. Im trying to walk with a certain attitude about me, like “don’t mess around in my class or ill hit you”. Ok maybe I wasn’t that serious, but once again, first impressions are important. I want to be the kids’ friends but I don’t want them to step all over me. He shows us another office with some important people and where to log in and out.

My first day here Billy mentioned a computer room with wireless. Later that first day I walked by a room full of typewriters. I hope that’s not the wireless room that Billy spoke of, I thought. The school isnt that technologically advanced despite being a “tech” school. I now know that he was talking about actual computers. Up the stairs now past more kids. “Hi teacher, hi teacher”. Keep it serious, wave, look like you mean business. Now were in the computer room. 15 minutes here to do some errands. No new messages in Gmail, lets see whats happening in the world of ESPN. Cavs lost, fuck that, no Kobe LeBron in the championship. The Red Wings are beating the Penguins in game 2. I have no TV, but hopefully I can get stream some of the games through my computer. Computer time is over. On the way out I see a sign that says “The success in business lies in English”. Therefore the success of these kids is in my hands. That’s a big responsibility. A big responsibility I can talk about in job interviews and on my resume.

Next stop is the library that takes up about as much room as my apartment. The books are in thai and theres a few more computers there. Then we walk down the steep staircase that leads to the canteen. I am choosing to avoid these stairs at all cost. Imagine if you fell down the stairs in front of all those kids. You would get laughed out of the school; lose some face. We need some water, 5 baht for the budget brand, 8 for the branded one. Lets drink these in our AC office. There billy shows us our schedules, or “timetables” as he calls them. Mine is quite full. Theres 8 periods a day. I have a few breaks, key word A FEW. I have 29 out of the possible 40. So 11 breaks, 7 classes on Friday. That’s my Friday! I havent had Friday classes since sophmore year of college. Last semester senior year I only had classes on Tuesday and Thursday. What a change. My professors didn’t even have this many classes. Whatever, ill just have to do this.

“these are not final, I will give you the final ones tomorrow” billy says about our timetables. Im wondering how much my timetable will shift now. Will I get more classes, less classes? Will my Fridays become 8 periods a day? I’ll wait and see for tomorrow. The timetable lists my books as well. 6 books for 6 different classes. Ian and Jill only need 3 books. How is my luck just so damn good? Ryan has the same number I believe too. Much of my time is spent color coding my schedule, asking questions, and trying to understand what I have to do for tomorrow. Oh I have 5 classes tomorrow using 4 books? And I have one class that is 100min long? Fine, yea sure. Our day ends early but I’m still overwhelmed and sweaty. We leave at 11:00 but from then on, ill be working until 4pm.

I just had a look at my book for the tourism class tomorrow. It’s called “English Know How”. The first lesson is all about introducing yourself and the verb “to be”. Easy stuff, for me. I bet its hard for them. English is such a messed up language with little consistency making it hard to memorize. But I’ll do my best to help these kids tomorrow. I need to buy a mattress pad because despite the bullshit claim of “the most healthy mattress technology from Thailand”, its hard as a rock. If this job wont be the death of me, the bed surely will. I also need a sheet because my kit I bought came without a sheet. Thank god it included 4 pillow cases though. What a weird country.

To Our New Apartment

2009-05-30T21:47:00.001+07:00

Bye Bye All Seasons....

30/5/09

Trainings over. Our quasi-vacation on the southern tip of Phuket is done. Several people are in Bangkok, Tim is in Lampang, James and Pippa are in Tak, Kates on a beach, and Nicole is in some small isolated village by herself. The four nutmeggers (people from CT), were in Phuket town. As for me, im in a dorm room next to Jills, 2 down from Ryan and Ian, drinking a coke and god knows what kind of whisky that was 125 baht… roughly $5 for a litre. Great deal if you wanna taste a unidentifiable alcohol with a label that has no english words on it. It’s yellow label whisky. No, not Johnny Walker yellow label (there is no such thing as far as I know), its mystery brand that has a yellow label on it, and its cheap. Its 7:40pm. We could be going out tonight, but nah, we gotta wake up in the morning. Well actually we have a curfew of 9pm for some reason, and we’re choosing to have some drinks and watch some movies in one of our rooms. Nothing fancy going on, we just have the 4 of us now opposed to the 24 others. But first lets back up to the beginning of the day.

My dorm room

Our school arranged for a car to pick us up. At least that’s what Belline said. A tuk tuk rolls up for us at noon oclock. No special treatment here for his new english teacher recruits, cmon Belline. We load up the back of the tuk tuk, half luggage, half us. We definitely brought too much stuff. Each of us brought 2 big suitcases and some personal items like a backpack or laptop bag. Good thing no one else had to ride with us, there would be no room.

“We have no idea where were going” Ryan says. The smile on his face contradicts worried undertone of the statement. I guess we’re used to having our plans up in the air. Having no idea seems to be a good trend. On the way to Kata, weirdo Bill from Chicago took many stops and we didn’t know if we’d ever make it. Even on the first day in Phuket, we took a taxi to our hotel. We were driving mile after mile through shanty town as we dubbed it. The thought of ATI being a scam breifly crossed our minds. Thankfully it wasn’t, and thankfully we got to the dorm that Belline spoke of. There were three rooms available, 2 with single beds and 1 with a double. Ryan and Ian almost selfishly took the single beds to leave 1 bed for Jill and I. After reconsideration they took the double bed. They just spent 3 weeks being roommates at the All Seasons, they can do another night. Or maybe they couldn’t. Ryan does always call Lindsay (his GF) and the fact that he just got a new cellphone that can call the states makes the matter worse for Ian.

We wanted to look for a place to live but after a call to Belline, we were persuaded otherwise. He would come the following day and take us to look at places. We decide to go to Tesco (the Walmart of Thailand) to buy some essentials. I don’t even remember what we went to buy, but I left with an umbrella and toilet paper. Yknow, the essentials. It does rain a lot and there is a serious lack of abundance of toilet paper everywhere you go. The only have that hose thing for you. Its like a b’day that they have in Europe. (I don’t know how to spell b’day).

We head back to the dorm. Theres nothing to do. No internet, no TV, no activity room. There was a ping pong table that was being used more for storage than games. Well lets explore, we’re not by the touristy area anymore. What are the odds that no one speaks English. We were on the outskirts of the city, on a road off the main one. There was really just one street that had any life to it. We walked up and down that looking for something to eat. The restaurants didn’t look like they catered to tourists and looked like they were more local. Well we’re locals now but the places still didn’t look terribly appetizing. The fact that they had tables and chairs with a person cooking constituted as a restaurant. I don’t think there were signs for the eateries either. Pick your poison, you gotta eat somewhere.

Theres a 7/11 but you cant eat dinner there, no way. (little did we know that we’d be eating there for most meals in the near future at our new place). We keep walking, doubling down back to where we already were. I think we’re getting a bit desperate. Some guy with a fanny pack comes up to us and actually spoke English. It wasn’t 100% but he did help us find a place to eat. He recommended some noodle dish and he ordered it for us. This guy was nice but whats the catch buddy. Turns out he was renting places out and seeing 4 white kids was a good business opportunity to him. I wouldn’t have pegged him as a landlord; he looked like he had been playing with the construction crew next to the restaurant by the sight of his clothes. He talked about his place and said that we should check it out after dinner. Hey, this could be a convenient situation and this guy found us.

I’m game to look at the places, I’ll keep an open mind. I wont think he’s scamming us into some shit place. Ryan’s in but Ian seems a bit skeptical of random fanny pack wearing landlords on the street. They guy comes back and takes us to two different rooms. One was right above the restaurant. I think we’d be neighbors with the proprietors of the eatery downstairs. The place doesn’t look terribly bad, how bout the next place? This place was close by, just around the corner from the restaurant, down a dirt road. There were some locals that lined the street just staring at us. The standard stray dogs did the same. We might stick out a bit, but this place doesn’t seem to welcoming.

We walked around this place for awhile hopefully finding an apartment.

This other room was alright. Had AC, bathroom, no bed though. I’m not furnishing anything. A bed’s a big investment. The guy was trying hard to sell us the place. Everytime I think of people selling to us, I think back to my days in Pete Petersons Professional Selling class. It was a useful class. It also proved that selling is more than the plaid jacket wearing used car salesman our to scam you. That class wouldve been equally educational if Pete showed us how Thai people sell to you and he told us to do the opposite. Thai people just create high pressure situations when you come into their peripheral. All too often have I walked into a store and the sales people start to follow you. I turn around and walk right out. Don’t need the people breathing down my neck trying to buy a shirt.

Back to the story, we tell him we will come back after we get money from our new job. Well we don’t get paid until July but he doesn’t know that. We’d just keep the places in mind, we have a meeting with Belline tomorrow.

Belline said he’d come by at 1:00pm to bring us to check out apartments. So he comes with a driver in a nice toyota. It looked like a higher end toyota, it was no camry (best selling car). We thought it’d just be him and no driver. Now we had to squeeze the 4 of us in the back of this sedan. Jill and I are pretty small but Ian and Beebe are pretty large. It was uncomfortable but it had to work.

The first place was a mile away. The exterior of the building was purple. The room had pink curtains that, when the sun shown through, made it look like the whole place was painted pink. So I really thought all the rooms were painted pink. The place was already low on my consideration list. Do you have internet? Two things were non-negotionable and that was internet and AC. They said they were getting internet at the end of the month but we didn’t know how reliable that was. And if it came would it even be good? The best selling point was that our school was across the road, about 20m down. That would be awesome in this heat to walk a short distance.

Ian's future room I took a pic of.

The bathroom is the shower room. The showerhead is on the wall hidden by the right doorframe.

Next place was back towards our dorm. The place needed a fingerprint scan to get in and it had cameras around. I felt pretty safe here, I was just thinking about my camera though. There were 3 rooms for 4500 and 1 for 5200 upstairs. They were furnished with a bed, armoir, and a small desk/vanity thing. It had AC but you had to pay by the hour for internet. It was still cheap compared to the $3 I paid an hour at the hotel. It’s a lot nicer than the purple palace we just came from. However it’s a mile from the school. Right now it’s a toss up between the first two. The first ones still in the running because of location.

The third place was gorgeous. Albeit about 1.5 miles from the school, it was very nice. Had a fridge, huge armoir, bed, AC, and internet came free with the place. Well free if you don’t count it under the 5,500-7,000 Baht price range. No fingerprint scan, but we would have key cards. We were all amazed at the place. If my first apartment looked like that I wouldve been happy. I initially envisioned me getting some job in NYC and living in some crap apartment right out of college. For the price of this apartment in Phuket, I might have gotten a closet in the city. This place definitely would be number one had it been closer to the school. The extra amenities might justify the high price tag.

That was all the places Belline had to show us. The purple palace, fingerprint scan place, and actual palace with a fridge. “Can we see the first two again?”. The drive obliged and it was convenient that they were all relatively close to eachother. Back to the pink rooms. I dunno, the fact that they don’t have internet really concerns us. Growing up in this day and age in a country that doesn’t speak your language, you’re going to need the internet. The third place was real nice but a little expensive, plus it was far away. The second place was juuuuuuust right. Kind of like Goldilocks and the 3 bears and how she stole porridge from them.

Ian is somewhere in there I think...

The university right across the street from our apartment... why couldnt we just teach there?

We ask if we can move in that day and it was done. We took a tuk tuk with the four of us and our 8 bags down the road to our new home. Loading the tuk tuk was like playing tetris; we had to configure the bags and persons to fit. Phuket Place, our home for the next four months. They take our passport info down and ask for cash. So who’s gonna have to pay extra for the big rooms? It’s big rooms now because one of the 4,500 rooms just got taken while we were looking at the other places. To be fair we picked out of a hat. Jill and I got stuck with the 5,200 rooms, Ian got 4,500, and Ryan got 4,800. Good thing the school will be subsidizing some of our rent, about 3,000 worth I think.

Phuket Place, our new yellow home.

I started to unpack my belongings into the armoir. No more living out of a suitcase like I did in the hotel. I put the pictures I had at school up around the mirror on my desk. Three of my friends from Australia, one from spring break, one from back home, and some other cards I realised I had in the picture envelope from Australia. I still had no sheets or pillows. But at least I had toilet paper. No I didn’t use toilet paper to fashion myself a sheet. I’m just saying… priorities. Ill get that stuff tomorrow after my first day of school. Scary thinking id start my job so soon. At least its just an orientation and the kids won’t have to put up with me just yet.

Shots from my room when i posted this... quite messy.

My work place.

ATI Training is Over

2009-05-29T21:21:00.000+07:00

29/5/09

Friday was our last day at Phuket Technology College. The last day for the other trainees, but only the 2nd of many for the 4 of us. We rushed through our lessons that day because some people needed to catch a flight or bus that day. I went last of the 6 in my group and did my lesson in about 25min. No warmer, just tried to go through the motions so my observer could score me. My lesson on “Finding an Apartment” was quite easy. Mainly because I used Bill’s lesson plan which was for the elementary school. It was way over their heads so I thought itd be right at the level for the college kids. Maybe also because Kerry’s plan was my plan from 2 days ago as well; “My House”. So hers was about living in a house, and mine was finding an apartment… so different the kids wont know what hit em.

Some classes ended early while I sat in the back of the room waiting for my turn to teach. I still felt as nervous as the first day at my school, just not as sick. I paced around going over my lesson plan while Tim in the next room over played charades. I even heard he took his shirt off to demonstrate “ironing”. Obviously he was running out of words to play charades with.

What was once a rainy day turned out to be sunny and beautiful. When it rains, it never rains for long. Although it does stay cloudy for quite sometime. Friday’s weather seemed to go pretty well. The time we were teaching, it was cool thanks to the rain. When we got out of teaching and back to the All Seasons, it was sunny, good beach weather. However returning to the All Seasons meant that people needed to pack up and leave. The first group to leave was at 2:45. They opted for the 12 hour bus ride from Phuket Town to Bangkok. The program most kids were with needed them to be at their office Bangkok at 9am Saturday morning. Damn you media kids, making everyone leave so early. 12 hours on a bus? That’s not my idea of fun. Take the $50 plane ride there and forego the extra time. They left at 4:00pm from phuket town, they mustve arrived atround 4am. Knowing thailand time, they arrived closer to 6am.

The four of us filled up a truck like this with our luggage and selves, these kids packed a whole lot smarter.

There were about 15 kids in taking the bus to bangkok. We all met in the lobby to say our goodbyes. Had a group picture with whoever showed up and promised we’d keep in touch. Cya jen, bye katie, be good stu. Some last minute pictures of everyone leaving and a quick video of the tuk-tuk driving away were in order as I tried to capture the moment.

Alright then, time for the beach before the next batch of kids go. I shouldn’t call them all kids but I do. The fact is that theyre all older than I am. The only younger person is jill who was born on Dec 29, 1987. John and laurie are taking a later bus. The roommates tim and ian and the limey couple adam and rachel are taking the fast route, air asia. Kate and Nicole, originally going to the same school, get into the airport van just to go separate ways later. Nicole is going off to a distant village by herself. She originally was supposed to go with a friend from home, then with Kate. Now she is going to a small part of thailand by herself while Kate goes off to a school by the beach. She gets a little emotional as she leaves. I want to say goodbye but give her some space to avoid the drama. I say goodbye to John “Woodie” Woodward thinking that he’s on the same van out of here. He says “no, im leaving 15 minutes later”. I revoke my goodbye and save it for later. John eventually says “its been real, its been fun. But it hasn’t been real fun”. Bit of a staged line that I might have to disagree with. I know he had fun during training. No further comments though.

Stole this from Jen's photos. We're still missing about 4 key people in this photo, the British couple, and Ian and Ryan.

And then there were 8. Or 10 if you count Noah and his wife Nicole. The nutmeggers, the californians, and the south africans. We rent scooters and plan out an afternoon. Katie wants to go feed the elephants and go to sunset point. Us 4 are definitely in. 50 baht to feed the elephants pineapple, sure. How many times do you get an easy opportunity to do that? Jill and I share a scooter, Katie and Evan do the same. Ryan and Ian get their own. We head towards Kata beach taking pretty much the only way out of the Nai harn area; past the resovior, past reggae bar, left at the restaurant with the big yellow umbrella. There are some pretty steep hills and tight turns. 2 people on a scooter makes it hard for the 50cc bike to get up. Imagine me and adam doing the same thing but with 2 surfboards under my arms. It took a bit longer for us. We finally get to one of the places you can ride elephants. Katie buys 2 baskets of pineapple. It seems like they know her there already. “Yea she wants to go everyday” Evan says to me as Katie is all smiles feeding one of her favorite elephants.

Katie with her favorite elephant, and then the 3 other kids in my teaching crew.

I got some good shots of everyone feeding elephants and now its time to scooter up to the view point. We stop at Koran view point to watch the sun set. We’re a bit early but the sight is still amazing. We are at the highest point on the road to Kata. You can see the beaches down to the right and some islands right off the Phuket Coast. The sun sheds some modest light upon the coast through the clouds. They are starting to take on a violet hue but we wont stay there for the whole scene. We can still get to the actual sunset point before it gets dark. But first up, theres an amazing restaurant with the same view a bit further down the road. Lets grab a beer and just look at the view. Chang and Singha’s all around.

The Koran lookout point that overlooks Kata beaches. The far beach is Patong.

Now lets head to Promthep sunset point. Backtrack to Nai harn but take a left before the reservoir. We’re met by a lot of asian tourist/photo enthusiasts. The two types of people are basically the same. You can even through the asians that love doing the peace sign into the mix. Apparently it’s a pretty touristy place. Chinese, Japanese, some Indians, and a bunch of Thai people frequent the spot I guess.

Restaurant with a view

The suns almost set, but we cant see it. The famous Phuket sunset place let me down, I cant even see the sun. Its hiding behind the ridge that we drove over to get to the view point. Im sure you couldve seen the sunset if you walk down lower to the shore. The trail looked treacherous and it was getting dark, not to mention we’re hungry.

The island where snorkeling Monks live... thats right.

Back at the hotel we see Ryan and Shelley. Its their last night too. I just found out that hes 29 and I think shes 22. And theyre married. They’re good people, and great teachers. You’d think that Ryan and his tall stature and loud voice would be intimidating to the little kids but hes quite friendly. His energy is illustrated by his loud voice and he sometimes sits on the floor with the kids to better get down to their level. He’s still twice as big sitting down but a less intimidating. Anywho, Ryan and his ball and chain recommend the italian place down the road. We have the scooters for 2 more hours so why not take a trip. We’ve exhausted the restaurants around here, its our last day, lets do something different. It might be the last time a lot of us get to have western food. I doubt that the village 70k outside bangkok has a pizza joint or any fast food. I had the Caprese pizza which was amazing. Katie and Evan both had a vegetable pizza.

After dinner I called up the 2 ryans, and Katie. Everyone seemed a bit tired but I convinced the remaining kids left to have one last drink. We just went to the bar in the lobby and chatted about the last 3 weeks. You’d be surprised on how long a conversation going on about Little Red (the stray dog that took a liking to us) or Danielle and her crazy antics. Ryan left early because he had to get up at 5am, and we all left shortly after.

The hotel seems quite quiet. Theres no trainees roaming the flower lined sidewalks of the All Seasons. Theres no drunk Kerry to keep me up at night. Theres no... well the lack of Kerry was probably the main reason it was quiet. No Bill in my room either. I’ll miss his frequent cigarette breaks just oustide our room. Ill miss ditching work and the sunny skies outside to watch Eastbound and Down. Now I have no roommate but my own place. Ill miss everyone, some more than others. Mainly the ones I got to know real well. Sucks how you meet some real cool kids for 3 weeks, then you just gotta say peace. Theyre the kind I can use more of home, the adventurous, open minded kind. Im sure we’ll meet up in Thailand sometime when we wanna get away from our schools and travel. I sure hope I’m right.

Teaching Practice: P-Tech Pictures

2009-05-29T20:40:00.000+07:00

29/5/09

Some pictures from Phuket Technology College, my future school. We had 2 days there and i didnt feel 100% each day. We had to wake up earlier and I didnt have breakfast and hardly any water. I felt like I was gonna pass out, luckily I didnt. That would've been a good way to make a first impression. "Hey that teacher who passed out last week is back". When we werent teaching, the director pulled the 4 of us to go over some stuff for our future jobs. I got my desk assignment in the office, thats when it really hit that I'll be teaching. The desk is alright, its got 2 drawers, the others got 3. And the top drawer of mine is broken... great.

I dont know why the pictures of me are so blue, maybe some settings were off. Cheers to James to taking the pictures for me. I know I needed some of me to send back home. Another post to follow soon. Im almost up to date on my blog postings!

-Paul

My future room. The U shaped classroom is supposedly more condusive to learning.

Lauren teaching. Her topic was "A weekend in Bali". The kids didnt know where Bali was.

Ian's topic, like the last 4 of his teaching practices, was on sports. Hes canadian, he only knows hockey.

Taking a much needed break.

My friends said i look like a waiter in this picture. The towel is my sweat rag because its so hot in the classroom.

Ryan 1 down from his future classroom.

Ian and Kerry.

Adam, Ian, and I.

The view wasnt that great when we were there, it was so cloudy and rainy.

Looking for an aparment was my topic... try explaining apartment to kids

Me acting out the dialogue before asking the kids to do it

Me asking some questions to which i received blank stares

"What is this guy talking about, plus hes shorter than a lot of us..."

Government School Teaching Pics

2009-05-25T19:19:00.000+07:00

So heres a post of just pictures from teaching at the government school in Phuket. The post before has a story about my first day here. I just wanted to share some more of the pictures. Next post up is about teaching older kids, theyre not as cute as these ones. Yes Im a little behind on the posting but im a working guy so bear with me.

-P

Teacher Kerry

Canadian Ian looking like a celebrity

just another day at the office

Kristin playing Fruit Salad. Its where every kid gets a fruit name, and when you yell that fruit they have to run to another seat, but when they run 1 chair gets pulled away. its like a glorified musical chairs with fruit names...

Teacher Ian trying to explain a game

Stu giving out high fives like its his job

It was a rainy day

The British guy would act out Big Ben.

These kids want to learn so bad, theyre not even in that class.

Bill trying to execute the double line. Its where one line says one part of the dialogue and the other line answers. Try explaining that to 10 year olds.

Emmy doing a rhythm game where the kids match the rhythm and the hand gestures.

They loved the camera.

Peace signs and Asian people

Kate, Tim, and Stu in the midst of the angry drunken mob. So maybe the 10 year olds werent angry and drunken. but they were a mob.

Settle down Stu, youre scaring the kids

Tim's so tall the kid had to jump to give him a high five.

The only known picture of me at the school, im way in the back.

First Day of Teaching Practice

2009-05-25T18:18:00.000+07:00

25/5/09
(disclaimer: the pictures arent that relative to the blog post. i just wanted to post pictures up of the school)

So Monday was my first day actually teaching. Time to pool everything I learned in the last 2 weeks into this day. Do the warmer, set the context, silent preview those cards, recap the vocab with a game. Easy enough.

The bus leaves at 8:30 sharp so if youre not on it, we leave without you. 8:30? That’s half an hour earlier than our normal class, I havent been up that early for a class since…. I dunno when. The bus leaves at 8:31; liars. Four or 5 vans pull up with 8 foreigners in each. These kids have never seen a westerner before, let alone 28 college grads in one day. There are no kids in site at first. A couple here and there playing a dumpster oddly enough. The school is in a gated area with a temple and other educational buildings. The vans park along the temple wall and we exit the vans. Sitting down in a morning assembly around the corner of said wall are about 100 little kids. Ears are turned off, totally disregarding what the principal was saying. Eyes only. Eyes only fixed upon us. They’re met with our gazes and nervous smiles. I play it cool, get some of my swearing out of the way and wave and smile. Just wave and smile and they’ll love you, you don’t need to know a lick of english.

We are at a government school. There is no air conditioning, just fans. There is no clean water, just recycled rain water and bottles that they brought esepcially for us foreigners. Some cookies and tea and coffee are provided. So on this blistering day I would like to have some hot beverages please. I eat a pack of cookies and head to my classroom. First room across the stairwell, in Amrita’s observational group. I walk in and feel ive grown 10 ft tall. The chairs go up to my waist, the desks are at my knees. There are bookbags on the backs of the chairs that are dwarfed compared to my north face ruck sack I brought to Thailand.

Jen, Ryan, Pippa, and Lauren are in my group as well. Ryan has trouble sitting in the low, low chairs. He just says “you nervous?” Well yea im nervous, I’m going first on the first day and have never taught before. I go to Amrita for some quick advice. “Should I say good morning, will they say it back?”. “Just say it twice and if they don’t say it, just move on” she says.
“Good morning class….”
“Good morning class………”
Were off to a good start. 3 english words and ive lost them already. I look back to Ryan and he is just laughing at me. I laugh a bit and turn it into a friendly smile. After all, I have to make these kids think im friendly. “My name is teacher Paul, can you say Paul?” Some audible “Pows” are filtered through the group.

Using some enthusiasm to wake them up, I ask “Do you want to play a game?!” it wasn’t met with the response I had hoped for. Little kids love games. But little Thai kids don’t know what the english word game is evidently. I just play remote control with them. That’s where I draw a big square with buttons and each button corresponds to an action they have to do. I had jump, stand, sit, and left/right arm up. I was going first, I didn’t wanna have them do anything too crazy. Plus I didn’t know if they would even participate. This helped them warm up to me a bit. They didn’t understand sit though. I said SIT and pointed to the button and they just bent their legs and squated. I tried to demonstrate SIT with bent legs, but they just took it as stand awkwardly and not sit in your chairs.

“Ok class, good, have a seat”. I realize this “have a seat” talk means nothing to them so I just gesture them to sit. I gotta just jump into the lesson. OK, repeat 4 times and have them repeat 4 times. First word up, lime. “Lime….Lime….Lime….Lime” Except it didn’t go like that. After everytime I said lime, they said lime. I tried to gesture to let me say first and then they say later, but to no avail. I just carried on the rest of the lesson like that. Soup, curry, carrot, ice cream, and durian go by, just repeating over and over. They seem to know what theyre doing, they can identify food and my sentences for them. Soup….Soup is hot. Durian…. Durian is smelly. Time for a game, because kids love them.

“Alright kids, you seem to know food very well, lets play a game!”. The game is 4 corners. It’s a recap to make sure they learned something if anything in the class. I put carrot, ice cream, soup, and lime up on the walls. The object is to run to the picture I painstakingly drew for class depending on the adjective. For example, if I say HOT, you run to soup because soup is hot. Class….”CRUNCHY!” They just stand in the center looking at me. I try and model by running to carrot when I yell crunchy and show them the other side of the paper that says carrot is crunchy. I yell “COLD” and run by myself to ice cream. I gave that up pretty fast so I just said Soup. They didn’t move. How do I reach these kids? I don’t think they like playing games. Here they have some new westerner sweating profusely, running from food picture to food picture speaking an alien tounge.

My times up for the class, and good timing. The kids werent playing my games and staring at me blankly. I’m gonna go get a water and cool off. I was sweating, but I wasn’t sweating as bad as ryan or james. I had cleverly purchased an undershirt to avoid such a situation. It looked as though ryan had a water fight in the bathroom. Splotches of sweat on his shirt, and his head was soaked. In all fairness he was more active in his lesson. He just said, “hey youre gonna judge me but im gonna make a fool of myself. Im just gonna dance in front of the class to get them moving”. I said “I wont judge but ill take pictures and video”.

Ryan gets up and just gets the class to stand up. “Ok were just gonna move around a bit”. (Insert scene of running in place and some weird dance moves) the kids love it, my camera loves it. He was very animate and loud with the kids. He was good at elliciting repetition and getting them to listen. His vocab recap was the Hokey Pokey. He invited some 3ft 7 year olds up to the front and starts singing. Him and his 6’3” stature start putting his right leg in and out. He does the hokey pokey, turns himself around and I guess its safe to say that’s what its all about. As he changed body parts, more kids came up who wanted to participate.

He was a hit, kids came up to him later in the day to give him a high five. They said the only 2 words they know which was hello and goodbye. They just repeated “hello goodbye, hello goodbye” to him.

Overall it was a good first day. I got a taste of teaching and it was quite nerve racking but fun. It was fun to see how all my peers would perform infront of 25 7 year olds. I don’t think anyone dissappointed but it was hard getting through to the kids. I think some of our lessons were just too advanced for them.

Well now its time to go home and do another lesson plan to get signed at 730. But adam and james convince me to go surfing instead. Surfing at the beach I nearly died at the day before. I felt a lot safer with experienced surfers going with me. I actually caught a few waves this time, the trick was just getting past the waves that would break on me. I was glad I went out that day and redeemed myself after the poor performance on Sunday.

Kata Beach and the Killer Waves

2009-05-24T21:37:00.000+07:00

(tim looks thrilled, emmy looks concerned)

24/5/09

So I almost died today… about 3 times. Actually about 4 times on a earlier occasion. I’ll get to that later, that first line was just to pull you in. But today 7 of us decided to go to the next beach over from us called Kata Beach. Originally some people were going to James Bond Island but their plans fell through because they missed the bus. Yea, theres actually a island called that, but I think its just for tourists. The Man with the Golden Gun was filmed there. Plus the girls missed the free 10am bus from our hotel to leave earlier for Kata. So tim and emmy missed the bus to james bond island, the girls missed the bus to kata and now we have nothing to do. But we decide now that we still want to go to Kata. So that makes 7 of us. Because missing the free bus was a dissappointment, we decide to still be frugal with our mode of transportation there.

The tuk tuks (taxis) outside of the hotel are too expensive. We didn’t know that at first, but the locals started telling us that we were getting ripped off despite our best efforts to haggle. We decide to walk away from the hotel for a bit in hopes for a cheaper tuk tuk. We stop by the reggae bar because sometimes they have taxis outside. The guys there were charging us 200 baht more. Anything over 200 baht for us would be a rip off, we’re bent on finding a driver that wont over charge us. But theres a better of chance of snow in Phuket, Thailand than that happening. We walk a bit further, left at Areu Restaurant and past a bunch of thai people watching a bunch of whites becoming more and more desperate for a ride. Our desperation was directly correlated with how red we were getting because of the lack of sunscreen.

Kerry, leading the way, decided hitchhiking would be a better idea than finding a tuk tuk. She stuck her thumb out for a pick up truck speeding behind us. No luck. Next this tall black toyota pick up rolls by and kerry puts out her thumb again. The truck doesn’t slow down for a bit then pulls into a mini mart parking lot on the left. I just remember me thinking that “no way this worked”. Then I thought, “hey, this is how horror films start and where all those stories of tourists being captured and mugged come from”. But hey, it would be an adventure and its good to trust in your fellow man.

This particular fellow man was Bill. Not my roommate bearded bill, who happened to shave, but Bill or BJ as he later referred to himself as. Now I wont tell you all about bill just yet, because I found most of the stuff about him after I got the ride from him. Five of us hop in the bed of his truck. Now its over 90 degrees out and the whole truck is black. It was like sitting in a frying pan back there, but that’s OK, it was a free ride. We go about 2k and then turn into a parking lot and go around the back of the building. Oh, heres where he holds us hostage for drug money, harvests our organs, and steals my camera. The worst one being of course… stealing my camera. But luckily were at his gym, he owns Nai Harn Gym. Makes sense, the side of his truck says Nai Harn Gym.

(i can say i went to the gym now)

Still sitting in the back, an american with a baseball cap and a yellow UCLA shirt comes up to the side of the truck. He says hey guys, want a gatorade. We just have blank stares on our faces. Now I had no idea who was driving the truck, couldve been some thai guy. But kerry signaled to come over, hopped in the cab with the guy and the rest of us jumped in the back. He said “when someone offers you something you accept”. I say sure. I really wanted a gatorade all along; its 95 degrees out, im sweating so much it looks like I just jumped in the pool and got out, and gatorade has all the electrolytes I need to get through the day. I thought it was odd that this guys giving us a free ride, now hes giving us free gatorade? Hopefully he’ll give us free memberships to his gym too. I get out and snap some pictures because it was an adventure in the making. And plus if this guy kills me, they can check my camera for evidence. We get our gatorades and hop back in the truck and head out.

It’s a scenic ride around Phuket, lots of mountains, forest/jungle, and random elephants along the side of the road. Along with elephants we have people walking on the side of the road who bill almost hit. He quickly swerved out of the way last second to avoid them and you could imagine what the back of the truck was like; taking corners is bad enough. Kate didn’t have the best of seats in the back and gets thrown around. She gets a grip with her white knuckles on the side of the truck and starts hyperventalating. It was a bit scary but hey, its an adventure. But this adventure is making believe that we shouldve shelled out the extra 50 baht a person to get on a tuk tuk. Now that I remember, the last thing he said to me was “just so you know im a bad driver, you all might die”. Nervous laughter ensues and I refocus on the adventureous part of the trip.

We pass a bar at the top of the mountain that has a great view down where you can see some beaches. I think, hey we should stop there so I can get some pictures. Too bad bill didn’t hear me up in the cab, so we stopped at some other rando bar on the side of the road. Ok, stop 2, we’ll get to Kata sometime today. Why are we at the bar? Kerry says “we just stopped to get a beer”. That sounds fine until I learned that it was Bill’s idea to stop for a beer. Good, he just needs to get drunk before he kidnaps us to the jungle and sells us on the thai sex slave market.

Jen gets out of the car with a “this is not OK” kind of look on her face. She says she thinks our driver is on something; hes acting crazy. Great, so we got this drugged out american from chicago (I now find out) that is a bad driver stopping to get a beer. That’s not the smartest of things and we could…. Oh look elephants! I havent seen any so close since the circus. No I wasn’t in the circus, just went as a little kid. Anyway I just hang around the elephants while 4 others go to the bar with good ole bill to talk crazy talk with him. I take some photos and listen to kate and jen’s discussion about how these elephants might be treated. I don’t really have a say in it so I just watch the elephants eat leaves and block the girl talk out. Kind of like how I blocked the fact that were being driven to Kata by the crazy drug dude who owns a gym.

(the phants, and bill drinking)

I go up to the bar to see how the others are doing, introduce myself to Bill, and take a seat at the bar. Bill starts telling some stories about himself and we find out that he wants to open a good burrito place in Thailand because they have no good ones here. He acts out eating a burrito and it creeps me out. Im starting to see why jen was so iffy about this guy. He says he went to a small unheard of college in illinois, then to culinary school, dropped out, then a college in colorado where he just skiied for two years, then moved out here to open a gym because opening a restaurant up is too much work. So im thinking that the UCLA shirt was a bit misleading and he wasn’t the gym business mogul I thought he was. I leave and go back to feed the elephants some bananas. Jen donated some money so we got to grab a bunch of bananas to give to the chained up elephants. I guess she felt bad for them and donated. Hopefully the thai guys who run the elephant trek station by the bar don’t pocket that for themselves.

On the road again. Got out of stop 2 alive. I get a good seat in the back so I wont fall over when he swerves at 60mph. No more stops this time, Right to kata beach. Or right to the beach right next to kata beach; kata noi. He lets us off and I think now we get bum rushed by these thai theives that bill has a deal with to bring hitchhiker tourists. But no, were at the beach and nothing really bad happened on the way. We were at the wrong beach, but we got a free ride and a good story to tell. We choose to stay at the beach anyway. So that was near death experience 1. Not really near death but I could see how I couldve died on several parts of that trip.

OK, surfing time. I wanted to do this since I got here. Kate, Katie, and Tim were all keen to do it too, so we rented 2 surfboards for 200 baht each for 1 hour. I get one and am the first one in. Great, these waves are big and I havent surfed since australia and I hear the undertoe in thailand is pretty deadly. Litteraly deadly. Steph was telling me how some girl died because of it on her volunteer trip here. So me, an unexperienced surfer going against waves bigger than I ever surfed and a undertoe that is looking for blood is the portrait im trying to paint for you here.

(couldve been the last known pictures of me)

The hardest part is getting out past the waves so that you can paddle to one and hopefully stand up and catch the wave. Yea and these waves are vicious so the hardest part just got harder. I start paddling out over some of the waves that have already crashed and some small ones. Until I meet this huge wave that I cant paddle over and is about to break over my head. I cant duck dive because 1, I don’t know how, and 2 this surfboard is really big and hard to push under the wave. So this wave is breaking right above me. Now I get tossed around in the waves back and Nai harn and theyre pretty vicious when they push you under. Now I have a huge 8.5 foot surfboard attached to my foot that I can get tossed around with. I hold my breath and accept that im just gonna get thrown in the washing machine. Im suspended for a bit while the wave picks me up and throws me back to the sea. I hit the water and the sand at the bottom, I start doing flips and flailing around. My board is being pulled with the wave back to shore and im still under the water. Im running out of air and I manage to get back up to the surface somehow. By some miracle I was still breathing, albeit hard panting but alive somehow. That was my one get of jail free card and near death experience #2.

So I say “well that’s standard and start paddling out somemore hoping I can avoid that same occurance”. Probably shouldve learned from the first wave because this wave was just as big. I cant paddle away from it to avoid it breaking on me because the current is just pulling the water towards the wave with massive force. I think of my game plan which is just stay alive like last time, and hold my breath. The same thing happens and I get slammed back into the sea, totally disoriented. So now I don’t know which way is up or down but I feel for the ground and push up from it. Im using a lot of my available oxygen for this. I head towards the surface and gasp when I think I reached air. I got a breath. Just about quarter second of one because another wave comes and puts me under. More flailing, more freaking out and thinking that “this is what I was warned about when swimming in thailand”. I am able to think, mostly just the “holy shit, im going to drown on this beach with no lifeguard around”. There certainly no lifeguards, only those thai people hassling me for crap products to buy and the 2 guys who sold me the death sentence of a surfboard. I manage to push up from the ground again and reach the surface. Near death experience #3.

#4. By this time I realise that hey, I need to get the hell out of here if I want to live. I start to head for shore, swimming for my life. Legit, swimming for my life. My surfboard is still ahead of me and I feel that it’s a big reason why ive almost died. I grab it and hopefully it wont exacerbate my drowning too much if I hold on to it during the impending doom behind me that is the next wave and near death experience #4. I say “this is it, im done for”. I hold on for dear life (not a saying anymore) and this wave just beats the crap out of me. The board slips from my hands and I just hoped that it wouldn’t land on me rendering me unconcious. Rendering me unconcious means rendering me drowning and rendering a reason why I cant be at school tomorrow. Im still under water, this time my other foot gets tangled in the surfboards cord that’s attached to my back foot. I cant kick. I can flail the leg around, but I cant kick. Enough flailing finally gets it free and I kick the ground for the surface yet again. And yet again im only allowed a quarter of a breath before im shoved under again. Wheres the surface, im running out of air, and why the fuck did I rent a surfboard on a beach with huge waves. I get through this one using my 3rd get out of jail/death free cards. I am almost back to shore, the waves are breaking behind me. I start running through the waves with my surfboard dragging in the water behind me.

I just need to get to land. I get there and collapse on the sand. I lay there for awhile while a group of my friends gather around me asking how it was. I still havent caught my breath or fully comprehended what just happened. I wish I was exaggerating but I really thought I was done for. It was awful, I rip the cord off my foot and hand it to tim; he wants a go. I lay in the sand while more waves come up and greet me on land. They just shove more sand up my shorts. Now the waves are just toying with me, adding insult to injury. I muster up the strength to look to the sea again and I see both tim and kate are past the waves breaking and theyre both getting up on some of the waves. Great, I failed at surfing. I didn’t even get to say I went surfing. I can only say I got my ass kicked by the waves with a piece of fiberglass attached to my foot.

Not letting the near death experiences get to me, I take the board out again. Mistake. Im still a bit hesitant to go out so I take it easy, I don’t get to the big waves breaking over my head but they still wash me ashore. That’s it im throwing in the towel. I am not going back out there and making the same mistake. I just hand the board off to tim and he uses it for the rest of the hour. Lets get out of here.

(tourist trap or death trap?)

We head to the real kata, just walking to keep our frugal nature intact. Eat at a nice pizza joint, and head to the beach. We only stay there for a bit but now I know which beach to go to. On entry there were beautiful girls walking from the beach, and the waves were much smaller and manageable. Plus the surfboard rate was 50 baht cheaper. Im just having no luck chuck. We just come to check it out, and hear me complain about how much better this beach is. “im sure these waves wouldn’t try to kill me”. We have work to do tomorrow, so we hop in a tuk tuk and head back home.

Nothings really changed, I didn’t get kidnapped by Bill “I own a gym and am clinically insane” McTruckdriver, I didn’t die at the hands of Poseidon, Ill try surfing again. But it was real, real scary and its safe to say drowning is one of my least favorite hobbies.

(Sidenote, I went surfing the next day and was sucessful, caught a few waves. Count it up as a win)

No more Milk, a 5 Stringed Guitar, and Sand in my Bed

2009-05-22T18:21:00.002+07:00

22/5/09

Another week has gone by. 6 days of training this week though. Who dares put training on a Saturday? But this post isnt about the training or that Saturday class. Its about the night in between that Friday and the Saturday class.

There was a restaurant named Naiharn Sunset Restaurant. It was the closest to our hotel. It went pizza place that was never open, random clothing/beach accessories shop, Naiharn Sunset. It was the first place I ate in Thailand with Bill, Jill, Ryan and Ian. There was a friendly waiter who worked there, his name was Milk. I’m sure it was something different that we farangs couldn’t pronounce but Thai people usually give themselves some weird western names.

Anyway he’d always wave and talk to us when we walked past. His English wasn’t bad, he was always trying very hard. He’d try to teach us some Thai words too. You don’t have to tip in Thailand but I tipped this guy. He was around my age, maybe a bit older. He was going back to Bangkok to study engineering that Friday before class. Electrical engineering I think. Since most of the 28 of us knew him we decided to have a little shindig as a going away party. We all came to the restaurant for dinner. I don’t think that the place has ever had over 20 people in it even in the high season. I think I had Mee Sapum which is a soup with yellow noodles in it. For a drink I brought several of the Changs that Bill and I bought at Tesco in at 24 pack. Its not uncommon to BYOB to a restaurant. Its cheaper; keeps me spending over $5 on my meals. The alcohol is sometimes more expensive than my meal.

But enough about the beer. Kerry had made a card for Milk using materials we needed for training; markers and colored pencils. It basically said goodbye and good luck, easy words that he could understand. He really appreciated it.

It was odd that we came to eat at the restaurant for a “going-away party” and he was our waiter. Its like being a caterer at your own wedding. But hey we gave him a tip. It was getting later and although Milk was working, it didn’t stop him from “cheersing” each of us with his 24oz Leo beer, and getting a Henna tattoo. There was a Henna tattoo kit at the restaurant for some reason. I’m not quite sure why. But I do know that a mismatched couple was getting a tattoo right before Milk did. There was this scrawny, pale man with an… how do I say this….oversized unsightly woman. Well I mean both were unsightly so I guess they werent that mismatched. The man looked like a rat with glasses and woman looked like she just ate 100 pounds of rats, no glasses though. Anyway Katie the art major from San Diego gives him the tattoo. Its really just black paint on your skin that doesn’t wash off right away. Milk says he has to help close and then he’d meet us at the beach for our bonfire.

We start getting the bonfire set up. Dig a ditch, get some wood from around the beach, and there ya go, you got a fire. Add some cases of big Changs that Milk brought, 20 trainees, some fire dancing and you got a party. Yes, there was some fire dancing. The kind where theres balls of fire attached to chains and you spin them around like nunchucks. Well James from South Africa was the Michealangelo of fire dancing. (if you didn’t get the reference, Michealangelo was the Ninja Turtle who used nunchucks. Its also the name of some dude that painted).

James is kinda a hippy, but not the American version of a hippy, more like a South African hippy. I don’t really know how to describe it but he’s real down to earth. He starts twirling the great balls of fire. Theres two of them. Each one follows the other in circles. James swings them on the side of him, infront of him, and above him. He even starts leaning back and twirling them so that they almost hit his face. I of course am taking pictures. The long exposure renders streaks of fire on the picture. The longer the exposure, the longer the trail of fire is. Emmy always into trying new things steps up and takes the reins. She twirls them around, looks like shes done it before, but after a bit she gets tangled up.

“Paul can”. I hear this from across the bonfire. What did my friends volunteer me for now? On one of the training activities, we had to write 3 things about ourselves, and one of mine was that I could play the guitar. I guess I could play. Seems a bit cliché to have a bonfire and an acoustic guitar. “Theres always someone there that doesn’t quite know how to play the guitar…”. I can play, but this particular guitar was out of tune, it had 5 strings and it was about 2k away. Oh, so I have to go get it with someone else now, one of Milk’s friends. So lets go on the back of a scooter, no helmets. We turn on to a dirt road and his house is on the left. Its actually very nice, it has a dip pool and it looks quite modern. I think all the waiters and Milk’s friends live in the house together. We must be tipping Milk too much. He jumps in and out with the guitar and we’re back on the road. So I am now flying down roads on a scooter in Thailand to a bonfire with my new good friends with a 5 string guitar in my hand. The only way it could be better is if the guitar had 6 strings and it was in tune. The wind is blowing in my hair. I struggle to keep my eyes open to see the sights blur by me but the wind is drying them out. I’ll take the risk of losing a contact to remember the night.

I didn’t really play the guitar much that night, it was very out of tune, and I was slightly intoxicated. One of the other Thai fellows tries tuning it and starts playing a song. Its “Zombie” by the Cranberries. Oh I remember this song, back from around middle school (elementary school for some of the oldies in my group). Did this song just reach the shores of Thailand? I know you guys are not the most current when it comes to music or movies. I think they’re still raving about the new Indiana Jones and Grease 2 over here. The guy passes the guitar and the other thai kid tries tuning it and starts playing. Oh, you know “Zombie” too? That’s fine, I just feel left out now. …I can play the Beatles?

Beach Party “No more Milk means Osteoperosis” 2009 is winding down. The fire’s dying down and people are either going to bed or being ambitious and heading to Reggae bar. I say yea I guess ill go to Reggae for a beer then go home. I gotta get up in the morning. So Jen, Emmy, Canadian Ian and I start walking the 1k to the bar. A motorbike pulls up next to us and its one of Milk’s waiter friends. His name is Bang but its pronounced Bong. He’s got a side cart and hes going to a club, its called Club Icon. Emmy hops on the back of the scooter and as for the 3 of us, we’re stuck in the sidecart made out of rebarb, wood, and a wheel that looks like it was stolen off a wheelbarrow. But when in Thailand… do as the Thais do and hitch a ride on a death trap to a club at 2 in the morning.

The bouncer who might as well just be some dude in street clothes outside a club tells me I cant bring drinks in. Alright, just let me in. It looks like a pretty legit club for in the middle of nowhere. The lightings good; lasers, strobe lights, colored lights and what not. You know what that means…. Im taking some pictures. I snap some good ones. I try to avoid the creepy old Europeans trying to hit on some Thai girls that are probably way underage but since there are no laws in Thailand, they’re let into the bar. Hey, Tims here too. I think he came with Milk and Jill. I think Jill wasn’t getting enough vitamin D or calcium from the food stands because she took a liking to Milk. I think every girl did. So Milk, if youre reading this in bangkok, you were a stud. Tim starts dancing with some random Thai girls. Ians drinking a Singha, hes not much of a Chang guy. So they’re doing that I try to take my camera out and Ian just goes no, just have a beer like a normal guy. I have no money so he buys me one, thanks bud, ill pay you back later. We just kinda sit back and sip some beers, people watch, Tim watch. Tim’s about twice these girls heights, but I guess Thai girls like tall white guys.

Its late, I just wanna go home and sleep, clubbings tiring work when I cant take my camera out. And speaking of my camera, some dude just tried to steal it. but real nonchalantly. I was posted up at a table and this 40 or so Thai guy just walks by me, kinda moves around my camera a bit like hes trying to shake it off me. Hey buddy, its strapped to my shoulder. But he persists and I just kinda look at him, I don’t freak out because I just think, “is this guy serious?”. I just stare at him and he walks away. He looks back over and im still looking at him. He averts his eyes pretty quickly. I’m not gonna do anything, my cameras still here and that guy just looks like an idiot.

Where is Bang, lets go. Im so tired, Emmy stop raving, Tim stop dancing with the locals, Ian… stop being Canadian. Ian and I almost start walking. We don’t even know where were going but we cant find a ride. Luckily last minute, Bang comes outside and takes us. But now theres 1 more of us, Tim you gotta ruin everything. Bang says go with her so Tim and Jen go on the back of this rando girls motorbike and Ian and I are in Bang’s side cart. We make it back, but some people are still up and still want to do something. Some people go for a late night swim in the ocean. Yknow because its safety first. I don’t think they had clothes on either. I just want to sleep in my air conditioned room with my comforter and my 2 pillows and my…. Whos in my bed? Bill, whos in my bed? Kerry… I don’t know why youre in my bed but get out. My orders fall on deaf ears. Deaf dumb and blind. Kerry’s the Helen Keller when shes drunk and sleeping; she has no senses. Bad joke? I brush my teeth and head back to Tim and Ian’s room, I know they’re still up.

So now its Tim, Emmy, Jen, Ian, and I watching Dude Wheres My Car. Ashton is hilarious but I gotta sleep. Theres a girl in my bed and now I gotta sleep in here. We push the beds together and make one big one. Emmy leaves the slumber party because shes so lame. We each have our own blankets and now Jen’s wet because she just took a shower which in turn makes the bed wet. Awesome sleeping conditions, see you guys in 3 hours for training.

I wake up with a slight Changover (creative eh?) and go back to my room. I forgo getting breakfast for a few minutes in my bed, but Kerry’s still there. Uh, whatever I don’t care any more, move over. The beds big but shes a hog. The beds mine, but shes not moving. Hello Paul, wanna spoon? NO kerry, why is there sand in my bed. “I went swimming” Great. Thank god for house keeping. Just what I need at 8am, chungover, having to go to training in an hr, cheerful Kerry. “Oh paul don’t ignore me, you know you love me”. (insert string of cursewords here). I come home from a late night where I didn’t want to be and youre in my bed. Why are you in my bed. I couldn’t get into my room. Super awesome, can you leave now? Stop hugging me, don’t touch me, I might throw up. GET THIS SAND OUT OF HERE. Its all over the floor, and it looks like the tsunami aftermath in our bathroom. I am not a happy camper, and I’ve camped on a beach, and beaches have a copious amount of sand.

I just start saying a bunch of random things, half influenced by anger, half from lack of sleep. I don’t remember much else, but I remember Kerry giggling after everything I said. If I had a room full of Kerrys at a comedy club, Dave chappelle would be opening for me. She was a regular gigglepuss. One thing I remember that she keeps bringing up, is this: “I cant wait to blog about this”. That was it, I cant wait to blog about my night and my morning experience dealing with this girl in my bed. I had already started writing about my travels in MS Word but nothing online yet. I hadnt shared my unparalleled prose and wit to the world wide web. But now its on, and Kerry, you get to be in one YAY. Maybe ill send you the link.

You Down with Koh Phi Phi

2009-05-18T20:03:00.000+07:00

May 16-17, 2009

So last weekend 12 of us took a trip to Koh Phi Phi (pronounced Co Pee Pee) which is a group of islands off the coast of Phuket. Its where they filmed the 2003 box office smash “The Beach” starring Leonardo Dicaprio. Well I don’t know when the movie was made or if it even did well in theatres but it was filmed in Koh Phi Phi. My trip was pretty much the exact same thing. Except we didn’t swim there with french backpackers, run through a marijuana field, and live in a secret, primative civilization. Our trip did include crappy hostels, good seafood, buckets of alcohol, muay thai fights, and countless pictures.

We took the 8:30am ferry from phuket town; 1000 baht for a round trip. We were greeted by free croissants and coffee and opted for the top level of the ship. Ryan, john, and ian start hitting the sang som whisky. I don’t know if that’s how you spell whiskey from thailand, but I think that’s how they spell it here because its not exactly whiskey; it tastes more like spiced rum. Just one more thing lost in translation.

Theres a lot of asian tourists on the boat (something I usually see in NYC but to see asian tourists in asia is something new) along with some aussie girl on holiday with her mum, a trendy brit couple with matching sunglasses, and these 3 girls sitting to the side of us speaking a language that we cant quite seem to figure out.

Nevermind the 3 brazilian, portuguese, or french girls, the mountains of Koh Phi Phi are coming into view. The captain says that we will sail around koh phi phi leh (where the beach “the beach” was actually filmed) and we will arrive at Koh phi phi don shortly after. The two main island of KPP are KPP leh and KPP don, don is the bigger attraction and where we stayed. Theres also other islands such as mosquito island which we, and as appealing as it sounds, did not get a chance to visit. We opted for more friendly places such as Monkey Beach.

As we leave the boat, like anywhere else in thailand, we start getting hounded by people trying to stay at their bungalos for “very good price” or take their “boat boats” to maya beach. Typical thailand, we say “no thank you” but its getting so old in thailand that we just start ignoring them. That wont stop them from asking you a second time 30 seconds later when you turn around and walk back the same way you just came from.

We don’t want any bungalos or boats, were just looking for a place to put our stuff and for cheap. “I have room, 400 baht, good price”. “Where you stay tonight my friend?”. “Bungalo, cheap for you”. The offers fall on deaf ears and start to ellicit a “get the hell away from me” rather than a “sure, im your friend, ill stay at your place” response. We know that the farther we go from the port, the cheaper the place will be. We start walking along the grey brick streets with no shortage of stray cats and whatdya know, more people asking us to buy stuff. The place is a maze but we just keep walking in what we think is away from the port. We pass some construction site, were on the right track to the crappy part of KPP.

Some guy comes up to the 12 of us with backpacks on saying that he has a room for 150 baht. That’s about $5 for the night. We jump on the offer and think the hostel is right there. But we start walking up some shoddy concrete steps on the hillside. The views nice but I can start to see why the room is so cheap. We get to a room with about 10 bunk beds in a room. Euro backpackers are still passed out in bed and theres some walking around. We get shown another room with 4 beds and 1 fan. This suits me much better, we can lock it and I would know the other people in te room with me so my camera wouldn’t get stolen. The random guy that might not even work there takes our 150, gives us our sheets and pillow cases. These sheets were pretty necessary because the rock hard mattresses had some questionable stains on them. This is traveling; finding the shittiest place to stay without all the luxury, meeting people from around the world who are doing the same thing we are. Maybe not teaching but seeing the world while theyre young. So right there is a comparable stat to “The Beach”. Leo stays at a crappy hostel where he meets some weird brit who gives him a map to the beach. “The Beach” similarity #1.

So our stuffs dropped off,, lets go find some food and some activities. We just want to go cliff jumping, KPP has some pretty reputable cliff jumps. We find a place that will take 4 of us for 600baht a piece. Ryan is not well trained in the art of haggling and out of excitement, he says “hell yea, sure we’ll take it!”. John and I shake our heads and just think that ryans stupidity cost us a few extra drinks at the bar tonight. Luckily john intervened and got them down to 560, great so 1 extra drink at the bar.

With our receipts in our pockets and a 2 oclock long boat departure time, we go tend to our second priority; eating. When on an island you have to be stupid not to try the seafood. We found a neat place on the beach. John of course got the spiciest dish he could find that of course wasn’t spicy enough for him. Come to think of it, I got the chicken with ginger and onions with noodles. I knew I had to try the seafood later then. I do love onions and ginger though. It was good, but you can still call me stupid.

I grabbed a 10L dry bag so I could take my camera on our cliff jumping trip. This trip exemplifies the reason I got this camera. The scenery of an island chain in thailand and a trip with my friends is exactly what I would like to shoot.

2 oclock rolls around and we head back down to the shop where we booked our excursion. The two ladies at the desk show us what seems to be a random thai guy but who happens to be our “guide” for the day. We weave through the streets to his shop to get fitted for flippers and shoes and gloves. The shoes and gloves were pretty key because the rocks to climb up the cliffs were very jagged. On the way to the longboat my green havaianas break. I love those sandals and I cant believe I had to get new ones. I only buy green flip flops and the only green ones they had on the island were this dark forest green havaians which I had to opt for.

The longboat is a classic thai boat. Its iconic to thailand and KPP with its colorful fabrics wrapped around the bow of the boat. Ours had red, white and blue around the bow and some flowers; easy to remember. So we pass a huge limestone cliff face that slants up from water level. We saw some people jump off the low part as we pulled into port on the ferry. We said to ourselves, that’s not too high, we wanna do higher. Luckily we did get to go higher, but we had to take it in steps first. He showed us how to climb up to where we would jump off, this is where the shoes and gloves come into play. If you made a bad step or your hand slipped, you would most probably die. Theres jagged rocks sticking up everywhere that you have to jump or climb over. Climbing up and making sure not to slip was definitely more nerve racking than jumping off a cliff.

First jump comes up, 10m, ryan front flips it. John goes. Ian goes. I do a backflip. Tim goes. Easy enough, nothing new to us really but still fun and a good warm up. A 12m jump is up next. We jump off pretty easily. John leans to the right and enters into the water kind of funny. Tim makes this funny noise as he jumps. It wasn’t an “AAHHHHH” im jumping off a cliff kind of yell, but a long, high pitched “oooooo”. Not an “Ohhh” but a sound that only Tim could replicate. The next height is 15m, about the size of the cliffs back home at Mamanasco. Those cliffs were fun as hell back in high school. These cliffs are a bit different. We’re not jumping into 6ft of murky CT pond water but rather 30ft of crystal clear, pacific blue, thailand water. We do this jump twice so that our guide can make sure we have enough body control to do the big jump. John still enters the water a bit sideways. Tim does his funny sound again. But for the most part we all have it down. The big jump is the next and final one.

(the cliff jump. start low on the left then last jump was from about the middle of the picture)

Climbing up seemed different this time. This time I thought I had a better chance of me dying from the jump than navigating around the spear like limestone formations. We were all nervously laughing as we climb higher. The phrase “oh shit” was common out of everyones mouth. We didn’t even know where we were jumping from, we just kept following our guide. He points to a small ledge that we have to climb a few feet down to and then stand on to jump off. We didn’t know who was going first. Ian mustered up some courage and volunteered to be the guinea pig for this. He leaps off and we peer off the edge to see him flailing around in the air. He quickly tucks in his arms and legs and pencil dives in; a clean entry. Next is Ryan still muttering some swear words. He quickly disappears from the edge and 4 seconds later I hear a splash. I hear him say something when he resurfaces, so at least I know now he’s not dead. Tim and I are arguing of who should go last. It wasn’t a matter of whose going next, but who has to be the last to go. He reluctantly said he would go last and I stepped down to the ledge. No way I can back down now. How many chances do I get to go cliff jumping in my life? And in thailand? Plus my friends wouldn’t let me live it down ever. I try not to think about it because then I just become more nervous. OK, I have a good stance, my shoes wont slip, and I go. My arms wave around in huge circles. I have quite a bit of time for some thoughts to run through my head. “oh shit” of course was my initial one and “hey I feel like I shouldve hit the water by now” was the second. As the thought passed, I tucked in my arms and hit the water. Not the cleanest of entries; my legs were a bit open and bent. The impact of the water on my feet was immense. That kind of impact could give someone with flat feet a high arch if they werent wearing shoes. I wipe my eyes from the sea water with my gloves on and look back up to the cliff I just jumped from. I can see Tim up there who, for a tall man, looks real small from down below. John and Ryan get their cameras ready for Tim’s leap. We hope to catch a classic Tim noise in the 4 second free fall on camera but to no avail. Watching him jump from in the water was a great sight. It’s a totally different view from sea level, 20m below the take off point.

The guide has us do one more jump. This time all of us at the same time off the smaller ledge. This made for some great footage. We made sure to jump out and away from eachother so we wouldn’t hit anyone. We count to 3 and we all jump. Ryan jumps right next to me and it just looks like hes diving in my left peripheral. He tucks in and pulls off the front flip though. John is a little too close in my right peripheral. He jumps a second before me and I hit him when I enter the water, nothing big, just a little bump. Some high fives are exchanged while wading in the water. We feel pretty good about ourselves and criticize the group that came to jump after us. The guys wont even go to the 15m height and as for the girls, one girl was too scared so she had to climb back down. To me, that’s scarrier than jumping off 10m.

Next up is snorkeling around the jump site. We do a loop around a limestone mass and see some coral, some fish. Standard snorkeling stuff. Ryan and John are diving deep down. I cant hold my breath that long and my I cant equalize the pressure in my ears. On the other side of the limestone mass, we can see KPP Leh from sea level. “The Beach” similarity #2. Here Leo is swimming to the beach and the view we saw is the shot they used in the movie. The waves are picking up and our longboat is drifting away from us. We eventually get there, struggle to use the ladder and get in. Next stop is monkey beach.

Monkey and trash beach it should be called. Obviously a bunch of litter has washed up ashore which took away from some of the aesthetic beauty of a beach filled with wild monkeys. Our guide has some cut pineapple and watermelon for us to eat and to feed the monkeys. They come right up to you and take the fruit from your hand. I focus more on documenting the feeding than actually feeding them myself. I tend to focus more on using my camera than taking part of the things that im caputring on film. This is fine, I like to document our travels. Id feel worse if I didn’t capture some photogenic moment and I regreted it. Luckily john has a waterproof camera that hes been snapping photos and videos with. Im still waiting for those to be posted. Anyway, about 20 pictures and some video clips, we head back to port.

Back at the shop our guide hooks up his video camera to a TV and we see our video. The jumps look great and were all smiles. We need this tape. We all pitch in for the 1800 baht tape. We plan to copy it or post it online so we all get to watch it and show it to our friends and family. So far no copies, we’ll get on it later.

We head back to The Rock. That’s the name of our hostel. Im surprised the place even has a name. Showers are actually a pleasant releif from our busy day. They arent very clean but they get the job done I guess. Alright, showered, changed, started sweating already. Good, lets go out. We meet up with the other girls who didn’t have the stomach to stay at our hostel. Turns out they payed less than us and they have their own bathroom and AC. Well at least we have an experience. They had to share 3 to a bed though. We pick up some big Changs, drink them and start walking. Where to eat, where to eat? I don’t recall exactly where we eat, but I think I had sea food this time, mission accomplished. We are being handed flyers for different bars and drink specials. We are quite keen to free buckets at 8:30 and we head over to Apache bar after deserting the desrted Hippies bar. Apache isnt very crowded, just us american alcholics in for some free alcohol. Something about the novelty of drinking out of a bucket at a beach is quite appealing. It was the novelty because it sure as hell wasn’t the alcohol, I don’t know what was in it, but I think it was mostly Sprite. I guess they cant lose too much money from us. The lighting is very interesting and I take the chance to snap some photos. The pattern the lights were drawing on the dance floor was quite interesting so I walk up to the balcony to take a picture of it. some long exposure and light paths on my camera later I go back down to the bar. Kerry says “whos the creeper on the balcony taking pictures of the bar? Then I realized it was you”. Haha, I coudlnt pass up a good photo op.

Apache was getting lame. It wasn’t crowded and I started wishing that my buckets would be filled with sand instead of this mystery sprite mixture. Lets wander around. We find a loud bar on the corner near to the irish pub and our hostel. Theres a muay thai fight going on. Ive always wanted to see one of these live, and it’s a bar… perfect. Its me, ryan, john, tim, and jen. And emmy appears out of nowhere saying shes going to fight. What? Yea apparently you get a free bucket if you volunteer to fight in the ring. Either against a random other volunteer or a friend. Emmy gets up there and has to fight this thai girl who obviously trains. She has no padding on whereas emmy has shin guards and a padded helmet. Maybe it was the extra padding that gave her some confidence but she started kicking some ass. The thai girl was on the retreat most of the match. Not the most fundamentally sound fight ive seen but it was pretty good for a girl fight. She obviously won the fight by judges decision…. Well the audience’s decision but the ring master lifted both their hands up as to signal a tie (or a thai? Haha… nevermind). Emmy looked upset, but I guess it was a “everyone wins yay!” kind of thai boxing match. Or maybe because they were girls.

This seems like a great experience. Itd be great to say “hey I got up and thai boxed in the middle of a bar in a ring in thailand”. Ive been meaning to make the most of every opportunity and this is something I wanted to do but I was still hesitant. I ran the idea by Tim and he kinda wanted to do it. I didn’t really wanna get beat up, hes much taller plus I wanted to protect the money maker. I mean, I just got punched in the nose 2 weeks earlier and I don’t think it was completely healed. Or maybe that was just my excuse to not fight but I still wanted to get up there, I regret not doing it. we walk over to john and ryan and say hey we should all do this. Ryan is already drunk and doesn’t want to get up and fight. John pounces on the opportunity and says “yea lets do it”. So john and tim are fighting, ryan doesn’t want to fight, and I, once again, am the photographer on the sideline. That’s fine because I got some good footage.

Round 1… FIGHT. So they come out slow, not really throwing punches. Afterall theyre buddies and no one has thai boxed before. They both try to throw the occasional kick in just because its allowed but none really land. John goes to dodge around and gets met by Tim’s right hook. Right in the nose, and john starts bleeding a bit. Round 1 over. Tim and john have a little meeting in the ring saying OK, lets take it a bit easier. I don’t think either are in too good of shape and john just started bleeding. So round 2….FIGHT. or kinda fight, but just throw some body shots and the occassional light head shot. Round 2 over, and less spectacular. A brit sitting on johns side just says “oi mate, stop fighting like a #&#%@ and fight”. John takes this as some disrespect so with a thumb of his glove shuts one nostril and blows a wad of blood towards him. The blood lands on the outskirts of the ring by my feet. That wont get cleaned up anytime soon. John turns away and the drunk brit goes to me, “ey that’s a sign of disrespect”. Not wanting to start any trouble in a thai boxing bar, I just turn around and start taking pictures again. The brit comes up to him and simply says he wasn’t talking any trash, he just thinks that john is bigger and should be controling the fight more. John takes his advice and round 3 he comes out swinging. The ring master stops the fight occassionally to dab the blood away from johns nose. Tim starts to protect his head more seeing that john is looking to draw some blood from him. He doesn’t want to be the only one bleeding from this match. Finally john connects with Tims face and gives him a bloody nose. Now the ring master has to stop the fight to dab blood away from both their faces. At least theres some hygenic practices going on here. A few more minutes pass and that’s it, the fights over. From the blue corner, with a bloody nose, and his hand lifted in the air, John is the winner. Both put up a good fight but it was his aggressiveness in the 3rd round that made him win.

Ok now take off the sweaty pads and leave them in the ring so they wont be cleaned and the next participant can bathe in your sweat. Oh, and you didn’t wear underwear under the boxing shorts. Congrats you now have ringworm from the pads and some communicable disease from the thai boxing shorts that get passed around more at a bar than one of those thai hookers. Good job, go get your bucket of alcohol. Walking back to where ryan and jen are, we find our previous champ emmy puking. Her eyes are half open, face is flushed and she is a bit disoriented. Drinking and fighting may seem pretty common but it is dehyrdrating. She was doing fine before, now shes puking under the table at the bar. Emmy, you need to go home.

Not much else happens for the rest of the night. At the irish pub, on a camera hand off between john-o and ryan, ryans camera fell to the ground. It fell on the opened lens and now the lens wont retract. The camera wont even turn on properly. Luckily the SD card can be salvaged. And at least Ryan has a better camera with him, although he rarely takes it out. Time to eat those problems away to some late night drunk food. Back home the late night drunk food consists of pizza or whatever the hell you have in your fridge. In Koh Phi Phi street vendors are your one and only source for a late night snack. Chicken legs, and mystery meat balls on skewers. That’s pretty standard around Phuket too, everythings on skewers, sometimes you might find the chicken legs on the skewers. I get a chicken leg and john gets an assortment of skewers, one of which I think has liver on it. No thanks, between that and the place I have to sleep tonight, I think id throw up.

So with the leg of a chicken that was probably roaming the filthy streets of Koh Phi Phi an hour ago in my stomach, I head back to The Rock. Tim’s already sleeping because he has to get up early to go rock climbing with Kate. We try to be silent but we feel the need to complain on how hot and disgusting the room is. Tims is asleep no longer. I don’t take my shirt off to cool down, but leave it on because I want to keep as little skin as possible coming in contact with the beds.

I wake up around 9am in a sweat and cant go back to bed. I roam the empty streets of KPP because I don’t want to go back to my hostel. Fast forward to when everyone awakes. People are hungover, no surprise there. Usually when youre hungover the last thing you want to do is drink, but “the hair of the dog”. I’m not quite sure how the rest of that saying goes, but I guess it helps. So its blazing hot, big backpacks on our backs, and they’re going drinking. Trusty ole sang som will do the trick. We all set up shop under a canopy by a beach. We don’t feel like shopping or walking. We wonder what we could possibly do on KPP if we stayed another day, we feel like weve exhausted everything. Or we just felt exhausted. That Sunday was a pretty mellow day, I took pictures, they drank in a lagoon by a jungle. “Holy shit, were in a lagoon. Is that the jungle over there? This is paradise!”. Yes it is john, yes it is. Except I don’t think it’s a lagoon if its attached to the ocean but im not gonna rain on your parade.

We need to get back to Phuket. All aboard the drunk boat. Or, drunks, all aboard the boat. I fell asleep on the boat but the others, still drunk from before were having a good time. However I don’t think the european tourists around them were sharing in their blissful joy. I think they understood that they were in paradise and didn’t need to hear you say it over and over again. And I think drunk loud americans, as we most often are, ruin the paradise. Its like litter at the beach. Its like ants at a picnic. Its like…americans in thailand. But I’m not bashing my friends, its just that I don’t think the old european travellers enjoy trips like we do.

Everyones tired after the trip. John and Ryan pass out in the bus home from a combination of lack of sleep and daytime drinking. We have a nice dinner at the hotel with the same people we just went on a weekend trip with. That was the limit, I think another meal after that with all of us together might be trouble; we might start hating each other. But it was good to see some of our peers around the hotel that we didn’t see all weekend. And it was good to see that my roommate bill was alive. He had been feeling ill before after some bad dairy. He would have trouble going to class or coming out with us at night. Its not so bad if you cant go to class, but if you cant come out with us, you k now its bad. On the trip we started speculating that it was Swine Flu. What if we come back and on the news read “American Brings Swine Flu to Thailand”. Well good thing it wasn’t, and he was back to normal, smokin a pack a day.

Friday before Koh Phi Phi

2009-05-16T22:03:00.000+07:00

Last Friday (15/5/09) was a great day. The last two days have been raining on and off and we havent had a clear day since we arrived on Tuesday. It was rainy and cloudy in the morning but it heated up real fast after that after the sun came out. After class everyone kind of just hangs out outside the door to the conference room aka our classroom. Adam the brit from newcastle says hes going to play soccer with ian the canadian behind reggae bar. I wanted to go, I extended the invitation to forkman (ian from CT) because he played in HS and some in college. He was up for it but then the fact that it was Friday afternoon and 90 degrees out persuaded him otherwise. Him being persuaded otherwise persuaded me otherwise and we ended up just going to the beach. It was a good crowd at the beach. Youll find the same people all hanging out together usually. Theyre the people that always want to do something. The others kind of hide in the background and go do things on their own. You wont find katie and evan from cali out with us much, that couple keeps to themselves but sometimes joins us. Nicole, Danielle, Noah arent always out either. Noah has a wife that did this program last semester and theyre just living together in a hotel room. James and Pippa are strangers most of the time. They come shoot the breeze with us sometimes but don’t join us in our big group dinners or anything.

But anyway back to Friday afternoon. The waves are pretty big, the biggest a kid from CT has ever seen. Even if this kid from CT has been to Australia and California. The waves are much bigger than me. It makes it hard to go out and chill in the ocean because you have to get passed the crashing waves. You’d ge a few steps and youll see a wave just towering over you and youd have to dive under it. But everytime you got a few steps towards the horizon, the waves would just force you back to shore. Ian got a new boogie board after the other one broke within 5 min of purchase… big surprise. His new one was holding up pretty well, it had a shark on it. A good upgrade from the broken dolphin/rainbow board. I caught some good waves but would crash a few times. The current and undertoe in thailand is pretty strong. Its infamous for killing people. Steph said when she went on her volunteer trip to thailand a girl in her group died because of the undertoe. It feels like youre stuck inside a washing machine when the wave crashes over you.

A wave can do some damage. It picks you up 6 feet then slams you down towards the sea bed. You hit your back or side on it and then tumble a few times. Disoriented, you don’t know which way is up and you start to freak out (or at least I do). Theres been a few times where I thought Im gonna drown. Despite running and swimming a bunch, my lung capacity hasn’t improved dramatically.

But after the beach we shower and go to happy hour. Happy hour at the pool bar is from 4-5; half priced drinks. Its only an hour, but the good thing is that the lobby bar happy hour is from 5-7. Bad news is that it takes forever to get a drink. Ive found that thailand is constantly on island time. Its island time on steroids, people are slower than molasses in an igloo. The sun is going down and of course I have my camera and I snap a few pics. We start to drink more and of course I take some artsy photos. We order some Tiger Beer from singapore for 40 baht (bout a dollar and 2 cents) to prepare for the night. Theres about 14 of us walking to a restaurant down the road, we don’t know which one, just something out of the ordinary 3 restaurants in close proximity to our hotel. We’d like to expand our repetoir. I order a beer and some prawn dish. I snap some more pictures and wait an eternity for the receipt as usual.

Fast forward to the walk home that was quickly put on hiatus by the calling Reggae bar on the way. Kerry, jen, katie, and maybe kate were already there drinking with the staff. Oh those rastafarian thai people, about as weird as a filippino dane kid from CT. Theres a unique bar behind reggae bar. Or should I say Yoonique because that is indeed the name of it. Theres a live band at this one which was absolutely amazing. A thai group that covers reggae songs and does it very very is scarce and truly unique. They let us pick up some random maracas and tambourines and join in the fun. The bar isnt exactly packed with people, its some local thais, and then our program kids.

The band’s frontman is a tiny thai man in a tight yellow shirt and pajama pants. No shoes is also a standard for anyone really in the country. They were so good, they covered bob marley, UB40, and jason mraz with their own thai/reggae style and flair. There was even two times when the lead singer gave jen the microphone to sing, I belive the second one was for jason mraz, “im yours”. It was just a very informal, live music, feel good kinda bar. A few girls showed up from america’s hat (canada) and through the common bond of canada our fellow canadian started talking to them. We ascertained that they were teachers here on Phuket and they loved it here. A few minutes later some guys showed up and were also teachers. It was good to talk to someone who is living the life im about to live. The overall sentiment was purely positive and im looking forward to teaching a lot more now. Seems like theyre still having fun on the weekends if we saw them at yoonique bar. I hope I can still frequent that bar when im teaching.

i have a video of the band playing

First Week Done

2009-05-15T11:43:00.001+07:00

So a weeks classes have gone by. Well 3 days for me because I missed the first 2 days traveling to get here. The classes have been fun and interesting for the most part and Ive gotten to know most of the kids pretty well. Theres 28 of us in program. I mostly know the kids on my side of the room, I should probably move around more to meet people. Traveling and this experience is all about new things and yet Im the guy who came with 3 of my friends from home. But were still getting out there, its not like we only hang out with ourselves.

The married couples in the class sit together, but one of the S. African couples (James and Pippa) sit across the room and move around to meet new people. James is an interesting character. In an activity we had to better know eachother, we had to write 3 truths about ourselves, fold them, and put them into a bag. then the rest of the class would pick one out and read one and we’d all have to guess who it is. One of his truths was “I sold one of my kidneys”. I cant recall the other 2 because this one just dwarfed the others. Come to think of it another one was that he believed in magic. In another activity on drawing, we had to draw a picture of “going to the mall”. Most kids would draw cars, but our instructors told us to remember to keep it local, so maybe draw a scooter. James drew 3 kids with shopping bags riding an elephant. He’s quiet, you wouldn’t really see that he was funny unless you sat next to him.

But class is not too bad. 9:00am to around 4:00pm, hour for lunch and two 15min breaks before and after lunch. We do activities which are real fun and help keep the energy in the class up. So theyre doing that partially because wed fall asleep if they didn’t, and we can use the same games/techniques in our classrooms. On our lesson on “Young Learners” the instructor had us play Fruit Salad. Its like musical chairs but no music, you just had to know your fruit assignment. There was apple, mango, and banana; I was a mango. So when she called out your fruit you had to move up and sit in an empty seat. And if she yelled Fruit Salad!, wed all have to get up and find a seat. But of course theres a catch, because not everyone can win (real world lessons were learning here). SO they pulled out chairs evertime a fruit was called. A nice little anxiety attack at 10am. “oh no, theres not enough chairs for all of us”. That’s right because in the real world, there’ll never be enough (another real world lesson). I did pretty well for myself; got in the top 7 or so. Ryan represented CT and won the whole thing. We nutmeggers are aggressive.

However class isnt all fun and games… no, really? We spent half an hour going over a mock young learners lesson. So the instructor got up there and taught us like we were 5 year olds. And we had to respond to the exercise like 5 year olds. The lesson was body parts. “My hands” (3 second pause) “My hands” and she would do this twice more. Because 4 times is a good number to when using repetition when teaching, 4 or more. But so she would say that 4 times, then we had to repeat. “My hands” (3 second pause) “My hands”… oh it was great. But the fun doesn’t stop at the hands, how bout eyes, legs, and fingers. Then she would put sayings to each of them. “My legs (pause) I run with my legs” and all this time she would gesture the movements. So we had to repeat all of the body parts with a sentence after it, then 6 of us went up there to hold the cards so the class can repeat them from there, then she gave us the cards to say and pass them out to our classmates to say with us. It was a tidious lesson. I hope my students don’t get as bored as I was, I don’t think ill be that cruel. But 30 min of that, she couldve paraphrased the whole thing and told us what to do, but nah. Luckily we got a break after that only to be followed by lesson plan writing format. YES! Because the only thing I love more after a long and argeuous (arjuous? I cant spell) lesson where we role play; youre the teacher teaching 5 year olds and im the guy wanting to put my newly sharpened pencil in my ear so I don’t have to listen to “My hands….my hands”. I swear everytime I look at my hands her voice pops into my head and I think of “my hands”. As I type this whole entry, I just think “my hands… I work with my hands”. Its great, superb. I guess the repetition really drills the lesson into the kids minds though.

The best parts of the class is coming up with things to work on our creativity for the classroom. They would have us draw some pictures for a story or come up with a song. The songs are great, its interesting to see who comes up with what and its insanely hard. Its tough to think hey, come up with a song about an object with gestures and dance moves and perform in front of the class. Its not the doing it infront of my peers that’s the issue, it’s the hey my songs really bad don’t laugh at me. But luckily everyones on the same page. They passed out objects and we had to pretend they were something else and write a 4 line song to it. People got a cassette tape, actual tape, and why cant I forget what the others were (I remember what they pretended the objects to be though… oh well). we got a red, circular, foam sheet. I stretched my imagination and said it was a mouse pad. My group of kerry, bill, and katie were content on coming up with something more creative. We decided on mars. It took a long time just to come up with 4 lines. Katie greased the wheels a bit and started singing. “mars… is very far away… so very far away…. In outer spaaace”. Her voice trailed off when she sang “space” like she was drifting towards the red planet. The 3 lines were sung to the tune of “im too sexy” by right said fred. The whole song went like this:

Mars, is very very red

Is very very hot

So red and so hot

Mars, is very far away

So very far away

In outerspace

Its copyrighted so don’t try and steal our melodic gold. We also went 2 lines over the 4 line requirement, so were real overacheivers. Our gestures made it all the better (when we remembered to do them). Moves included but werent limited to pointing to katies red shirt, wiping the sweat off our hot foreheads, pointing to the ceiling, and bill’s epic moon walk. The only dance move we thought out was bill doing the moon walk in front of us when we said “in outerspaaace”.

The next thing we had to come up with was make a song or chant out of a dialogue. Our dialogue was real lame, it was about music being important to us and it makes me feel good. Great, we can work with that. Bill immediately starts singing the opening lines to the Madonna song “Music”. So we steal the first line of that and try to write the other 5.

“music, makes the people come together (yeah)

Music makes me feel good

When I sing in… the shower

Music gets me dancing

Makes the friends dance

Music is important… (yeah)

Great song, our concept of keeping a beat and melody was seriously challenged by this exercise for some reason. Last lines a bit sketchy, but we had to include that part of the dialogue. So what have we learned? That the song writing talents of paul, bill, kerry, and katie are unmatched and if our teaching career doesn’t work we’ll write for the pop stars of tomorrow.

The activities are a great way to see people break out of their shell. Everyone feels more comfortable and we get along better. “oh hey you suck at writing, singing, and you dance like someone with deficient motor skills and two left feet? That’s fine, youre just like everyone else here”. The funny songs we’ve come up with come up every now and again and we all have a good laugh.

32hrs and 10min

2009-05-13T23:08:00.000+07:00

Graduate, take pictures, go to the reception, move out, pack, drive to the airport and fly to Thailand. That’s about as fast and crazy May 10th went. So as of 10:30am May 10, 2009 I am a college graduate; I’m a UConn alumni now. Four years went by so fast and now I’m on the next chapter in my life. Ill probably be back to UConn sometime soon. I’ll be that weird alumni who keeps showing up in the student section in basketball games or at spring weekend. Good thing Im the height of a freshmen; ill blend right in.

Leaving right after graduation was weird, I had no turnaround time; no summer, barely enough time to pack. However in those 2 hours of packing I managed to bring too much stuff. You’d think that id put more thought into packing for a half a year trip 10,000 miles away from home but nah. The drive to the airport needed to be trafficless. But knowing my luck, theres traffic. Not much but enough to make me worried about missing my flight. It didn’t help the service at the Delta terminal was atrocious and no one was very helpful. Finally I self checked in (if you want something done right, you do it yourself) and went through security. But that wasn’t before the girl at the front of security gave AL some attitude for taking pictures. Finally at my gate I took the time to send a mass text griff style to all my friends and call Sara to say bye. Ill see them again sometime, I just don’t know when. I like how I’m acting so badass saying I don’t know when ill be back. Its like me saying im getting the hell out of CT for university and where do I end up… UConn. So be prepared to see me sometime within the next year ordering a cluckin russian at Genoa deli.

My flight to San Fran was at 7. I only had a 2 hour layover in cali to get off the plane, get to the international terminal and board Singapore Air. So when did my flight leave? 8. I surprise myself with my luck sometimes. “Sorry for the delay folks but we’re 16th in line on the runway”. That was the captain speaking informing me that I might not make my flight to Asia. What he shouldve said that “Hey Paul, youre fucked if we don’t leave this second because youre not catching those next 3 flights to a teaching program youre already late for”. Thank god the flight time was shorter than expected and the international terminal was closer than I thought and there was no line at check in or security. Hey my luck might be turning around. That was before the only movie on the flight was Bride Wars starring Kate Hudson and Anne Hathaway. The ipod being far away and my camera manual being totally alien to me, I decided to watch it. charming story I guess…

I see my 3 other friends ill be living with for the next half a year or so in the terminal before they see me. Ryan, Ian, and Jill. Ryan says “you ready for this” and I just said “yea”. In my head I just went “god I sure hope so”. I buy my last things that will remind me of america in the vending machine, goldfish and a Gatorade. If the iconic food items werent nostalgic enough of the states, the insane aggregate price of $8 for the two will make me really miss how expensive things are there.

The 1am Singapore Air flight to Hong Kong was not as bad as I predicted. The plane is a palace. Too bad I had to walk by the cubicles complete with a bed inside them that business class was staying in. They were on their computers already as to say “hey look at us, were making money right now. You go have fun in economy with the crying baby and the lady sprawled across the 2 seats next to you”. At least theres games, free food, booze, and movies to choose from. Oh and good thing Bride Wars was offered on this flight because 1 time in a day is not enough for me. I end up watching Benjamin Button which is about 3 hours long. I watched the movie in 2 parts because I fell asleep halfway through. Very good movie though. I was sleeping on and off in between the lady next to me feeling uncomfortable and the second birth of satan (aka the crying baby). The sun started to come up behind me and I could see it through the window. Have you ever watched the sunrise while flying over Japan? Its alright.

6am we land in Hong Kong. My first time in China let alone Asia. The far east with a robust history and culture that is so foreign and vibrant compared to mine. So naturally the first place we go to eat is Burger King. A whopper meal please and coke. $14? Is that chinese dollars? Whatever nothing else is open and im starving, give me the whopper. Lets hope the credit card company doesn’t shut down my card for “suspicious activity”. If the fact that an american card is being used in china doesn’t tip them off, the fact that someone went to a BK in china will. I exchanged some money for some Thai Baht. About 300 bucks worth is 8,000 Baht. I don’t know what that means really, I just have a bunch of pink and purple notes that look like monopoly money. Hopefully I wont treat it as such and buy the boardwalk and park place equivalent in Thailand.

Next stop is to singapore, this time the plane isnt as full and the four of us all sit together. We play the trivia games on our screens and start ordering some booze. What is it 9am on the plane? Well that doesn’t matter because its 9pm from where I left, so no alcoholics here. Some cognac, bloody marys and something called a singapore sling. Its red, its got alcohol in it, its free… fine by me. I watch Fawlty Towers, classic show with the very funny John Cleese. Getting off the airplane were greeted by more people with those Sars masks. Or those swineflu masks if you want to be current and hip. Luckily Jill’s parents packed us some, but in attempt not to look as foolish as the asian tourists who come to NYC, we didn’t use them. Almost on the last flight, we got an hour layover and then we’ll go to Phuket. Lets get to the gate and put our stuff down and we can…. Oh look free Wi-fi. First stop Gmail and Facebook. What is everyone else doing? Well if they care what im doing ill update my Twitter page. Im going to asia in a bit to have a job, but right now I got my college priorities. I did email my mum back home though. I buy a wrap because im always hungry while ryan and ian go up to the 2nd floor of the aiport to check out the arcade, showers, theatre, gym, and play place. Jill and I went up to meet them but they were just leaving, they always have all the fun.

At the gate theres about 10 people, no asians. Mostly couples on honeymoon, and a danish couple I identified using my vocab I picked up on the plane’s online tutorial. They’re all white except for that one asian over there and the african american over there. Oh youre not boarding yet? Oh theres free wi-fi at the gate? Better check my facebook and gmail again. Hey at least im staying connected when im traveling around the world. The flight leaves, with enough people to only fill up 4 rows, but we are all spread out. For some reason they say to sit in my assigned seat next to another guy when there are about 100 open seats. I don’t take their advice and sit by the window again to take some pictures. An hour and half later, im finally in Phuket, Thailand, my new home. The captain informs us that it is a brisk 32 degrees fahrenheit, great 92 in my language and im wearing my grey UConn hoodie. I start sweating the minute I get off the plane and realize that the next 6 months or so will be quite tough on my hydration habits.

We go though customs, see some more people with sars masks on, ian gets laughed at by the customs guards, and we go to the luggage carousel. Thank God ours are all there. Im thinking the airline industry is already shitty enough, and I just took 4 flights to get halfway around the world, theres a good chance I wont ever see those bags again. But low and behold, my bags are tehre, I guess my lucks changing. We pay 1300 baht for a cab ride for all of us an hour away to our hotel. Come to think of it, I still owe ian for that. I get some good footage of my first taste of Thailand with my new Canon DSLR. Ryan’s canon isnt doing so well, its not taking pictures….weird.

All seasons hotel, my new complex at the south of Phuket island. Oh good its on a beach, ill get a lot of work done here. We get our keys and drink lemongrass water which we quickly stop after someone says “I hear the water here has typhoid in it”. Room 45, my new living quarters with a roommate named william. Hes not there when I move in. I finally meet him and hes a real traveled guy. From massachusettes near the CT boarder (good thing he got out of there, boston sucks). Hes been all around, working in europe, asia and finally settling down in chicago before coming here to teach.

We go out to eat with Bill, that’s what he goes by. Hes Bearded Bill. We just go to one of the nearby restaurants. Since theres no Burger kings around, and im in Thailand, I guess ill get the Pad Thai. Our waiter Milk serves it to us. The whole meal, noodles and beer, costs me about $5 US. Its quite a deal, you cant get a bad meal here for a cheap price. We run into a few other of our peers from the program, get introduced, the standard operation. Bill, having ate some bad yoghurt from before, rejects our invitation to go out. We probably should have followed his model and stayed in. I mean we did just travel about 32 hours. We hear of this place down the road called Reggae bar. Its got more stuff on the walls than applebees and chilis put together. I wouldn’t think that a jamaican inspired thai bar would exist but heres the kicker, its next to a mexican restaurant. Interesting place im at, I don’t think the upcoming months will be anything short of interestitng. We each get one changs (thailands bud light I guess. If I can just find thailands version of keystone, ill be in business) and hang out on the couch. We are all delerious from the lack of sleep. I feel drunk already despite only having a few beers. I rest my eyes for a second and pass out. I know, whos the lightweight passed out at the bar, this guy. Its just the jet lag, I promise. We walk back early, its for the best.

Im finally back at a bed. I still put off sleeping to open up Gmail and facebook. (you might see a trend here). I don’t really realize that im in thailand yet. I just graduated what seems like this morning to me and now im 10,000 miles away on the equator. Everything has been going so fast and when I finally get settled itll set in; the fact that im a college graduate teaching english in thailand. It’s a big step in my life and one so soon after my college graduation. But hey, the economy back home is fucked, and I have a job, I just had to go to Thailand to get it.

New Trial Post

2009-05-13T11:00:00.000+07:00

I dont know how these get posted, or how these get ordered. Because i have my posts in my word documents and that theyre not online because i rarely have internet, i might just have to post a lot at once.

Another disclaimer - i swear a bunch, sorry. and i dont have spell check on my MS Word because its annoying seeing all the red squiggly lines under it, so just bare with me. i know what youre thinking, "hey this guy's an english teacher, why cant he spell?" well i dont have much time to write these posts and i get lazy and i rush.

Hope to post more stuff in a few days. My new job starts next week at Phuket Technology College. From now on, im Professor Paul.

Trial Post

2009-05-12T20:52:00.000+07:00

So this is my trial post. Ill start putting stuff here soon. I have stuff written i just have to figure out how to post pictures and videos and such and make this site look appealing. This blog wont be the best written. I usually type these things late at night (which is around11pm for me now since i have to wake up early) and i usually get to tired to try and work on my prose. plus i dont read books so i dont know how good stories are supposed to sound. i just try and get my ideas down. i dont think many people will read this, ill probably have a few followers (mom, dad). but this beats constant emails and such. plus its a kind of journal thing and i can look back on these stories.

so ill try experimenting with these things. only problem is that i rarely get onto the internet. its a scarce commodity here in thailand. i have to pay for the internet at the hotel, and it doesnt even work there, and right now im at a scandanavian restaurant with free wi-fi. plus i got an open faced sandwich with salmon and egg. thank god theres no time limit because pages load real slow here. everythings real slow, we're on island time.

so sit tight (mom, dad) ill post stuff soon.

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2009-05-11T23:57:00.001+07:00

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