The Fall of the Thai Language Barrier

Even Ronald McDonald speaks Thai here... I'm DOOMED!

Many Thai people outside of downtown Bangkok do not speak good English.  It is even more pronounced in Mahachai, the town where the school I teach is located.  Though English studies are mandatory in every school in Thailand, it does not universally produce oral fluency.  I find that many Thai people can read and understand several words and sentences in English, but carrying out conversation is very challenging.

Though its hardly worth mentioning, I was quick to discover these facts.  And because I like to communicate with people and be friendly, I found myself up against a very formidable barrier when trying to accomplish much of anything in my day-to-day life: from teaching to shopping to asking for directions -- even just being friendly.  Smiles and hand motions only go so far :)

Since the first day I arrived here, I've made it a point to learn new words and phrases on a daily basis.  Just about 6 or 7 weeks ago, I decided to take on learning their alphabet.  It looks like this:

In case you haven't noticed, it looks absolutely nothing like English or any Latin-based language.  The Thai language derived from Old Khmer Script.  According to tradition, the Thai script was created in 1283 by King Ramkhamhaeng The Great.  The above are just the consonants.  Whereas English has its 5 vowels as part of the alphabet, Thais consider the consonants their alphabet.  There are a total of 44 consonants.  Outside of this are the 32 vowels.  They look like this (4 are hardly used anymore and are omitted below):

Vowels are placed to the left, above, to the right and below consonants, depending on which vowel it is.  To a foreigner, like myself, this is highly confusing.  We are so used to reading left to right.  And while Thai is read from left to right, you kind of have to recognize what's above, underneath and to the side while reading.  It definitely makes the learning process very interesting!

I decided to take on my studies on a gradient.  I taught myself how to write the Thai numbers, 0 through 10, though the customary Arabic numerals are what's commonly now used here.  After that I took on the 44 character alphabet.

Each character has a sound, then an associative word that uses that sound.  This helps differentiate characters within the alphabet, because despite there being 44 characters, there's actually only 20 unique sounds.  There are 4 different characters that make the sound "K", for example.  The first character is read "Gau Gei", however it is a soft "G" sound, which almost sounds like a "K".  The "Gei" means chicken.  So this character is associated with the word for chicken.

Then there is the issue of tones, voice pitches when reading the character.  There are 3 classes: high, mid and low.  These classes affect the way you say the character when read independently and read within a word.  This is the brick wall I'm currently running up against now.  I can now write, read and say each of the 44 characters, but sometimes my tone is not correct.

Okay, enough with all the didactic gibber jabber.  I'll spare you... for now.  This is a video of me writing and reading each of the characters in the Thai alphabet.  Enjoy.

For the record, I entirely taught myself this alphabet.  I downloaded videos from YouTube, watched them constantly and practiced writing each character until my hand went into a full-on, catatonic, carpel tunnel stasis.  But it was fun and I was always kept at high interest.  I enjoyed approaching Thai friends, showing them my new-found skill.  Their astonishment that I was learning, and getting it right, was real motivation to keep going.

An easy way I remembered each of characters in their proper sequence was through a YouTube video I found.  It's a narrative about a cute little rooster that is trying to find out why Mr. Sun did not rise when he was supposed to.  The story takes you through every associative word of the complete alphabet.  So when I think of the order of the characters, I go through the story in my head.  Because its all in Thai, I wrote a little script for it, according to what I thought was going on.  Check out the video.

Even if you can't understand what's being said, it's still very well done and very cute.

I am now learning each of the vowels.  I can read and write about 8 of them now.  For the last few weeks, I've been studying 3 hours a week with one of the Thai teachers from my school.  I am putting together words and sentences, which is really cool.  I am constantly trying to read the signs when I drive around, which is probably not the safest idea.

This past week I wanted to learn a few new goofy phrases.  It's always fun meeting new Thai people and saying something totally random to them.  I always love their reaction.  Here's a video of "Important Thai Phrases."  Enjoy.

That's all for now.  I hope to be well-versed in writing and reading in the next 3 to 4 months.  So hopefully you'll see a blog some time from now where I'm carrying on whole conversations and reading long, complex, bombastic dissertations, all in Thai :)

I'll leave you with some random pictures from around Thailand over the last several weeks.

Thanks for reading!

March of the Penguin Suit

That's me.  Donned in dapper.  Dressed to kill.  Turning heads and saving lives.  Well...maybe not the saving lives part.

But you guessed it!  I'm in a tuxedo, or as some Thai people call it: a "body suit."

Every year in the month of June there is a big parade/procession in the town the school is located, Mahachai.  All of the schools, programs and even some companies in the province of Samut Sakhon march through the streets to promote themselves and celebrate.  The streets are endlessly lined with locals: from 6-month-old babies to 85 year old grandma's.  Everyone and their mother -- and grandmother -- is there.

I was informed about a week before that this was happening and that I would be fitted for a tuxedo.  First I was told that I would be modelling.  I got the idea it was some kind of catwalk or something indoors.  NO.  Then I found out it was going to be outside in the late afternoon.  That was some kind of misunderstanding on my part because just the day before I discovered that, not only would it be outside, it would be at 2pm in the afternoon on one of the hottest days of the year!  And I'd be walking 10 kilometers (approx 6.2 miles) to boot!!

The cherry on top was when I was told, "Oh, and the teacher who did it last year passed out from heat exhaustion -- AND HE WAS FROM KENYA."  What??!!!  If a Kenyan can pass out from this heat, I'm SCREWED!

Nevertheless, being the trouper that I am, I carried through.

That morning we had to drill the formation and who was doing what exactly.  This is me thinking of what's to come...

The school wanted me at the very front of the formation.  They had one of their Thai teachers dressed in traditional attire, me in my "traditional" attire (if you consider a tux Anglo-American traditional) and a Chinese teacher.  Behind us were the signs and most of the faculty.  Tyler 1 joined in the ranks and took most of the pictures throughout the day.  Gotta give him props.

We arrived at a large temple lot where everyone was waiting to start.  Let me stress again: IT WAS HOT.  The heavy, non-breathing, black tux only exacerbated the already wonderful warmth I was feeling.

Here's a video that shows you how lively it was in preparation for the parade.  You really get the contrast between me and local culture.

When Tyler 1 and I got there, we were greeted by the management and faculty.  Being that they never see a foreigner in a tux, I was quite the showcase.  Everyone wanted their picture with me.  The students.  The dean and manager.  The Thai teachers.  The Chinese teachers.  It was celebrity status.

There was an old temple right behind us.  After entering, we were warmly greeted by a friendly, young monk. He showed us around a little and we got a picture with him.  It's hard to tell, but he's smiling -- it's a humble smile.

From inside the temple.  They had all this great natural light coming through.

Then "The March" started.  And while it didn't end up being 10 kilometers, it was still a hellavu trek.  Fortunately, there are assistants constantly handing you wet towels, water, electrolytes and all manner of food and candy, so you definitely stay fueled.  It was really an experience.  Here are some shots from along the journey.

Heading out into the street.

There were all kinds of cool sights throughout the day. 

Here was a group of women in traditional attire.  Look closely.  The woman in the foreground clearly likes her watermelon. 

Throughout the 2-3 hours of walking, Thai people were constantly saying hello, waving, greeting me with smiles.  They were all extremely amicable.  I was constantly bombarded with heavily-accented "Hello!", "I love you!", "Good afternoon teacher!"  And when I acknowledged them, they would get giddy with glee.  It was hysterical. 

Tyler 1 shot a video of me about 2 hours into the walk.  I was definitely feeling it. 

It did finally end.  Needless to say, I was drenched in my own sweat and my feet were on fire.  Boy did it feel good to get out of that tux.  

The school was grateful and said I could take a 3-week paid vacation for my dedicated service -- NOT.  I wish.  It definitely was great promotion for the school though.  They were very pleased to have us and were happy that I didn't pass out.  I felt pretty good.  I lasted longer than a native Kenyan.  I must have good blood :)

Here are some other shots from throughout the day.  

Hope you enjoyed.  Until next time!

3 Months in Thailand -- and Counting!

Well folks, as of today, I have officially been in Thailand for 3 months.  That's 12 weeks.  90 days.  2,160 hours.  And here I am -- still kickin' -- to tell the stories.

As promised in my last blog post, I've got some more videos and pics from the school where I work, Samchaiwitaedsuksa.

Here's a video of just one of my Grade 1 classes (all age 6) holding up their new English books.  Per our program, every student gets their own book to study with.  They love the classes and are learning very quickly.  Because we have two Teacher Tylers at the school, I am called "Teacher Tyler Song" which means Teacher Tyler #2.

This is one of my Grade 2 classes holding up their new books.

This is another one of my Grade 2 classes walking into my classroom.  You can hear me doing the Star Wars theme song.

This is one of my Grade 3 classes.  I was taking a random video before class and some of them caught on.  They loooove the camera :)

These are some of the high-schoolers.  Tyler 1 teaches them but I'll pop in sometimes during break and say hi. This particular class are all very good students.

I'll usually play a few games with every class.  With the Grade 1 kids, I have this game where they have to respond to a command.  It's boys against girls.  A boy and a girl come up, then I say a command and the first one to respond correctly gets a point.  The first gender to 10 wins!  They absolutely love it every time.  Here's a video of the final match.

Two weeks ago they had "Teacher Respect Day".  This is basically where the kids spend 3 hours wai'ing and showing respect to the heads of the school.  All the kids get together in the auditorium and the each class systematically gets on stage and pays their respects.  As you can see, it's just a sea of black haired kids.

Some of the kids on stage.

Because my 3 months was coming up, I needed to renew my visa.  I had to go to Cambodia to do this.  I went with about 15 other people who all needed new visas.  We were at the Cambodia/Thailand border for two nights, most of which was spent hanging out in or around the hotel while the visa run staff took care of the paperwork for us.

I befriended a cool group of Filipinos that came along.  They invited me to eat with them at a Filipino restaurant that also had karaoke.  It was a blast.  This is us.

And of course, I just had to break out the Frank Sinatra.  Oh, I sang to my hearts content and they frickin' loved it.  This is me in the moment whilst singing "My Way".  Franky would be proud.

That's it for now.  It has been a great experience being here.  The people, the culture, the food, the language, the stories.  You don't get this anywhere else, my friends.

Until my next blog post!

The Halls of Samchai School

In the halls and classrooms of the vibrant school of Samchaiwitaedsuska lie books, pencils, whiteboards and... insanely hyper Thai children. 

The Samchai school is a private school located in the Samut Sakhon province of Thailand.  It is near the ocean and is about a 45 minute to an hour drive out of Bangkok.  It teaches from kindergarten all the way through high school.  The school has approximately 1,000 students.  And as of mid-May this year, they have a smoking English program!

Consisting of two Americans (both coincidentally named Tyler) and a dynamic language program, this school is rockin and rollin' with a fantastic amount of A to Zs, not to mention every letter in between.

The Learning Space program, the one's I work for, were approached by Samchai in desperation to put in a successful English program.  Every school in Thailand is required by the government to teach 3 languages: Thai, English and Chinese.  Each school will have a corp of Thai teachers, Chinese teachers and English teachers.  Samchai was severely lacking good English teachers and a good curriculum to teach.  One indication of which can be seen in this picture -- a banner hanging in the school:

It reads, "Academic Strength Have Morality Leading in Language to Widen Your World."  They've got some solid words in there, but not necessarily the best grammatical syntax.

So after a few months, and the advent of a fresh new school year, we rolled in there with our program to pave the way to a bright, English-speaking future!

Here are some shots of the school.

The admin building.

The hallway of the second floor, where I teach.

The school has everything it needs.  There's a full-size soccer field, an outside basketball court, a kid swimming pool, an Olympic-size swimming pool, auditorium, cafeteria, movie theater room, music room, computer room and plenty more.

The kid pool.

The Olympic-size pool, which I swim in from time-to-time.  I'm starting to perfect my butterfly and breast stroke!

And they are building some kind new structure on the property.  I'm not quite sure yet what it's going to be. 

The staff are very friendly and the kids are freakishly friendly.  I am constantly mobbed before, after and between every class by kids of every age.  Yesterday I literally had 5 kids grabbing onto me pulling me in 5 different directions.  One of them likes to cling onto my leg as I walk.

Here are some of my students.  They are soooo cute!

I always poke this little guy in the belly when I see him. 

These are my grade 1 kids, fresh out of kindergarten.  They've got their English books and they're all ready for action!

Except this little guy.  He was a little sleepy before class...

Before my grade 4 class the other day, I told them to lick their elbows, which as everyone knows is impossible -- but not these guys. They went for it -- haha!

These are some of the kids during our afternoon break.

I still have so much more to say and many more photos and videos.  I think I'll put them in my next post.

Signing off for now.  Thanks for reading!

Life's a Beach: Part 2

Completely beat and burned -- but happy.  That's how I felt after a full day on Hua Hin beach.  Part 1 covered our arrival to Hua Hin and the following day.  Now it's on to a little beach night life.  

Before it hit nighttime, we enjoyed a nice dinner at this little outside restaurant on a cliff of the beach.  You looked out at the ocean while you ate.  The three of us all got fruit smoothies, which were absolutely amazing. 

Just before sitting down, we passed a woman with an amazingly cute little puppy.  It must have only been 6 weeks old.  It was just so small.  I don't even know what kind of dog, but I couldn't resist taking a video.  

The night was highly entertaining.  There are bars, cafes, massage parlors and restaurants one right after the other.  They go on endlessly.  They all had 3 or more Thai people (usually women) outside smiling and saying "Welcome" as you walk by.  The humor we found in this was the fact that we hadn't even entered their establishment, so "Welcome" was really not the right word.  But that is what every single one of them -- one for one -- would say as we walked by.  We just smiled and nodded.

Amanda told us there was a foot spa around where little fish eat the dead skin off your feet.  I had been hearing about this for weeks so we were determined to find the spot.  And of course we did. 

These are the little buggers.  The lighting in this particular picture makes it look like something out of the movie Aliens. 

Tyler Capp and I decided to give it a go.  Amanda had done it before in Cambodia.  You stick both feet in and they swarm you, nibbling away like you were dinner.  At first, its an intense tickling sensation.  You look down and there are fish sucking away at your feet.  It takes some getting use to.  We did it for 15 minutes.  

This video pretty clearly demonstrates what we were going through the first few minutes -- haha!

Again, highly entertaining.  But that's just the tip of the iceberg.  Tyler had been talking about me and Amanda eating our first bug.  He had done it before so he was insisting we do it that night.  And lo, we happened to stumble upon a delectable fried bug cart.  They had crickets, water locusts and a few different others.  

Yummy.  Bug photos courtesy of Tyler Capp. 

As you can see, some of them were HUGE, so we left it at crickets for our first go.  It was a momentous occasion so we of course had to capture it frame by frame.  The three of us have seen this video over and over again and laugh every time.  The contrast between our faces is priceless. 

At the end there I say "Aloy mak mak" which means "Very good taste."  

The taste wasn't actually that bad.  Amanda's reaction is more towards the fact that she has just ingested a once-living, creepy, crawly insect.  An hour or so later, while playing pool in a bar, we had the opportunity to eat another small bug.  It was some form of larvae.  And it wasn't half bad , though I don't think I'll be making them a regular snack.

We polished the night off with more pool -- a lot more actually.  I was totally on that night.  I must have played 10 or 15 games.  When the waters flowin', don't bring the beavers.  That's what I say. 

We ate a nice breakfast near the water the following morning.  It was another pretty day so we couldn't resist taking more photos.  I'll leave you with a few of them...

Thanks for reading!  See ya next week!