The Office

It will take a leap of imagination on your part to picture the office. There are nine English speaking teachers in the large room with table-sized desks. In the mornings, the windows are opened to permit the cool air in. In the afternoons, ceiling fans are switched on, blowing papers around on desks. The teachers go in and out all school day chatting and laughing. It seems the majority of their time in the office is spent around the food table.

The food table is a cornucopia of dishes amassed from the teachers' daily offerings. Because of its plenty we have yet to bring lunch to work for ourselves. We use our free periods to stuff ourselves with various Thai foods: fermented fish paste (not a personal favorite), red and green curries, papaya salad, fried vegetables and pork, sugary sticky-rice desserts wrapped in banana leaves, tasty mini bananas, baked fish, snails, shrimp, crayfish, oysters, sausage, varieties of vegetables alien to our eyes, bamboo shoots, juicy sliced fruits... the list is still building. Thai edibles (and not-so-edibles) must be one of the most diverse of all cultures. As we've wandered through some markets in Thailand we've seen things such as pigs' faces, live turtles trying to escape baskets, long catfish flopping around in a heap, roasted crickets and grubs, chili powders, curry powders, grasses and herbs of all kinds....




I've come to believe that this action of bringing so much food to share with us is not only an experiment of curiosity and cultural pride by the teachers, but also one of appeasement. The English teachers at our school normally teach between three and five classes of students each day. With Lisa and I here, one of their classes each day is taken by one of us to practice speaking and listening. The result is us teaching five or six classes each day with a random period or two off, during which we are kindly and aggressively invited to eat what has been brought.

Never have I seen a more constantly eating bunch of people, except, of course, my own Criger family on Christmas or Thanksgiving Day when we will stuff ourselves silly from morning to night and rest only at intervals to drape our swelling bodies like Dali's clocks over sofas and chairs. These Thai teachers may not devour quantities like the Criger's, but could rival us in their frequency of food-table-visitation. They spend nearly every free moment either gathered around the food table sampling its delights or being invited by those who are gathered to “gin khao” (eat).

And most of them are shameless about their joking, particularly Ajarn Gowit, known in the office as, “joke man”. He will often introduce us to someone and quickly add, “She's ugly” or “She's fat.” And if he notices we don't remember having met someone, he might assert that it's because, “She's not pretty.” Laughter is as common as eating here. Sometimes we are in the know and other times the teachers are speaking to each other in Thai and laughing it up.

The teachers are all very productive despite accusations by one another of being “lazy.” Students duck into the office in two's or three's and kneel at the teachers' desks to receive an assignment or ask a question. Desks are piled high with stacks of notebooks bound together, these are their grading or marking that must be two to four hundred students each. Our school teaches around 2,200 students in Mathyom 1 through Mathyom 6 (grades 7-12). Between the two of us, Lisa and I teach them all.

Despite the business of our schedule and the heat bearing down nearly all of the time, we are excited to come to work each day. Anyone who has had the good pleasure of working in an environment filled with fun-loving, happy people can attest to the difference it makes in the work day.


Tim, with the morning sun shining on his face, ready to go to school.


The teachers from left to right...Ajarn Daang, Ajarn Gowit (head of the English Dept) Ajarn Pakawan, Ajarn Tak, Ajarn Ajarn Pyrapah, Ajarn Lisa, Ajarn Tim and Ajarn Soam.


papers piled high


room 426: This is our least favorite room. The desks are like cubicles, the students get tucked so far away in there and it is impossible to walk between the aisles. Tim and I are convinced that the naughtiest children must race to class to sit in the seats farthest in. This is safety from the teacher. There they can hide in the impossible-to-get-to cube and read comics all period long. When possible we usually take this class outside where there is no where to run...well actually...


A typical classroom



Every Wednesday the students (and teachers) wear their scout uniforms.