Surin Elephant Round-Up

On the train.

Greetings everyone! I hope you're all getting ready to gain five pounds in one day this Thursday, and that you've thought about tacking on another few to make up for my absence. I have to say, I'm going to miss Thanksgiving up in Worthington with the Murray/Downey clan: crackling logs in the fireplace, frigid walks through the woods and cemetery, mom's forty desserts that she woke up at 5 AM to make for the previous three days, drinking, a little throwing around of the pigskin, and of course, passing out on the couch with Caroline for two hours in a tryptophan-induced coma...oh, and the historic game of Trivial Pursuit where there no one can ever agree on intellectually challenging questions such as "What did the first Spanish dog to be fitted with contact lenses not see the day after the fitting?" Yes, I just looked that up online. So, put those feedbags on if you love me and try to agree on some answers this year.

Sam and Alicia!

This past weekend, I went to Surin province with some friends to see the annual "Elephant Round-up." This is day one of a 10-day elephant festival in the city of Surin, it's people known for their excellence at capturing elephants in Cambodia and using them in wars and for agricultural purposes. While elephants are not used in battle anymore, and rarely (if ever) used for economic purposes in Thailand, the people of the Surin province still hold a special reverence for these majestic and kind creatures.

Countryside views.

The train-ride from Ubonratchathani to Surin was a quick two hours through the beautiful countryside of the Isaan region of Thailand. It really makes you appreciate wide open spaces and greenery as far as the eye can see, especially when spending most of your time in a cramped city environment. I saw lots of lotus ponds and rice fields filled with farmers and laborers harvesting their crop, as well as lots of water buffalo and beautiful white cranes. The train itself was another story-it was pretty ghetto. I'm pretty sure the cars are about 80 years old since they were composed of grimy metal and glass windows and thinly cushioned wooden benches; basically, think of the circus train in "Water For Elephants" plus a few benches. It was kind of cool though to be barreling through the countryside, head banging on the window every time the train crossed a trestle, in what seemed to be a nearly-antique train car. Maybe you had to be there since I'm not giving the best description, but I hope you can check out some of the pictures for a better idea.

Beautiful young elephant.

Once we arrived in Surin, we hopped on a tuk-tuk and sped through the rainy city towards the festival. It was already busy when we arrived around 9:30 AM since the famed "Elephant Breakfast" and parade had already started at 6:00 AM. Outside of the arena was a sort of bazaar filled with lots of delicious Thai food, trinkets, wood carvings, clothing, umbrellas, and men walking around with wooden boxes filled with ivory carvings. On the latter, I was kind of bummed because there were some really cool elephant pendants, but I also thought about the prospect of landing in prison upon my return to the States, so I restrained myself. We bought some tickets and some lunch, and while we were eating, some of the mahouts (elephant handlers) began walking some baby elephants down the street! They were, at risk of sounding like a girly-girl, extremely cute and very personable. The mahouts kind of scared me because they had these wooden sticks with sharp, metal hooks on the end that they would poke and prod the poor elephants with. When they need a place to put the hooks, they just put them on the elephant's ears. The whole thing was basically just a performance to make money for the mahouts, but I've never touched an elephant or fed one, so that was a really cool experience. The little guys would take your money in their trunks and then you could feed them some food. Feeling an elephant suck the money and food right out of your hand was a very strange sensation. Their trunks have course hairs on them and are very tough and leathery, but they were so gentle. They also made these little high-pitched elephant noises (sounds sort of like this...) and it made me think it would be pretty hard not to love these incredible creatures.

Getting ready for battle...

Surin Elephant Round-Up ticket.

Huge elephant guarding the goal!

Soon, we headed into the arena to watch the actual performances by the full-grown elephants. First, a group of elephants did some hula-hooping and dart-throwing. After that was over, a few elephants came out to step over their human volunteers, who were lying face-down in the arena while a massive elephant poked at them with it's trunk and sometimes gently tapped on their bottoms. It sounds terrifying, but it was actually really funny watching the volunteer's reactions to having a gigantic creature stepping on them. Once the volunteers recovered from their heart attacks and got off the field, two large groups of elephants with their mahouts wearing either yellow or orange trotted onto the field for a game of soccer. Those elephants could show up Manchester any day of the week! The last hour or so consisted of several traditional Thai dances accompanied by the elephants and large drums. The finale was a reenactment of a battle between Burma and Thailand, complete with swords, spears, uniforms, gun smoke and fire, and of course, about 25 elephants dressed to kill (hehe...get it?). 

The four of us wandered the bazaar for a bit, walking past mango stands and insect stands and all sorts of stands. I do not think I will ever be adventurous enough to eat a cockroach or a cricket, but I did have my favorite thing in the world-fresh coconut water with coconut meat. Our journey back to Ubonratchathani took about four ridiculously uncomfortable hours, but it was well-worth the journey and the opportunity to get out of Ubon and into the country. 

This guy knew how to dance better than I ever could. 

 Surin Elephant Round-Up

Rivers Know This

I'd like to dedicate this post to all of the fantastic people I have met thus far in Ubon. Sometimes, I forget that I'm in Thailand because I get wrapped up in being homesick or missing something or someone from back home. This was especially true last week when I was very sick and had to get tested for malaria (which I don't have, friends). By the third day of lying in my bed in my tiny one-room apartment, I was going a little stir crazy. It just so happens that on this third day, I ruined my beautiful bag from home and my TOMS, as well as my cell phone. To put it simply, it was a crappy day. I called home when I knew the parentals would be awake, and proceeded to completely lose in on the phone. 

However, I met several farang over the weekend (Australians, British, etc) and one of them said something to me that struck a chord. He mentioned one time when he was extremely sick with what sounded like a bout of bad food poisoning. He had been lying on the bathroom floor all night and hadn't slept a wink, and started sobbing about how much he missed home and how badly he wanted to leave. Almost as soon as that thought crossed his mind, he realized he wasn't really homesick. He was extremely ill and in that moment of weakness, his brain caught an opportunity to latch on to this weakness. I think this is what happened to me last Wednesday-I felt absolutely miserable, I was exhausted, and an object from home that I purchased with my mom was totally wrecked. My brain reacted to all of these factors at once, and the final result was a near hysterical sobbing attack. However, I don't really want to go home right now and I am actually really starting to love it here.

I also started reading a book called "The Power of Habit" by Charles Duhigg. Basically, it tells the tale of several individuals and large corporations who, rather than overhauling entire systems or routines, simply took on one task which in itself did the overhauling. In the most primitive part of our brain, the basal ganglia, we store our memories of basic tasks like walking and breathing. Other memories and routines are stored in the outer layers of our brain (like an onion, or a parfait...Shrek anyone?). For example, every morning I wake up, take a shower, get dressed, eat, brush my teeth, do my make-up and put my right shoe on first. But what would happen if I simply started putting my left shoe on first? Or if I ate first then showered? Believe it or not, it could change the course of your day, week, month, and perhaps life. I came to Thailand in large part because I needed to break a habit, to switch up my routine, and I am not going to let being homesick or sick-sick take that belief away from me. 

You may be wondering now about the title of this post, "Rivers Know This." Well, it's taken from a quote by A.A. Milne (author of Winnie the Pooh) which in it's entirety goes "River know this: there is no hurry. We shall get there someday." Too often we wish that the day would just end or that this year would just hurry up and be over. However, we will never get that crappy day or that slow-moving year back, just as we can never catch up on lost sleep. Whether an experience is good, bad, funny, sad, traumatic, or what-have-you, it is an experience and that is what has become so underrated. You've all heard this before, that our experiences shape us and make us who we are today. I'm not going to beat a dead horse, but it is true. Yeah, I felt HORRIBLE last week. There was a moment or two in my feverish, hacking-ridden state that I wanted to hop the next plane to Bangkok and then home. Now that I am better, I appreciate being sick because it taught me several more things about myself:

1. It's pretty cool that I am a female who moved to a foreign country 10,000 miles from home by herself. 
2. A year is going to absolutely fly by, and I cannot waste a single minute of it. 
3. I never want to be sick with the plague in a subtropical country ever again, EVER in my life. 
4. I CAN do this, and I WILL do this. 
5. Life is journey, not a destination. The more we will our time to quicken, the more we waste our precious time here on Earth. 

So thank you to my kindergartners or to the small bacterium I probably caught in Laos. Without you and your germs, I probably would have never fully learned these lessons. This past weekend was incredibly fun and relaxing because I opened up to the idea of actually liking it here and having that be okay. I met lots of new Thai and farang (foreign) friends, and I am happy. I haven't had many adventures this past week or so, so no new pictures to post. But I hope those of you back home can take the message out of this and somehow relate it to your own life. 

Next time you are standing on a bridge over a river, think about how far that water has travelled and how far it will go. Whether the water is moving rapidly or meandering along, a river is still in no hurry to get to it's final destination because it really has none. It may end up in a lake or the ocean, it may evaporate, maybe it will dry up. What will happen in the future is something the river could never know without first embarking on its journey through hills and mountains, forests and fields, cities and villages, and so on. In this way, we too need to realize that our greatest potential lies not in our final destination, but in the experiences, lessons, people, and places that we find and lose along the way. We are being steadily pushed through life without a remote control, so think about the future, but don't plan it too strictly; learn from the past, but don't let it haunt you. Simply go with the flow and your life will unfold as it is meant to be. And check out "Power of Habit," because it's really good and it might change your life a bit too.

Also, try putting your foot in a different shoe this morning. Who knows what could come of it.

Power of Habit

Mai Bpen Rai!

Compilation of photos put together by my co-teacher in KG 1.

Well I've now been here almost a whole month, and I figured I should actually talk a little bit about how school's going, considering that that's the main reason why I'm here. For those of you who don't know, I am teaching three levels of kindergarten in the English Bilingual Program at Assumption College in Ubon Ratchathani. The KG 1/1's are about three and a half years old, the KG 2/1's are about   four to five years old, and the KG 3/1's are usually about five. In my time at UVM, I never worked with kindergartners, so this is a very different experience and age group than any I have worked with. There are between 30-35 kids in each class, and they are all at varying levels of social development and academic understanding. Most of the students are also in the EBP program because their parents want them to learn English, but they do not really know much. There are a handful of kids who are half-Thai and half-British, American, or Australian and they can be good with helping out. However, it can be difficult communicating with students who, native English speaker or not, would have a hard time in the classroom because they are so little.

The first week was definitely a struggle, mostly because there really isn't any sort of built-in system for, well, much of anything here especially in the schools. Everything-supplies, lesson plans, activities-is up to the teacher and everyone basically plans alone. This can be kind of cool because it gives you a bit of autonomy over the classroom environment, but it was definitely frustrating and a lot to get used to. In the States, we're really used to people holding our hand through everything (that's not true for everyone, but coming to a country where you're forced to be really independent makes you realize how much of everything we really do have in the States). Here, while every single person is always smiling and they all try to be helpful, everything is still up to you.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is Mammote. 

There is never a problem or a worry here either-again something which is good many times, but can be maddening when you actually want something to get done. They have a saying, "Mai bpen rai" which basically means "no worries." It's awesome that nothing ever seems to be a major problem here, but in some ways, I think that is why the education system is still very much in the past here-no progress is made because there is never anything to overcome. But to keep it simple, my experience has been pretty awesome so far.

Bannet (pronounce Bonnet) and Andrew (KG 2).

The kids are so excited to see you everyday-it's kind of nice to have at least 90 people absolutely psyched to see you for no reason other than that you're their teacher. Some of their names are kind of ridiculous (i.e. Nurse, Fern, Chogun, Garfield, Ice, Island, Focus, and Chompu to name a few), but that makes them easier to remember (?).

We're supposed to use these St. Gabriel's Foundation "workbooks" which are a little overly simplistic and can be a waste of time if you ask me...or any of the teachers. But because they are so easy, you can make up games and activities to play with the kids because the lessons are so vague that they give you. So far, in Math the KG 1's have learned how to count to ten and have done some addition; the KG 2's have done addition and matching numbers to their number names; and the KG 3's have done word problems in addition and they can count to about 50. Science is all about body parts and trees and animals, while English is basically stuffing their brains with as much vocabulary as you can think of. The interesting thing is that the teacher before me checked things off in the workbooks that the students "understood" or "completed," but when I give them tasks on these things that should be automatic to them, they really don't understand. I'm basically starting over from the beginning with some of the kids because I think it's wrong to just push kids through the system even though that happens here a lot. For example, when doing the ABC's with the KG 1's, I sometimes put the cards out of order to see if they actually know the letter rather than having memorized the order. About two-thirds of the time they do not say the correct letter for a while because they've simply memorized the sounds of the letters, not what they actually look like or represent.

Day after said wedding: Family Day at school.

Okay, I'm being too analytical. The co-teachers are all awesome and they all do their VERY best to convey the information to the kids in Thai. It's hilarious sometimes when the kids start doing an activity the exact opposite way that I intended because the language is just so different, but you learn to roll with things literally all of the time here.

I've never considered myself to be a super laid-back person; I can be, but I like getting things done and being organized and I don't always "go with the flow." However, living in Thailand has taught me that it's better to be happy then to be right (thank you Eliza Arsenault). I am really argumentative and stubborn, two qualities which have served me both negatively and positively, but are two qualities which really have no place here. Arguing is useless because there are "no worries" for literally every problem or argument, and being stubborn is equally useless since there is nothing that stubbornness gets you here. I am grateful for that aspect of Thai culture because it's taught me to keep my mouth shut a lot more than I used to, and to just appreciate all of the small things that people do for you rather than focusing on the one bad thing and letting it ruin your day.

Getting my nails did at Family Day.

I'll definitely be writing more about school and the kids in the future, so don't you kids worry. I threw in some random photos at the bottom for your viewing pleasure. Mai bpen rai!!!

UVM Represent! At Juice's drinkin' some juices.

I went to a Thai wedding...and had a VERY good night.

P.S. I don't know why, but the captions aren't showing up when I post this...If you want to know, just ask!