Thailand: Winter in the Tropics

By Carson Christiano - Winter has descended on Chiang Mai. You wouldn't know it save for the hats, scarves, jackets, and knitting needles that have made their way into my classrooms, the complaints from teachers and students that they are getting sick, and the questioning looks I get when I show up to work in short sleeves. The weather is an excuse for everything from tardiness to falling asleep in class to unfinished homework. This morning was admittedly cool, a brisk 57 degrees with a biting southeast wind, but by midday it was brilliantly sunny, around 80, with a gentle breeze wafting through the windows of the English department. If these temperatures are driving the Thai people into hibernation, I hate to think what the summer months here are like.

School by Carson Christiano

I've been working full-time at a private high school in Chiang Mai for a month now, and I’m starting to feel reasonably well-adjusted, if such a thing is possible. It became clear to me early on that teaching is the sort of gig you learn by doing—no TEFL course could have fully prepared me for it. It's unpredictable. It's exhausting. It's intimidating. There are days when I feel at odds with the entire student body and all of the Thai teachers, and others when I feel a real connection with my students. When conditions are just right—the stars are in alignment and the wind is blowing steadily at two meters per second off the mountains—I walk out of class feeling like a prophet. I guess I enjoy the rush that such an emotional rollercoaster brings.

I teach fourteen classes a week, Matiom 4 and 5 (grades 10 and 11), with 55 or more students in each class. My curriculum is English writing, but it’s more of a mixture of reading, writing, and conversation—or as much as I can get across to all 55 of them in such a short period of time. Not surprisingly, I do a lot of yelling and often leave school with a wicked headache. Drinking herbal tea in the morning has become a necessity rather than a choice. Of course, the students more than make up my discomfort by being awesome; and with names like Boat, Fang, Mint, Bomb, Jump, Gift, Poon, Ping Pong, Fluke, and Porn, how could they not be?

One thing that will never get old is the way the students greet me. In Thailand, teachers are very highly respected, and when students pass me they must bend down so that their heads are lower than mine. This can be a quite amusing when thirty students shuffle pass me in succession; a little wave of heads rippling down the hallway. When I enter a classroom, all fifty-five of them stand up and say, "Good morning, teacher" in unison, and when class is over, they stand again and say "Thank you, teacher. See you again soon." The kicker is that they won't sit down until I give them permission, and they can't enter the classroom or go to the bathroom without bowing and asking politely. I don't think there will ever be a day when I don't grin foolishly throughout this whole process. It makes me feel very powerful and very, very good about myself.

The Thai teachers I work with are amazing, and I wouldn't be making any progress here without their help. An experienced teacher in Thailand uses the title ajarn; I proudly go by “Miss Carson.” It is also customary to call women who are older than you Pee (meaning sister), followed by their first name. Pee Yew (no relation to the common English phrase), upon finding out I was sleeping on a rock hard bed, brought me a pillow from her house the following day. Pee Kwan always offers to drive me places or play me Thai music or lend me her clothes. Every five minutes another ajarn is dropping a new kind of food on my desk, so he or she can sit there and watch, amused, while my eyes either widen with delight or disgust—it was the pickled mangoes that did me in last time; I thought they tasted a bit too much like the fetal pigs we dissected in high school (or rather, how I imagine they would taste).

Outside of class, I've become the native speaking go-to person at the high school, helping Thai teachers write recommendations, editing grant proposals for a new IT center, tutoring students writing college essays, making up answer keys for tests, etc. Even though my free time between classes is often reduced to nil, I really enjoy these interactions; they are the fruit of my existence here.

On the streets of Chiang Mai, I revel in the smiles I get from students, the look of recognition on their faces and the pride they emanate when they have a successful exchange with me in English. It's not all smooth sailing, however. One awkward cultural hang-up is the tendency of Americans to say "How are you?" in passing, without actually caring to hear the answer. A Thai will never ask how you are unless they really want to know, in the case of an illness or misfortune. Consequently, when a student says "Hello, Miss Carson!" and I reply "Hello, how are you?" I often have to stop walking and wait for them to say "I'm fine. Thank you. And how are you?" and by then I'm late for my next appointment. I have to stop doing that.

Unfortunately my Thai has not progressed substantially since I've been teaching full time, but I have been getting lessons every Tuesday morning from Pee Nan. Since Thai is a tonal language, words that sound the same to a foreigner when spoken by a Thai can have many different meanings, often ones you'd rather not confuse. For example, the words for "banana," "salt," "afraid," and part of the male anatomy are all pronounced kgluah, but with slightly different tonalities. This could get you into a pickle if, for example, someone thought you wanted salt on your ice cream or a favor instead of a morning snack. The Thai words for "near" and "far" are also indistinguishable to the untrained ear, and can make communicating with a songthow or tuk-tuk (motorized rickshaw) driver difficult.

Yesterday I visited an orphanage where a friend of mine volunteers on the weekends, and had a rather humbling experience. I had never set foot in an orphanage before, and was surprised (and relieved) to find that the kids looked like perfectly normal little creatures—as slimy, slobbery, leaky-eyed, and ravenous as any of them. Only after an hour or so of picking them up and flipping them upside-down and helping them across the monkey bars did I notice they clung to me much tighter than the average three-year-old. Some seemed a tad on the aggressive side or were unaffected by pain or loud noises. Others had strange bruises or what looked like an excessive number of mosquito bites on their legs. My friend informed me that many of their parents are beggars at the night market, where children as young as three or four are used as props to get money from foreigners, like the little girl I met in the café. Unfortunately, many of them will also never be adopted because their parents refuse to give up custody.

One girl, a tiny two-year-old with a neon green t-shirt and sedated look in her eyes, had been dropped off only a few days earlier. She sat motionless in the middle of the playground, and I couldn't help but wonder what this child had seen in her short lifetime to be so unfazed by the screaming mosh pit of children tumbling all around her.

In other, more uplifting news, I am now the proud owner of a 1999 Honda Dream 100cc motorbike. She is a faded electric blue, and does not rival my Saab at home in character or good looks, but she sure is fun to zoom around on. I figured with all my weekend excursions to destinations outside the city and spontaneous trips across town, songthow rides were becoming impractical and expensive. There certainly is something to be said for traveling in the open air rather than witnessing your surroundings through the windshield of a car; to be completely exposed (except for my heavy-duty helmet, of course), with the warm, sticky jungle air on your face and the smell of orchids or green curry passing through your nostrils, is a truly exhilarating experience and not to be missed.