"Mai Bpen Rai"

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Yesterday for the first time, I lost my "mai bpen rai" attitude -- the attitude that allows the Thais to be calm and cool about everything and never ever to show anger or irritation or anything other than happiness on their faces. Up until yesterday I have been so good! When they tell me things at the last minute, or we are late for something, or we don't do something we planned to do, or ANYTHING, really, I have just smiled and accepted it.

But since I am leaving the school on Wednesday, I had started going into "intense-planning" mode and so by noon yesterday I had planned out every minute of my last 2 days here. Last night I was supposed to go to the market to buy gifts for the other English teachers, go to the Internet cafe to find the last bits of information I needed before sending off my transfer credit application form to the U of T, find a store where I could buy a Swiss Army Knife, and decide which clothes I would send home and which I would keep with me for the rest of the time here. I also planned to practice my goodbye speech for tomorrow, which I will be doing all in Thai and so I'm a little nervous.

But as we were eating lunch, one of the teachers said to me, "Oh, Dawn, we have to go to Ubon Ratchathani tonight because the director's father is sick. We have to visit him."
I replied, "Who has to go?" because sometimes when the Thais speak English it's hard to tell who they are referring to.
"All of us!" she said.

I, in a moment of not thinking before speaking, said "WHAAAAAT??" in a slightly screechy voice 😊 "WHY?"

They all looked completely stunned and didn't know how to respond. "I mean, you don't have to..." Pee Orathai said, sounding afraid of me.

I immediately covered over my response and said, "No, no! Everything is fine. I'm so sorry. Yes, of course, we must go to visit his father tonight." And everyone looked relieved and happy again. But if you remember, Ubon Ratchathani is 3 hours away, and I don't even know this man! I barely know the director of our school! Pee Orathai assured me that none of the teachers knew him, but that it was Thai culture to go and visit anyone from any of the teachers' families if they were sick.

So immediately after school, we began to drive, and I couldn't even practice my speech because the car was full of chattering Thai teachers. We went, saw the old man (he was sleeping), and then left. We got home at about 11:30 and I was slightly afraid that I would never be prepared to leave on Wednesday.

But everything seems to always work out for the better! Today Pee Ong showed up at the door (surprise!) and she said, "Dawn, I'm going to Si Saket for the day for a conference. Pee Anothai will take over your classes. You can come with me and use the internet and buy a phone card and a bus ticket and we will go to the post office."

At that moment, I was making chocolate chip mango pancakes for Pee Orathai (she had never tried pancakes and when we were in Ubon I found some pancake mix in a foreigner-oriented store). So I said... ummm... five minutes? I milked the Thai system of time so that I had about 20 minutes to clean up and get dressed and now here I am in Si Saket! Crazy how things happen here.

It is so sad that I have to leave these students just when I was starting to get to know them. They were so shy at first and now some of them will find any excuse to talk to me! They have all asked for my address (not email) so I think I will be snail-mailing a lot to Thailand for a while now!

One thing that will be a relief, though, will be the photo-taking. I hate to be racist, but all the Asians I have known really really love to take photos of everything. I generally avoid photo-taking, but so far here I have turned into the ultimate Asian photo-obsessed tourist! Why, you may ask? Just trying to embrace the culture 😊
Actually, I'm trying to avoid the questioning and trying to show them that I appreciate their country. If they take me somewhere and I just look and say, "Wow, very nice!" they just stand and wait for me to take a photo. If I don't, it's like I don't think it's good enough. As a result, I have so many photos of myself posing beside various statues and bits of scenery. If I can't resist it, why not embrace it?

It still does bother me, though, that when taking photos they take precedence over the actual experience. For example, when we were at the Wax Festival last weekend it was soooo crowded. There were people everywhere and everyone wanted to get a photo beside the winning sculptures. Naturally they assumed that I did too, so of course I pretended that I did. I would stand in front of the sculpture without my umbrella in the pouring rain (because you can't have an umbrella in a photo!) as people walked in front or were in the way and they waited to get the perfect light. And then when we finally had the photo we would quickly move on to the next sculpture before I even had a chance to look at it! I would much prefer to get close and have a good look than to have a photo of myself posing beside it.

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