Fish, Taxi's and so much more!

Picture of a float at a festival a few weeks ago.

Hi All, 

The thing about having both shingles and a head cold is that it absorbs all my attention and replaces it with this constant sense that I am wandering through a dreamlike world with lots of screaming little people that talk to my in tongues (aka my students talking to me in Thai).

 It's one of the worst places mentally to be in when you have to control 50 plus raging hormonal teenagers and constantly be ready for any mutiny they may be plotting in class.  For some odd reason though, the kids have not been picking up that I don't want to be here.

 Yesterday as I was climbing into a song tao to go back home, a group of students ran up to me and blew me kisses as the the car drove away. They seem to be like cats. The more you don't want to be around them, the more they love you.

Here is a quick catch up of the past few days events.

....

I went home the other day in a song tao taxi (as I do). When I hopped in the back, I was met by a four year old, a five year old and ten year old completely unsupervised travelling back home. Well, hello everyone!

The three year old just stared at me for the entire ride home. I would smile at her, but she would just keep staring. Talk about tough crowd.

The five year old was adorable wearing knee high socks with his school uniform and kept telling me over and over again that his name was Jing.  The ten year old was fascinated by me and kept asking me questions in Thai about why I don't have a boyfriend ( I told him my mother asks the same thing and he understood me and laughed!!!).

 As this was going on Jing had grabbed a hold of the handles bars on either side of the song tao and was swinging in mid air as the car raced down the road at 40mph. Keep in mind that the ceiling had no padding, so any bump on the road and Jing's head was going straight up into metal and open nails.

I watched as this demon child swung away and nearly killed himself. I had a moment of panic. Then I thought "Not my kid, not my problem." and enjoyed the rest of the ride.

 I find it amazing that no matter where you are in the world, children are always trying to kill themselves. 

......

This week I got fish! 

I was originally going to steal them from an old lady's pond down the road. Now, I know that sounds pretty awful, stealing from an old woman an all, but there are literally hundreds of them. Honestly I would be doing the fish a favor by depopulating their pool. 

I told my friend Nok what I was planning on doing and she looked at me in horror so I proposed going down and asking the old women if I could buy some from her. Nok said it was a stupid idea but went along with it. Besides what's the worst that could happen? She says no, we move on and then go get some dinner.

Five minutes later, this Thai grandma is yelling at Nok's face as I stand behind her trying to figure out what was going on.

Apparently the old lady was really attached to every single one of her fish.  I couldn't understand much of the conversation besides "I am NOT a fish store!" and "What's wrong with you?! Get out!"

Nok apologized profusely and flashed me this look that said "Don't talk to me. I hate you."

I slinked back behind her feeling guilty and then followed her into a pet store where I let Nok pick two small fish for me. Nok picked out two small fish the size of half my pinky finger, ones deep blue/black and the other goes from pale to dark orange.

I brought them back to my room and put them in the cookie tin can Nathan ( another teacher in the same program) gave me.

 Retrospectively, putting two fish in a container that is silver and thus serves as a giant mirror might not have been the best idea for two male fish. For hours the fish were attacking the walls, trying to kill their threatening reflection.  My bad!

I also noticed that when I tried to feed them, they were uninterested. I realized that they were most likely freezing because the metal container offers no insulation. My bad!

 I padded the bottom with gravel, put in a live plant to give them some oxygen and now they are my little buddies swimming around happily. The blue one is Sukiaki named after a Thai dish here that I think sounds cute. The orange one's name is Ahtee, short for panateet which means sun in Thai.

I love them and pictures are coming soon!

...

The bathrooms are not working at school today. They put a "out of order" sign on the door but I didn't understand it because it was in Thai. I realized what it said after I had already had used the bathroom and the toilet didn't flush.  Sigh.

I'm pretty horrified right now trying to figure out where all these children are going to the bathroom today. I would hope they are all holding it in, but I highly doubt the bladder of a five year old can handle that responsibility.

Also, no one else seems upset by this! It's as if they all got a memo about some new top secret bathroom location that I'm not privy to. Thailand! What's going on?!

Well off to teach! Thanks for reading and talk to you later.

Much Love,