MicahJohn

Today I sat in on a lesson on learning English delivered primarily in Thai. I sat there both to practice listening to Thai and to get some ideas for language learning. Both goals were achieved. In the midst of it the speaker unintentionally reminded me of how meaningless life is without the life of Christ. He was encouraging the students not just to eat, poop, and sleep; but instead to agressively learn English and get rich. Adding ‘aquiring wealth’ to the list of things to do, didn’t seem to me to add all that much more meaning to the whole life thing.

I’ve started my third and final module at language school. Monday at the start of the day we had a huge class of 10 students. They split us into two groups of 5. Those of us who have been studying together the last two months narrowly avoided being separated.

Entrance into module 3 means an official start to my learning of the writing and reading of the Thai script. I’ve already got a bit of a start. I’m looking forward to literacy.

In other news, 60 kids from the northeast of

Thailand moved into the church on Monday. They are here for an English camp. They will be here until I leave.

I may have mentioned that in the apartment where I am staying there have been two locked bedrooms. They are no longer locked. Staying in the rooms are people my age who are here to help with the English camp. This obviously expands opportunities both for language and culture learning, and for the unintentional, but hurtful breaking of cultural rules. I’ve realized how often I’ve been wearing my shoes inside my apartment (as much as I’m a fan of being barefoot, barefoot on tile gets old).

Not only am I in danger of breaking rules as a Westerner in Thailand, I’m also in danger of breaking rules as a male unaccustomed to mixed gender environments. Modesty rules for travel between shower and bedroom change dramatically with the introduction of females. One of the two rooms has I’m still not sure how many girls in it (I’ve gone to bed before they all arrive, and left before they all get up; there are 4 mats in the room). The other room I think has 3 guys (I’m unsure for the same reasons).

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.