Time flies. (fly flew flown)

I have a feeling I'll be saying this more and more often as we creep further along in our service, but: I can't believe it's been almost two months since either Josh or I has found the time to write! And now, of course, when I am trying to take a few free moments in which I have both time and an internet connection, I find myself surrounded by my students, who are all commenting on how fast I type.

It seems this minor interruption (all of which has now gone off to class) is pretty much par for the course in Thailand. Just when I think that I will have time to relax, exercise, write, clean, call a friend, Skype, read, sit in a hammock, or otherwise chill out, something else comes up. 

Since December 3, when we last posted, a lot has happened. For the sake of updating everyone (and excusing myself for not writing), I'll just run you down a brief list of what's been going on:

First, sports days. For about 2.5 weeks in December, school was cancelled so that the students could play sports. There are no school sports in the same way they exist in the US, as far as I can tell. Students don't play a sport for a season, practicing only after school and playing games only on weekends or when school is not in session. Instead, students all practice all sports during PE times, and/or after school with a coach. Then, every December, practice ramps up. School is cancelled in the afternoon so students can increase their practice time. English teachers, Science teachers, Math teachers - everyone becomes a coach after 1:30 in the afternoon. (My co-teacher and I coached volleyball at one school.) Then, the games begin. The schools in our Amphur (district) met in a series of tournament-style days over a course of about 3 weeks. Students played volleyball, soccer, footsal (like soccer but on a concrete court, instead), petang (um... wikipedia?), and dta-graw (like volleyball and soccer combined. sort of. look that one up, too). There were also ping-pong tournaments, I think, but I didn't actually witness any of those. 

That takes us up through December 19, when my program director came for a site visit. That day was the "opening day" for the sports day in the Amphur, and so she and I sat through a parade and opening ceremonies, and then retreated to an open meeting room (within full hearing range of the incredibly loud commentary going on about boys' soccer) to discuss what's going on at my schools. Everything seems okay, so far. 

Then vacation. Thanks to Josh's incredible planning, we found ourselves on Goh Lipe, Goh Tarutao, and Goh Lanta, three islands in the south (Josh posted pictures, I believe). I felt at one time that I had so much to write about the experience, but as with all things, it seems to have been somewhat lost in the waves of other experiences washing over me. The islands were beautiful. For me, the guilt about being away from site was palpable, but so was the relief at finally being able to relax. On Christmas, we called our families, and then on New Year's, exchanged Secret Santa gifts with a few other friends. None of it quite felt like the holidays. 

We ended up staying an extra few days in Bangkok on the way back to meet Josh's aunt and uncle and their good friend, an experience that made me realize just how crazy this place is that we actually live - things I'm so used to already, I was able to see others experiencing for the first time. Fresh eyes really do see things differently. 

Finally, we got back home long enough to do laundry and get whisked into the ONET fever - the ONET is the national test that about 1/3 of my students (6th grade, 9th grade) will take on February 2nd, and everyone is crazy about it. Long enough to find ourselves at a New Year's party given by the public health staff in the Amphur, where Josh and I were presented with silk scarves as a thank you for the English class he taught to the hospital staff some months ago, and where in answer to the question "Josh, who do you love the most?" Josh answered, "I can't say." Long enough for Josh's program manager to come and visit our community, and both of my schools, hopefully clearing a way for Josh and I to begin working on life skills classes once a week. Long enough to create two lessons - Healthy Relationships and Contraceptives - to include in the sex education camp we'd been planning with our fellow married volunteers in Khon Kaen.

And then, away again, back to Bangkok to meet my cousin and his boyfriend (a couple whom my fellow volunteer friend described as "perfect for each other") and take them around Bangkok. Fortunately they were game for the snake museum (king cobra, anyone?) and for walking around a few corners of BKK that we hadn't seen before. Another weekend of surreal displacement from site, not only because it was Bangkok, but also because I was seeing my cousin Nick for the first time in 9 years! This fact alone was probably what made most of our community okay with us traveling again - "you have to go" they said in the week leading up to our departure to go meet them, when I would tell them how long it had been since I saw Nick!

Then back again to site. Long enough to do laundry, dip toes back in the ONET fever, and then out again to the sex education camp. One day of planning and rehashing our sessions, translating materials, creating name-tags, discussing group activities and games, and smacking our foreheads over the things we forgot. Then two days of small-group sessions with middle and high school girls, teaching about contraception, pregnancy, HIV/AIDS, STDs, and healthy relationships. One hour of answering the girls' most intimate questions, submitted anonymously at a no-boys-allowed session. Ten minutes of watching one of the most graphic "cabaret" shows I can imagine as we all sat around a campfire in a circumference far wider than was appropriate to actually warming ourselves on the fire. About 48 straight hours of head scratching at just how many things Thais and Americans do differently. And finally, one compliment from the Thai teacher who had envisioned the camp in the first place: He was glad the volunteers had come and had planned the activities, because in our culture we  focus on discussion, and Thais are often uncomfortable with open discussion. However, he thought the students got more out of our sessions than they would have if they had been planned by our Thai counterparts -- even though in the end, it was the Thais running the sessions after all. (This is how we define success in the Peace Corps, by the way.)

After the camp, a night of serendipity and perfect Thai-ness, when the Nayoke (mayor) insists we all stay in the National Park another night, then makes the arrangements for another volunteer, traveling with two people - a Thai and an American, and both perfect strangers to all of us who had done the camp together - to stay with us in the National Park as well. Barbecued pork. Barbecued sticky rice dipped in egg. Brownies. Warm beds. Cool night. Hot shower in the am. And then....

Back home. Long enough to do laundry and break the washer. Attend an ONET English camp. Teach a few classes. Maybe plant vegetables before we....

go to Suphanburi to meet the new crop of volunteers, and tell them what it's like to be in Thailand. We leave on Sunday. Wish us luck. 

Projects, projects, projects

It seems the last few weeks have suddenly been busy, which means most of all that although there have been plenty of things worth writing about, there hasn’t been any time for the gathering of thoughts and committing them to paper (or screen). It also means that the housecleaning has been taking a serious hit in our estimation of its importance, which could explain why I just poured hot water all over my computer bag in order to kill a nest of ants that had taken up residence there. (I am a bad Buddhist.) Of course, I had just put my computer in that bag this morning, thinking it would be safer (from what?) in there than out in the open in the house, and so I’m now periodically also smashing ants as they crawl out from between the keys while I type this.

The activity consuming most of my mental and physical energy for the last three weeks has been the painting of a mural at my bpratom (elementary) school. I initiated the so-called World Map Project a few months ago, hoping to include some geography and nation related terms and ideas in a few lessons that I thought could lead up to the eventual painting of the map. Although initially well-received, the project was almost immediately back-burnered because I brought it up during the rainy season, and part of the set-up involved using a projector to project the image of the map on the wall we had chosen. So, while we chose a wall outside, and painted in white in anticipation of the eventual map, nothing else happened. My co-teacher and I decided to wait until the end of rainy season when it would be safe to run an extension cord outside and when we’d have more than a couple of hours of decent, dry weather to complete the map with the kids.

I had wanted to wait until January, since it made more sense with our curriculum and since that would give me time to incorporate the correspondence I’ve started with a teacher in Florida and maybe get our curricula on the same page for a magic week or two. No such luck. A few weeks ago, the school found out that someone from the Jangwat (province) level is going to visit the school, and essentially grade them on a variety of measures of performance. A visit from an official in Thailand is a major event, one that has necessitated the cleaning out of many an old closet, cabinet, desk, and drawer. It has mean the cleaning and recleaning of stairs and walls and the putting up of posters, black boards, and various other instruments of learning that until now, we have done without. We now have a word of the day program (both English and Thai) and fancy new black boards to write those words on outside where the kids have their morning assembly. We now have binders upon binders of evidence of projects that the school has done over the last five years. Grades are being tallied by hand in thick record books. Children’s heights, weights, and speeds at the 50 and 100 meter dashes are being measured and recorded. Letters, pictures, documents are being printed and bound with delicate precision. Many a “jackboard” (bulletin board with stuff on a particular theme) is being assembled around the school. Josh and I even got to create a jackboard with information about AIDS for World AIDS Day (Dec. 1). Fortunately, we had our friends at the anamai help us out with this one; otherwise, it would have been a heck of a task to Google-translate our way to coherent and accurate information!

In the midst of all this, long meetings began to happen on a regular basis. I attended the first two, at which I was asked to start the World Map project ASAP to be finished in time for the Saw Maw Saw visit on Dec. 4. I couldn’t really say no. I mean, I don’t really think the random white patch on the wall looked very good either. So, we pulled it off. Three weeks, two extra 8-hour days per week later, we ended up with a beautiful map of the world on the wall. Of course, up close, the detail work is a little lacking.

We managed to revise the coastlines of all seven continents – call it global warming taking its toll. We also resolved a few territorial disputes in the Middle East, Europe, and Central Asia with a few brush strokes. I doubt Israel would be happy with its current containment (but then again, Syria probably isn’t, either). We didn’t manage to get Palestine or Tibet on the map, but those political developments seemed a little out of our hands. Several times, I had to save light-colored countries from the naam-tuam (flood) the kids were inflicting on them with their wild painting frenzy.

Nearly everyone is unhappy that Thailand is dark green – but this turned out to be a blessing when we lacquered the map and all of the black marker we’d used for the borders ran, creating a few new mountain ranges and river valleys at the borders of France and Spain, northern Russia, parts of Mexico, and basically anywhere else that was originally yellow, orange, or light blue. We nearly lost Hawaii to the cavalier brushstrokes of a few 5^th graders who shall remain unnamed – I had to re-paint the home state of our president from scratch as a last minute measure.

I painted and repainted borders, mixing and remixing colors, with the expert help of my co-teacher, who is also the art teacher. For days on end I recalled old memories of painting with my grandfather in the sunroom at his Albuquerque house. I had to remind myself as I asked the kids, “tam arai??” (what are you doing??) with rising panic every time they dripped paint down the whole of the wall that I was once just as clumsy and unschooled with a paintbrush, and that I have my late grandfather’s patience and love to thank for my even now novice ability to create art at the tip of a brush.

Tomorrow, the officials from the jangwat (province) will show up, and who knows what scrutiny they will bring to bear on these tiny projects. If they criticize the lack of labels, the hastily done borders, the height or size of the map, it won’t be a surprise. But, they won’t see the 120+ tiny hands that helped to make the map what it is, or the surprising conversations that have already taken place because of it.

“Where is Korea? My dad works there.”

“Where is Canada? My dad works there.”

“Wow! America is big!”

“What’s the biggest country in the world?”

“What country has the most people.”

“Do you know what country this is? This is Australia.”

“What’s all that white at the bottom of the world?”

“Where is it the coldest?”

“Where’s your house, Kruu Erin?”

I guess this is what it's all about. 

India - Erin's Perspective

Er, Erin's camera, that is. Enjoy these almost 200 other pics of almost the same things. :)

https://plus.google.com/photos/112856808465437487897/albums/5813552403480943329?authkey=CIXvzoiJwa8K

A (post) birthday birthday post

Depending on where you are, it might still be my birthday. For me, though, it's over, and year 29 begins on a cool, cloudy Thai morning. (Yes, I'm 28, but that means it's the beginning of year 29, since yesterday I basically celebrated not getting myself killed for the first 28 years of my life.)

Today I woke up (relatively) early - I say relatively because it was early for me, but the birds, the farmers, and the neighbors had all probably been up for hours already, and I only felt compelled to join the fray when I remembered the mountain of greasy dishes from last night's birthday dinner still sitting in the kitchen (surreptitiously attracting ants). I also heard a funny noise that convinced me that someone was either attempting to (further) break or to fix our broken fence, so I figured I might as well get up and get something done before school.

The dishes were the aftermath of a hastily conceived and somewhat poorly executed meal of French fries (frozen, purchased Sunday), fried chicken, terrible beer, and "floor brownies."

Josh was responsible for the first three items, although the fact that the beer is terrible isn't his fault.

I am responsible for what turned out to be VERY chocolaty and a little bit  banana-y, not very sweet cookies.

They were supposed to be brownies, but in the manner of my mother, who once forgot to add the flour to the batter, I made some sort of terrible measuring mistake and ended up with something quite unlike a brownie batter. Thinking I had no sugar left, but needing to turn the "brownies" into something more like cookies (or else they would never fill the pan I had to bake them in, resulting in a thin layer of who knows what once baked), I added a little bit of coconut oil (sweet-ish, right?), some more flour, and then mashed a few bananas into the mix and called it a "cookie dough."

After we greased our hands and our bellies on the chicken and fries, I set about baking my new creation. First batch in and out of the oven and....
.... promptly dropped onto the floor.

And then from the floor onto the cooling rack because this is Thailand and chocolate is precious, and there was a worm in the garlic yesterday and I could ignore that, and there's always lizard poop somewhere and ants somewhere else, and further more, it's my birthday.

I managed not to drop the rest of the chocolate-banana cookies. And they were all delicious. And now we will call them "chocolate banana drops" and make them for years to come. But you can call them "floor brownies," if you like.

Blogs don't update themselves

In Thailand, people are rarely direct. If someone is concerned about something you did, or something you said, or that your hair is too long or your skirt is too short, or you forgot to close your fence last night, or really, anything at all, they wait until your neighbor gets home and then they gossip about you.

In the course of their conversation (something I've never been directly privy to), something happens and the person who wasn't originally concerned becomes concerned. And so they talk to someone else. Eventually, whatever you're doing wrong is communicated to you by the person determined to be the closest thing to an actual friend. This is how you sometimes find yourself at dinner listening to comments that begin with, "The yaais (grandmothers) are concerned about .... ."

It's also why I can really appreciate my American friends, who have absolutely no qualms whatsoever about saying things like, "I miss your blog." And then I know that it's time to write again. Thanks, friends. Keep the directness coming.

Today is my first day back at school after a month-long bit-term (school break), which, as you might have noticed from Josh's "pictures-are-worth-a-thousand-words-I-don't-have-time-to-write" blog post, included a trip to India. I haven't written about India because I haven't yet figured out how to write about it, but I'll give it a shot. The only word I have yet been able to use to describe it involves profanity, so I'll settle for this sentence instead: It was chaos--chaos of the senses, the intellect, the heart.

Chaos of the senses: The sights! The sounds! The smells! The cool, cool air! The fooooooood!
We arrived at night to a very modern-looking airport, and before we even disembarked from the plane, we were startled by an announcement that, "Prudy, passenger Prudy, we have a message for you." So Prudy, who had been with us for 10 days prior, seeing all sorts of crazy things at our site and in Bangkok, went and received the message that our "driver" had called to say he would be late. Our "driver" was actually our friend C. whom we'd gone to visit, and it turns out he was flying in the same day and his flight got in later than ours. From the minute we left the airport lobby with C. to the minute he dropped us back off at the ticket counters there 10 days later, we encountered a whirlwind of activity and confusion and excitement. Here are some highlights:

In Bangalore:
The bull temple, a monolithic bull (statue carved from a single piece of stone), that is still worshiped today and that is black because it is cared for with offerings of butter and oil that are rubbed on it daily.

Tipu Sultan Palace: The palace of Tipu Sultan and it's beautiful grounds/garden were one of the calmest places were went. A bit of an oasis in the middle of the city. The Sultan fought the British four times.

The ISKCON (International Society for Krishna Consciousness) Temple: Chanting the Hare Krishna barefoot with devout believers was a compelling experience. Outside, we joined barefoot worshipers in their walk from stone to stone as they chanted the meditation 108 times. We blessed ourselves with fire and spent a few good long minutes meditating on the beauty of the inside - no pictures allowed - which was decorated in golds and whites, carvings and paintings of the Hindu deities adorning the walls. The walk through the gift shop (lots of pressure to buy) and the line for food (lots of pressure to buy) and the plans for the new ISKCON Center (which resembles an amusement park more than anything else) were less calming and slightly off-putting. But, that wasn't the only temple we went to where we were expected to "donate" for the right to worship and it seems to be common.

Indian Hospitality: C.'s cousin, D. was kind enough to let us stay in her home for several nights when we first arrived. She also served us incredible food, in portions large enough to feed a small army, night after night. Sometimes, we were so stuffed we couldn't imagine eating anything more, and then a new roti, chapati, or rice would appear on our plate, followed by a serving of some delectable, spicy, brightly colored dish, yellow dal, red chicken curry, green chutney. To die for.

The roads: hahahahaha.

The driving: I figured out that the rules of driving in India are just like those of downhill skiing: You are responsible for not hitting whatever is in front of you. That's it. But you also have this cool horn you can use to say, "hi!" or "I'm going to give you a love tap if you don't move over," or "holy *&^%!," or even, "I'm coming right for you and I don't plan on stopping!"

The directness: Like Thais, Indians don't seem to have any qualms about asking questions regarding money. But they will not politely tell you paid a little too much for something. They will tell you, with a horrified expression that you got ripped off. Then they will take you shopping and argue way more fiercely on your behalf than any Thai ever would. And you will get a good deal. And then they might buy you a present. (See Indian Hospitality, above.) They will tell you you are too skinny and that you need to get fat. (They will not understand why you can't get fat or why Thais think that's a bad thing.) They will attempt to make you fat. (See Indian Hospitality, above.)

In Madikeri:
I got sick. Mountain roads. Pollution. More mountain roads. Too much coffee.

In Mysore: Great food. People people everywhere. Festival. Palace!

In Hampi: Calm. Amazing views. Incredible landscape. Ruins. UNESCO Heritage Site controversy (google it). Sunrise hike to top of hill to see the Hanuman temple, at which the priest and other devotees read the Ramayana 24/7/365 (they have 3 hour shifts). Gift shopping. Delicious vegetarian food. Terrifying bus ride (see roads and driving, above).

It's not fair, really, to reduce the last six weeks to this post or the soundbites above, but it just doesn't yet seem possible to say more.

Plus last week other big things happened: Like, Amanda's English Camp, at which I did arts and crafts with the kids, broke up a fight, and got a new nickname (Pailyn, or sapphire).

Then Obama got elected, Karl Rove went crazy, and Petraeus resigned. And of course, school started again. I promise, I'll try to keep up the blog - but, who can compete with all that news?

Lots of Photos from India

https://plus.google.com/photos/107357616020283224778/albums/5805028544511289169?authkey=CImUuNiwqdKz9gE

Ants. Ants. Ants. A Cliche.

FIRST, AN UPDATE: The soap works. It lathers. It is in bottles. It has been placed in the bathrooms. It is still a foreign agent looked upon suspiciously by the children. Now, to make handwashing fun.

And the ants.

If anything in this country is going to make me crack up, and I mean seriously lose it, it’s going to be the ants. Sure, getting your love handles grabbed by your co-workers, with the added insult that they actually tell you that you’re fat as they do it—that gets old. Really old. So does the heat—getting out of the shower only to start sweating again; arriving at school after a ten minute bike ride dripping already, with helmet-hair plastered to your face. That’s not really that exciting anymore. Neither, might I add, is the fact that our water goes off from about 8 am until about 4:30 pm every day. Which is fine unless it happens to be Saturday and you’re halfway through a load of laundry (your sheets) when the naam stops lai-ing. Even the giant spiders are okay because they come seldom and because Josh has a pretty good technique with the broom. But I don’t want to complain about those things. I can live with all that.

I want to complain about this: Apparently (predictably?) I also live with thousands, probably more like hundreds of thousands, of variously-sized insects. They waltz right in the front door. In fact, they’ve set up camp, and they think they’re going to achieve a permanent residence right inside the concrete foundation of the house. Then they’re just gonna use the front door as their entrée into what is apparently a veritable buffet for them.

My research on these little creatures reveals that they are in search of either sugar or protein, and that the scavenger ants bring the morsels they can carry back to the colony where they are fed to the larvae, which then excrete a liquid that the adult ants eat. Gross. Research and anecdotes from friends also suggests that baiting them with borax-laced peanut butter can kill whole colonies, but so far I’m uncomfortable with inviting the enemies in such a devious manner. Also relatively uncomfortable with the prospect of spraying the place with yaa gan mot (“medicine against ants”) because it comes in one of those scary looking spray cans with black and orange on the label and has probably been outlawed in various other countries with more progressive laws regarding chemical agents. So the options are somewhat reduced to being a SUPERFREAK when it comes to cleaning (not really an option), sealing the entire house (not really an option, this place is open to anything less than an inch big in any one dimension. Vinegar has been suggested. Cinnamon too. They don’t like garlic (no protein, no sugar). They apparently don’t like coffee (those grounds and coffee rings could stay put on the counter for weeks if we let them—like most Thais, I guess they don’t really know a good brew when it’s right under their noses).

Yesterday, I ordered Josh to bring the hot water boiler (which, under certain circumstances yet to be completely revealed the ants also love to inhabit), full of boiling water, so that I could squirt it into the entrance to their underground kingdom that I’d discovered right outside the front door. We were cleaning everything else. I figured drowning some ants couldn’t hurt the cause and one ant forum had included the suggestion of pouring boiling water into their colonies to flush them out. Let them know they’re not welcome in the neighborhood, you know? So I drowned some ants. Twenty minutes later, they were rebuilding. I swept them away. Rinse repeat. Twenty minutes later, they’re rebuilding. More water? Rinse repeat. Maybe we’re the ones not welcome in the neighborhood.

We cleaned and cleaned and cleaned. Josh took the strings off of his guitar, unscrewing the keys only to find that hundreds of our six-legged friends had been living in there. They came out carrying their eggs and looking for a new home. We have ant-proofed a table in the kitchen and an eating table by placing the legs in yogurt cups and filling them with water. We have discovered that the cheese packets in the precious mac ‘n’ cheese we received from home are anything but ant-proof. Unlike most Thais, ants apparently have an insatiable desire for powdered cheese. Now the remaining unharmed mac ‘n’ cheese lives in the freezer, which the ants have so far not infiltrated.

So last night I found myself, as I increasingly do, bent over staring at a line of ants. “Where are you going?” I asked them. This is what they’ve done: ants have reduced me to muttering to myself in the kitchen. I tried the cinnamon, precious seasoning though it is, having had to be purchased in BKK and all. . I sprinkled it outside the entrance to their lair in the wall just above the kitchen counter. They went a little nuts, and the more I spread the cinnamon out, the more they just kept going a little crazy, walking their scent trail and doing a little arm wiggling and hugging when they met their brethren going the other way. A whole gaggle of them stopped at the cinnamon, walking this way and that, but not able or willing to move forward. Not entirely satisfied with the result, there wasn’t much more I could do besides imagine the content of their conversations, and that seems a little crazy.

Didn’t I say if anything in Thailand makes me completely crack up, it’ll be the ants? It doesn’t much help that the little ones bite in self-defense if you accidently step on them and that sometimes my body freaks out a little and swells completely out of proportion with the offense. Now, I can spot one across the floor at 20 feet, and Josh is probably sick of me pointing them out as if it’s some kind of novelty, but I can't help it. I'm obsessed. I'm developing a grand fascination for the little creatures that makes me both immensely curious about them even as my hatred for them grows. 

Stay tuned.