Kru Sutipan's Funeral

One of our teachers, Kru Sutipan, passed away on Monday. They say it was from drinking and smoking so much. He actually moved to another school in February but had been teaching at my school for over 20 years. His body was moved to the temple in our village and the funeral took place here. When my parents came to visit, he volunteered to act as their guide, showed them around the school and took us out to lunch. I was pretty surprised and touched because we talked every once in a while, but we weren't very close.

K. Sutipan was originally from Bangkok and it took our teachers a while to contact his family. It seems like he wasn't very close with his family, and our teachers organized most of the week-long funeral. His younger sister and some relatives made it out here Thursday though and were present for the cremation ceremony on Friday.

I went to the funeral almost every night. On the first day, the room was pretty bare because things were just being set up. That night, there were a couple wreaths of flowers that Thai people give to honor the dead. By Thursday night, the wall by his coffin was full of them.

Every night, five monks came and prayed.

One monk gave a long speech and then five principals from five different schools knelt in front of each monk and presented them with presents and bouquets of flowers, and they prayed again.

Trays of cups and small bottles of holy water were passed around. During the prayers, we slowly poured the water into the cups as a way of letting K. Sutipan's spirit know we were here.

One night, I actually tried to paid attention to the monk's eulogy and I understood more than I thought I would. On the other hand, although I understood key vocabulary, I didn't understand the key words that linked them together. For example, the monk actually brought up K. Sutipan's drinking problem but said that we should focus on the positive aspects of his character. However, what I thought he said at first was, K. Sutipan's drinking problem can be seen as a positive aspect... haha. Confused, I asked the math teacher and she clarified for me.

Thai people believe in ghosts or spirits. One of the teachers joked that during the day we laugh about it, but at night we take it seriously. The last night, I caught a ride home with two teachers who live close to me. I told them they could drop me off at the top of the hill where they turn up a small road to their house instead of going out of their way. My house was only two houses down. I could easily walk, I said. No, no, they insisted. We'll send you to your house. Otherwise, K. Sutipan will send you...

The cremation ceremony was held during the day on Friday. We're in the middle of rainy season. It had stayed pretty dry all week but it rained all day on Friday. Many people from the community, other schools, and the Education Service Area Office were there to send him off. K. Sutipan taught physical education as well as boy scouts and his body was dressed in his scout uniform. On the day of the cremation, many teachers wore their scout uniforms and brought groups of their students, also dressed in scout uniforms. We walked from the temple to the cremation site, and as the funeral procession passed, the scouts stood in formation and saluted him.

The coffin in the funeral procession

The cremation site 

Teachers in their scout uniforms saluting 

Students in scout uniforms saluting as the fire is lit for cremation

Once the fire is lit, the ceremony is over. It's not uncommon to see all dry eyes at funerals in Thailand. But there's a feeling of finality when you see that fire burning. I was sitting next to the science teacher who is always happy and positive and never seems to get angry or sad. She was sober but made it through the entire ceremony. After the final salute, she broke down and cried into her scout cap, the kind of crying where you can barely catch your breath. I had to struggle to keep from crying too. After one minute, she regained her composure and carried on.

Volunteering like it's 1992

A one-week no technology experiment (that I thought would have been my two year service). So,
No photos.
No videos.
No posts (well, except this sort of is).
They didn't have those things in rural Thailand in 1992.

The Little Things

On the way back from Chiang Mai one day, the driver was careening around the turns on the mountain road as usual when unexpectedly, he stopped the van. We all craned our necks to see what he was doing. A turtle was trying to cross the street. It had just made it across our lane and would have continued into the path of oncoming traffic. But the driver picked it up, saying "Bpai nai?" (like "Where do you think you're going?"), and set it a couple feet in the bushes along the side of the road.


At the beginning of the semester, my co-teacher asked all the students to write a profile about themselves: name, nickname, birthday, address, personality traits, future occupation and idol. He told me many of the students don't know what they want to do in the future. No one motivates them to think about it; they assume they'll grow up doing what their parents did. My co-teacher said he wants to push them to realize what they really want to do - whether it's the same as their parents' way of life or something different. He asked them to list an "idol" for the same reason, so they have a role model - a teacher, family member, or celebrity. The students presented their profiles out loud in front of the class. One of the matayom 3 (= 9th grade) students said she wanted to be a teacher. As she read her idol, she gave me a quick look and said "Kruu Debi." :)


Last year, I barely ever talked to the fourth grade teacher besides to greet him with a brief hello when I saw him. When I spoke to him in English, he'd laugh nervously, "Ha.. ha.. I have no idea what you're saying... ha.." He always seems curious about what I'm doing in the teachers' room though. A couple weeks ago he commented about how I write and read a lot. I want to get my students to write more too, he said. How do I do that? I gave him some ideas and he started sharing them with other teachers. The other day, I found an article "An Imaginative Approach to Teaching Writing" and showed it to him. It was all in English, but he photocopied the pages and took them home with him. It's going to take me ten years to translate this, he said. Today he told me he translated the first two activities! Step by step...

Bats and Birds

A couple nights ago I was about to turn off my porch light before going to bed. As I opened the door, bats almost flew in! The light had attracted flying termites that came out after the rain and the bats were having a feast. There were so many of them (the termites and the bats). They kept swooping in and out noiselessly. Since I couldn't open my door more than a crack, much less get to my porch light to turn it off, I took a video from my position crouched behind the door.

The bats were cool to watch, but the following morning while I was at school, the chickens came on my porch to eat the leftovers. They left their muddy claw prints and pooped all over my porch! Damn chickens. I got some consolation this afternoon when Narnu and I played real life Angry Birds with a slingshot and the chickens running around. (Tell me about animal rights when you have to clean up chicken poop in your house.) Anyway, Angry Birds is much harder in real life. We missed every time.

Hammock

A fine new addition to my house, thanks to Andy (for the hammock) and Narnu (who helped me put it up - i.e., did it for me).

And, completely unrelated, a bright creepy crawly that was clinging to my bike spoke this morning.