If Dickens was Thai: 1

Throughout my 18 blog entries, I have introduced quite the cast of Thai characters. These, for the most part, have been passing mentions, and the writer in me cannot help but feel that this is incomplete. To try and understand my life at site, a further characterization of this eclectic bunch is necessary. They are the people who make my life here what it is, who help me exist happily, and who I will hopefully give something back to in return. That, and I’m not sure I could dream up better characters. I am going to write my “characterizations” in installments, and will intersperse them with my regular blog entires.

My counterparts:

Ning - Ning is my 4 foot 7 inch pink-loving, hard-working, glitter-headband-sporting, feisty, baby-obsessed, educational supervisor. Ning and her husband Dten recently got promoted from teachers to supervisors and moved permanently to Wat Bot, where they live in a beautiful house along the river with their son Dtiu, Ning’s younger sister, Dten’s father, and dog named Pie. I lived with them before I moved into my own house, and within half an hour of my arrival, Ning whipped out her wedding album. She lost no time regaling me with the entire saga of their courtship, and inquired seriously what age I want to get married and how many babies I want to have- needless to say I was horrified. Despite her adoration for all things marriage-and-baby related, Ning is a dedicated career woman. She is always working when I see her, which is…unusual in Thailand. Ning’s driven, ambitious attitude stands in delightful juxtaposition to her collection full of pastel, shimmery Thai silk suits and collection of sparkly headbands, which she wears immaculately every single day. Dten does not work nearly as hard as Ning, but can always be found about 10 steps behind her with her light pink camera, snapping pictures or bringing her papers.
Ning and Dten have just one chubby seven year old son named Dtiu, who they indulge constantly, which is partially which he is so rotund. Twenty minutes before dinner if he asks for fried chicken, sticky rice, and sweets, he gets it. Fortunately he is still at an age where fat is cute. Every time you ask Ning or Dten how Dtiu is, they say “oh, very fat”, and smile. Dtiu can be shy, but has no problem running around the house naked and farting loudly, whether or not I am present. Apparently he is only shy around “beautiful girls”, and I did not make the cut. I try not to let it bother me, and told him I will wait until we can get married one day.

Som - Som is my co-teacher at my big school. She has a degree in English and heads the district’s English network. Despite this, her English is not very strong. She has a good vocabulary but no sense of sentence structure. Consequently, we often have language standoffs, where she is convinced that she is speaking properly and I have no idea what she is talking about. She repeats the same ambiguous jumble of words over and over and I try to guess the meaning. For example:
Som: “You eat very much, fat like me”
Bekah (in an upset voice): “You think I’m fat?”
Turns out she meant that if I eat a lot, I will be fat like her. I made a mental note to teach her the conditional tense.
However with her position as the head of the network, Som pretends her English is much better than it is. She loves to show off her “English skills” for other Thai people. During lunch or at meetings, she will translate basic things for me she knows I get, just to display her abilities, and will nod knowledgably and say yes to anything she does not understand (What is for lunch today? Yes. How long does it take to go to Korat? Yes. Why do most Thai men have mistresses? Yes. ) The most flagrant example of this happened during our presentation at a teacher training. I spoke English and she translated into Thai, but when she did not understand me, she would just make things up. With my Thai skills, I noticed every mistranslation, but wasn’t about to call her out in front of 150 of her colleagues.
Som is one of the only moody Thai people I have ever met. She is always nice to me, but I have seen her get into arguments with other Thais -something you never see in this intensely non-confrontational culture. She has melancholy days, where she sighs heavily on a regular basis and locks us in her classroom to eat lunch alone. Often Som’s bad moods are triggered by her on-going feud with the school principal or her husband, who takes business trips to visit his various mistresses. Conversely, when she is in a good mood, Som is the life of the party. Last week, she walked around the wat (temple) holding her boobs and teasing the other teachers that hers’ are bigger. She also initiated a conversation at lunch one day about how many times a year the teachers sleep with their husbands and has asked me to help her make a match.com profile so she can “make foreign friends”. Another one of her strong suits is making up weird “teaching” songs on the spot.
The woman can also eat like no-one I have ever seen. She always complains about how she is fat and wants to be skinny, but then takes me out to eat massive amounts of deep-fried fish, som tum, and canome (Thai sweets). She always orders food enough for five people, and finishes all of it. It blows my mind every time, particularly when an hour or two later she asks if I want to go eat dinner with her, because if you don’t eat rice, it’s just a “snack”. Furthermore, Som has somewhat off-kilter notions of nutrition. We will be eating the deep-fried fish, which has a few pieces of shredded carrot and cabbage on top, Som will tell me the dish is healthy because it contains fresh vegetables. She will only drink glasses of water with one ice cube in it, because very cold water makes you fat, and according to her I lost weight because mango season ended, not because I started going on 40 km bike rides. In her classroom, she has a poster that says “motto” and reads: Rich -> Eat, Eat ->Fat, Fat -> Danger.
I enjoy spending time with Som outside of the classroom, but teaching with her can be stressful. She is impatient with the students and does not seem to enjoy teaching anymore. She will bang a bamboo stick really hard and loudly against the board or the desks when she wants attention, which freaks me out, and told me it is the rule in Thailand that teachers hit students. I told her in America it is absolutely not ok for teachers to hit students and asked her not to do it anymore, or at least not when I am in the classroom. Thus far she has acquiesced. Som regularly invites me to sleepover at her house, and I think I will use the no-hitting thing as leverage for the slumber party she clearly wants to have.

Orasa - Orasa is my co-teacher at Thangam, the small school. She teaches first grade and adores children. She has never been married and has no kids of her own, but is the full-time caretaker of her nine year old nephew who lives with her (and me). She grew up in the same village as the school and literally knows everybody. Orasa was the one who helped introduce me into the community and get me settled. At Thangam, she is in charge of the school’s finances, and spends a great deal of time helping out the other teachers. It is clear the school would not function without her-the principal wanders into our classroom with questions multiple times a day. She is an incredibly caring, thoughtful woman who figures like a sweet, loving aunt in my world here. When I was sick, she brought me food everyday and knows when to step in if I am having an off-day. I feel comfortable going to her if I am upset or need help. She helps me with so many small things, like making copies, getting my haircut, or chasing down the motorized ice cream stand in heels and a skirt.
Orasa speaks very little English, and does not seem overly eager to learn. She dedicates many hours when I am at Thangam to helping me improve my Thai reading. We will often spend a couple hours a day going through the first grade Thai book, eating fruit or locally-made treats, and chatting. She loves to laugh and when she came to PST II, made so many friends that when I asked her to get dinner with me, she couldn’t because she already had plans. She can be very shy, however, around authority figures, and when the country director came to visit my site, she hid in my kitchen. I want to get her to the point where she is comfortable with hugs, because every time I see her, I just want to give her a hug, but alas, that is definitely not normal behavior here.