It's no white Christmas,

but my Thai Christmas has been pretty good. Thoughts of you dear reader, and of all my family and friends, are dancing in my head even as I enjoy my modest little Christmas here. Midnight mass (my first ever!) entirely in Thai, singing Christmas carols in front of 1500 students, teaching three classes, and a pad thai Christmas dinner with friends. And of course, opening presents that have traveled across one very big ocean to get here.



Merry Christmas and happy holidays to all.

With a heart full of cheer,
Rebecca

P.S. It appears no one told the person in charge of this display in Bangkok that there's a difference between Christmas elves and the seven dwarves. I guess it's an understandable confusion. Being here, and explaining Christmas traditions to students, has really driven home how bizarre the holiday season is in some ways. Trying to communicate through a language barrier that I am not a Christian but that I still celebrate Christmas has proved difficult. And hearing myself say that "in my country all the children think that a fat man comes down their chimney once a year"...pretty great. On the other hand, I've never had better insight into the depth of the sad Christmas songs like "I'll be home for Christmas," and "Blue Christmas."

The theme of class this week was "giving"

Some choice responses on the giving worksheet:

What would you give your friend for Christmas? Why?:
I would give friend my homework so copy. Because I like friend.

What would you give your mother for Christmas? Why?
I would give mother milk. Becaus she low cacium.

What would you give your teacher for Christmas? Why:
I would give teacher motorcycl.
I would give my teacher a kiss me because I love teacher.
I would give teacher a healthy basket because she is old.

What would you give your boyfriend or girlfriend for Christmas?
I would give boyfriend frist kiss. Because I fell very.
I'm singer. (He meant "single")
I would give my girlfriend a Singha beer because I will be opend her virgin. (!!!...Don't worry, this one was the only scandalous response I received.)

How would you give back to your community?:
I would go picnic family and go shopping. Because love shopping very fun.
I would help the blind. Because they don't feel lonely. I want they know, we are here.
I would grow the tree because Phitsanulok has bed air.

They're cute, right?

Yours,
R

This happened...

Take a guess:

a) I've such abundant spare time here I've joined a small amateur cabaret group based out of Phitsanulok.

b) My blonde hair has enabled me to become a celebrity in Bollywood's lesser known cousin Bangkok Hills, and this is a still from my latest film (to be released straight to VCD in Thailand May 2010).

c) We had a district wide Teacher Sports Day and I was chosen to dress in traditional Thai garb and lead our school in the parade.

d) I've gotten married.


Yours,
Rebecca

It turns out you CAN buy Christmas decorations here

and so tonight I brought Christmas to my little flat on Ekatossarot Road.



The relative abundance of Christmas decorations in a Buddhist country was clarified for me by a teacher, "we celebrate ALL holidays here in Thailand." Which explains both why I could buy a Santa hat and also why I haven't seen my Thursday or Friday classes in weeks.

Yours,
R

Some recent excursions

Reader, I must tell you, I have not just been teaching. I have also been exploring a little. These past few weekends I've ventured out of Phitsanulok to some choice nearby destinations.

First, a quick trip to the village of Sawankhaloke to visit my dear friend Marie. We took in the sights with a few of the girls at Sukhothai, where the ancient ruins of the 11th-15th century Thai capital make for a terrific day of bike riding. Sukhothai was the capital of Thailand prior to its relocation to Ayutthaya (see the my October homestay post for pictures of Ayutthaya). Now Sukhothai is a UNESCO World Heritage historical site, and it's also very very pretty. Large brick ruins in various states of disrepair and restoration, giant and ancient stone Buddhas keeping a calm watch on the few tourists and school children, lotus spotted lakes separating crumbling temples.






And also a trip back to Bangkok for Thanksgiving. Fulbright was ever so kind as to fly us back and put us to work cleaning the streets of Bangkok as a day of outreach and education. In reality, we spent about forty five minutes impeding the progress of actual Bangkok street cleaners before sitting down to a few hours of panel discussions about the state of street cleaning in Bangkok (thanks to Anna for some of these pictures).



Additionally, dear Fulbright made sure we got an authentic Thanksgiving feast by raiding the pantry at the U.S. Embassy grocery store (apparently such a thing exists). There were even imported Butterball turkeys! And cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie. Eating something other than rice and noodles was unbelievably exciting. The caterers actually voiced concerns to our host about the amount of food we consumed.

And finally, this past weekend was a three day weekend in honor of the King's 82nd birthday. After several hours of birthday ceremonies at school on Friday, I boarded a bus for the beach. It was total bliss.




Anna and I embarked on the trip with images of the backpacker-chic lifestyle in our heads, but ended up appearing significantly more like honeymooners than savvy young world travelers. Due to the holiday weekend every hostel and resort on the island was full save the Silver Sand Resort, which really ended up being totally lovely. However, it wasn't until right about when the resort's night club really got going that we realized we were staying at the island's gay hotel...

That's it for now. Sorry to bore you with a laundry list of activities. I hope you're doing well reader. Are you enjoying the brisk air of American winter? Have you seen snow yet (it's the cold season here too in Phitsanulok, which means 80 and sunny, though my students protest that this is still too cold)? Are the Christmas carols everywhere yet?

Yours truly,
Rebecca

The glamorous life of a teacher

December 7-9, 2009. Classes M 5.1-5.12.
Daily objective: describe your favorite animal.

For the most part, the hypothetical "paragraphs" of "full sentences" about favorite animals turned out like this: Favorite animal cat. Pretty. That's gets a student full credit in my class. However, I saved some of the gems for you:

My favorite animal is a rat. Because it is small. It is cute. It is delicious.

My favorite animal dog. I like because friend alone time.

And the kids who own dictionaries:

I lik goldfish: It'is beautiful and adroit.

I would like a shark because them have a teeth danger. But it animal wonderful. It predator bite sed predator bite crocodile. Some scientists belive shark best target predator.


Additionally, I've been really indulging in the mad perks of teaching. Look at these gifts I got from some of my kids today. That bracelet is from a nice girl in one of my 11th grade classes named Fai. I can't so much specify the giver of the apple-looking-things. I was walking past these two cute girls at school and they saw me and practically fell over themselves in their haste to give me the fruit. Maybe I'll eat them for dessert?



So reader, what is your favorite animal?

Teacher Rebecca

I was in charge of the "word of the day" at this morning's assembly...

Good morning, students.

Today's word of the day is "hunky dory." Hunky dory. H-u-n-k-y d-o-r-y. It is an adjective. It means very good. In Thai, you say "dee." Example: The movie New Moon is hunky dory.

Thank you.

Happy Turkey Day

Fondly,
Rebecca

Sports Days

Welcome to Sports Days at Triam Udom Suska School of the North.



Once a year, teams Red, Blue, Yellow and Green engage in two epic days of battle--volleyball, basketball, indoor soccer, track, and cheer--to determine the ultimate victor.

Opening ceremonies.





Yes, that's a pirate theme the blue team has chosen. They even managed a pun about "Fanta Sea." Who taught them about English puns, you ask? I only wish I could claim credit. On to the games. Green vs. blue for the men's volleyball championship.



And to the cheering competition, by far my favorite part. At the head of every cheer team is the captain lady boy. Although the lady boys of Triam Udom Suska also participate in other sports, and especially in volleyball, they are the absolute last word on leading a cheer squad. My team (green) put up a good fight, complete with smoke machine, golden costumes, and confetti canons, but ultimately came in second.



Poor blue team. They had a technical malfunction involving stereo equipment that surely cost them the gold, despite the having had far and away the most creative dance routine. The dance narrative was a little unclear to me but involved a treasure chest, the King, and a gang of pirates. One girl (pictured two to the right of me) teared up as she told me "Teacher, teacher, I very sad. We stay three am last night practice. No sleep."



Sports days were really a blast. I wish I could tell you who won, but I went home early because it was Friday and I was tired and no one was paying attention, so shortly after this photo was taken myself and my co-teacher Beth (pictured in yellow) snuck off and went home.

Yours,
Rebecca

Bpen kru pasa Engrit, na ka.

This is the way every English class in Thailand starts:

On cue from their classroom leader, the students stand in unison and say,

“Good mawning, teacher!”

I reply, “Good morning. How are you today?”

Class, “I am fine, thank you. And you?”

“I am fine, thank you. You may sit down.”

This is the English dialogue that every Thai student knows by heart, and it is a bit of a joke that this is the only English that Thai students know. And by “joke,” I mean, one of those funny-because-it’s-true jokes, as in some cases it is definitely the only English that Thai students know. And I use the term “know” loosely, as I don’t think many of my students actually understand what they’re saying, i.e. what the word “today” means.

Today, instead of “fine,” I used the word “great,” and for the most part, the response was a sea of confused faces.

My budding career as a teacher:

I teach twenty classes a week at Triam Udom Suska School of the North. I am at school from seven forty five in the morning to four in the afternoon, Monday through Friday. I take “public transportation” from my apartment to school, in the form of a song taew, which is in fact a small pickup truck fitted with two rows of seats in the bed. I have my own wooden desk at work, for which I have purchased several different ambiguously useful desk organization apparatuses. I have no classroom but rather travel from class to class to teach. I meet with each of my twenty classes once a week, and each class has just under fifty students.

It has been a little hectic, transitioning from never having taught before in my life to over nine hundred students. At first, some very basic things seemed unclear to me, for example, how and what I should teach. How would I communicate anything through a near total language barrier? How would I learn over 900 names? How would I give grades when I have almost 200 students a day? Then there were other less immediate but still meaningful concerns: how could I possibly be of any help to these students who see me once a week for fifty minutes? What would they possibly retain? And selfishly, how would I find a sense of satisfaction if could not connect with and feel of some service to students?

These mysteries are beginning to clear up, or at least seem less pressing. For example, as much as it pains and embarrasses me, I have to use the students’ numbers for grading. I just cannot learn 900 names at once, especially as they are written in Thai. Additionally, I am really blossoming into quite the enthusiastic mime thanks to my attempts to act out everything I say from “nice vs. mad” (easy) to “you don’t have to copy, because this is just a participation grade” (difficult). My Thai has taken strides exclusively in the area of classroom vocabulary (ex. “poot mai chat pasa thai…” and “song ma hi kru,” meaning “this means…in Thai, but not exactly” and “pass your papers to the front.” From experience I can tell you that these are time-consuming concepts to act out). I smile big, nod and say “very good” maybe one billion times a day. When I am sad, I make the whole class clap about something because that always cheers me up. The rest—figuring out how to feel like I am helping these kids in some way—I’m giving time, letting go of my worries.

The teachers here are extremely kind, giving, and tolerant of my incessant questions. The students are great, which makes teaching much more fun. What they lack in English skills they make up for in sweet dispositions. Some of them are absolute peaches, and even the ones with the most attitude aren’t terribly rude or disrespectful. Happily, they seem far younger than American high school students, giggling all the time and stretching into new teenage personalities.

Also there’s a whole new range of emotions I’m learning. I don't know the word for these new emotions but maybe if you are a teacher you have felt them too?: something like “that sinking panic when the air is going out of the classroom and all at once every student is bored and not paying attention to you,” or “the bliss that comes from students spontaneously laughing because they actually understand and are enjoying the educational game you designed” (yes, I finally made that past perfect game work).

And so it begins, my career as a teacher. I make worksheets, I play educational games, I force Thai children to read dialogues at a full scream because they are too quiet. I may not be a very good teacher, but I am trying!

Yours,
Rebecca

The digs

Dear Reader, I present to you, my new place:

I added some color.





And some pictures of loved ones.





Please do note my very own first small appliance purchases. One toaster oven and one kettle.








Home sweet home.

With affection,
R

Loy, Loy Krathong

I am in the midst of my second week of teaching, and I continue to flounder in a state of uncertainty about how and what to teach. The kids are so very sweet, but I am incessantly confusing them with ill-conceived and overly optimistic lesson plans. In carrying out yesterday’s lesson plan, I never even reached the “game with past perfect” activity because I couldn’t manage to adequately execute “make students fill in seating chart.”

So instead of regaling you with more tales of incompetence, let me and tell you about this lovely festival that coincided with my arrival in town: Loy Krathong.

Loy Krathong is an annual apology to the river, a making of amends for the usual take, take, taking of resources and pollution of the rest of the year. For Phitsanulok, this means apologizing to the Nan River, which cuts through the middle of town and serves as a hub of commercial and social activity. The very day I arrived, the whole town was busying itself in preparations for the night’s festivities. The area of the town along the river was transformed into a carnival of food, lights, theatre, and krathong vendors.

The Nan:



First among the many traditions I was exposed to, the parade:





For an hour and half, we watched as a mélange of high school bands, groups of small, costumed children, and countless neon floats bearing beautiful Thai women processed past us, moving in a streaming dance with the surrounding traffic (not redirected for the occasion).

As we watched the parade, the evening air began to fill with floating lanterns, delicate flaming lights borne up into the night. At first tens and then hundreds drifted slowly in the dark sky. I tried fruitlessly to take pictures to show you, dear reader, because I wanted you to see how pretty it was, but really there is no way to share the beauty of all of those lanterns suspended above our heads or convey the magic of their quiet and slow rising into the inky air.

A lantern lighting:





(I didn't take that second picture)

After a delicious dinner of street food and fresh ice cream (homemade with coconut milk), we readied to float our very own “krathongs.” We found our school’s energy club industriously selling krathongs as a fundraiser, and painstakingly selected the perfect ones. After hiking down the steep banks, we lit our krathongs and with a quiet prayer and a wish, released them onto the river. Here’s mine:



And P’Maew, one of my wonderful co-teachers, floating her krathong:



Finally, totally beat, my host teachers returned me to my little apartment nearby the river.

So what do you think? It’s pretty, right? In terms of environmental impact, Loy Krathong might be a touch of a problematic holiday, but at least most of the waste is biodegradable, which is a lot more than can be said for Christmas decorations.

Oh, I almost forgot, my favorite part, the Loy Krathong song! Take a listen.

Next time I plan to show you pictures of my house! It is my motivation to finish decorating. And maybe I’ll even write a little about my daily life here? Until then, farewell dear reader.

Yours,
Rebecca

Phitsanulok, I am here

Sawatdee kaa dear reader,

I have arrived.

I am safe and sound in Phitsanulok. I write to you from my humble and totally comfortable fourth floor apartment, full on green curry, mango, and sticky rice.

These first few days have been a sort of incoherent blur of confusion, tiredness, some teaching of English (I use the term "teaching" here loosely), more confusion, some awkwardness, ants, and a lot lot lot of kindness from the faculty at my school.

Tomorrow morning I introduce myself to the whole school (1600 students)! Wish me luck. I am practicing my speech right now:

(First: a wai, which is a bow with hands pressed at my head level)

"Sawatdee Kaa. Dichan cheu Rebecca Riddell, kaa.Yin dee tee dai roo jak, kaa. Dichan bpen con prattet American. Ma jark Austin, Texas, kaa. Kob kun tee hai dichan ma bpen kru tee nee. Ja bpen kru tee dee ka. Kob kun kaa. Sawadee kaa."

(Another wai)

That's more or less it, except I don't know how to type the tone marks in with english letters, which is just as well because I really am not able to pronounce the tones when I speak.

I will post some pictures later this week, maybe once I have decorated my little new home. I just wanted to tell you that I am here and doing fine (...hi mom!). I am incredibly well cared for by the flock of mother hens that is the English department. I will be teaching 20 classes per week, i.e. 20 different 45 person classes, once per week. I sat through my first all-Thai staff meeting today. I live across an alley from a giant and wonderful temple. Also I have a sinus infection and my voice is gone (poor timing). Finally, I have been given a Thai nickname by the staff. It is "Duuan Pen," which means full moon, because I arrived on the full moon.

Oh and, additionally, I am using this blog to officially declare full-out war on the ants in my apartment. As recently as yesterday I was trying to befriend the little parades of ants so I wouldn't be talking to myself in my apartment, but we have failed to establish a mutually beneficial relationship. I tried to show mercy at first, I did, but as of a recent banana peel/macbook disaster, I am now giving no quarter.

Thanks for your time. Take care now.

Yours,
Rebecca

Goodbye Bangkok!

In just a few hours orientation comes to an end and I depart for Phitsanulok, where I’ll be spending the next eleven months teaching. Given my one entire week of TESOL training coupled with my one additional week of practice teaching, I foresee no problems whatsoever. Wish me well dear readers!

Yours,
“Kru” Rebecca
(Kru=Teacher)

P.S. I made my training-wheels-kids learn about Halloween, and then I made them practice “American trick-or-treating.” Maybe teaching will be fun?





P.P.S. Check out more photos on my picasa site, if you are interested (see the photostream box on the right).

Visiting the King...

I can’t really sufficiently explain to you how important the King is here. He is beloved. The colors on the Thai flag—red, blue and white—stand for Thailand, Buddhism, and the King. Though officially removed from political power since the 1932 coup that implemented a constitutional monarchy system like Britain’s, the king is anything but a figurehead. Over the course of his sixty-year reign, he’s been the protector of stability and order in the midst of military coups, political violence and widespread protests. More than just respected, he’s also deeply loved by the Thai people. He’s a symbol of unity in a politically fractious and volatile country. Before every movie, audiences stand to listen to the national anthem played over a montage of clips of the King. People in the theatres cry. And while I can’t tell you what every Thai person says in private about the King, in public the only sentiments expressed are abundantly positive and loving (saying or publishing anything negative about the King is against the law).

In September, the King fell ill and was rushed to the hospital. There’s a general sense of held breaths and hushed tones surrounding his health. Particularly with the violence of these past few years protests, and continued questions over the viability and legitimacy of the current constitution, the stability offered by the King is much needed. Since he fell ill, Thai people have been visiting his hospital in droves.

This past weekend we decided to go to the hospital to offer some well wishes. Absolutely every activity we embark on is fraught with fear of being culturally ignorant and offensive, and this was obviously no exception.

Our confused taxi driver dropped us at the hospital inpatient doors (our Thai is so poor the best we could do was to communicate that we needed to go to the hospital), and after a decent amount of wandering around sickbays in a gigantic hospital compound, we found the courtyard we’d seen on the news, filled with incense and flowers and so many well-wishers. Vendors offered food and flowers to visitors. People milled about, periodically glancing upward to the floor where the king is staying. We bumbled around a little and lit some incense, offering a prayer and hoping we weren’t doing anything too wrong. We were about to leave when a woman beckoned us up into a large room to sign one of the many books available for well-wishers. As we sat down to sign the book, the press photographers in the room jumped up and swarmed our table, documenting our signing. We tried to retreat with swiftness and subtlety, but the photographers asked Anna and I to sit and pray in front of the statue of the King. We obliged their wishes, awkwardly (The attention we get here—both positive and negative—for being foreigners is…confusing. I am never sure how to respond).

It was all very beautiful and interesting, and for me brought up only more questions about the institution of the monarchy. It’s a very different type of thing for an American to get their head around, this apolitical but at the same time very powerful institution.

Here’s a picture from the hospital:



And a couple of news stories about the King:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article6843789.ece

http://www.nationmultimedia.com/2009/10/31/national/national_30115568.php

(The link to the wiki is blocked in this country)



Okay that is all for now. Happy Halloween dear readers.


Yours,
Rebecca

HOMESTAY

I have my first Thai friend! Her name is Nong Mae, and really I guess she is more than a friend because she is also my Thai sister. She is seventeen, speaks incredible English, is an excellent hairdresser and loves Korean boy bands (especially Big Bang). I spent this past weekend with Nong Mae, my new Thai Ma and Paw, and my other little sister Nong Mook. The family was so very kind it was sort of outrageous. They took me to ancient ruins, to the cinema, to no less than six temples, to an island, to an elephant show, etc., etc.

Here’s my family:



Saturday night I had the honor of joining their extended family for dinner at grandmother’s house, and was taught to cook (“tam-a-han”) several Thai dishes. Here’s the recipe for one of the dishes, Tom-Yum-Goong, which is a traditional shrimp soup, so you can make it:





-add ¼ cup each of diced lemongrass, purple pearl onions, chopped kaffir lime leaves and an herb called “ka” into boiling water; wait three minutes
-add ½ spoon of salt
-add ½ cup diced straw mushrooms; wait some more minutes
-add shrimp; wait maybe eight minutes
-add hand-crushed red and green chili pepper and lime
-eat with rice

I spent the weekend butchering the Thai language in an effort to communicate with the rest of the family. Nong Mae (who is able to speak English because she attends a private and costly English language program outside of school) was an excellent teacher and gave me detailed and lengthy Thai vocabulary lists. She thought it wise to give me a list of the bad words so that I could reprimand my students for using them:



Calling someone a monitor lizard here is a really, really big deal.

Nong Mae was really a delight. She and I are pretty much thick as thieves. She introduced me to what a cultural powerhouse Korea is becoming. Her favorite movies, television shows and bands are Korean rather than Thai or American. Most of the Korean media she showed me seemed derivative of American pop culture circa late 1990s through now, but I’m sure a lot of the Korean nuance was lost on me. To explain to me her most favorite band, Big Bang, Nong Mae took out the plastic-wrapped concert brochure that she carries with her at all times. She lovingly flipped through the glossy pages and described each member’s personality, role in the group dynamic, and level of appeal.





Here are Nong Mae and I on an elephant. The whole elephant show experience added another layer for my ponderings about animal-domination/anthropomorphism-tourism (for lack of a better word). Both here and in South Africa, taking animals from nature and training out their wildness is a serious industry. It’s sad but also it’s weird. How and why is it that people somehow end up paying to see elephants trained to bob up and down to Black Eyed Peas?

Now it’s back to classes. It’s getting rather tiring sitting through seven hours of class a day. This doesn’t bode terribly well for my impending career as a teacher, nor does my inability to speak the Thai language and my continued ignorance of how to teach. Oh well.

What else is new with you, dear reader? You haven’t been e-mailing me as I requested. And no one ever comments. Is the comment feature broken? My sister thinks so.

And what’s happening in the news? I think maybe I’ve never been so disconnected from American news in all my life. Did you know that over here they call the recession the “Hamburger Recession” because it was started in America?

Yours truly,
Rebecca

Thai language class...

is really hard.

I have included a special message for all of you back home:




It means (roughly):
Hello. I miss you. Everything tastes like fish here. I love you. Goodbye.

I had a homestay this weekend. It was really lovely. My Thai family was incredibly kind and gave me a Thai nickname (Lintse). I'll write more when I get a chance?

Okay take care.

Yours,
Rebecca

Pictures, too!

If you click on the Picasa Photostream "gadget" on the left you can see some more pictures from the first week, if you're so included.

Yours,
R

One week in...

Greetings friends!

I’ve now been in Bangkok for one week and two days now. How time flies, yes?

And what a city. I can’t think of any city I’ve spent time in that compares in effect to Bangkok. It’s a world of a city; just eight million people but all of them living amongst a sea of skyscrapers spread in every direction, reaching into apparent infinitude. Between all the skyscrapers is everything really: neighborhoods, used car parts stores, high-end shopping centers, 7-11s, temples, shacks, packs of dogs, monks, silk-screen shops, salons and street vendors, and so, so many people.

For the most part, I’ve been busy with orientation. Every morning our conspicuous little flock of American girls walks through the streets of waking Bangkok to Chulalongkorn University for training. Your tax dollars are treating us to a speedy but rigorous education in Thai culture, language, economics, history, politics and education policy, as well a primer in being an educator and in teaching English to speakers of another language. We spend our days absorbing all of this information as presented by a panoply of Thai government officials, American diplomats, and university professors. It’s the next best thing to happen to me since school ended. It does make me aware of how unqualified I am to teach, and especially to teach English (our lecturer today asked how we would explain the past subjunctive tense…), but I’m here so I suppose that’s really a moot point.

I spent the weekend industriously touristing. Within about thirty-six hours we visited Chinatown, shopped in a gigantic and packed market in north Bangkok, took a boat up the main river, visited several Wats and a Golden Mount, went to a bar dripping with farangs (foreigners), and trekked many miles for an American style Sunday brunch. The only part of the weekend worth writing home about was our Friday night visit to an exclusive club for Bangkok’s rich and fabulous (“hi-so,” if you will). A chance invitation landed us in the company of fashionable and glamorous Thais, including not just a senator but also the son of a publishing magnate, as well as German-Korean model. We stuck out like sore, unfashionable thumbs.

I’ve put up some pictures if you’re interested. I’m off to orientation now. I take an oath that my future entries will be more interesting. Please take care. And do send me e-mails? You’re not the only one who is bored by the fact that I only talk about myself in these entries.

Yours,
Rebecca

P.S. re: Arrival

Here I am at an internet cafe with Anna! Now you have photographic proof I am here!

I will post more pictures later, I promise.

Arrival

Dear readers,

Whew!

I arrived in Bangkok late Friday night, pallid and confused from a near sleepless thirty hours in planes and airports. The forty-five minute drive into Bangkok was a steamy and surreal final leg of the journey, towers of glass and light rising up to meet us as we rumbled towards our new home. The night air was terribly hot and heavy, its effect a bit like a warm and buzzing embrace.

The sun woke me yesterday from a night of dreamless sleep. For the next month I am staying with the nine other Fulbright English Teaching Assistants (ETAs) at the Suskit Nives International House of Chulalongkorn University. The room is nice: a rectangle; two single beds with hard mattresses draped in shiny sky-blue polyester sheets that rustle; institution-white walls; florescent lights and not enough of them; air-conditioning; and a beautiful mint-teal fridge that is really the heart of the room. My roommate Rachel is from Lafayette, Louisiana and graduated from Hendrix. She, along with all of other ETAs, seems interesting and bright. Our neighborhood is centrally located, and characterized by crowded streets, diverse smells and busy shops with faded awnings.

No one seems to have very high expectations for us for the first two days. Our only official task yesterday was a brief meeting with the lovely program coordinator Siriporn. She delivered our first month’s stipend in the form of a large taped envelope stuffed with baht, took us on a walk around the neighborhood, and then left for a massage appointment. I spent what feels like the bulk of the day in one of Bangkok’s largest malls, the MBK shopping center. It is no mid-western mall of the Americas but rather a six-story explosion of activity that is one part mall, two parts market, and packed with people from wall to wall. The fourth floor, dedicated entirely to cell phones, is a labyrinth of narrow and loud stands pushing imposter iphones and “blackberys” (I have a phone now. Do call me!). The MBK also provided hours of gratuitous people watching, ideal for studying the social codes and fashion habits of Thai young and old. I am trying to soak up as much as I can in the vain hope that this will help me avoid some number of gaffes in the future.

In the evening we had our first Thai dinner at a small noodle house in the neighborhood and walked back through a bustling Saturday night street market. Looking for a drink on the way back to our dorm, Anna and I happened an exceptionally bizarre hotel bar. As we entered the dim purple and orange neon-lit lounge of the Siam Siam Hotel, the notes of a not-too-shabby cover of Mustang Sally surrounded us. An audience of mostly older foreigners and a few young Thai dates milled about enjoying overpriced drinks and an unreal ambiance. The wholly endearing cover band consisted of four middle aged men and two adorable women in their late twenties. They played everything from Queen to Cyndi Lauper to Elvis. I like thinking about their rehearsals, you know? How they choose those songs; if one of them is always trying to get more funk on the set list but gets shot down by the front man who thinks they should stick to top 40 songs; if they have any of their own songs; where and when they had their first rehearsal (are there garages in Thailand?). A sign on the wall advertised that the band plays at the Siam Siam every “Satursday Night.”

Now it’s Sunday, our last day of rest before orientation starts. If you’re reading this you can see I am doing swimmingly with my attempt to update my blog once a week. I think I’m also going to do some grocery shopping and stock my precious mint green fridge with yogurt and fruit. I think I may get a massage as well, and explore the large park that’s not too far from here. Tomorrow I begin orientation. Thai classes, culture classes, history classes and lots of forms. I’m sure this is all terribly interesting to you, dear reader. Perhaps (and hopefully for you) more exciting things will happen to me this week such that next week’s installation will be far more entertaining and informative. Perhaps I will share my mastery of the Thai language with you, or regale you with fascinating tid-bits from Thai history. Perhaps I will rant for a page about mundane frustrations with minor details of the public transportation system. Who knows; I’ve only been here a day!

I miss you all very much.

With love,
Rebecca

Eighty four hours,

or three days, until my 6:30 am United flight departs dear Austin.

Stay tuned for updates...

Yours,
Rebecca
(on the internet)