A "stream of consciousness" post.

The picture above is of the coastline of Koh Chang (Elephant Island), located in the easternmost part of the Gulf of Siam, near the border of Cambodia. When my family comes and visits we are making a stop at the island for about five days before they head home. I've been working on figuring out our travel arrangements, so I've been thinking about it a lot. I can't wait. People, you think Hawaii is beautiful... Koh Chang is 10 times as lovely and less touristy. I spent days lying by the pool, staring at the glorious ocean that was only a few feet away. I am very excited about going back and taking my family with me.

Speaking of which, it is only about four months until my family will be here. Crazy. The last day of classes is in about four weeks. Crazy. I go home to California for the semester break in about five and a half weeks. CRAZY. When I got here at the end of May, October seemed so far away. Time has passed so quickly. I feel like the week has hardly begun when it has ended.

I've been thinking a lot about what is going to happen after I leave Thailand in March. I know that I am going to live at home for a while, working until I go back to school... providing I get in somewhere. I'm applying to graduate school for Fall 2008 and I honestly cannot wait to go back to school.

"What?" you say. "But you just graduated four months ago! Don't you want a break? Aren't you sick of school?"

The truth is that I love learning and going to class. I will talk about literature to anyone who will listen (and even those who don't want to listen, as my long suffering family will testify). I'm excited at the prospect of going back to school and concentrating entirely on what I'm interested in. I've been doing a lot of research on graduate schools and have compiled a list of schools that I want to go to (all on the East Coast, actually. I feel drawn to the other side of the country since I did my undergraduate work in California).

I know that March will creep up on me and give me a surprise. I want to enjoy the time I have left in Thailand, because I do love it here, despite the difficult parts of life. I enjoy teaching, especially interacting with my students outside of and after class. I love living in this beautiful, ancient city, and seeing the wild mountains rise up out of nowhere. I feel blessed that God led me here and has provided for me without fail, time and time again, in all sorts of situations. But I'm excited about what the future holds.

Awwwwwwkward.

I went to Thanoon Kohn Doon, the Sunday night walking street to go Christmas shopping and caught a taxi for the ride home. On hopped three middle-aged women and one guy who looked to be about my age. I smiled and struck up a conversation. The ladies were delighted that I could speak Thai and immediately started gushing about how beautiful I was. (I think it was the fact that I can speak Thai that made me so beautiful). I waied and thanked them for all the profusive compliments.

Then things started to get awkward. One of the ladies asked me how old I was. Next she asked me if I had a boyfriend. After I responded (twenty-two and no, respectively), she exclaimed, "Great! You can marry my son! He is twenty-two as well." Did I mention that the son was sitting right next to me? His mother practically proposed marriage for the two of us while he was innocently trying to get home. He didn't seemed nonplussed in the slightest and proceeded to ask for my phone number. I was internally flustered but luckily the taxi pulled over at my stop and I didn't have time to give it to him. Too bad. It might have been love.

.........................

Last week, I walked to a street market near my apartment building to buy some dinner. It had been a long day, filled with two classes and tutoring after 5, so all I wanted to do was buy some food and go home. Did I mention that it was pouring rain? You know how in movies some poor sap stands in the street and a car racing past them drenches them with dirty water? Yes, that actually happened to me. Luckily, I was already soaked so it didn't really matter.

I stumbled up the stairs to the market and decided to get "phat thai," beloved by locals and tourists alike. I went to my favorite vendor stall and ordered. While I was waiting, the seller looked at me, smiled, took out his cell phone, stuck it in my face and took a picture of me, no preamble whatsoever. I was too surprised to respond or say anything, I just smiled weakly and then pretended like it hadn't happened. As soon as my food was done, I hurried away, my inner monologue reflex too tired to do anything.

I don't look like the average person who lives in Chiang Mai. Although many tourists visit, I don't live in or often frequent the areas where tourists commonly hang out. Because I am a little different, this means that often I get some unwanted attention. Nothing sketchy, mind you, but staring is quite common. Some of the older female ajaarns in the English department like to touch my skin and my hair, and stare into my exotic blue eyes. And yes, that does get awkward, at least for me. I often get told that I look like Britney Spears and/or Hilary Duff. Sometimes strange men take pictures of me with their cell phones.

I've gotten used to this and I really don't mind it most of the time. Honestly. Most of the Thai people genuinely want to compliment me, and who doesn't appreciate a nice compliment now and then? However, I might think twice about going back for phat thai at that market anytime soon.

The P word.

Plagarism: a word that strikes fear into the heart of even the most conscientious college student. Two of my classes had a written assignment to write a one to two paragraph biography. I stressed several times that these biographies needed to be written IN THEIR OWN WORDS (meaning that to directly copy something printed off the internet was not acceptable).

Imagine my astonishment when at least a third of each class not only directly copied information, but didn't even bother to disguise it. They merely printed a biography from wonderful, reliable sources like Wikipedia and company, with the website source still on the page. At least other students copied biographies in their own handwriting!

I was tempted to give everyone who copied a zero on the assignment, but decided to give them another chance. They have until Friday to turn in something legitimate. I lectured both classes about plagarism today, trying to explain that it is a serious offense to pass someone else's work off as your own. I also told them that in universities in America, the plagarising (is that a word?) student would fail the course, maybe worse. They seemed genuinely surprised. I got the feeling that they had no idea that such a thing was wrong.

What really astounds me is the position of CMU on plagarism. In the grading criteria I was given, I was instructed to take no more than 1 full point away if the assignment was not written in the student's own words. Plagarism is tolerated; it is assumed and accepted that the students will copy.

No matter what the position of CMU, I explained to my students that making mistakes in their writing is natural and improvement will follow. I don't expect them to be perfect; I just want them to try.

Election Day.

I have no classes on Monday because someone decided that it is a holiday (it seems like every other week there is a random holiday, decided by who knows who!) I have no classes because on Sunday the Thai people will be voting on a new draft of the constitution. That is right, as of now Thailand is under military rule and there is no formal constitution.

In 2006, when I was an exchange student here, the Prime Minister, Thaksin, lost power during a coup d'etat. Thaksin was extremely corrupt in his business dealings (in many ways, actually) and is now being prosecuted. However, the coup was extremely peaceful; it seems like every two to five years Thailand has a change of government, but they are quite dignified and polite. Only Thailand could have coups like that!

On Thursday and Friday I gave each of my classes a little lecture about how voting is a privilege and they needed to be responsible citizens and vote. Not many of them showed interest; a few didn't even know that there was going to be an election. Most of them seemed apathetic.

I can understand how if the government was changing every few years that it would be hard to keep track of the political situation. I wouldn't be as interested in politics if I thought that in a few months that someone new would be in power.

I have no idea whether this draft of the constitution will be approved, but I told my students that maybe I would give them extra credit if they could prove to me that they voted. We'll see!

Wading through red tape.

Finally. After two and half months, I am a legal, non-immigrant, working resident of Thailand for one year. I started the visa and work permit process on my first day of work, June 1st, and now, on August 15th, it is finally over. Thank God.

I already had a visa when I entered Thailand in May, but it was only valid for ninety days. I had to get a work permit with papers from CMU to prove I was a legitimate teacher, then extend my visa for a year, and then go back to the Labour Office to extend my visa. You can't have one without the other.

For each step of the process, I had to provide papers prepared by the Foreign Relations Office at CMU along with about a gazillion copies of my passport. Sometimes it is hard to get a clear, concise answer from Thai people about logistics. Often they would tell me that something is ok even if isn't, just because they didn't want to disappoint me or hurt my feelings. However, when working on very important documents that prevent me from being deported, this is frustrating. Sometimes unbearably frustrating.

For example, a few days ago, the head of the Foreign Relations Office told me that they had lost all of the papers I had gathered and given to them to process. To prepare another batch of papers would take at least a week, perhaps more, and that was time that I didn't have. I had a hard time keeping my temper but held it together, and then went in the bathroom and cried because I was so frustrated. Thankfully, they called later that afternoon to tell me that they had had my papers the entire time. Ha ha.

Today I went to the immigration office and spent more than two and half hours signing things, being interviewed, waiting around, and generally just being confused. But I got to leave with a little stamp in my passport that says I am a legal resident until May 2008. Later, I went to the Labour Office at the City Hall, showed them my new visa and got another stamp in my work permit. Finis.

Now all I have to do is present myself with my passport at the immigration office every 90 days to prove that I am still in the country. It is such a weight off of my back to have this taken care of; my current visa expires in a week and a few days. I didn't want to make it a close call!

Thanks to all of you who have prayed with me about these documents coming through without any hassle. Although there was some hassle (quite a bit of hassle, actually) I am just grateful to have everything that I need. Hurray!

George W. Bush in the flesh.

My ENG 103 classes had presentations due today. They had to create a TV program that was both "creative" and "constructive," and then present part of the program as a role-play to the rest of the class.

One group of three boys in my 2:30 class had some sort of... game show? I'm not exactly sure what it was supposed to be, I had a hard time following the plot... if there was a plot.

The three boys had to introduce themselves (as their characters) before they began, and one of the boys introduced himself as, "George W. Bush, the President of the United States." This struck me as hysterical and I laughed aloud, trying to pretend like I was choking on my bottle of water rather than laughing; these boys were deadly serious. They saw nothing humorous in using the American president as a character on their game show; maybe they thought he had a wide knowledge of celebrities (the questions seemed to concentrate on celebrity trivia).

George W. Bush was on that game show to win. I think he did win, actually; there was a grand prize of one million baht. Way to go, George.

Mii dok maay laew.

Finally, after more than two months of searching, I found orchid plants that were available for purchase. Orchids are a native flower in Thailand and grow almost everywhere; however, it was extremely difficult to find any plants that were for sale. I went to two different flower markets by the river, searched up and down a street where there were rumored to be sellers, and asked around, but to no avail.

Yesterday I went to Tesco Lotus, the Thai equivalent of a Costco, and lo and behold! There were several little gardening stores, one of which had beautiful, brightly-colored orchids for sale. I was pretty much beside myself with excitement and it took me a long time to decide what colors to get.

I have been wanting something alive in my apartment for a long time. I almost bought a rabbit the other day. Seriously. I stood in front of the rabbit cages for about fifteen minutes, pondering. But I didn't buy a bunny. My apartment building doesn't allow pets. Ha ha. I don't even really like rabbits.

Before I move on to the added responsibility of a pet (perhaps a goldfish) I am going to see how I do with my plants.

The inevitable.

I've been having a bout of homesickness recently. I've read that culture shock and adjustment goes in stages, sort of like a love/hate relationship. I guess now I am in the less positive stage of that process. Last week I got the flu and spent forty-eight hours throwing up; there is nothing like a good case of the flu to make one want to go home. Let me tell you, I was ready to hop on a plane and fly back to California if I'd had the chance. I feel better now.

I miss my friends, too. I've met some really great people here, but I crave being around people I love who know my heart and love me too. I was blessd with some amazing soulmates in college (and one soulmate from home!) that I really miss right now. Most of the people here are either Buddhist or emphatically non-Christian, and I miss being a part of a thriving Christian community. I've been going to an international church here in Chiang Mai for about two months and I like it, but I don't really feel like I have become a part of the community there. At least not yet.

Sometimes I am exhausted by standing out so much in this culture. People stare at me quite a bit, probably because I am so different-looking. Not only am I a white foreigner, but I have blonde hair and very fair skin. Being here gives me a sliver of an idea of what being a minority is like. I've gotten used to it, but sometimes I long to blend in with everyone else.

So I ask this from you, my friends and family: please join me in praying for Christian friends and a Christian community to be a part of. A very wise woman once told me that good experiences are not always fun to go through, but you're always glad you did them when they're over. I know that I am learning and growing. The process of change is not always enjoyable, but I am confident that being here is God's will, and I try to cling to that when things get rough.

Il pleut beaucoup.

It has been raining all day today. The skies looked indecisive this morning, wavering between a delicate sprinking or a bombardment. Rain in Chiang Mai is thicker, more substantial than the skinny little bits of water we get in California. The plump drops fall heavily and hit mango leaves with enthusiasm, perhaps even reckless abandon. When the weather decides that rain is in order, it commits without hesitation.

This early afternoon rain feels purifying. I feel far away from traffic chaos and fussy commuters, armed with brightly colored umbrellas, ready to run down anything or anyone in their way. I crave cleansing right now. Water washes away the smog and pollution of the ever-crowded city; I feel encouraged to breathe deeply instead of holding my breath. Sometimes I forget the benefits of just breathing.

Tomorrow the biggest worms I've ever seen will go out for their morning stroll, avoiding certain death from large shoes and the feet in them. I wonder at them, and how lovely it is that they only venture from their fertile havens when the air feels cleaner, renewed. A little part of me envies them.

The rainy season will end soon, perhaps late September. I'll miss it.

I love midterms. Correction: I love midterms when I'm the teacher and not the student.

Here is a list of some of the things I've done recently during my midterm break:

1. Went to the labor office (again!) to pick up my work permit. I am now legal... at least until my current visa expires.
2. Nearly fallen off the curb when a police officer blew his offensively loud whistle right into my ear.
3. Enjoyed staying out late and sleeping in late.
4. Played sports vocabulary bingo with my two junior high students.
5. Gotten TWO paychecks. Count them, two!
6. Made a new British friend that I met at the Night Bazaar while perusing Lacoste knockoffs.
7. Walked to teach a class in a torrential downpour (I braved fierce winds and toxic cesspools).
8. Ate rhoti, a Thai dessert with fried bananas and chocolate, three nights in a row.
9. Done WAAY too much laundry.
10. Watched the entire first season of Arrested Development.

I don't know how I will ever be able to go back to work.