Are you sure?
This action might not be possible to undo. Are you sure you want to continue?
Achan
by Elayne Clift
Ratings:
178 pages3 hours
Summary
This lively collection of vignettes, pithy essays, profiles, humorous anecdotes and travel tales shares the experience of a seasoned American writer, traveler, and teacher who spent a year as a guest lecturer at a university in Chiang Mai, Thailand. It offers an entertaining and enlightening read for anyone who loves exploring other countries and cultures. A gem of a travel memoir!
Publisher: XinXiiReleased: Apr 21, 2011ISBN: 9786167270517Format: book
Book Preview
Achan - Elayne Clift
Achan: A Year of Teaching in Thailand
1st edition ebook 2010
Text by
Elayne Clift
ISBN 978-974-7051-82-7
eISBN 978-616-7270-51-7
Published by www.bangkokbooks.com
E-mail: info@bangkokbooks.com
Text Copyright© Bangkok Book House
Cover page Copyright© Bangkok Book House
E-Book-Distribution: www.xinxii.com
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, copied, stored or transmitted in any form without prior written permission from the publisher.
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. It may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to www.xinxii.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
***
For my Thai sisters,
Lena and Laura,
who gave the year its glow,
and
With thanks to the special friends
who shared it.
Prologue
Week One in Chiangra-la
Flying halfway around the world nonstop — a 17-hour journey — is similar in some respects to giving birth: the thought alone is daunting, and the actual event is arduous and difficult. Thai Airways makes the journey more than tolerable and lives up to its slogan, Smooth as silk.
Still, nearly 9,000 miles is a long way to go without touching down, even when punctuated by three excellent meals, enough movies for the duration, and a nap or two. Thanks to the amenities and clear skies, my usual flight angst was absent during my flight from New York to Bangkok, one of the longest nonstop flights in the world.
I had to suspend my usual catastrophic imaginings about flying, of course. I mean, how does something larger than a New York apartment get up there in the first place? How do tons of metal lift off in just a few short minutes of racing down a runway, and what in the world keeps it up there? My luggage alone for this year away from home, laden with books and other teaching materials, is enough to keep anything grounded, and there are nearly 200 others onboard, no doubt with similarly overweight bags. That is reason enough to worry, even before I get to consider mechanical failure or human error.
And so I arrive in Bangkok and overnight in a convenient airport hotel where I have a large room and a complimentary buffet breakfast. The next morning I fly to Chiang Mai, Thailand’s second largest city and capital of the north, where I am met by my new best friend and, as it turns out, my next-door neighbor, Lena, the real estate agent with whom I’ve been exchanging emails and who has found me a house to rent.
My new home is sweet, light and airy, and just the right size. I like its tiled floors downstairs, and the dark wooden ones up. Like traditional Thai homes, the kitchen is outside; this will be hard to adjust to in the heat. It has two gas burners, a temperamental microwave and a sink. Lena explains that the house is designed so that the heat of cooking and the smell of spices will not permeate the house.
Then she takes me shopping at one of the huge supermarkets, Carrefour, where I buy a crockpot, a toaster, a coffeepot and a wok. I open an account at Siam Commercial Bank, arrange a rental car, laundry service, and a weekly housekeeper. The tireless Lena follows our shopping spree with a visit to the university where I will begin teaching in a week. Just ten minutes from the house, it is modern and manageable in size. There I am introduced to Achan Laura, another American teacher from New England; within minutes she clues me into campus politics and within days she, too, is my chum.
Just before I collapse from jetlag, Lena guides me to the Internet cafe, the cell phone shop, the hairdresser and the cheapest place to buy gas. In short, she has become my guardian angel.
And so I take up life in my new home and, in the few days before school starts, begin to learn my way around. One thing I know already is this: there are kind, smiling people everywhere to help me as I become accustomed to Thai culture. There was the businessman I met in the Bangkok hotel lobby who taught me how to say thank you, the student on the long flight from New York who explained Thai food customs, and the young housewife who shared an airport limo and hoped fervently that we would meet again in Chiang Mai. And of course, there is Lena, who knows how to get anything done in Chiang Mai, and Laura, who mentors me through the first days of adjustment and anxious anticipation about being Achan.
The world seems oddly smaller from this side of the globe than it does from the familiarity of home. Contemplating exotic
Asia from North America, places like Thailand are so mysterious. But from Chiang Mai, the green mountains of Vermont are somehow much closer. Watching people go about their daily lives, seeing familiar products, eating a meal in a coffee shop makes one realize just how universal some things are. People work, shop, walk their pets, love their kids. They do the same things we do to make the world go around, and that is reassuring. In this peaceful place, the differences among us shrink. They are there to be explored and enjoyed, but not to divide. Seeing that, I rise each morning with a sense of calm curiosity, wondering what challenges and pleasures the new day will bring.
Part I
All in a Day’s Work
First Impressions
Thai people are gracious, calm and reserved. I love the ubiquitous greeting, Sawasdee-(ka), often accompanied by hands clasped as if in prayer, and a gentle bow. This posture is called wai. But I also sense that Thais are just as private as they are polite. Closeness, and I imagine confidences, are only shared with family or best friends.
Family life is important.
The babies are all gorgeous and so are most of the young women, with their slim hands and graceful, small bodies.
There is a sizeable, and comfortable, subculture of gay men as well as courtesy among social classes. (Who says this is an undeveloped country?
)
Thai women have a good thing going: they can order out and have cooked food delivered for ridiculously low prices, or their families can eat in the abundant restaurants ― many of which are open air ― that serve fabulous inexpensive food. Thais also seem to have a penchant for coffee ― there are lots of coffee shops and cafes around as well as fabulous bakeries!
Cars, gasoline, books and imported foods are the expensive commodities. Everything else is cheap by western standards.
Massage is big here. You can get a one hour foot and/or back massage in the shopping mall or the Night Market, often expertly delivered by gentle rural folks, for about US $1.50. A terrific haircut costs less than US $5.00 and a manicure/pedicure the same. What price luxury!
Life seems laid back and there is an aura of calm about the place. My neighbors, middle-class professionals, leave for work at 8:00 a.m. and return by 6:00 p.m. at the latest. Many people from Chiang Mai work hard in places like Bangkok, or further afield in other countries, but they call Chiang Mai home, retreating here on weekends and holidays because it is so mellow ― and the good life is so inexpensive.
Traditional life is rapidly giving way to commercial modernity. Twelve years ago when I was last here, Chiang Mai was small, old-world charming and manageable. Now it hosts giant shopping malls, serious smog, five-star hotels, and ever-increasing urban sprawl. But the Night Market is bigger than ever and still wonderful!
Like elsewhere in Asia, women are expected to be patient, obedient, demure and hard-working. They are ― often to their own detriment.
Thailand is decidedly hi-tech. Cell phones are ubiquitous and sophisticated, high-end computer retailers abound, and everyone is really savvy about this stuff.
Thais are potentially good entrepreneurs but they have a way to go when it comes to customer service. Neither Carrefour nor Tesco Lotus, for example, the two superstores frequented by many foreigners, have staff on duty who can understand enough English to guide farang (westerners) to a product. (On one of my first solo outings I asked for a hook and was guided to cookery.)
Thais drive like maniacs! The copious motorbikes are a particular threat. And no matter what happens in a fender-bender or worse, the farang is always to blame.
There are two temperatures in Thailand: Hot and I-can’t-take-it-anymore.
Being Achan Elayne
They are from Thailand, Burma, Japan, Indonesia, Turkey, China, Korea. They are eager, polite and curious about their new achan (teacher). And they are so young ― mostly nineteen or twenty ― that I feel like a western relic. But age and teachers are respected here and their beautiful, dark, almond-shaped eyes are fixed attentively upon me as I introduce myself and the courses I will teach in the university’s International English Communication program.
Universally, they want to speak English better, to travel widely, to learn more about the world. And in an icebreaker exercise on our first day together, they reveal unanimously that what they hope for most fervently is for peace to prevail everywhere.
Coming to teach here has been a new challenge for me. While I’ve taught many academic courses in the U.S. ranging from Women’s Studies to Health Communication, this is the first time I’ve taught students who are struggling to become fluent in my native language while I understand nothing of theirs. (Luckily, when I ask them to make table tents of their names almost all of them write their western nicknames.) So I must learn to slow down, to enunciate clearly, to interpret idioms, to plan creative, well-paced lessons week by week. At home, I plan semester by semester, so the pressure is on.
As the first week of my new teaching adventure progresses, I grow increasingly comfortable with the challenge. Both my Thai and expatriate colleagues have made me feel at home and my students are so eager that even when I ask them to fill out a brief questionnaire about themselves, they whip out their electronic dictionaries and oversized erasers, hunker down over their papers, and give it all they’ve got. When I tell them about my prior experiences and travels, they gaze up at me with awe and one student writes on her questionnaire, I want to be an internationalist, just like you!
As we begin to focus on the work before us ― oral presentation, listening and speaking, writing in English ― we start to develop a group dynamic that includes trust, inquiry and risk-taking. It also includes having fun.
The classes are by definition practical, dynamic and applied. So each day I arrive in the classroom armed with exercises that I hope will be challenging, instructive and entertaining. Sometimes they flop, like the time I handed out names of famous people and asked the students to write questions they would ask if they could interview the historical figure. Many students didn’t know who Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela or Napoleon were. But most of the time, the exercises work. The students talk or write about things they wish for, animals they would like to be, guests they would like to invite to a dinner party. These early exercises serve as icebreakers, assessment tools, and practice sessions for the work ahead. They let the students experience my teaching style and they help me learn the personalities of the young people I will work with. After each class during the first week, I know them a bit better. I see their strengths and areas for improvement and I sense who is especially well-motivated. I know who is doing okay as a college student away from home for the first time, and who is feeling lonely and afraid. And I return to my lesson planning with a bit more confidence about what is needed and what techniques (and games) will be most effective in the week to come.
Culture Shock
You have traveled to a different country full of new and different [experiences]. At first you will probably feel like a tourist enjoying all these new things, full of energy to see it all. After a few weeks, however, you may find yourself with less energy and enthusiasm. You may feel disoriented as new things change from exciting to strange and different. This disorientation is called culture shock. It is a natural phenomenon and will pass quickly.
According to The Handbook for International Staff provided to me by the university, I’m right on schedule. Now that work has started and I’m settling down to my new life and its busy routine, I seem to have entered the first stage of culture shock. That’s when you feel less energetic, keep wondering what’s going on at home, and make a lot of comparisons between your new life and your old one. Actually, I seem to be on the cusp of Stage One and Stage Two. In Stage Two, apparently, you feel sleepy, perpetually hungry, and somewhat withdrawn. I’m not too hungry yet, but I have a growing affection for my bed and I declined an invitation to dinner this weekend. Most significantly in Stage Two, you may find yourself getting irritated over minor things
and being critical because Thais do not do things the way you do them, when your way is obviously better.
Here are some of the minor things that make me just a tad irritable or critical.
In the first place, why doesn’t anyone speak just a modicum of English? Weren’t they colonized or something and aren’t they required to study English in school? (The answer is yes to both questions, but neither seems to have made a difference.) Couldn’t they at least make the signs bilingual?
Why don’t drivers ever stop for pedestrians, and why don’t those awful motorbikes stay in the lane designated for them? For that matter, why can’t Thais drive on the right side of the road like every other civilized country (with all due respect to friends and family in the U.K.)? Every time I get in my car I feel like an expatriate accident waiting to happen. Motorbikes zooming everywhere and not a helmet in sight!
Why can’t people stop implying that if I can’t take the heat I should get out of the country before March when summer arrives? Don’t they know you never tell a menopausal woman she shouldn’t feel quite so hot?
Why can’t there be fewer mosquitoes or more geckos, those cute little household lizards, to eat them (but preferably not perched on the toilet paper roll just as I am about to use it)? And why can’t those geckos shut up at night? Don’t they ever sleep?
I’ll be glad to get to Stage Three. According to the handbook, that’s when "you can
You've reached the end of this preview. Sign up to read more!
Page 1 of 1