Face Saver

From my Lonely Planet Thailand:

Thais believe strongly in the concept of saving face, ie avoiding confrontation and endeavoring not to embarrass yourself of other people (except when it’s sanuk- funny- to do so). The ideal face-saver doesn’t bring up negative topics in conversation, and when they notice stress in another’s life, they usually won’t say anything unless that person asks for help. Laughing at minor accidents – such as when someone trips a falls down (or when you can’t speak Thai very well- my addition) – may seem callous but it’s really just an attempt to save face on behalf of the person undergoing the mishap. This is another source of the Thai smile – it’s the best possible face for almost any situation.


Constantly keeping this concept of “face” in mind was one of the most difficult adjustments I made during my first year living here. The description above is fairly accurate, although I would sum it up this way: (1) Never make anyone look bad (2) If someone looks bad, smile (3) If someone looks really bad, laugh.

It is completely permissible and excusable, not to mention preferable, to lie in almost any situation to save someone’s face, whether said person is present or not. I now know not to take everyone at their word, but at first these “little white lies” resulted in a lot of confusion and culture clash.

Another technique in the face-saving repertoire is lumping responsible parties into the collective we, even though it might be one specific person’s fault, as in “Even though you took your midterms 7 ½ weeks ago, we are not finished grading them.”

Finally, as a last resort, use the passive voice. “I was not told that I had to sign for my paycheck 10 days before the end of the month in order to be paid,” or “Your final exam has been moved up 2 weeks.”

Face has also been a barrier to learning Thai. Compared to Americans, Thai people are generally relatively reserved and some would say shy. Therefore, it takes a lot of courage for a stranger to speak to you. Most people just want to practice English, but of those very few who try to speak to you in Thai, face makes it difficult. There are not a lot of foreigners in Khon Kaen, so most people don’t really think about the fact that they might have to alter their speaking speed for a non-native speaker; and, if you don’t immediately understand someone the first time they talk, in general they won’t try more than once to get you to understand. They want to save you the embarrassment of not understanding, so they just stop talking and smile or laugh. I am getting better, though. Now in about 2/3rds of these situations, by the time the Thai person has finished laughing, I have put together what they said and am able to provide some kind of reply. However, sometimes they just keep laughing, which I guess means either I didn’t accurately understand what they said or they can’t understand my accent.

Interestingly, the bravest and most persistent people I’ve come across in this situation are gas station attendants. More often than not when they’re filling up my motorbike, the gas station attendant will ask me questions, and since the questions tend to cover the same subjects (am I traveling, how long have I been here, do I work…), I’m getting pretty good at providing answers. I’m slowly starting to work my way to the next level; at this point I usually still have no idea what their 3rd or 4th follow-up questions are, but the conversation always ends in a smile.

PS: This topic was inspired by a NYT article about something completely different, and even though it's technically about Japan, the comparisons in the article could just as easily be said about Thailand. I just thought I'd post it for fun.
East and West Part Ways in Test of Facial Expressions

From a faculty bathroom at KKU...

Now why is this sign in English and not Thai?

Aj. Jordan

I am currently on summer vacation and spring break at the same time. How could this be? Being a lecturer (ajarn) at a Thai university and a grad student at an American university forces me to live by two different academic schedules, which is a huge hassle the majority of the year, but this week is the exception.

I know when I got my current job back in October I promised to tell all of you more about it, but the excuse for my tardiness is twofold: 1) How can I fully and accurately explain if I haven’t lived through an entire semester? 2) See paragraph 1.

Note: If you don’t like the longer, more boring posts, you can go ahead and stop reading now.

Anyway, here’s what I do…

I’m contracted to teach 15 to 20 hours a week with the expectation that I’ll help out with other “tasks” that require a native speaker when asked. I’m also salary, which is both good (I get paid for the summer break) and bad (unlike hourly people, I don’t get money for those extra “tasks” and I teach classes that in general require more work outside of class). Almost all of my classes are for English majors, which is much better than the part time/ hourly teachers who mostly teach English for other majors (the university requires 2 semesters of English minimum for every graduate), but I do have a lot more work.

This past semester I taught 6 classes (16 hours), 4 of which were classes for majors. My favorite classes were my 2 classes for third year majors. One was a conversation and discussion class. It was a breeze to teach with almost no work outside class, and I learned a lot about Thai culture through our class discussions. It was also challenging to keep the conversation going since it is not very culturally acceptable to disagree, but I was able to create a space that was non-alienating, and since I’m not a Thai teacher, I think the students felt freer to act outside their cultural norms.

The other class I really enjoyed was Creative Writing. There was an enormous amount of material cover and work to be graded for this class (they wrote 2 3-page stories a week!), but it was all worth it. We spent the first half of the semester writing short stories, and the second half we covered playwriting and poetry. Although a lot of the writing was done in groups of 3 or 4, every student wrote their own 10-15 page short story. That’s a huge achievement in a foreign language! Of course these stories also took an hour to grade each, and I had to do it twice; once for the rough draft and once for the final (18 students in the class). Another class project was writing and producing their own 30 minute play, but at least for this they could work in groups of three. Soon I will post some pictures of their performances (the relationship between my camera and my computer is currently a bit rocky).

My other classes were not nearly as exciting. I taught two sections of a paragraph writing class for second year majors that was the bane of my existence as it was super-boring material and created pounds of boring grading.

I also taught another conversation class for MD students which was not exciting, but certainly interesting at times. My favorite lesson was when I had each of the students (there were only 12) bring in 5 slang words and we created a chart on the board with their definitions, a number on a scale of 1-5 to show how “bad” they were, and an appropriate audience and context for the word. I got a lot of positive feedback on that lesson because the students simply don’t have another source to learn these definitions.

My final class was a standard issue non-majors course that all first year students take. The book is boring, the material was far too easy for these pharmacy majors, and I couldn’t pay my students to participate. Normally I would adjust the class to meet the students at their level, but my thinking was just that it was a mandatory course; I had to cover the specific material I was given because 85% of their grade is determined by their midterm and final, so there was no need to make it any more difficult for them. The class is just a money maker for the department. In reality, most of my students could have passed the midterm and final before the class, so I just kept it easy and tried to be as entertaining as I could.

Other “tasks” have mostly included editing work for other Thai ajarns and doing things where it’s nice to have a native English speaker, like interviewing grad students. Not too much other than teaching.

All in all, I was quite busy for most of the semester, but not terribly busy (aka teachforamerica busy) until the final 2 months. It was a very nice pace. Also, my colleagues are for the most part great to work with and the students are fantastic. I have now literally taught students of all ages (from age 2 to about 35) and the students at KKU are my favorites. I don’t even have to think about discipline, and enough of the material requires creative teaching to keep me interested on a day to day level. Also, as with most teaching jobs, the paid vacation (just taking another opportunity to remind all of you that I’m on summer break) is amazing.

oral hygiene very good

I’m currently stuck at home for a few days looking like half a chipmunk because I finally decided to remove the wisdom teeth that have been providing seasonal dull headaches for years. Why now and not 7 years ago when the pain started? Cheap and reliable dental care. Although at this juncture I’m starting to doubt the second adjective.

It all started a few weeks ago when Mara and I decided to go to the dentist for a cleaning and I wanted to have someone look at my wisdom teeth. We got a reference for an office whose dentists came from the university where we work, and who supposedly spoke near fluent English. WRONG! Although our visits went very well (no cavities for either of us) our dentist was not so good on the English side. She spoke a little, but could not understand me when I first said wisdom teeth. She was able to communicate that she couldn’t do anything for my third molars, other than show the two erupted teeth to me in a mirror. She then proceeded to blindfold me (very weird) before she cleaned my teeth and told me I had “oral hygiene very good.” She also said “perfect” in Thai, which I hope was in reference to my teeth, but I don’t really know due to the blindfold. I was just happy to understand the Thai.

After a two week recovery from the initial encounter, I went in to make an appointment with the specialist. In order to make sure I got what I wanted across, I had one of the other Thai ajarns at the university write a note for me that said I wanted an appointment with a specialist to look at my wisdom teeth. This apparently didn’t work because they sent me back to the same dentist I saw the first time and she just told me to go to a specialist. I then politely asked her to help me make an appointment with the specialist to make sure everything was clear to the receptionist.

The following day I went for what I thought was a wisdom tooth consultation at 7:00pm. Why that late? No idea. The dentist was nice enough, and her English was pretty good, so I felt a bit more comfortable. She told me she needed an x-ray to see the two upper teeth that had not erupted, and then she told me she could remove the two right-side teeth today. What? Today? Before I could recover from the shock of it, she was sticking a needle in my gums and then sent me off to get the x-ray. When I got back I asked her why we couldn’t remove all 4 today, and she told me that I wouldn’t be able to chew, and that we could remove the remaining two in one to three weeks. She also asked me if I was “excited.” Thai does not have a word for nervous or worried, instead they use excited. Not thinking, I told her I wasn’t very excited. I later realized that was her way of determining if local anesthesia was going to be good enough. Five minutes later, I’m in surgery.

I was blindfolded again (at least this time I was prepared), and took many deep breaths as she wrenched the lower tooth out and closed it with one stitch - took about 5-10 minutes. The upper tooth was not nearly as cooperative. She kept cutting and prying and cutting and prying, clearly using all of her strength as the assistant held my head tightly for leverage. She ended up ripping the side of my cheek open. Finally, after at least 30 minutes, the tooth was free. Turns out the bottom edges of the tooth were outturned, creating a barb that would not allow the gum to release the tooth. It took 4 stitches to close up that upper wound. Before cleaning me up she actually unblindfolded me to show me the crazy angle of the bottom of the tooth.

The local anesthetic was fine for the surgery, but all she sent me home with was Ibuprofen 400 for pain and an antibiotic. The scariest part of everything has been the recovery. It took more than 12 hours for the bleeding to stop, and 72 hours later I’m still swollen like a chipmunk (although considerably less chubby). I’ve relied a lot on the internet for post-op advice (although I know I shouldn’t). Her advice was don’t smoke, don’t spit, eat soft food. She was also trying to explain something about swelling, but she didn’t know the word swelling, so I’m still not really sure.

Through this miserable 3 day (and counting) recovery I’ve definitely felt a lot of frustration for the way everything was handled. It’s one thing to chalk it all up to cultural differences when you have an issue at work, but when you have no time to mentally prepare for surgery, and when you don’t agree with you dentist’s reasoning for why you can’t get all 4 teeth done at the same time (3 days later and my teeth still won’t meet to chew anything), you tend to feel a little hostile, especially since I’m facing the whole thing over again next week when she removes the remaining two teeth and my stitches. At least the bill was nice, only $100 for two teeth, both impacted, one erupted. And that even includes the Ibuprofen!

In the end, I’m mostly just thankful that I speak English. In so many ways I’ve lucked out because everyone here learns English, and I can only imagine how much more horrible the situation would have been otherwise.