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.

I bet you wish your summer break started in February

Full-time lecturer + Grad student = no blogs for a month

End of the semester + Summer vacation + Buildup of blog ideas = more frequent blogging

So the past few weeks have been the busiest I’ve had here in Khon Kaen, which means I have a fair few things to write about. Since I’ve delayed posting for a month already, I figure I might as well procrastinate a little longer and distract you with a list of coming attractions while I’m finishing my grades:

High Drama (or who knew KK had such a bustling English theater scene?)
University Life from the other side of the desk (or what I do at my job)
English Camp (or why it’s fun for 22 year olds to sing the bunny in the woods song, or why Joe makes a stunning Sandra Dee)
Thai Language (or why I’m not fluent yet, unless I’m hungry)
Passage to India (or summer plans, or the shameless plagiarizing of a book title)
Dinosaurs of Khon Kaen (a long, long time in the making)

If that doesn’t satisfy your desire for fresh blogging, notice the 2 new KK blogs on the left sidebar. They are both from my awesome language exchange partner, Maeng Won aka Babie. The first one is sometimes in English and sometimes in Thai, but there are a lot of pictures.
Here's one of my favorite posts: Thai TESOL Conference 2008

The second one is her cooking blog, and she writes most of her recipes in English, and I she takes a photo of everything she cooks, and some of the recipes have step by step pictures. I’m sure she would love to hear about it if you tried one of her recipes.

Opium? Lady? Elephant?

I was really frustrated by this article in the NYT today, particularly this part:

“Mr. Nattawut makes about 2,000 baht a day, or about $67, selling sugar cane to passers-by, good money in a country where a typical factory wage is 8,000 baht (about $269) a month.”

According to those figures, Mr. Nattawut, a mahout (elephant handler), is making about twice as much as I am, and after basic expenses I still have the money to support myself in a city (which costs a whole lot more than in a rural area) and save money for vacation and moving back home. 8,000 baht is not a lot per month to live on, but it can be enough (maybe not in Bangkok, but living in/near Bangkok is a choice, and most of these workers come from rural areas). I know a lady in Khon Kaen who gets along on 4,000 (which is not enough) and she has a son.

Elephant exploitation is a really important issue, and every time a mahout asks me to buy sugar cane (that he already owns) so his mal-nourished elephant can eat, I feel horrible anger. I understand that everyone wants to make the best living that they can, but that’s no excuse to so blatantly abuse and exploit an elephant. No matter how much I agree with most of the points made in this article (especially about the uneven distribution of wealth between urban and rural areas), I don’t appreciate the NYT giving an unfair assessment of the situation by not providing a fair representation of the cost of living in Thailand.

Although not as extreme as drug dealing or prostitution, this problem has similar causes and results from similar rationalizations. When people are poor and good jobs are scarce, compromising their morals for the often-fulfilled promise of wealth (and 60,000 Baht a month is wealthy*) becomes almost too tempting to pass up. Attempts to control the situation will never really be as effective as examining the root causes of the problem, whether the issue is dangerous criminals, loose women, or dangerous elephants on the loose.

*The latest data I can find is from 2001 (without wading through a whole lot of online pdf files), and then the average combined household income was 12,185 baht.

nam crook?

One of the best appetizer-type dishes that I’ve had here so far is nam crook. At least I think it’s nam crook, that’s what I say to the som tam lady at my favorite veggie restaurant, and this is what she always gives me. Of course one time she wasn’t there and then I tried to order it and the man taking my order had no idea what I was talking about. So I digressed into limited choppy Thai vocab/hand signals: “fried ball” (mashing motion) “leaf” (spooning motion). He got the idea and I got what I call nam crook. If you’re reading this and you know what it’s really called, please post it in the comments.

Since I can’t find a recipe (maybe because I don’t know its name), I’ll explain how nam crook is made in my imagination. You first make a kind of fried rice with chopped up kaffir lime leaves, these awesome dried roasted chilies, peanuts, and other magical Thai spices. You then form this rice into pool-ball size spheres and deep fry it. You leave the balls in this stage until just before you are ready to eat. (It is at this point that I actually begin to witness preparation).

When you are ready to serve nam crook, you place one of the balls in a bowl and mash it up with your hands (preferably gloved). You then add fresh mint leaves, lime juice, maybe something else if you think it would taste good. It is then served on a plate with fresh leaves, generally of the same unknown variety (occasionally supplemented or substituted with a less tasty unknown variety).

I then spoon the rice mixture into a leaf and wrap it up before popping the morsel in my mouth. However, I can’t say if this is the proper way to eat nam crook, but no one’s ever corrected me (although maybe they’re just too polite).

Like many Thai dishes, Nam crook has a nice balance of spicy, salty, sour, and sweet (not really sure where that last flavor comes from, but it’s there). The texture is also amazing, with the soft rice mixed with crunchy dried peppers, peanuts, and bits of the original deep fried shell wrapped in the smooth and fresh-tasting leaf. It is amazingly arroy (delicious-- one Thai word I know very well).

Since the Thai election was last month...

Although I'm not living in the USA, that doesn't mean I'm not paying attention to politics. I'm also not blogging to push a political agenda. I just think this website is really cool. Basically, you take a quiz on how you feel about 25 issues, and then it calculates which candidate (Republican, Democrat, etc.) most closely matches your ideals. Try it.

Out with the Old

No New Years resolutions here, just good news; I now know where I live.

For all of those official documents that want my home address, here is why you didn't get it.


Even if that sign did use the Latin alphabet, I still wouldn't have been able to read it. It has recently been replaced by the much-better-in-more-ways-than-I-can-count sign below.



I still don't have a mailbox though, so if you feel like sending me a letter or a large box of tortilla chips, please send it to:

Jordan Fields
Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences
Khon Kaen University
123 Mitraparb Road
Muang Khon Kaen
Khon Kaen
Thailand
40002

Now if only my address would fit on those pesky online forms with their limited character boxes...