It's been one year...

As I lay in my bed to sleep, my mind kept wandering off to Thailand. Memories from the time I spent there flooded my mind. Even stronger are the pangs of longing for Thailand that seemed strangely familiar until I recalled that the last time I felt these pangs was when I knew I was irrevocably separated from the one I had fallen in love with. Can it be true that those great novelists of the passed who claimed to have "fallen in love" with some foreign land actually meant it? That their falling in love was not a figure of speech but an actual, tangible attachment on par with what we understand as romantic love? 

And then I realized why I had such strong feelings. It has been exactly one year from the day that I left Thailand.

Is a year really that powerful? Do our physical bodies really understand the concept of time and
that 365 days constitute a year? Yet a year has passed and my constant longing for this land that seems so far right now has not dissipated. I was in Thailand for a year on a Fulbright ETA grant and a year seemed too short so I stayed six extra months. It was incredibly hard the first three months to be back in America last year but that made sense; my friend studied abroad in Japan for about seven weeks and it took her about seven days to grieve her leaving of that land. I calculated that since I was in Thailand one and a half years, it will take me exactly 78.26 weeks to get over everything. It has been far longer than that and every single day, I think about Bangkok or Sawankhalok or Chiang Mai and when my cerebration of that loss becomes too much, I express it verbally to anyone in my family who may be around me via recollections of food or memories.   

I miss the feeling of waking up to a warm morning in Bangkok, early enough for the room to remain cool but late enough for the extreme humidity to start seeping in. I miss the ambrosial taste of Thai tea purchased from a hardworking street vendor after I have walked miles in the heat. I miss the long tube of extremely cold air aka the BTS train that recharges me to continue my journey in the cacophony outside. I miss the feeling of going to class everyday to learn a language that I would use immediately after I stepped back outside. I miss setting my mouth on fire with extra chili in my food and making it worse by downing a gulp of green soda.

I miss the freedom of riding my bicycle and taking the long way home just to smell the flowing waters of the Yom river, sometimes pleasantly clean and other times simply fishy. I miss the smell of the rain and the soil after a thunderous storm. I miss walking around town with full assurance that I would run into someone I knew whether it was one of my shy students, a caring teacher, or a concerned parent. I miss the once in a full moon OTOP market with goods for sale from all around Thailand. I miss walking around the night market and buying food from shop owners who I can call friends. I miss buying junk food from Tesco Lotus that I would never even think about buying in the states. 

I miss the sweat pouring down my face even before class begins as I prepare the classroom for my lesson. I miss reading my students' notebooks and realizing how much they've grown already and honored when they would share deeper things about themselves. I miss having students come into the office with just the excuse of wanting to hang out with me. I miss receiving and giving back smiles and wais from any student in my school. I miss working twelve hour days and still having an abundance of energy at the end of the day because I was completely devoted to my students' growths.

These and many more memories flooded my mind tonight. Why are these memories still so potent even after a year, seeking once again to debilitate me as I try to piece my life back together? Thailand has left an indelible mark on my heart and it seems that even an entire year cannot render these memories and feelings any less vivid.

 

Thank you God for all of these wonderful experiences and memories

Miracle in the Flood

I am back in the US now and continuing to get my life back together. However, I wanted to share something amazing that happened during the great flood in Sawankhalok two years ago (that felt weird saying...2 years already?).

A few days before the flood, the whole school was buzzing with conversations about when the water would reach us. We knew because as a teacher in the school quipped "When there is flooding in Prae, there will definitely be flooding in Sukhothai." Phrae is a province north of Sukhothai. The waters in Sawankhalok's Yom river had started to rise the day before and people started sandbagging the banks. During my 7th period class, as I was teaching the appropriate vocabulary befitting the occasion, "flooding" "sandbags" "help," a commotion started outside and it seems the flood had finally come and the water breached the sandbags.

 I finished my class and then went back to the office. It was still dry in the school but the water had already started to flow into the main street in front of the school. Just then, another fellow American teacher, an elderly woman from Wisconsin, decided she really wanted to ship a box of pillows and convinced a younger Thai teacher to send her to the post office which was conveniently right next to the river. I thought she was crazy, but it turns out that I was the more idiotic one, because I decided to take my bike and tour around the city. It was a crazy sight to see heavy traffic and the water already up about three inches. When I returned to the school to gather my things and load the things of another fellow teach on my bike, the water was up to about 10 inches and I had to walk my bike instead. I wanted to make sure she got home safely so by the time that I was heading back to my house, the water was way past 1 ft.

By the time I reached my street which was lower than the main street, there was a mini waterfall at the entrance of the street. Although my house was a little higher, the water had already nearly reached the front step of my house and all my plants and garden supplies were floating. I hastily went inside to clean up from all the mud and to my disappointment, the water pressure was so low (during a flood? really?) that I couldn't do anything except wash my hands. An hour later, I went out to check my front yard again and the water had gone past the front step and was literally a centimeter from reaching the bottom gap of my door. I stuffed some plastic bags under the door frantically, but I didn't think it was much use since the water was really coming in with full force.

This was when I had no choice but to come down to my knees and pray to God to save my house from the flood. I commanded the waters not to enter my house by the authority I had in Jesus. I also prayed that the floods would not harm anyone in my village. I closed my door and believing, went upstairs and watched as the water in the street rose higher and higher. It also rained that night if I recall correctly...as if there wasn't enough water. I ate some frozen food and went to bed hoping for the best.


The Miracle

The next day, as I looked out the window, I saw the water had subsided a little probably due to the neighborhood arranging for sandbags to be placed at the street entrance to reduce the flow of water. I went downstairs and saw that my bottom floor was completely dry! I praised God for saving my house from the flood! I held my breath as I opened my front door (since I couldn't see how high the water was in comparison to the door). When the door opened, I saw that the water had subsided to my front step again. As I went out and looked at my walls, I saw water stains that suggested the water level reached about five inches above the bottom of the door!

The water reached one foot above my door and did not enter? Even my neighbors had water entering my houses as I saw them brooming away the water from their houses, but mine was kept safe. It was definitely a miracle and I thank God for literally saving my house from the flood. Thank you Jesus!

This is a contrasted picture to show the water line above the bottom gap of my door! I also praise God that there were no reports of any deaths or severe injuries either in Sawankhalok!

Hongsawadi-Suvanabhumi...and then a summary

This is the first time in many months that I have sufficient free time to write something on this blog of mine. I am still in Thailand and currently I am sitting in the Bangkok Airways lounge at Suvarnabhumi airport for my flight to Sukhothai. I just arrived back in Thailand this morning after a ten day 'vacation' in Burma. First a little bit about this trip.

Burma is the same as ever: colorful, beautiful, dirty at times, and eclectic. There were poignant moments like the sale of the estate I lived in during my early childhood in Burma - the rest of my extended family are getting ready to leave the country to call America their home as well. When I walked through the gardens and the empty halls of my old home and as I picked my last mangoes from the trees I played under as a child, I felt like I was saying goodbye to a very old friend. I was also in Burma during her first 'free' elections since 1988 and Aunty Suu's party won 43 out of the 44 seats. This seems monumental, but compared to the overall size of the Burmese parliament, this is still quite small, not to mention that regardless of the parliament's decisions, the military leaders still have final says on what laws actually get enacted. Burma is still quite far from the democracy that Aunty Suu envisioned, but at least the country is now much more oriented towards that path than it has been since my birth. There have been many calls for sanctions on Burma to be completely removed, but that should be done only slowly, because there still remains much to be done and pressure must be retained on the military leaders.

Since this morning, I have felt a little lost. I woke up at 5 AM to get my final packing done for Bangkok and I felt an emptiness within me. I still feel it now and I don't know why. My time in Thailand has come to a close. I am only here a few more weeks, because the Fulbright program in Thailand has asked me to give a presentation to the board members about my experiences as an ETA at the end of this month. However much I want to give this presentation, I still really would like to be on a flight back home now...back to America. I am very ready to go back I think.

My school year ended in Thailand somewhat uneventfully and somewhat disappointing, though the feeling of disappointment was more due to my own doing. I expected too much of my students to give me a decent farewell and I feel like I utterly miscalculated their affections for me. In my one and a half years as a teacher in Thailand, I can honestly say without a doubt, that I gave it my all to my school and my students. I have never worked this hard in my life while loving what I was doing. I could go to school at eight in the morning and stay until nine at night still feeling quite energized, because I felt like my time was well spent and I loved my students so much. The hours I spent checking hundreds of notebooks  (I had 504 students this semester) everyday after school while my co-workers were already comfortably settled at home, were spent with the fullest of my energy and love. I never regretted working hard and I never will. I loved my students like they were my own children (albeit I don't know what having children is like, but I assume it must be somewhat like what I felt.

So with all this effort in my mind, I came out, to say the least, a little bit disappointed (a lot actually) when the school year ended and I did not receive much thanks from my students. A few students did wish me farewell and a small class gave me two teddy bears, but this was about 6% of my students. I don't know what the other 94% felt about me. In some ways I do kind of know how they felt about me. They probably thought I was annoying given the fact that I was probably the first English teacher in their life who pushed them beyond what they thought was possible and making them work hard. I did give them work and I did expect a lot out of all my students regardless of their levels or class, because I believed in them, and I believed that they could learn so much more than the games that previous teachers played with them. All my M2 (8th grade) students can now speak about themselves non-stop for at least one minute as well as various topics such as the school, their family, and their town. My M4 (10th grade) students can now competently write essays about various topics from themselves to current events and while their grammar is far from perfect, they can express their voice in their writing and tell beautiful stories. A class of my M2 students are now all swing dancers. This may not seem much, but it is a lot of progress from when I first met them (they used to hesitate even when I asked them 'how are you'). One Thai teacher pointed out to me that the students don't really appreciate a good teacher when they meet one, especially if the teacher pushes them. I would like to believe her, but at the same time, I wonder if I did something wrong. I do hope the the lack of farewells and expressions of appreciation and such were due more to unappreciative personalities rather than my incompetence as a teacher. I'm not sure if I'll ever figure this out. 

In the end of the year banquet for the the languages department, over lunch at a beautiful restaurant made completely of wood and surrounded by mango trees, as I was getting ready to say a little bit about my thoughts of my time to all my teachers, I started to weep. It was quite startling to me, because I am not really the crying type, let alone one who cries in front of other people. I couldn't say much afterward, but just thanked everyone for their love and friendship and unfortunately causing other teachers to start crying too. I guess this physical manifestation was an indicator to me that I really did love my school. Sometimes I am not even convinced by what I think about things so it was nice to get a confirmation coming from the recesses of my psyche.

The one and a half years I spent in Sawankhalok, Sukhothai, Thailand, were some of the happiest times I have ever had in my life, but of course, as a human, this also came with some sadness and disappointment as well. I guess the greatest thing I learned about myself through all this is that I can be passionate about something and work endless hours fueled only by my love and conviction that my hard work is producing fruit in my kids. I have gone through the first 22 years of my life not sure if I was really interested in anything as I have not found myself as excited or energetic about any job or volunteer position I have held until I came to Thailand. I really do hope that my students did learn something from me...if not about English, I hope they learned about life, how precious they are, and how much potential they have in them...thank you Thailand and thank you God for this amazing experience.

A full blooming padauk (Pterocarpus macrocarpus) tree in Rangoon. There is an old saying that these trees bloom only one day a month a year. The flower blooms in the morning and falls the very same day so I was very fortunate to see one. I also got a close up look of its tiny yellow blossoms surprisingly at the immigration counter as I was leaving for Bangkok.