Things are different here

Book, Mint, Nut, Poo, Film, Pigeon, Ice, Top, Bass, Pop, Ploy, Porn, New, Bee, Arm, Tan, Tip, Pure, Sun, Tea, First, Cherry, Milk, Noon, Beer, Balloon, Boat, Jam, Bow, Gift, Mild, Art, Beam, Hack, Chompoo, Earn, Ray, Jam, Sprite, Tee, Moo, Cling, Off, Pong, Joe, Bank, Benz, Pooky, Fame, Bank, Bow, Fern, Ken, and my favorites – Primrose & Copter.

This gloriously random mix of words is a smattering of the English nicknames my students have provided for me. Some are hilarious, others are perplexing, and all are twenty two times simpler than the students' Thai names.

Things are different here.

I had spicy pork, vegetables and fried rice for breakfast my first day in Suphan.

Pale skin is idealistic. Balane, Leah - get your beautifully pasty selves over here.

They drive from the right side of the car on the left side of the road. If there were speed limits, they'd be in kilometers per hour.

Teachers leave the English Resource Center at 8:37 for an 8:30 class.

Tuesday morning I hesitantly abandoned my classroom to grab my whiteboard markers from another room and returned to find the students cleaning the classroom, literally sweeping the floor in my absence. Unasked.

I attended a Thai funeral yesterday for a fellow teacher's mother and there was a full-out musical in the evening as part of the ceremony. Talk about a celebration of life. I would like a Ke$ha/Dino dance party funeral when I go. Gotta come full circle.

Today during my off period, the classroom outside of our English language center was emitting sounds of absolute mayhem. I thought back to my days at Villa, literally sprinting with my twenty pound backpack across campus, Meghan Price and Laura Pinnie in tow, trying to make it to Sister Carmela’s chemistry class in our allotted three minute interval, then arriving and sitting in silence (except for the sound of our labored breathing as we recovered from the 400 yard dash). At Villa Maria Academy, the level of noise coming from this Thai classroom would have been grounds for detention, maybe expulsion, but it’s just another Friday afternoon at Banharn. So I slyly pulled out my camera, set it on my desk, and hit record, hoping to somehow capture the insanity reaching my ears from next-door. For thirty seconds or so, I recorded the screams and the bangs, the laughs and the skids. As I chuckled to myself, thinking, “students would never behave this way at home,” a boy popped his head in the door, looking for another teacher, spotted me, and gave a perfectly polite and gracious bow, called a “wai” in Thailand, then slipped away silently and respectfully. I smiled, thinking, “students would never behave that way at home...” and was reminded again that things are different here. Not better, not worse. Just different.