Alien Status

Last Friday, I was moving slow, getting ready to drive down to Phang nga for some hiking and climbing with James, and I heard this loud wailing sound from the direction of the school. At first I thought it could be a siren for something awful like a fire, but then a recorded voice came on the loud speakers. First came a message in Thai, then English, German next, and finally Japanese. The message was something like “Attention! Attention! There is a tsunami. There is a tsunami. Leave the beach for higher ground immediately. Leave the beach for higher ground immediately.” It was a beautiful day and I had not felt an earthquake that might trigger a tsunami, but then I remembered that there had been no obvious indicators for the 2004 wave. I didn’t panic, but there was definitely a moment of fear that comes from uncertainty. Of course, I had just gotten out of the shower, so I scrambled around to get some clothes and find out what was going on. It turned out that it was, thankfully, a practice, but we had not been told anything about it. The wailing and message continued to repeat about every 10 minutes for the next half hour and then it changed to an “the situation is safe. Please continue to rescue the victims” message. It was a little unsettling, but I guess good to know that a warning system is in place.

After that I drove about an hour and a half to Phang nga. It was a much shorter ride than that to Phuket, and lovely to see the scenery change from the beach and rolling jungle hills of my area to the terraced fields of bigger mountains and finally the limestone karsts of Phang nga.James and I went to a park with a hiking trail that runs along seven cascading waterfalls. There had been a mud slide since James had been there last, but the trail was still good, and it was really nice to be out of the city after spending last weekend in Chiang Mai. At the last waterfall, which was rather anti-climactic, James felt something squishy in his shoe. He took off his shoe and his toes were covered in blood! He hadn’t stepped on anything and was trying to figure out what had happened when I saw large inch-worm looking thing on his foot. “You have a leach!” Leaches are nasty little buggers; they hang on tight and are quite determined to feed. When James finally pulled his first leach off, it went for his finger, so he flung it through the air and his bloody leach landed on me! We stayed remarkably calm despite a situation that could have descended into chaos as we found more leaches on James’s feet, a couple on mine, and noticed that they were actually on the trail, not in the water where we though they were, and inching towards us with shocking precision.


We made it safely out of leach territory and decided to cool off by taking a swim and a couple of jumps into one of the waterfall pools. We drove back to town soon after that and changed to go out to dinner with Laura, another PiA teacher who arrived recently and took the post Grace was filling temporarily. Unfortunately, my ear, which had felt uncomfortable since jumping into the pool, became increasingly more painful. This was my first experience with swimmer’s ear and I can now sympathize with everyone else who has endured it.


The next morning I felt much better though, so James and I went to a park in town that has some climbing. There’s some pretty good variety, but the routes aren’t really kept up, so there was lots of crud to scrape off, and we didn’t have a rope to do the routes that were bolted. So we bouldered a little bit on some projects that James has been working on. On the last route I tried, two big holds broke free and I ended up falling a few meters. It was a fairly injury free fall though and it was fun to get out and climb for a bit. There were also monkeys around, who I’m convinced were limberly swinging and climbing around just to taunt us.


I watched the land around me change back from karsts to beach on my way home and spent the rest of the weekend starting to pack up my things. A couple of weeks ago I found a perfect little house to rent from a delightful old lady. It is located in the Moken community called Tabptuwan, which is not too far from R35 and next door to Mark, another PiA teacher at the school, though his post will end in about 5 weeks. I also saw one of the most amazing sunsets I’ve seen yet in Thailand. Check it out!

On Monday, I officially became an alien in Thailand. All of Ian’s and my paperwork was processed successfully, so we received our work permits and work extensions for our visas until the end of next March. I spent quite a bit of time developing worksheets and games for my younger students’ unit on school places and subjects. I’ve also been trying to come up with some activities that are more student-centered and will help the older students with their grammar.

I also got oriented with Grassroots, a local NGO that serves the migrant Burmese community in southern Thailand this week. I officially begin volunteering for the organization next week, when I start to teach a life science class to the older students in the community at one of the youth outreaches centers. I will also be writing a grant proposal to renovate the women’s center and start a variety of community activities and vocational trainings, so I attended a planning meeting with the volunteer coordinator and deputy director about the goals of the project. I’m really excited about this work, and will include more details on it soon.

Today, I finished packing all my stuff. Somehow, I seem to have accumulated much more than I arrived in this country with… So, I am saying good bye to my little one-room bungalow and all it’s quirks, like the frog who decided that my plant was a better perch than the windowsill. I will post pictures of my new abode next week once I’m settled.