Vol. 2 30/6/08

Monday 30th June

Well, today was the first day of my course, i woke up at around 6:45am with the T.V. on (and the-air con too). Last night i went to see my friend Es at the Master Control room for Hello Bangkok TV. One of the channels she runs had Big Brother Thailand on it... i can’t say i wasn’t tempted to pull the plug! I had to go there because i had absolutely no idea how to get home, and apart from the instructions written in my notebook for taxi drivers, i still don’t have clue! All i know is that it is absolutely miles away from where i need to be! Oh well, only another 2 days before i get my apartment.

So... i woke up in good time, however nothing could really prepare me for what was outside! I was on the street by 7:15am and needed to be at Sala Dang station for 9am... not to be i am afraid! Outside the road was more like a graveyard for cars, buses and taxis. Firstly, it took me 30 minutes in the baking heat to get a cab which wasn’t occupied. Secondly, because i had walked so far to find my taxi, and the traffic was so bad, it took me 30 minutes sitting in the car just to get to where i started. I made some small talk with the driver while we waited, couldn’t call my school to say i was going to be late because i was out of credit, and the clock was ticking all the time. Luckily, the Thai philosophy of mai pen rai (nevermind) is pretty in tune with my own way of thinking when it comes to certain levels of punctuality. I finally arrived at the subway and got my train, which after a quick stop to top up my phone (Es gave me her spare), and a cigarette breakfast i scraped in 30 minutes late without missing too much.

As far as the course goes, all is good. A small group of 5 English people, and 7 tashed up dudes from from Oman. Everything seems pretty straight forward, just a lot of work, which i always expected. A quick ‘get to know you’ session followed by information and then a surprise lesson in Hungarian to see what it is like to be on the receiving end of the teaching before some preparation to teach my first lesson that afternoon. Lunch was too short after preparing the lesson for so long (a concurrent theme for the future i think), and so it consisted of iced coffee and more cigarettes. Once back in the building i had about 5 minutes to organise the room before my class of 7 came in (better than the predicted 18). The way these classes work is that they consist of private, charity sponsored and refugee students of pretty much all ages. I had a handful of Thai students, a Lady from Singapore, a couple of guys from the Congo and a woman from China.

I also had my heart broken today, not in the traditional sense though. The first lesson was a ‘get to know your students’ kind of a job, which went fine. I was with a couple of the guys from Oman teaching the group, going through some small games and exercises with this beginner’s class. Part of this involved us all wearing name badges and writing a number in each of the four corners which was somehow special or relevant to us, the game was to ask ‘yes or no’ questions in order to gain some information, it was also an exercise for us as teachers to gage the student’s abilities. One of the students i was talking too Xia Dong is a Chinese woman who unbelievably is 40, but looks more like she is in her 20’s. After speaking with her a little i realised that her grasp of English was pretty poor. She had the numbers 8, 2, 0 and 0 in her name badge and so i enquired as to their meaning but with little success and only very distant and confused looks. After a little while she went to her bag and pulled out a few pieces of paper. To cut a long story short, it turns out that she was a refugee from China persecuted and tortured for practicing Falun Gong (Falun Dafa). I don’t know if you are aware of this, but it is something i have known about for a long time, and as an action writer for Amnesty International, it is something which i have come across and written letters of protest about several times. Basically, Falun Gong is a non-profit marital art/methodology concerning the harmony of body and mind through the promotion of Truthfulness, Compassion and Tolerance (Please see www.falundafa.org). Because of its mass following of nearly 80 million Chinese people by 1998, Jiang Zemin (The top most official in Communist China) personally saw this as a threat to his power and therefore made it illegal, punishable by kidnap, torture and death. However in reality the situation is actually much grimmer (read human organ harvesting). Xia Dong’s numbers stood for as follows – 8 for the friends she had seen die, 2 for the number of times she had been imprisoned and tortured, 0 for death of her son and 0 again for the number of family members she had. Pretty sobering really... in fact i was pretty close to tears, and so was she. She then proceeded to give me some information of Falun Gong and a lotus flower which is its symbol as a gift. I felt really protective of her from then on, not only because of that, but because she was by far the least skilled at English language in the group. I never really thought i would become emotionally attached on my first day of teaching, but i guess that is part and parcel, especially when you are dealing with refugees.

After class we had a short break for more cigarettes, followed by a quick assisted lesson planning session for tomorrow (i teach next on Wednesday). I then went with a couple of the randoms off the course for a quick drink in some horrible Irish bar (just being polite), and then i went to do some writing and get some food. Richard, if you are reading this, you will be glad to know i went Japanese and totally devoured some Okonomiyaki in your honour. I have to hand it to you, it is pretty fantastic, although the one i had was probably a little smaller than your monster pie! But for that, a side of grilled asparagus and a host of sauces, and some green tea, i paid less than 3 squid! I think tomorrow, i will go Korean.

Shortly after that it started raining for the first time since i got here, i mean really raining... it’s the most mental rain, thunder and lightning i have ever seen and it’s still raining 4 hours on with a fantastic temperature of 27’C outside and its midnight!

Well i was going to write some more, but i have run out of both time and energy....

Fun dee ja

Ahhh... i nearly forgot.... Viva Espanyol!