This is Saohin
Category Archives: this college life
G is for Gecko
This morning I fixed my normal coffee before church and lay in my hammock to read my Bible and journal. It was quite chilly, down at 55 degrees Fahrenheit this morning, which is cold for us. I was almost finished, when I heard a rustle at the head of the hammock. I looked up and a tiny Dtukae was sitting on the hammock canvas. For those who don’t know what a Dtukae is, it is a small lizard like creature that when full grown lives on the walls of houses. It is known for its sticky feet and for its croaking call at night, as well as its bite. They say that when a Dtukae bites you it won’t let go unless you dunk it under water.
The little creature at the top of my hammock didn’t look big enough to bite me, but when it came running down the hammock toward me, I didn’t stop to consider, but jumped off with a yelp, hitting my coffee in the process and spilling it over my Bible. It seemed a little confused and lost, so I went into the house and hunted up a bag and chased it into the bag. I then stuck it into a snack container and poked holes into the top for air. I will take it to school and show it to my 1st graders and teach them “G is for gecko.” There is some controversy as to what a Dtukae is called in English. Most Americans do not call it a gecko, reserving that name for the smaller, more harmless “jing-jok” that are so much fun to flick off window screens, but a few of my Thai friends insist that those are not called gecko in English, but that Dtukaes are called geckos. Google translate says Dtukaes are geckoes. In the little bit of research I have done, it looks like Dtukaes are generally known as Tokay geckoes and the jing-joks are other kinds of geckoes. I prefer to call Dtukaes geckoes purely because Dtukaes are more memorable than jing-joks and when you are teaching “g is for gecko” to first graders you need memorable ideas.
Whatever it should officially be called, I am happy with my find and hope it will live long enough to show to my first and second graders. I keep on being amazed at the way these children learn. Because their level of English is still so low, they don’t have much previous knowledge to build on. This is a little frustrating at times because you have to start from the bottom up. However, it can also be hugely rewarding because their minds are also very receptive to new words and they are excited about learning. One of my favorite things is to hear them tossing English words around as they leave the room. I also find it fascinating to be involved in every step of their learning and have a front seat in observing their journey of language. Not only are they starting to be able to use the words I have taught them, but they are no longer afraid to call out a good morning to me as they meet me outside the classroom. One thing I find quite hilarious is how they love to boss each other around in the classroom. The older classes can be a bit rowdy at times, but usually all I have to do is say “Shh” or “be quiet” in English to one student, and he or she will turn around and yell at the others, “Be quiet!!” in English. Or “Calm down!!” Somehow when you are bossing others, it is easier to say it in English. And yelling it is always better. In the first grade class, usually the general roar subsides if I say “be quiet” except for one of two students who are so busy telling others to be quiet that they forget that the order extends to them as well.
Anugun, or Koko, is one of my 5th grade students who I thought at first would be one of my more difficult ones. He is rowdy, but he has surprised me with his interest to learn and the way he remembers sentences. The other day he blessed my heart when after class he came back to his desk to pick something up and saw me sitting there studying some Karen words. He then came over and helped me with some questions I had about the Karen dialect spoken here. When I taught occupations to them last week, I asked each one what they wanted to be when they grow up. He then asked me what I wanted to be when I grow up. I take that as a compliment.
Sometimes when I open up Google maps and see my location where that bold dark line marks the border of Myanmar three kilometers away, and then trace the map 4 hours down to Mae Sariang to the closest phone signal, I give a little inward gasp. A gasp not unlike the gasps I involuntarily emit when the shock of the cold water hits me as I shower in the evening. Or the little gasp that Cha, one of my students gives when I call on her to speak English in class. For the most part, I have adjusted to living here. One day runs into another. Life seems normal. In the morning I wake up before 6 and light the fire. I make my coffee, sometimes sitting beside the fire to warm my feet in the chilly morning as I journal and read my Bible. The children are supposed to be at school at 7:30, and assembly starts at 8. My first class is usually at 8:40, with three class periods before noon and two in the afternoon. The day is usually over before I realize it. And yet, the gasp sometimes still escapes me… the tingling shock that still lingers from the realization that I am not in my home culture, or my adopted Chiang Mai culture. Like this morning as I walked to church and met 2 enormous buffalo blocking the road. Or when you find out that one of your first grader’s family has a buffalo. Or in the morning as I squat by the fire to light the kindling.
This week was a mix of ups and downs. At the beginning of the week, I found myself beset entirely with cravings for dairy products and chocolatey cookies, cakes and breads. I was rationing my stash of granola bars and also realizing they just answer the cravings I was having. Finally, I remembered that at a store in the village, I had seen some off-brand oreos. I set off to find some, and they were perfect. The wafer satisfied my cookie hunger, the frosting helped with the desire for something milky and sweet (is the frosting actually milky? I doubt it, but my brain is happy with it), and the wafer also satisfied my chocolate urges. I was getting tired of black coffee and wishing for some milk, or for something sweet to offset the bitterness. Oreos worked perfectly. For 5 baht, I can eat a packet of 6. The amount of Oreos I have eaten in the week that has passed is beyond ridiculous. I have decided that I need to take turns going to the different stores in the neighborhood when I buy them so that no one can discover how many Oreos the farang teacher consumes, because I am sure if anyone would realize the truth, it would spread like wildfire.
Because, it seems, everything that I do here is of interest to everyone else. One of the village teachers speculated to another village teacher that the large amount of water I consume (I carry a water bottle with me wherever I go) probably makes me hungry. I have a feeling she was wondering why I eat so much. I feel like I am a distraction in an otherwise very quiet village and I give them something to discuss over their suppers. I keep on being surprised at the stories about me that eventually come floating to me. “Kru Dtaum says that you read your Bible every morning.” “So-and-so said that you can speak Karen as well.” (the few words I can speak do not constitute speaking Karen.) It seemed from comments from my students and others that the entire village knew I had accompanied some of the villagers into a more remote area to hunt for tadpoles and gather greens.
This week the water stopped running. It does so in the dry season. Water then has to be brought in from the storage tanks. It randomly starts up again every now and then, and then we fill up everything possible. Because of this, I had to wash my clothes in the tubs in front of the men’s showerhouse since they had more water there than we had in our house. I washed my clothes on lunch break and dumped the water out in front of the showerhouse. When I went to hang up my clothes, I found that I had washed only one sock from my pair of gray socks. This is not unusual since I am a little scatterbrained when it comes from doing laundry. It wasn’t until later that evening when Kru Dtaum went to the showerhouse and shouted out, “Hey whose socks are these?” There were three socks that I had thrown out with the washwater lying between the showerhouse and the office. I was just grateful that it was only socks and not more embarrassing items.
My fire lighting skills are getting better. I struck some difficult times several evenings when I was trying to light it and it simply would not light. I keep on getting tips that help me, but there are times, very frustrating times when I am lighting the fire and someone else comes to help me light the fire. This help is usually to say, “Oh, it’s going,” and pile on some wood. And then 1 minute later my precious fire is smoking itself to an untimely death. I want to say, “If it were your fire, then yes, it would be ok and you would know when the lit kindling is ready for bigger sticks. But this is MY fire and I happen to realize, even though I am a newby at this, that it is NOT ready for bigger sticks. So please keep your sticks off my baby fire!” But I do not say this. Instead, I grab a sliver of pine and light it again.
I have gone to the Catholic services twice now since I have come. Perhaps I should not be fraternizing with Catholics, but there is no Protestant church here. Even those who are Catholic seem to be very nominally Catholic. However, I enjoy sitting and listening to the hymns and getting some language practice. It also gives me a chance to get to know the villagers as well as see some of my students outside of school. In spite of this, I am very hungry for a good service in Thai or English that I can understand, as well as fellowship with people who are serious about their relationship with Christ.
My Acer laptop gave me some gasps this week as well, refusing to turn on when I needed it. After an anxious night and nightmares of great magnitude about losing all my data and teaching computerless for weeks while my laptop is sent to Chiang Mai to be fixed, I did find the magic key to turn it back on, which was to drain the battery until it totally died and then start it up again. Praise the Lord!
Captain Joe, (or Pugong Joe as you would say in Thai), one of the policemen at the station that is right beside the school, comes over for supper at the teacher’s house most evenings. I keep on being surprised at how people here constantly drop in on each other. When Pugong Joe is not sitting on the porch with another of the teachers and serenading us with Thai folk songs on his guitar, he is asking me questions that usually start with, “I saw in a movie once….” He dreams of traveling and going to far away places and watches movies to do so vicariously. He loves asking questions about all sorts of things, and is not hesitant to ask bold questions about Christianity, unlike many Thai people.
We teach from Monday to Saturdays, and then crash on Sundays. This is the schedule for schools in what the government calls พื้นที่พิเศษ “Special Areas,” meaning it is an area far away or hard to reach. After three or four weeks of a schedule like this, the school closes for a week or even more to give the teachers a chance to go home to their families. This means on this Friday we head down to Mae Sariang for over 7 days. I am looking forward to a break and some time by myself.
I keep on thinking that when I blog, I should choose one subject and stick to it, and then somehow wring out some kind of wise lesson or conclusion about the happening. Perhaps someday I will write something sage and wise to connect with my life here. But for now, I write because these stories need to be written in my own heart, for my own memory.
*once I reach Mae Sariang and have some good wifi connection, I will upload some pictures.
** this post was mostly written on Sunday but I was unable to post it until today because of the internet. Or the lack thereof.
Life in Saohin
It’s amazing how humans can adjust. Take for example, the ability to adjust to things like squatty potties and cold dip showers in the middle of the cold season. I’ve experienced those before, but in the past few years, I have become someone who really, really enjoys hot showers, and even more than that, hot baths when possible. Also, the longer I live in Thailand, the wimpier I get when it comes to anything cold.
So for me, one of the challenges of coming on my internship in a village called Saohin in Mae Hong Son province was cold showers. The very thought of them made me shudder and I indulged in hot baths in Chiang Mai as long as I could. (Amazingly enough that rickety house even had a bathtub!)
When I arrived in Saohin the third of January to do my internship (the last step before I graduate), I realized there was more to adjust to than squatty potties and cold dip showers, but those other things are harder to pinpoint and measure my progress. Sometimes I still cringe and hold my breath and gasp as the water cascades over my back, but for the most part, I think little of it. The squatty potties themselves never really scared me. It was more the lack of toilet paper…… And I am getting used to that as well.
So, I marvel at what we humans can adjust to when we need to. Given the choice, we often prefer to stay with our old habits and routines, but it is extremely beneficial for us to be jolted out of our safety zone once in a while.
I’ve been here at the village for about a week and a half. I am still adjusting and there are still fears I battle at times. Fears like, what if I am faced with some kind of ethical dilemma and fail God. What if I do something that angers the other teachers? I am slowly learning to shoot down these fears with God’s word and focus on Him, reminding myself that even though I feel very alone in the village, He is here with me.
Adjusting takes energy too, I realize. At first, just getting up in the morning and figuring out how to live and where things belong and what my next move should be left me panting. I gave myself grace that first week when at 8:00 pm I felt exhausted and ready to flop into bed (even though no flopping is done on this bed. I might break a bone).
In the past week, I have had a full schedule of English teaching to the school children. They are delightful to teach. Far from perfect, they are a group of very lively, yet shy students, who are not addicted to cell phones. This non-addiction works wonders for their concentration and retention skills. These are forest-born children who know how to find minnows in the streams and weave baskets better than they know how to introduce themselves in English. Yet at the same time that I am teaching them, I find myself learning hundreds of things I never knew were there to learn.
Every day I need to write reports for my intern advisor. The first slot is for, “Things I learned.” I often find myself stuck at this point. I learn hundreds of things every day, but most of those things don’t really have anything to do with an English Communication degree.
Things like….
- How to build a fire to boil the water for the coffee in the morning. You stack and lean the little pieces of kindling onto a larger stick and you light one small piece and hold it UPSIDE DOWN and stick it in there. You also have to scrape out the ash from the fire before, or there won’t be air for it to breathe. If you want it to light very quickly, you use a piece of pine wood.
- How to boil rice on an open fire. First you need to wash the rice, and then pour out the water. You might need to wash it again. You then guess the amount of water and rice, but make sure there is plenty of water. You pour the rice into boiling water on the fire and then stir it until the outside is soft but the inside is still a little hard. You then pour out the water and put the kettle back on the fire and close the lid for it to finish steaming.
- How to catch minnows in a stream. You walk from downstream to upstream with a net and carefully overturn rocks and catch the minnows in your net as they escape.
- How to make field rats for lunch. I only saw the part where you hold them over the fire and scrape off the skin as it roasts, and then you gut them. I didn’t see the later part where they cut them into pieces.
- How to see if the greens beside the stream are the ones that you can eat or the ones that make you dizzy.
- How NOT to say a certain Karen word that I thought was the word for “book” but was a word for a certain unmentionable body part.
- How to say the names of over 60 students, some of the villagers and some of the policemen from the nearby station.
- How to wash your clothes by hand. I’ve done this before, but not on a regular basis. I still try to wash them while no one is watching to see how the funny farang does it.
- How to live with a minimal amount of privacy. My room happens to be directly off the kitchen, which is where any cooking, socializing, or work goes on…..
- Learning about a new drink I’d never had before called Green Mate. It’s a sweetened coconut juice that is refreshing on a sultry day.
- I’ve learned how to go to bed early and get up early. It’s not unusual for me to be in bed by 9 PM which is a miracle in Chiang Mai.
- How to make fried eggs Thai style. I never knew so much oil goes into Thai cooking.
- How to sit on your bed so you don’t fall off. Honestly, this should not have happened on my bed at all, since it is quite a big bed with plenty of room. It has mosquito netting wrapped around the side. Each of the 4 corners of the netting is tied to nails on the 4 corners of the room. I was sitting on my bed doing work on my laptop, then I closed my laptop and leaned back against a pile of blankets and stretched. To make the stretch better, I lifted up my legs clad in PJ’s and stuck them in the air. Somewhere along the line, my center of gravity shifted, the blankets receded from my back, and my legs went up over my head and I found myself sliding head first on my back off my bed. To make it worse I had a round clothes hangar with clips for laundry hanging on the rope that held the mosquito netting. The net, the hangar and I landed on a confused muddle on the floor. I lay for about 2 minutes helpless with laughter on the floor, wrapped tightly between the bed and the mosquito netting and trying to figure out how to get up without tearing my precious netting. I don’t know when I have laughed so long and helplessly, and at the same time, trying to keep it quite so no one else in the house would hear me. Once I was able to inspect the damage, only the one string that held the netting was broken, and that was quickly fixed, much to my relief. I didn’t want to explain to the other teachers why I needed to buy a new mosquito netting.
I am not finished learning and adjusting yet. I still have a long way to go, but it feels good to have some adjustments behind me. Instead of moving to another province it feels like I am in a different country and time zone. It feels like years since I rode my bike among the streets of Chiang Mai and ate TomYum noodles at Lung Chang’s restaurant and sat in on a class at Payap. It’s also hard to believe that it’s been a week and a half since I’ve had a lengthy, intelligent conversation with anyone in English. At the end of the month, we will take a week off and drive to Mae Sariang for our breaks. I had planned to return back to Chiang Mai for a visit, but will likely not do so because of Covid19.
This gives me a good month for adjustments before a week in town. If I learn as much in the next two weeks as I did in the first two, I will be one happy person.
*note. I would love to add photos to this post but the temperamental wifi won’t handle it for now.
Reach
Could I but reach the pain–
Could I but touch the spot–
Could I but speak the aching word–
Could I but see through a clear glass, smudgeless of stain curling over the edges of reality, that burns the senses into dumbness, numbness, darkness and bleeds its bitterness into the currents of humanity—
Then, oh God, I would.
(It’s been a long day. I feel like I’ve seen a little bit of everything– innocence, laughter, pain, fear, kindness laced with subterfuge, depression, sincerity, deception, honesty. Hence the poem. From teaching 2 and 4 year-olds in the morning, to attending a college class at noon, translating for a sticky, depressing case at the station, and debating the principles of Christianity with a lawyer from another belief system, I guess I can see why I am little bit discouraged. I also don’t know if that last sentence is grammatically correct or not. Blame my PR teacher for making me doubt.)
Frogs
I am beginning to feel empathy for the people of Egypt in the time of Moses. A plague of frogs seems to have hit my home.
Now, I can think of many other animals that would be worse. In fact, I actually like these little frogs and named one of them Theodore. They are cute and full of character. But they keep on popping up in the most unexpected places, especially when I am not prepared for them.
They like my sink where it stays cool and wet. I’ve discovered they can climb up walls, which explains the mystery of how they get up in there. I don’t mind as much if I find them in the sink with the dirty dishes, but I do mind when they climb into the drainer.
Episode 1 with the frogs left me laughing. I washed a load of clothes. The washer is really slow so it takes about an hour to wash a large load. When it finished, I was hanging up the clothes in the half-dark, when I saw something moving on the bottom of the washer. Here was a frog! He must have been buried in the clothes that I had piled beside the washer and then was washed along with my dirty clothes, churning and spinning around for the better part of an hour. I felt like he deserved a medal.
Episode 2 had me laughing afterwards, but not in the moment. I pulled a dress off the washline to wear the other morning, and after I slipped it on, I noticed a curious wet spot at my waistline. I wondered where it had gotten wet, so I patted my hand on the spot and felt a lump under my hand. Thinking it was a part of my pajamas that I was still wearing under my dress, I wasn’t worried right away, until it moved! After shaking the dress in panic several times, out fell a frog!! I still cannot figure out how he got into my dress in the first place, since it was hanging on the washline.
Episode 3 happened tonight. I was squeezing the dishrag while making supper and felt something rubbery. It was a frog! After letting out a yelp, I marched him out the door as quickly as possible. “Quoth the Raven, nevermore,” I said.
However, I am not sure how to get to the “nevermore.”
Books on my Kindle
I love it when other people give me book recommendations. Perhaps love is too mild a word, but I don’t know what other word to use. Kindle is great, but one of the problems with it is that often I get a book that looks like a good one, only to disgustedly toss it aside (or in reality delete it) because of the content. So, I am always grateful for any recommendations of Kindle books.
Here is a list of some of the books that are on my Kindle. I hesitate to recommend anything because what may be good reading material for me may not reach other people’s standards, but I still love browsing through other people’s bookshelves, so I guess in a way this lets you browse my bookshelves. This is also in no way an exhaustive list of the books on my Kindle since right now I have about 270 books altogether. Below I have included a few of them with links to the Amazon page and a short description. Enjoy!
Daddy Long Legs by Jean Webster. The story of an orphan girl who is sent to college and writes letters to her mysterious benefactor, known to her as Daddy Long Legs.
Saving my Assassin Virginia Prodan. The story of a Christian in the Soviet Union.
The Gospel Comes with a House Key Rosaria Butterfield. Interesting insights on hospitality from a former atheist.
The Circle Maker Mark Batterson. A book on prayer.
Flame and Shadow by Sara Teasdale. Poetry.
The Case is Closed by Patricia Wentworth. A mystery case by one of my favorite authors.
The War that Saved my Life by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley. Young adult story of a girl during World War 2.
Swift Water by Emilie Loring. An old-fashioned romance.
Mere Christianity C.S Lewis. Everybody should already know C.S Lewis.
Intended for Evil by Les Sillars. A story of a Christian’s survival during the Khmer Rouge.
The Places in Between Rory Stewart. A book I had for one of my lit classes at school about a man walking across Afghanistan.
Sold by Patricia McCormick. A powerfully written story of a Nepali girl trafficked in India. Another book I had for a class focusing on social issues.
The Insanity of God by Nik Ripken. The story of a missionary couple in one of the most dangerous countries in the world.
Emma by Jane Austen. Badly done, Emma. Badly done.
My People, the Amish by Joe Keim. Intriguing story of a boy from a conservative Amish setting.
I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith. The oddly moving story of a poverty-stricken family living in an old castle.
Human Trafficking Around the World: Hidden in Plain Sight by Stephanie Hepburn and Rita Simon. The title basically says it all.
A Tangled Web by L.M Montgomery. One of Montgomery’s lesser known books.
The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Orczy. Is he in heaven, is he in hell, that elusive Scarlet Pimpernel?
Spark John J Ratey, MD. A book I had for my health class.
The Hiding Place by Corrie Ten Boom. Most of us are familiar with this one. Do you know its free on Kindle?
The Hound of Heaven by Francis Thompson. One of my favorite poems.
When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi. The musings of a doctor facing death.
Beginnings: How We Experience the New Birth by Stephen Smallman. Exploring the new birth.
Love at the Speed of Email by Lisa McKay. Dating done via email. Different. Interesting.
Oh and some of these, I can lend out to others. Let me know if you want to borrow one for free!
An Alphabet of Chiang Mai (through my eyes)
A is for ants
B is for backpack
C is for church
D is for donuts
E is for episodes ( I couldn’t think of a better word….. episodes meaning occurrences, or happenings at the station. This picture was a hit and run accident, but the poor foreigner driving did not realize he hit the mirror. )
F is for friends
G is for green tea
H is for homework
I is for iced coffee (on the way back from a accident call for which I translated, we stopped for coffee. Usually I don’t do iced coffee, but it was a hot day.)
J is for Jimmy (Jimmy, incidentally, is not one of the guys in the photo, but the little truck that is sort of mine now. Our relationship is well…. complicated.)
K is for Karma. (Karma, simply stated, is the belief that what you do to others will eventually come around to you. While I do not believe in the Buddhist philosophy of Karma following you into reincarnation and you needing to pay in this life for sins in your previous life, I do believe that God rewards us when we do good, and that there are consequences for sin.)
L is for Louie (my classmate at Payap who has become one of my closest friends. Together we laugh idiotically, run through giant sprinklers, explore the border regions of Northern Chiang Dao, drink green tea, hold deep discussions, and make donuts.)
M is for mukata. (a meal made by placing a grill on the table and grilling your meat etc. as you eat. Soooo goood)
N is for noodles
O is for Obchei (one of the most intriguing characters I have ever met.)
P is for police (the previously mentioned accident when we stopped for coffee)
Q is for questions (those are all in my head, so no picture)
R is for rallies (You cannot be too careful currently what you say about the rallies in Bangkok right now, so I will refrain from even a picture)
S is for scorpions
T is for twilight
U is for uncles
V is for view
W is for We Club
X is for xenophobia (While I haven’t experienced much, there is some xenophobia in Thailand now because of Covid19. Foreigners are looked at with some fear because people are worried they might carry the virus. Borders between Myanmar and Thailand are being patrolled tightly to keep illegal immigrants from crossing over.)
Y is for Yussi (a friend’s daughter named this cat about 3 years ago. It’s a neighbor’s cat and hadn’t appeared for ages until one evening it meowed at my window. A cat was just what I needed at that moment.)
Z is for zoo (we took our kids club to a mini zoo last Saturday. In some ways it felt like we were the zoo. I have to laugh at Mint’s serious expression in this picture)
The Stuff of Dreams
Maps are the stuff of dreams-
The remains of journeys past
The visions of journeys to come;
Whispering of woodfire smoke in early morning mist,
Of roosters crowing in crisp mountain air,
Of smiles flashing in dark faces.
They speak of vistas that lie beyond, beyond
Of mountains where unknown fires burn,
And roads that run like veins in twisted valleys.
Maps, they are the stuff of dreams.
A Personal Challenge
I don’t know where my words have gone. It’s been months since I’ve written much outside of school assignments and I’ve poked around inside my brain countless times trying to figure out what is happening.
Maybe, I’ve thought, it’s because I’m not living right somehow. Maybe I am not listening well enough, or feeding my “muse.” Maybe I am not close enough to God right now to listen to what he wants me to write. There’s this niggling feeling that I must be doing something wrong if I am not writing.
Maybe it’s because I am experiencing burnout with school. Maybe the school assignments have squeezed me dry of all inspiration, even though I am taking a lighter semester than ever before. Maybe my Thai study and translation work have frozen my mind temporarily. Or the work I’m doing has distracted me from writing.
Or maybe its just a stage, a season of life in which I have to stop writing for a while. You’d think that living alone would be the perfect atmosphere to inspire writing, but so far it hasn’t.
Maybe it’s just a lack of discipline.
Whatever it is, for the next 7 days I am taking on a challenge to write and blog every day. From what I’ve experienced in the past, sometimes the best way to get the creative juices flowing is to start writing, so I’m giving it a try. The outcome may be lame, dry, and boring. I don’t care. I’m just going to write and blog the result.
Yikes. This is scary.
Life in Pictures
My days consist mostly of teaching, studying, and volunteer translation work. Life has fallen into a somewhat normal pattern.
