She told me about one of the high school students who had just graduated and suggested I could take Thai lessons from her initially. She is a really good kid who used to take the family motorbike to school. Well, I guess one day it got stolen while she was at school, and her father was so furious he demanded she buy a new one soon, and even went so far as to suggest she go sell herself at one of the massage parlors! Poor thing. So, Judy was trying to come up with ways she could help this student earn money quickly, and thought she could start teaching Thai to the volunteers coming in. Well, now she has 3 students! She’ll earn that money back in no time.
That answered my first question of “how do I learn Thai?” and my next question was about my cell phone. I needed a SIM card! Basically, there are two major types of cell phone frequencies: the US and the rest of the world. Years ago, when I was in Belfast, I got a little Nokia, and every country I’ve been to since, I just go to a mobile phone shop and get a new SIM card for that country and then you just pay as you go for minutes and texts. It’s a great system. You only pay for minutes you use and it’s really cheap, usually (unless you’re in Lebanon, where the cell phone towers keep getting destroyed). Judy suggested we pick up my new teacher and get her to help me navigate the SIM card transaction. I also wanted to set up a bank account so I can have my money in a bank rather than just carrying cash all the time. Judy drove us to the mall and we worked out which card I wanted and how much money to put on it (I put 500 baht on, so with the cost of the SIM card, it worked out to $18.30. Calls cost 1 baht per minute, so for under 20 bucks I got 500 minutes and a new SIM card. Pretty good deal, eh?)
While we were at the kiosk, I noticed that they had iPhone 4s! I asked how much they were, and the lady said “very expensive.” Of course, I was skeptical. I mean, this is the place that considers 70 degrees freezing cold and $5 a day for a scooter rental a lot of money. So, you can understand my cynicism. Well, she typed out how much in baht and when I divided by 30 to get the dollar amount I was shocked! $864 for the new iPhone!! Wow, that AT&T subsidizing does wonders for the cost of electronics.
Judy left us to try to open a bank account and me to learn some new Thai words. Unfortunately, I had the wrong type of visa, since I had gotten a tourist visa when I came in, and was expecting to get my year-long visa the following day (stay tuned for that hair-raising story). So, no bank account for me. Well, I figured, why not make the best of the location we were in and get some ice cream!? So, my teacher (ok, I’m just gonna give her a name so I can refer to her in the future too. Let’s call her Lucy.) So, Lucy and I headed away from the Dairy Queen, (I was like “WAIT! Where are we going?!” but apparently DQ is “too expensive”. Ha!) and down the stairs to the KFC for some chocolate dipped soft-serve. Pure deliciousness for only 50 cents!
Then we headed out to catch a Song Thaew. The downside of these is that they don’t want to go anywhere until they have a few people, so we just were sitting in the back eating our ice cream for a while, til finally another person jumped in and the driver was satisfied. While we were driving, I learned colors. And by “learned” I mean that Lucy said a color and I repeated it tone for tone, until she said “Chai” which means “yes.” Of course upon getting this response, I would immediately forget what I had just learned. Purple starts with “muy.” That’s all I got. When I start proper lessons next week, I will be writing things down. Hopefully, I’ll be simultaneously learning how to read and write Thai as well, so it will be a fully immersive experience! I have to say I was pretty proud of myself, though, since Lucy kept telling Judy that my tones and accent were very clear and she was really impressed. J Guess I’m a natural!
We finally got back to TS and when I walked in, Willow, one of the girls in my class, came racing over and just jumped in my arms for a big hug. I know I’m not supposed to have favorites, but she’s definitely one of them. I also saw Phon, another of the girls in my class and she was almost as excited to see me as Willow. All this kid love really just reinforces how glad I am to have come back and how much I feel that I definitely made the right choice.
I was supposed to be helping teach that day, so I jumped on the computer to find some ideas for games involving “family” which was our topic of the week. When I came back downstairs, yet another of the girls in my class, Faith, was there. She was watching a movie with the other kids, so she didn’t see me, but when I called to her, she was like “P’Heather!!” and practically knocked me over with a huge bear hug. Nice to know that I made an impact in the two weeks I was here. :) What makes me laugh is that all the girls are so excited to see me, but the boys could really care less. Haha, well, that’s gender differences for you. I think they remember me, and at least the boys in my class are happy to see me, but they are not overly affectionate in their recognition.
Class consisted of the kids doing presentations about their families, and it ended up taking so long that there was no time for my games. I think they need another week on family though, so I’ll just do the games next week when I teach.
After class was dinner, then more playtime when I got to hang out with the girls some more. I brought a couple new jump ropes from the states, so the kids were really stoked to try them out, all taking turns and jumping together sometimes too. J
After the kids left for the day, Rob and Judy gave me a ride home and pointed out some landmarks along the way. They dropped me at home and I walked in and Jaz said “Hey! I’m just going to meet some friends for dinner. Want to come?” Of course, I said yes, cause I need to meet some people here! We headed out and basically drove right back to the neighborhood where TS is. Haha. I could have just gone straight there from work. Oh, well. It was fun getting there. Jaz has a motorbike, and I have only been on one like once before, so it was scary but exhilarating.
We went to Miguel’s, a Mexican restaurant. It made me laugh because I had just eaten Mexican on Monday since I thought I wouldn’t be eating it for a year. A bunch of other Aussies and some Americans came too. I was having fun getting to know people and all of a sudden it hit me. Jet lag. I have to say, though, I made it to 8:30pm after a 21 hour flight and only 6 hours of sleep, and I had been awake for nearly 13 hours that day, so it’s still pretty good.
As I was starting to hit the wall, I felt like the ground was moving. At first, I thought it might just be the waitress walking past cause the floor was wooden and maybe it buckled a bit as she walked. Then I thought it might be a truck driving past. It couldn’t be what I really thought it was, right? I mean, nobody else was reacting at all. When I looked up at the lights and they were swaying pretty wildly, I finally asked, “Uh, do you get earthquakes here?” One of the guys responded, “Sometimes, yeah. Why?” Then they felt it. All of us did and we were laughing, trying to figure out what to do. Finally it stopped and we all started making guesses as to what it was. Someone said that since we felt it, it had to be over a 5. I said that wasn’t true cause I’ve felt a 3.2 earthquake in LA before, and just last year, we had that 4.4 that woke everybody up in the middle of the night.
There was another table of Americans there and they were also from CA but they just moved there, so they had never felt an earthquake. Everybody jumped on their iPhones and discovered that the epicenter was in Burma and it was 191 km away from Chiang Mai! It was a 6.8 earthquake, so I know there must have been some devastation.
Rob and Judy also run a Border Refugee Ministry, so I was worried about the kids who live there. Turns out they were all ok, but there was some pretty severe structural damage, and one of the kids’ fathers was hit on the head by some falling concrete, so he was in the hospital. I’m not sure of the death count, but I know there were some fatalities as well as lots of injuries. Some welcome to Thailand, huh?
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