MicahJohn

God has specifically answered my specific prayer for friends here at the church. The last two evenings I’ve had a great time playing basketball and soccer, eating food, and playing guitar with three guys here.

I had a good visit with friends in Ubon this past weekend. I rode the train up Thursday night (skipping class on Friday). I actually slept pretty well on the train. Not realizing a breakdown during the night had put the train two hours behind schedule I got up earlier than I needed to.

The delay meant Kris wasn’t able to take me along to see the village school where she teaches English. In the afternoon she was able to take me by to visit Benchama, the school where I plan to teach starting in May. It was a good connection.

Saturday afternoon I went with friends to a village they often visit. The village is more distant from my American experience than either Bangkok or Ubon.

Bangkok is very much a big city. It has its subways, buses, and taxis; its tall buildings, its museums, its universities; Its poor, its rich; its neighborhoods, its international communities. I’m sure I’m missing some good big city things that are in Bangkok.

Ubon, for my Wboro area readers, could in many ways be compared to
Chambersburg. I think there’s a similar number of people. It’s a central kind of area where those outside come to do their walmart style shopping.

The village is a village. People seem more connected to each other. Property lines are not readily distinguished by the foreign eye. Time, in the 7:48 sense, seems a non-issue. Time, in the the-peppers-are-ready-to pick sense, and in the heat of the day / cool of the day sense, is much more significant. Clothing is much more laid back. The men in Bangkok and Ubon wear slacks and shirts with collars. Some of the guys in the village were chilling in nothing more than a knee-length checkered cloth.

Through the afternoon we visited with different people in different settings. We visited an older couple at their field house. We visited another lady in what felt to me like a back yard. We sat with a blind woman in her house.

In the evening several people came together in yet another house. Quickly, for those of you trying to visualize, there is a large single room. There’s a TV against a wall. There are closets towards the back of the room creating a divider, behind which is a sleeping area. In the middle of the room 15-20 people ages 2-62 sit in a circle on a tile floor.

We sang some songs. Kris told a story. I was very pleased with my ability to follow the story. I had known ahead of time what the story was going to be about. After the story, still on the floor, with a mat in the middle of the circle on which sit the shared bowls of food, we ate a meal together with our hands.

After the story a mat was unrolled in the middle of the circle of cross-legged people. Bowls of food were placed on the mat. And we all ate (sans silverware) together (from the same bowls).

I’m now back in Bangkok. I had another person join my English class this afternoon. I think she improved the classroom dynamic. Two was too few (for the setting).

Yesterday I had a good dinner with the people from my class at language school. One of the highlights was when one of the guys tried to practice his bargaining skills. The item had a starting price of 70 baht. After he asked the girl if she could lower the price she answered she could make the price 100 baht. He misheard, and asked if she could lower the price further. She answered she could make the price 200 baht. At this point several of us started laughing, he wondered why. He thought she had come down 1 baht, and then down 2 baht from the original price. He hadn’t heard the “hundred.” She gave the item to him for 70 baht. 

Tonight I leave for Ubon by train to visit friends there. While there I hope to stop in and visit the school where I will be teaching in a few months. 

Today I feel a bit sick. I continue to welcome your prayers.

This week I have had what could honestly be called conversations (with classifiers such as “stumbling,” “simple,” etc). Along with increased speech has come increased errors. One of the most amusing was my response to the question, “how long have you been in Thailand?” I answered, “three minutes.” The word minute and the word for week are reasonably similar (and are both stored in the time part of my brain). 

I had a conversation with a taxi driver last night (I was in a taxi because I was again close to not making it back before the locking of the gate). He several times had to rephrase his questions, but I think I satisfactorily answered nearly all of them eventually (keep in mind he was asking questions of some who had prefaced the whole conversation by saying “I don’t speak Thai, I am learning Thai”). 

I succeeded in telling him I am going to be in Bangkok for three months. I am going to be in Ubon for two years. I told him I was going to be teaching in Ubon. When asked what I was going to teach, I must confess I answered “English” because I do not know the word for mathematics. I told him some of what I have studied so far (colors, numbers, etc). I obviously told him where I live.  

He told me that he can’t speak English but he does know “hotel,” “one hundred baht,” “two hundred baht,” “restaurant,” and a little other assorted taxi language. I’m telling you all this because it felt really good to have a “conversation” with someone who was not a teacher (who knows the limits of my vocabulary) nor someone with whom I could retreat into English.

I just discovered that the days of the week in Thai are named after the same planets/sun/moon as the days of the week in English. I guess whenever the seven day week showed up it came with each day’s tie to a planet. 

For those of you who don’t know each day’s celestial body: Sunday-Sun, Monday-Moon, Tuesday-Mars, Wednesday-Mercury, Thursday-Jupiter, Friday-Venus, Saturday-Saturn.  

Additionally, if you’re wondering why Tuesday (or Wednesday, or Thursday, or Friday) don’t look anything like Mars (or Mercury, or Jupiter, or Venus), it is because in English the days are named after the German gods associated with the planets while the planets are given their Roman names.  

For those of you who speak (the Latin derivative) Spanish, the names of the days and the names of the planets are more obviously similar. Martes (Tuesday)-Mars, Miercoles (Wednesday)-Mercury, Jueves (Thursday)-Jupiter, Viernes (Friday)-Venus). I never did learn the Spanish names of the planets. And, not being online (or having any other way to access a Spanish English dictionary at the moment) I can’t look them up. 

All this is a new discovery to me. Those of you who know more/better, please feel free to add/correct.