Mai Pen Rai

What does, "mai pen rai" mean? It's Thai for you're welcome. But it really means something like, "forget about it" or "no worries." I decided to title this post as such because here in Thailand, it is more than a phrase... it is their philosophy! You could say that mai pen rai is like Hakuna Matata! It means no worries, for the rest of your days :) Seriously though, that is what the country is drinking. You'll see what I mean in a little bit.

Before I go into what a typical day for us looks like, I want to tell you about our house! And technically it's our very first house together! How fun that it's in Thailand, right? So the house is owned by one of the teachers at our school and is therefore provided free for us, we just have to pay for utilities. And it's a legit house! There are two floors: bottom floor has a living room with cable TV, a kitchen with a little refrigerator, a sink and a washing machine, and a bathroom. Top floor has one bathroom, and 3 rooms. I think the house was designed for 3 single people because each room had a single bed, a wardrobe, vanity, and desk. So what did we do? Took apart one of the beds, pieced it back together next to the other single bed in the biggest room, crammed both wardrobes and vanities into the same room, and put the desks in the empty room. Now we have a study! (And one fully put-together guest room.... if anyone wants to come visit!) Our make-shift bedroom is a bit cramped, but it totally works. Oh, and we have little AC units in each room! Which is a TOTAL life saver. Here it is!

And we have it all to ourselves! Well, us and a couple of geckos. One particular little baby gecko likes to greet us every morning by scurrying out from under our bathmat right as we step on it. What a terrible place to settle down. Now that I think about it I haven't seen him in a while.... maybe I should check on that.

Ok. A typical day. Wake up at 6:30 and get ready for school. I feel like I should point out that the showers here only have one lever - no hot or cold. It's lukewarm most of the time but when it rains, the water does get a little chilly. Which is actually very refreshing! And there's no tub or tray or anything... the water falls straight down to the floor, so the whole bathroom gets a little flooded haha. It actually only took a couple days to get used to. I am just happy that we have running water! Alright, then we get dressed (I wear a dress or skirt everyday, except for casual Wednesdays we can wear pants) and have breakfast. We are holding onto the Americans inside of us and are still rocking cereal every morning :) One of these days I'll cave and have what the Thais eat for breakfast - chicken, rice, and eggs (which is what they have for EVERY meal anyways haha) but not yet! We live only a few minutes away from the school which is handy, and the basic way you get around is by motorcycle taxi. Cabs are only found in the big tourist cities like, Bangkok, Chiang Mai, and Phuket. There's this motortaxi station right at the end of our street and it's super funny that after only 2 days, we don't have to tell them where we need to go anymore! They see our Farang (foreigner) faces and say "Sawbowa, Sawbowa" which is the nickname for our school. Heck, they even see us walking at the end of the road and will backtrack to pick us up. They are so friendly :) We'll see them driving by and they'll start honking and waving at us haha. Yeah, if you couldn't guess, we stick out like a SORE thumb! Saraburi is very much a residential city, there aren't any tourist sights here, just a couple of local temples, so Farang don't come through here too often. Especially for months at a time. 

We are going to video one of our motortaxi rides to school just so you can see what it's like. It is CRAZY! Weaving in and out of traffic, hugging the shoulder on the wrong side of the road, and even driving on sidewalks. It's an adventure every morning. Our first day of school, we got dropped off and we walked towards the middle of campus where all the students were gathered for their daily announcements and such. Um, and they have 3,900 students. Since we are new this year, they had us get up and introduce ourselves to the whole student body. I don't know how many of them actually understood us, but they all laughed and giggled after we were done. :) Afterwards our coordinator showed us our desks (there is a foreign language department where we are stationed) and then handed us our schedules. There were a few unexpected surprises. I thought I was teaching science, but actually I am teaching Supplementary Science (like a lab class), Health, AND English/Grammar. We thought that Jonathan was teaching mainly English and a little Computer Science, but he is actually only teaching Computers. That kind of threw us at first. Then they handed me a different schedule (because the first one was wrong) and it turned out that I had a class right then, and I was already 15 minutes late and I didn't really know where it was. Then later in the day, my schedule said that I had one of my science classes over in a different building, but when I go over to it, the room is locked. I peek through and all the desks are piled high with books and my students are no where to be found. After walking around and triple-checking my schedule, I went to the nearest office and tried to explain what was happening. Of course, no one really spoke English, but then they got some department head on the phone to tell me that they moved my class for the meantime, because of all the books. But then I didn't really know where my students were.... I walked around and finally found them, and the class time was already half over by then. GREAT first day haha. But no worries! Mai pen rai. That's how things go here. Especially with the foreign teachers. Just go with whatever they give you!

So with Jonathan and I teaching subjects that we weren't really mentally prepared to teach, we were asking around for curriculum, books, a syllabus, anything. And you know what we got? A piece of paper with 3-4 handwritten bullet points of what to teach for the whole year. Mai pen rai! Everyone was really nice, told us not to worry and that we could spend the first couple of classes introducing ourselves and getting to know the students. But then that was done and we had to start teaching for real. I was told that my English classes had some books, but didn't get those til the middle of the second week of school (let me tell you, we did a lot of getting to know you games until then.... ha). And for Science and Health, I have to come up with basically everything. Mai pen rai! Oh, and Jonathan was given the same thing - a couple of bullet points for teaching computers. He's actually creating his own curriculum for Computer Science which is really cool! ....... And then 2 weeks after school started, he was given two more classes, teaching English. Mai pen rai. He LOVES teaching those classes though. He's definitely more of an English teacher than Computer nerd, but he is doing fantastic and all the kids just love him. Of course. He's a pretty likeable guy ;) So it's been a little bit more work than we were anticipating, but we are learning a lot and it's fun having to figure out this part of the adventure!

The Thai students here are SO sweet! Teachers are very respected in this culture and it's awesome. (Like second to only the Buddhist monks and the Royal Family). So you don't get the same rebellious nature that kids have in the States. There's no talking back or defiance whatsoever. The only issue you have in the classroom is chitter chatter, which you would expect from teenagers everywhere in the world. But once you set your boundaries, its really fun to teach. And all the students are so sweet!!! (Did I already say that?) Seriously, the other day I got caught in a monsoon downpour after one of my classes and one of my students took out her umbrella and walked back with me to the foreign language building! They just didn't want me to get wet :) Also whenever we walk by any students on campus, or outside of school even, they say, "teacher, teacher!" and then they wai you (that is the traditional greeting of respect - bowing with your hands together). It makes me feel so good haha. So all of my classes are part of the English Program at the school. Saraburiwittayakhom offers an English Program for grades 7-9 where all of the subjects (with the exception of Thai and Social Studies) are taught in English, with farang teachers. Students have to take tests, do an interview, and pay extra to get into the program - it's a cutthroat process. So their levels of English are higher, which is really nice to teach with. Jonathan's two English classes are part of the regular Thai program, so his classes are bigger, about 50 students (rather than 30) but he says that they are a blast to teach as well. Bottom line: We got the best school with the cutest students! We really got super lucky with our placement and we couldn't be happier!

Ok. Enough about school. We get off at like 3:30 or 4:00 and usually ride a motortaxi home. Most of the time we can't find two of them so we both squish onto one motorbike with the driver. Super fun when everyone is hot and sweaty. Then we go home, try to cool off and relax by watching one of the two English channels on TV. I have never watched so much Law and Order in my life hah. And then we come up with something for dinner. We've cooked spaghetti in our rice cooker a couple of times, but we mostly have instant noodles (thai style - which means with very spicy seasoning) or rice and eggs. I think we are going to try some more adventurous meals with our rice cooker in the future. [Any tips on rice cooker recipes, please comment below!] Or we head over to the night market. There is this really good night market about a 5-10 minute walk from our house and they serve a bunch of delicious food. You can get 5 sticks of grilled chicken for only 20 baht! (That's under one dollar). There's also this lady boy who makes super good fruit smoothies - strawberry, banana and coconut YUM. Grab some chicken and a couple of smoothies and there's dinner! Oh and I just have to say, last time we went to the night market, there was a little baby elephant just walking down the street. In the middle of the city. Haha, only in Thailand! Of course there were men with it, selling bananas and such to feed the baby elephant. They came up to us and we were like, no thank you, shaking our heads. But then they gave the bag of bananas to the elephant to hand to me... and I couldn't say no to those little eyes! We forked over the 20 baht and I got to have dinner with a baby elephant on the streets of Thailand.

The past couple weekends we've mostly caught up with grocery shopping and laundry, but we also went to a Saraburi football game! Wow, was that fun. It's just their local league but it was definitely spirited!!! We sat right behind the drums and some fans that were standing and singing literally the whole entire time hahaha. It was so funny because I was hoping that we could get a picture with them at the end of the game, but then they turned around first and asked to get a picture with US! I guess we are as much of a sight as they are to us hah. So here's the picture. We are definitely going to buy ourselves some Saraburi jerseys and go to more of the games.

Alright, I can't end this post without at least mentioning the coup d'état. I'm pretty sure all of you in the States know more about the situation than I do, because here in Saraburi, we've haven't noticed anything different! Doesn't affect us here. I think the only military personnel I've seen are a couple that help direct traffic during rush hour, but that's it. No tanks or protests or anything. There is a countrywide curfew from 10 pm to 5 am "indefinitely" (more like until further notice) but since we are a boring married couple, we are in bed by 9:30 anyways. The people of Thailand seem to have a "mai pen rai" feeling even about this... at least here in Saraburi. No worries! So we aren't :) The day after they announced the coup, they did close all of the schools and universities in Thailand though. So we woke up Friday morning, got ready for school, and then realized that we had 3 day weekend! What did we do with all that extra time? Well, we wanted to see more of this beautiful country... hence our impromptu trip down to Ayutthaya. Courtesy of the military of Thailand.

A post of our adventures in Ayutthaya is forthcoming!

15 Things I've learned about living in Thailand

Wow. So much has happened! Time has just gone by too fast and I can't keep up with everything that is going on! So I'm just going to jump right on in and give you some of the highlights...

The flights to Thailand weren't too bad. I mean, I'm not a fan of 6 hour layovers, but it could have been worse. With the exception of our first leg (from SLC to LAX), we were flying completely at night. I guess the way the earth turned while we were in the air, kept us in the dark the whole time! Which was great - helped us sleep some. And when we didn't sleep, we watched a stream of endless movies - they had a seriously legitimate selection.

We flew into Bangkok at about 11:00 AM Tuesday morning and met up with our program (OEG) at the airport. And here is where I start my list of things that I've learned about living in Thailand.

1. Thailand is known to be the 'Land of Smiles.' And it's true!

I was talking with one of our fellow Thai teachers and she said that the reason Thais smile and laugh so much is that they don't know how to respond to foreigners (or "Farang"). They see us, weird Westerners and they get shy, so they just start to smile and giggle. Super funny when you think about it :) Even the airport security personnel at Customs and Immigration were smiling and chuckling when we told them we were coming as teachers... Not sure if that was a good sign or not.

Once OEG drove us to the orientation hotel, we turned right back around and got some vaccinations in downtown Bangkok.

2. Health care is SO CHEAP here! 

Well I can't speak for other things, but the vaccinations were ridiculously cheaper than in the States. The American travel clinics wanted us to pay $600 (per person, per dose - 2 total) for Japanese Encephalitis. Oh, and insurance wouldn't cover any of it. And guess how much it was in Bangkok - $16! And only one dose! So that was awesome, however the ride home was not so much.

3. Bangkok traffic can be horrendous.

The ride to the travel clinic was about 20 minutes from our hotel... and it took us over 3 hours to get back. Not even kidding. And that was after it took us about 15-20 minutes to find a taxi that would even take us. They were either full, or would say that our hotel was too far away. But we were grateful to have some shelter in the taxi considering it started to downpour.

So this picture is from the internet, but this is pretty much what it's like during rush hour every day in Bangkok. In my opinion, the traffic patterns are a giant mess. There are a million of these forks where 3-4 lanes of traffic have to merge. We were stuck basically where that yellow cab is (in the middle of the picture) for at least a half an hour - wedged between all these lanes of traffic trying to merge, but really everyone was at a dead stop. I think there were some protests going on around our hotel as we were trying to get home; nothing violent, just another thing to contribute to the traffic chaos.

4. You don't tip here.

The taxi only charges using the meter, so naturally, we gave our driver a little tip (especially because of how long the drive was) and he absolutely lit up! I attempted to say "khawb khun kha" (thank you) and he busted up laughing. Haha, I hope that made up for the couple of hours he pretty much wasted. Anyways, apparently you don't tip in Thailand! At restaurants they already include the service charge, and everywhere else, you just don't do it. It makes things easy.

5. The Thais are so welcoming and endearing! 

Our orientation in Bangkok was about a week long and mostly consisted of classes - some that taught the Thai language, and other that gave us tips on teaching English here. When we met up with our program, the Thai OEG staff conducted the traditional Thai Welcome Ceremony. I forget what it's called, but they wrap basically some string around your wrist and give you a blessing. It was so cool and everyone was so sweet :) I guess you are supposed to keep it around your wrist for the whole duration of your visit? But you don't have to - just if you want to keep the blessing, which we will. We can use all the help we can get!

6. There are like NO bugs! Thanks to you, Mr. Gecko.

Seriously. There were NO spiders, flies, even ants in any of our hotel rooms. Not ONE! (And here in our house in Saraburi, only one cockroach sighting). And it's all because of those amazing little lizards :) They are super common here - and we love them because they eat all the bugs and mosquitos! So as far as I'm concerned, Mr. Gecko will be our permanent roommate.

7. This country is literally dripping with humidity.

Multiple showers a day is a MUST. Like I said, we mostly stayed in the hotel during the first few days of orientation, but they did take us to The Grand Palace. And wow, was it beautiful! But mostly sweaty. Like a LOT of sweat. Every person was completely drenched, and we were only there for a couple hours in the morning! It is so humid, that when I leave our air-conditioned bedroom and enter the hallway of our house, my glasses fog up! Haha, that has never happened to me before.

Here are some pictures of us at the Grand Palace:

8. The Thai people LOVE their King.

People speak so highly and personally about the King and the Queen. Their pictures are everywhere and they are fervently worshipped. It's pretty crazy to find that kind of loyalty nowadays. Their King has been in service for like 65 years now, so for many people, this is the only King they've known! Thailand's Father's Day Holiday is actually on the King's birthday - and same with Mother's day for the Queen's birthday. It's interesting how reverent the Thai people are towards the royal family... it's cool.

9. Do NOT drink water from the tap.

Luckily, neither of us learned this the hard way. We were definitely forewarned. When Jonathan filled up the sink to shave, the water was brown. Ew, gross. Though you're ok to brush your teeth and wash your dishes in it. Just whatever you do, DON'T SWALLOW. Every Thai person only drinks bottled water. In fact, there is a joke that there's a water fountain somewhere in Bangkok that actually IS safe to drink, but its never been used. Better to be safe than sorry!

10. Rise and shine - get ready for some rice.

That's what Thais have for breakfast! The same food they eat all day... chicken, seafood, eggs, and rice. However we've caved and bought some cereal and milk. We've gotta start our American tummies off right in the mornings!

11. Phad Thai is NOT spicy.

Yup. It's not. A lot of other Thai food is really spicy (that's kind of what they are famous for), but not Phad Thai. Which is great because I can actually eat it!

12. Westerners have been mis-pronouncing "The Bridge over the River Kwai" for decades!

Let's set the record straight. It's NOT the River Kwai (like in 'high'), but the River Kwae (like in 'quack'). You learn something new everyday! So that's how its supposed to be pronounced. The cool thing is, that we actually got to visit it! Here are some pictures:

As you can tell, it's still a functioning railway. So when you hear the horn, all the tourists scurry away and then follow right behind it. It's funny because we were taking pictures of the train, while the people on the train were taking pictures of us!

After we visited the bridge, we were taken to this place called the Rafting Restaurant. We walked on and there were tables and chairs set up and we were like, cool! Eating dinner, floating on the River Kwae. But then a little tugboat came, strapped our raft to his and then he pulled us down the river! The sun was setting and it was gorgeous! Just look at these sweet pictures that Jonathan got. Oh, and side note, the raft then turned into a raving dance party - complete with colored strobe lights and a disco ball. Haha, only in Thailand.

13. 7-Eleven runs this country!

There are more 7-Elevens in town than there are bathrooms. Ok, maybe not (including the bathrooms in houses). But you can look down the street and see three 7-Elevens within walking distance. It's the bees knees here.

14. Fruit is considered dessert.

Don't get me wrong, I LOVE fruit! It's just funny that after every meal, they usually have 'dessert.' But it's fruit. So instead of thinking that I'm being healthy, I guess I am really just consuming treats all day.

And I saved the BEST for last....

15. Elephants have a great sense of humor.

On our last day of orientation, they took us to an elephant camp in the Kanchanaburi province (about 3 hours away from Bangkok). It was amazing! They brought out these baby elephants that put on a little show for us. There was a part where they asked for volunteers to receive an elephant massage. Some girls went up there and proceeded to get their 'backside' worked on, if you know what I mean haha. It was pretty funny. Since Jonathan has really wanted to get an elephant massage, I told him to volunteer! Well, I think you can guess what happened by the picture...

Got slapped in the family jewels by an elephant. I guess that's crossed off on his bucket list now. I just hope that we can still have children! Hahaha, poor guy. Had no idea it was coming. And neither did all the other guys who volunteered to go up later (that was fun to watch hah). But then things got a little better because then we got to feed and play with the baby elephants :)

And of course, finished up with taking a quiet stroll atop our very own mama elephant.

More to come about our new home in Saraburi.....