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Thailand is proving to be all I hoped it could be, and less. I’m in my 7th month here, and I’ve been teaching on some level pretty much since I arrived. I was working part-time with two different private schools in Chiang Mai, and now I teach at Nakhon Sawan English School in Nakhon Sawan. The schools have been very different, as are the impressionable young minds I am misshaping.
At ALC, I trained flight attendant hopefuls for industry-specific English usage. I also taught them to mistrust men. At Kumon, I taught mostly reading pronunciation to kids between 6 and 14 years of age. Both gigs were very rewarding and fun for completely different reasons, but both were part-time, and I had to move on toward something more stable. Thus, my move to Nakhon Sawan. Most Thai students are hard-working and respectful to the core. Some are very shy and have performance anxiety in front of the teachers, especially the foreign ones, and some are absolutely unself-conscious and blissfully silly.
Having said that, My Nakhon Sawan students are all drop-outs from other schools, and I am a disciplinarian more than a teacher. They are nightmares, every last one, and putting me in charge of discipline is indeed a cosmic jest. And if I have to confiscate one more cell-phone or digital translation unit from these little shavers, I’m goin’ Godzilla on someone. Furthermore, the admin guy that hired me is hardwired to be incompetent, and has screwed up everyone’s work visas.
I am currently entertaining an offer for a full-time contract at a kindergarten school with some 400 – 500 kids. If it comes through, I will stay for sure. I like Nakhon Sawan better than Chiang Mai, because it is smaller and less touristy. White guys are a rarity here, and I’m kind of like a minor celebrity. Not like a rock star, but more like a game show host. The city marks the center of the country, and is much more upcountry, with villages and rice fields all around. The people are also more village-y, and they have a weathered ruddiness that lends them a rather more fearsome aspect. They are also more traditional than the Guns N Roses Thais of Chiang Mai, and the Metro wannabes of Bangkok. They are much closer to their Buddhism, and respect and peace is very much central to their mind-set. And that’s rad. The little kids shout “Hello!” and the really tiny ones count coo, like monkeys and Native American braves. They appear out of nowhere, slap your calf, and dart away giggling. It’s really fun. There is a big lake in the center of town that has been converted to a park, with running trails and fitness machines out for free use. There goes my every excuse. The lake is boiling with fish, and permits no fishing, so one of my favorite pastimes is to feed the fish with Thais off the center of the bridge. Some catfish are 5 or 6 feet long. I buy loaves of stale bread for pennies and toss the crumbly bits to the fish. There is one particular species of fish that can evidently see up and out of the water, and they can time a leap to snatch the bread before it hits the water, thus screwing over the others. (Thus passing on the jumping genes to ever larger egg sacs than the others, blah blah)
The wildlife here is much richer, including monitor lizards, monkeys, giant centipedes, and dragon flies that could transport packaged goods if they were trainable. Speaking of trainable, and I’ll end for now with this; I was the hapless victim of a macaque attack. I was trekking up a mossy and overgrown stair set, seemingly endless, to one of the mountain temples, and was brained by a coconut. As I stumbled around and fell, a big macaque (monkey of the Gibbon family) dropped out of a tree and started slapping me on the belly. It turns out, owners of plantations hire a service to harvest coconuts, and the service consists of a dude with a macaque. The monkey scales the trees and throws down the coconuts, and is later fed for his efforts. When they get too old to do 100 or so nuts an hour, they are replaced by young ones, and driven away. This was one such, and he thought he was being a good boy, but I thought he was attacking me. That’s right… I got my ass handed to me by a homeless, out of work monkey. What’re ya gonna do?
At ALC, I trained flight attendant hopefuls for industry-specific English usage. I also taught them to mistrust men. At Kumon, I taught mostly reading pronunciation to kids between 6 and 14 years of age. Both gigs were very rewarding and fun for completely different reasons, but both were part-time, and I had to move on toward something more stable. Thus, my move to Nakhon Sawan. Most Thai students are hard-working and respectful to the core. Some are very shy and have performance anxiety in front of the teachers, especially the foreign ones, and some are absolutely unself-conscious and blissfully silly.
Having said that, My Nakhon Sawan students are all drop-outs from other schools, and I am a disciplinarian more than a teacher. They are nightmares, every last one, and putting me in charge of discipline is indeed a cosmic jest. And if I have to confiscate one more cell-phone or digital translation unit from these little shavers, I’m goin’ Godzilla on someone. Furthermore, the admin guy that hired me is hardwired to be incompetent, and has screwed up everyone’s work visas.
I am currently entertaining an offer for a full-time contract at a kindergarten school with some 400 – 500 kids. If it comes through, I will stay for sure. I like Nakhon Sawan better than Chiang Mai, because it is smaller and less touristy. White guys are a rarity here, and I’m kind of like a minor celebrity. Not like a rock star, but more like a game show host. The city marks the center of the country, and is much more upcountry, with villages and rice fields all around. The people are also more village-y, and they have a weathered ruddiness that lends them a rather more fearsome aspect. They are also more traditional than the Guns N Roses Thais of Chiang Mai, and the Metro wannabes of Bangkok. They are much closer to their Buddhism, and respect and peace is very much central to their mind-set. And that’s rad. The little kids shout “Hello!” and the really tiny ones count coo, like monkeys and Native American braves. They appear out of nowhere, slap your calf, and dart away giggling. It’s really fun. There is a big lake in the center of town that has been converted to a park, with running trails and fitness machines out for free use. There goes my every excuse. The lake is boiling with fish, and permits no fishing, so one of my favorite pastimes is to feed the fish with Thais off the center of the bridge. Some catfish are 5 or 6 feet long. I buy loaves of stale bread for pennies and toss the crumbly bits to the fish. There is one particular species of fish that can evidently see up and out of the water, and they can time a leap to snatch the bread before it hits the water, thus screwing over the others. (Thus passing on the jumping genes to ever larger egg sacs than the others, blah blah)
The wildlife here is much richer, including monitor lizards, monkeys, giant centipedes, and dragon flies that could transport packaged goods if they were trainable. Speaking of trainable, and I’ll end for now with this; I was the hapless victim of a macaque attack. I was trekking up a mossy and overgrown stair set, seemingly endless, to one of the mountain temples, and was brained by a coconut. As I stumbled around and fell, a big macaque (monkey of the Gibbon family) dropped out of a tree and started slapping me on the belly. It turns out, owners of plantations hire a service to harvest coconuts, and the service consists of a dude with a macaque. The monkey scales the trees and throws down the coconuts, and is later fed for his efforts. When they get too old to do 100 or so nuts an hour, they are replaced by young ones, and driven away. This was one such, and he thought he was being a good boy, but I thought he was attacking me. That’s right… I got my ass handed to me by a homeless, out of work monkey. What’re ya gonna do?
God D##m you crack me up. i think you should befriend the monkey and make him your pet. Seems he might come in handy, why I don't know. Gimme more picures!!! And more comments!!
ReplyDeleteSo, it took me a few minutes to compose my self after reading this update. F$%k dude,my side hurts and i think i can now muster up the strength to pick up my chair. King of the Hominid's my a#s. A monkey kicked yo a#s. I agree with Rob and think you should befriend this out of work, homeless macaque. Again, not sure why but, it seems like the right thing to do.
ReplyDelete