East Meets West

Foreign Language Departmnet with the principle
In west and east costumes

I never thought that in Thailand I would be asked to dress as a cowgirl to represent the “west.” Let me explain. For weeks my school has been preparing for a two-day cultural exhibition titled, “East meets West.” Essentially, this was going to be two days celebrating Chinese and Western cultures. The Foreign Language Department (English and Chinese) took charge and was in a frenzy holding auditions for singing, speaking, dancing and other such things for the students to get involved in these two days.

Cowgirl sandwiched between Chinese!

Selling drinks

The school knows that I used to sing in an a cappella group back in America and they had me help judge the singing competitions as well as other things. Basically, this was a chance to miss class and get to hear the students attempt to sing songs in English (some of them were pretty good as well!) I was also told that the foreign language department would be dressing up in order to display the different cultures, one day in Chinese garb and one day in “Western” garb. For Chinese, I was given a red t-shirt with some Chinese symbols on it and was told that Chinese colors were red and black and I should wear that. For the “west” there was a picture of Madonna hung up in the office wearing Jeans, flannel, cowboy boots, cowboy hat, holster and gun. I was told, “this is what you should wear.” All I’m thinking is, wow I can’t believe I didn’t pack flannel for Thailand! For two day at school the English and Chinese Departments at school were decked out in a combination of Chinese and cowboy style clothing.

Cowboys and Cowgirls for the day

"festival grounds"

After weeks and weeks of preparing “East meets West” finally arrived at Benchama. The canteen area was filled with different booths of food, art, toys, drinks and more (reminded me of a little festival). I got there early (and brought my class I was supposed to be teaching period 1) to check out the scene and help out. I soon found myself behind the drink station supervising the students collecting money and giving out much needed drinks on the hot day. Decked out in my cowgirl uniform I was busy all morning until the singing and dancing began. The first day was dedicated to Chinese culture and there were students singing and dancing to Chinese themed songs. Some of their costumes were great as well!

Me and my M-4 student who sang really well!

Chinese costumes

Singing my heart out

The next day, it was time to celebrate Western Culture. The same booths were set up, and once again I was asked to supervise the drink station. It was fun working with the students and getting involved in the whole mix. Midday the western singing and dancing took place. Students got up and performed to Lady Gaga, Celine Dion, Michael Buble and other typical American songs. And then, I got to sing! I got up in front of everyone and sang my heart out to a Billy Joel Song,  “New York State of Mind.” I figured I should sing something about America, and what better song than a Jazz piece longing for New York! (plus it sounded good with my voiceJ. Singing was a lot of fun, and my students were all supportive and cheered their farang “western” teacher on! (For the next few days in class my students kept coming up to me ‘teacha! New York! Sing’).

Judging the cowboy costume contest

After the singing and dancing there was a cowboy costume contest which Jay, Steve and I were asked to help judge. The costumes were great (some ladyboys as well) and it was cool to see the students get so involved and excited about everything.

Students selling food

Me with some of my M-2 students!

East Meets West was a ton of fun! However, as soon as it came, it was over and it was back to normal activities in school… whatever normal means here at Benchama. 

It's a small world after all

Okay.. so I’m certainly falling behind on my blog posts (which I think is a good thing. .means I’m busy!) but I will eventually get everything I’ve done posted on here… it just may be a little delayed. (Such as this post)

Khao Takiab

A few weekends ago there was a long weekend for mother’s day and I decided to check out a new place I haven’t been to yet, Hua Hin. Hua Hin is on the eastern shore of the tail part of Thailand (but not too far south).

The second I got to Hua Hin, I already knew I liked it. Not only was there a beach town feel because of the shore nearby, but I was surrounded by mountains! The more I got to learn about Hua Hin the more I liked it. The scenery was great, the people were great and the town was pretty modern yet still maintained a strong Thai culture.

Me and Theresa almost at the top!

Passing by a GIANT Buddha

The view from one side of the mountain

Driving around Hua Hin

After I arrived, I met up with a girl who teaches English in Hua Hin, and she brought me back to her house and I got settled in. That night we hit up the famous Hua Hin night markets and walked around a bit before stopping at a Mexican restaurant. “Mexican food made by real Mexicans” was how they advertised themselves. I didn’t actually eat any food, but I did have some tasty margaritas and met  a bunch of other English teachers from all over. This one teacher from Oregon had been on the same Israel program as me except two years earlier. We hit it off immediately talking about travel and Israel, and obviously had to discuss whether we knew any mutual people and sure enough, not only did we know some mutual people.. she  had met my sister a few years back! I was completely amazed that here I was in Thailand, in the middle of a random city, at a random Mexican restaurant, and who do I meet? Someone who knows my sister. The world can be feel extremely small at times.

There were bells surrounding the temples and the Thais
went around banging each and every one of them

Finally made it up to the temple

The next day, the girl I stayed with took me around Hua Hin and we checked out some sites. First we went to this small mountain that had a temple on it called Khao Takiab. This was a cool little trip because we drove past all these fisherman villages  to get there. The temple itself was nice, and there was a lot to look around and see on the mountain. It wasn’t a big hike, but the view from the top was stunning and overlooked the beach. Also, the mountain was full of monkeys! (After Lopburi though, I wasn’t as scared anymore!)

Artists Village

Some huts outside artists village

After Khao Takiab we drove over to this little thespian gathering called “artist’s village” a little outside the center of town. This place was full of painters and artists hanging around doing their artwork, displaying and selling it. The main reason we went was to see Theresa's friend's band play there. The band was fun and they did a mix between American classics and some Thai tunes and they even did some Louis Armstrong. The drummer (who was Thai) did the most amazing vocal impression of Louis Armstrong, and I never thought I would see a Thai person sing like that! The artist’s village was a cute little set up and it was amazing to see artists, some famous some not, all over the place painting, glass blowing and doing their artwork.

Overlooking Hua Hin- If you look towards the right.. the little hill on the water in the back is Khao Takiab
(where we had hiked earlier in the day)

Overlooking the mountains!

Climbing up Khao Takiab

After Artist’s Village my host took me to one more spot as the last site seeing activity for the day. We drove through the mountains and headed up to this overlook where we climbed some rocks and got to see all of Hua Hin from above.. the beach.. the mountains.. the houses.. everything. It was amazing (and of course there were monkeys up there as well). We headed back, exhausted from a day full of adventures and met up with some people before going out later that night. The next day I said goodbye to my friends and headed back to Chachoengsao, promising that I would return to visit Hua HIn again. 

This one goes out to my mom

Two weeks ago was one of the biggest holidays for Thai people, the queen’s birthday a.k.a mother’s day. Now we have mother’s day in the states, and in my family that means making breakfast for my mom in bed and getting together later in the day with aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents for a barbecue. Fun, cute, and an excuse to see the family.

Me with some of the Thai teachers in the English Department

In Thailand, they take mother’s day to a whole new level…. they really celebrate mothers. The queen’s birthday was on a Friday (school was off so we celebrated at school on Thursday). In Thailand every day of the week is a different color, and Friday is blue so for the celebration all the Thai teachers came to school donned in their blue beautiful Thai silk outfits.

The girls all dressed up for Thai dancing

Me with my M-2/1 students and the homeroom teacher
and "outstanding" mother

After the daily morning assembly there was a larger school wide assembly where one mother from every class was honored. There were speeches, singing, prayer and of course, Thai dancing. There was one mother, that the teachers explained was an “outstanding mother” and she was honored in front of the whole school. The whole thing was really very sweet. After the assembly every class split off and the one mother that was represented in each class went to their respective homeroom classrooms. I was told I can go and check out what they did in the classrooms with the mothers so I went to one of my favorite classes (M-2/1) and when I walked into the classroom, all of the students were sitting on the floor facing the mother sitting on a chair and they were signing to her, and the mom, with tissue in hand, was wiping away her tears. I would be lying if I said that I didn’t get a little choked up.. the whole thing was sooo cute. After the singing and showering her with gifts the mom gave a little speech to the students (which I obviously didn’t understand) but then we took lots of photos. I went back to the office and was talking to all the Thai teachers and explained how I htought the whole thing was soo nice and that I missed my mommy!

My M-2/3 students holding up their mother's day cards

After a morning assembly it can often be hard to get the kids focused the rest of the day because their heads are in a hyped a place. Well as true as that is for my students, it is just as true for me. There was no way I could just go back to teaching prepositions or about different occupations after such an awesome morning assembly. So what did I do? The rest of my classes that day I had them make mother’s day cards… in English of course. This was a fun activity for me to help them with, and I think the kids enjoyed it as well (if not they at least got a free period to do arts and crafts instead of study). Some of them came out really cute as well!

My M-4/1 making mother's day cards

 

on a side note-- this is the roster for one of my
eighth grade classes-- check out their English nicknames!

On another side note--I spent a day playing music for my students--a.k.a educated them on pink floyd..
don't worry i made it educational-- they had to listen for the prepositions in the song 

With the long weekend coming up (Friday off for mother’s day) I headed to somewhere I hadn’t been yet.. Hua Hin.. a cute town on the coast…I’ll blog about it next time!

Everybody's got something to hide except for me and my monkey

orchid

Two weeks ago my students took their midterms. What did that mean for us foreign teachers? Basically, we had no classes but we had to show up and fill our office hours. However, most of the teachers weren’t in the office because they were either proctoring exams or out on some excursion. Therefore I spent most of the week, catching up on grading, preparing lesson plans, and of course giving myself some long lunch breaks at the market across the street.

Birds of paradise

at the temple

Me with the teachers eating lunch

at the resort the teachers took us to

at the resort.. looking out to the rice paddys

One of the days, one of the teachers took us to the labor office to (finally) get our work permits, and then we headed over to the immigration office and officially extended our visas till the end of the semester (otherwise I would have been deported last week)! On Wednesday, we arrived at the labor office just to find out that the permits weren’t ready because the director wasn’t there to sign any papers. So instead of taking care of business, the teachers decided to show us around Chachengsao province. We drove about 40 minutes out to this beautiful, quiet resort right on the water, and we walked around, looking at some art and amazing flowers. Afterwards they treated us to a delicious lunch overlooking the canal. On our way back we saw a huge golden temple in the distance and the teachers asked us if we were interested in checking it out- so we stopped off and saw this awesome temple. We eventually headed back to the office, and were allowed to leave early because all the exams were done for the day. Not bad for a day of school!

Me with the teachers eating lunch

Me and Leah on the train to Lopburi

Oh yeah—we went back to the labor office the next day and took care of business. Although we did tell the teachers that if we couldn’t figure out the paperwork that day they could take us on another outing!

Midterm week drew to an end and on Friday I headed to Bangkok with my friend Leah (who I met at the park in Chachengsao). We stayed pretty low key in Bangkok and on Saturday we went to Jatujak (jj) market and walked around all day. This market is huuuuuuuuge—I think it might be one of the biggest weekend markets in the world. Saturday night we took a train to Lopburi.

ruins

Now Lopburi is famous for a few things including: sunflower fields, ancient ruins and MONKEYS! As much as I love sunflower fields, I knew they wouldn’t be in bloom this time of year so I will definitely have to go back and check that out at a later date. But let me tell you about the ruins and the monkeys.

more ruins

Have you ever seen the movie Jumanji? Do you know the scene where all the monkeys come and are overrunning the city and are just complete menaces? Well, that’s pretty much what Lopburi city was like. The beginning of the day started out relatively normal, it was rainy weather and we found some ruins interspersed in the city, so we checked those out and went to this museum. The whole time Leah and I were thinking, where are the monkeys? Is it the rainy weather that’s keeping them away?

Monkeys hanging around telephone wires

But sure enough we turned one corner and we just saw hundreds of monkeys hanging out in the city- on windows, telephone wires, tops of cars, in the street, scaffolding of hotels. Not only were there many monkeys but they were pretty aggressive. We were told before we went there not to carry any food or anything for the matter because the monkeys will come up and grab it from you and then run away. I’m glad I heard this advice and I had my backpack on back under my raincoat and the monkeys left me alone. Leah was holding a shoebox from new shoes she got and a monkey ran up to her trying to grab it. Needless to say, Leah dropped the shoebox and ran.

monkeys in the street.. they were EVERYWHERE!

monkey eating a stolen fruit

and....more ruins..

Me feeding the fat monkey before
he decided to steal all the food

Many cars were stopped at a red light and the monkeys started jumping on top of the stopped cars. One pick up truck got the worst, when it was stopped at the red light and all the monkeys just ran to the truck and stole all the fruit out of the back. It was pretty hilarious to watch. We bravely walked a little further through the monkeys and found this really cool ancient ruin where all the monkeys were hanging out (there was a ranger there so we felt safe and comfortable getting close to the monkeys). We walked around observing all the monkeys just hanging out, pretty much taking over these ruins. There were tons of mothers with their little babies clinging to them underneath (soo cute!) Once in a while a monkey would jump on you, here are there. I’m not gonna lie, I was a little scared.. but it was really cool. 

Mommy and baby-- so cute!

You can't tell in this picture.. but there were monkeys
everywhere.. all over the ruins here

Monkey on my back..no big deal

We bought some seeds to feed the monkeys and the guys who worked there showed us how to just hold out our hands and they would eat the food. I saw this one FAT monkey and decided to feed him because I thought if I didn’t he would try to take my food away. I crouched down and held out my left hand and this monkey was soooo gentle. He almost felt human with his fingers just sifting through the seeds in my hand. It was really cool until the monkey got a little greedy. I was sitting there patiently with him holding food out in my left hand when he grabbed the entire bag of seeds that was in my right hand! I tried to grab back, but then he looked angry so I just scurried out of there. Now I know why that monkey is so fat.

May have freaked out a little here

Monkeys on the Buddha

But anyways, we walked around some more and checked out some more ruins that were just dispersed all over the city. I said goodbye to the monkeys and headed back to Chachoengsao. Classes started up again and I quickly got back into the groove of teaching. It’s already another holiday weekend this weekend, still unsure of what my plans are but I’m sure I’ll venture somewhere exciting. On another note, I can’t believe its already mid-August!