Innocent mistakes

We all make mistakes.  There are bound to be problems when living in a foreign country.  Yesterday, I discovered it can even happen when taking attendance.

First I should begin by telling you 95% of Thai children have a nick name. Most are given to them by their parents, but occasionally the child makes changes to it.  It is not unusual to have multiple Win's and Best's in a classroom.  Rather can be amusing to me  to call out Poo, Poo Poo, or Pee in front of a class and see a child eagerly raising their hand.  To the student and parents it is just a name (A rose by any other name would smell just as sweet), the connotation is just a coincidence.  There are however a few students with the name of Fluke that make you wonder.  This however is not the point of the story.

I was innocently taking attendance in one of the grade 4 classes.  Normally I have them raise their hand, smile and wave to me but yesterday I was in a hurry.  Instead, I asked them to call out "here" when they heard their name.  There was some chattering about my request which is not unusual.  I began...

"Pint" I called.  "Here" he responded with a chorus of laughter.  I stopped.  Once again the laughter is not unusual.  It is common for Thai people to laugh after they have spoken English, especially to someone like me.  I waited for the students to settle down before continuing.

"Phan."  "Here" replied the student, again through tumultuous laughter.  I waited again and gave a comment about attendance being a task not a joke.  I continued but always to the same result.  Some students were unwilling to respond here and instead wished only to raise their hands, but I was determined to have this procedure work.  I ignored the laughter until at last a student spoke.  He informed me "here" is a "bad word" in Thai.  I smirked and chuckled to myself.  Finally I understood the laughter.  My attempts to discover the true meaning of the word were in vain and I quickly asked the students to call out present.  Some of the students did this, others did not.

Finally I asked a friend for the true meaning behind the words, although I could already guess.  She explained to me although the word itself is not bad, when said as an exclamation it is loosely translated to a great big FU.

Eduardo?

Here!

Rain, rain, go away

We awoke this morning in disbelief.  It was cold in our apartment.  There was a certain chill in the air.  To be precise, the current temperature is 22C, or somewhere around 72F for those of you who are Celsius challenged.  Brr!  For the past six months we have been enjoying delightfully warm weather (26C+) which makes me now think there is a cold front moving in.  I might need a jacket.

The downside of this weather is we are leaving the rainy season behind and entering tourist season.  Good bye cheap hotels, half empty buses, and last minute travel plans.  It isn't the end of course, we still have plenty of time to enjoy the sites.  Fortunately we got a lot of our "popular beach destination travel" out of the way already.  It shouldn't be too bad.

Stay warm!