Bangkok, 2:46 pm
Tokyo, 4:46 pm
Chicago, 1:46 am
Last layover in Tokyo, one more flight, and I'm home!
My last few days in Bangkok were good, despite being sick. This is right when I caught a cold last year, boo. So I spent part of Monday in bed. Tuesday I hung out with Kraig, saw his house (MAJOR fixer-upper), met his puppies (OMG CUTE PUPPIES), bought a 250 gig external hard drive for 3,000 baht, and ate pizza with him and Anne. I was kinda sneezy and falling apart by the end of the night, which was no fun.
Wednesday, I stayed in bed most of the day. I managed to get showered and dressed, but then I slept all afternoon. And then Amir took me out- ostensibly for dinner. This actually meant copious drinks beforehand and after. It was a fun night, though. And I haven't had that much to drink since Pub Crawl. Miraculously, it made me better. I can't explain that- maybe the alcohol killed the little buggers?
Thursday I packed. Nat and Lea came over, and it was like Christmas day- I gave them all the stuff I couldn't or didn't need to bring back. My fan, my pans, hangers, laundry baskets, most of the books I bought, my speakers, curling iron, towels, all the pepto and imodium pills, the backpack I bought . . . Nat was estatic, it was rather hysterical. :D Then we took that stuff to school, and went to the Esplanade. Had dinner, went to see the new National Treasure movie. Which cracks me up, last night in Thailand I go see a movie that's all about American history. Though the part in England, Nat said it looked like home. Not a bad movie.
I got home at 10:30, finished packing. Couldn't fall asleep at all. And then I woke up BEFORE my alarm at 3am. Was downstairs checking out at 4. Lea came with me to the airport because she had a friend getting in at 7am.
My one suitcase was 37 kilos. OUCH. And I had to pay for it. 12,600 baht. 400-something dollars. On the upside, they let me take my guitar on as a carryon and I didn't have to pay for that, so that's something. But really, I didn't think I bought THAT much stuff!
Now, for the 10.5 hour flight, and I'll be HOME. The sun just set here in Japan, and we're going to chase the sunlight back to the afternoon back home. I'm listening to christmas music as I type this . . .
Boarding in ten minutes. I should get over there.
Hey, I get to be in the same timezone as most of my friends now! What a revolutionary concept!!
Friday, December 21, 2007
Friday, December 14, 2007
Today is the last day of school. We had a class and a half, and now it's break, and then we have assembly, and that's it. And then I come home in a week.
It's strange, saying goodbye to students and friends. It's not like people from back home, where I can drive four hours and see them, or at the worst drive across the country. Estonia, Romania, Germany, New Zealand, UK. Being here makes the world feel very small, like anything is possible. And now it feels so very big and vast and insurmountable.
Christ on a bike, I just signed withdrawl forms for two students. And there were two more yesterday. Dave is going to New Zealand, Olivia is going back to Korea, Sachiko back to Japan, and I forget where the other boy was going. I never moved as a child; there were a couple kids I went to kindergarten with that I graduated high school with. It's not like I was in a small town and there were only 200 kids. But I can't fathom moving a lot. A kid needs a home, a rock, a place to belong to. I suppose it's possible to move a lot and still have that family stability. But on the other hand, you're never somewhere long enough to forge deep relationships, to learn the way and move up in ranks to become a leader in your community.
-It's almost noon, we just had assembly. Heath dressed up as Santa Claus, only the pillow padding was a little iffy- looked like Santa had rather perky double Ds.
Sigh. I can't even articulate how I'm feeling right now. Maybe I'll try later.
It's strange, saying goodbye to students and friends. It's not like people from back home, where I can drive four hours and see them, or at the worst drive across the country. Estonia, Romania, Germany, New Zealand, UK. Being here makes the world feel very small, like anything is possible. And now it feels so very big and vast and insurmountable.
Christ on a bike, I just signed withdrawl forms for two students. And there were two more yesterday. Dave is going to New Zealand, Olivia is going back to Korea, Sachiko back to Japan, and I forget where the other boy was going. I never moved as a child; there were a couple kids I went to kindergarten with that I graduated high school with. It's not like I was in a small town and there were only 200 kids. But I can't fathom moving a lot. A kid needs a home, a rock, a place to belong to. I suppose it's possible to move a lot and still have that family stability. But on the other hand, you're never somewhere long enough to forge deep relationships, to learn the way and move up in ranks to become a leader in your community.
-It's almost noon, we just had assembly. Heath dressed up as Santa Claus, only the pillow padding was a little iffy- looked like Santa had rather perky double Ds.
Sigh. I can't even articulate how I'm feeling right now. Maybe I'll try later.
Monday, December 3, 2007
6 1/2 days of school left . . .
We've got Wednesday off for the King's Birthday, and then the following Monday is Constitution day, I believe. We haven't had a single days off save for half-term, and now they're at the most inconvenient time. Alas. I'm going to SLEEP on Wednesday, for I am EXHAUSTED after the week I just had. And I now get to tell you all about it.
Wait a second, first I need to show you what a Thanksgiving dinner in a British brewpub in Thailand is like. :D
First plate- salad, bread & butter, candied yams, twice-baked sweet potatoes, and pumpkin soup. You don't understand, honest-to-god real bread is SO hard to find, or expensive, here. It was SOOO good.
Turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, cranberry sauce, broccoli in cheese sauce, wild rice with mushrooms. The mashed potatoes were kinda . . . gluey. Like when you melt cheese in mashed potatoes, only there was no cheese. And I was disappointed in the wild rice. The turkey, however, was to DIE FOR.
More Turkey, more salad, more bread. Mmmmmm.
Dessert. Cinnamon cranberry cake of some kind: meh. Apple pie: decent, but not what I would call apple pie. Pecan Pie: It was abundantly clear it wasn't my recipe, which is a pecan RUM pie. Needed rum. And a pumpkin cheesecake, which was lovely. Also, fancy cheese and apples.
Lea, after having entirely too much to eat.
And then we couldn't go home and be sluggish and maybe go shopping on Black Friday, nooo, we had school! :P
Monday was a lovely start to my week. I had the year 10 drama students in a rehearsal for the songs for their Christmas Carol production. Gareth was in the other room, and I was about to warm them up. A student leaned over, and something fell out of his pocket. It was a cigarette case, which then broke open on the floor and spilled.
Yes, I busted a kid with marijuana on Monday. Honestly, it was a bit surreal- you talk about drug policies and DARE and yadda yadda- but then to have it quite literally fall on the floor in front of you . . . My cooperating teacher took him to the headmaster, and the student was expelled. There's a rather strict drug policy here, and quite rightly too. He was a smart kid, and I think they're trying to find him a spot at another school. But what a mess; and to top it off, June no longer has a Scrooge.
Tuesday, the year 13 drama students did their performance, which got taped and sent off to England to be adjudicated, etc. They took a Thai myth called Maenak, and rewrote it into a piece. It was performed entirely without dialogue, they used their movements and the music they chose to tell the story. And a bit of screaming and laughing as well. It was about a half an hour, and it was just lovely. It's so difficult when you don't have words to tell the story for you, and they did such a wonderful job.
Wednesday I came home exhausted. I had a lot of paperwork to do in preparation for the rest of the week. About ten minutes after I'd gotten to my apartment, the phone rang. It was Davy Jones; Mr. Cooper had gotten into Bangkok early, was here, and would like to come talk to me. Cue me going 'AAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!' Mike Cooper was the previous secondary head here, and he started working for GST back in England. It was very nice to meet him in person, after the phone call mishaps of last summer. :D But I was not really prepared to see him until Friday. He asked about my portfolio, and I said half of it was at school- which was the truth!
Thursday, I had a choir rehearsal. I realized when I went to Singapore that I miss singing in church, back in Ripon. I knew I wouldn't find a place like First Congregational here, but I did manage to find an Anglican church that seemed ok, at least for a temporary basis. They're doing a lessons and carols service on the 16th, and since I'll be here then, why not? It's glaringly obvious that I haven't sung in ages, nevermind singing with my students and to demonstrate stuff. One of my goals has always been to find a choir or a theatre group, something, in order to keep my singing skills in shape. Here, not so easy to do as back home. But I'm excited, simply because I get to sing the nasty high descants Sir David Willcocks wrote for some of the carols . . . . I don't quite get the Anglican church, they use those nasty communion wafers, and I'm not sure I agree with bits of their doctrine, but I met a few nice people, and it will be nice for a couple weeks.
Friday I was a bit on the looney side. I knew I had no reason to freak, but it was still there. The one thing that was different was when Norman was here, he ate lunch with me, we talked a lot, and he saw me in the context of the entire school. Mike Cooper, on the other hand, knows everyone here already, so he spent a lot of time visiting in general and not with me, besides lessons. The first lesson went pretty good- the year 11s. I had worked up for them some questions with listening. If this test is the thing they're focusing on, and they need to improve their listening skills, why not do that? I had them research a musical each, give us a brief background. I think next time I'd give them more specific instructions on what to bring. Then we listened to 2 or 3 songs from that show, and they had 2 or three questions each- some on musical things, other questions asking about the plot, or what the character thought, etc. Les Mis (which, I have to say, was horrible of me because poor Tuang had no clue how to pronounce Jean Valjean or Javert or Cossette), West Side Story, Phantom of the Opera, and Sound of Music. The one thing he had for me to improve was that he thought I was asking too specific of questions, he wanted more open-ended things. My response to that was that I'd tried open-ended questions (I had!) and gotten nowhere; and also, the questions on the GCSE are rather specific as well. Richard (who's class it really is) said he would have said the same thing.
The afternoon, I had the year 7s, second day of musical theatre for them. The goal by the end of the class was to have them able to perform- singing and dancing- Comedy Tonight from A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum. The one choreography bit where they do a criscross was a bit funky, but on the whole it went really well. My goal was to get them to connect what we were doing to theatre as a whole- why does an actor do tongue twisters? Why are movements big? What happens when the audience can't understand you? (well, they can't get the story, and that's really the point, isn't it?)
Before I dismissed the class- and they were raring to go, as it was the last class on a Friday- Mr. Cooper actually complimented them on how well they performed, how well they worked as a class, etc. And then he told me he couldn't think of a single thing that I needed to improve upon in that lesson. "Excellent competence in all aspects of the instruction", quoting from the write-up there.
*THUD* That's the sound of my jaw hitting the floor.
I mean, I thought it was good, but I wasn't expecting that!
And then I went home, and I was so exhausted that I fell asleep at 6:30, intending to get up at 9 and eat something and watch a movie. I woke up at 1am. Then I couldn't get to sleep until 4am. Then I was up at 7, because I went to the Ploenchit fair with Heike. :D Zzzzooommbie!!
The Ploenchit fair is a chairity thing organized by the British Council on something-or-other, and it's a big thing. A lot of the British schools have booths, like we did, and all the money goes to charity. I believe our booth raised over 33,000 baht, beating last year's record. I got a couple small things, and had some nice fish and chips and coconut ice cream. I went home, napped a bit, and then went back to school. Saturday was the staff christmas party, and to be honest I didn't really feel like going. I'd had my big dressy thing already, and I'm tired and broke. And Patsy, who runs the boarding house, likes to go with her daughter Charlie, because it's the one time they get to go to something together. So I volunteered for 'babysitting'. It was lovely, actually; I had internet and munchies, and the girls were no trouble. Marina was looking up the top 10 christmas songs, and I'd hear one I haven't heard in awhile and go running out to see. Some of them they didn't know, being teenagers from Estonia and Armenia. The Chipmunk song, for example. I think that's both an American, and growing up in the eighties thing. And then the Royal Guardsmen Snoopy and the Red Baron album, which I only know because my mom bought it for me as a kid and it's AWESOME. :D
Sunday was church again, and then home for another nap. Then I steeled myself for the torture to come . . . just kidding. :D The Bangkok Opera was doing Die Valkyrie, and we had two students playing plus our violin teacher, and comp tickets . . . It was lovely, it really was. But I don't think I need to sit through any of the Ring Cycle ever again. I hadn't realized it, but 90% of it was recitative. And there's only so much recitative I can take. It was supposed to start at 6. They played the King's Anthem and turned down the lights at about 6:12. Then Somtow Sucharitkul, the conductor, comes out on stage and apologizes for another delay. One of the violinists had dropped her bow underneath the pit, and they had to raise the pit to find it. So up on hydraulics the entire orchestra comes. Then they start going down again, only to stop when someone shouts from underneath . . . . They finally started at about 6:23. There were two intermissions, where we'd go out and warm up, because the hall was FREEZING. Literally, us women were huddled in balls with our pashmina shawls wrapped twice around us. And the seats in the Thailand Cultural centre are just horrid seats. I think the best part was seeing Mr. Kneath's eyes go buggy when, during the second intermission, he learned there was still an hour and a half left. The final curtain fell at 11pm.
Boon and Ruaychai, during an intermission.
Your humble author, and Amir, our violin teacher.
The fire curtain at the Cultural Centre, just 'cause it's pretty.
And then today was the school's celebration of the King's Birthday.
The stage set up on one side of the field.
A veritable sea of yellow. Thais have colors corresponding to days of the week. Monday is yellow, and the King was born on a Monday, so thus his color is yellow. Thus most Thais wear yellow on Mondays. The King turns 80 on Wednesday, and here's for many more. He's done a lot for Thailand, and is deserving of the respect and love the Thai people have for him- unlike many leaders in the world today.
Tonight's goal: find a salad dressing. I've tried four kinds in as many days, and the one kind I know I like I can't find anywhere. They have really bad salad dressing in this country.
Also, curses. I have to figure out Christmas presents and the like.
Wait a second, first I need to show you what a Thanksgiving dinner in a British brewpub in Thailand is like. :D
First plate- salad, bread & butter, candied yams, twice-baked sweet potatoes, and pumpkin soup. You don't understand, honest-to-god real bread is SO hard to find, or expensive, here. It was SOOO good.
Turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, cranberry sauce, broccoli in cheese sauce, wild rice with mushrooms. The mashed potatoes were kinda . . . gluey. Like when you melt cheese in mashed potatoes, only there was no cheese. And I was disappointed in the wild rice. The turkey, however, was to DIE FOR.
More Turkey, more salad, more bread. Mmmmmm.
Dessert. Cinnamon cranberry cake of some kind: meh. Apple pie: decent, but not what I would call apple pie. Pecan Pie: It was abundantly clear it wasn't my recipe, which is a pecan RUM pie. Needed rum. And a pumpkin cheesecake, which was lovely. Also, fancy cheese and apples.
Lea, after having entirely too much to eat.
And then we couldn't go home and be sluggish and maybe go shopping on Black Friday, nooo, we had school! :P
Monday was a lovely start to my week. I had the year 10 drama students in a rehearsal for the songs for their Christmas Carol production. Gareth was in the other room, and I was about to warm them up. A student leaned over, and something fell out of his pocket. It was a cigarette case, which then broke open on the floor and spilled.
Yes, I busted a kid with marijuana on Monday. Honestly, it was a bit surreal- you talk about drug policies and DARE and yadda yadda- but then to have it quite literally fall on the floor in front of you . . . My cooperating teacher took him to the headmaster, and the student was expelled. There's a rather strict drug policy here, and quite rightly too. He was a smart kid, and I think they're trying to find him a spot at another school. But what a mess; and to top it off, June no longer has a Scrooge.
Tuesday, the year 13 drama students did their performance, which got taped and sent off to England to be adjudicated, etc. They took a Thai myth called Maenak, and rewrote it into a piece. It was performed entirely without dialogue, they used their movements and the music they chose to tell the story. And a bit of screaming and laughing as well. It was about a half an hour, and it was just lovely. It's so difficult when you don't have words to tell the story for you, and they did such a wonderful job.
Wednesday I came home exhausted. I had a lot of paperwork to do in preparation for the rest of the week. About ten minutes after I'd gotten to my apartment, the phone rang. It was Davy Jones; Mr. Cooper had gotten into Bangkok early, was here, and would like to come talk to me. Cue me going 'AAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!' Mike Cooper was the previous secondary head here, and he started working for GST back in England. It was very nice to meet him in person, after the phone call mishaps of last summer. :D But I was not really prepared to see him until Friday. He asked about my portfolio, and I said half of it was at school- which was the truth!
Thursday, I had a choir rehearsal. I realized when I went to Singapore that I miss singing in church, back in Ripon. I knew I wouldn't find a place like First Congregational here, but I did manage to find an Anglican church that seemed ok, at least for a temporary basis. They're doing a lessons and carols service on the 16th, and since I'll be here then, why not? It's glaringly obvious that I haven't sung in ages, nevermind singing with my students and to demonstrate stuff. One of my goals has always been to find a choir or a theatre group, something, in order to keep my singing skills in shape. Here, not so easy to do as back home. But I'm excited, simply because I get to sing the nasty high descants Sir David Willcocks wrote for some of the carols . . . . I don't quite get the Anglican church, they use those nasty communion wafers, and I'm not sure I agree with bits of their doctrine, but I met a few nice people, and it will be nice for a couple weeks.
Friday I was a bit on the looney side. I knew I had no reason to freak, but it was still there. The one thing that was different was when Norman was here, he ate lunch with me, we talked a lot, and he saw me in the context of the entire school. Mike Cooper, on the other hand, knows everyone here already, so he spent a lot of time visiting in general and not with me, besides lessons. The first lesson went pretty good- the year 11s. I had worked up for them some questions with listening. If this test is the thing they're focusing on, and they need to improve their listening skills, why not do that? I had them research a musical each, give us a brief background. I think next time I'd give them more specific instructions on what to bring. Then we listened to 2 or 3 songs from that show, and they had 2 or three questions each- some on musical things, other questions asking about the plot, or what the character thought, etc. Les Mis (which, I have to say, was horrible of me because poor Tuang had no clue how to pronounce Jean Valjean or Javert or Cossette), West Side Story, Phantom of the Opera, and Sound of Music. The one thing he had for me to improve was that he thought I was asking too specific of questions, he wanted more open-ended things. My response to that was that I'd tried open-ended questions (I had!) and gotten nowhere; and also, the questions on the GCSE are rather specific as well. Richard (who's class it really is) said he would have said the same thing.
The afternoon, I had the year 7s, second day of musical theatre for them. The goal by the end of the class was to have them able to perform- singing and dancing- Comedy Tonight from A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum. The one choreography bit where they do a criscross was a bit funky, but on the whole it went really well. My goal was to get them to connect what we were doing to theatre as a whole- why does an actor do tongue twisters? Why are movements big? What happens when the audience can't understand you? (well, they can't get the story, and that's really the point, isn't it?)
Before I dismissed the class- and they were raring to go, as it was the last class on a Friday- Mr. Cooper actually complimented them on how well they performed, how well they worked as a class, etc. And then he told me he couldn't think of a single thing that I needed to improve upon in that lesson. "Excellent competence in all aspects of the instruction", quoting from the write-up there.
*THUD* That's the sound of my jaw hitting the floor.
I mean, I thought it was good, but I wasn't expecting that!
And then I went home, and I was so exhausted that I fell asleep at 6:30, intending to get up at 9 and eat something and watch a movie. I woke up at 1am. Then I couldn't get to sleep until 4am. Then I was up at 7, because I went to the Ploenchit fair with Heike. :D Zzzzooommbie!!
The Ploenchit fair is a chairity thing organized by the British Council on something-or-other, and it's a big thing. A lot of the British schools have booths, like we did, and all the money goes to charity. I believe our booth raised over 33,000 baht, beating last year's record. I got a couple small things, and had some nice fish and chips and coconut ice cream. I went home, napped a bit, and then went back to school. Saturday was the staff christmas party, and to be honest I didn't really feel like going. I'd had my big dressy thing already, and I'm tired and broke. And Patsy, who runs the boarding house, likes to go with her daughter Charlie, because it's the one time they get to go to something together. So I volunteered for 'babysitting'. It was lovely, actually; I had internet and munchies, and the girls were no trouble. Marina was looking up the top 10 christmas songs, and I'd hear one I haven't heard in awhile and go running out to see. Some of them they didn't know, being teenagers from Estonia and Armenia. The Chipmunk song, for example. I think that's both an American, and growing up in the eighties thing. And then the Royal Guardsmen Snoopy and the Red Baron album, which I only know because my mom bought it for me as a kid and it's AWESOME. :D
Sunday was church again, and then home for another nap. Then I steeled myself for the torture to come . . . just kidding. :D The Bangkok Opera was doing Die Valkyrie, and we had two students playing plus our violin teacher, and comp tickets . . . It was lovely, it really was. But I don't think I need to sit through any of the Ring Cycle ever again. I hadn't realized it, but 90% of it was recitative. And there's only so much recitative I can take. It was supposed to start at 6. They played the King's Anthem and turned down the lights at about 6:12. Then Somtow Sucharitkul, the conductor, comes out on stage and apologizes for another delay. One of the violinists had dropped her bow underneath the pit, and they had to raise the pit to find it. So up on hydraulics the entire orchestra comes. Then they start going down again, only to stop when someone shouts from underneath . . . . They finally started at about 6:23. There were two intermissions, where we'd go out and warm up, because the hall was FREEZING. Literally, us women were huddled in balls with our pashmina shawls wrapped twice around us. And the seats in the Thailand Cultural centre are just horrid seats. I think the best part was seeing Mr. Kneath's eyes go buggy when, during the second intermission, he learned there was still an hour and a half left. The final curtain fell at 11pm.
Boon and Ruaychai, during an intermission.
Your humble author, and Amir, our violin teacher.
The fire curtain at the Cultural Centre, just 'cause it's pretty.
And then today was the school's celebration of the King's Birthday.
The stage set up on one side of the field.
A veritable sea of yellow. Thais have colors corresponding to days of the week. Monday is yellow, and the King was born on a Monday, so thus his color is yellow. Thus most Thais wear yellow on Mondays. The King turns 80 on Wednesday, and here's for many more. He's done a lot for Thailand, and is deserving of the respect and love the Thai people have for him- unlike many leaders in the world today.
Tonight's goal: find a salad dressing. I've tried four kinds in as many days, and the one kind I know I like I can't find anywhere. They have really bad salad dressing in this country.
Also, curses. I have to figure out Christmas presents and the like.
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