Back to the grind

Mom and me in Chiang Rai.

Alas, summer vacation has come to a close. Tomorrow, transient turns teacher. Ay yi yi.

Returning to campus has been... interesting. The freedom and thrill of traveling for the past two months contrasts sharply with the confined space - literally and figuratively - I find myself in. Again. The boarding school life is a double-edged sword: it's convenient, cheap and enables me to build stronger relationships with my co-teachers and students. On the other hand, it can be a tad suffocating at times, and as much as I love my students, watching them peer into my kitchen window as I slurp down Mama noodles in my pajamas can be a little unsettling.

That being said, it's time. Round two. My main goal for this semester is to be a better teacher: these kids really deserve better than my sad performance last semester. Hopefully the more consistent schedule will enable me to build a better foundation for learning. And I WILL learn their names, dammit - all 375 of them.

I also hope to be more consistent in my blogging. As in Cairo, it seems to become more difficult for me as time passes. I lose some perspective - things no longer strike me the way they did before, or the way they would strike folks at home. They become, frankly, normal and mundane.

For example: Yesterday we walked to a restaurant in our village, and by restaurant I mean a woman's front yard with some lawn furniture surrounding a counter with ingredients for som dtam/papaya salad. We waltzed up, ordered in Thai and took a seat. After she shredded the papaya, she handed us the two cores (terminology?) and chatted away in Thai as we struggled to pretend to understand. After we paid our 20 baht (less than 65 cents) she started saying "motor-cy" and "go" and pointing at us. A few minutes later, we figured out she was offering to give us a ride back to school. Our questions as to whether or not the three of us would fit were quickly dismissed. So we piled on with our som dtam as I made sure not to burn myself on the exhaust, sticking my legs out awkwardly. As we drove to school, she shouted at a friend of hers, pointed at us and the two of them shared a great ole chuckle. Then we drove by a few places, which she named for us, chuckling all the way. We pulled up to the security gate, laughing, stumbling off her bike. The security guards waved and laughed as well.

Cute, right? A little slice of life here in Chiang Rai? It occurred to me as we were walking home - this is what it's about. This is one of the differences between living somewhere and traveling through somewhere. Little experiences like that can teach you so much more than tours of museums and history books. And those are just the experiences I've come to take for granted and stopped translating for people back home. Then I'm surprised when I find they can't comprehend where and how I'm living. It's difficult for me to step back and retain that "American" perspective. When I came back from Cairo, people asked me to tell them stories about things I experience there... and I would come up with nothing. Not because I didn't have the stories, but because I couldn't figure out what constituted an interesting tale - it was just daily life.

All this is to say that this semester, I'm hoping to make a better effort to record and share stories like that.

But you know me. It's unlikely. :)

Travel stories later!