It's my party... I'll pass on the crying.

Kyaw Hlu Sien made the students throw me a goodbye party which unfortunately turned out to be an awkward affair. Despite the fact that I has specifically asked for no party, he told them to throw one anyway and didn't even bother to tell me-- I found out secondhand from a student. The food was great, but the entire time I sat there wishing that I had just taken off a week early and announced my departure with a note.

The Karenni Math teacher, Soray, ran the thing like a business meeting. He stood up and said stuff like "we don't have an agenda" and "this meeting is to thank our teacher, uh--" he stumbled over my name-- "Kim, and say goodbye." He asked the students to make speeches. Class 1, who I didn't have this year, get into an argument over who would have to do it. Yoom lost and stood up and said some forgettable things. Class 2 and 3 were better prepared and had their speeches written. Their speeches were a lot more thought out but unfortunately they didn't write them. Nee Eh could barely make it through hers, so peppered was it with new words. I appreciated the time that they had put into them but would have liked a speech that was made of their own words, even if there were mistakes.

I think that the worst bit, however, was when it came time for the teachers to give speeches. My expat compatriots couldn't do better then yelling out "Kim Rocks!" which was hardly moving. Soray, however, proved that this was indeed better then something. He alluded to something during our last meeting and I was pretty shocked by the event that he'd picked-- during the meeting Soray asked the teachers to come up with a schedule for testing. We'd already been in the meeting for an hour and I was getting tired. After some hmming and hawing I finally jumped up and the room watched in silence as a drew up a schedule for the week that allowed the classes to take their tests. After I sat down Soray told me that "this wasn't the way it was done here" and drew up a new schedule which I felt was lacking since it involved one teacher having three exams at once. "Then why did you bother asking me?" I wanted to say. I was surprised and hurt when Soray talked about this as the event that apparently defined my experience as a teacher ere. He said something about "cultures coming together" and I realized suddenly that the event was actually rather telling of my time here-- my opinion is asked then ignored because "it's not the way things are done here." Then why am I here? Good question. Throughout the three years one of the things that I am bothered by the most is being shown off as the resident American. I guess I am expected to just be white and be quiet.

Unfortunately, I am leaving way too late. I should have probably left about a month ago when I realized that teaching English was no longer something that I wanted to do. I have been really unhappy and I think that I will miss teaching about as I will miss shaking cockroaches out of my clothes in the orning. I just wish that I wasn't ending this whole thing on such a sour note.

Why'd it have to be snakes?

Note: This is a picture from the web: this is NOT my picture! I was watching over my class as they worked on a writing assignment today when I heard my cat calling for me. I poked my head outside and called to him so that he could find me, and he came running. At the same time, I looked down and saw a black snake about the size of my arm. Length-wise, that is, it wasn't as thick as my arm. In fact, it wasn't all that thick it all which told me that it was too skinney to be a constrictor and too big to survive on small animals like mice-- therefore, it was most likely poisonous. I darted forward to intercept the cat but was too late. Fortunately, the cat was too focused on my to notice the snake and it crawled away, but not before I noticed it's neck flatten out briefly. Good god, this snake was a cobra! I had no idea that they even existed in Thailand, so I did a quick search and found that they are actually quite common and quite poisonous. I am pretty sure that what I saw was an Indochinese Spitting Cobra, or Naja siamensis. Note that the picture is NOT the snake that I saw, but rather a picture that I found on the internet. I found out that "Naja siamensis possesses a deadly poison. In addition, the spitting of poison can lead to damage to the corneas." It then drove the point home by adding a triple skull-and-crossbones. Pretty cool, huh?

Everyone who knows me knows that snakes have never bothered me, but that isn't true for all other critters. I am really proud of how far I have come since I started traveling. True, I screamed at a spider the other day but only because it was about the size of my palm and crawling up my leg while I was reading. Another spider (black and yellow) ambushed me in bed and I just pounded on it with my fist and went back to my book. I remember when I first got to Samoa and found my first giant cockroach. I screamed and ran out of the room and got one of the boys to kill it and afterwards would have to spend ten minutes psyching myself up to enter the bathroom. Yesterday, when I was packing, a comparable bug crawled into my bag. I felt around picked it up by a wing, yelled at it, then tossed the thing outside. I wonder how long it will be after I get to the states until I go back to my old, arachnophobic self?

HELLOOO Nurse!!!

Sadly, my international adventure is about to come to a close after three years, but a new and more exciting one is about to start. I have just been accepted into St. Luke's nursing program in Sioux City, Iowa, to start in January. It's been a slow, long and difficult process and I can't believe that I finally found a program that will accept me.

After I get my degree, I am planning on heading out right away. I am thinking of re-joining the Peace Corps, then taking a position with Doctors without Borders or Care. But as my old Arabic teacher used to say, "small steps, Kim!" Let's see if I can get through the program first.

I can't believe that I am going back to Iowa!

Hormonal Problem Anyone?

Hey guys, I am working on an assignment for my Anatomy and Physiology and I need to talk 2 people who have a hormonal problem and 3 people who have a problem with the digestive system (I am looking at you here, Ram). If you can help he, shoot me an email and I will send you some questions. If you can't help me but can bullshit something real good, then shoot me an email anyway.

Back at CLC

Well, I'm back at CLC. My trip back from Mae Sot was uneventful. I managed to snag the front seat of the songtow to avoid seasickness, which was nice. I felt bad for the driver who was obviously used to having his passenger keep him amused for the six-hour trip. I was too tired to try and patch together a conversation made up of our 20-word shared vocabulary so I politely offered him some of my breakfast and then pointedly put on a pair of headphones.

About halfway between Mae Sot and Mae Sariang, there is a massive refugee camp. I am sorry that I don't have pictures, but my camera isn't working. It's huge, and every possible place is taken by makeshift houses with leaf roofs and bamboo floors. Some of the houses have walls, many don't even have that. This is the closest that I will get into a camp, as foreigners aren't allowed. This makes me angry-- if Thailand is ashamed of the camps, then they should fix them so that are are livable to the point where they can show them off to the press. Anyway, we picked up a man and two small kids (about 4 or 5 years old) and they were removed from the truck as we left the camp. As the man was led away with the two scared-looking kids, I noticed that he was missing a leg-- probably from stepping on a mine-- and was fitted with a prosthetic. Hopefully he was just returned to the camp, but I wanted badly to yell at the guard that took him away.

The police were very paranoid on the way up to Mae Sot-- every one of them took my passport and examined it. Perhaps this is because of the new law that would require them to wear a "Hello Kitty" armband if they break a minor law like overlooking a foreigner. On the way back they were calmer and only one asked for my passport-- of course, it could be that they were the same guards and they simple remembered me.

Back at CLC, very little had changed. No classes Thursday or Monday, which is fine with me because I am behind in my own classes. Friday was a speedbump between a day off and a long weekend and so one one really wanted to work. Monday is the Queen's birthday, and most Thais celebrate my treating it as a mother's day. So I had some of the classes make Mother's Day cards. This was a bit of a gamble as many of the poor kids either don't know who their mother it, or have a mother who is passed on or a refugee in another country. Some of the kids don't even know their parents names, and have no foster families to take a missing parent's place.

Visa'ed Up

Well, I got my visa and I am good to go until November although it's hard to say where I will be I will be when time for renewal comes up again.

I was a bit nervous about going through. Thailand has a law that says that you can only be in for 90 days at a time on a tourist visa. Now, I came in for 90 days on a tourist visa, and now I am on a new visa, so I am not sure if I am breaking the law or not. I don't think so, but if my name came up in their computer and they decided that I wasn't allowed to come back in there isn't much, as I learned back in March, that I can do about it!

So a little background for those unfamiliar with Thai visa laws: you can either get a 30 day or 90 day visa-- I have a 90 day. This means that every 30/90 days you have to leave Thailand and come back in, this is called a "border run". It's really, really stupid if you ask me. Most people just go to Mae Sai or Mae Sot, cross into Burma, get the enter and the exit stamp, and then cross back into Thailand-- a process that takes about 15 minutes, not including travel time.

It's particularly silly to me because my school is about 10km from the border, but I still have to travel 400km to get to one of the official checkpoints! Too bad the Kareni Army, who patrols the border, doesn't have visa stamps. The other annoying thing is that I have to fork over 500 baht to the Burmese government whenever I do this. I would much rather give the money to the Thais, and I don't know why they don't change their laws so that they can keep the money.

Heading to Mae Sot for a border run is always a little bit of a risk because they close the Mae Sot border so much. Mae Sot is considered "little Burma" and most of the signs are in Burmese. There are a lot of refugees, migrant workers, and illegals here, and it's also the flashpoint for protests and the hang out for NGOS and illegitimate aid organizations (illegitimate meaning that they are not recognized by the Thai government and operate under wraps, but also do most of the best work.) Anyway, all these means that there is a lot of potential for trouble, and when this happens they shut down the border and you can't get a visa.

Anyway, everything went fine. I left the country and decided to hang out in Burma for an hour. Myawaddy is a little border town that you can't leave (except to go back to Thailand). They actually don't let you in with your passport, you have to leave it at the office and they give you a temp. I took a quick hike around. I had tea in a real Burmese Teahouse with it's squat tables and what I imagined was political conversation at the next table (probably not). It was pretty chill except for a backfire or a firework or something that was very loud and gunshotish. I took a sip of my coffee and looked around to see if I should be alarmed, and all the patrons were staring at the farang to see what she would do. Sorry guys, no hysterics here.

The teahouse was really nice, and the guy who ran it was a cutie with a wide smile who I think accidentally almost way undercharged me for my coffee. It was clean and well put together. Outside, it was filthy and depressing, and I know that Myawaddy is probably one of the nicer Burmese towns because so many tourists have to see it. Dogs wandered around with their uteruses hanging to the sidewalk. Everyone was dressed in torn rags and spat bettlenut. The bridge was full of beggars, most of which were missing legs and arms. It was pretty appalling and depressing. Manners were low too, I got more "hey babies" in walking around for an hour then my entire 6 months in Mae Hong Son.

Back at the border, chatted with a nice Canadian couple that were getting thier visas renewed as well. The poor woman (a student of Thai) was a day late on her visa, and the Thai authorities really do a number of you as they hand out thier guilt. After the glares, you get a special stamp on your passport and have to fill out about three different forms, the entire time the office is staring at you like you committed some horrendous crime. I actually was three days late when I left Thailand last time and I thought that the Border guy was going to start crying at my apparent lack of respect for Thai law. Then you hand over 500 baht (about 15 bucks) a day for you subordinance.

I’m in Mae Sot for one more night, then I am taking the long trip home, but I think that I am going to break it into two days rather then one.

Run For The Border!

Remember those old Taco Bell commertials? "Make a run for the border! BOONG!!!" Well, that's what I am doing. Can't believe that it's been three months already and my visa is about to expire!

I am taking this as a minivacation which I dearly need. For about a week I am not thinking about classes, students who arn't learning the present tense, Anatomy and Physiology, Chemestry... you name it, I'm not thinking about it. I am in the happen' town of Mae Sot. I don't remember this place being so dingy! Mae Hong Son is a lot nicer, maybe I should have taken a vacation up there. The creepest thing about this place are the expats. I don't know where the volenteers hang out, all I see is fat white guys who have swanky buisnesses in town that are generally the cover for something else, or scary looking guys with a Burmese wife and baby in tow, looking like they are almost done with a plan to escape this place, probably leaving the new baby behind. I am already starting to miss my safe harbour of Mae Hong Son-- clean, friendly, and for the most part creep-free.

I will be going to Burma tomarrow. If the weather holds up, I think that I will hit Myawaddy, which is a small Burmese down set up for tourest crossing from Mae Sot. 100 baht says I will hate it.

Midterm Blues

They tell you in the Peace Corps to prepare for a feeling of sadness in the middle of your service, and that this is a pretty common feeling halfway though. I am finding that this is true whether you are serving for two years or one year or six months. Unfortunately for me, the condition is made worse by the fact that I already have a disposition towards depression.

I have had a good time with teaching, but I am getting ready to move on. For me, teaching comes easy. But the enthusiasm that is needed does not. For me, the hardest part of teaching is the feeling that I get when I am standing in a class that the students don't want to be there, and I feel a bit like an entertainment director on a slave ship. One of the classes is always demanding songs and games, but it's frustrating because the games that I come up with feel like work. I actually managed to even ruin Uno for the class by hiding the discarded card and making them play the game completely orally. (That is, you had to say "red three" and the next person would have to listen and put down either a red or a three.) This "jailkeeper" feeling has been difficult for me from the first day that I started teaching in Samoa. And I feel that were I a better teacher then my students would want to be there. I try to think of my best teachers and remind myself that even with them I only wanted to be in class about 40% of the time. I tell myself that I am holding myself to unrealistic goals, but it doesn't help too much.

My next career move will hopefully be in nursing where the object of my job will be to get rid of people so that I never have to see them again, rather then holding them hostage with an English book for an hour. I am really excited about this and have loved the three classes that I am taking. However, I haven't been hearing back from the school, which is also frustrating and depressing. This makes me upset with myself for being impatient, and the whole thing starts again. Still, I have a feeling that this will work out for the best, I just have to be patient.

The students this year are an incredible bunch, and they really are the only thing that is keeping me here. Whenever I think about leaving my students flash before my eyes and I put it off for another month.

Happy Buddhist Lent

Betcha didn't know that Buddhists have Lent, did you? I'm giving up cigarettes and alcohol. Which shouldn't be hard since I've basically given up on both anyway. But it's important to acknowledge the fact that I have given them up. Sort of a positive feed back loop (A&P term, Sarah gets it). Anyway, it's easier then giving up coffee.

We went to the temple to walk around the big thingy but it turned out that this was supposed to happen the next day. The next day the kids were too tired from picking bamboo shoots (or "shoot bamboo") to head back, and I was too tired from my run. So I guess we are all crappy Buddhists who will be reincarnated as chickens.

Poor kids had to rummage in the forest looking for bamboo to eat because I guess there isn't any other food here. Yesterday they had to kill one of the chickens.

Ignorance Was Bliss

I was reading through some of my old blog entries of Yemen and Samoa and realized that my life isn't as exciting at it was when I lived there. No being attacked by goons with firecrackers, no near-miss kidnaps in Marib, no students writing about the color of their panties. I think that a lot of this can be blamed on the fact that Sonia isn't here with me and she stubbornly refuses to come. I think that Thailand is too rugged for the little princess anyway.

It might SEEM like my life is boring, but I assure you it is not. As I read more of my Anatomy and Physiology book every day, it turns out that my life is really in high mortal peril every minute. It turns out that moving, my heart's continous beating, breathing, and other processes that keep me alive basically all boil down to a few measly Ca+ ions being in the right place in the right time!

Yes, I am learning how even the slightest movement requires a plethora of chemical reactions to happens, ions released and collected, and neurotransmitters being produced and reuptaken. Makes me want to lie on my bed and not move to introduce as little stress as possible and save any space Ca+ ions for the pumping of my heart and the contractions of my diaphragm.

But that's no good, according to the book, because if I don't move then my muscles will atrophy into little puddles. So instead I thought that maybe I should just move as little as possible-- like when I absolutely have to get up to eat, teach class, or make coffee. Which is convenient, because that's pretty much what I do anyway.

No good either. The book has informed me that unless I take in at least 30 minutes of exercise a day, my bones and muscles will decompose into little piles of dust by the time I am 35. Now I've heard all this before, but unlike the previous carriers of this message, I am not being offered a chance to join a gym or buy the latest slim-fast craze. No, my book simply offers in excruciating molecule-by-molecule detail how this decomposition will happen.

So, as a result, I have been jogging every day. Not an easy feat in tropical Thai weather, let me tell you. But I feel better about this workout program then ones in the past. For starters, I don't have to get up to do it, which was the doom of past attempts. I jog at dusk, when I am starting to burn out slightly and even running for 30 minutes seems more appealing then another chapter of physiology. Plus, that's the time that the mosquitoes come out, and I don't think that they are very good at hitting a moving target.

Dang!

My new favorite student 'o the week is Ms. Dang. Dang is pretty incredible. She came here and not only did she not speak a word of English, she was also illiterate in her own language, Thai. She couldn't read or write. (She could, however, say "chocolate". A woman after my own heart.) Talk to her in English and she'd just repeat what you said. Today, she can respond to most pleasantries such as "how are you" or "where's Emmett?" or "is this stuff spicy?" and even "I'm thirsty/hungry/angry/tired." She's worked her butt off and it shows.

Meanwhile, I have been really busy. I have been studying Thai and also working on my prereqs for nursing school. I got my 1100 page Anatomy and Physiology book in the mail (thanks, Sarah!) and I am also taking Chemistry and Psychology. A&P is nearly impossible! During a Thai lesson, Dang sat with us, fascinated, interjecting long strings of Thai. She could not understand that just because I could say "Hello, I am hungry" I couldn't understand long rapid 30-second monologues. To get rid of her, I finally opened my A&P book to the cut-outs of pregnant women and developing fetuses and shoved it at her. That shut her up for the rest of the lesson, flipping through the pages in wonder. She couldn't read the words, obviously, but she was quick to pick up that the drawn pictures of cut-away vaginas and GI tracts were part of her body. I was impressed. Now, whenever I am sitting at the table she'll come up and demand to see the "baby book".

Today she found the section on breathing and circulation and so I taught her how to use my stethoscope to listen to her own lungs and heart. After listening to her heart and mine she went running to her house to listen to the hearts and lungs of all the other girls. I taught her about her pulse and she ran around checking that too. Then I tried to explain to her through gestures about how the cirulation system works (not easy, you try it!) and she got the basic idea. I explained (or gestured, rather) that the heart sped up through lots of movement. She leapt up and started to jump and jog in place so that she could hear her heart go fast. Then she put the stethoscope around her neck and announced that she was a doctor. The pictures are her reading the A&P book and wearing the stethoscope.

Unfortunately, I don't really know what her story is. She only finished 3rd grade, and she speaks Thai, not Burmese. I don't know why she didn't to school-- she should have been able to go to the Thai school. Her family, like all families around here, isn't rich but do seem to have enough money to provide her with a cell phone and nice clothes. They should have been able to handle the school fees. When I asked the others what she was doing while not going to school they said that she was cleaning the house. Cinderella incarnate, I guess.

And the bug of the week is *ba ba bum* FROGS! Yes I know that they aren't bugs but they are everywhere. Little guys the size of a fingernail. Walking around campus I have to watch the ground constantly so that I won't step on them. I can't take a picture because they are too small to focus on. They are adorable and step up from last week, which was large hand-sized spiders.

What are the kids listening to today?

So, once upon I time I worked for this great startup called MongoMusic. They allowed you to make music lists and would then recommend music based on what you liked. It worked really well and I found some of my favorite music at the time there. Then we got bought out by Microsoft. Microsoft promised us that they wouldn't touch a thing about our online radio and then proceeded to not only gut the functionality of the startup but the people who'd they relocated from California to Seattle and proceeded to then fire when they started getting comfortable. (Disgustingly, this plan to "rehire" the people into other places at Microsoft-- because a music analyst is such a hot commodity there-- was announced on 9/11/2001.)

But the radio was still pretty good until they finally threw out the MongoMusic one (whose code, I am proud to say, was given a major overhaul by yours truly and then viewed by thousands daily) and then I left the country and didn't revisit the site since.

I went there today out of curiosity and found that the music radio that had been written by a startup and removed and replaced by some Microsoft creation had then been removed and replaced with code written by another startup. Makes perfect sense, don't you think?

So I've been sampling some of the music clips off Amazon to find something that's worth spending my money on and I'm pretty shocked to discover that all my favorite bands now suck. The Indigo Girl's new album contains not only recycled musical themes from Rites of Passage but actually contains recycled lyrics as well. The latest Sarah McLauchlan album is a *blah* Christmas Album! WTF?!? Even Suzanne Vega let me down.

Where I am going with this:
The reason that I went back to MSNMusic was that I was hoping that they'd finally turned on MongoMusic's recommendation service because I desperately need some new, modern, music. My old heroes have let me down. So please tell me, what are the kids listening to nowadays? If you were a fan of the alternative Cranberries/Sarah McLachlan/Melissa Etheridge type then please shoot me a line to let me know what the hell you are listening to now.

Life's Small Victories

Some of my hard work has finally paid off. After weeks of harassment, my students have finally started to wear their motorcycle helmets. I got two of the male students to wear helmets for a 2km trip to Nai Soi without any fight as all (usually the students just laugh at me when I insist on wearing helmets for this trip) and one of my students, Wanna, knocked on my door to ask if she could borrow a helmet to go to Mae Hong Son. I was so surprised when she made the request that I thought I must have misheard her!

It's just plain common sense. The director of the school has had his health greatly compromised because he wasn't wearing a helmet and was caught in a landslide when driving to town. I would have thought that that would be enough to get them to protect their heads, but they still insisted that helmets aren't needed. I gave them a rather gory and exaggerated version of my own accident and I figured that they were just laughing the silly white girl behind their concerned faces. Apparently not!

"Mr. Malaria" Tun is still symptom free but now he is plagued by some sort of stomach thing. Took me ten minutes and the help of five other students to determine if he was having regular bowel movements or not. I was able to see for myself that his appetite hadn't changed much, but what happens at the other end I could not be a witness to. I'm not too worried because he's eating and other stuff on a regular basis so it's not an obstructed gut. I spent another ten minutes trying to determine it it was a stabbing pain, a cramping pain or a dull ache. After a while Tun just started to just say "yes" to all my questions which pretty much wrapped up my interview. If he's not better by tomorrow we're sending him along with 100 baht to the clinic to let those poor people deal with him.

Fly Away Butterfly

The students interrupted me during class to inform me that a butterfly had gotten caught in a spider web while I was teaching in one of the quasi-open-air classrooms. They coached me as I borrowed an umbrella and cheered when the butterfly flew away. That's really what I love about the school-- the respect for life. The only things that really get killed with a vengeance around here are the mosquitoes. This morning the cats followed me into the classroom and lounged on the students desks. Rather then kicking them off, they carefully placed their notebooks out of the way of the sleeping felines.

Butterflies were the bug of the week about two weeks ago, now it is ants. Ants is a decided step-down, but still an improvement over the previous weeks of the wasps and the termites before that. My favorite remains the few days of the fireflies where sometimes my room would be lit up so brightly by them that I could read in the dark.

Having a few low-key minor crisises. They are irrigating the rice paddies around the school and I am pretty sure that this is causing the water to get shut off from the school. We have large water tanks that hold about four or five days of water and they are getting pretty low. Fortunately it's also been really cool as we head into the real rainy season (what we had before was just practice) so one shower a day is adequate. In addition, we haven't had cell phone coverage in Nai Soi for about two days now. One of the students, Yoom, explained to me that this is because we've had rain for a few days and the cell signals can't get through the clouds. Since we don't have this problem in Seattle I am a bit skeptical of this technological explanation.

The student's language skills are quickly improving and I am trying to get more of a gist of their past histories. I've been focusing on the four boys from Lak Thai. They were here last year and either were, are, or will be Shan soldiers. (Hopefully this will be more clear when they finally nail down the different tenses.) I am just starting to learn about their situations. Tun, the kid with malaria, is a 19-year-old who apparently left his entire family in Burma and hasn't seen them in three years. The kids aren't terribly shy about talking about their families. Yee told me that his father died a year ago because he was old. When I asked him about it he started to laugh and another kid laughed with him, saying “he thinks it's funny that his father is dead”.

And the rains starts up again.

Malaria Shamaria!

Emmett, can I use your shower? And by "shower", I mean a bucketful of malaria water."

- Kevin, one of the new volunteers

Things have pretty much returned to normal. My malaria case, Tun, is up and about and running around like nothing ever happened and doesn't seem to be relapsing or showing any signs whatsoever that less then a week ago he was suffering from a possibly fatal disease. The other three Laktai boys (Aung, Lu, and On) are being closely watched since the four of them celebrated their brotherhood by giving each other tatoos with the same machine-- Tun going first, before he got malaria. So far, so good.

I have decided not to go on antimalarials. Sarah found a really great drug which wasn't hell on your liver and kicks in in two days. The drug is one of the few that is good for the strains of Malaria found in this area, but ironically it can't be bought here. I would ask for someone to send it but with the way that the mail goes here it will be the cold season by the time it shows up. I am still waiting for a chemistry textbook that I ordered six weeks ago. I have had about as much luck with the mail in my travels as Hilter had in Russia.

I did have my first major motorcycle accident and walked away rather miraculously with nothing more then a briused knee. I'm sort of glad that I got this out of the way as it was an inevitiable event. I was heading through an intersecion that had neither stop light nor heavy traffic when a car came out of the mysterous nowhere. I jammed on my brakes but forgot that I was supposed to use the footbreak. Years of riding bycycles and mopeds had trained by reflects badly for a motorcycle. The bike didn't stop and I was faced with the choice of trying to swerve around the car or taking my chances with the curb. I picked the curb. Fortunatly, when I flew off my bike I fell into a think bunch of Thai soft jungle bushes. God did punish me by giving them thorns. I couldn't believe that the bike was okay, with the exception of a broken fuel gauge and a flat tire. Check that one off the list.

Malaria stalks CLC

Today one of my favorite students, Tun, was diagnosed with malaria. The poor kid is burning up and there isn't much that I can do for him. We have him on strong drugs and I can only pray that they are the right ones for him to take (the labels are in Thai.) He's being brave as hell.

It was surprising how sudden the whole thing was. Tun was in my class and doing his normal good work when he suddenly said quietly "Teacher, I'm cold." I thought at first that he was just trying out the grammar point that we've been working on and I was about to say "Very good, Tun! Who else is cold? Lu, are you cold?" when I noticed that he had his shoulders hunched and his hands clenched between his thighs. I touched his forehead and immediately sent him to bed with two Tylenols. When I checked on him about 30 minutes later, he was wrapped up in the 90 degree Thai heat in a winter blanket.

They got his blood tested and gave him some drugs. The label is in Thai but he only speaks Chan. I assigned a smart Thai-Chan speaking interpreter (Yee) and demanded that he take all the pills and get lots of rest and water.

The thing that I love about Tun is that he really smiles with his whole face. He managed to smile at me when I sent him to his room, smiled at me when I made him wear a helmet to go to the clinic, and then smiled at me when he came back from the doctor, so it really broke my heart when he was too sleepy and sick to smile when I checked on him this evening (although he did manage a small one when I asked for my name to check that he wasn't delirious.) I'll try to get a better picture up of him when he gets better, but until then I hope that you keep him in your thoughts.

As for me, I'm debating whether I should go on antimalarials or not.

Hello, Nurse!

How the Hell did you get back here? I flushed you down the toilet two hours ago!

- Me, this morning

Charlotte the giant St. John's Cross spider has vanished. I think that she's dead. The reason I think this is that I have found a bunch of baby St. John's Cross spiders around my room. They are not following in the footsteps of their namesakes by jumping off to parts unknown on little webbed parachutes-- no, these seem to prefer to build their webs in my clothes. When I find them I don't exactly do a somersault and give them a name like Wilber did-- the lucky ones gets tossed outside.

After my week of teaching Health to the class one students, I more or less have become the official CLC nurse. Injured students will either seek me out or avoid me depending on the nature of their injury. One of the volunteers has pinkeye [insert South Park joke here]. One student, Laulang, came to me with what he claimed was a “sick” or sprained wrist. Not broken or terribly swollen, I diagnosed it as a minor sprain and told him not to move it. When he seemed unhappy with my diagnosis I offered to splint it for him with bamboo and tape. He turned me down but still looked so unhappy that I went against the advice in “Where There Is No Doctor” and tried to interest him in a Tylenol, but that was turned down as well.

Sigh came into class with huge sores on his leg from God knows what but I was more concerned about the massive amounts of purple gunk around the wound. After class I marched him down to the shower hole and got him to wash it throughly while trying to find out what he'd put on it. Two bandaids and I pronounced him cured, telling him not to think of putting anything else on the spot. Two hours later, the bandaids were gone and he had no clue what I was talking about when I asked him why he'd taken them off. This time he got bandaids and some bright red electrical tape wrapped around his legs. That seems to have done the trick.

Her Happy Ear

One of my students wrote on her present simple assignment: "My teacher's name is Kim. She is a very smil[e]. She is a tall. She teaches my happy ear."

Yes, her English needs work but that really is one of the nicer things that anyone has said about me.

The school year is in full swing. The boys that were supposed to have ditched us to join up with the army decided to come back after all. Hopefully this was their choice. Most of the girls have gone, and we are left with just two living in the girls house. The boys, sadly, brought back their guitars but fortunately they seen to do work in the morning and save the guitar playing for after dinner when I am not working.

The bugs are still swarming, but I've gotten used to it. Lights go off and the gameboy goes on. They just fly around for about an hour having sex, and their wings come off and then go away as quickly as they appear. I actually sort of look forward to it, isn't an excuse not to do work.

The Lovelorn Tokay Gecko

I have another geckoin my room. I thought at first that this was the same one as before after taking about a wekk to hike back. The new one is about the same size and likes the same hiding places, but after comparing photos I determined that this one is a new one.

This one, however, is a depressed tokay gecko. While the old one had a bright, confident mating call that he would make several times a night, this one has a reather pathetic mating call. He only yells out about three times a night and it has a lackluster feel to it like he's only doing it for the hell of it and doesn't really expect any females to come running. By the end of the call he sort of trails out, like he's thinking "to hell with it, this isn't going to work." I've deicided to let him stay as I feel sorry for it and can relate to it a lot more.

Cave Lod

We had a surprise four-day weekend. The boys went off to Chiang Mai to pick up chicks or whatever guys do and I declined to join them. Instead I decided to take off for Cave Lod, which is one of the largest caves in the world. I have been to two different countries that are allowed to boast about the quality of their caves, so it was a bit embarrassing that aside from swimming though short lava hole in Samoa I hadn't been to one yet.

Cave Lod is one of the places that is remote enough that the prices very near reflect the prices advertised in my ten-year old Thailand guidebook. To get there, you hop an hour-and-a-half bus to Sappong and then catch a motor taxi to Tham Lot, an area rich with caves and interesting geographical sights. I checked in grabbed my flashlight and turned right around to find the cave, despite the numerous warnings that no one should try to enter the caves alone.

Cave Lot is unique is that there is an entrance and an exit, and the cave is massive enough that the ceiling is almost never in sight of anything except a very high-powered light. It's like a 1.5 km long cathedral. There is a river running though it and I figured that it would be an easy hike. Follow the river and if I was feeling brave I could take a side-trip to see one of the side chambers. I was feeling cheap and opted against hiring one of the 150 baht guides (about 5 dollars). At the end of the cave you can see the birds flying out and the bats flying in-- or vice versa, depending on if it is morning or evening. I figured that I would be through the cave an about an hour, birdwatch, batwatch, then be back in time for dinner. Big mistake.

You see, the thing about large caves is that they aren't linear paths that go from point a to point b. They are like little mountainsides in pitch black, and even if they were filled with floodlights it would be possible to lose the trail. After about 30 seconds of stepping into the pitch black I realized that I had no idea which way I had come from. I turned off the flashlight and after a few moments I could see the hazy light coming from the entrance and a brighter light coming from a group of people who had decided that the 150 baht was worth it. I should have left the cave, but instead I flipped the flashlight on and dashed after the group, thinking that I could stalk them-- or at least stalk their light.

A pathetic Thai excuse for a bridge

I nearly ran right into the river that crossed through the cave, and ran my flashlight over it before I saw the outline of a bamboo bridge. I managed to get to the bridge without slipping on bat guano and dashed up a rickety staircase and caught up with the group just as they were admiring a cave paining. No pictures, I am afraid-- it was to0 dark for my camera to get a light reading. In the cave one lost all sense of direction and which way was was up and down. While you are groping around in the dark you become very aware of the tons of rock that is over your head. I think that the scariest part was knowing that if something did happen to me and I was not able to cry for help it would be a long time before I was found. One of the most striking things that I have found about the third world is that no one takes the normal measures to keep their guests safe. You have to rely on your own common sense-- a sense that itn't very well taught to Americans.

The group came back from the chamber-- I was skulking guiltily behind and for some reason they decided to head back. Stupidly, I headed towards the other side of the cave and discovered after a long thirty-minute search that there was no bank next to the river to walk on. Faced with the choice of wading in an unfamiliar river with a non-waterproof flashlight, I decided to head back. It was still one hell of a humbling experience, being in such a magnificent and dangerous place.