Thailand - part 5 (January 6th) Remind me not to get drunk on holiday in a foreign country! I felt like crap the next day, and it ruined my morning. We met Ian and his parents at the entrance of the mall and went to another open-air, food market for brunch. We ordered a huge variety of dishes and stuffed ourselves. I managed to conquer my queasiness and consume a heroic proportion. At this meal, we were introduced to 'son tahm’ a spicy, vegetable salad made with papaya. From an accompanying plate of sticky rice, you take a small, handful of rice and squeeze it into a ball. With your thumb, you pinch a clump of the salad against the rice held in the fingers and stuff it all in your mouth - heavenly! Since Wednesday was the big open-air market in Si Racha, we decided to go do some shopping. Most of the market is covered with tent-like awnings to keep off the sun. The majority of wares were clothing: western jeans, shirts, etc. There was very little 'traditional’ stuff that the tourists like to buy. In fact, I don't think I saw one local person wearing traditional garb. It was only the tourists in sarongs or other exotic fabrics! In the bazaar, we brought some lengths of traditional Thai fabric, woven with beautiful colors and patterns and occasional silver thread. Since Ian's parents were returning that weekend, they had agreed to take some film negatives and the cloth to mail to my mother. The most annoying thing about the market were these vendors with a personal PA system. They would sit behind their products and speak in to a microphone, projecting a deafening monologue about the fine quality and low price. It raised my hangover suffering to a new level. At this point, Joan wanted to go to the beach, but I was able to do much of anything. So Ian gave Joan instructions on how to get the beach, and off she went, searching for sun to lie in. I slunk back to the hotel and took a much needed nap for an hour or so. As I had wanted to visit Ian at his school, Assumption College, and see his teaching situation, we had arranged to meet later that afternoon, so I jumped on a motorcycle taxi to buzz over there. While cheaper and faster than a tuk-tuk or metered cab, it was one of the scariest things I have done in a long time. I felt very uncomfortable, whizzing along with all my bare flesh just hanging out only a few, scant feet above the abrasive asphalt. While called Assumption College, it is in fact a high school of 4000 students with a campus that would put many a small, liberal arts college to shame in America. A full-size running track with stadium and soccer field, an Olympic sized swimming pool, 12 outdoor basketball courts, playing fields, ping pong tables permanently mounted under the palm trees, computer labs and other academic buildings all set in a lush, tropical setting make for quite a pleasant scene. However, all this doesn't mean squat if you have 50 - 60 students per class and a set curriculum that is designed solely so students can pass standardized tests. As you teachers out there know, teaching to the test is a lousy thing to have to do: no flexibility and few opportunities to have fun. The students were all well dressed in white shirts/blouses with an embroidered school crest and dark blue shorts/skirts, accompanied by bright white socks and black dress shoes. At first, I thought that all the boys had the exact same haircut because it was fashionable but found out that it is part of the uniform. The school building is five stories high with open balconies/walkways on one side. The classroom have wooden desks and chairs and louvered windows, almost exactly like my classrooms in Fiji. Ian introduced me to the class, and I spoke for a moment and then had them ask me questions. Every who asked a question then called out a two digit number which Ian wrote on the board. Each student has a number, and in this way, Ian can keep track of who participated in the lesson and therefore gets a good grade. I also spoke some Russian to them, which left them amazed. And I was amazed at how little English they knew for studying it for so many years. Ian tells me that a lot of the students are there on athletic scholarships, especially for soccer and are not required to produce much academically. While Ian's situation in Thailand is very nice, in terms of physical and cultural comforts, his teaching millstone leaves much to be desired. I don't know if I would trade with him. However, the director has mentioned the possibility of Ian joining the ranks of management, perhaps as Assistant Methodologist or something like that, at a much higher salary. He is currently applying to the Peace Corps and will see what comes from these two possibilities. We walked back to his house, a lovely, breezy, two-story structure with water buffalo grazing in the field behind the property. Ian shares it with Ian #1, an English English teacher at Assumption; our Ian is called Ian #2. There we found Ian's dad, and we went back to Assumption to play basketball. I had not brought tennis shoes to Thailand and had been thinking about buying a new pair. At the Tavee Guesthouse back in Bangkok, this came up in conversation with Graham the monk. He said, "Wait a minute," and went over to the shoe locker near the entrance. He came back and handed me a nice pair of Reeboks that he had abandoned during the 'shedding of material belongs before I go home’ stage. So there I was, in Thailand, wearing monk blessed tennis shoes. My karma was good and so was my jump shot. We played 21 for awhile until we recruited a student to play 2-on-2 with us. He played in bare feet and could jump straight up about ten feet! Ian's dad, for a fifty-plus-year-old, is a great basketball player. Unfortunately, age and treachery did not overcome youth and enthusiasm, and our aged team lost. I headed back to the hotel in a tuk-tuk to gather the troops. We tuk-tukked over to a restaurant to meet the Ians and parents. We had a wonderful meal full of little dishes of unknown food that just kept coming and coming. Ian #1 has a Thai girlfriend who doesn't speak English, and so he has become fully immersed in the culture there. The restaurant was a favorite of his, and we left ourselves in his hands. During the meal, an elephant with a handler walked up to the open air patio. For 20 B, you could feed him - the elephant, not the handler - some corn cobs for good luck. Wow, what a big, hairy beast but such sad eyes. "Saving Private Ryan" was playing at the local theater, and we scooted over there to catch it. Unfortunately we had missed the last showing, around 7 PM. We wandered back to the hotel and sat out on the deck, watching the moonlight reflecting off the ocean, playing checkers and chatting. As we were all wiped out, it was an early night.