So that time I got swine flu (part two)

the interior of a room at the Pathumwan Princess Hotel in Bangkok, and the happy ending to my story


So where did we leave off last time? Ah yes, I had just contracted what my doctor believed was a pork related influenza of the A strain variety. Now what any sane or intelligent person would do in this situation would be to go home and get in bed for a week. But well, this is me. I decided the best path to take would be to challenge my body to a game of chicken. I was going on my tropical island vacation damnit! And my body just needed to get in line. I had given it meds, a little bit of rest, plenty of water and all that. So it was time my body did something for me in return, namely recover from the flu in record time and allow me to go romping on sun dappled beaches and swimming through emerald waters in approximately 24 hours. Reasonable right?



So along with two friends I boarded an early morning train out of Bangkok to Surrathani (the jump off point for the island, Ko Samui). It was supposed to be an eight and a half hour train ride, so I reasoned that really this was just another full day of rest. I’d just be lounging around, alternately dozing and reading American gossip magazines (which cost, ahem, about ten US dollars here, EACH, and yes I am deeply, deeply ashamed of myself for buying these on more than one occasion). I was feeling okay, I mean. Sure my head still felt like it was in one of those squeeze garbage cans, and my chest wasn’t all that great either. But my body just had lingering reservations about this beach business. As soon as it saw the water and got a little bit of sun, it would be a completely different story. My body would be thanking me for this vacation.
I sat back, ready for a relaxing train ride (because there are many of those right?), and well it wasn’t exactly relaxing. It was an AC train but you could have fooled me because of how stifling it was. The train itself was tiny, a little midget train, only two cars long, and it was also full. There were fans in the ceiling but they weren’t rotating and they weren’t pointing in my direction. So within minutes of leaving the station it was boiling. But hey, it would just give me a chance to sweat out some toxins. By the time we got there that evening, I’d be the vigorous picture of health. Except as our journey went on I started to feel worse. I still had absolutely no appetite, and even the sight of the prepackaged train “breakfast” (which was rice and some kind of neon orange chicken) made my stomach turn. But no matter. My body was just trying to test me, get me to fold, but like I said, it was a game of chicken. And I wasn’t about to be the first to turn and run. Thai island paradise here I come! WOOOOO!!


And then oh yeah, our train crashed. Now this wasn’t a big, derailment, carnage and explosions kind of crash. I’ll make that much clear up front. But it was still a very definite crash. And that’s not all that normal for me. I don’t expect the train I’m on to have any kind of collision with any kind of object, machine or man. That’s not too much to ask right? I mean I already have the friggin’ flu and now my train crashes!? Seriously universe? SERIOUSLY?


Like the cliché always goes, it happened very quickly. It wasn’t until it ended that I could even figure out what my senses had just experienced, because at the moment it was all one big jumble of sound and image and movement. It was the weirdest thing, because I honestly took in everything completely backwards. One second the train was humming its merry way through beautiful Thai country side (oh yeah, did I mention that every time you take a train or bus anywhere in Thailand you are sure to drive through the lushest, greenest, most tropical, jungly, mountainous, straight out of any movie, most heart stoppingly, soul achingly, drop dead gorgeous scenery on this planet). And then the next second we were stopped. And then in reverse I understood what had just happened. Right before the train ground to a halt there had been a large spray of water out of the window. Milliseconds before that there had been what looked to be a very large pick up truck flying through the air. Before that the train had lurched forward with a sickening screech. And then before that had been the collision, the sudden sound of metal and steel and glass all churned up together. Now it all sped up and formed a complete picture and only then did I understand what in the hell just happened. There was silence for a few beats and then the two train cars filled with the sound of people wondering what had just happened, if everyone was okay (everyone was okay, except for a few scratches and bruises, and one train attendant lady who apparently fainted and had to be carried off). Everyone then looked out the windows (on my side of the train). We were a couple dozen yards away from a small train stop (just a platform really) and in the midst of some kind of rural market place where at least a hundred or so people had been gathered minutes before, eating and talking and shopping. But as we looked out the window these same people, in masse, ran in the direction we had just come, most of them toward what I could only imagined was one absolutely obliterated pick-up truck. A few groups stayed put, walking instead toward our stopped train, anxious looks on their faces. I realized that some of these people had been standing there, waiting for a loved one to arrive on our very train, and that these poor people had watched us hit the truck and lurch dangerously on the tracks, and that as confusing and scary as it had been inside the train, they had probably had it ten times worse.


And then well, a lot of aimless standing around and talking occurred. People got off the train. People got back on. People stood around outside the train talking. People stood around inside the train talking. There were no official announcements, no official anything. At one point everyone, en masse, got off the train with their baggage, so we followed suit. As I stood in the aisle, I glanced at the car ahead of ours (remember this was only a two car train) and couldn’t believe what I saw. The floor was caked in red dirt and shards of glass (the front windows of the train had been smashed with the collision). Surely we would have to take a different train to our destination. I mean this one seemed down for the count. We stood on the grass with our backpacks while random Thai people said things to us in reassuring tones. People drifted back from the site of the wrecked pick- up truck. I didn’t want to look too closely but when I glanced in that direction I saw that it lay on its side in some kind of ditch/creek (hence the water spray) a little ways away. No one seemed to be screaming or crying so that seemed like a good sign (a little while later another backpacker reported that everyone was okay, which seemed impossible, but hey, someone’s really, really, really luck day right?) There was much meandering. A large crowd of people stood around the front of the train which I can only assume took its fair share of damage. And then after a little while longer, the engine started up, the train lurched forward, and you got it, we boarded this beaten up, mangled, dirt and glass strewn train and went along our merry way.


And it did run, but I couldn’t help expect the whole thing to just give up any second. Excuse the kind of cheesy parallel, but here I was, a broken down Liz, trying to keep my Thai island dreams alive, riding on a broken down train, doing the very same thing. Oh life. Somehow, our rag tag train made it to Surrathani (along the way people on the ground who we passed usually did very comical double takes when our little battered engine that could moved past). We departed, late but at least in one piece. And then the fun really started. You see the train station in Surrathani is in a tiny little town about twenty minutes from the actual “city” of Surrathani. And from there you have to take a ferry to get to Ko Samui. Now there aren’t really any “official” ways of doing this, no “official” city buses to take you to the pier, no “official” city ferries to take you to the island. No instead there are tour companies, all touting their own package deals. And you don’t come to them. No they come to you. The second you, a very clear farang (foreigner for those of you keeping up on your Thai) step out from that train station, you are the prey. But they don’t walk up to you with the clear intention of trying to sell you a package trip to the island. No they are merely concerned citizens who want to help. In fact, you can be halfway through one of these business transactions before you even realize that you are in fact, taking part in a business transaction. There’s no information desk. Every time you try and stand off to look in your Lonely Planet, you are swarmed by many men who are thrilled by the prospect of taking you to your destination. Except it’s not so simple. Because some of these men are saying that the ferry to Ko Samui already stopped for the day so you must stay in a hotel in town (a hotel that coincidentally is either owned by the same tour company or sharing a deal with them). But another guy is saying they can get you a boat to the island (provided you’re willing to pay of course). It is a complicated labyrinth of smooth talk and genuine help with no way to differentiate between the two (to be fair none of these guys are evil, they’re just doing their job, albeit in a very smooth talky, potentially deceitful way). We spent a good forty five minute talking to about five different guys with various “advice”. We even tried to join forces with a beautiful, multi-national family (you know the ones, where the mother is from like Eastern Europe and the dad is from Australia and somehow they have created a baby with all of the genetic blessings of both countries, and none of the genetic shortcomings) to get a chartered boat to the island. But after much prodding and many assurances that if we went to the pier that evening the only way to get to Ko Samui would be to swim, we went to a hotel nearby for the night.


And that’s when my body, so cooperative throughout all the train and train station shenanigans, decided to remind me who is boss. It was almost as if it had decided to wait politely in the background while I dealt with all of that stuff, and then once I was securely and safely in a hotel it felt it was time to head butt me into submission. In a sudden rush I felt like complete and total poo. I felt like my fever was back. My chest hurt. My cough was getting worse. I felt sick, really, really sick. I climbed into bed, and without any kind of deliberation I knew. I was not going to Ko Samui to frolick on sun drenched shores. There would be no pina coladas in the sand, no snorkeling in clear waters. There would be no fun holiday times, no celebration even for the 4th of July (which was the next day) with my other American friends. I was going back to Bangkok to a hotel with room service where I would not have to get out of bed for as long as possible.
And to make absolutely sure of this my body decided to throw in some vomit (sorry for the graphic details, but it’s for posterity) the next morning, so as to really hammer the final nail into the coffin that was my trip to Ko Samui. If my body could have talked it would have said this: “Hey Liz, we usually get along, sure you put some fast food junk into me every now and again, too much beer or wine on occasion, all that coffee and Diet Coke, seriously I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that. But the point is we’ve always been pretty much in synch. But this, this is just sheer lunacy. You drag my flu ridden self out of bed, put me on a hot, crowded train (and one that crashes to boot!) for nine uncomfortable hours, and then you expect me to get on a ferry and go on vacation! We could have done this the easy way but no. So go ahead, throw up that watermelon you had for breakfast (the one tiny glimmer of American 4th of July I had that day, to make this story even more pathetic) then get on a train and go back to Bangkok immediately!”


And well that is what I did. Of course the first available train didn’t leave until 6pm, meaning that I had about four hours to kill at the train station. But those four hours ended up being strangely wonderful. For one I’ve always loved train stations (except for the hell on earth, abysmal, make you want to throw yourself on the tracks Indian ones we visited-go to Agra, you’ll see). There’s something just so romantic about train stations to me, something old fashioned and adventurous. And when I think back on past vacations or trips, somehow it’s always the train stations that stand out to me, little post it notes stuck in the pages of old travel memories. And as I sat there on a hard plastic seat with a giant bottle of water, I couldn’t help but be reminded of four years ago, me traveling solo for the first time in my life. I was with a friend in Rome (during my semester abroad in Paris), but she flew to London to meet her parents, and I still had a week left of break, so I took the train to Florence for two nights. I remember Florence very clearly, seeing the statue of David, eating gelato for dinner (okay and lunch), wandering the streets and getting chased by an Italian man. But just as memorably I remember waiting for the night train that would take me back to Paris, sitting on a similar bench at a similar station. And I remember how I felt that day, the same way I felt sitting at the Surrathani station, waiting for the night train that would take me back to Bangkok. There are things in this world people can take away from us. There are things that can be tarnished and ruined. But traveling alone in a foreign country, even if just for a few days, nothing and no one can ever take away what that feels like. Just to know you can do it, to know you’re okay, that even in a foreign country, alone, you’re okay. I carried that feeling away from Florence and hold onto it still, and I know I’ll do the same with my time in Thailand.


I sat at that station and kept waiting to have to throw up again, but I didn’t. I didn’t feel great by any means, but I felt level and strangely calm. It was as if my body, having seen that I followed its instructions, was giving me a little break. And I read. I started and finished Elizabeth Gilbert’s “Eat, Pray, Love.” I had almost read that book so many times in life. I had picked it up and carried it around at Barnes and Nobles before changing my mind and putting it back. I have no idea why. But the morning I left Bangkok, as I was browsing the shelves of the hostel’s book exchange, I saw a battered, crumpled copy. My favorite version of books is when they are battered and crumpled. As with any proper stuffed animal, this shows they have been loved, adored, read again and again and again. I like the creases in pages from where they’ve been folded down. Love the food stains and smudges. I like these kind of books because it shows that they are really living things. Books aren’t static, or at least they shouldn’t be. I re-read books because they do grow and change every time you read them. But I digress. I saw this battered, crumpled, torn copy of “Eat, Pray, Love” and exchanged my book for it.


And I started it at that train station. Nearly five hours later I was almost finished. And it was the perfect book for that moment in my life. When I was depressed and feeling sorry for myself (being alone and sick on the 4th of July thing was rough. I love the 4th of July, love the hot dogs and cole slaw and watermelon, love the tennis on television, love the flags and the fireworks and that one perfect, unironic day of patriotism and pride) this book filled me with happiness and calm and warmth. I won’t go into the details other than to say that Elizabeth Gilbert puts into funny, clever words exactly how I feel about so many things, spirituality (minus all the meditating, I respect it but am not at a point in my life where I could “quiet my mind”, my mind never shuts up), God, food, pasta, wine, did I mention food?, but most importantly at that moment, travel.


Because, here’s the thing. A lot of this blog has touched on some not so great things, misadventures if you will. But I really hope it hasn’t seemed overly negative. Because as much as some of these things have sucked, they are all part of this big, messy moment in my life. And I wanted this. I signed up for this knowing it would be hard and messy and that I might get sick or have my purse stolen while night swimming off a Thai island (okay well maybe I didn’t anticipate that part exactly). I knew teaching would be hard. I knew I would miss home sometimes. I knew that this would be rocky. But I wanted rocky. My life before I left, throughout the year after graduation, was veering dangerously close to the opposite of rocky, which is not to say perfect. Perfect is not the opposite of rocky, bland is. A life that was always easy and always safe is not at all what I really wanted. It’s great for life to be easy and safe sometimes, a good deal of the time even, but if it’s always that way, then it’s not really life, not life, capital L. It’s just life, lowercase l, and that’s not enough for me. And being here in Thailand, well it hasn’t been easy and safe. And that’s why, despite the stolen purse and the swine flu and the passport stuff and various other mishaps I’ve loved every minute of this. And you might say how in the world can I love every minute of a trip that’s had such issues. But I love this trip because of its issues, because of its rockiness. I feel like finally my life is starting to be lived in color. I don’t want a beige life. I never have. Beige might be easy on the eyes and it might mean you never clash with anything, but frankly never clashing with anything is overrated. Let me clash. Let me pair pink and orange together and just go with it.


But I bring all of this up because of a passage in Ms. Gilbert’s book which spoke so directly to my heart and to that moment in my soul that it was almost a little spooky. And here it is. I know this blog is already a novella but I just have to transcribe it all.

“Truthfully, I’m not the best traveler in the world.



I know this because I’ve traveled a lot and I’ve met people who are great at it. Real naturals. I’ve met travelers who are so physically sturdy they could drink a shoebox of water from a Calcutta gutter and never get sick. People who can pick up new languages where others of us might only pick up infectious diseases. People who know how to stand down a threatening border guard or cajole an uncooperative bureaucrat at the visa office. People who are the right height and complexion that they kind of look halfway normal wherever they go-in Turkey they just might be Turks, in Mexico they are suddenly Mexican, in Spain they could be mistaken for a Basque, in Northern Africa they can sometimes pass for an Arab…


I don’t have these qualities. First off I don’t blend. Tall and blond and pink complexioned, I am less a chameleon than a flamingo. Everywhere I go but Dusseldorf, I stand out garishly. When I was in China, women used to come up to me on the street and point me out to their children as though I were some escaped zoo animal. And their children-who had never seen anything quite like this pink-faced yellow-headed phantom person-would often burst into tears at the sight of me. I really hated that about China.


I’m bad (or, rather, lazy) at researching a place before I travel, tending just to show up and see what happens. When you travel this way, what typically “happens” is that you end up spending a lot of time standing in the middle of the train station feeling confused, or dropping way too much money on hotels because you don’t know better…


Aside from my cockeyed internal compass, I also have a shortage of personal coolness, which can be a liability in travel. I have never learned how to arrange my face into that blank expression of competent invisibility that is so useful when traveling in dangerous, foreign places. You know-that super relaxed, totally-in-charge expression which makes you look like you belong there, anywhere, everywhere, even in the middle of a riot in Jakarta. Oh, no. When I don’t know what I’m doing, I look like I don’t know what I’m doing. When I’m excited or nervous, I look excited or nervous. And when I am lost, which is frequently, I look lost. My face is a transparent transmitter of every thought…


And oh the woes that traveling has inflicted upon my digestive tract!...But I have other bodily weaknesses too. My back gave out on my first day of traveling in Africa, I was the only member of my part to emerge from the jungles of Venezuela with infected spider bites, and I ask you-I beg of you!-who gets sunburned in Stockholm?


Still despite all this, traveling is the great true love of my life. I have always felt, ever since I was sixteen years old and first went to Russia with my saved-up babysitting money, that to travel is worth any cost or sacrifice. I am loyal and constant in my love for travel, as I have not always been loyal and constant in my other loves. I feel about travel the way a happy new mother feels about her impossible, colicky, restless newborn baby-I just don’t care what it puts me through. Because I adore it. Because it’s mine. Because it looks exactly like me. I can barf all over me if it wants to-I just don’t care.”


And that last paragraph, as I sat reading that in the train station off the Gulf Coast of Thailand, that spoke to me in a way few other books have ever spoke to me. I needed to read this book at this moment. I needed to have this book show up on a bookshelf in the Wendy House hostel in Bangkok. I don’t necessarily put too much stock in fate and destiny and all that, but maybe I should, because this book found me in a really low moment and reminded my sick, self pitying self why I was doing this. I have been barfed all over repeatedly here, but like Elizabeth Gilbert, I could care less. That barf is a part of this wonderful, incredible, life changing journey. I’d rather not be barfed on, but at the end of the day, it’s all part of it, all part of this. This trip has figuratively thrown me down stairs and sucker punched me and roundhouse kicked me Chuck Norris style, but in spite of that, hell, because of all that, I’m doing what I love right now. As strange as it seems I have always wanted a life that would throw in an occasional round house kick.


My mom sent me this letter recently, strangely a letter from myself, aged 18, written at a high school retreat and saved by my high school all these years, only to be mailed out now, five years after graduation. This letter addressed me, its future self, and in no uncertain terms, told me what it expected of me. I haven't met quite all of these strict expectations, but halfway through the letter, past self told me that if I wasn’t traveling, then I should go and do it right then and there. And maybe it’s cheesy, but I’m really proud of the fact that in that way I’ve lived up to the eighteen year old me’s expectations. Because eighteen year old me, like a lot of eighteen year olds, naïve yes, a little foolish maybe, but beautifully, singularly brave when it comes to looking at the future and demanding that it lives up to its potential, the way only an eighteen year old can demand.


So I journeyed back to Bangkok with newfound clarity, and I spent the next two nights in one of the nicest hotels I’ve ever stayed at, for about a sixth of the cost it would be in any American big city. Something else I took away from “Eat, Pray, Love”, the whole Italy section about letting yourself be a little decadent, treating yourself every once in a while, especially when your body is weary and broken. And boy did I (or at least my kind and understanding parents did, thanks again Mom and Dad!) I knew from the moment I checked in (and was brought this iced banana tea in a champagne glass) that this was the place to recuperate. Every single person who worked at that hotel who I encountered asked me if I was taking medicine, if I needed to see a doctor, to let them know if I needed anything, anything at all. At the point when I arrived I think I looked and sounded a little, let’s say, rough. A lack of sleep and food and general health will do that to a person. And these kind hotel workers welcomed me like I was their sick child home early from school.


I slept in the softest, cleanest bed, with the most wonderful cloud of a comforter. I took like three hot showers a day in the world’s most awesome bathroom (it had a big clear window looking into the bedroom but if you pressed a button this awesome curtain came down!...and the shower, it had this big square nozzle in the ceiling that was like a waterfall!, oh!, oh! and there was an elephant on the counter made out of towels! that killed me. I couldn’t bear to remove a single towel from it). There were soft, wonderful, fancy hotel robes too, and if you know me you know it has always been a dream to stay in a hotel with fancy robes. I wore my robe around for hours along with the provided pair of shiny blue slippers. I recuperated. I took care of myself. I ordered room service (a big juicy hamburger with salty fries and real ketchup! Pizza with real parmesan cheese! Definitely enough to entice my appetite back to life) and made tea and watched actual English language television. Wonder of wonders I made it back to Bangkok the day of the Wimbledon final, the only live match I got to watch for the entire tournament (and for me this was almost unbearable, Wimbledon is the two week long Super Bowl of tennis, it’s as much a part of my summer memories as the pool and camp) and wow it was a good one, as much as my heart broke for Andy Roddick (although as a fan I was so proud of how he played and how he conducted himself after the match).


I watched oodles of the Discovery Channel and BBC News. Both mornings I actually put on some clothes, (as tempted as I was there was a little sign saying that slippers and robes were not allowed to be worn outside of the rooms) left my room and partook in the complimentary breakfast in one of the hotel’s many restaurants. Now I have seen some massive breakfast spreads in Asian hotels but this one, well it put them all to shame. So much delicious food. Crepe stations and omelet stations! Mountains of gorgeous fresh fruit. French toast and pancakes. An entire table of bread and pastries. Bacon! Corn fritters! Fresh sushi and miso soup! Four kinds of freshly squeezed juice! The second day when I felt better and more rested I sat by the enormous salt water pool with all of Bangkok spread out around me.



I breathed. I knew that I was doing exactly what I needed, that in the future there were sure to be more mishaps, more disasters, more metaphorical train crashes (hopefully not any more literal ones). I was going to get barfed on again by travel (just had to put that word in one more time!). And I was going to love it regardless. Because it’s just that unconditional kind of love.


But for two nights at least, I took a vacation from travel, sent the colicky baby out to a sitter, and finally, finally got some rest.

so that time i got swine flu

Hello all. I think it's been about a month since my last post, and for that I apologize. But if you continue to read on then I can at least offer you some very legitimate excuses for my internet absence, at least in the last two weeks. And as far as weeks go, those two were a doozy.

It all started after a weekend trip to Bangkok. Everything was lovely as it usually is when I go to Bangkok. Against all odds I have formed an attachment to this big, chaotic city. Pretty much whenever I don't travel off to islands or other far flung Thai locales I pack up a few things, hop on the red, non AC number 82 bus that leaves from the center of my town, hop off about ten minutes later and get onto the air-con orange number 140 and head direcly into the heart of the city (I mentioned this earlier but in case you forgot I pretty much live in a suburb of Bangkok). There's this little street (barely more than an alley) tucked away in the shadow of one of Bangkok's behometh malls, and this street has become intensely familar to me. It's lined with hotels and hostels and guesthouses. It's barley wide enough for a car to pass on (although they do of course, and of course as in all places in Thailand they pass by at high speed). There are various food and fruit vendors. And toward the end of this little street, with the big skyscrapers looming in the distance overhead, are a few little hostels that well, feel like home. I've stayed in these rooms legitimately a couple of times. I have also crammed illegitimately into single rooms shared by five or six of us teachers when really they only comfortably fit one (hey when you're on a budget...). And maybe I should venture out more for comprarison but I really can't imagine ever staying anywhere else in Bangkok (except for the super modern, ultra luxurious Pathumwan Princess Hotel but more on that later).

My favorite of these hostels is Wendy House. I'm not even sure if it is techincally a hotel or hostel or guest house, but I do know that it has a wonderful blend of hotel ammenities mixed with the laid back, warm vibe of the most backpackery hostel or guest house. The lobby is small and filled with tables. At any time of day or night there are at least a few travelers sitting at these tables, either eating the home cooked Thai food provided by a small kitchen or thumbing through Lonely Planet in various languages. Some have their ginormous backpacks on the floor beside them, either waiting for a plane or train or bus to some next destination or newly arrived in Bangkok, jetlagged and exhausted but full of restless energy at the adventure to come. Toward the front windows there are two rows of computers with webcams and speakers conveniently attached. Whenever I walk through the lobby there is almost always one guest on the computer talking on skype to a friend or family member back in some far away home. Toward the back of the lobby is a large bookcase crammed full of paperbacks and hardbacks in various stages of disintegration. And here you can browse or borrow a book for your room or if you happen to have some extra books you don't want anymore you can simply exchange your book for a new one, no money necessary.

So in many ways Wendy House sounds like your typical hostel, but one large difference is that you get to your room, and it's clean and nice and there's an ensuite bathroom with hot water and fresh towels. The beds are large and made up with soft, clean sheets. There's television with cable (channels in English!). There are even a pair of slippers to wear around when you're in the room. So it's really the best of both worlds. Which is exactly what I crave. I love staying in a nice room with AC and hot water and tv and all of that, but I also love the commaraderie and friendliness of a hostel or guest house, the sort of "all in it together" vibe that fills the place, the knowledge that everyone else there is a tourist or traveler and can in some way relate to your own situation, with all of the excitements and frustrations it entails.

But I of course digress. So two weekends ago I stayed at Wendy House, spent time at Siam Paragon (oh such decadent, shiny luxury, so much so that the only two floors I ever really frequent there are the food hall and the cinema), bought myself some real, honest to God cheese at the Gourmet Market at Paragon, saw Transformers 2 (very, very silly) and then on Saturday evening went back to my humble little abode in Pra Pradaeng. I ate myself some cheese (mmmm) despite not having too much of an appetite (warning sign! dun, dun, dun) and went to bed early. And then I woke up, early (another warning sign, although I've started at least waking up on my own early in the mornings I can almost always get back to sleep if it's a weekend, unless of course I'm sick, dun, dun, DUN!) And fairly quickly I realized all was not well. There were the usual culprits, chills, general ickiness, lack of appetite (and right after I bought the block of real CHEESE, freaking germs), but there was also a very weird sensation deep in my chest. I didn't really have a strong urge to cough, but when I did cough I found myself unable to stop. And it was that full, heavy kind of cough, ugly sounding and rattly, but emanating from a deeper place than I'd ever coughed from before.

So I was sick, but not surprised. As I've mentioned before my immune system must have decided to jump ship somewhere around my plane's stop over in Hong Kong. It must be happy, off alone on some Asian beach, not having to do any heavy lifting anymore. But unfortunatley it's left me in the predicament of constantly being sick. Until this point I'd had a couple of minor infections and bugs, sore throat, cough (but a different, much less scary one), nasal stuff, you know, the usual. But very soon on this Sunday I could tell this was worse. I took my temperature early on in the day and it was just under 100, so a mild fever but nothing I couldn't handle. I made myself some tea and put on a sweatshirt and retreated to my bed to watch DVDs.

But an hour later I was freezing even with my sweatshirt and blankets and the AC setting turned up to a high temperature. I felt significantly worse so I took my temp again and it had jumped up to above 101. Hmm. Well I snuggled back in bed and tried to nap, but unfortunately I have this weird thing where I have a really hard time sleeping when I'm sick, especially when I have a fever. It's all my body wants and needs and yet it's somehow forgotten how to do it. I kept watching my DVDs (Chuck Season 2, yeah that's right, go out to your local Barnes and Noble and see if they have it there, oh wait they don't, it's not out yet and won't be for quite some time, same with my Gossip Girl Season 2, and 30 Rock Season 3, and The Office Season 5, oh how I love MBK and its wide selection of completely non legit DVDs). But suddenly I couldnt even watch tv properly (which is definitely not normal for me). I was feeling even worse. Only an hour had passed but I took my temp and it had jumped up again, past 102 now. Same deal an hour later. And then an hour after that it had reached 104.

That's when a small part of my brain started to worry. I felt too sick and hazily feverish to really panic or be alarmed, but I had never in my life had a fever that high, and with how fast and sudden it came on, I knew something might be wrong. This coupled with the fact that I'm in Thailand right now and you know, they have tropical diseases right? Isn't that what my doctor told me before I left. I started to wonder if I could be malarial. I'd been bitten by mosquitos plenty of times. Or what if it was Typhoid (I got a vaccine for that of course but in my fevered state such logic didn't matter). All sorts of terrible, dramatic, illnesses raced through my mind-Dengue Fever? parasites? Whooping Cough? I groaned a lot and pulled my blankets even tighter around me except now I was both chilled and extremely hot. My face felt like a furnace. I kept picturing how in old movies they put those ice things on people's heads who have fevers. I really wanted one of those ice things, or a cold wash cloth, they have those in movies too. The closest I had was a chilled bottle of water and that actually felt really, really good. I was thirsty and no amount of water I drank really helped. It was just a lot of badness really, and through my fevered state I resolved to call someone if my fever went up much more. That's the thing about living alone in a foreign country. When something like getting massively sick happens you really are on your own. And at that time you want nothing less than to be on your own. At my sickest that Sunday I could barely make myself get out of bed to pee (luckily I did mind you). When the end of the DVD came and I had to put on a new one it took about fifteen minutes of convincing myself before I could move the five feet to the DVD player. Although I didn't want to watch dvds, I couldn't really concentrate, I couldn't sleep. My head was starting to ache. My eyeballs were painful (ugh, one of the WORST and little talked about parts of the flu, is the painful eyeballs). My lower back and knees were hurting so much I couldn't get comfortable. So I just lay there, a bottle of water perched precariously on my head, took three Advils and waited for their promise of relief.

And whether it was the Advil or just the fever reachings its peak, an hour later I was covered in sweat. I took my temp and it was back to under 103. Which made me even more confused because while I welcomed the fever reduction and subsequent improvement in my convalescent state, I had no idea what illness I had that would have included such a rapid rise and fall in fever.


So after another full day in bed (oh how I miss my soft, full size bed with even softer down comforter at times like these) my temp was close to normal and I decided I could go into school. I had already missed several passport related days and I felt bad missing more, especially with a three day holiday coming up the next week. So I taught, although I was so exhausted and still icky feeling that I could barely stand up, much less try to corall 40 boisterous children. I came home exhausted, went to bed early, woke up in the middle of the night, and surprise, surprise, the fever was back. But now in addition to the fever and chest stuff there was a whole new array of symptoms, mainly just an ungodly sinus blockage that felt like there was something very heavy sitting on top of my skull.


At this point I really had no idea what in the world was going on with my body. I was seriously leaning towards me being malarial, that or the whole Whooping Cough thing. So deciding that I shouldn't just assume all would be well on its own, I called my coordinator in the morning, said in no uncertain terms there was no way I could teach (I know my limits, I would have passed out or started babbling incoherently, or if the sickness really got the better of me and the students were extra troublesome there could have been physical violence involved, it would have been bad). I said I needed to go to the doctor. And so I somehow forced myself out of bed, put some clothes on (that's about as much as I could handle, the whole brushing hair, putting in contacts thing, not so much), stumbled out my front door into the heat (by this point I had started to get used to the crushing Thailand heat, but being sick, oh it's not fun), stumbled even more to the school and met my coordinator.


A little while later I was being poked and prodded in the front of a Thai hospital. Since it wasnt my first trip to the rodeo (ie all of my previous sicknesses) I was familar with this distinct Thai medical practice. You get checked in like an American hospital but there's sort of an assembly line type thing right there in the waiting room. At one table they take your temp (it was in Celsius, but the nurse exchanged a meaningful glance and some Thai words with my coordinator, which was reassuring), your blood pressure and pulse, then you're taken (this time I was physically led) to another little station where you're weighed (thank you Thailand! with exactly no attempt at dieting I have lost 12 pounds, I think about 4 pounds of that were sickness related, but seriously I've heard from everyone hear how foreigners come here and lose weight. I officially give up. I know nothing about dieting. Forget carb free. All I eat here are carbs, literally every meal noodles and rice. And I've been going through a box of sugary cereal every two days! Yet I'm losing weight without effort, while at home I deprive myself of all things delicious and force down cottage cheese and celery and I maybe lose 2 pounds in a month. It's like it was in France. All of these things Americans avoid or else turn sugar free or fat free or calorie free or carb free, well they eat them freely everywhere else in the world and yet people are not what we so often are back home, super, super fat. Maybe it's the spiciness of the food or the fact that I walk a lot or you know, the whole no wine thing (which pains me to admit because it means that my love affair with wine and my refusal to abstain from it even when dieting could in fact be the thing keeping me from ever being able to lose weight at home), but I'm just convinced that it's something about America itself, the place, that takes all this wonderful carby food and makes it pudge inducing, oh it's just so unfair)


But again I digress. After my little spin at the assembly line, there came more waiting (although minimal waiting time compared to what it would be in an American hospital), and then I was led into a room with a doctor behind a desk. I sat opposite him. He talked in rapid Thai to my coordinator. I stared at the wall behind him while they conversed in what seemed to be a very interesting conversation about me. Then he came across the desk, looked into my mouth, said some more stuff in Thai, listened to my breathing (for far too long for me not to be a little freaked out) then went back to the desk. At this point I coughed (something I had needed to do for a while but was trying to hold in because in this H1N1 climate you cough in a public place and people look at you like you just sprouted three extra heads). And the doctor's reaction to my cough pretty much told me all I needed to know. He literally lept back in his seat, almost cartoonishly so because of how speedy it was. Then he hastily pulled his face mask up from his neck onto his mouth. Then he grabbed some tissues, thrust them at me, and said I was to cough only into these tissues. Meanwhile I was trying to narrow down what horrible contagious disease I must have that he would clearly be so afraid of catching, again leaning toward Whooping Cough.


There followed more rapid fire Thai between him and my coordinator. Then he looked at me, said "well, yes I think it might be H1N1 or something like it", then began speaking Thai again to my coordinator. And so there it was, I was officially (or I guess unofficially, since there were no blood tests, just this doctor's opinion and obvious fear of me and my cooties), swine flued. I suddenly felt like the diagnosis was scrawled across my forehead. I was infected. I was contagious. I was like those people in the signs everywhere! The disembodied nose sneezing into a tissue or the similarly disembodied mouth coughing. I was the disembodied mouth! Would they put me on a poster? Were they going to quarantine me and make me live in a bubble? But I was getting ahead of myself. The doctor looked back at me, said that it didn't seem to have "progressed" in my lungs (which, um, what exactly would happen if it did PROGRESS in my LUNGS?), but that it was important to monitor my symptoms over the next few days. Then he very quickly prescribed me four different meds (one I later learned was the famous Tamiflu I had so often read about in the news), said to come back if things got worse or if after four days I wasn't better, and then hustled me right on out to the waiting room to wait for my prescriptions (in Thailand you get your prescriptions at the hospital about ten minutes after you see your doctor, and with no insurance at all they're still so cheap they might as well be free).


My coordinator led me to a chair and then proceeded to walk to the other side of the room to stand (which at the time, not gonna lie, made me feel a little like I had leprosy). And then the icing on the cake. The same nurse who had taken all my vitals earlier walked up to me, in the middle of this crowded waiting room, and handed me a face mask, clearly indicating I was to put it on immediately. Now there were plenty of people in this hospital with face masks (as there are all over my town and Bangkok), but it was clear to me and to all near me that this mask was not for my sake. It was for the sake of everyone else around me, because again, I was officially diseased, a danger to society, like that monkey in Outbreak. I could almost sense everyone in the room shift slightly in their seats away from me. I was still feverishly hazy at this point and exhausted from the minimal effort it had taken to get to the hospital, but underneath it all, I felt a lot of things, weirdly amusement in some ways because OF COURSE I would catch swine flu while in Thailand, after everything else that had already happened. It was really just my luck (or complete lack thereof). I was curious about what exactly swine flu was and how different it was from any other flu. I was more than a little freaked out after the whole lung progression discussion (what would happen if it did progress doctor man, you didn't mention that!). I didn't think I was going to die, but at the same time, when you're diagnosed with an illness that has made headlines for killing a fair number of people (I know, I know, people with underlying illnesses, just like the regular flu, but still, the headlines don't say "3 more die from h1n1, but don't worry because they were already really old or sick so you'll be totally fine", they just emphasize the word die). I was more than a little annoyed with the mandatory face mask. Had never worn one before but wow do they suck! Especially when you are sick and have a fever and thus have hot breath, which gets trapped inside the mask and makes it really hot and fogs up your glasses in a really embarassing way. But most of all I just really wanted to be home, not for good, I knew even in my sick stage that my trip here in Thailand was not at all finished, but if I could only be home for like a week, to be in my bed, with cable television and meals prepared by my mom, and all of the comforts of home. I wanted to be comforted and fawned over and made the center of attention. I'm not ashamed to admit these things because well that's what all of us really want when we're sick. I didn't want to go back to my little dorm room apartment and lie in my hard bed (oh the beds in Thailand, I will not miss these) with only a couple of packets of Ramen Noodles for nourishment (the super spicy Thai variety so not exactly chicken soup) and a dwindling supply of bottled water. Plus the whole no hot water thing, I've pretty much gotten used to it, but I will tell you that taking a cold shower when you have the flu, pretty much the worst thing ever.


But I won't bore you with my little pity spiral. It didn't last too long. I got home. I got into my hard bed (which even in its hardness was a welcome relief from being upright at that point). I watched more DVDs (now I was on to Arrested Development). I drank some tea. And then I knew what was necessary. I would go to Bangkok, go to a hotel with hot water and beds and complete my recovery. At this point I was giving myself um, about a day and a half to recover, because like I mentioned there was a big three day holiday ahead and I was not going to miss it. I had already bought a train ticket to an island down south called Ko Samui. A lot of my friends were going. We had a bungalow. I was not going to spend the only major break in the entire semester sick and in bed darnit! I would get better. I was on four different medications! Never mind the fact that as my fever lowered my sinuses were getting even worse, now there was an elephant sitting on my skull, and as much as I adore elephants, I'd prefer if they kept their large hefts off my cranium. Never mind that there was no way I would be up for an eight hour train ride in a day and a half, considering that even making tea left me utterly spent in the energy department. I would will myself to get better in no time. I was young. I was (pre-Thailand at least) healthy. No stupid swine flu or A flu strain of some kind was going to stop me! Pandemic schmandemic. I laugh in the face of any pork related illness! I fart in its general direction (sorry for the crudeness, but the only way to sum up my disdain for this virus is with some help from Monty Python).



So yeah, that was the plan at least, but like most of my plans, it did not go, well, for lack of a better phrase, according to plan. But I will have to finish this tale another time. For one this post is long enough already and I'm almost out of time at the internet cafe. So I'll just have to leave everyone hanging. Suffice it to say I am alive and I can assure you I am not in a bubble, so at least in that regard you won't be in suspense.

so this teaching thing...kind of difficult, kind of amazing

I have now been an English teacher in Thailand for four full weeks. I am four days into my fifth week. I teach twenty-three classes a week, each lasting fifty minutes. I meet each class only once, meaning that I teach around five hundred different students every week, ranging in age from Kindergarten to fourth grade. I will teach until mid-September, almost twenty weeks when it is all said and done.

Those are the numbers that define my teaching experience thus far. They tell you something, sure. But in the end they're only numbers. To really talk about teaching, what it's been like so far, could never be summed up in such perfunctory terms. I am a teacher, a klu (the Thai word for teacher) and it is the hardest thing I have ever done in my entire life.

Here's a little snapshot. I walk the non air-conditioned halls of my school (the classrooms have AC, thank the Lord) with a crinkled piece of paper in my hands. This piece of paper is sacred, because it is all that stands between me and complete and total disorientation. One of the very kind Thai teachers made it for me a couple of weeks ago, after I had gotten lost finding a class for the umpteenth time. On one side of the piece of paper are Thai numbers, and the other side has their corresponding numbers in English. You see, the Thai classrooms are labeled but the numbers are in Thai, and since I teach twenty three different classes per week (each one a different grade and each grade separated into four different sections), on three different floors, in two different buildings, along countless different hallways, I had been finding it impossible to remember where to go from class to class. For the first few weeks I either had to ask someone, or simply wander, peeking into the classes and hoping the students would call out if I passed the correct one. It was not the most efficient method and I usually ended up arriving late to class, sweaty from the exertion of going up and down stairs ten times to find the right floor.

So now I never go anywhere in the school without my trusted number translation sheet. It still takes me a while to find the right floor and the right hallway, but I'm getting better. Now when I look at my schedule and see that I have Grade 2, Section 4, there's something familiar there. I can at least get in the general vicinty of the classroom. So I'm walking along the hallway, paper in one hand. Under my arm I carry a blue ball, another extremely valued possession. It was left to me by the last foreign English teacher at the school, and I use it in almost every class. Take a tedious drilling exercise (asking the children to answer the question "How are you?" for example), add a ball, and suddenly it's a game. Simple solutions. Again and again I have found that the simplest solutions are what can make the biggest difference in a classroom.

In my free hand I carry my little plastic briefcase (they gave us these at orientation and thank God, because never once in my pre-trip packing did I think to get a bag to use for teaching). The briefcase is pink with a purple handle and it has accumulated several dozen stickers. The kids stick the stickers on me, I stick them on my briefcase. There are some Pokemon ones, some Disney princesses, a nice little mishmash of American and Asian culture all represented in tiny, colorful stick on pieces of paper. The briefcase always has my notebook in it (where I write down lesson plans), a couple of white erase markers (side note: white erase boards-worst idea EVER. Who decided to switch from chalk boards? I want to know your name mister or missy because I will hold you responsible for the constant smudginess of my hands. White erase marker gets everywhere. No matter how hard you try, you will end every class with blue or red hands, and quite possibly blue or red smudges all over your face and clothes. And even worse than that, white erase markers have no life. One will last me maybe two days. I have to buy these things every week, and yeah they're cheap, but it adds up. Give me chalk. I know it's dusty but chalk dust doesnt stain your clothes, and pieces of chalk don't suddenly run out of ink in the middle of a class, forcing you to put all your body weight into writing on the board so that maybe you will get a feeble outline. End of side note). In addition to the notebook and the markers, I will also usually have a thick stack of paper, most often something the kids can color. I mentioned before the power of coloring and I hold firm in that position. Some of my third and fourth graders will feign disinterest but by the end of the class (usually, not always) they are crouched over their desks, colored pencils in hand, brows furrowed in extreme concentration as they carefully color in shapes or the Amerian flag or any of the various other subject related objects printed out to be colored.


So with all of my teacher gear in hand I arrive in a classroom. I stride purposefully toward the desk, smiling but in what I hope is a firm, teacherly, authoritative way. I put my stuff on the desk. It's never my desk mind you. I don't have a classroom. I am a vagabond, wandering from class to class to class. If the teacher happens to be in the class when I walk in it's always a little awkward because I dont want to put my stuff on the desk while she's sitting here, but if I don't I have to just stand there with it, or maneuver it onto the ground into a little pile, all while attempting to keep my calm, cool, collected teacher demeanor of course. During this whole time there is usually a wall of noise, accompanied by lots and lots of movement. But for one brief, glorious moment (most times the only moment in the whole fifty minute class) the noise and movement stop. The class "leader" stands up and shouts in full on drill sargeant mode (and remember in my clases, this child is no older than ten, and half the time is only six or seven) "STAND UP". Everyone follows suit and then they half say, half scream this little gem "GOOD MORNING/AFTERNOON TEACHER." Now I'd say about 50 percent of the time do they get the morning afternoon part right (i.e. its 2pm and they're screaming good morning at the top of their lungs) but bless their little hearts for trying right?

And then they continue to stand, and in theory would continue to stand for the rest of the time if I didn't tell them it was okay to sit down. So that's kind of cool. If they ever really piss me off I might just test my theory out and see how long it takes for them to disobey and sit down on their own. But I am a kind and generous teacher (naturally) so I tell them it is okay for them to sit down. And then it begins. The class and the noise. I attempt to stave off the noise with a focus chant, which kind of works. It's simple. I do an action, they repeat. Hands up, hands down, hands up, hands down, to the left, to the right. You get the idea. And 9 out of 10 times the kids will do this. In first and second grade they're earnest and exited, all of their motions energetic. In 3rd and 4th they still do it but with that slight trace of irony, subtle maybe, but definitely there. Oh that terrible transition, when children get to the age where they start being ironic. Maybe that's my problem with older children. Even when they're giving you a straight answer there's this lingering feel of smart ass about it. Little kids feel every word they say. But at some point around age nine or ten kids start to learn that words can be manipulated and used, that emotion can be hidden. They learn to say what people want to hear, not what they actually mean. And maybe that's a part of life but I really hope my own children make it at least until they're 30 before they get to that stage. That's not too unrealistic an expectation right?


So the focus drill ends, and even after six weeks, there is always a tiny moment where a little voice inside my head says "oh shit". Now I have to actually teach, for fifty minutes, to a room full of Thai children, who don't speak my language. What in the world have I gotten myself into? But I soldier on, ready to put into practice my carefully constructed lesson plans. But there's that slight problem of the noise. Did I mention the noise. It shouldn't even be lower case n, noise. It should always be capital N, Noise. The Noise. Oh that unGodly wall of sound, voices at normal level, voices raised in shouts, voices in whispers, the sound of desks being scraped across linoleum, rulers and pencils and pens dropping at intervals with tiny clatters, chairs being scooted in and out, in and out. And that's just the kids in the background. No matter what we are doing there is always at least one, and very often many more than that, students sitting at their desks, hands in the air, shouting TEACHER!!!!!!!!!!!! over and over and over again. Although to be fair they're not always at their desks. Often they are only centimeters away from my face. And even though they are only centimeters away from my face they are still shouting as though we are on separate ends of a football field, TEACHER!!! They are Marlon Brando and I am Stella, and they are putting every ounce of lung power into getting my attention.

Some of them don't bother with the formality of shouting "teacher". Some merely walk right up and ask (sometimes in English but also sometimes in Thai) if they can go the toilet. They have to ask and I have to say yes (in theory, often they just walk out the door) and then they have to bow. Now I have learned the words for toilet and water (they all have water bottles which they can fill, where and with what water I have no idea). But there are lots of other requests or questions or maybe just statements I get in Thai which I have no comprehension of. A small child will come up to me, often when I'm in the middle of teaching, and when I look their way they let loose a long and very expressive stream of Thai. Then they look at me expectantly. And I offer my go to response, a smile and a yes. Now it's very likely their questions are not able to be answered with a yes or a no. They could be asking me whether they should use pencil or pen. Or what my favorite color is. Or any other question under the sun that requires more than a simple yes. But yes is what I say, because short of staring at them blankly for minutes on end, that's all I've got. Now I've given this some thought and I do wonder if at some point one of these children will ask me if it's okay for them to leave school early, or go play in traffic, or hitchike to Cambodia, or stab a pencil in their friend's eye. And me, being the hapless farang (foreigner) that I am, will smile, nod and say "yes", of course it's okay if you want to cut out of school early today and go get a full facial tatoo, of course it's fine if you want to go pee in the principle's office. This is not an entirely unlikely scenario (well the face tatoo part might be a little out there). But what can I do? As of yet I have not given permisson to any of these children to do something illegal, so here's hoping I keep that streak alive.


I used to try and fight The Noise. I would spend half the class miming quiet to the kids. I would walk the aisles and break up one little huddle of children only to see another huddle form out of the corner of my eye across the room. I tried everything. I tried yelling. I tried...okay mainly I just tried yelling. And let me tell you, yelling don't work. So now I try to work with The Noise. It's not going anywhere but neither am I. I may not be able to defeat The Noise but I darn well won't let it defeat me. After a couple of very hoarse weeks, I have gotten used to speaking at a permanent shout. It makes me feel a little ridiculous, especially when I'm doing something like going over the lyrics to the Itsy Bitsy Spider (for a unit on weather) and I'm practicaly screaming "down came the rain and washed the spider out." It sort of ruins the whole calm, pleasant teacher image to be standing at the front of the room, red in the face from shouting, but alas, it is my lot in life to do so.

Now The Noise has a companion, a little thing I like to call The Movement. I go back and forth on which is worse. The Noise is irritating sure, and it definitely makes it hard to teach lessons, just on a logistical level (if the students can't hear the teacher, that's a significant problem). But The Movement, well The Movement, is another monster. These kids could not sit still in their desks if their lives depended on it. I want to know if their parents are sending them out the door with mugs of coffee. Does the cafeteria serve red bull? Children all over the world are little balls of hyperactivity, but the kids at this school, at all times of the day, are simply tiny litte Tasmian devils. There are two ways The Movement works. There are the sweet, enthusiastic, excited children at the front of the class who move primarily to get my attention. A simple game of hang man creates a stampede of children who are all determined to plant themselves directly in my line of vision so as to be called on to guess the next correct letter in "January". And that's just hangman. In a lot of my lessons I play racing games where one kid from each team has a dry erase marker and they have to race to write something correctly on the board. And good God, I had no idea the frenzy that would be created from lettting children write on the board. I often find myselfs in impromptu games of tug of war with small children, me hanging onto one end of the dry erase marker, them on the other, locked in a battle of wills. Or else I'm in a mob of eight year olds, closing in from all sides, chanting "TEACHER!" and waving their hands in my face. The only thing that saves me from suffocation is the sheer fact that I'm taller than they are. I cannot tell you the number of times in one class I say (in calm teacher voice) "Go back to your desks please" or "I will only call on you if you're at your desk". I cannot also tell you the number of times in one class I yell (in desperate, dear God I'm about to be crushed to death by a horde of uniformed children voice) BACK TO YOUR DESKS NOW. And some of them do. Most simply go and stand next to their desks and dance around like they have ants in their pants, which I used to try to fight, but now realize I need to accept it for the small improvement that it is.

But like I said that's just one type of The Movement. The other type is the defiant, yay the white teacher is here, time for recess/gossip hour/playtime type of movement. And this is the kind that drives me slowly to the edge. Because the enthusiastic movement I can forgive. Heck most times I find it kind of endearing. I mean you have to love kids being manically, out of control excited about a lesson on the months of the year or numbers up to 25. But the other kind of movement is why I could never be a teacher for life. I dont have nearly thick enough skin to be outright ignored, and I think being outright ignored just comes with the territory of teaching. I cannot tell you the number of activities these children engage in in one fifty minute period. Every week I think I've seen it all and then I look over and one of my students is knitting, KNITTING. But at least that's contained. I don't have to worry about any collateral damage from crochet work. But especially in my younger classes, there is full on physical contact. I'll be trying to work through a lesson and then out of the corner of my eye I will see a small blur of white and navy launch through the air and land with an enormous crash onto another small blur of white and navy. They tackle each other. They jump on each other's backs. They crash into desks. They crash into walls. They knock chairs over. They knock posters off the walls. They are human wrecking balls, and half the time I simply try to get through the class without anyone losing an eye or breaking something (either bone or furniture). Depending on the class and how much energy I have, I choose one of two tacks to deal with this. If I have a lot of energy and am feeling particularly spunky, I'll chase them around and attempt to keep them in their seats. I will be stern and firm and grab students by their collars and point menacingly toward the hallway (usually it's empty but I think they get that I'm referring to the threat of going to get their Thai teacher). But this is problematic. One, they will stay in their seats maybe five seconds before bouding out again to body slam each other or stand on something or start running in circles (seriously these kids are on speed). Two, if I do this, and make it my mission to maintain control, then there will be no teaching. I will spend the entire lesson chasing the little monkeys around, and every time I corner one little monkey, why another little monkey on the other side of the class will be up and running around. It's like wack-a-mole. Except I can't beat them with giant hammers. But you get the idea.

So usually I go back and forth between ignoring them and dealing with it whenever it starts go get out of hand. And it kind of works. I try to focus on the students who are actually paying attention, because really what else can I do? So there's that and then like I mentioned there are the many, many disparate other ways these kids stay in motion. They play rock, paper, scissors. They color in coloring books. They turn their chairs around (as in their backs are to me, and then they look surprised when I ask them to turn around) and talk amongst themselves (nine year olds clearly have very complex personal lives that needs to be discussed at all times). They do their other homework (this is the most prevalent form of movement, yet oddly the one I mind least. I know I should fight it and sometimes I do but the honest truth is that if they're doing other work at least they're quiet . Also my class isn't graded. It's a supplement to their other English class, and these poor kids are at school all afternoon. Does it make me an awful teacher if I think it's kind of okay for them to get some homework done while I talk). They go and stand by the window and look out. They go to the bathroom...constantly. Again I used to try and fight this. I tried to say that only two at a time could go. But I dont think they understood me and they thought I was just saying no outright. Which I would never do because I have the smallest bladder in human history and the last thing I would want to do is say no to some poor child that legitimately has to go to pee. So I say yes to two and seconds later three come up to me and I say yes to them and it goes like that all class. And half the time they come back and their faces and hair are soaking wet which...? Again could fight it, but I've learned to pick my battles and that simply isnt one worth fighting.

I'll look over and there will be three of them at my desk. I never see them approach but nearly every time I look there they are. They shuffle through the worksheets I brought. They pick up my flashcards. They inspect my briefcase and play with the clasp. And if I forgot and left the ball somewhere easy to reach, they will pick up the ball and start throwing it to or more likely at each other. Now that is a battle that I willingly fight and that I quickly put an end to. How are these kids this energetic? I mean I know when you're little you are naturally more sprightly, but really? And the toys. How do they have these toys in school? They have little plastic cars they race over their desks. They have stuffed animals (one class I confiscated a pile of these and the little sneaks took them back when I wasnt looking and hid them well enough where I couldnt find them. I think I might have burst a blood vessel on that one). They have little video games. And if I somehow manage to take/get them to put away the darned toys, well then they just improvise. They start sword fighting with rulers. If it's a Scout day (I think it's sort of like our version of the Boy/Girl Scouts, but I'm not entirely sure), they play with the various accessories to their Scout uniforms, the crazy hats and a rope that goes around their necks which I kid you not, looks just like a noose.

This is the enivronment I teach in. These are my two major foes, The Noise and The Movement, and if you've just read that and have never taught before you're probably thinking, why in the world would any sane human subject themselves to it? And sometimes I ask myself that too. When I try to hand out what I thought was a fun birthday project (the kids would make a list of all of their classmates' birthdays and then color and decorate it) and the little twerps look at me, shake their heads and say "no" I ask that question. When I'm teaching first and second grade and at least one child in every class is crying I ask it. Oh the crying, that could almost be a capital letter too. It shocked me the first time it happened. I went to the crying child, tried to ask what was wrong (of course she or he couldnt explain it in English, but they definitely explained it, in detail, in Thai), tried to ask if they needed the nurse (again, language barrier), tried to ask who was responsible (this I could ascertain through the wonderfully universal act of pointing) but then what? I have no means of punshing these kids and boy do they know it. As far as I know there's no detention. They don't have recess so I can't threaten to take that away. I could send them to the principal's office but as far as I know that's not a thing here, and I'd probably just end up pissing off the very busy principal who doesnt have time to deal with things like that. Pretty much the only form of discipline at my disposal is physical violence, which as tempting as it sometimes is, I could never do. So when I see a kid hit another kid and then one starts crying all I can really do it speak in a harsh tone of voice, say a bunch of words the kid won't understand, and shake my finger. So that's usually what I do. So because I have no choice I've learned to just live with the crying, the same way I live with The Noise and The Movement. As of yet every crying child has eventually stopped. None of them have been sick or really hurt. They're just still babies really and well like all babies they occasionally cry.

So then why do I do this? What keeps me here? It's not the pay, although I probably make more than most of the much harder working, much more deserving Thai teachers. It's not because it's some relaxing vacay. My weekends my be filled with tropical island paradises or fun trips to Bangkok with friends (thank the Lord for my weekends, they keep me sane) but my weekdays are just plain old hard work. I'm tired all the time. I no longer have an immune system. Out of the six weeks I've been here, I've been healthy for approximately two. On the rare occasions I have an afternoon off, I take these crazy 5 or 6 hour black out naps, naps that are very nearly miniature comas. I wake up and I barely remember my name. This is exhausting. It's hard, harder than any job I've ever had (and I used to have to get up at 4:30 in the morning to go make espresso for eight hours). So then why do I do it?

Well I can say that every day, at least once, and on good days sometimes quite often, there are good moments, wonderful moments even. When I walk into a Kindergarten class and I'm surrounded by a mob of children all trying to hug me. When I walk down a hallway and every kid I pass lights up, shouts "ELIZABETH" (it's easier for them to say than Liz, go figure) and tries to shake my hand or get a high five. When those same, Tasmanian devils of energy get so into a game or lesson that I can see it in their eyes, when they're literally jumping up and down with enthusiasm and I know that somehow, against all odds, I did something right. When I go to review a previous week's lesson and amid a sea of blank stares, one child raises a timid hand and gets the answer right and I know that I actually, legitimately taught something, even if it only stuck to one out of the forty kids in the class. When I stop thinking about traffic control and babysitting and let myself have fun, let myself enjoy the pure and untarnished energy of the only people on earth who can be that energetic and not be on some kind of drug. There are things I really love about this job. I love the dorky kids in my classes, the ones who wear glasses and don't rough house around with the obviously "cool" kids (even in second grade there are cool kids, they just might not know it yet), and who sit in their seats all fifty minutes and never take their eyes off me. Oh how these kids melt my heart, the quiet ones who pay attention, who shoot irritated glances at their other, loud and hyperactive classmates. They're these little kids but they look at me with genuine, very adult commiseration. They try to help out and get the other kids to quiet down (they have about as much luck as I do). And I honestly love them for it. Some of them I can tell will have a rough go of it in school. They're quirky and crazy smart and they'll probably have to survive a few rough years (if the Thai social hiearchy is anything like at home) But I just want to take them by the shoulders and tell them how awesome they are, how they're going to get to college and everyone will suddenly realize how awesome they are too, because they have something that no amount of popularity will ever bestow, kindness and empathy and a wisdom that is far, far beyond their years.

Or the kids who are both class clown and super nerd. Who have a ton of energy and can't sit still but who so obviously love school and learning and who want to do well. I love how competitive Thai children are. I've talked about how I divide my classes up into three teams and give points for participation and take away points if they're too noisy. And they get so into it. One of my favorite noises in the world now is the sound of ten or fifteen Thai children cheering like they just won the lottery because they got one little point. They don't get a prize if they win, not unless you count a high five from me a prize. And well, the thing is they do treat it like a prize. They get excited and students from the losing teams try to sneak in for high fives, like I'm giving away buckets of candy.

So these are the moments that are good. And even though to be honest the good moments are more rare than the "run screaming from the building" moments, they just matter more. I can't explain why but they do. Here's an example. This past Tuesday I started each of my four third grade classes by asking them to take out their calendar projects we had started the week before. Now in three out of these four classes, there was absolute silence after I said this. I had to draw a calendar on the board and then only about five of them took them out. They hadn't worked on them at all since the last week which was fine because I planned on finishing them in class. I never intended for them to be homework. So maybe two out of the five started working on them in earnest, with colored pencils and rulers and everything. The other three I had to cajole into doing it, much to their evident dismay. And then the rest of the class, the ones who hadn't taken their calendars out. I had to go up to every single student and stand there with my hands on my hip until they took the darn thing out of their backpack or desk. Most of them tried to say "no" to me, you know, just "nope, teacher I'd rather not, I'd kind of rather play cards with my friend over here." I couldn't help myself. Immediately in a raised, very annoyed voice I said "this isn't optional!", even though of course they dont know what optional means. So finally they would take it out and then go back to whatever they were doing before, even with me standing there. So it would take another few minutes of negotiations before they would pick up a pencil and even then they looked at the calendar like it was an impromptu ten page essay. All they had to do was fill in numbers and draw a picture, but it was the last thing these kids wanted to do, much to my dissapointment.

And so it went for three classes, but then I got to my last third grade class of the day. I walked in with slumped shoulders, ready to go home, tired and annoyed and honestly a little hurt that these kids thought my calendar project was stupid. I had worked hard on it and paid for the copies myself and paper clipped them together for each student. And so I walked to my desk, wearily faced the students, ready for another tug of war. But before I even opened my mouth five students came up with their calendars in hand. I took them and looked down and I swear to God I nearly cried. Every single one of these students created the most beautiful, most colorful, most perfect calendars I could have asked for. And then after these five, more came up. And suddenly I was in a mob of students, but this mob I didn't mind. I welcomed it because they were all very eagerly holding out their wonderful little calendars to me, wish such evident but still slightly tentative pride that I could have started blubbering right there (luckily I didn't). Their drawings looked like they must have taken ages. Whereas my other students sketched a birthday cake in pencil and handed it in, these kids had drawn elaborate artwork. Sure it was a little random and not exactly what I wanted (originally in theory I wanted them to draw a picture related to the month, but I soon realized, as I often do, that explaining directions is the most challenging part of my job. These kids may know the numbers all the way to 100 but they do not, unfortunately, know what "be creative" means), but it was beautiful. I had several Pokemon calendars but no two exactly alike. And these Pokemons, well I never thought I'd be so thrilled to look over pages and pages of Pokemon characters. They had created stories, each calendar page bursting with color and characters, some even with little thought bubble above the character's heads. And that's just the Pokemon ones. I had calendars with Winnie the Pooh and Mickey Mouse. I had calendars with princesses. I had ones with ninjas in full on battles. I had calendars with stickers, calendars with glitter marker. I had one calendar that apparently told a full story about a girl and a cat, each month a different chapter, with text and everything (in Thai sadly so I could not read it). I had in my hands calendars that had been drawn with care and with thought and with such childlike purity and singularity of purpose that it was one of the most touching things I've ever experienced. They had worked on these at home. They hadn't needed to. They probably had a ton of other work to do, but they had worked on my calendars at home. Whereas the other kids obviously chucked them in their desks without another thought, these 35 kids, for whatever reason, had decided to treat my little project like it meant something, like it was graded even though they knew perfectly well it wasn't.

And I can think of no better way to describe why I keep doing this, why I will finish the semester and why I havent already booked the next flight home. For every ten horrible moments where I think these kids are little monsters, there is one moment like that, where they are perfect and beautiful and precious and where all I want to do is help them to stay like that, if just for a little longer. And maybe 10 to 1 seems like not a great ratio. And I guess it isnt. But like I said before, the good moments just seem to mean a lot more. They are the ones that stick with me, the ones I find myself thinking of most often. And so it goes.

I am an English teacher in Thailand and it is the hardest, most impossible thing I have ever done. I am a teacher and there are moments when I love it. And those moments, well they make all the difference.

Oh Ko Samet (and oh life): FIN

So I've been sitting here in my school's little internet room trying to muster up the energy to write a new blog post. And I'm not sure at this point I really have but I thought I'd at least give it a go, because right now school is the only place I have internet (my computer power adaptor died, which considering my luck lately, of course).

Last we left off I had just recieved a mysterious phone call from a man who claimed he had my passport. Now at the time I wrote my last blog I still believed that this little tale had a happy ending, namely me getting my passport back and avoiding the huge, logistical, financial, and just plain old mental head ache that would come from trying to replace my passport. But little did I know, my soap operiffic drama would get even more convuluted before the end.

So we were riding on the bus back to Ko Samet when mystery man calls my friend Choua's phone and says he has my passport. After some intial confusion I found out he got Choua's number from the police report we filed (see not a waste of time after all). At this point I could have kissed this man's feet (which were probably all sandy and gross too, we were on an island). He had apparently gone out of his way to find me. He said he called my banks and the American embassy. He was a regular Dave in shining armor (Dave was his name). I told him I had left the island already. He told me he was going to Bangkok the next day. Problem solved, right? Right? But I get ahead of myself. I said I could be in Bangkok the next day and that way I could go to a Western Union, sort myself out a little. So great. We would meet up at one of the giant, massive malls and if he didnt get there in time I asked if he would mind terribly dropping it off at the embassy at some point during his stay.

Fast forward one day. I go to Bangkok and head straight for the Western Union I had looked up online. Now at this point I had never used a Western Union before. I thought you had to go to the specific branch, even though really that doesnt make that much sense considering everything there is electronic and money isn't physically wired to a branch like in a giant tube, but wired electronically and thus available at all Western Union branches. But I was sunburnt and exhausted and a tad unhinged at this point so my mind wasnt working at full capacity. So I took a bus into Bangkok (at this point I hadn't figured out precisely what buses to take to get into the city and so of course I ended up having to hop off at a random place and get a taxi the rest of the way), and found the Western Union. I had just enough money to get into the city (given to me, no questions asked, from my school) and was expecting to recieve a nice little security chunk of cash from my kind and understanding parents. And then I'd be set until my payday. Now I read on the Western Union website that you need a passport to get money, but surely I thought, surely, they must have some kind of loophole to that. Half the people who go to Western Union are probably backpackers or tourists who have lost everything, including passports, so it wouldnt really make that much sense to have a passport be a requirement. And I had copies, COPIES, lots of them, copies of my passport, copies of my French visa, my Indian visa, my Thai visas (man I have a lot of visas), copies of my social security card, copies of every official looking document you could probably imagine. So I'd be fine. No problem.

"M'am we're going to need your orignal passport." The very nice (even though at the time I wanted to punch her in the eye) Thai woman behind the desk kept repeating this sentence, yet I could not process those eight simple words. You don't understand, I kept saying. My passport was stolen, along with all of my credit cards and all of my money. That's why I'm at freaking Western Union in the first place. And so it went like that for several minutes, the nice lady repeating what was clearly a company policy and something she could not violate or else would probably be fired for, and me, blankly, telling her that I needed my money, that I didnt have my passport, but that I needed my money. I had to have that money. I didnt have a cell phone or a camera or a passport, but as long as I had some money I had something, something to make me feel at least somewhat not in this void of helplessness. Maybe if I had told her specifically about the void of helplessness it would have helped. But as it was, she was unmoved. And then it happened, that embarassing thing that happens sometimes when you've simply had it and can't take anymore and haven't slept that much and can barely move any part of your body without extreme pain because of the suburn from hell and sort of smell bad to top it all off (dont judge, you try walking around in Thailand and see how much you sweat). I started crying, right there at the counter of Western Union in the brightly lit entry way of a Big C Super Center.

And this poor woman just shrugged and repeated the lines she had to repeat, that she was paid to repeat. At the time I thought she was the enemy, but looking back I wonder how many crazed, cash-less, passport-less Westerners she's had to deal with in her day, how many times she's had to patiently wait for said Westerners to finish their little meltdowns and move on and let her continue her probably underpaid job. Somewhere amidst my barely contained blubbering I heard her say that I could try a bank, that all Thai banks work with Western Union and that maybe a bank wouldnt require an original passport. Well luckily enough there was a tiny little bank in the same area of the Big C. After going to the lady's room to compose myself (ie sniff loudly into a tissue while trying to regain some tiny shred of my dignity), I went to the bank, sure that the same thing would happen, willing myself not to cry publicy at a second Thai financial institution that day. And as luck would have it, they could have cared less that I had copies. Five minutes later I had cash, glorious cash, my own little lifeboat.

So after feeling deeply silly about the whole, completley uneseccary Western Union meltdown (and seriously considering going back to apoligize) I headed off to Siam Center (aka land of the ginormous malls) to wait around for British Dave and see if we could meet up. He only had email so I brought my laptop into the city with me and camped out at Starbucks. (Side note. I LOVE the Starbucks here. Now mock me if you most. Oh Liz, can't even go a month without getting your grande latte fix, but I don't care. Five days out of the week I dont have hot water or television (Thai soap operas do not count) or even internet at home. So when I get the chance to indulge in a little Western fix, I'm going to darn well indulge. And the baristas at the Starbucks here (across the board at the ones I've been to) are like the most cheerful people on earth. I don't know what they're putting in their morning coffee, but they all have these massive smiles plastered on their faces, and they act like your drink order is the most important, momentous thing that has ever happend to them, and that getting it right is not just a job description but a calling from God. Why yes, I would love to sample that delicious treat (they all have sample platters and they offer seconds!). Why yes, I would love my muffin warmed to perfection (and for some reason the muffins here are so much better, just little, fluffy, pieces of heaven) and served on a real plate and brought to me on a tray with a knife and fork. Half the time in the States the Starbucks baristas act like they're doing me a favor making the drink I (over) paid for. Here they act the complete opposite way. Seriously the most chipper people I have come across in a nation of insanely chipper people. End of side note.)

So I camped out in Starbucks and waited for word from Dave. By 6pm no word and so I figured he wouldnt get there in time. I didnt want to head home too late (it takes half an hour to two hours depending on traffic) so I sent Dave an email (he doesnt have a cell so it's the only way to get in touch) and asked if it would be okay if at some point in the next week he dropped it off at the embassy, because it was difficult for me to get into Bangkok during the work week and I couldn't take another day off. So I figured problem solved. I thanked him profusely, told him how much I appreciated all of his efforts.

Throughout the next week I kept checking my emails, waiting for Dave to say that he'd dropped off at the passport, but no word. But a bunch of CIEE people were going into Bangkok for the weekend so on Friday I emailed Dave again, told him I'd be in Bangkok, and that if he hadn't already dropped the passport off, we could meet up, preferably Saturday during the day. I got to the hotel in Bangkok around 8 and saw that I had a text (apparently Dave can send texts through email but I cannot send anything back through my phone), saying that he would be at a bar near Khao San Rd (an infamous backpacker haven in Bangkok) and if I wanted my passport I should meet him there as he was leaving the next day. Now, this is where I started to think, hmm. A little bit weird right? He's had all week to drop the passport off, because he had no idea I would be in Bangkok in person again before he left. But he's held onto it, and now that he knows I'm there he wants to meet at a bar at night in a kind of sketchy area. There was no way in hell I was going alone (especially because it was dark and Bangkok is huge and confusing and my knowledge of its geography is very limited). And by the time I met up with my friends it would already be 9 or 10 and I wasn't going to ask them to go all the way there (we were all staying in an area in Siam Square which is not close to Khao San Road). But I couldnt text any of this back to him, so I had to wait until I had internet access.

I got another text from him not long after, saying "dont you want your passport back, you should meet up with me tonight" which again, hmm. Finally I got access to a computer and I emailed him this.

"Hi Dave, sorry I have not had internet access for the last several hours and could not respond to you until now. Sorry we could not meet up tonight. Can you drop it off at the nearest police station to you or to the American Embassy (whichever is more convenient). Please let me know where you drop it off (it's a police station then the address would be helpful). Thank you so much! Please let me know that you received this."

Reasonable right? There are police stations all over Thailand. I figured it would be a lot easier for him to drop it off there than to try to meet somewhere both of us would know without being able to communicate through cell phones. But the next morning I recieve this.

"Liz, Your disregard towards your stuff shocks me, especially when I run around for you breaking my laptop in the process. Yet again am paying 40 B for 10 mins to write this message, why I don't know. I suggest you meet me at 3pm or just after on platform 4 first class section, I am wearing blue shorts with a white pattern. Dave"

Say it with me people, hmmmmm. First of all, why is he talking to me like a stern parental figure when we've never met. Second of all, I need a little clarification. I might just be slow but come again, how exactly am I responsible for him breaking his laptop? (he also texted me about this, saying that he "sat" on his laptop in his "rush" and that he "was not happy.") What rush was he in? We hadn't arranged a meeting place. As far as dropping it off somewhere like a police station I assumed he could do that on his way to leave, and even if he was in a rush, that could have been solved by him DROPPING OFF MY PASSPORT AT THE VERY CENTRALLY LOCATED AND EASILY ACCESSIBLE US EMBASSY ANYTIME IN THE PREVIOUS WEEK. Plus he said in the same email he wasn't leaving Bankok until 3-4ish, so why was in such a fluster in the morning to meet me, such a fluster in fact, such a panic, that he had no choice but to sit on his laptop and break it. I know when I'm in a rush to go somewhere the first thing I do is sit on my laptop. Sitting on a laptop and hurrying to go somewhere are pretty much one and the same. And okay maybe this is mean but at this point this guy is a butt face and/or a serial killer so I dont really care, but how much do you have to weigh to break a laptop the second you put weight on it? If it was closed it really should have been okay with the momentary weight from an adult male. But this is all besides the point, because REALLY? Really you sat on your own laptop in your imaginary hurry to get to our imaginary rendez vous and you're mad at me for it?

And it was at this moment that I realized British Dave was a total psychopath. There was no way I was meeting him at this vaguely referenced station of some kind. First of all. He did at no point name the station, or say where it was in Bangkok, or even what kind of station it was, bus, train, who knows? Bangkok is kind of a large city, large enough to have more than one station surprisingly enough. So in theory I could have gone to a "station" of some kind at "3pm or just after", just hoping that by some psychic intuition I happend to get the right one. But even if I had gotten the right one, no. At this point I would not have been surprised if "Dangerous Dave" (as he was henceforth dubbed) would try to make me pay him in full for his supposedly crushed laptop (which I pretty much sat on myself, that's how directly responsible I was for its demise) and/or lecture me and/or push me onto the tracks in front of a moving train/bus/whatever type of vehicles operates from this mystery shrouded station. It was painfuly obvious at this point that he wanted a reward for the passport, that that was why he didn't drop it off at the embassy even though he had a full week to do so. It also became a possibility that Dangerous Dave was the one who stole my stuff in the first place, kept everything valuable, and then thought he'd make some more money off the passport reward. Whether or not that's true is probably never going to be known, but I do know that this guy seems seriously unhinged and that it's probably a good thing I never met him in person.

But after all that, I was faced with the reality that I would not be getting my passport back. I emailed him once more and asked if he had left it at the "station" and if so which one, but it's been a week and no word and I'd be highly surprised if I ever hear from him. So yesterday I had to trudge into Bangkok, take another day off work (which I legitimately feel bad about), and go to the US Embassy. Now in my mind I was picturing the embassy all sparkly with gleaming marble floors and large, sunlit atriums, lots of flags, maybe some official looking uniforms, oh and badges, definitely official visitor badges with pictures on them and everything. I'd walk in and immediately be taken under some kindly American expat's wing, ushered into a crisply air conditioned office, given a coke and told that everything would be okay, that I needn't worry, everything would be taken care of and I'd have a brand spanking new passport in no time. And it's possible parts of the embassy are like that (minus the cokes probably), but the part I was directed to was the Citizen Services wing, which, picture the DMV. Okay got that mental image. Shrink it a little. Replace the American employees with Thai employees. And bingo. Sort of depressing after all of my grand mental images of American diplomacy at its most elegant and shiny.

So turns out it costs 100 bucks to replace a passport. But here's the kicker. In order for them to even start processing my new passport I need to bring them the police report (which of course I misplaced, thinking I didnt need it after talking to Dave). I pointed out, politely of course, that people must need new passports all the time who don't have police reports. What if you just lose it, or it catches on fire, or it's swallowed by an elephant. Surely things like that must happen all the time. What did those people do? Very similarly to Western Union, the probably very nice Thai lady who had probably had a long day dealing with people like me, just repeated the same line again and again. We need the police report. And then she informed me that I would be stuck in Thailand forever and/or arrested if I didn't do this promptly.

Which brings me full circle to where this whole crazy thing started-Ko Samet. Out of all the places I could be forced to return to, Ko Samet isn't too horrible. I mean I guess I could handle some more clear, green waters and a few more hours spent on blindingly white sand beaches. So a week from today that's where I will be headed, to get the police report primarily (I'd really like to avoid getting arrested) and to have a weekend in paradise without any major calamaties. So that's the end of this very long story. I appreciate it if you've stuck with me through the whole thing. I know it was a whopper.

So for now.

FIN.