i'm a little bit scared of my boss, as you might have guessed.  it seems like whenever i see her, it's because i'm in trouble.  so i do try to stay out of her way as much as possible.  that's the kind of great relationship we have.

she comes into my classroom once in a blue moon.  it's been twice so far this year, in fact. 

the first time, i was busy teaching my kids the word 'comfortable'.  of course, to fully get the meaning of this you need to demonstrate it.  first you get them to sit on a hard floor and wiggle about a bit and make pained faces.  then you get them back in their chairs, feet up on the desks, arms behind heads like so, (and remember, feet are offensive in this country)

and of course when you've got all eighteen of your students doing this, that's going to be the exact moment your boss walks into your classroom.

so I was teaching my favourite class this week, my beautifully behaved, clever, funny kids, the sort that make my job a joy instead of a drag.  and they were busy all lesson doing their intelligent, well-behaved thing.  towards the end of the lesson, we did a listening exercise - play a song, fill in the gaps on your worksheet.  completed easily, no fuss.  still five minutes left til the end of class.

'Teacher Dorla, play song again!  Please!'

'Alright.  You can sing along if you want.  Have a dance.'

'Yay!'

And so of course they're all up immediately, jumping about like crazy chickens, roaring like lions, wriggling on the floor...

this is one of those moments where you think, if the boss were to walk in now... and, guess...  what ... happened.... next....

 

Koh Chang sunset. If only things were always this fine.

I missed it, of course  - I miss every anniversary and birthday there is, as a matter of course, I don't why I'm so bad at this stuff - but yesterday marked exactly 2 years since I arrived in Thailand.  And while I was on koh chang over the long weekend (check out the photos, links below) with a bunch of silly girls, I somehow hatched a plan for myself which seems to involve a lot of intervals of 2 years.  Here's how it goes: 

In 2 years, after I've finished my MA, I'll try to find a job at an international school in Phnom Penh.  I'll move there.

After 2 years I'll buy an apartment in the section of the city I like best.

Give me another 2 years to settle in and I'll adopt a Cambodian child (gender unimportant), and I'll raise said child as a single parent, provided no-one irresistable comes along in the meantime. 

And thus I'll reach a happy middle age in Cambodia.

The only offputting thing is that I have an innate aversion to plans.  I've never been one for mapping out my life, and therefore any plan is automatically subject to rebellion and rejection.  So, although I'm surprised to realise that my plan is, in fact, entirely do-able (though by no means easy), I shan't be surprised if it gets turfed simply, well, because.

 

please be offered these pleasant photos of the weekend..., and also some moreshould you so wish to see them, thanking you very much sir

A:  You're a tweep.
B:  I still don't know what that means, but it sounds so good....
A:  I like the sound of...
B:  I like the sound of your mum when she's in my bed and we're going for it and she's...
A:  (Thwack!)  Shut up! (To C) Did you hear what she just said? You didn't, did you, you never listen to anything.
C:  Do you need my protection?
A:  I think I need it.
B:  What? Did you see her whacking me just then?  I'm the one who needs protection.
A:  Well I need protection for my ears.  (takes some tissue and plugs it into her ears.)
B:  Yeah, those ear plugs are gonna come in handy later tonight when me and your mum are at it again and she's screaming across the courtyard and we...
Thwack! 

i'm starving.  But it's the middle of ramadan, an hour or so before dusk and this is some extremist Islamic state.  Where can i find food?
Maggie Tomlinson knows a bakery, and she leads me there, past scowling men and scrawny dogs. 
'What's this?'  The pastry looks pretty good.
'It's a poop pump puff.'
'I'll take it.'
But I can't eat this in the shop,  this place is take-away, and I'll be attacked for eating on the streets in daylight.  Where to go?
The mosque is the answer.  Surely no-one will attack me there.
I round a corner, pass a group of soldiers with AK-47s, hiding my poop pump puff behind my back, and find the mosque. 
I enter on my knees, and crawl uncomfortably through the sacred compound, hands raised and lowered in  worship.  There is a small empty chapel ahead, where I will be safe.  But as I near the chapel, a man towers over me, a large knife gleaming in his hand.  He plunges it into his chest, and then swipes it across his wrists, and blood is raining on me even before he collapses onto me.  I try to tumble out of the way to avoid his knife, but am caught in the side by the sharp steel.

It’s this kind of stuff that manages to bring out the sulky child in most of us.  And it’s the stuff that makes working for a Thai Christian school come into its own.

 Yes, it’s – Hallelujah! – Spiritual Revival Week.

 When I was at primary school we used to be similarly besieged by all of this Christian rubbish, but it didn’t work.  Why?  Because our school used old-fashioned Christianity as its focus point, figuring they would bore us into submission with those god-awful church services and R.E. lessons taught by old fuddy-duddy vicars.  The perfect way to get children to turn their backs on the Lord. 

 I was worried, then, when I discovered that during the week of 15-19^th June 2550 (as it is here in Thailand) our school would be over-ridden by trendy young new-age Christian pop singers attempting to woo our boys into the arms of Jesus; I was worried that they might be won over by this strange religion our school claims to promote. 

 I needn’t have fretted though.  Sitting in the chapel, yawning through rotten plays with deep Christian moral messages, I had to conceal my relief as the students’ nudged one another, sniggered, and groaned with disdain as yet another hopeless, spiritually lost, alcoholic traveller fell into the arms of a missionary with the light of the Lord shining from his eyes.  It seems our kids have already been saved – saved by Buddhist families and a healthy cynicism that seems to be creeping over children at an increasingly early age.  Or maybe they’ve overdosed on the rants about hellfire and damnation that come through the P.A. system every morning (on Thursdays we get to listen to these charming sermons in English).  

 Revival Week doesn’t, unfortunately, begin and end with the students.  We teachers are being subjected to the same Biblical nonsense, only we get it in the adult version.  This involves us spending our lunch hours pretending to sing along to happy-clappy tunes accompanied by electric organ and acoustic guitar, and being pelted by lectures on why it would be simply ignorant and wrong to continue to deny the existence of God.  There is proof – PROOF, GODDAMMIT! – that Jesus WAS God; didn’t he rise from the dead, just like he said he would?  It says so in the Bible!  And, of course, we are told that we are all sinners, and our preacher for the day (actually a foreign teacher) tells us that sinning is in our DNA (although he didn’t offer any proof for that one).  Hobbes would have been delighted by the support.

 There are Christian teachers at the school; I counted four of them among the forty or so that were congregated for today’s session.  You could tell by the way they sang out loud and nodded in agreement during the sermon.  I, having been well brought-up, am tolerant of these people’s bizarre customs, and I go about my duties within the system for the most part uncomplainingly.  I accept that the Thai Education system is ironically named, that education will always come second to ritual.  But what I don’t, and can’t, appreciate is being told I’m ignorant because I don’t share some fellow farang’s belief in God.  I don’t appreciate being kept back at lunchtime to be told I’m a sinner by people who are not just in it for the ritual, but who actually believe the rubbish they’re spouting.  I don’t run around telling people it’s ignorant to be Christian – oh dear, but I think I just did. 

Forgive me.