Things from the market

Since our school is a temple school, it shares its grounds with a temple... sounds pretty simple. Because of this it is both a school and a sort of community centre where community events are held, such as the morning market on Tuesday and Friday mornings. You may have heard us mention the market before as it is somewhat a bone of contention with us teachers here... not because we don't enjoy purchasing fresh produce or delicious sticky rice but because sometimes the vendors seem to us to be selling questionable items to children of such a young age. On the primary side of the school this seems to be less of a problem but the poor matayom teachers really get the short end of the proverbial market stick.

The first example of this was the fireworks incident. A market vendor was selling firecrackers to students, and as mentioned in a previous post they were detonating these mini bombs all around the school. Shane lost the hearing in one ear for the better part of a day as the result of one of these charming fireworks.

The next item children were purchasing before school was hair elastics. Sounds harmless right? Not when they are strung together to create a slingshot from which students shoot tiny paper balls at each other. Watch out or you might lose an eye! However, I suppose you can't really fault market vendors for selling hair elastics to children like you can for selling them explosives.

Following the hair elastics incident came the BB Guns. Shane was collecting them to arm the staff in case of a students' revolt but they started taking up too much room on his desk, so they have now gone to the tough Thai music teacher (who is known to be liberal with his "pia" -a bamboo rod used to smack unruly students). In order to reclaim your BB gun you must go through him, I will be curious to see who actually gets their guns back.

Probably the most hilarious thing that kids have bought at the market though is pets. Here is a conversation we had recently after market day:
Shane: "So, did any of your kids have like, gerbils in their pockets today?"
Hannah: "Um, no... did yours?"
Shane: "Yeah, I think they got them at the market and they were keeping them in their backpacks or pockets or something. There were gerbils all over the place all day."

Oh yes, the old pocket gerbil. I wonder if they cleaned their pockets after having a rodent pooping in them all day. So far on the primary side the biggest surprise that we have had is fish. A student marched proudly up to the front of the room saying "teacher! fish!". Indeed, he had a bag full of fish which he then proceeded to stuff in his desk. I later saw him with the same fish in a water bottle. Their chances of survival are probably slim.

 Kids selecting fish before school

 More fish

 These kids are looking at the vendor's selection of BB guns like, these are garbage! Where is the guy from last week?

Questions to consider when travelling in Thailand

Happy New Year!

We have just returned from ringing in the new year with a little island vacation full of reading, relaxing, snorkelling and taking pictures with our new underwater camera! We spent the long weekend on the island of Koh Tao in a beautiful little resort away from the party beach (time for some peace and quiet!). This place was ideal for spending our entire weekend just staring at fish and other sea creatures.

Sting ray!

 Snorkel mask rings...

 Diving

 Sea horse!!!!

 Our bus on the way to Koh Tao

Shane diving

 Christmas tree worms

 Parrot fish... or as Hannah has called them "Rainbow fish"

A lonely yellow fish... mostly these little guys travel in pairs.

After such a wonderful relaxing weekend we shouldn't have been surprised when we encountered a few tiny mishaps on our way home...

First of all we wondered, what do you do if it starts to rain while you are riding on a songtao (a pickup truck with two benches in the truck bed)... well, we found out that you just get wet. Luckily the rain wasn't too torrential so we arrived at the pier to meet our ferry in relatively good shape.

Unfortunately on the ferry we found out the answer to another important travelling question, does Shane get seasick? Sadly the answer to this one is yes. However, he wasn't as sick as many of the other passengers, particularly one poor girl whose sickness seemed to follow her (and us) from the boat to the pier and then even on to the bus. To get to (and leave) the island, the most economical option is to take a night bus, leaving late in the evening and arriving early in the morning, coupled with a ferry to or from the island.

On our way home we were finally being lulled to sleep (sick girl had finally settled her stomach) when suddenly there was a POP and a hiss, and the bus pulled over with a flat tire. Now, you might be wondering, what do you do if your bus has to pull over with a flat tire at two in the morning in some small town in Thailand? Why, drive slowly down the road stopping at every garage-looking place and knocking on doors of course! Our bus drivers spent the better part of an hour yelling at houses and getting barked at by soi dogs as they attempted to find someone who could fix the busted flat. Luckily they were eventually sucessful and we got safely back on the road no worse for the wear.

The pig goes oot oot

One of Hannah's pet interests is finding out what noises animals make in other countries. You should try it some time, the results will often surprise you. This fact was brought to the fore the other day in Kindergarten when teaching the kids the classic song "Old MacDonald". Although the kids cannot understand the words (and so far can only sing the Ee I Ee I Oh part) they CAN make some excellent animal noises and thus it was discovered that in Thailand:
The dog says "hung hung"
The duck says "gawp gawp"
The pig says "oot oot"
Chickens say "kataw kataw"

I am hopefully going to figure out some more sweet animal noises this week. Need to get some sort of animal flashcards going on. Then I can teach the kids the English names and myself the Thai sounds!

Also notable... in Thailand trains say "choo cha choo cha POOT POOT" rather than "chugga chugga choo choo" We make a train to go from one station to another in our colour groups so I get to hear this fairly often!

This week is "Sport Day" (an inaccurate name as it lasts all week) on the Matayom (highschool) side of the school. As with any celebration or festival in Thailand this:
1. is a giant production
2. includes some form of pyrotechnics
3. exhibits some lack of organization
In Canada, when you go to see fireworks they are generally lit far from where the crowd is standing. There is some kind of organization to prevent you from getting your face blown off. Usually in Canada, fireworks involve some kind of aerial display of sparks. Fireworks are also regulated. In Thailand none of these things are likely to be the case. They often light fireworks right next to you (in fact we hear that there are some celebrations where they actually shoot Roman Candles at people). The fireworks do not always include any aerial display, and seem to be more like bombs...
Today for sports day they seemed to be filling coconut shells with what we assume was dynamite. These explosions were terrifying (sending kindergarten children diving to the floor and screaming even though they
were across the road in another building) and sent shrapnel raining from the sky onto the students below.
Another highlight of sport day opening ceremonies -the flaming baton twirlers. Unfortunately these poor kids had apparently missed a couple of practices, and weren't quite up to the challenge of keeping a flaming baton away from their bodies... ouch. 
All-in-all, a magnificent opening ceremony for Sport Day.

*No children were actually harmed in the making of this blog post*

Also, a note to our faithful readers. Just to keep you informed, we have now broken our record for most family members on a motorbike. The previous record was four, we have smashed it by seeing a family of six all crowded on one bike. Another family of four was also seen with the addition of a chicken, hardly record breaking but hilarious nonetheless...

T'was the day before Christmas

and we saw through the fog, every creature was busy -even the soi dogs.
The stages were being decorated with the utmost of care,
in hopes that the President of the Obejaw soon would be there.
The children ran wild as is usual here,
For them to suddenly get struck with nerves was the teachers' biggest fear.

I in Reindeer antlers and Shane in a Christmas cap
were wishing we could take a hard-earned Christmas nap.

Yes, yesterday was our big Christmas eve spectacular at school. Each campus had a seperate show, sharing one Santa (who may have developed heat stroke during the event) to hand out small gifts and candy. Shane's side (Matayom or highschool) had a Rockin Around the Christmas Tree song and dance followed by "T'was the night before Christmas". Hannah's side had a KG1-KG2 nativity scene and song, a Prathom1-3 Rudolph sing-along and a Prathom 4-6 Jingle Bell Rock.

Everyone worked really hard to get everything ready on time and Shane's show even had to restart as the guest of honour, the president of the temple schools arrived! Both shows went off without any problems (despite the fears of all of us teachers!) and were super adorable. The kids were amazing and we are so proud of all of them!

Here are some pictures from the Christmas show... video to follow when we have better internet connection! (Hopefully this week!)

 My little KG1 angels! lol

"baby Jesus" in his manger...

Some of my students hanging out on our Christmas/New Years party day at school!

Handing out presents... Sweatiest santa ever lol.

Adorable...

Our little tiny Christmas tree!

Nicknames & Kids

Hello all,

well it is nearly the end of month two here in Thailand and as teachers we have been realizing that this blog is bereft of any mention of the kids we are teaching, so we thought we would add a little information about the little darlings.

First of all, kids here in Thailand are referred to by foreigners by their "Nicknames". These are names, that are designed to help out the farang of the world who when trying to pronounce Thai names can become so terribly lost. Quite a helpful gesture really...

We have been told that these nicknames are chosen sometimes because of a trait of the child (for instance a small child may be nicknamed Lek or Noi which both mean small), because of something the parents like (for instance Paytong -a Thai form of bocce ball), a short form of the actual name, something that the parents think will be fortunate for the kids, because the word sounds good or even more spiritual reasons. Sometimes they choose thai words, other times they choose English words, and sometimes the English words strike us as funny... not because there is anything wrong with the Nickname Bank but only because it is generally different from what we are used to calling each other back home! So, here are some of the nicknames of kids in our classes...

Bank, Bong, Bomb, Arm, Manow (means lemon), Filmy, Tankwa (means cucumber -being cool-headed is extremely valuable in Thai culture), Pee, Poo (in the same class and one after another on the attendance list), God, First, Best, Mail, Guy, Pet (means duck), and many others... These caused us a smile when we arrived at school.

Another common occurance in Thailand... well actually apparently just at our school, is kids throwing up out the window. Not so much on Shane's matayom (high school) side, but in the Kindergarten and Prathom (grade school) classes this happens on basically a weekly basis. Here is an actual conversation that occurred between Hannah and another teacher here:
Hannah: "so... do kids like, throw up a lot in your class?"
Other teacher: "No... why?"
Hannah: "Oh, I guess it's just my kids then. They throw up all the time."
Same goes for nose bleeds and any other messy incidences... straight out the window.

Another thing that Hannah has had to get used to here in Thailand is the limited resources. For instance, the activity book we have to use includes MANY pages of cutting and pasting things... However, we do not have a full class set of scissors (only around 15) or squeezy glue bottles. At the beginning of the semester Hannah was handed a bottle of white glue. One with a screw top. It didn't even have a stick to get the glue out. The common practice with this is to walk around the classroom allowing each child to stick their fingers in the jar and get some glue... as you can imagine this results in utter chaos. Hannah has now graduated to cutting open old water bottles and finding stick-like objects to hold and spread the glue.

Another thing we're having to get used to is the practice of selling dangerous firecrackers to children. These are sold at the morning market that occurs on the school grounds just before school begins. Some charming man sits out there selling these improvised explosives to the highschool kids, who spend their day merrily throwing them off the top of the building to land in the courtyard below. One such blast knocked Shane's and most of of his class's hearing out for most of an afternoon. THese are not those little black cats that you throw at the ground with a pop, these things may be made out of TNT and have a boom loud enough that you feel it in your chest. They don't light up, they just make noise... and now if you are caught with one you are headed straight to the Thai disciplinarian at the school.

If we haven't mentioned the Thai disciplinarian before... his name makes kids tremble in their seats. He went around to the parents' houses at the beginning of his time at school and asked if he could hit their children. They agreed, and so he does, with a bamboo rod. These aren't your old-fashioned slaps on the wrist either, this guy gets his whole body into the swing. We try not to get kids in trouble with him.

Sorry no pictures tonight, we're working on compiling a collage of soi dogs...

Long Weekend in Paradise

Wow, these Thais sure do love their holidays! This weekend was another long weekend in a row, this time we had Friday off for Constitution day. Our friends suggested that we head down south to the beach and we were more than happy to agree! After a long bus ride followed by a ride in a songtao (basically a pickup truck with two benches in the back) a long wait for the ferry and a speedboat ride over to the island of Koh Mak, we arrived in paradise.

Koh Mak is a small island near the more popular destination of Koh Chang. It is home to more beachside resorts than convenience stores and as such has a fairly small resident population and a healthy dose of tourists. It is a quiet beachside getaway, unlike its nearby neighbour Koh Chang which is renowned for its nightlife! We decided on Koh Mak because we felt like we could all use a little R&R.

Arriving in Koh Mak was like arriving in exactly what we pictured Thailand to be like. Turquoise blue water (so clear that in some of our pictures it LOOKS like we're standing on a beach when really we're in the water!) white sand and coconut palms everywhere. We spent the remainder of the day of our arrival checking out the area around our resort and figuring out where we could get some good snorkeling in on Saturday! We had a relaxing evening, some dinner and drinks and then went out for a nighttime walk on the beach where we found one of the most interesting things on Koh Mak -bioluminescent plankton! When water is disturbed near these little guys they give off a bioluminescent liquid which apparently is designed to attract other predators that will eat whatever is trying to eat the plankton! This results in really cool effects when you move your hand or feet through the water. We managed to get one of these little guys on film -not an easy feat as they seemed to be a little camera shy!

Saturday was snorkeling day and we set off at 9 in the morning with Steve, the island's resident hippie farang dive instructor. His employee Anuk -a colourful dutch hippie, took us out to the dive spots and we dove in to a whole new world. There were all different kinds of fish, big fish, little fish, colourful fish etc. They were swimming around by the thousands on top of rocky outcrops covered in coral and beautiful sea worms (look like neon coloured christmas trees). We could have sat and watched fish all day... but sadly eventually we had to head back to the resort. Equally sadly, we do not yet have an underwater camera, that may have to be someone's Christmas present since it looks like it is something that will really come in handy out here!

We spent the rest of our weekend in paradise relaxing on the beach and enjoying our new favourite treat -coconut fruit shakes. We also got to taste some of the delicious fruits of the ocean -freshly caught prawns by the kilogram! We weren't aware that you had to order ahead so we had to take a half a kilo between the bunch of us and eat them as an appetizer, and they were delicious! We dipped them into a chili lime sauce and spent the walk between the seafood place and the swiss restaurant (where we had dinner) licking our fingers. Yes, that is not a typo... there is a Swiss restaurant on Koh Mak. A Swiss man recently moved there with his Thai wife and they have opened up a little restaurant on top of a hill serving absolutely delicious Swiss, European and Thai food. We shared a plate of Jager Schnitzel and a tomato salad and then Shane and Harry split a spaghetti bolognese for dessert while the girls shared some fried bananas and iced cream. Then it was off to play in the plankton again (less spectacular the second night) before bed and catching the ferry home early the next morning... :(

At home we could travel for around 7 hours and go to Ottawa, Michigan or possibly nearly to Sault Ste Marie. Here in Thailand we travelled for around 7 hours and ended up in Paradise. We wish that we could bring everybody over to share this with us!!!!


The boat ride on the way in... other islands near Koh Mak!

The water was so clear! This is a picture of some tiny fish right off the pier.

 In this picture Shane's feet are actually under water but it is so clear you can hardly tell!

 A fishing boat. They use the lights to attract the fish at night.

 Our first snorkeling spot of the day. This island is surrounded by rock formations and coral reefs and tons of beautiful fish!

 The pier down to the beach where we had lunch :)

 Beautiful swing... so peaceful!

 Delicious delicious prawns!

 Beautiful emerald beetle :)

 Melly Thai Clissmas :) Shane with the coconut santa

 Hannah pointing at a huge crab!

 Morning beach walk :)

The inside of our little bungalow.

Kanchanaburi for the King's Birthday

What a busy couple of weeks! There have been two long weekends in a row. Yes, that's right, on December 6 we got Monday off for the King's Birthday and then on December 10 we got Friday off for Constitution day (more on that in the next post). As a result we have been travelling up a storm! For the King's Birthday we decided to check out Kanchanaburi, the province home to the famous River Kwai Bridge.

We were told by friends that Kanchanaburi is a quiet little town, perfect for a relaxing weekend, but this was not the case on the weekend of the "War is Over River Kwai Bridge Festival" and the King's Birthday! Our first night's stay in a guesthouse called Sugar Cane Two was sadly an epic failure (if you feel that the main purpose of a hotel room is to sleep) due to the SUPER LOUD music blasting from the River Kwai Bridge festival. However, there is no time for napping when you have exploring to do! We rented motorcycles again and headed out to Erawan Falls, a famous 7-level waterfall with a beautiful trail following the river up into the jungle to the top of the canyon (and head of the falls). Since it was the King's Birthday weekend, admission to the park was free and a LOT of tourists (Thai and farang) were taking advantage of the opportunity for a little relaxing by the river. Luckily, tourists like relaxation -not an hour and a half hike uphill into the jungle, so the top of the waterfall had many fewer people than the bottom. We found a secluded spot that looked nice and after a little jungle bushwhacking we were swimming in the beautiful blue waters of a river in the middle of the jungle. However, this is no ordinary river! This river is full of tiny little fish that just LOVE to nibble the dead skin off your feet and legs. It sounds weird, and at first it really was! It is a feeling somewhere between a tiny pinch and a scrape... but eventually we got used to it and sat in the river for some relaxing fish pedicures! Unfortunately we have not yet been able to aquire a waterproof camera so for pictures of these little fish actually at work you may have to try google, but here are some pictures of the river and other sights in Kanchanaburi!

Fireworks over the bridge! Wow do they have a big explosion sound to go with them! 

On the left hand side of this picture you can see some big versions of the little fish that were nibbling on our feet! This is closer to the bottom of the falls.

Our swimming spot! All it takes is one bunch of people and others will come. Luckily we had the place to ourselves for about an hour and a half of uninterupted swimming first!

The bridge over the River Kwai. Accompanied by one of the worst museums we have EVER seen... Luckily it had one redeeming staff member (see next picture)

A giant iguana that hangs around the River Kwai bridge museum! Even though the museum was terrible we did get to see this guy, the sleepiest lizard I have ever seen! There was also luckily another museum further into town which had some really interesting information on Thailand's involvement in WWII and the bridge over the River Kwai.