"Fall" in the Land of Eternal Summer

October 20, 2006

I stomped, swished, and crunched through the fall collage of brown, red and orange covering the red brick pathway leading away from Franklin Street. My dark gray jacket with its light pink embroidered design was cute, but sadly cute doesn't cut it when it comes up against a chilly fall air. 

I didn't mind the whispers of winter too much though as I slipped through the leaves. It was a nice change of pace from the blazing summer and fall means that I have reason to drink more hot beverages because my little body that gets cold easily must stay warm somehow. 

My mouth tingled as I thought of the mint, hot chocolate that the hip, dread-locked barista would soon make for me at the Daily Grind--just one of the delightful simple pleasures that an American autumn brings along.

October 20, 2008

AHHHHHHHHHHHH! I didn't want to scream, but it was happening all the same. It was like someone had pried open my mouth and was pulling high-piercing sounds out of it without my permission. My head felt like it was a balloon on the verge of being popped, waiting for the shiny needle to make its entrance.

But then, right before the messy explosion of my head, we jerked to a stop and Boomerang was over. We groggily picked up our bags from the other side of the ride and made woozy comments about how intense, and what a thrill the ride was.

To give our bodies a break, we decided to meander to the water park. We eased into the lazy river, the machine-made current gently pushing us past Thai boys wearing speedos, and Thai girls wearing flowery one-pieces. One kid asked Dominic if he was a tour guide since he was surrounded by three of the few only Westerners in a sea of Asians.

Going to a water park at the end of October?? When I was wandering around Siam Park it hit me how bizarre it was to put my American fall mindset into Thailand. In America I only went to water parks in the midst of summer break, June or July. It was always swarming with people, and you had to wait for hours sweating in the sweltering sun just to go down a 28-second long water slide. But in the Land of Eternal Summer, water parks are always open, so Dominic and Ja thought the whole concept of waiting in line forever for a water ride was unfathomable.

It is strange to be in a land where fall constitutes days when rain gushes down so hard that on the way to the way to the gym, Dominic had to pull the motorbike to the side of the road, which was slowly disappearing under the flood. We sat for about 20 minutes, sympathizing wordlessly with the other riders under a dilapidated bus stop. Motorbikes were lined up along the street in front of us like it was a new parking lot. 

Because the only weather change during Thailand's fall is more rain, of course stores in the malls we were browsing last week would be selling jackets with fur trimmed hoods, woolly gloves, and a rainbow of scarves. It makes sense to market cold weather wear in a country where a refreshing day is when it is 88 degrees instead of 95. 

Well, that is if the buyer is an upper-class Thai business person. Dominic told me many workers in the skyscraper towers of Bangkok enjoy turning on the A/C to the max in their office and putting on coats and sweaters. It is apparently the cool thing to do to show off your money. :)

I can't wait to be in America for fall next year and wear a jacket and really need it. Even more I can't wait to experience American autumn for the first time all over again with Dominic. Raking piles of leaves and jumping in them, wearing cosy coats, and of course, sipping rich, hot chocolate with marshmallows. 

There are always things to look forward to...

Malleable Blobs

I was sick of Bangkok. Don't get me wrong, Bangkok has its special joys: savory, spicy street food on every corner, towering shopping malls just a BTS stop away, and strange people to observe everywhere you look. But the hot weather- stuffy air-pollution-and-sweat-infested- people- and-pollution-and- traffic-and-dirty-broken-sidewalks-and pollution can get rather old after awhile. That is why I was delighted when Dominic answered my plea for asylum from Bangkok.

Dominic lives about 30 minutes outside main Bangkok in a suburb called Pakret. Just a motorbike ride away from his apartment is a pier by the river where one can hop a 2-minute ferry ride across to the Mun village pottery makers community, Ko Kret.

I must say the definition of Ko Kret is quaint. That pretty much sums up the winding maze of paved bicycle/motorbike/pedestrian paths that wind through the island full of tropical fruit trees, stilted wooden river houses, and even a blossoming, peaceful flower garden where Dominic and I toured on two rented, rattly bicycles.

The peaceful pottery community was warm to us--not whining at us to buy or look at their pottery like most touristy vendors do in Bangkok. The smiling workers ushered us into their "factory" with a wave of their clay-smeared tan hands.

Three potters were hard at work in the center of an open-air building bulging with recently formed pots waiting to go in the kiln. I could have stood there for hours, gawking at the mesmerizing masterpieces being formed right before my very eyes.

I was most impressed by one man. He had one huge, clay water container-whose height looked to be almost as tall as the man's sitting down- molded already on a plank of wood next to him. But I was still a bit worried for the sad, blob of square, gray, ooshiness sitting before his potter's wheel. How could that goo ever become that pot?

But I need not to have been worried. The potter placed the overly moist Play-Dough on the wheel and with a slight grin behind his dark eyes he set to work. He smushed it down and pulled it up as the wheel spinned rhythmically to a rhythm only he was the master of. He pulled and pulled and swirled his hands around it gently and sweetly like a father caressing the cheek of his child. He patted and pushed a little here and a little there.

I had no clue what was going on of course. It seemed like he was playing some sort of game that I was too slow to catch onto the rules of. So alas, I didn't figure out how he did it, but in the end a huge, water clay pot was before him, being placed next to his other pot.

But the pot wasn't done yet. Dominic and I rode around to the other parts of the island to see the rest of the pottery process. We saw the etchers making minute marks in the softened clay, then the kilners pulling red-brown pots out of the fire and putting gray ones in. Then we bought cute little clay trinkets at many of the pottery shops along the paths.

But in the midst of all this I kept thinking of the mysterious little potter man. He knew exactly what he was doing, and the clay could care less about "helping out the potter". It just did its job by being a malleable blob. Because only by doing its job could it become what it was meant to be.

How I long more malleable and blob-like.

-Yet, O LORD, you are our Father.
We are the clay, you are the potter;
we are all the work of your hand.-

Isaiah 64:8

Far-Sighted

11 a.m.-7 p.m. Wednesday-Friday, 8:30 a.m.- 5 p.m. Saturday, and 8:30 a.m.- 2 p.m. Sunday are my work hours at Elite Prep. My forty hours are spent preparing lesson plans for my SAT Writing Class, 3rd/4th grade Book Club and 9/10thgrade Book Club. I teach 3-hour length classes. I give out vocabulary quizzes and reading quizzes. I lead discussions on the books. I do “fun” activities about reading and writing and grammar. I go over SAT test questions and how to write a good essay for the SAT. I grade and edit SAT essays.

But in the midst of my teaching and planning, my efforts also lead to constructing a nursery for marine life, building a preschool, harvesting a fish farm, researching how to genetically modify fish, and mining pearls.

A purpose of Sustainable Development Research Foundation is to find ways to provide for the needs of communities all over Thailand. I love how while I’m teaching at the profit center of Elite Prep where some of the smartest, most well-off kids of Thailand come for tutoring, I am connected to developing other communities in need around Thailand.

The past year I have known in my mind the mission behind SDRF, and thought it nice and wonderful, but it didn’t really move from my mind to impact my heart until my recent visit to one of the many sites in Thailand that SDRF works at, the remote, Got Yow Yai island in the south of Thailand.

An hour and 15 minutes flight from Bangkok to Phuket, a 30-minute speed boat ride to a port at what looked at first like Gilligan’s Island, and an hour truck drive from there, it was the farthest outside of a city I have been in Thailand. While traveling on the winding roads I felt like I was in Waxhaw on some forgotten country road, but instead of the scenery of cotton fields and cow pastures, I saw rubber tree forests and water buffalo fields.

The first stop was the construction site of the nursery for fish, which will keep some of the fish SDRF is harvesting once the fish start to mature. After the tsunami, SDRF entered the community and saw that the fisherman were fishing, but not getting much profit from their work. They were lacking knowledge of how to run fishing as a real business. I love how SDRF asked what the islanders needed help with and came up with the entrepreneurial idea of trying to start a farm to genetically modify fish, which hopefully will make the fishermen more profit.

Epiphanies were popping in my brain at this first site about how I’m part of this concrete block foundation. By attempting to build up the students I teach at Elite, I’m helping the workers here as they build up the lives of those in the community.

I learned on our trip that Elite isn’t the only one assisting the work in this community. A church came from California to help SDRF construct the wooden walking bridge from the mainland to the dock, where fishermen tote cages from the ocean. I was in awe of how hard the team must have worked, calculating when the high and low-tides were so it could work at the best conditions and then laid down the complicated maze of pipes in the ocean that connect to the nursery. Each little plank and pipe was so significant and necessary, just as much as the hands that fit each one together.

After another short drive through more forests of palm trees and cliffs over the emerald ocean, we came to the only pre-school on the island, a home away from home to more than 100 children.

But since it was Ramadan on our visit, and many people in the south of Thailand are Muslim, the students were not there. But there were workers constructing the rest of the pre-school. The friendly, welcoming school was built partly by another church in CA that partnered with SDRF after the island community told SDRF another one of its needs—a preschool. The islanders were not left out of the project, but are doing their part by finishing up the school after SDRF helped start it up.

The next stop was the Marine Research Institute, MRI. I loved riding the motorboat out to the fish farm in the middle of the ocean where a fisherman guided us as we walked on wobbly planks that surrounded wire-mesh cages floating in the water. The fisherman reminded me of a worker at Sea World when he coaxed the variety of fish to the surface by holding out a small bait just above the water.

Watching these plump fish flopping around, I felt awe to be part of such a mission. I had never dreamed in my life I would in any way shape or form be linked to genetically modifying groupers to weigh 72 pounds, or be a member of one of the first companies to experiment on how to harvest lobster, or be part of the patient process of mining pearls, but I am.

On the way home back to Bangkok I was thinking about how blessed I am, but also how if anyone thinks about it, how blessed we all are. We live in a world where we are all connected, so by doing our jobs the best we can, essentially we are helping others far beyond our near-sighted eyes can see.

I just hope everyday working at Asoke Tower at Elite Prep I can put on my far-sighted lenses, so my vision will always stay clear.