Adventures in Thailand & Teaching: Thoughts at Christmastime

The funniest thing I heard today at school was, when I asked another English teacher if I had class later, “Oh if they come…that’s up to the students.”

Welcome to the Thai educational system, my friends. On a daily basis, I have been dealing with many frustrations and differences in the way schools are run here. Although I consider myself to possess an easygoing personality, things are taken to a whole new level here. Some days my students don’t show up. Some days they run out of class (is my teaching that horrific?? Ha) or they are going to buy ice cream in the opposite direction when I am walking to teach class.

My materials are very, very minimal. I have a whiteboard and some pens. No technology and at the elementary (prathom) I teach at once a week, I teach 50-60 little kids outside at one time, talk about exciting! I am usually hoarse by the end of the day. As I walk into that elementary school, I see the little kindergarten faces peering at me through screen doors; their excited and nervous giggles already putting a smile on my face. As I teach, I try to put as many little positive things as I can into their lives---because that is what I think teaching is.

I learned today that my students are the poorest of the poor. Northeast Thailand is the poorest region in the country, and these children come from parents who are barely eking out a couple dollars a day by farming dry lands. For many of the students, their dirty and tattered school uniform is all they have, their legs are covered in scabs and they don’t own a notebook.

In class today, as I put a sticker on each one of my students and said a little “Merry Christmas’, I saw their faces fill excitement. My heart was simultaneously utterly broken and filled with a fulfillment that I cannot explain. Broken, because they are so excited about one little sticker. Broken, because I take everything I have for granted. Broken, because I cannot completely fix their lives and communicate how much I love them. But thank goodness the joy is bigger than the brokenness…I know that there is hope and that there is one who loves them who can do all that I cannot.

My traditional Thai dance team!

On a lighter note, I got to travel to the neighboring province of Chaiyaphum with the Thai traditional dance team. We took a karaoke bus for eight hours and let me tell you, I’m good for about three hours of karaoke! It was incredible to see all the behind-the-scenes work that went into the complex dances. The dancers had been living at school for weeks, practicing every night and making their own costumes. They competed against many other teams from all over Isaan, and performed so beautifully! I was so proud. The girls wept uncontrollably after they were finished and those were the first tears I had seen in Thailand. Emotions are not to be shown here---especially anger or sadness. But they were so happy, relieved and tired that catharsis just happened naturally. Such a beautiful thing to watch.

So proud

The team was comprised of about ten girls and five ladyboys. For those of you who have no idea what a ‘ladyboy’ is (in Thai ‘kathoey’), I’m referring to the effeminate gay or transgender males that are very, very common here. In so many ways, Thailand is more liberal than America. Clothing is much more modest, but ladyboys are widely accepted and from my point of view, in school they hold prominent positions of leadership and academic success. They are also some of my best students at English!! Sexuality is a continuum here, completely different from the Western way of putting people into clearly defined boxes. Each morning I watch my neighbor ladyboy painstakingly put on makeup on his balcony across my mine. It makes me think, what is gender really? Gender is so constructed by society and if society is different, like Thailand for example, it can mean something completely different from what I have experienced.

Whew. I feel like the post has been so random. I guess they are just a few of the thoughts that have been swirling around in my head the past few weeks that needed to be pinned down.

Although Christmas has been sad at times for me, talking to my mom made me realize that the ache I feel in my heart for my family is a beautiful thing. It is something good from God that shows how close we are. I hope that each one of you got to experience joy from life, whether with family or without this year.

Merry late Christmas and Happy Holidays friends. Know that I am missing you from the other side of the world!