Experiensation

※Imagery

First things first. For those of you who have never graced the borders of Bangkok, let me illustrate for you a common, pervading feeling known as Bangkok air. Imagine with me, if you will, that you are in your house preparing to make cinnamon buns. Before you, rolled flat on a table or counter-space is a nice, irregularly shaped rectangle of yellowish-white, gooey sweet dough, its fringes powdered by the downy freckles of flour that you scattered underneath it, serving as a non-toxic pre-Teflon coating, serving as a safeguard against sticking. To the right of this delightful sheet of raw dough is a small glass bowl, pleasantly sitting with a spoon drowning in the browny paste contained therein. The paste, looking like some exotic sand from a volcanic beach, sparkles and glistens with rich yellow streamlets pooling in the paste's random depressions. From the aroma wafting out of the bowl, your nose sings an aria of delight, and the stomach rumbles in accord, eagerly anticipating the final product. The spoon's hands are full as you pull it from the pasty bowl and light it on the pillowy dough nearby. As if desiring to share the wealth, you help the spoon spread the brown sugary mash of cinnamon and margarine over the virgin dough, sullying its pristine, spotless fields with a thick, sticky coating of heavy goo.

In Bangkok, you're that dough and the air's that spoon. Within minutes of venturing beyond the realm of air conditioning, you find yourself covered in a film of humidity & sweat. It’s unavoidable, inescapable & pervasive. I now know what a cinnamon bun feels like when it gets dressed... No wonder all the Thai people are light brown! ;)


※Updatedness

Okay, instead of talking about baked goods, I'll get to the real reason for writing this stuff: what's been happening in Thailand. It has been two weeks (I think?) since my last update, and since then, we've completed orientation AND our first week of classes.

My goodness, you wouldn't believe how much of a difference knowing the material makes when you're trying to teach an upper-level subject! Ha! I was dreading the though of teaching math again for the first month here while the permanent math teacher arrives in mid-July.

Last year, not knowing a stitch of how to teach nor remembering any of the content that I was supposed to be relaying to my students was a horrifying experience. Every day, I was finding myself sweating bullets through each class and every evening I was forced to press my nose deep into that proverbial grind-wheel just so that I could have a slight grasp of what I was to convey to my students during the next day. It was like being a kid forced to eat a bucket of lima beans or else watch the bad guy shoot your parents. Disgusting but necessary.

Not so, this year. The difference is almost like night and day. Switch out the lima beans for jelly beans & you've got something more like what's going down this year. Instead of dreading classes, I'm now looking forward to seeing my students. Instead of fearing what's on the next page in the textbook, I smile to myself, already knowing what it portends. Rather than just trying to communicate the content in any way possible, I now get to spend my time more creatively—like making up ways of how to relate mathematical concepts to real life (who woulda thunk that relations & functions could be compared to notes & chords?). The difference is remarkable. The students are not marauders escaped from the pits of hell, there is sunlight during the daytime & sleep is more than a fanciful luxury! Ahh, it's a pleasant contrast.

Orientation this year was amazing. Much of the time was spent setting the framework of how the school is run, what will be expected from the teachers throughout the year & what we as teachers should expect from the days throughout the months ahead. Whereas last year's orientation focussed more on random theories of how to teach & presented not-so-practical paintings of instructional style (which may have been applicable to certain class settings, but not in my case), this year's orientation focussed more on drawing outlines in which we could paint our own pictures—as long as we coloured within the lines, things would be groovy. This approach, in retrospect, seems to offer a better plan of attack than a general example of what "could be."

Those days whisked by, ushering in the fateful acid test of "Day One." Remarkably, everything seemed to progress quite smoothly for both retuning & new teaching staff. Our schedules came to us very late (The Friday evening before classes began) which posed a bit of a stress, but on the whole, the good ship GES set sail in 2008 without so much as a hiccup. Last year, we had a huge debacle surrounding military school for the high school male students (In Thailand, there is a mandatory term of military service for all able-bodied males, and if that service is offered during "military school" as a student, the male can forego potential conscription / drafting in any potential future conflict) last year, which caused high school classes to be taught on most days until 5pm. With advanced notice this year, we managed to rework the schedule to accommodate this, which means better times for both students and teachers throughout the year (hooray).

There isn't really much else to report on the business side of life over here. I'll be filling in for the Math teacher until mid-July when he is scheduled to arrive, and after that, my duties as "resource manager" will begin, and I'll have the fun job of being able to help every teacher with any of their copious needs—students too.

※How You can Partake

Things to pray for/about, if you're that type of person:

•One of my students from last year, Soda—the drama queen/sensationalist-turned-sweetheart is sitting in through the first few months of school here. She'll be going to Kentucky to study in an American high school over the next academic year. At home, she is an only child, and her father runs a business up in Chiang Mai—several hundred kilometres north of Bangkok—which also ends up meaning that he practically lives up there too. Because of this, there's a marked lack of—and a desperate cry for—a masculine presence/attention in her life. Long story short: she ended up having two boyfriends for the bulk of last year—her more serious one, who went to study in Virginia, and a "fill in" here at GES until he returned. As such things always go, the truth became known to all parties, and now three people are hurting after two consecutive break-ups. Pray that this would be an opportunity for Soda to discover that the emptiness she's trying to fill—the love that she is looking for—can be resolved or accomplished or fulfilled by the wondrous gift of a relationship with Christ. I'm concerned about the possibility of her going to America with the state of mind that a boy can make her complete: its a dangerous position to be in when facing North America's more aggressive teenaged boys... Please, please pray that she would come to know the true Joy Giver and Lover of her soul.

•Pray for the up starting ministries that will resume & begin this year at the school. We will be picking up "Life Group," GES's version of a youth group for those interested in & committed to Christ. I'm hoping to be able to start an after-school/weekend Bible study group with some high school students if there's interest. Pray that the Lord would have his way in this.

•Pray for both the new teachers & returning ones as we try to get a rhythm for the work week—that we would get ample rest and continue to persist in seeking God's face.

Thanks for your time; I've gotta go & get ready for my classes. I'll fire off some phonemes & spit out some syllables again in July. Until then, keep on keeping on!

Neogenesis

June 7, 2008.

A week has effectively gone by, and in a few days, orientation for the 2008/09 school-year will begin. To say that the week was without note would be a gross understatement, as many new twists, turns, excitements and whatnots have been revealed within these few, short seven days.

When I arrived at GES, I had assumed I was the only foreign person around, and for the first few days of my return, it definitely felt like that. I didn't actually see anybody from the school until Sunday morning, at church... When Chris & Ro walked up on stage and began leading worship. "What what what??" I thought to myself, "There are other teachers around?! Sweet!"

The service went by in an interesting fashion. It being the final week of classes (or something) at ISB, the most prestigious International School in Thailand—which happens to be just down the street from the church—Sunday's service was oriented around the fact that many families would be leaving the community with the culmination of some of their children's educations. There were a lot of good-byes and a lot of heart-felt responses to which I felt a bit foreign, having just arrived back in Thailand; and after the speaking portion of the service was done, the church held a rather sizeable potluck session in the sanctuary for people to mingle & munch away the last service everyone'd be together. It was good to still see some familiar faces in the congregation and even better to have been noticed by a handful of folks too. I was surprised, actually, at how warmly I was welcomed back by a church body with whom I had spent no more than like 45 Sundays with. It felt good to be noticed & appreciated.

As far as school has been going, Monday was a very anxious day for me. Having just arrived a couple of days previous, with many of my memories from the end of last year fresh in my mind, I lay on my bedroom floor laughing nervously at the potential absurdity of the decision I had made. "What in the world am I doing here?" was a thought that plagued my mind that morning, coupled with, "What in the world will I be doing here," "How am I going to survive this year," and "What was I thinking?"

I knew, however, that God had indeed called me very explicitly to come back to GES and to Thailand to be used for his purposes. Still not knowing what those were, I was feeling a bit trepidatious... at best. Knowing Scripture seems to come in very handy, and since the God's Word admonishes us to cast all anxieties on Him (for He cares for us), I did just that. I prayed and told the Lord exactly how I was feeling, but let Him know that I would allow Him to deal with these issues and trust that He knows what He is doing. After taking a deep breath, I closed the door to my bedroom, went down the flight of stairs, out of my house and traversed the school's campus to head into the potential fire of the office.

To spare you from tedious details and episodes, let's just say that from Monday through to today, each day has caused my reservations & fears about my relationship with the administration to melt away—and not just melt away to neutrality, but in place of my fears, hope & excitement have begun to spring up in its place! Working with Peter & Sue directly, so far, has been not bad: even pleasurable at times. Sue's asked me to see what I can do about updating the school's website and to try to get some monthly content areas flowing as well as spearheading a project that sounds much like a school newspaper (springing from that, also a yearbook). These things sound quite interesting, and at present I'm looking forward to seeing how I can engage students in taking ownership of some of these activities.

I was also given the pleasure/responsibility of being able to pick up new & returning staff members from the airport throughout the week. It was good to see familiar faces & to be able to welcome my former colleagues back to the country—even if they were half dazed by the jetlag of trans-Pacific flights. Furthermore, it's been great to be able to get to know the new staff members who have been filtering in throughout the week. They are, for lack of a better word (and based so far on first impressions), awesome, awesome people & I am looking very much forward to spending the next year getting to know them & having the opportunity to support them in their teaching endeavours.

As I left Canada, Katie Wong had mentioned to me that the community atmosphere changes substantially each year that she had been at GES, and I can already see such differences forming. One of the biggest "new" things about this new group of staff is that the majority of new teachers all know each other very well, having all gone to the same college together (and all having graduated this past spring). The reservedness and social barriers that often come with people "trying to put their best foot forward" when conglomerating into a new social environment are practically nonexistent. These people feel real, and they feel very comfortable with each other—even the new teachers who didn't know any other soul at GES before stepping onto campus.

One of the most exciting things that happened with this group so far occurred last night, the evening after the newest arrival, Chris, landed in Bangkok. The whole shebang of new staffies had just come back from taking an excursion to Big C and came into the staff room where Surang & I were talking about campus security measures and other new ideas for the year. One thing led to another, and Surang expressed that one of her big dreams for this year is to have the school focus more on getting the students spiritually connected. She mentioned how, through working with the Baptist church on campus, it might be a good idea to have students be invited to come & hang out with the church folk once a month, with activities co-sponsored by GES staff & Thai church members. Suggestions were made about having dinners for the students along with activities & sports/games where they would be exposed to Christianity in more of a relational way than just the "instruction" style of exposure dominated by our devotional times.

Hearing this made my heart leap for joy.

And then she talked about maybe taking the whole high school to go to orphanages & children’s' ministries and other outreaches of the sort, to show them Christianity in action—and to give the students an opportunity to assist in helping the community! Goodness gracious, this woman must have been reading my mind over the past few months! All of the staff members seemed very gung-ho about such activities, which was really encouraging. And then, as it was Friday night & we all wanted to go do something, without even mentioning anything, the group decided that they wanted to get together & sing worship songs and pray. On a Friday night! I couldn't believe it!! Last year, trying to get staff together on a Friday night to worship God seemed like a painful chore, and here this group is, getting together on their own initiative, desiring to worship God together at the beginning of the year. Man, I have a feeling I am going to love working with these people this year!


* * * * *


Orientation begins for the new staff on Monday, and the first two days are optional for returning staff. I think I'm going to sit in on those days to try & further building amicable relations with the new staff. One of the things that I felt about my arrival last year was how disconnected & unsupported I felt from the returning teachers when they didn't show up at newbie orientation. I could really have used their wisdom and experience throughout that time, and my desire is to provide just that to these new folks this year—even with what little experience & actual proficiency I have.



As for my job description, well... It’s GES & I'm pretty sure no one really knows the full story as to what will ultimately happen with me. I've been hired back as a full-time librarian, who will be responsible for digitising the library catalogue, organising the collection with a recognisable standard, moving the collection to the new facilities (scheduled completion is September of this year), maintaining, weeding & adding to the collection. Extended responsibilities include (but aren't limited to: this is GES) the first on-call substitute teacher, the primary after-school "homework help" worker, secondary administrative support, non-library resource management and external communications head. On top of this, I've been asked by the Thai office workers to take up teaching Remedial English classes to high school students—essentially taking the lower level students from the main-stream English 10 & 11 classes and teaching them in line their proficiencies. By chance, Michelle—our half-time administrator—and I stumbled upon what also looks like me filling in for high school math instruction (grades 10, 11 & 12) until the permanent teacher arrives in the middle of July. Seriously, we literally stumbled upon this: during a casual conversation about who was going to fill in the blanks with the late-arriving staff, Michelle pulled up the master schedule and hovered the mouse over the empty Math slot, and a note appeared, which said "Mr. Daniel." Ha!

Michelle is in full support of me being a full-time librarian, and she—like I—recognises that in order for me to be able to do a good job at it, the position will require me to focus intensely upon the tasks within that job description. Having me take over the high school English "B" program (which we all thought was scrapped, after a parent/teacher/administration meeting at the end of last year) as well as becoming the acting high school math teacher pretty much sounds like my last year's experience... plus being the librarian. I was overloaded as it was with Math and English "B" last year; how in the world I would be able to pull of my library position would be beyond me.

This, hopefully, will all get sorted out within the next 10 days—or at least it had better. The first day of English instruction at GES is ten days away. It's going to be interesting to see how everything turns out.

More on that next time ;)




Update: June 8, 2008.

Turns out that I’m for sure going to be teaching high school Math until the permanent teacher arrives (hopefully) in July!

Day One Back

May 30, 2008

Well, the trip across the Pacific turned out to be a success, because here I am, sitting in the Nonthaburi (Big C) McDonald's sipping on a Coke Zero jumbo, digesting a "dub-oh chee set, upsie."

My flights were, for the most part, remarkably uneventful, except that this time, the cuisine served was all North American! I was really looking forward to having another black bean dumpling for dessert on my Taipei / Bangkok flight, but instead they served danishes (don't get me wrong, danishes are amazing... Just not what I was expecting). The trans-pacific flight was, perhaps, the best leg of this trip, as for the first time ever, I flew on the second storey of an airliner—AND had an aisle seat with no one directly beside me. The gentleman sitting by the window was, I think, form the Philippines, as he remarked on how Bangkok had almost as many bars as the Philippines and that I should really check it out some time. Beside that, there was nothing really much to say about my flights. All the in-flight entertainment systems worked this time and I had great rowmates, who mostly kept to themselves & allowed me to sleep.

When I arrived at GES, the first thing I noticed was the remarkable new Kindergarten complex. It has a huge, sweeping roof & was painted white and blue—probably to match the primary/upper-primary building across the courtyard. Much of the complex is glass, which allows for a huge amount of natural light into the rooms. Ajarn Surang was standing outside the complex, looking over plans with some workers when I popped out of my taxi. I think she was a bit caught off guard by my arrival, because the first thing she said to me was, "I thought you were coming later." Apparently, it turned out, her son Solomon miscommunicated my flight details to her and she was uncertain as to whether my room would be ready for me to move in. She proceeded to tell me that in our absence, all of the apartments had undergone extensive cleaning (and repairs, I later discovered) & she wasn't sure if my room had had "the treatment" yet. After a short talk, it turned out that my whole apartment was done—even the icy biohazard that was the refrigerator—and that later on, she'd like to me with me to discuss her plans for the upcoming year.

So far, that's pretty much all I've done. I started unpacking in a zombie-like daze yesterday afternoon, as my 24 hour flight only allowed 90-minute powernap sessions (I'm sure those of you who fly understand why this is... What with the flight service making their rounds every other hour & row neighbours needing to evacuate bodily wastes), had a shower then went to 7-11 for water and didn't recognise a single face behind the counter. What was with that?! Where did all our Sev friends go in such a short time?? Maybe... Just _maybe_ I caught them on a bad shift or something. Later trips should tell all.

Post 7-11, I stopped in Rose's / Soi Dog for some of their delicious pad thai and was again surprised to see not a single customer in the store. They welcomed me gladly, asked me when I had come back to Thailand and if anyone else had come back yet. After my meal, they told me that I got really fat since I left (I think I gained 2 pounds a week when in Canada. So many parties & so much eating out. Ha!), which I must confess, is probably very true... though North Americans would probably call my weight healthy (every time I've gone home, my family makes fun of my thinness, calling me puny or anemic, and my mother expresses concern about my health since I look so thin. I dunno... I thought that I looked good!). Anyways, the day ended with me throwing in a copy of Rush Hour 2 that was lying around the house, and after I couldn't keep my eyes open any longer, I stumbled upstairs into my bedroom and crashed for a nice 14 hour sleep.

Today, I woke up, worked out for the first time in 8 weeks & then walked to Big C where I intended on having lunch and making some household purchases upstairs for the apartment. While waiting in the McLine, a short dark-haired girl appeared beside me & said, "Where are you from?"

For a second, I wasn't really sure that she was addressing me, but then I remembered that I was in Thailand, and practically nobody speaks in English unless speaking to a foreigner. "Canada," I said.

"Really? I'm from America. Where in Canada are you from?"

"I'm from Alberta," not sure if she'd know where that was (sorry, Americans, but often it's true!).

"Cool. Some of my best friends live in Alberta. My parents lived in Alaska for like twenty years."

"Nice. So why are you here?" I inquired.

"My parents are missionaries," she responded and proceeded to tell me that her father pastors a church down the road as well as teaches at Global University, apparently a Bible college in Bangkok.

She and her family have been living in Thailand for six years now, and she goes to ICS—not only that, but she also frequents Newsong with the other ICS students and was supposed to be helping out with worship this evening there, but she had to help out with a Pilipino wedding at her church which pre-empted her Newsong participation. After placing her order in perfect Thai (oh, am I ever so envious), she introduced herself as Anna, let me know that the church services at her church (2 blocks down the road from Big C) started at 9:40 (maybe that was Sunday school... I can't remember) and then took off out of the store, with the bag of Mcgoodies that she was sent to retrieve for some people waiting outside. That was a cool little experience. Who knows? Maybe I'll run into her again some day.

All in all so far, Bangkok's been decent—if not with a touch of isolation & loneliness. It's become quite apparent to me how much the idea of Bangkok in my head depends on the people that I share it with. I really am looking forward to the teachers returning in the next 10ish days, so that we can share life again together. The first teacher to come will be Ben, and he should be here on Monday or Tuesday. Ben volunteered for the first few weeks last year and we had a good time hanging out. It'll be nice to touch base with him again, and I'm pretty sure that he'll be a good advocate of pushing the spiritual agenda here on campus.

If any of you reading this are of the praying persuasion, the only things that I can think of right now would be that you ask the Lord to help me and the rest of the staff prepare in all ways for this upcoming year: spiritually, mentally, socially, emotionally and physically. Also, pray for the students who will be gracing our school later in the month, that they would be open, receptive and respectful of the words spoken to them—both educational and spiritual words.

That's all I've got for now. Perhaps, it's the jetlag still fogging my mind, but I'm sure there'll be more to tell in a week's time. Until then, may the God of peace be with you & yours as you earnestly seek His face!


June 1, 2008

I had my first face-to-face chat with one of my students this afternoon, which was great. Apparently, Thai instruction at GES begins tomorrow & the regular academic term will take off on the 16th. I'm pretty sure that this year's gonna be nothing like last year! ;)