First of the Year

"From there to here, from here to there, funny things are everywhere!"

-Dr. Seuss, One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish

Sup ya’ll. This how 2014 kicked off in Nakhon Pathom.

Till’ the Brink of Dawn

Last Tuesday night after working out, I walked over to Tesco Lotus to grab dinner. As I approached the store, I noticed EDM blasting and spotlights shooting off the roof. This doesn’t normally happen. I walked up the ramp and saw a huge party going on. There was band playing on stage and young Thais in costumes drinking out of fancy glasses.

I tried seeing if I could get in but they were taking tickets at the door. Some great stares followed me, as a white guy still sweating and wearing workout clothes looked very out of place. On my way down I passed some girls entering in Playboy Bunny costumes. I was severely underdressed.

Luckily my apartment is very close by, so I could hear Pitbull blasting all night. The music finally cut out around 1 AM. Apparently sound ordinances aren’t a thing here.

Born in the USA

As of last Wednesday, I have been in Thailand for 90 days. Wow! That’s a quarter of a year. And while I do love it here, it never quite is America. Luckily the internet exists so I’ve been able to keep up with what’s going on. Well, at least here’s what I think is going on in America.

1.      In a world where half the population is on facebook, we somehow had trouble launching a website called healthcare.gov.

2.      The Bears blew it again. Peyton Manning rocks. Gronk is still Gronk.

3.      More people seemed upset about the death of Paul Walker than Nelson Mandela. That isn’t to poke fun at either of their deaths; I just noticed more coverage on Paul Walker.

4.      Chicago looks like the set of Hoth in The Empire Strikes Back.

5.      As of last week, Chris Christie probably won’t be president in 2016.

6.      The best way to gauge public opinion of homosexuality is through Duck Dynasty.

7.      Colorado is selling weed. That’s chill.

8.      It seems that most people who don’t want to go to work on Monday/are hungover will facebook or tweet something along the lines of “On the struggle bus” or “The struggle is real.” I’m dismayed that so many people are struggling since I left. I have also yet to see anyone post, “The struggle is fake,” so I’m assuming that thess struggles are real everywhere.

9.      About half of all internet articles posted are now composed in lists. It drives me crazy. Why does every blog or article need to have a list? Can we not communicate if things aren’t in list form? People are stupid.

Boys will be boys

There are no substitute teachers at my school. When a teacher is absent, the other teachers cover their classes. This generally works out because most teachers will have a few free periods a day, so we can spread the load amongst ourselves. This day I was covering an eighth grade class.

I played a game with them called anagramania. The game is pretty simple. The class is divided into two teams. In this case, the class naturally segregated themselves into boys and girls (bless their hearts!). They came up with unique team names too, with “The girls,” and “The guys,” respectively.

A student from each team would come up to the board. I would write a big word and the students would have to come up with as many anagrams of the word as they could in two minutes.

What happened next was beautiful. The kids went nuts. Some ran up to the board, yelling words to the student with the chalk. Others grabbed posterboards to shield their words from the other team so they couldn’t copy. They were completely absorbed in this game and earnestly wanted to come up with as many English words as they could. It was pretty cool to see kids so eager to learn and having fun. #blessed

This weekend was full of grading and getting ready for midterms next week. Not too bummed about having a chill weekend, it’ll help me save money for traveling later. Another plus was that it allowed me to watch the entire first season of Hannibal. It’s a great show about Hannibal Lector that takes place before Silence of the Lambs. However it made me want to question any meat I eat from here on out. That probably isn’t good because I question most meat here anyway.

Mark