Sakon Nakhon--The Beginning

I started teaching on Monday, and within hours, I was reminded of my purpose here. I think perhaps I misunderstood where I could find my happiness in Thailand. I imagined I would find happiness where I found it while studying abroad—on weekend excursions to new places, exploring new cultures and meeting new people and having new adventures. I think travelling on the weekends will be harder than I thought: I am very far North, I cannot leave Thailand until I receive my work visa, I don’t have many vacation days, and if I want to go anywhere in Thailand, I first need to fly to Bangkok, because the airport in my little province only has flights to and from Bangkok.

Of course, there will be plenty of time to travel when I am done teaching in March. I finish teaching March 10, but I don’t need to leave Thailand until March 31, and I think I can save up enough money to travel around for those 21 days.

The upside? Unlike study abroad, which was incredibly satisfying Saturday and Sunday but a boring and tedious experience Monday through Friday, I am immensely enjoying what I do Monday through Friday here.

I had no idea what I was doing when I stood at the front of the classroom on Monday. Truly, honestly, no idea. I am not a teacher. I have never planned a lesson before. Moments before my first class I scrambled to print out Taylor Swift “You Belong With Me” lyrics and blanked out a few words for the students to fill in, but besides that, I was really winging my first lesson. And I don’t like winging anything in my life.

I was planning on introducing myself with an “All About Me” activity we’d learned during orientation, but I was even nervous to do this, because I knew my first class had already done the same activity with the other American OEG teacher at my school. So I figured the activity would bore them. Honestly, my back-up plan was to play hangman for 50 minutes.

If I thought I was unprepared, I was even more thrown off when I said to the class, “Okay, let’s get started,” and they all stood up and said “Good afternoon, Teacher!” And then remained standing. I smiled and nodded. They kept standing. I was becoming really frazzled by this and said, “Okay, okay,” but still they stood.

Finally, I said, “You can sit now,” and they did. Apparently, they cannot sit without my instruction to do so. If I hadn’t caught on, they would have stood the whole class.

Also, when I walk through the hallways, all the students put their hands together in front of their chest and bow to me, even the youngest children or the oldest, “coolest” boys. The level of respect towards teachers here is unfathomable to me—when, in the U.S., have I ever bowed to anyone?

So then I played the Taylor Swift song. Although they are M5 (meaning, juniors in high school), they knew a lot less English than the M4 students (sophomores). My program is specially designed for a select few 180 students out of a school of 3,000. The program teaches all classes—math, science, physics—in English, so it’s like an intensive program. It started only three years ago, and as the years have gone by, it’s become so popular that we now select the top 10% of all students in a grade, and Thai parents spend an extra 20,000 baht ($600 U.S. dollars, a LOT in Thailand), for their child to be in this program. I’ve been told that this is why the older students, the program “guinea pigs,” are not as good at English as the younger ones, who have been more carefully selected.

So I spent the first five minutes after the song ended trying to explain what a “park bench” was, and why Taylor Swift was sitting on it.

I’m not sure how well I did at explaining. I mostly just pointed at my chair and said, “This… except on grass.”

Then we filled the rest of the class with random games I learned during orientation. They were very timid and shy students, and would not participate if I did not allow them to do so with a friend. After class, one girl came up to me and said, “Can you speak slower next time?” I’d been nervous about speaking condescendingly towards them, like they were idiots, so I was appreciative of the feedback. Then a 16-year-old French foreign exchange student (you can absolutely tell he is not from here… in a sea of black hair, I noticed his blonde hair and blue eyes immediately and thought, How did you end up here?) approached me and tentatively asked, in English, “Why do you come to Thailand?” We spoke for a few minutes and I gathered some of his story, and then I said, “Well, your English is very good.”

“Not as good as yours though, Teacher!” He said emphatically. I promised him I wouldn’t have been nearly as good at French as he was, if roles were reversed.

I am shocked by how close the students are with the teachers here. Many students hang out in our office with us until we leave around 5 p.m., just for fun. In-between classes, students come into our office to play games, always asking us to join them. They joke with us in English and ask us if we are married. After class, my students hang around me, and I am usually the first one to leave the classroom.

Yesterday, a student found me at my desk and asked if I would eat lunch with her and her friend Fluke. I sat with her and him and asked them questions in English and they spoke back respectfully and excitedly. She told me she is so happy I am here because now she can practice her English. I practically apologized to Fluke when it was just the two of us, saying, “Is it strange for you to eat lunch with the teacher?” He barely understood the question, and I don’t think it was just because the literal translation was hard. For him, and many of the students, there are no boundaries between “cool” and “uncool” when it comes to hanging out with the teachers. In fact, I think the coolest kids are the ones who go out of their way to sit with us and talk with us.

Today, Fluke and the girl (I think her name is Oom?) came straight to my desk at noon and said, “Let’s go to lunch, Teacher!” Five more students joined us outside, and they sat with me and spoke in English for MY sake, helped me pick out my meal and carried my food for me because they WANTED to, and laughed at my “jokes” even if they did not understand me.

My favorite part? When we were walking from the school building today I said, “Oh, it’s so nice out today! I love the sun!” Fluke, the sweetest looking 14-year-old boy, turns to me and says, “I hate the sun. Too hot.” After I ordered my food, I found Fluke and said, “Where are we sitting?” And he said, “I picked a table near the sun for you, since you like it so much, even though it is too hot,” and then gave me this shy little smile.

Anyways, back to Monday. So then I taught M4. This is my favorite (am I allowed to say that?) class so far. They are the only class I teach every single day, and every day, they are SO excited to learn. They laugh a lot and get outrageously excited and competitive and are incredibly good at English, flying through the Taylor Swift worksheet no problem and actually demanding I make one of my games “harder” for them.

They are also, in some ways, a lot like American kids. The boys know how to “dap” and do it when they get an answer correct. They talk to each other a lot and get bored easily, so I try to switch up my games as quickly as possible. But they are truly the sweetest kids I have ever met. They hang on every word I say and often repeat the words they like. They ask questions like, “Can you teach us past tense?” They have great difficulty saying “I’ll,” instead of “I will,” but they think it’s funny so they repeat me often. They truly want to learn the language, and they are so respectful. If I talk and a student is talking, the other students turn to him/her and say, “Shh! Teacher is talking!” I love them.

            Besides the students, I love my coworkers. They are mostly all from the Philippines, so they are foreigners as well, and they all speak English when I am around so I can be included. They ask a lot of questions, and last night they invited me shopping and to dinner with them.  At dinner, they invited me to their house one night to cook me Phillipino food, and have given me answers to any questions I have. They are incredibly inclusive and welcoming and laugh a lot, even in the office, and step away from their desks whenever students ask to play games with them. Tonight they took me to the market because they wanted to show me where to get fruits and vegetables as well as the “greatest pad thai in Sakon Nakhon,” and on the way back they continued to mention all the survival tips they’ve come up with since living in Sakon Nakhon. They even walked with me to the pharmacy because they wanted to help me translate “aspirin,” even though they don’t know any more Thai than I do. The four of us stood together at the counter anyway, pointing to our heads and saying the word slowly, “as-pir-IN,” as if this is all that is needed for translation.

            I’ve gotten a little more used to living alone, although sometimes it makes me sad. Luckily, I am so busy that I really just come home to sleep. Also, the owner of my building is this old Thai man, and he might be my favorite person in Thailand. He is so petite, all his clothes practically hang off of him, and he has this wide grin. Whenever he sees me he follows me to my door just to hang around outside of it and practice speaking English, of which he knows only a few words. So he will say, “How are you?” and then I will practice responding in Thai, and he will say, “Yes, we will teach each other!” And then he gets excited and laughs. And on Sunday he knocked at my door at 9 p.m. with a blue plastic chair for me and said, “For you. Also… I come… fix,” he paused and pointed at my dresser, which has a drawer that is loose, “tomorrow.”

            “Great!” I said, and then grabbed my Google translator and typed in: mosquito netting. I pointed the phone at him. “Do I need one of these?”

            He peered at it and then said, “Ah!” and left. I closed the door. Ten minutes later he was back with his own personal bug spray. He handed it to me and said, “Use this.” Then he just smiled at me until I said, “Okay, well, goodnight.” He liked that word a lot, and repeated it a few times: Goodnight, goodnight, goodnight.

            Lastly, my Thai coordinator (the Thai teacher basically responsible for my adjustment as a teacher and as a foreigner in my province) has been wonderful. Every night he picks me and the other American up for dinner and takes us to new places because, as he says, “I want to give you options so you know where to go on your own.” He is like a parent. He takes me to the store to buy cleaning supplies and food and shampoo and to the pharmacy and shows me the “American” tasting coffee shops (there is exactly two in this area, and they’re a little far, so I can’t get there Monday-Friday. During the week, instead, I drink orange tea with condensed milk from the school cafeteria because it is my only option). He translates for me and makes promises like, “this weekend, I show you hiking spot!” and “I will talk with my hospital friend to see if you need malaria shots.” Also, today he offered to go with me tomorrow to the songtaew stop (like a pick-up truck that acts as a bus), and to speak with the driver to get the schedule for me, although, as he warned me: “Thailand is underdeveloped, not like Japan or America. So there is no schedule. It comes when it wants to come. So, every day is adventure!” I appreciated the positive spin he put on it. I would really be lost without him.

            All of this being said, I would be lying if I said I didn’t have days or nights when I think to myself, Wait… this isn’t like study abroad at all. It’s so dirty. The shops creep me out and there is no Western food ANYWHERE, so I am stuck eating rice and meat for the next 6 months. I don’t love a lot of the food. My town is not exactly beautiful. Most shops are falling apart and most roads are dirt. There are bugs in my apartment at all times, despite my attempts to keep everything closed. They don’t even use toilet paper here. Most people don’t really know any English at all, outside the school, so I walk around pointing my phone at people once it has translated a word for me. Yesterday, I tried to find an apple or a salad after school because I didn’t want rice as a snack, and all the shopowners shook their heads and said, “no fruit or vegetable here. Spaghetti?” Why the hell am I doing this?

            But, so far, if nothing else, I have found the answer in the people here—my students, my coworkers, the Thai man who owns this building. Perhaps part of travel is adjusting to the gritty, un-glamorous, even painful bits. It certainly shows me all I should never take for granted in America—and it also shows me the many ways people in Sakon Nakhon find creative and indirect (by American standards) routes to their own versions of happiness.

I asked one of the Phillipino women yesterday why she has decided to stay in Sakon Nakhon for three years now, despite her original intention to stay 6 months.
"I stay for the students. I love them,” She responded easily.

^The cutest lunch buddies! Fluke, Oom, and others.