Holiday Festivities

Happy 2024! While Christmas and New Years definitely isn't as widely celebrated in Thailand, the past month has been filled with celebrations, both holiday and non-holiday related.

My family came to visit for two weeks during Christmas!

Fulbright Meeting in Udon Thani

I spent the days leading up to Christmas with the other ETAs in Udon Thani, where our Fulbright regional meeting was held. This was the first time all the ETAs got together since orientation in Bangkok, and everyone was teeming with the most amazing stories of their latest adventures. While we are all ETAs in Thailand, everyone’s placement is so drastically different, and the lifestyles we're each leading are so drastically different, although it seems like general themes of crazy kids and a lot of good food doesn’t change from province to province. All in all, it was nice to take a step back from the daily life of teaching to reflect with everyone and to remember our larger goals and the impact we want to make within this short year. I definitely left that meeting feeling invigorated and with a long list of ideas I want to implement in my teaching.

Some things we do in our meetings

Some pretty places in Udon Thani: we took a boat out to the the Red Lotus Lake to catch the sunrise, which was absolutely beautiful. The photographer there was selling framed photos of each of us taken by the lake (which we were unaware were being taken), and I definitely felt a bit guilty not buying it.

While the meeting ended on the 23rd, we all stayed an additional night together for a little Christmas celebration, where ate leftover Indian food and KFC, played White Elephant, and gave 3 minute Powerpoint presentations on life these past few months.

Christmas in Khammuang

Every year, Khammuang School hosts a Christmas celebration with the English Department, using the holiday as an opportunity for the students to have fun and practice English. As the foreign English teacher, I was assigned to MC for the day. My parents and my brother had arrived the day before Christmas for their two-week visit, and on Christmas day, they came to school with me for what was probably the most hectic, activity-packed day of school I've had yet. I was called onto stage by 8am and handed a mic without much instruction, so I gave my best attempt at an impromptu Christmas speech. My co-teacher and co-MC for the day, P'Madchim, decided that it would be fun to call my family onto stage too, so to their surprise, they ended up giving self-introductions in front of the whole school on Christmas morning.

The next several hours were packed with MCing all the Christmas events we had: song and dance performances, trivia, raffle lotteries, and more. My family was assigned to run a booth, where they asked students questions in English and handed out prizes. When I finally caught a short break from MCing, I went to check on them to find each of them surrounded by a swarm of curious students, eagerly conversing with them.

When afternoon classes began, I brought all three of them along, introducing them to my students. They walked around, conversing with the students and joining the lesson for the day. My dad stuck around for the rest of my classes, and by our last one, he had a pretty fleshed out self introduction, complete with drawings on the board and ending with a few Thai phrases.

Bangkok

My family and I spent the rest of their two weeks in Bangkok, where we explored markets and temples, went biking, and ate a lot of food.

I also brought them to Muay Thai! Watching everyone shadow box, work mitts, and meet my little Muay Thai community was definitely a highlight of that trip.

While my brother and my dad had to head back to the States after two weeks, my mom stayed an additional week with me back in Khammuang, where she joined some more of my classes and all my Khammuang rendezvous.

We took a weekend trip to Maha Sarakham with P'Madchim to attend her boyfriend's celebration for his new teaching position. We attended the morning ceremony, where a monk recited prayers and everyone tied white cotton strings, called sai sin, onto his wrist, symbolizing protection and good fortune. No Thai events are complete without a feast, and my mom and I joined P'Madchim's family to share a range of delicious Thai and Isan foods.

English Camp

I was invited to join this year's English camp for our M1 students, where they spent two days in a Bangkok amusement park playing games and doing activities in English. I wasn't sure if I was expected to help lead any of the activities, and for most of the first day, I just watched the students play a lot of rock paper scissors and heads shoulders knees and toes. It became pretty clear that I didn't really have any responsibilities, so I spent the rest of that afternoon going down waterslides with the students and other teachers in the park. The following day was for the students to play in the amusement park, so I tagged along. It was pretty much felt like I was in camp too, complete with the dorm-style room I shared with the other teachers.

Field Trip

Two days after English Camp, I joined the M4 students on their field trip to Mukdahan, tasked with chaperoning my M4/1 class. While I was technically the chaperone, I felt like I was the one being chaperoned. Our first pit stop was a huge temple, and the moment we got off the bus, a few students took me under their wing, telling me to follow them. We explored the temple together, and each time we were in a crowded area, they would check on me to make sure I was keeping up and not getting lost. When we went to a nearby food court for lunch, one of my 4/5 students walked around the food court with me, translating menus and double checking to make sure I wasn't getting anything spicy. We ate together, conversing in English the whole time, and I felt so proud watching him piece together phrases and sentences, eager to communicate with me.

Our next stop was the Mekong River, where Laos sat on the other side, and I ran into two of the pencack students there. One of them rarely talks to me during pencack practice, but on that day, he decided to make the effort to explain the legend of the Phaya Nak, the sea serpent that lives in the river. Watching him piece together the story with the other boys jumping in to help was honestly the highlight of that entire trip.

After exploring a market and another temple, we began the three and a half hour drive home. While I was hoping to get some sleep on the bus, the students clearly had some other plans in mind. The moment we got on the bus, the music was turned up to max volume, disco lights came on, and microphones were pulled out. The music was loud to the point that you had to shout to whoever was sitting next to you. An hour in, none of the students were in their seats, all dancing in the aisle and singing on top of their lungs. While the first hour was pretty entertaining (I learned quite a few Thai and Isan songs), by the time we completed the three and a half hour drive, I was the first one off that bus.

Teacher's Day

January 16 was Teacher's Day, or wan kru, which is an annual Thai holiday celebrating the work that teachers do. All the teachers in Khammuang gathered at a local elementary school to attend a morning ceremony with songs, prayers, and teacher awards. P'Pom, my host teacher, received an award, and when I asked her what it was for, she replied, "I really don't know... maybe for the most being the most beautiful teacher?"

P'Pom with her Most Beautiful Teacher award, the morning ceremony, and my little "Khammuang Girl Gang" that I've formed here with the other English and Chinese teachers

The afternoon was filled with food, drinks, and sports games. I made my own papaya salad and got pulled on stage to dance with some of the other teachers. Halfway through, a teacher ran up to hand me a Jujube fruit so I had a little snack break on stage, watching the other teachers dance and our Khammuang teacher soccer team play.

The festivities didn't end in the afternoon; the real party started in the evening with rows of tables set up in front of a stage with a live band. Plates of food and bottles of drinks were constantly being brought to every table, and by 8pm, almost everyone was dancing to all the Isan classics. Khammuang is usually a quiet village, but when there is an event or celebration, everyone goes all out.

And because I never know where to put the countless pictures of food I have, here is a compilation of just a few:

I’m halfway through my first semester now, having just wrapped up midterms and grading. Being a teacher for three months has made me so much more grateful for all the teachers I’ve had in the past; while teaching is so rewarding in ways I hadn't imagined, it's also so incredibly challenging in ways I hadn't imagined. The number of disinterested students generally outnumber the interested ones, and there’s nothing more discouraging than dramatically acting out new vocabulary words to a classroom of students on their phones, straightening their hair, or just talking with their friends. I feel like I’m at a constant battle against the phones and makeup, fighting for my students’ attention. I'm definitely still navigating classroom discipline; "if you can hear me clap once" is slowly starting to lose its effects.

In most classes, there are a group of students that sit in the back of the classroom, completely unengaged in the lesson. Some purposefully ignore me when I try to talk to them, but most are just on their phones or asleep. It’s so easy for me to get discouraged or frustrated, but I’ve learned to celebrate the little wins: if I can get them to repeat a few words or sentences after me, even if they go straight back to their phones after that, I consider it a success. Some days I'm more ambitious than others and spend a good period of class time in the back of the classroom, but with class sizes around 40, it's not feasible to do that every class. That’s not to say that all my students are unengaged; there are several familiar faces that show up on time every day, curious and eager to learn. Some students diligently take notes during my lessons and will yell “teacher, teacher!” as I’m walking around the classroom to ask me a question. Some students are practically fluent in English and will come up to me after class to chat. I honestly depend on these students so much, and they are my anchors through the chaotic teaching days.

These first few months have been a lot of trial and error, exploring what activities and teaching methods work and which ones don’t. I’ve made my fair share of mistakes but have also implemented a lot of successful ideas, and while the next several months are definitely still going to have its trials and errors, I anticipate it’ll be a lot more smooth sailing.