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!