Sunday, December 12

Roman with grasshopper

Thursday evening, I did some voiceover work for the first time. Earlier in the week, Roman had a job with the same company—as the language monitor for a long piece. His job was to correct the many many errors in the script and to stop the recording if the voice talent misspoke. I was hired as the voice talent for a short advertisement for a Swedish group based in Thailand.

I wasn’t very nervous until I got there, and saw that the client, an older Swedish man, had joined us via Zoom. They showed me a very professional-looking ad with a pretty professional mock-up of the narration, and I felt like a fraud—clearly a lot of money was being spent on this ad, and I was masquerading as a professional, though of course I’m not. I also hadn’t had much time to practice, since I’d gotten the job offer the day before and had been working since then.

The client was also pretty undemonstrative—after I read it once, he basically said to make it a little less cheerful, and then suggested we run it through a few more times so I could get more comfortable, and I was worried we might be there a long time (I was paid for an hour’s work, and wouldn’t get paid for any time we ran over). But after the second reading, which I did in a cooler tone, he seemed fine with it. His only note was that the country name is pronounced with a slightly longer first “e”—more like Sweeden than Sweden. Which I tried my best to do without imitating the Swedish Chef. Sweeeeeeeedin.

Anyway. We rerecorded the spots with “Sweden” and “Swedish” and then, after only 30 minutes, we were done! I’d have liked to record a few more takes—I felt I was just warming up—but they seemed to think it was normal to finish a spot like that quite quickly. Next time (assuming there is a next time), I’ll prepare more, so I’ll have a clearer interpretation going in and a little more comfort with the script but…all told, it was a nice amount of money (like $36) for a half hour’s work.

We had a three-day work week because of holidays on Monday and Friday. In that short week, I was dealing with some conflict with one of my students. In my less well-behaved class, the three boys in K3 have been getting more and more unruly. They are all friends and two of the three speak very good English and we are all quite chummy. But I have let certain behaviors slide and it’s gotten to a point where teaching them the Montessori lessons is a pretty unmanageable—they keep snatching the teaching cards off the table and laughing and laughing when I tell them to put the cards back.

On Wednesday, I’d had enough, and I told one of the kids that if he snatched the cards again, I’d make him stand up (a common practice the other English teachers use for discipline that I hadn’t yet employed). The student did it again and I told him to stand up…and he wouldn’t. And the tone of our little group totally changed. The other kids got very quiet and just stared. I was calm and told the student we would all wait until he stood up. He said no again. The other kids were whispering, stand up, stand up, and he still refused. Inside, I was a little panicked. What the fuck would I do if he wouldn’t stand up??? I didn’t want to call over the Thai teacher, but I didn’t see a lot of options, and this kid was stubbornly dug in. I tried several times to get him to stand, but he wouldn’t. Finally, I did have to call over the Thai teacher, but she didn’t really understand the situation, and just asked the student to apologize to me, which he did. But he never had to stand up.

I felt pretty shitty afterwards. I hadn’t really followed through on the whole standing up thing, and as a result, I felt like my authority was a little undermined with all the students. I am not that invested in my authority as a teacher, but I do want to have a relationship with the students where they listen to me and respect me. And I was definitely having some of my am-I-a-doormat fears.

I thought about it all when I went home, and the next day, I started the group by having the students get quiet and listen to me, and I laid it out. I said it had gotten too wild and I wanted them to listen to the lesson because it was important for them to understand this. I said no touching the cards, and no hitting each other. I said if they did touch the cards, they’d get one warning. And if they kept messing with the cards after that, they’d have to stand up. And if they were still messing around, they’d have to go back to their stations.

And the kids totally got it! They were like, ok, no touching the cards? Can I touch the table? And I said OK. And they did so good! I had thought we might have a really painful period of me having to discipline the kids that up until now I’d been so friendly with, but they didn’t mess around with the cards at all. I think they were more uncomfortable with the previous day’s stand-off than I had realized and wanted to avoid that happening again. And, I mean, I am sure more behavioral stuff is going to come up, but it was a surprisingly good reaction from (and very reasonable conversation with) the kids.

Other kid news? This week, Miki came up to me after class, pointed to my stomach, and said, Is baby? And I said no, that’s just my tummy! And she said again, Is baby? I’m glad I wasn’t feeling more self-conscious about my body—I just found it funny. Also, the kids are so excited about Christmas—the teachers have been decorating the rooms and the kids have been making trees and coloring in Christmas-themed pictures. They also got some supplies to take some and create little Christmas scenes. And the parents posted some pictures to the Line group, which I’m gonna share!

This is Minton, who likes to come up to me and sing the refrain I like to move it, move it, which cracks me up every time.

This is Vicky, who has a Polish father and is fluent in English, and asks me things like, why do you have dark circles under your eyes?

This is Gen, who I think has an uncharacteristically wry look in this picture—he is small and compact like a little baby bear, and is often just as wild. He’s also typically all smiles.

This is little Daisy (making a funny face) and cutie Io, both in their Squid Games outfits.

 

This is Yiwa, who is the absolute sweetest. She will wait outside the teacher’s office saying Teacher, Teacher, in her small voice until I notice her and look up, and then she’ll blow me a kiss. 

And this is Asher, who I’ve talked about—the tiny little K1 student who talks to me in a stream of English (and, after his birthday about two weeks ago, has been greeting me every morning by saying, Teacher, it’s my birthday!).

So, even though it feels bizarre in 80 degree weather (a huge relief, by the way, from the 100 degree and humid days of May), it’s fully Christmas season in Thailand. 

On Friday, I went over to my friend Elle’s house, and we listened to Christmas music, drank tea, and made Finnish joulutorttu and British mince pies.

And then on Saturday, I set up our “Christmas tree” and stockings.

Christmas in Bangkok!

On Saturday, Roman rescued a very large grasshopper from the lobby of our building…

Then we headed to Silom, where we had lunch at a Northern Thai place…

Roman with my som tam pa with green apple snails, water mimosa, bean sprouts, and fermented crab. And sticky rice!

And then we headed to Lumpini Park, where we hung out with monitor lizards and fed a well-cared-for park cat the kitty treat we’d brought along with us. 

In the evening, I met up with my friend Mar for ramen, but didn't take any pics of that. Then on Sunday, Roman and I volunteered for Bangkok Community Help Foundation. This time, we were helping with meal prep—other folks (all Thai women, from what I could tell) were preparing the food (white rice and a dish of pork and vegetables) and bagging the meat/veg component. Roman and I put the baggies in with the white rice, closed the cardboard containers, wrapped a rubber band around the containers, and clustered them in groups of 30. It was a very efficiently run, streamlined process and we finished in less than two hours.

After lunch at Pier 21, we headed home so I could swim in the pool and do some lesson planning, and Roman could watch the new Beatles documentary, as our long weekend came to an end.