Monday morning all 64 Teach in Thailand participants took a group field trip to the Grand Temple, which Pat mentioned in the previous blog. The Grand Temple was incredible beautiful. Large statues guarded the wall of the main entrance. The exterior walls were covered with intricate paintings of warriors and battles in gold leaf. A gold dome pointed into the deep blue sky drawing our attention to the ornate and expansive grounds. Columns were covered in glittery pieces of reds, greens and blues that played with the sunlight like small mirrors. My favorite part of the trip were the sculptures of monkeys and demons posed with bent legs and bent arms. The same glittery blue, red and green mirrors pattern the bodies of the sculptures while their faces were painted like masks. We ventured shoeless into the temple of the Emerald Buddha and sat on our knees as to not point our feet at the Buddha. The interior walls were made up of painted scenes with gold leaf. As we exited the building there was a Thai taking on the tedious task of restoring the gold leaf.
Tuesday we had a full day of orientation sessions of Thai lessons, teacher training and hearing about traveling in Thailand. After our sessions we grabbed a cab and headed to a restaurant that had been recommended to us, Cabbages and Condoms. Initially I thought the name was just to draw attention, but in fact part of the income of the restaurant and gift shop goes to sex education and AIDS prevention. The décor of the restaurant was fantastic! Super heroes made of condoms greeted us at the door and led us to the dining area. Light fixtures were made of condoms and decorated in flowers made from condoms. The food was fine. I order a dish that had come highly recommended, Yum-Plau-Duk Phoo, grated, fried catfish. The meal ended up looking like a large portion of hair pulled out of the shower drain. Delicious, I know! The grated, fried catfish did not have a strong flavor, but with the addition of some dipping sauce it tasted fine. After dinner, we attempted to fight Bangkok traffic to get back towards our hotel for a Muay Thai boxing fight. The traffic was horrible, so we paid and hopped out of the taxi and headed for the SkyTrain and Metro. We made it to the stadium a bit late, but with 7 or 9 fights a night, we did not actually miss that much. (Side note: Muay Thai is a form of boxing and is the national sport of Thailand.) We bought ringside tickets and we were escorted to the fourth row back from the boxing ring. I was a bit hesitant about watching Muay Thai because I am not the violent type, but I felt that since it is the national sport and would be a cultural experience that I should go to at least one fight. Of course the boxing was violent, but in the end we only saw a little blood and only one of the fighters was hit hard enough to be escorted out in a wheel chair. The fighters wear boxing gloves, a mouth guard and very bright shorts. That’s all. No shoes, no helmet, no nothing. In the stands there are huge crowds of Thai men shouting and waving their hands betting throughout the entire fight. As the fights progressed, we were able to sit in the front row where we were actually getting hit by the sweat from the fighters. Watching the Muay Thai was fascinating! I also took plenty of pictures to share. Hopefully we will post a few to give you a better idea of the fights.
Last night Pat and I met our Foreign Language Coordinator from our school. She is absolutely wonderful! She speaks wonderful English and has a great philosophy on teaching. We asked all kinds of questions. One of us is teaching M1 (which is 7th grade) and the other is teaching M3 (which is 9th grade). We will each be teaching 10 sections twice a week so a total of 20 classes a week. We head South on Saturday with our coordinator either by bus (12 hours) or by train (14 hrs) and then we have a little over a week until school starts (November 3). We will be living about 2km from school and we will be about 45 minutes from the nearest beach.
Today we leave Bangkok for a few days of relaxation and the last part of orientation for a resort at the Bridge over the River Kiew (that may be spelled horribly wrong). We will get to ride elephants and take bamboo rafts on the river. It should be a lot of fun and then we are off to our school locations on Saturday.
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