Retreat

We are about to say goodbye to Rochell and Ozzie. Their contracts end this month and both are leaving, Rochell will be heading to Bangkok and Ozzie will be studying at Harvard. As part of saying goodbye to both of them, and because of the long weekend, Esther organized a retreat for us.

sarah had been trying to get us to come to these lake cabins she discovered and so this was our chance. We packed our things and went for an hour's drive or so out of Chiang Mai. From there we were picked up on a boat to be ferried to our cabin. It was raining pretty hard and we all got pretty wet. Esther did her best to shield us using "the world's smallest umbrella."

Quote Esther: This is a pretty good analogy of the CV program, don't you think? 

Question for the ages: why are Kevin and Anisha wearing sunglasses?

The scenery actually reminded me a lot of New Zealand, what with the mist and rain. The weird thing about Thailand is that when it rains, it's still warm outside. so you're wet, but you're not cold. An odd sensation for this northerner. 

The cabins were actually floating cabins, situated just a few yards from shore. I was reminded of trips to my uncle's cabin in Idaho and felt right at home. We ordered lunch and began to swim while we waited. I just realized that I forgot to take a picture of the menu, which is a shame because it had the most hilarious English translations. I did take a picture of lunch however, which included this freshly caught fish. 

Because this is Thailand, the cabin had a karoake machine. In fact, many of the cabins seemed to be outfitted with this form of entertainment because we were plagued with karaoke pretty much the entire time. Oh my gosh it was awful. I was in agony. This was meant to be partially a spiritual retreat, and the off-key warbling coming from next door was particularly distracting as we tried to meditate on scripture and pray for one another. I had been hamming up my annoyance because I was expected to as the resident music major. And then I made one of the most embarrassing mistakes of my entire time in Thailand. 

The cabins weren't super tidy and there were some odd things lying around on the deck. I had gotten up to stretch my legs after a devotional and before a meeting about CV stuff. I noticed a random shot glass containing a clear, probably alcoholic liquid just sitting on this small wooden platform. Had someone left it there? How funny. "Hey guys, look!" I said, raising the shot glass in a pretend toast. They didn't seem to find the randomness quite so amusing. 

"That's for the spirit house..." someone warned me. Wha? Oops. I looked back at the platform and realized that it was decorated... The cigarettes and things littering it were actually offerings. I hastily replaced the glass and looked around to see if any Thai people had been watching. Thankfully I don't think there had been, but I was teased mercilessly by the group about how I'd brought bad luck on us all. And coincidentally, just seconds later, a group of Thais arrived at our cabin in order to do maintenance on our karaoke machine. We were subjected to lots of unpleasant, loud noises for the two hours that we were trying to hold our meeting. I will pretty much never live this down. From then on, anytime anything bad happened guess who got the blame. Not to mention the endless mocking. "Hey Heidi, this looks like a small doll house. Why don't we play with it?" Ha. Haha. After a while I told them I thought it was getting a little old, but nobody else seemed to agree. Ah well, what else am I here for. 

But despite the bad luck, it was still a good time. We spent the evening playing a great game of "golf" and listening to our own  music in order to drown out the increasingly drunken karaoke. We got to swim in the warmest lake water I've ever experienced. And overall there was a lot of great fellowship. 

A B C D... Oh forget it.

One of the reasons my students struggle with reading so much is that reading isn't really a part of Thai culture, whether it's Thai or English. With an alphabet like this, I can't say I really blame them.

In which I continue to enjoy teaching

some days you leave class with the unhappy thought that the students are no better off than they were before the lesson. And then some days, you leave class really feeling like the students actually learned something. Today is one of those days. 

I've been struggling with how to teach reading. While my students can recognize and write English words quite well, when it comes to actually understanding anything longer than a sentence, they struggle. Until today I'd been hitting a wall with how to help with this. I would have them read one paragraph at a time, and then ask them to tell me about what they read. The response was usually moderate confusion and, after some prompting, maybe one student would read me a random sentence from the paragraph or provide me with some irrelevant detail that for some reason stood out to them. 

student: Teacher, I need help. I don't understand. (points at text)

Me: so tell me about what you read

students: terrified stares of confusion

Me: What did you read here? (pointing at the first paragraph)

(A painful two minutes goes by during which I smile a lot and tell them not to be shy.) 

Brave student: jeans

Me: Okay, that's great! What about jeans?

students: blank stares

It usually ended with me explaining to them what the story was about or getting into detailed explanations of vocabulary, sometimes involving acting or makeshift props. It wasn't helping their reading skills at all and they still just didn't understand what I wanted them to do.

Today I encountered the same situation, and in an effort to elicit any response, I blurted out "who is it about?"  Well, that was a question they could answer. With vague memories of 4th grade I asked them to answer the questions who, what, when, where, why and how in relation to the text. I find it is helpful to review question words anyways as all too often I have asked something like "When do you eat lunch?" and gotten a reply like "At the canteen." 

so I had them answer who, what, when, where, why and how (when appropriate) for each paragraph in the text. I then wrote a sentence per paragraph based on their answers. Then I had them do the same thing with a new text, only this time they had to write the sentences themselves. It was amazing. I sat there and read for half an hour while feeling that there was far more learning going on than on the days I find myself dancing around trying to explain the meaning of "boundary" or some such word. There were a couple of questions about vocabulary, but the first time one of the other students knew the definition while the second time the word was "medic" and I was able to get them to figure out the meaning themselves. You cannot imagine how pleased I was about this.

 

I was a little afraid that I might be confusing them further. After all, not every paragraph of English will have the answers to all those questions and they would have to figure that out themselves. But at the end of the session I was pleasantly surprised with their summaries. They weren't perfect, but they weren't copied, they had gotten the general idea and they understood the text. I was so pleased, I just had to share the victory with you all. Unfortunately, by the time we finished it was pretty late (not my fault) and I think I tired the poor things out. As they left the building, I overheard one of the students exclaim the word "free!" 

Mother's Day Music Post

First of all I want to say, Happy Mother's Day Mom! Thank you for being the best mom ever. 





Perhaps you are wondering why this week's music post is "The Final Countdown." Well, the reason is one of the following:


a) It was the only song epic enough for Mother's Day
b) It is secretly my favorite piece of music ever
c) I accidentally posted the wrong link
d) I will have a new niece or nephew this month! 


The answers are of course "a" and "d." My brother and sister-in-law are due to have their second baby this month and  I'm super excited! After chatting with sam I realized that I may not have made people aware enough of this fact. so prayers and best wishes go out to Eric and Jenny as they prepare for this next step of parenthood!


(Coincidentally, as I was searching for a music-only clip of this on YouTube, I ran across this arrangement featuring head-banging cellists. sadly, I don't think it's tongue-in-cheek. Just when I thought musicians couldn't get any more weird.)

Another Holiday

Yesterday was Coronation Day or something like that and so we had yet another day off work. The Christian Endeavor group had a retreat planned and of course I was invited to attend. I knew it would be a bit awkward because it would be all in Thai, so I brought a book along.

We left in one of Payap's "World War II" buses. I wasn't exactly sure where we were going. According to Jew it was some sort of camp, part of a national park but a business. This didn't make much sense to me but I assumed it would be sort of wilderness-like. Of course it wasn't at all like that. It was more like a resort.

It was much what you'd expect for a faith-based retreat. There were some presentations and scripture readings and worship songs. Most of these involved hand motions. In Thailand, it's okay to do things that might be thought of as silly or childish. The whole point is "sanook" or fun. The basic idea is that if you're going to do something, you may as well have a bit of a lark doing it. I think there's actually a lot to be said for that, but I do feel a bit ridiculous sometimes. I mean, when's the last time you sang a song with hand motions when there wasn't a child around?

While I mostly sat in the corner and read, I was able to talk with a few of the students during breaks and at lunch. They were pretty excited to have me around and quite eager to practice their English. During lunch, one student peppered me with questions which I did my best to answer while eating my food. When she finally slacked off, I focused on eating my lunch. But after a few moments of silence she turned to me and said "you haven't asked me any questions yet." :-D

Thai students (and people in general) are also very affectionate. While boy-girl touching of any kind is pretty taboo in public, girls often hold hands and hug. This means that I am occasionally the recipient of unsolicited hand-holding and the like. I tolerate it, but for some reason it seriously wigs me out. I have a pretty big personal space bubble.

The most notable thing about the day was that after the usual discussion and activities, we were taken on a "tour" of the resort, which was also a sort of garden/zoo thing. Let me explain. The main feature of this place was that most of bushes were sculpted to look like animals. so there were elephant bushes, gorilla bushes, bird bushes, even some dinosaur bushes and a sea monster bush. They were actually pretty impressive. The students got unbelievably excited about it all. I couldn't believe how much they screamed. And that was before we got to the actual live animals. somehow there was a sort of miniature zoo that contained various birds and some camels. I was pretty mystified by the whole thing, but in Thailand it's best to just go with the flow.

I've had a few more students come to my room for help, which has been good and gives me the chance to blog a little bit about cultural differences and education. Namely: plagiarism. You see, the concept of an idea as private property is a bit foreign to some cultures, which means understanding of plagiarism is limited. The students who came to me were prepping for an English presentation. One of the presentations I looked over was mostly copied off of the internet. I didn't quite know how to approach the problem. I mean, you could say that I ought to lecture them about academic honesty and doing their own work, but communicating successfully on the most basic level is often a struggle. And honestly the problem is so widespread that I'm not sure it would do any good, even if I did get the message across. In their defense, the books they have and the assignments they're given are way above their level. They have to turn in something. As a tutor, my policy thus far has been to simply choose my battles and try and capitalize on any learning opportunities. If I can make it so they're actually learning something instead of just regurgitating something they found on the web, then I figure I've done my bit. It would help if I could be confident that the professors were actively enforcing, or even introducing, policies against plagiarism, but I'm doubtful. To be honest, I don't know what to do. This is something that obviously needs to change, but when it's apparent they've been getting away with it for quite some time and when the problems go deeper than laziness or dishonesty it makes me feel as though there's not much I can do, at least for these guys, especially as it's mid-term. But perhaps at the beginning of next semester I'll be able to lecture on it or something.

Another student who came to me hadn't exactly plagiarized, but she had simply written her presentation in Thai and then put it through an online translator. It made zero sense. In this case, as with most of the handful of students I've seen so far, I felt that the student assumed I would be her easy ticket out. I would simply fix all the problems and she wouldn't have to do a thing. But while I may shrink away from confronting a student about taking portions of their work off the web, my conscience stops dead at the thought of virtually authoring these students' assignments. It's agonizing, but I don't allow myself to spoon feed them any vocabulary. I do help with spelling, but mostly it's a long slow process of "explain to me what you want to say." I then have to decide how much to fix their grammar and how much to leave alone. Okay, I do occasionally supply them with a word when I feel they've done their best to explain the meaning they want, if only because it's faster than having them look it up in a dictionary, although I'm considering forcing them to do this to. This would be more possible (and things would all be much easier in general) if I knew more Thai but that can't be helped. Basically, I do the best I can and I'm working through the ethical issues. If anyone has ideas, I'm open to suggestions. And if the Higher Education Police want to take it up with me, well, I'd like to see them in my place.

But despite the challenges, I'm really starting to establish myself here. I've got a feel for how I can fit in, or at least cope, with life in this culture. This isn't to say I'm completely comfortable. I certainly couldn't move here indefinitely. But I think I might be able to handle a few more months.

Thai Food II

Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to once again take you on the culinary adventure that is Thai food. Today: weird fruit and northern Thai dishes.

To begin with, check out this weirdness:

Your eyes do not deceive you, this is a real fruit, even though it looks like something out of a Dr. suess book. It's actually pretty tasty.  Here's the inside.

Next up, we have some northern Thai dishes from an alumni event at the nursing dorm. The first one is made from "raw" or unripe jackfruit while the second is made from "raw" mango. These are similar to the more popular (not pictured) papaya salad made from, you guessed it, unripe papaya. I didn't care for the jackfruit one much. The mango one was okay. Papaya salad isn't bad, but too spicy for me. 

And here we have "khanom jeen," or as I like to call it "why exactly do people think Thai food is so great?" 

Khanom jeen is made of noodles that have, to my taste, a seriously unpleasant slimy texture and zero actual flavor. But that's okay because they add an extremely spicy broth mixed with blood to make up for the blandness. And if that wasn't appetizing enough, the dark chunks you see are bits of fried blood. MmmmMmm! I think I'll order seconds. Now that I'm a little more prepared for the weirdness of Thai food, I was actually brave enough to eat one of the blood pieces. If you can get over the texture and the knowledge that it's blood you're eating, it's actually pretty awful. The drink on the left is made from some sort of plant that grows on a bush. It's kind of sour. The green things you see are actually a sort of sweet snack wrapped in banana leaves. Imagine a cross between jello and pudding with a sort of unidentifiable purple center... 

The meal ended with a Thai dessert I'd never tried before. The photo is of the assembly process with the finished product in the bowls on the bottom left. It's kind of like a sno-cone with a mystery-flavor pink syrup. And beans and corn mixed in, because obviously those are logical dessert foods. My tastebuds were seriously confused. Plus it melted after about five seconds so that it basically resembled a bowl of pepto-bismol.

I will end this post with a less confusing but equally strange dessert. Presenting "D-milk."

D-milk is, I guess, a sort of chain. Like Dairy Queen or something. They specialize in milkshakes that have very elaborate toppings. The kicker is that the actual shake tastes like the leftover milk from a cereal bowl. And I'm not talking your boring Fiber One adult cereal. I'm talking Lucky Charms. You can choose up to four toppings to go with your leftover cereal milk, like sprinkles or cornflakes. It is definitely strange but not bad. It mostly makes me want to go watch saturday morning cartoons. 

p.s. I was watching "Foyle's War" on YouTube the other day (excellent show! I highly recommend!) and in the episode one the characters was eating a sandwich. It looked soooo good. Add that to the list of foods I'm going to eat when I come home. And steak. And macaroni and cheese. Maybe all at once. You see, living abroad makes you appreciate the little things. 

Actual Easter Post

Now that I'm done geeking out over Bach's unlikely marriage with the Punch Brothers, here's some actual life news.

I am very excited to announce that the theology student I was tutoring last semester is now my coworker! Jew has become the chaplain of the nursing dorm and lives just two floors down. I can't even begin to tell you how much easier this will make my life. For one thing, Jew is Thai and can translate things for me, as well as help me to avoid unintentionally breaking the rules or making slip ups in this working culture. I suspect she will even be able to function as a line of communication between me and the staff of the nursing dorm. Because Thais avoid confrontation, the only way I've found out if I've been doing something wrong has been through third parties. What's more, Jew will provide a great link between me and the nursing students since we'll be working together on a lot of student activities. Plus she's just a spiffing person, so you can see why I'm very pleased to be working alongside her.

I had heard rumors that Jew might become the chaplain at the nursing dorm, but I didn't realize this meant she would be living there. To be honest, I'd kind of forgotten about it what with trying to figure out my own job. so I was very surprised to see her on the premises on Friday. I immediately congratulated her and invited her to join me for the Good Friday Tenebrae service at the chapel. If you haven't been to a Tenebrae service, it's a very reflective and moving way to spend Good Friday. It was a good evening of fellowship, and doubly so as I was able to celebrate Jew's recent employment with her over dinner.

On saturday, Mai had planned another excursion to the "sticky waterfall" because she has a friend from home visiting. I didn't have other plans, so I decided to come along. The group was a rather random mix of people, some from Thai class and some I'd never met before. But we had a good time although I got a little sunburnt and somewhat sore. I must be getting out of shape... This time we stopped at a cave that's been turned into a sort of temple. It was pretty neat. There was a giant statue of Buddha inside and some other ornaments. It made me wish we could have church in caves.

I decided to call it a night early as Jew had invited me to come to Payap Church's sunrise service on sunday. since I haven't had any morning commitments in a while, I haven't really been getting up before 9:00 a.m., so I wasn't sure if I could pull it off. But somehow I managed to drag myself out of bed four hours earlier than usual and make myself look somewhat presentable. It was good to do something special for Easter, even if it was an overwhelming amount of Thai for 6:00 a.m. Luckily they have a translation service, and I had a personal translator besides. Afterwards there was a potluck of sorts, and I was dreading the prospect of Thai food so early in the morning, but I needn't have worried. Along with the boiled rice there were eggs, sausage and donut along with the usual offering of nescafe. The breakfast of champions! Afterwards I'll confess I went back to bed for a few hours before attending my usual church's Easter service. '

That evening I'd promised Jew I would attend and help with an Easter presentation she'd put together. It was mostly with members of Christian Endeavor, but some of the students were Buddhists who were simply curious about this foreign holiday. Jew had asked me to share my understanding of Easter briefly for them, say in five minutes or so as she didn't want the event to go over half an hour. Trying to explain the meaning of Easter to people who maybe aren't familiar with it in a way that is easy to understand and/or translate in under five minutes is a bit of a challenge. Plus I had an M. Div student sitting next to me. I didn't really get through everything I had planned, but Jew seemed to appreciate my effort and it was neat to share my faith in a low-pressure setting with people who were genuinely interested. I'm looking forward to doing more with the Christian Endeavor group and am glad that I'll have Jew to help direct me.

Today I finally got myself back in a practice room after an inexcusable hiatus. I've actually made out a written practice chart that I've posted on my door in order to keep myself accountable. I was looking forward to my English class in the afternoon, but it's exam week so nobody showed up. such is the life of a volunteer English teacher in Thailand.

A bit on teaching, since I haven't posted much about it. Teaching English here is a unique challenge because of the culture. Because of the concept of saving face and also because of the traditional mode of instruction, Thai students are very reluctant to ask questions or tell you if they don't understand something. I can very carefully explain an activity in English and then ask "do you understand?" and be met with a room full of nods and smiles. But as one of the books Esther assigned us to read points out, this often means little more than "I acknowledge that you have said something to me." To admit you don't understand is to lose face, or to make your instructor lose face. It is the same with asking questions. I cannot rely on the expectation that my students will ask questions when they don't understand something. To do so would be disrespectful and make me as a teacher lose face. It is an interesting challenge considering I cannot communicate with them in their first language.

This evening I accompanied Jew to dinner and, knowing how important inclusiveness is in Thai culture, I invited her to come and watch tv in my room since hers doesn't have one. I never watch tv here for the simple reason that I can't understand anything, but Jew was a good sport and explained to me what was going on. We watched a Japanese game show involving people dressed up in costumes that looked like pokemon. They had to compete in different contests, including racing toward a giant fan, performing a vault, sumo wrestling and my personal favorite, keeping a balloon attached to them intact while being attacked by an army of children. Gotta love Japanese entertainment.

And so life continues to be an interesting mix of new experiences, or non-experiences as with the case of my all-too-frequently cancelled classes. Pohb gan mai ka.