Bangkok Year Two

Hey everyone,
Switching up the blog format for year two to allow for comments and feedback. I would love to hear from everyone who reads this and I welcome any blog ideas or questions you can think of. I am sure I will have interesting Thai stories to tell you about!

-Parker

PS...THANK YOU to Aubrey for all of her help on the main blog picture, it looks awesome!

My Daily Work Commute

Wow, sorry for the lapse in blogging…I’ve been traveling a lot and I have been busy with school-no excuse though I need to blog more. I have had some questions asking how I get to work everyday. It is about a 45 minute commute from my place in Satorn district of Bangkok (Business/Financial district) to my school, which is located on Sukhumvit Road, Soi 47. I wake up at about 630 and shower/get dressed, grab some breakfast, and head out to the street to get a motorbike taxi, or “Bangkok helicopter”, as they are called here. The motorbike taxi drivers have orange or purple vests on and usually spend their time in-between fares playing checkers on homemade boards with beer bottle caps as the checker pieces. I wave to the guys now (they know me because I take them everyday) and they pick me up. I tell them “Sawasdee krap” (hello) and say “Chong Nonsi BTS, kop khun krap” and we are off. We speed through the dense traffic jam and weave in and out of the cars. All of the motorbikes drive this way; it is the only way to get through Bangkok traffic. If I took a normal taxi, it would take me an hour to get where I need to be and on the bike it takes about 10 minutes. When I get to the BTS station (the elevated metro system), I pay the motorbike driver 40 baht and get on the train. I take the train for about 20 minutes and have to switch lines once, then I get off and walk down Sukhumvit-the famous road in Bangkok-for about 8 blocks until I reach kindergarten.

Travel Pics from '08/'09

Chiang Mai, BKK Xmas

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2560610&id=6802265&l=0def577b2a

Cambodia

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2560601&id=6802265&l=423590eefa
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2560607&id=6802265&l=20d93a85b1

Phuket

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2560599&id=6802265&l=08a444f382

Valentines Day in a Shark Tank.

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2576062&id=6802265&l=8b973

Loy Krathong pics/Grand Palace/Reclining Buddha

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2536891&l=46e66&id=6802265

The King and I

The King of Thailand is literally everywhere in Bangkok. The King and Queen are pictured on billboards, shop signs, and in most every cab you take in the city. Thais wear yellow on Mondays to honor the King, who was born on a Monday. The Queen was born on a Friday, so Thais wear blue on Fridays. These shirts have the royal insignia on the front and are emblazoned with “I love the King” or “I love the Queen” on the back or the sleeve. The sidewalks are a sea of yellow on Mondays, it is amazing to see. Every day at 8 a.m. and 6 p.m. all radio and television stations will play the national anthem and show the pictures of the King and royal family. Everyone (including drivers of cars) stops what they are doing and stands still until the anthem is over.

I first experienced this when I was running just a taaad late for school due to oversleeping and found myself speed-walking through the Bangkok Transit System (BTS) station at 8am. I was running down the stairway steps and saw everyone stop in their tracks. I had heard about the anthem before and sure enough it was playing over intercom. Even though I was extremely late, I had to awkwardly stand on the steps and wait for the anthem to finish. Another odd place where Thais pay tribute to the King is in movie theatres before every film. The anthem is played, everyone puts their popcorn down and stands up to watch a slide show or a film of dramatic pictures of the King’s childhood and adult life (the King as a Buddhist monk, the King sailing, the King helping the poor).

The last thing you want to do in Thailand is insult the royal family in any way. Doing so can get you time in prison for treason, so I try to avoid the subject altogether so I don’t offend anyone. I went to Tesco Lotus (a huge Wal-Mart style big box store) after I moved into my place to get sheets for my queen-sized bed and realized I had no idea how to ask the employees for a “queen” bed set without potentially insulting them. I didn’t know if calling a set of sheets a “queen” set would be an insult to Her Majesty, so I asked for “2nd biggest sheets” and “bigger than a twin”. Needless to say, this totally confused everyone so I went home empty handed and slept on a towel for the next week. It turns out a queen bed is called a queen bed, even in Thailand.

My job.

I am a kindergarten teacher (K3) at an international school in the heart of Bangkok. My job is to mold the minds of impressionable children from age 4-6…kind of scary, haha! I am enjoying my job a little more each week. I had no teaching experience prior to coming here and now I have my own classroom of 19 kids. Some of the kids speak little-to-no English, so it has been a challenge, especially since I had no idea what I was doing at first. Apparently I am the first teacher this school has hired with no experience; most of the teachers who work at the school have lived in Bangkok for years. There is a suprising amount of pressure teaching at this school. The parents treat kindergarten like western parents treat high school, because it is really uncommon for children in Thailand to advance far in school. Plus, my school is expensive and we operate very closely with the parents. I am expected to keep close communication with them and I usually write messages to them 3 times a week talking about what we are doing in class and how their child is doing. Waaaayyy more intense than I pictured kindergarten to be; plus I have to lesson plan every day and teach all subjects. I am much busier in Thailand than I expected to be!

I really like my coworkers; they are from all over the world (England, New Zealand, Bangkok, India, and Iran). They have really helped me with advice of new teaching games and methods to keep the kids attentive and somewhat well-behaved. Likewise, my students are from all over the globe: India, Thailand, Japan, Korea. As big of a pain as they can be at times, I love my kids, they make my day so much better and make me laugh all the time.

The hardest thing for me to do is be a good diciplinarian; it was really tough for me to get stern with them because they are so cute and usually mean well. I have found a better method though, I made a “safari” board in the front of the class with a little jeep and I made cutouts using each child’s headshot picture. If they are good students, they get smiley faces next to their name . Whoever has the most at the end of the day get to “go on safari” and they usually go nuts over that. If they are bad, they get the dreaded “boo-boo face” next to their name, which means trouble. We had parent-teacher conferences last week and they went really well. I was so nervous but all the parents seemed to really like me and I got a bunch of cool gifts and stuff. I also coach soccer after school-funny since I haven’t played since middle school-but I am actually getting to be pretty lethal on the pitch as they say. I am coaching the tiny kids-K3s and the older kids-grade 1 through 3. Its really fun coaching the older kids because we usually scrimmage the whole time and I get to showcase my skills and feel good about myself as I dribble around 10-year-olds. I have to write a lesson plan now and get to bed early but upcoming posts will be about the Bangkok protests, my daily commute, and some random funny stories I need to tell.

Inaugural Bangkok Post!

It first hit me that I was going to be a long way from home when I stepped on the Japan Air 797 flight from Chicago to Tokyo on September 29th. I looked around the crowded cabin and realized I was the only white person sitting in my section. Severely jet-lagged, I arrived in Bangkok at 9PM local time and managed to find a taxi to take me to my hotel. As we turned onto Sukhumvit Road, the main artery of the city, I saw an enormous elephant walking down the sidewalk with a blinking light attached to its tail. From that time on, it has been an adventure (and misadventure) in this huge and vibrant city. It has been pretty nuts so far but I am really loving it here. Sorry about the long wait for my first blog post; I have been so busy with finding a place to live, finding Internet and working. Here is a link to some of the pictures I have taken so far: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2482803&l=fdf7b&id=6802265

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2499205&l=93fff&id=6802265

Also, if you want to get ahold of me, my email address is parker.a.lynch@gmail.com…I’d love to get feedback or suggestions about the blog! Many more blog posts and pictures to come I promise!

Bangkok Year Two

Hey everyone,
Switching up the blog format for year two to allow for comments and feedback. I would love to hear from everyone who reads this and I welcome any blog ideas or questions you can think of. I am sure I will have interesting Thai stories to tell you about!

-Parker