Where to start?
I am too incompetent to express to you the experience of living in Bangkok and my job. It’s nothing too great. I am no explorer on the frontier of something incalculable, mental or physical. Actually, much of what I have done since arriving has been mundane and clear cut. Shopping for supplies (towels, soap, detergent, cell phones), getting acquainted with surroundings and relearning the Thai vocabulary for foods I like (cao mon gai, guai diao moo, cao gai taot), riding buses and taxis here and there. I saw Indiana Jones and went out to bowling and a bar afterwards. Bangkok is city like any other city, and I am a resident, though a green one.
Somehow, still, the every day knick knacks of living — the sights and sounds of experience — have drained my senses and deflated my words. I am simply here and I don’t know what to say about it. I have only poorly constructed vignettes thrown together in a notebook:
“The strangeness of a city that runs independent of you, yes, Bangkok. I woke this morning to churnining engines and child’s voices, to a city already in the full bloom of its day, and I could have slept away and the world here would take no notice – for a while at least.
The day was spent mostly in malls with unfamiliar names, Tesco Lotus, Central Ping Glao, MBK. The malls of Bangkok let you see how Western culture has patched itself into the messy quilt of Thai life. English meshes itself on almost every sign, often completely without context – crunchy shrimp snack food packages have English names, but every other text on the package is in Thai. English is the language of the money-making class, and maybe by extension the language of the hip. Are hipness and money ever that far apart, really?
Sights and sounds: Sidewalks writhing with people, so many you think of ants, and I am a head taller than most of them. Thais are thin and I am big, so my passing certainly clogs bottle necks in the sidewalks caused by vendors’ stalls, selling everything from leather belts and watches, wallets and key chains and geode crystals and gold fish. Thais surely curse my frame in tight alleys. One advantage to not knowing the language well yet is that I am spared the ire of the small waisted.“
St. Gabriel’s has assigned me to teach writing to 7th, 8th, and 9th graders, each class with sixty kids or more. Chaos has a face and it is in a Thai classroom.
This is a great place for a cliffhanger, so I will collect what thoughts I have and put them down next time. Til then.
2 responses so far ↓
Kristen Berube // May 28, 2008 at 12:40 am |
I have a fun list of comments:
1) As you have probably noticed, I found your blog website (since you forgot to send it to me) – yay facebook
I am also happy to hear that you are there safe and sound.
2) I have to thank you in advance for motivating me to now read through this fun blog of yours… although I might have to keep a dictionary handy
(just kidding – I can figure it out)
3) Don’t worry… try to see every school day and the journeys you make with your students as several smaller yet exciting adventures and that part of you will be satisfied – oh yea, and it will make teaching WAY more enjoyable
4) Finally, good luck with that age group, although they are probably slightly different and hopefully more mature than American students at that age… However, I definitely enjoyed my 7th graders once I got used to being with them every day, so be as optimistic as possible
Cait // May 29, 2008 at 11:01 pm |
Uncle Sam,
Glad to see you arrived on foreign (or rather, familiar) soil safe and sound.
Keep in touch — I want to hear how it goes (by that I mean as it is going, not after it went).
Address? (you know, the snail mail kind)
Miss your face.
Love,
Vintage.