Dubrovnik, Croatia Oct. 20-23, 2021 Last days in country
It was exactly 10 years ago today [Oct. 20, 2011] that I boarded a plane from LAX to head to New Zealand as part of yet another of my Grand 10-Year Plans.
Snickering
Yes, anyone who knows me, knows I have been preaching and living my Plans For the Living [P4L] platforms to anyone who will listen.
Those NZ plans began as:
-work hard in [town near Lake Wakatipu outside of Queenstown on the South Island]
-buy a house
-during their summer Dec – Feb, I’d visit Southeast Asia, volunteering in several places
-ReConning [checking out where NEXT home would be-after 6 years, rent out house as another stream of income-live and teach in select two SE Asian Nations, including India and then…
OFF TO AFRICA by Dec. 2021
Well, God must’ve been laughing the entire flight from Los Angeles to Christchurch because after seven months trying to get a work visa, and coping with a city I no longer recognized after several hundred earthquakes, tremors and other shifts making it impossible for me to feel “at home” there.
With four days’ research between China, Singapore and Thailand, I boarded a plane for Bangkok, in search of work to stop the bleeding that was my dwindling life’s savings. I was a DAY LATE from landing the Just Right HS English teaching gig but with the promise of getting one HS position the following year, I accepted teaching 3rd grade for the 2012-13 school year.
Some of you will remember that crazy summer leading up to this: Mr. Asshole Owner offered me a Summer School gig in Bang Kapi, Thailand, but that Mission to get a work Visa failed (no money), and I worked illegally that summer – don’t tell no one…
Having let the 7-Eleven block my only credit card when my brain or my Snauage Fingers punched the wrong number three consecutive times, Ed and Wayne sent me money until my card cleared security, three days later [happened on a Friday].
Teaching 3rd Graders in a “private” school in Bang Kapi was the worst and best teaching year of my life.
I was humbled.
I was dumbfounded.
I learned so much about their culture and how money rules education. But most importantly, I learned the Diamonds in the Rough are worth digging for. I will treasure that short time there with that small group of young minds. However, that coveted HS English job [suddenly TWO available] was not offered. “We need only the best teachers in the lower grades so they’ll have greater foundations and fewer issues in middle and HS,” they told me.
Some may take this as a compliment.
I left.
Simply, grade school is WORK! Kudos to all you teaching these little ones. Six separate preps = lesson plans, adhering to standards for that particular subject and pacing, rigorous demands when I’m just an English teacher. While I’d lived teaching Science to 3rd and 4ths a couple years at St. Anne’s while studying at Queens College in Flushing, NY. That was different; my predecessor had lessons mapped out before my “substitute” gig turned permanent. Mrs. Foster took my 3rds for History and I hers for Science. Great fun and I loved teaching those in Bang Kapi Science through exploration; goggles and gloves or fun with microscope. That’s one subject that rewards creativity and teaches so much is learned when we DON’T get expected outcomes and mistakes can lead to even greater successes. Like my P4L.
Summer of 2013, in search of the next best SE Asian country I returned to Thakhek, Laos, and where I’d visited during the 2012-13 Christ’s Birthday, New Year holiday, to teach a group of monks in a small temple near some really famous other temple. My goal was to check out Cambodia and Vietnam as I’d heard those two countries were ripe with teaching gigs.
Flashback Dec. 22, 2012 – Jan. 6 2013
During that trip I:
-Taught about 12 neighborhood kids and monks-in-training [monk-ees] English
-took photos of them
-ate fried crickets and frogs legs watching fireworks over the Mekong River separating Nahkon Phanom Province, Thailand from Thakhek, Laos
-broke my big toe a second time* playing soccer with neighborhood children on the Thai side of the Mekong another – Dec 25, 2012
-camped out above elephants sanctuary with freshly broken toe
-first visit to doctor to check on toes
-*Doc says, “…evidence of another fracture.” I have no idea when I’d broken it the first time.
-learned to ride a scooter…
-broke my little toe [right foot], on said scooter Dec. 31, 2012 leaving that 1st tutoring session
– Happy New Year…
I’d heard from experience that cures for broken toes and fingers were taping them up and keeping them immobile. Yeah, that wasn’t part of my 2-week plans, so I waited till everything was OVER to visit the Doc on the Thai side of the Mekong River.
Side Note: paid pennies for everything; approximately $25 for all meds, X-rays, Consults and soft-casts. International Schools have great Health Care Plans.
So, on my return to Laos, I gave those I’d tutored copies of themselves which was like The Easter Egg Hunt, New Years and The 4th of July for them. And taking NEW photos of their incredulous and mesmerized smiles and laughing at their own images captured forever in space and time was priceless.
After about a week working with them singing Children’s Songs, practicing the alphabet, Days of the Week and other basics, I left for Hue, Vietnam.
I’d first visited Vietnam the summer of 2007, full of Lisa’s bangin’ chillie after a Hill Community 4th of July Blast. My flight took off before the fireworks, but there were plenty of those on my flight…if you know what I mean!!
That time, visiting Michelle Hoang’s family in Saigon and attending her cousin’s wedding in her hometown of Hue, I became a celebrity; the one-man film crew, thanks to Bobby loaning me his video camera. Weddings are several days, and I was constantly told to move to prime filming locations in temples, at the house and reception areas. Michelle, whom was my co-teacher in SBAAM Middle School that year in the Bronx, translated, “They say you need to be over there for when the bride and groom pass by that monk.”
So, returning to Hue was like coming home. I returned photos to those monks we’d taught for three weeks of our last night there, now six years later. Funny thing with vanity and monks. Unless you’ve reached a certain level, they aren’t allowed to own anything personal. So, all those photos we gave them back in 2007, hopefully their families have them somewhere. Yet, not the point. The looks on their faces laughing at photos of themselves and posing for new ones they new they’d likely never see are etched in our minds to be sure.
Vietnam 2013-15
Teaching in Vietnam was a blast. Coming off the High Society burn from that pseudo Private School of Bang Kapi, Thailand – yet the kids, staff and grounds were unbelievable. However, the owner, a self-made Malaysian man was abusive to most women and fraudulent in several other Con-Artisty Ways.
Therefore, my first year in Saigon, I avoided that scene and worked in a “Language Institute”. Making $18/hour I taught integrated speaking, writing and listening lessons to augment the rudimentary crap of “listen and fill-in-the-blanks” that are great for beginners, but their systems had no vision for
-specialized learning
-advanced learners
-diversity within programs [getting them writing sentences or speaking conversationally]
However, taking a cut in pay, $12/hour, I also taught up to 56 kids in classrooms a few days a week. Sounds tough? Forget building any kind of rapport, let alone memorizing names, getting everyone to respond individually pretty much took up an entire class, so I had to get creative there too. Small groups [not easy when flash rains come and windows don’t close all the way so only the middle of the room is NOT getting wet…and then those rains knock out electricity.
Yet they were so well behaved, it wasn’t as hard as you’d think.
People in the office, back at the “institute” were like, “Why do you teach those public schools?” It was the closest thing to actual teaching I’d experienced that year.
Selling out, I took a gig at another Private School teaching AP Literature – my dream job. However, six months later, on Friday, Feb. 13, 2015, I was fired because, “You’re confusing the students.” But I was actually confusing the owner, a business man who’d opened the school since he didn’t agree with the school his sons were attending; one of the most prestigious in Ho Chi Minh.
I’d been warned about the fickle nature of Private School gigs, laughed packed as much of my shit and went scuba diving in Indonesia and Malaysia. You see, that Friday was our 3-week [Chinese] New Year’s Holiday, so while terrible getting fired, I’d plans made and simply extended that “vacation” till landing a job in Hangzhou, China, some four months later.
Getting fired was the best thing. Instead of returning to work after diving and a teaching seminar in Indonesia, I explored Sapa, northern Vietnam for about a week. Note to those thinking of taking the bus there: Vietnamese have this thing with car sickness, so on these winding roads, expect perhaps a domino effect and sit up front. I was NOT aware of this, and was awakened to all stages of pre-throw up, throwing up, dry retching that seemed to go on for the entire ride. I saw mothers and fathers calmly taking care of their sick kids only to get sick themselves 30 minutes later…usually after their sick loved one had stopped and fallen asleep.
Truly Monte Python or Stephen King [story within a story “Stand By Me”] shit. So funny, I almost puked.https://thesheaf.com/2010/10/29/why-we-can%E2%80%99t-get-enough-vomit/
I was able to revisit Malaysia, MORE DIVING – as before getting fired, I’d signed up for an AP Language/Literature Seminar that my school was supposed to reimburse me for later.
Spilled Milk –
Stayed with Sasha, Sheila and their growing family for about a week and with Ron and Myta and one of their children for another week. They live on opposite sides of Bali. Did my first Shore Dive with Ron, visiting an amazing coral-rejuvenation project and tons more diving on Lembongan Island from where manta ray photos were taken.
China 2015-17
My most memorable days in China were visiting the pandas for a couple days near Sichuan Province. Unfortunately, those photos never uploaded to the Cloud for whatever reason. Of course there were the dedicated, over-worked students, and in Xi’an, the Terracotta Statues of Qin Shi Huang, the first Emperor of China, were also outstanding.
Do Epic Shit 