One Down, One More to Go

Friday was the last day of my first semester of teaching at an international school. The past five months were filled with ups and downs, with many frustrations from surprising and unexpected sources. The last month has been especially draining, with lots of manufactured drama coming from the high-school administrators.

First, the parenting style here has become a major source of frustration for me as a teacher. Most Thai parents are unwilling or unable to set boundaries for their children. The parents' first priority is the happiness of their children, so they don't want to make their children do anything that will make them unhappy. As a result, Thai people tend to be very relaxed parents, and most children of all ages are given a lot of freedom and decision-making power. In addition, those with money, who are used to not having to lift a finger to do anything, always have help raising their children; some of my students continue to have nannies care for them, even at 15 or 16 years of age. Some of my students are being raised by nannies, grandparents, or siblings, while their parents live elsewhere in the world, too busy with their careers and lives.

Because of the lack of boundaries and parental supervision, children of all ages get to decide what they want to do, when they want to do it, and for how long they want to do it. So this year, I've ended up with teenagers who stay up till all hours of the night making online purchases with their parents' accounts, playing video games, and chatting online with strangers; who go to bed at 3:00 in the morning and wake up at 5:00 to get to school; and who then fall asleep during class. This gaming addiction is not atypical of the kids here; I daresay at least 50 percent of students at our school spend most or all of their free time playing video games.

Then, when we ask the parents to take away their kids' devices, we're met with this response: "Oh, I can't. S/he will get mad at me." Sometimes the parents will have the nanny take away the devices instead, either because they don't want to be bothered or because they don't want their kids upset with them. The school and its teachers also should take some blame in this -- because of the parents' connections and social status (I have students who are relatives of the King), the school is afraid to cause trouble by telling the parents the truth about their children. This has been especially aggravating for me, someone who speaks her mind and feels that problems should be dealt with and not swept under the rug.

Many of the mothers are what I would consider to be trophy wives whose entire existence revolves around dressing well, looking good, and shopping. They don't want to have to do any of the hard work of parenting, and they think throwing money at a problem will solve it. For example, one student's mother was called in to the school for a meeting with me and other teachers because the student had been skipping classes and doing no schoolwork whatsoever. Instead of disciplining her son and making him take school more seriously, she is now considering sending him to a boarding school in the U.S.! If I had had low opinions of those American parents who are incapable of setting and sticking to firm boundaries, you can only imagine what I think of these Thai parents.

Exam time!

Another aspect of the culture here that frustrates me to no end is the mindset that every problem has a quick fix. This is especially frustrating when dealing with the parents of my students, who are all learning-disabled and extremely low-functioning academically: reading skills at the third, fourth, or fifth grade level; inability to write a simple, grammatically correct sentence; and some who don't even know how to add or subtract properly. Imagine having parents of these types of students come to you to ask you what their children need to do to be in the IB Diploma Programme in their junior and senior years! These are students who don't even have a clue how to write a topic sentence; my eight-year-old writes better than they do, and I'm not exaggerating. Imagine, too, that the sole focus of all of these -- and all other -- students is their grades, and how to get better grades, without a deeper understanding of what it takes to learn and get better at something. They might have good intentions of wanting to get better at certain subjects and to learn, but once they hear that it's a long-term process to get better, that it takes real, hard work, their minds are turned off, and they go off to seek another solution, usually tutoring. I have a student who has a team of tutors for each subject he takes at school -- English, math, science, grammar, and so on. He understands so little that he doesn't even understand when he doesn't understand something. His tutors are there just to help him do his work and get good grades. Even with all these tutors, though, he is a "C" student at best. But his parents just keep getting him tutors, with the thinking that enough tutoring would be able to overcome the child's learning disability.

Still, nothing tops the frustrations caused by the high school administrators and other managers at the school. First, there's the high school assistant principal. When we arrived last year, we had heard very good things about her, and thought she was a fair and supportive administrator who actually was able to get things done. This year, however, has been a very different story. She has seemingly turned into a micro-manager, treating the faculty like children, reprimanding them for little things like hanging out at the canteen during their own time before school starts in the morning. She's been giving out a completely different vibe this year, and is no longer trusted by the faculty or staff. On top of this, she also seems to be jockeying for position at the school, probably in preparation for the possibility of the principal's departure after this year. She has been taking over various positions and duties, such as the IB Programme and AP coordinators' positions, from people who have been doing it for more years than she's been here.

In the past three weeks, she and the principal also have made it their mission to make the high school part of the special education department miserable by criticizing everything we do and telling us that the entire high school has complained about us (which is completely untrue). They're also trying to chip away at the accommodations the students are "allowed" to have. My department head has been called into their office only to be screamed at and treated like an animal.

The principal did praise me for "raising the bar" for the department, and since I'm new, I'm really not part of this battle. Still, I am part of the department and stand by my colleagues. I wanted to speak out and tell them off, but for the sake of the other teachers and my son (who's in the principal's wife's class at the elementary school), I didn't, though I made it known in other ways that I disagree with what they're doing and their "leadership."

Then there's the administrator for the Pupil Services office, who is a school psychologist and with whom my department works closely when it comes to testing students and placement in the special education program. He has terrible communications skills and has the unique "talent" of saying a lot of words without saying anything at all. He also never responds to or follows up on any emails with questions about students or requests for advice. It has been extremely frustrating for me to have to rely on him to provide services to my students.

Given all this, we've thanked our lucky stars that we made the decision we did to leave the school next year. But it's really given me an appreciation for our school system back home, all the department heads and administrators my husband and I have worked with there, and -- as flawed as they are -- the laws we have in place in the U.S. to protect the rights of students!

Christmas Loot

Now that it's the last week of the semester before school lets out for the holidays, gifts from students and parents are coming in. I've received gifts ranging from expensive baked goods from the shop of a luxury hotel (the least expensive room there costs $500 a night) to a chicken-shaped basket full of eggs. In the meantime, my husband receives gifts such as flowery, pretty, scented candles, and chocolates. Always interesting, always amusing.

Because most of these presents are not to our taste, and we don't want to lug them home or throw them out, or because there's just too much for us to use up before we leave for the holidays (like the eggs), we've decided to give them away to the janitorial staff at school, our cook, and our maid. We're not giving them to the school secretaries because they are all actually very wealthy and well-connected, and little gifts like these might insult them (they wouldn't say that to our face, of course). The people we give these things to will appreciate the gesture and know how to make use of the gifts. We already gave the basket of eggs to our maid, who has three little kids at home and is the sole earner in her household of five, and our cook got the tamarind juice concentrate because she probably knows how to use it in her cooking. 

Tamarind juice concentrate.

Very expensive cookies that tasted horrible.

A chicken full of eggs! Apparently, all these eggs are double-yolked. Former teachers of this student also received the same present in previous years, so her family must own a chicken farm or something.

Handiwork of my son's? No, these are made by a 16-year-old student for me and my husband. 

Different "flavors" of hand lotions from Crabtree & Evelyn.

These are the kinds of presents my husband has been getting: scented candles and a diffuser with scents and pretty candles. From his male students.

Getting My Work Visa: "Fun" at Thai Immigration and 12 Crazy Hours in Singapore

Back in July, I wrote about spending part of my summer at home chasing down paperwork just to prove I am who I say I am, and having to change my visa so I can work here. Well, for part of the past two weeks, I had been dealing with the second part of this process -- changing my visa status, and it's been time-consuming, frustrating, expensive, and stressful as hell.

I had known since day one of this job that I would be required to leave Thailand at some point just to change my visa status at a Thai embassy in another country. What the Human Resources office failed to inform me last year (and there are so many of those moments!) was that, in order for me to change my visa status, I first needed to cancel the multiple-entry permit I had purchased at the end of last year so I could re-enter the country with a single-entry permit. The reason I was given for this requirement was that the re-entry permit was attached to my spousal visa, and couldn't be transferred to my new work visa. And there were no refunds either. I had paid hundreds of dollars for that multiple-entry permit, having anticipated traveling to other countries multiple times this year! Knowing how incompetent the HR staff could be and how lacking in knowledge they are, I checked multiple times that the cancellation of my re-entry permit was a necessary step in this process.

So the plan was for me to be able to use that multiple re-entry permit during our October break, when we went to Japan, and I was to go to the Thai immigration office to cancel the permit after the trip. But there was always one crisis or another with my students, so I never got around to it. Weeks went by, and I thought that maybe I could get away with keeping my current visa status and multiple-entry permit since I had already worked for four months without doing a thing! Finally, a couple of weeks ago, HR told me I needed to take care of this because they needed to apply for my work permit before our upcoming December break.

So last Thursday, the day before the King's birthday holiday, I went with an HR staff member, and a student who also had a visa issue, to the Thai immigration office. What was supposed to be a quick trip turned out to be 5 1/2 hours of agony and mindlessness, causing me to miss an entire work day. And that didn't even include the almost-two-hour drive to get there (without traffic, it would've taken less than an hour).

The entire experience reminded me of the horrors of visiting the motor vehicles department back in the U.S., only multiplied by at least 100. It was even set up the exact same way: you get a number, get in queue, and wait until your number is called to go to a particular "station." I was number 12, which came up only about 10 minutes after our arrival. Great, I thought. Before I could move, however, the accompanying HR staff member came to me and informed me that HR had made a mistake: it was not my multiple re-entry permit that I needed to cancel, but my spousal visa! Really?! They didn't think to double-check during the four months I had been asking them about which document to cancel?! And surely this wasn't the first time they had to deal with this! Because of this mistake, he had brought the incorrect documents for me! So, he informed me, someone from HR was to draw up the correct documents and bring them over to the immigration office! We could be there for hours! Yippee.

So we waited. And waited. Along with at least 70 or 80 others. To make the wait even longer, the immigration office closed at noon, when everyone was ordered to leave and not to return for an hour. Right before the office closed at noon, the HR staff member finally received new documents for me via email, printed them out at a nearby copy center, and submitted them to the Thai immigration officers for review. Just as my papers were getting reviewed, we were booted out.

When we returned an hour later, we had to wait around for another hour or so until the head honcho returned and could sign off on the cancellation. Yup, waited an hour just for a damn signature. Then we waited another hour while the student waited for a signature as well. It really was bureaucracy at its worst. It was horrible to be waiting in a dreary building all day. I was so glad when we were done with that part of the ordeal.

Then, yesterday (Wednesday), I went to the Thai embassy in Singapore to get my visa status changed. The original plan was for my family to go with me, stay overnight, and sightsee a little while I was waiting on my visa status change. Alas, it was not to be since my son fractured his arm and couldn't fly with a cast on, so I decided to get my visa status changed and fly home on the same day. Earlier in the week, I had double-checked with the HR office to make sure I had all the documents I needed to change my visa. I was told I was all set.

I was originally scheduled to fly out at 7:00 that morning, but someone from HR told me I had to submit my paperwork to the embassy by 10:30 a.m. to get my visa on the same day, so I paid extra money to change my flight to the 6:00 a.m. flight, which would arrive in Singapore at 9:30 a.m. Singapore time (one hour ahead of Bangkok). Well, we didn't even start boarding until almost 6:00 a.m., so the flight arrived about 10 minutes late. Between that, immigration and customs (which was quick, thank goodness), a quick stop in the bathroom, exchanging currency at the airport, and waiting for a taxi, I didn't even get on the road until almost 10:00! I arrived at the embassy right at 10:30. But my heart sank when I walked in -- there was a line a mile long for visas.

I didn't get to the counter until after 11:00. I explained who I was because someone from HR at school supposedly had notified the embassy that I was to be there that day. The lady reviewed the paperwork I was given by the school HR office. I was asked if I had already filled out a visa application and if I had passport-sized photos with me -- two items that HR had told me they would (but obviously failed to) provide, so the answers would be "no" and "no". She asked me to get my photos taken, as well as make copies of my marriage certificate, my return airline ticket to Bangkok (to show that I was, indeed, returning there after getting my visa), and my transcript (she couldn't make copies for me with the copier right behind her!?). She told me about a mall a block away that had a photo booth and a copy center, and instructed me to return to the embassy with those items.

I ran to the mall and located the photo booth almost immediately. I stepped inside and realized it took only dollar coins. So I ran to the convenience store next to it and bought something small just to get change. But the cashier there didn't have enough dollar coins for me, so I grabbed the bills she gave me and ran next door to a hardware store to get dollar coins. Finally, I got my photos taken, located a copy center, and made copies. Yes!

I ran back to the embassy about 10 minutes later, at 11:35, and asked the guard to let me in. He looked at me, looked at his watch, and said, "No, you're too late!" What?! He said he had been instructed not to let anyone in after 11:30. I looked at him, dumbfounded. I reminded him I had just left 10 minutes earlier, when he told me where to go to make copies. He again repeated that the embassy was closed and I couldn't return until THE NEXT DAY! I explained that the lady inside had specifically told me to return to the embassy with the requested copies and photos, but the guards were adamant that they couldn't let me in because they had not received a phone call to allow anyone back in. I asked them to call inside, but they wouldn't. Finally, because I was in such utter disbelief over what was happening, so exhausted after having been up since 3:00 a.m., and so stressed after rushing around, I just burst into tears in front of these strangers (first in my lifetime)! I just couldn't believe what had just happened! I was thisclose to getting everything done and now I had to wait a whole other day?! I didn't even have a place to stay that night and I was scheduled to return to Bangkok that night!

Desperate, I stayed and begged and pleaded with them to call inside the embassy so they could see I was telling the truth. What did I have to lose? I had already humiliated myself by crying like a little baby, so what was more groveling going to matter? The guards finally relented and called inside to check if I was allowed back in. Within a few minutes, the lady who had reviewed my documents came out to fetch me. Then she reviewed my documents again, which literally took less than a minute, took my S$100 for the visa, and gave me a receipt to return at 2:00 p.m. Seeing the embassy hours on the receipt, it was then that I realized that the embassy was open only from 9:15 to 11:30, and from 2:00 to 3:00, every day! How's that for inconvenience? It would've been nice had someone told me that.

Singapore from a taxi:

From 11:30 to 2:00, I hung out in the mall next door. I had planned on taking in some sights, but after the morning I had had, I was spent and wanted nothing more than just to sit and zone out. At least I was able to indulge in my favorite pastimes -- people watching and reading -- for hours. I realized that of the different groups of people of the world I have observed and interacted with so far in my life, the Thai people seemed the most happy and relaxed; the Malaysians seemed subdued, but relaxed; the Vietnamese people seemed aggressive and sneaky; and the Singaporeans seemed like Americans -- harried and stressed.

I also wandered around the mall a little bit. At some point, I wandered down a small, quiet side corridor in the mall. Immediately after turning down this corridor, I encountered a row of shops with scantily clad women sitting in front of each shop! The ladies giggled when they saw me, and said something in a language I didn't recognize. At the end of the corridor, I saw a shop with a huge, blinking, neon sign advertising "sex" inside. I had apparently wandered down "prostitutes' corridor"! Oops!!

At 2:00 p.m. on the dot, I returned to the embassy, and of course, my visa and passport were ready for pickup. I was so glad I had stuck around and persisted in convincing the guards to let me back in since the embassy was obviously able to get my visa ready with such short notice.

Afterwards, instead of sightseeing, which I was not in the mood for, I decided to head back to the airport right away to see if I could bump up my flight home, originally at 10:45 p.m., to an earlier flight. The airline wouldn't allow flight changes with less than two days' notice, though, so I had to stick around until boarding time at 10:05. But at least the Singapore airport wasn't the worst airport to be stuck in. It had public desktop computers and free internet access, a movie theater, an outdoor garden, a swimming pool, a cactus garden, a spa, a children's play area, a family fun area, lounges, restaurants, beautiful holiday displays, and high-end shops galore. I walked around and browsed for quite some time, check out the outdoor garden (which was underwhelming, but what can you expect from a garden at an airport?), sat and read, ate, and people watched some more. I quite enjoyed having all that time to myself and being able to just relax.

Then I decided to check my work email. The first email I saw was from the school's HR office to the Thai embassy (copying me and a few other HR staff members), stating that I had forgotten some required documents when I left Thailand that morning, and asking them to consider the documents as attachments to the email instead of the originals. I could feel my blood pressure rising again. I had specifically asked them prior to my departure if I needed additional documents and was told no, but now I was getting blamed for their incompetence! I couldn't let it go after the day I had had. I responded to all that it was interesting to see this email considering that I had been told explicitly that all the documents I needed were already with me. Of course, no one responded to that email! At this point, I don't even care if there are repercussions for speaking out and making everyone lose face; I've had it with their incompetence and inability to do anything right. This is what happens when people have the positions they do because of their connections and relatives and not because of any actual qualifications they have.

But now it's over, and I've got my visa. Let's just hope they don't botch our paperwork when processing us for our separation from the school next year!

Look at all that's available at the airport! 

Children's play area. 

The outdoor garden with a walkway to walk up on to watch planes.

Holiday display.

Holiday display.

Yup, holiday display.

One more.

Beautiful orchids at the airport.

I loved the indoor gardens at the airport.

Fun with Depth

It's been an interesting weekend filled with fun, mystery, and intrigue, but more on the latter two later. This post will be about the fun. Because we had an appointment way downtown on Saturday afternoon, we decided to slowly make our way there by first spending the morning doing something fun by checking out Art in Paradise, or the 3D Museum, in Bangkok.

Originally started in Pattaya, followed by another one in Chiang Mai, the Bangkok branch opened in February of this year on the fourth floor of a shopping mall (what in Bangkok isn't located in a mall?). The intricate art in the museum was created by thirteen Korean artists and is presented in a three-dimensional format, allowing viewers to be a part of it. Markers on the floor indicate the best angles from which to take photos for the best 3D effect. There are also photos demonstrating which poses work best with each scene.

We had a lot of fun with the art and the scenes, trying for different, silly poses. Even my son, who usually doesn't like being in the spotlight, asked to pose in every scene and made sure we took photos of all of his poses. It was a good thing we had such a relaxing morning because our afternoon appointment would turn out to be of a more serious and darker nature. As with most of daily life in Thailand, even a mundane event such as a meeting can turn into a fascinating story.

Thanksgiving in Thailand, Year Two: Same Same, but Different

Our Friendsgiving celebration this year began much like last year's celebration -- dinner on Thanksgiving night with the same group of friends at the same restaurant we went to last year, It was another year with good food and good company. This year was a little different, though, knowing that this was to be our last Thanksgiving with these good friends, at least for a while. We all talked about how we would visit each other (they are all from the West Coast, but staying on for at least one more year, and one of them actually has relatives living in the small town in Connecticut where my husband grew up!), and our hopes that we will all be reunited someday in yet another part of the world. It was bittersweet, to say the least, and really underscored for me how little time we have left with these friends.

That dinner was where similarities with last year ended, however. We had been invited to Thanksgiving dinner on Saturday by a family that we had met a couple of months ago while out at dinner with friends, but due to unforeseen circumstances, we weren't able to make it to the dinner. [We met this family because they had been seated at the table next to ours at the restaurant, and the mom of the little boy at their table struck up a conversation with me when she overheard that my son has the same name as hers. It turned out that her husband is the son of someone who used to work at our school (though he himself never attended our school)! They had been living in Saudi Arabia for the last seven years, and had just moved to Thailand to be closer to her family (she's half Thai and half Welsh, and grew up in Scotland).]

Here's what happened: On Friday morning, before school began, my son hurt his arm after his hands slipped on the monkey bars at school. His teacher found him sitting alone on a chair crying quietly (there were no other adults around, which was unusual) and took him to the school clinic. Then she found me and my husband, who went to check on him. He soon realized that my son wasn't really able to move his left arm, which was the arm he fell on. The nurse advised us to take him to the hospital for an X-ray. One of my son's P.E. teachers offered to alert one of the school's van drivers to take us, and one of the school nurses offered to accompany us. Other teachers, parents of his classmates, and school administrators came to check on him. It's in these moments, when we need it most, that the school community comes together and is at its best, and makes me feel nostalgic about leaving it. If only it could be like that at other times as well.

So it turned out that my son had a small fracture near his elbow. The doctor put a splint on him and made an appointment for the next weekend for a cast to be put on. Throughout all this, my son was very brave and only cried out when the radiology technicians moved his arm to X-ray it. He was curious about his injury, looking at the X-rays intently along with me, the doctor, and nurses, and asking questions. He watched closely as the splint was placed on his arm. It was a whole new experience for him. He had watched with curiosity when friends at school with casts had gotten people to write on their casts, and he relished the thought of being able to do the same.

We went home after going to the hospital, and we hung out, played, had lunch together, and read stories together. He figured out how to do things with just one hand, and joked about how dirty his left hand will be after weeks of being left unwashed. He was in a great mood that entire day, despite the discomfort of the splint. That night, however, was a different story. He, being a belly sleeper, was unable to get comfortable with his left arm in such an awkward position. We tried everything -- different positions, with different numbers of pillows, etc. etc. I ended up sleeping with him that night, which meant that I didn't get much sleep either. To make matters worse, my husband and I became afflicted with some stomach virus within half an hour of each other during the night, and took turns visiting the bathroom multiple times that night.

When we woke up Saturday morning, I felt like I had been hit by a truck. I was exhausted and sick. We had had an appointment downtown later that day that we had to reschedule. And we certainly didn't feel like socializing or spreading whatever we had to anyone else, so we also had to cancel the Thanksgiving dinner with our new friends. The only one who was chipper as usual was my son, despite his lack of sleep. He was his usual energetic self, playing and talking non-stop. Meanwhile, my husband and I sat limply on the couch, seemingly half dead and unable to muster up enough energy to even blink. It was really quite pathetic.

Luckily, we all began to feel better later on Saturday, and I figured out a solution for my son to sleep a little better that night, so Sunday was a better day. We were able to go to lunch with a friend and enjoy a little dessert. Still, I hope his arm heals quickly, so we can all get back to our normal routine, and he can participate in physical activities again!