Broken bicycles and Earthquakes: less exciting than you think

So it’s been more than a week since my last update, and I must say it has gone by pretty quickly. Had I realized this fact I probably would’ve posted sooner, but better late than never as they say.

First and foremost, I’m sure you’re all dying to know what the results of last week’s interview are; so am I. Haven’t heard back yet, but for some reason I’m still hopeful. The girl that interviewed before me hasn’t heard back either, so at least there’s that.

Despite the delay in contact from the school, a few good things have already come from that interview. Turns out that same girl who interviewed before me, we’ll call her “Nikki” (because that’s her name), did her teaching certification here in Chiang Mai, and therefore has been here for a while and is a bit more in tune with the teaching scene in general. I met up with her and a friend the following night and they gave me some good tips and schools to look in to, which has been pretty helpful. On top of that, I got a text from Nikki on Monday asking if I’d like to teach a class on Tuesday and Thursday. Obviously I said “No.”

Sarcasm doesn’t always translate well in writing, but needless to say I was really excited to do some teaching and make some money, and jumped at the chance immediately. The job was fairly simple: teach from 1:30-3:00 on Tuesday and Thursday of this week to a class of 4 kids, all 8 years old. Sounded easy enough, and I really didn’t even need to make a lesson plan, so I said yes and was told the woman who organizes it would call me, which she did about 45 seconds after I said I would do it. She was very nice on the phone, and I agreed to meet her the following day at a restaurant near her house 15 minutes before the lesson would start.

I’d never attempted to teach kids that young, but it did take a bit of getting used to. Getting an 8 year old to settle down and listen to something is difficult.  Getting an 8 year old who has little to no idea what you’re saying to settle down and listen to something that they barely understand is.. more difficult.  But I just sort of went with it, playing games and coloring with them and figuring out what they were interested in, involving as much useful English as I could when the chance arose. A bit more educational than English Language Daycare. Pretty enjoyable though, all things considered.

Thursday’s teaching adventure was a bit more memorable however, not because of the lesson itself, but because of what happened getting there. I have been renting a bicycle the last 4 days or so in order to get around town a bit more cheaply and efficiently (the mountain bike costs $2 a day to rent). While riding through Chinatown on the way to the lesson, I thought I would change gears so I could go a bit faster. Shouldn’t have. The bike chain ended up jammed between the second and third gears, and I had to stop to dislodge it and put it back on the gear. This required actually flipping the bike over, grabbing the chain with both hands and yanking it out of the tiny space it had wedged itself into. So: now I am on the sidewalk in Chinatown, 12 minutes before my class is due to begin, bike flipped over, a pretty substantial sweat going, wearing my white dress shirt, and hands fully covered in bike chain grease.  Not how I envisioned my commute going. I was able to go into a nearby shop and wash my hands, which was less effective than I expected, but good enough to get me back on my way without too much concern of ruining my shirt. Luckily the lesson went really well to balance things out.

So aside from teaching, I’ve been hanging out with a pretty regular group of 5 other people from the hostel: A girl from Portland, (Beth, 26) an out-of-work architect who has been traveling for 9 months now, and is planning on extending it for another 3, a guy from northwest of London (Jack, 25) who sold all his stuff and is now travelling around without a plan or agenda, a guy from Peterborough, England (James (“Jimbo Slice”), 23) who is traveling around SE Asia, Australia, and The States for about 5 months, a girl from Adelaide, Australia (Sarah, 25) who’s plans I can’t really recall, and the first chick I’ve ever met from Finland (Merika, 26) who is traveling around SE Asia before going back to London to get her masters. Beth left 2 days ago, Jimbo left yesterday, and Sarah & Merika left this afternoon, though Jack and I have a new addition to our team, Carl from Middlesborough, England, who spent the last 5 months teaching English in Lopburi, Thailand, about 2 hours north of Bangkok; it’s sad seeing people go that you’ve become close to, but always fun to meet new people with new experiences to learn about.

Most of our nights have been fairly quiet, especially since I have now instated a self-imposed limit of 1 beer a day for budgetary reasons, though sometimes a quiet night turns in to a rager without you even noticing it’s happening. Ex: the other night we went to a reggae bar to have a drink or two and listen to some live music; about two hours after we got there, as Jack emerged from the bathroom wearing freshly applied pink lipstick, I knew it would be no ordinary night.

Not much else to say at the moment, though we have some really cool plans for the weekend, so if all goes as expected, I should have a pretty good update for the Blogiverse early next week. Till then just sit tight and imagine what I might be doing. It could be anything. It is, in reality, only one thing really, but you know what I mean.

You stay classy (is that a famous tagline yet?)

izd

PS OH RIGHT, the earthquake.

As some of you may have heard, there was a pretty substantial earthquake, 7.0 on the richter scale, that happened yesterday in Myanmar(Burma), about 65 miles away from where I currently am. There was not a single negative effect here in Chiang Mai, and there is nothing at all to worry about. Also, due to the relatively low population of the affected area in general, the damage was fairly mild given the intensity of the quake itself. We did feel it though, and everyone I have talked to has described the exact same feeling I had, even the Thai lady at the restaurant across the street: I was sitting on the balcony upstairs at the hostel on my computer, and I started to feel like I was swaying just a bit. When I looked up, I got the sensation of being dizzy, which continued even after we all realized an earthquake was happening. It was really strange, and only lasted about 10-20 seconds. That’s all there is to be said about the earthquake, at least from Chiang Mai’s perspective. I do hope that those that were more seriously affected are able to recover quickly though, natural disasters are frighteningly powerful things.