So what should one do without a job? I realize I should be delighted to have these few days of nothingness. When is the next time I will be able to spend a week doing whatever, whenever and however I want? No deadlines, no alarms, and no responsibility. This all seemed fine and good until one morning I woke up to no internet. In a world that is just a few clicks away from wifi, take it away and what does one do?
Honestly, I’m still not really sure? I only have fifty or so songs downloaded onto my computer (at home I live off Pandora and here 8track), I don’t have a TV or any movies (project free tv and hulu), I upload books onto my nook for free from the library and they expire every two weeks aka I needed to update it and most importantly how am I suppose to research and plan the next month’s worth of travel without internet? What has my world come to? An internet dependent life to say the least.
After cleaning the dishes, sweeping, hanging my clothes to dry, walking to buy coffee and eating breakfast—I was completely out of ideas of what to do? Should I go shopping, always a good idea? Then I remembered the good ole days of Word Perfect and how I could actually write a blog post in Word and wow post into the lands of the Internets when they are alive and well again.
So, I shuffled through my measly excuse for an itunes library and settled on Gavin DeGraw—bringing me back to tenth grade promises of a Riverfest preformance (which sadly did not happen..too cool for school) and started typing away. I’m not even sure where this blog post is going?
My life is bizarre in Thailand. There are plenty interesting things I could/should write about. But, five months here, I can’t remember what is strange and what isn’t anymore. What are things that people at home would want to read about (aka my family, pretty sure no one else reads this?)? So we can settle with A Day in the Life of Teacher Esther. Why not..? I suppose if it isn’t interesting, we can blame it on the lack of creative juju that comes from wifi land.
Monday through Friday, I wake up around 6-6:30. Depending on which coffee spot I want to go to—one on the way to school (more expensive, but a wonderful AC break on the blisteringly hot walk to school) or the one a little past school. The walk to school takes about ten minutes. Every day I walk by 1 temple, 2 coffee shops, 3 traffic policemen blowing their whistles every two seconds for no reason, 4-6 stray dogs, 7 smelly garbage cans and almost get hit by at LEAST 8 cars.
I have three classes with 35-38 students in each and I teach each class twice a day. The school is set up in a square, with a large courtyard in the middle. In the center of the courtyard there is a large Buddha statue and this is where Flag ceremony is held every day. All the doors are sliding doors, like the doors on the way to the balcony of a beach condo (sliding doors are everywhere here), but instead of leading you to a beautiful view of the beach, they lead into the classroom. Each room has two sliding doors, but no windows. The rooms do feel bright and happy though and everything is painted purple—the school’s and the princess’s color. All rooms have fans and AC—we are lucky, because it gets extremely hot.
Flag Ceremony, one of those things that is extremely bizarre initially, but now feels normal. First, I must explain about the speakers that are all throughout Thailand. Thailand has speakers everywhere throughout cities and is very 1984-esque in that announcements and songs are constantly blasting. If one is lucky enough to be caught during a playing of the National Anthem, you must stand respectfully still no matter what you maybe doing at that moment. The whole city just freezes—quite freaky to see.
At 7:45 we are signaled by the Flag Song that is it time to report to the courtyard. Each class stands in two straight lines: one for boys one for girls and the teachers stand on either side. The teachers use this time to “check” all the students. The girls cannot have hair longer than chin length and for boys if there is enough to pull—it is too long, finger nails must be cut short, shirts tucked in and girls must have a bow in their hair. One day, one of my teachers put neon rubber bands on the boy’s hair that was too long. They had little ponytails all over their heads—it looked very silly.
So flag starts with the Anthem. We must all stand still with our arms by our side. Following the anthem, two students from P5 (grade 5, here it is called Prathom 5) lead the school in a call and response singing prayer. Since I am in an area with only kindergarten students, it sounds awful. My students are always off key and late/early. Following the prayer, we have announcements. This is all in Thai and everyone is sweating bullets at this point. Or at least all the foreign teachers and all the kids are, I don’t know how, but my Thai teachers never seem to be sweating. Sometimes announcements last two minutes and sometimes they last close to fifteen and I never have a clue what is going on. I normally bring out my phone and look at Instragm pictures—Friday is the best because #TBT pictures distract me from the unbearable heat.
Once dismissed we return to our AC filled classroom. At this point one of the students puts out four small chairs for the teachers: head teacher, co-teacher, student teacher and me. We all sit and the co-teacher calls up each student one at a time. They must one-by-one wai, Sa-wat-dee-kah and hug all Thai teachers and then wai, good morning to me. Yes, I hug 38 snotty 4 and 5 years olds every single morning. After this process is finished, I have a little time to facebook, email or lesson plan before I teach my first lesson.
I then teach back to back rotating through the three pre-k classes. Each week is a different topic and is the same topic that the Thai teachers teach, so they learn all the vocabulary in Thai and in English. This is a good and bad thing. Sometimes when translated into English, the topic doesn’t make any sense. For example one week was Magic Eyes, one week sticky rice—how I am suppose to teach about sticky rice for a solid week and what the heck is Magic Eyes?
It is incredibly hard to hold the attention of 37 Thai students for even five minutes, but they love competition, so we spent a lot of time playing games: Girls versus Boys, students versus teacher etc. While I am teaching, at least one Thai teachers stays in the classroom (or they are supposed to). They sit to the side with a ruler in hand ready to whack anyone playing, talking, or as they like to say “being naughty.” At first, watching the students get hit was a weird thing. But, after trying to teach a few lessons without my Thai Teachers present, I realized I needed them there. Most of the time they just instill fear in the kids (not necessarily a good thing..), but the kids know I would never hit them, so why would they ever pay attention to me? Towards the end of the semester, I did get to were I could handle the class on my own, but it was exhausting and the quick easy fix = Thai Teachers mere presence in the classroom.
So after teaching three lessons, we head to canteen for lunch around 11. The students sit in an open area cafeteria: girls on one side, boys on the other. They walk to the cafeteria in two lines and split down the middle once they reach the canteen. One spoon, one fork and one bowl/plate of food: one portion of food and if still hungry, they raise their had and we come give them another serving. They don’t have anything to drink and there is no option of what they eat. If they don’t like it that day, too bad—eat it anyway (and the teachers make them eat it).
After they have finished (teachers make this a crazy fast process), we send down the dessert box where they use their fork to stick whatever gummy treat they will have that day. They pop the treat into their mouth and the slide the box down the table and put their fork and spoon into box that comes next and then slide that down. Very robotic and assembly line-esque. As soon as the two boxes reach the end, clap-clap “boys stand up” and the boys file into line, push in their chairs and carry their dish to a large trash can, pour in any left over food, and then place the dish into a large vat of dirty dishes. I then take the kids back to the classroom where they take off their shoes (students never wear shoes in the class, forgot to mention that), grab their tooth brush and metal cup. Then they sit in two lines in the hallway. Clap-Clap— “Girl stand up” and the girls file down the hallway holding out their toothbrush and I put toothpaste on for each of them and they respond with “Brush my teeth, thank you teacher,” some of the suck ups even say “Thank you, I love you.”
I then stand at the bathroom doors, “hurry, hurry, hurry, lay-o, lay-o, lay-o” (lay-o= hurry in thai and after teaching pre-k for 6 months I tend to repeat things three times..). Once they finish drinking water and brushing their teach, they grab their pallets and silk blankets and pillows, find their spots on the floor and sit quietly. This is my cue that it is time to go to lunch. At this point the Thai teachers lead them in a prayer and then they nap. I spend the first hour of nap time at lunch. Every day I go to my Vegetarian restaurant for lunch, get a mango for dessert and a coffee for a treat. When I get back the lights are out and the AC is on full blast. The best and worst part of the day. Sometimes the kids really fall asleep, but more often that not they don’t. They squirm and roll around and it is really hard to keep them quiet. Especially since nap time sometimes last as long as 11:30-2:45. It is a range and sometimes it isn’t that long, but sometimes it really is that long, which is crazy.
The thai teachers decide when it is time to get up and each teacher is a bit different. When the lights come back on, half the kids jump up and other half are lost in a sleep trance so deep that even their friend’s tugs, yells and shakes can’t break. At this point, I grab the baby powder—yes another thing that seemed very odd in the beginning. All the students wash their face with water and then hold their hands to get baby powdered—I pour baby powder on their hands and then they rub it all over their face. The idea is that it cools you down and it actually does work. As you get older you learn to rub in the powder, but in pre-k they kids just spend the rest of the day with splotchy white patches all over their face.
They once again sit in two lines and wait for the afternoon prayer. Once they pray they systematically grab one bag of milk, one straw, and one snack. The snack and the straw go in their top pocket and they hold the milk with two hands, while I cut a small slit in the top of the bag (where the straw is later inserted). Then sit down, drink milk and eat a snack. Every day, same exact process. Some days bags of milk slip to the floor and some days they eat chocolate granola bars, some days fruit, but without fail the process of the day remains the same. Thai school is full of structured events.
After snack, I read a story to each class. But, you can’t really read the story. They won’t be interested in the least. Pretty quickly, I picked up on what words they know and what story lines they like. Same as any other kids around the world, they laugh when you change your voice, love to repeat words/yell using motions and the biggest success of the year is putting the ones that are well behaved into the story. They just love it. Once upon a time Penguin…. (in case you are confused Penguin is a student’s name).
After story, my long hard work day is over. Can you believe that is what I’ve been doing for the past 5 months? It is without a doubt the easiest, yet most exhausting job I’ve ever done. I had to bring back a lot of my cheerleading attributes—smiley, peppy, sing songy Esther somehow managed to remain present for almost the whole school day, leaving grouchy, tired, cynical Esther to enjoy the rest of life.
And I suppose that is what you do on a day without internet & a job—write a three page blog post about your life. Self absorbed? Just a little.
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