Things that get lost in translation...

A lot of things have happened in the last couple of weeks. Josh and I have each spent the afternoons of the last week in our "practicum," which for Josh included talking to a lot of people and asking a lot of complex and difficult to answer questions (like, where and why do you burn trash?). I'll let him tell you about it.

I spent Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday of the past two weeks in a Thai classroom, working with another Peace Corps Trainee and also with the Thai teacher whose classroom we were taking over.

Needless to say, it was stressful. If you know me, you know a few things: 1) I'm hard on myself; 2) Teaching doesn't exactly come naturally to me; and 3) I don't do that well without structure.

Enter situation in which: 1) I don't really know what I'm doing; 2) I don't really know how to communicate with my Thai counterpart; 3) Classes both start and end at the same time (i.e., no passing periods), meaning that they always actually start late, and well, you get stress.

After the first couple of days, I felt like the honeymoon period with the PC had ended. Suddenly, I was stressed out, feeling upset in the face of constructive and well meaning criticism, and kind of mad about everything. (A couple of emails ago, my mom said that she hopes that being in a Buddhist country will rub off on me, or something to that effect. And in some ways, it has... I am having to remain calmer, by sheer necessity, and to let things roll off my back, and to just be comfortable with just being. But that doesn't mean I like feeling like I don't know what the crap I'm doing...). As usually happens when I develop an unshakably bad and cranky attitude, things started going wrong: I lost about 10 blank lesson plans and observation sheets. I kept forgetting my homework (yes, homework); my bike lock stopped working. I forgot to bring silverware with me so I could eat som dtam at the market. My helmet started falling apart. All silly things that just made me realize how easily I manage to manifest stupid silly and upsetting when I let myself fall into a bad-attitude funk.

And then something mortifyingly funny happened. It wasn't either mortifying or funny when it happened, but now, it's both.

In the last class I taught, I wanted the students to write sentences regarding activities that I had taught them (horseback riding, camping, fishing, swimming, ice-skating, and something else... Don't ask. They were in their  textbook.) Specifically, I wanted them to write sentences in which they correctly use third person subject pronouns (he and she). So, "He went fishing. She went horseback riding."

Gendered pronouns are difficult for Thai kids because there isn't a gendered pronoun except for the "I" - "pom" is male; "dichan is female."

So, anyway, I used Krista as an example, gesturing to her and saying, "She" and then to myself, and another girl, and saying "she." Fine. All fine. I then gestured to the students (all male) in the front row, saying "he," "he," "he," "he." Giggles. Giggles from the bows in the front. Students in the back also quite distracted and trying not to laugh. I think, "whatever" and try to move on with the lesson (which turned out to be a total flop because the students really, really did not want to participate, at all.... but no matter).

Later, Krista says, "Oh my god, Erin, do you know what you did in class today?" I honestly had no idea. She then reminded me of an unfortunate fact she'd learned the day before: In Thai, "he" (especially said slowly, as I was saying it) essentially translates to what in English we would call "the 'c' word"--you know, that especially naughty word reserved only for the worst of women or the dirtiest references to female genitalia? Yeah, that one. And I had essentially pointed at four male students and called them "he."

Krista had actually learned and shared the fact the day before, when she related to us the story of trying to learn how to say "snow" in Thai. Snow is a combination of two syllables "he" and "ma" which need to be said fast and with the right tones, otherwise you're saying the above mentioned "c" word and "dog" together, to get yet another explicit and disgusting word. Which she managed to say about 40 times in her language class  before finally breaking down and asking her quite amused aa-jaan, "What am I saying???"

So yeah. This is learning Thai.

And I have a much better attitude this week.