Things that just never happened to me in the States
Just when I was starting to feel a little more "settled in" here and like I was beginning to figure things out, I have a week of culture shock-filled experiences. Talking on the phone with Mom and Meghan tonight, they said I should start a list. Here's the beginning:
While living at home in the States, I never...
1. ...got caught in a torrential downpour, getting completely drenched as I tried to get "home" - first trying to find a taxi, then getting kicked out of an available taxi because the driver did not want to take me a mile down the road, then waiting for the bus, then walking 2 blocks back to my apartment (part of the way through ankle-deep puddles) from where the bus dropped me off.
2. ...had a string student tell me that he couldn't clip his nails right then because of his religion. [This was an Indian student - not sure what religion nor what the procedure is in that religion for clipping nails, but I let that one go and asked him to come back to class with nails short enough to be able to play the violin correctly.]
3. ...found myself by the side of a busy street with my cello standing beside me, a violin in one hand and a heavy briefcase/bag in the other, trying to hail another taxi because my first one refused to take me all the way back to my part of town. (Are you catching a pattern here with taxi and traffic issues?)
4. ...was late paying a bill because it was written in a language I can't read. [I even saw the due date written in Arabic numerals, but had no idea it said September 9, 2006 because here they write dates day/month/year and in Thailand the year is '49.]
5. ...was woken up multiple times during the course of the night by mosquitoes biting me while in my own bed, despite having sprayed myself twice with Off and attempting to cover myself completely with the sheets.
6. ...spent my entire Friday evening stuck in traffic (first in a taxi, then a bus), eating 1/2 of my fast-food dinner during the 10 minutes I stood by the side of the road trying to find an available taxi, then eating the other 1/2 in a dirty bus after I had given up on the taxi all because I accidentally left my cell phone in the first taxi I was in, losing not only my means of communication with the friends I was planning to eat dinner with downtown but also my main form of communication with everyone I know in Bangkok and their contact information, as well as my alarm clock and a large sense of security as a single woman on the streets of a large, crowded and foreign city.
7. ...had school canceled for two days in a row due to a military coup in the country in which I reside.
Are you laughing? I have to or else I'll either go crazy or cry. May the Lord sustain my sense of humor and adventure during this season of new experiences.
[I also wanted to offer my profuse apologies for not yet replying to many who have written me such wonderful emails and posted comments on this blog! I think about you all often and keep planning to write back. My weekdays are so full though and I find myself very brain-fried at the end of them due to the stress of work and, again, the newness of the culture I'm trying to learn and adjust to. Thank you for your patience!!]
Yellow Shirt Day!
[As this last picture suggests, I've been riding the bus recently. Yesterday morning I had my first "successful" bus trip - which was the way I got to church this week. : ) I discovered that it costs 8 baht to take the bus (which is generally just as fast as a taxi) to get to the MTW office/church in comparison to the 35-60 baht I was paying to take a taxi. The cheapo in me couldn't resist!]
Christmas concerts
Most of you (other than Dad, Leslie, and any of my music-educator friends) are probably wondering why I'm thinking about Christmas when September is not even over yet! Well, it's that time of year for musicians: time to pull out the Christmas music and start rehearsing for special concerts and services. Tonight I spent some time planning out my Christmas programs and how I'm going to teach the music to the kids and I got so excited! The students will soon see my excitement, as I'll be introducing them to the music later this week and the next, but I couldn't wait to share it with someone!
I'll be directing two (Elementary) Christmas concerts this year one week apart, one at each campus where I teach. For a number of reasons, I decided to pick a different musical/program for each campus and I've very excited about each. I really love the music we'll be doing (me loving the music I teach is actually pretty high on my list of criteria for concert music! My very wise co-operating teacher encouraged me to never teach a lesson or piece of music I couldn't be excited about, because if I don't like it, the kids won't either), but more than that, I'm so excited about sharing pieces of the gospel with my students throughout the next few months that we work on this music, telling them the amazing truth of what Christmas is all about. AND, I'm so excited, eager to see, and prayerfully nervous (if that makes any sense at all!) at what God might do not just in the students' hearts this Christmas, but also in their parents' hearts as they come to see their children perform. I've had these Christmas concerts on my heart actually since last Christmas and have been praying (intermittently) since then that God would do great, eye-opening, life-changing things through them. Please pray earnestly with me to that end!
At the larger campus, we'll be doing "Jesus, Light of the World," which Pinewood did a year or two before I taught there. I've very eager to get my mom's "director's notes" to it all and a copy of Mrs. Tolson's rewritten script. The musical is perfect for an international school, as it includes Christmas carols from all around the world - a few of which we'll sing (Lord willing!) in different languages too! As I was looking more closely at the words to the main, opening/closing song tonight though, I discovered that the message is more perfect than I even hoped for as I prayed for guidance while picking out this music...
Jesus, Light of the world,
hope and salvation for all the earth.
Jesus, Light of the world,
from every nation we come to celebrate your birth.
My eyes filled with tears and chills went up my spine as I read those words. He is the hope and salvation for ALL the earth! Every NATION will celebrate our Jesus! My mind imagined the ICS students, a mixture of so many different nationalities and cultures, singing those words. Wow! I remember Maria Francis praying during my commissioning at Immanuel about how I would have the "nations" in my classroom. If anything thrills me most about being here, it's that: each day, all at once in one room, I have the opportunity to reach the NATIONS with the gospel and tell them about the hope that Christ offered them as He came to earth!! The opportunity there is HUGE, the responsibility massive, the joy inexpressible! Pray that I will speak these life-giving words with clarity and that our God would WORK!
And I would take the boys...
Clint and Will: I would take you swimming in the huge pool on campus. You could play, or watch the ICS students play, soccer in the field beside the Elementary building. I would probably challenge you both to a ping-pong tournament on the open, first-floor of the middle-school building. After we had worked up an appetite, we could walk down to the corner of the soi to "my" fruit stand to buy watermelon (Will's favorite!) and pineapple (or another delicious type of tropical fruit!) for 10 baht/bag! Sometime later, I'm sure I would also take you out to ice-cream: there are ice-cream stores (Thai and American chains) everywhere!
And Dad, if you were able to be here in a few weeks, I would take you out with me and some of the other teachers to see the ballet "Carmen" performed as part of the Bangkok Arts Festival this month. (No pictures from that yet - but I'm very excited about going soon!)
More places for girls to go!
Mom, Joanna and Meghan: I would also take you out to get a massage. We could get a full body "Thai" massage or a foot massage or an "Indian head massage" (that one felt particularly good!), 1-hour, 2-hours: your choice! I know several great places and they are so incredibly inexpensive, it's hard to believe! While they are massaging, we would sip on tea and chat some or maybe just fall asleep. : ) Another day perhaps, we could get a manicure/pedicure to relax again. You guys would LOVE it! (Oh, but don't worry: we definitely would NOT get our eyelashes permed! : )
For Meghan and Joanna
Meghan and Joanna (and all my other girl/female friends!): If you were here, I would take you to "Agalico," an amazingly beautiful or "delightful" (as my friend Kim, who took me there, kept calling it) coffee/tea house. I would buy you tea or cappuccino and scones or a piece of chocolate cake (depending on what you were in the mood for) and we would sit and chat inside the very peaceful restaurant filled with interesting antiques and little tables with a vase of orchids at each. Or, depending on the time of day, we might have a full "tea" - laid out with the whole tea set and trimmings - outside in the also delightful gazebo or on an outdoor table in the lush, gorgeous gardens.
If you were here...
[These are written mainly for my family, but I thought all would enjoy seeing the pictures of places I've visited recently.]
Mom: If you were here, I would take you to the Jim Thompson house museum. We got a tour of it today and the houses and gardens were so beautiful and interesting. He was a true artist - in addition to building up the silk industry in Thailand, he was also an architect who construction this amazing house complex we visited by acquiring and relocating 6 different teak buildings (most 2 or more centuries old) from all around Thailand. He filled them with all kinds of (mostly very old!) Thai, Chinese and other Asian and European art (statues, paintings, furniture, etc.). It was all so very neat to see.
coup d'etat
As most of you have probably already heard on the news, Thailand had a peaceful, bloodless coup d'etat last night. I did not know about it until 5:00 this morning when my principal called (at the same time my alarm was going off!) to tell me that school was canceled for the day. The military declared a national "holiday" and closed all banks and schools. My principal encouraged me to stay close to "home" today and to wait for further news regarding the rest of the week.
I slept in some after she called, then got up to look online for more information, as well as read the several emails I had received from my concerned family and friends. It sounds like most of the rest of the world has more access to information than we do here. The military-controlled television stations were apparently showing pictures of the King while playing the national anthem all day (not that I even have a tv to see that!). I read about soldiers and tanks blocking off intersections downtown (and even heard about some a little closer to where I am) but I'm really not very near the action where I live, so for me the day was extremely quiet. In fact, it almost felt like Christmas day or something: the whole school and neighborhood around it was very still and there was a lot less traffic and people out and about doing business.
The "holiday" actually came at a very nice time for me personally! I'd been feeling behind in a lot of spheres and in need of a several hour block of time to plan out my 2 Christmas programs coming up, so I was able to spend a restful morning in my apartment, talking to my parents and other friends, eating breakfast with my neighbor Jen, cleaning and praying. I did do some planning in my classroom in the afternoon, then went to the MTW concert of prayer. The team has it every week, but I'm usually not able to go because of after school meetings at ICS. It was such a blessing to be with the team today. I was really feeling the need to pray with others about all this and to just be able to talk about it. The MTW team is increasingly feeling like my family here and they are probably my favorite people to spend time with, so it was a comfort and joy to be with them the rest of the day (after prayer, most of us went out to dinner).
Later in the afternoon, I got another call from my principal saying that our school was canceled again tomorrow (although I think Thai schools will be in session). Friday was already a scheduled faculty "Family Fun Day" and day off for the students, so I'm anticipating a very quiet, restful remainder of the week.
Please be in prayer for the nation of Thailand at this time. According to what I've read and heard, this is the 18th coup since WW1 and all have been very peaceful. However, I'm still a bit nervous tonight and feeling strongly that the future stability of this nation (and all of our lives) is dependent on God's work and intervention. Pray that He will grant peace during this potentially divisive time. And pray most of all that this will somehow lead to the salvation of many Thais and the building of His kingdom here.
this is the way we...go to church!
(Ok, I know - the title is a little cheesy for a blog entry, but Meghan encouraged me to keep using song names! So that one's for her! : )
Today I learned the meaning of the Thai phrase
rot dit. This morning I was leading music again for the MTW English service, and in effort to be more prepared, have time to set up, get the guitar tuned, etc. I left my apartment a little after 8:00, hoping to arrive at the office around 8:30 at the latest - a 1/2 hour before the service was supposed to start. When I got in the taxi, I told the taxi driver the name of the area where the MTW office is (
Ram Song), praying that he would both know where it was and understand my Thai accent (most of them don't). He repeated "Ram Song" (at least he understood!) but then started complaining in Thai and said "Rot dit" and knocked his fists together. I sighed and said "Mai Cow Jai" (I don't understand) and repeated the directions. He rolled his eyes, pitched a bit of a fit in Thai and proceeded down the road. We turned onto the main highway-type street that I live off of and almost immediately came to a stop in bumper to bumper traffic. He turned around, knocked his fists together again and said "Rot dit!" "Aah, traffic jam," I thought, "So
that's what he was trying to say." Well, then I was stuck; not that I really knew another way to get to the office anyway. It took us almost 40 minutes to go down the 1-2 mile stretch of
Bangna Trad (the highway), during which time I memorized verses, transposed a couple hymns, got some good looks at the little shops and businesses along the road and called Dave to let him know that I would be late. The Veldhorsts were actually stuck in the same traffic jam I was, just a little bit ahead of me.
When we got to the street where we were supposed to turn off of to go to the
Ram Song area, I asked the taxi driver to turn left ("leo sai"), at which point he pitched another fit. I had been watching motorcycle taxis coming to the rescue of many people such as myself who were stuck in taxis on the street and I wondered if it would be culturally/ethically acceptable to leave my taxi in the traffic and hop on one of the motorcyles to go the rest of the way. Well, I didn't have to wonder for long: my taxi driver practically pushed me out of his taxi towards the motorcylists when I asked him to turn onto the other street (appartently there was also a "rot dit" on that street). So I got out of the car and got on to the motorcycle. Fortunately, I did not have a guitar in tow (I borrowed the one from the office) and I had decided to wear dress pants to church this morning. My motorcycle guy and I zipped (mostly) along the edge of traffic and I was there in less than 10 minutes.
Soon after I got on the motorcycle, though, I saw a small herd (about a dozen) of water buffaloes, seemingly without human supervision, scurrying along the edge of traffic along with all the motorcycles. I couldn't help but laugh. : ) Only in Bangkok...
quotes from my students
Joon (one of my first graders): "Koreans never lose."
Me: "Oh
really?"
Joon: "Yes, we have 3 Koreans in our class and we never lose. Americans alway lose, but Koreans always win."
(This sadly proved to be true as we played a music game in class in which we counted off students and the 8th person was out. Not one of those 3 Koreans ever got out, while poor Nicholas Veldhorst was tagged 3 times!)
Last week: I have a second grade class right before lunch. Soon after I had said goodbye to them when their teacher picked them up, I went down to the cafeteria to eat and saw them also getting ready to have lunch. One boy saw me and exclaimed, with his arms spread out and a huge smile on his face, "Miss Cat-tar-in, we meet again!"
I wish I could describe to you the facial expressions and tone of voices used by each of these boys: the first with the cutest, most mischievous, competitive and yet humorous look on his face and the second speaking like an Italian man with a booming voice. They both made me laugh so much! : )
"Getting to Know You"
Last summer when I taught conversational English classes as an intern with MTW, I remember thinking it incredibly ironic that the first lesson in our textbook was entitled "Getting To Know You." During class, I started singing the song from "The King and I" and Tiffany and I got a good laugh out of it (although I don't think any of the Thai students in the class understood the joke!).
I feel like these last few weeks have really been weeks of getting to know my students. It's been very neat to begin to remember their names when I see them (although I think I've played the "name game" about a hundred times now and still have to review before each class!) and to have some of the younger ones now wave and shout across the playground "Hello, Miss Catherine" (pronounced "Cat-tar-in"). They've begun to seem more comfortable during music classes, and we've shared lots of giggles with each other. And my heart nearly skipped a beat last Thursday when one student (the first since I've been here, although a few have since) gave me a hug!
But these have not just been weeks of learning their names or faces but learning a bit about who they are and how they think. Even though we're still getting to know one another - and I especially have a LOT more to learn! - I see God starting to plant a love for these children in my heart. It's growing slowly, but I think will be deeply rooted and strong - and perhaps even as Kim said: fierce.
I'm coming to see how differently these children are being brought up from how I was raised. One thing I loved about all the kids at Pinewood was that as I looked at them, I saw myself as a child and knew exactly (for most of them) what kinds of homes they came from, what their childhood was like. But the vast majority of the kids at ICS are nothing like me as a child and they don't come from homes like I did - and I'm discovering that fact also causes me to love them. The students here seem to have so many questions, and I really love how when I ask them questions, their answers are rarely the spit-back "Sunday school" answer I'm used to hearing, but a genuine observation or thought.
For example, one thing I've been doing in class is having a "hymn of the month," using the Hymn Treasures curriculum that I brought from home. The 2nd-4th Graders are working on "This Is My Father's World". It's been so cool to see them grow to love this hymn! They were a bit skeptical at first, I think, but now I have whole classes asking me for a copy of it to take home! And I've found so many things to teach them about God in just two verses of this hymn! The first week/verse, we discussed God as Creator and Owner of all things, which many students were pretty familiar with, but while teaching the second verse (in the HT book), we were able to discuss the Fall and its affect on EVERYTHING but how God is still the Ruler and will one day be "satisfied" or happy in His victory when all things are again how He designed them to be and when all things in heaven and on earth are worshipping Him. When we talked about the second verse, I asked them if all things were "good" or perfect when God created them. I received mixed answers. We went back to the Genesis account and I quoted God on saying that each thing was good and exactly how He wanted it to be after He spoke it into existence. But then I asked them if everything they saw around them today was "good" and to share what they saw wasn't good. Here's where their answers really caught me off guard at first: several talked about pollution and trash, some talked about traffic and wrecks, a few spoke of those "people who don't have an arm or a leg and sit outside the skytrain station holding out a cup [for money]" and even one or two said that in their home country/city some moms or dads would kick their children out of the house because they didn't want them anymore. This is what these kids are seeing, this is what their hearts are wrestling with - all so very different than what was on my mind in Elementary school. But as we discussed these things, it felt almost good to hurt and struggle with them about the "wrong [that] seems oft so strong" and to remember (and share with them) that our Savior is still in control, still the Winner, the "Ruler yet." And as we sang, it was even more rich to "rest in the thought...[that] this is my Father's world, the battle is not done; Jesus, who died, shall be satisfied and heaven and earth be one."
Please pray for these students. They have very real questions and are hearing many different answers from many different sources. I started crying just thinking about it as we prayed for them in a meeting about the older Elementary chapel this year (the theme of which is apologetics and the uniqueness of Christ - in attempt to answer a lot of their questions). And please continue to pray that I would love them deeply and speak the Word to them faithfully and without error.
an indeterminate evening
In my last semester of music theory at Stetson we studied 20th century music: including 12-tone, set theory, sound mass, impressionism, expressionism - all sorts of weird, fascinating music forms that your typical audience would consider more noise than music. During that class we listened to some indeterminate or "chance" music, made popular by John Cage (but actually a method used by Mozart!) - music which is produced by rolling dice or choosing a card or even sitting in "silence" and listening to the sounds that naturally occur around you. Very interesting stuff - always different and never predictable. That's kind of how I feel like tonight was...
This evening I went out to get dinner with my friend Jen. It has been a long week, yesterday was a super long day and now on Friday night, both of us were quite exhausted and ready for the weekend. But the weariness actually made us a bit loopy tonight. Jen is a very funny, crazy person anyway - someone who always ends up making me laugh at something or the other - and somehow the combination of being with her and not exactly having an agenda as we went to get supper made for an interesting combination. (She is not, however, the best person to shop for bed-sheets with, as I discovered tonight.)
It all started when we were in the taxi, headed (slowly through the traffic) toward the mall near our apartment. Jen asked me for change to give the taxi driver when we were still down the road a bit, predicting that she would need to give him 58 baht. I asked her how she knew it would be 58 exactly. She said she just knew. I told her that if she was wrong, we were going to get ice cream. (Side note: I've discovered that I can get a small/kid-size coffee and oreo blizzard - my all-time FAVORITE combination!! - at Dairy Queen for 15 baht – that’s roundabouts 40-45 cents!) It was 57 baht. : )
Wandering in the mall, we realized that we had never discussed where exactly we would eat. She started laughing and said that she used to play a game with one of her friends back home to pick out restaurants: they'd pick a number and say they would eat at the ___th place they saw, for example the 6th place, making conditions of course as to the types of places they counted. I said, "Ok, we'll eat at the 6th place we see." We ended up at KFC, where we had some good American-ish food after having quite the time of trying to communicate with the Thai worker as to what we wanted to order. I think he must have had a headache by the time we left, and when Jen went back later to ask for straws, he acted almost afraid to see her again!
After dinner, we ended up stopping at some tables in the middle of the mall to spend probably too much money (not as much as I spent on the sheets though!) buying yellow shirts to honor the King. [Yellow is the King's color apparently and this year is his 60th anniversary as King, so the big thing is to wear yellow polos with a Thai emblem on them. Before I arrived in Thailand, one of my friends sent me an online article talking about the shortage of yellow shirts to buy in Bangkok! You see people in them everywhere - and they are worn especially on Monday, because yellow is Monday's color. I'm sure Kim has explained this much better and more accurately in her blog, which I highly recommend reading because she knows so much more about this culture than I do!!] After buying shirts, we were going to look for some stuff for school in the main department store at the mall, but while there I got distracted with looking at sheets and pillows - which I still needed to buy - and we spent about 45 minutes looking at and feeling sheets and trying out different pillows, going back and forth about what I should buy or if I should buy them at all - so much so that by the end of it, we had about 4 Thai workers laughing at us. Well, with Jen's encouragement, I ended up spending WAY too much on an amazingly beautiful set of sheets. Now, back at my apartment, I'm thinking, "Why on earth did I spend that much money on sheets?!?!" Sigh...
After another 45 minutes of wandering, we finally made it outside around 10:00 pm. That's when it really got interesting. Jen had been telling me about her bus-riding experiences and how much cheaper they are than taxis (only 8 baht/person) and how she knew that a certain number bus (38 to be specific) went right by our soi (which, by the way, is only a few large blocks down the main street from the mall - could be walkable, sort of, but not really ideal that time of night or even during the daytime). So we decided to save money (which I no longer have because I spent all of mine on sheets) and try the bus. (Did I mention the sheets were expensive? : ) We waited by the sidewalk with many other Thai people, trying to look like we knew what we were doing, as bus after bus came and left and groups of people got on and off each of them. After about ten non-"number 38" buses, I finally said, "Ok, next bus, no matter what number it is, we're getting on." She laughed at me, not thinking I was serious. But I was: all of the buses were going in the direction we wanted to go and we both knew that there were many other "numbers" of buses that stopped near our apartment, we just didn't know what they were. After Jen stopped laughing, I said, "What's the worst that could happen? If it doesn’t stop where we want to get off, we can just get off at another place and find a taxi home." She said ok.
The next bus that came was a very nice one - and a very empty one. We got on. We were the ONLY ones who got on. We sat down in the bus and Jen commented how that was the first time she had been able to actually sit on a bus because they were always so crowded. A bus-lady came up to us and asked for money to pay the fare. I gave her 20 baht for both of us. She looked confused and dissatisfied and began talking to us in Thai. We tried to ask (in Thai) how much this bus cost, but couldn't understand her answer or even tell if she understood our question. Then we tried to ask her where this bus went. After several minutes of getting nowhere, she turned to the back of the bus where a young-ish man was sitting and we all appealed to him for help. We asked him how much it cost and he said 200 baht. "200 baht?!" Jen and I looked at each other and asked him, "Where are we going?!" "To the airport" was his response. "The AIRPORT?!" (the airport is a good 45 min. to an hour away, on the complete other side of Bangkok) "Oh NO!!" The two of us began waving our arms and protesting, then practically begging for the bus driver to somehow stop right there (we were just about to pass our street) and let us off. When all those in the bus finally understood what had happened, they just laughed and laughed at us. The bus driver did have pity and pulled over, depositing us on the side of the street and letting us off with only paying 34 baht. We also laughed - most of the walk back to the apartments. That is, until I put the sheets on my bed and it hit me not only how much I had just spent on them but also that they didn’t exactly go with the color scheme I was headed with in my apartment and they were more Meghan’s style (they are EXACTLY Meghan’s style) than my own.
So tonight I learned that Bus #554 is a good option for transportation to the airport and that it really is worth it to wait and consider a purchase before buying.
