Tuesdays With Coffee

The first cup of coffee is always filled with ants. I learned this the hard way, not from ruining my first cup on my first day, but by ruining first cups on consecutive days during my first week. Then I started to open the water kettle and try to scoop out the ants, but this only scattered them in the water, forcing me to empty out the entire pot. The best way to avoid ants in your coffee is simply to throw the first cup out the window.

Still, I’m weary of drinking coffee out here. First of all, it’s instant coffee and isn’t good. Second, the food here is hard enough on the western digestive tract, and a hot cup of coffee in the morning often makes a bad situation much worse. Still, today, even my daily cold shower couldn’t wake me up, and I have to have some caffeine.

I meet the other falang teachers under the shade of a large tree standing between the soccer field and basketball courts. All 2,500 of the students stand on the shade-less soccer field for morning assembly and announcements. I hum along with the Thai national anthem, then bring my hands together to pray along with their Buddhist prayer. I look out into the sea of students and bow my head when they bow theirs.

After the prayer we sneak back to the English Department to finish our instant coffee. I wai all the teachers I pass on the way, so as to not offend anybody with a lack of respect. The girls walk straight to the office, but I make a quick stop at the school store and buy four donut holes for three Baht and a fake orange juice for ten.

Back in the office I look at my notes from the previous Tuesday, the last time I had 3/3. The outlook is bleak. Though they are decent students, the class is the Thai equivalent to freshman, and has over 50 students. Though the students don’t have the TV/videogame-induced ADD of American students, it still takes a special lesson plan to maintain the attention of that many pubescent kids at once. I wonder if my coffee will help at all.

The donuts are stale but edible. I place the mandatory straw into my orange juice and when I suck, I taste orange but the texture is entirely foreign. I immediately think of ants. But I know what its like to drink ants, and it’s not ants. It tastes more like rice. I look at the label of the orange juice and see it’s written in Chinese. Fucking bubble tea. I dip my stale donut holes into my instant coffee and check my watch.

Sometimes morning assemblies go on for the better part of an hour, well deep into first hour, but this only happens when I have first hour off. Today I teach first hour, and so the assembly ends early, and students are in class on time, a feat worthy of praise. I walk slowly across campus to class, plotting what I might do with my simple lesson plan, I smile and say, “Good morning” to all the students who I walk past me. Some students wai me, others are getting smart to the fact that I could care less if they wai me or not.

I walk up to the second floor of the building and down the hall to the classroom marked 3/3. Outside a girl is standing behind another with her hands covering her friend’s eyes. I put my books on the bench and silently signal to the girl that I will switch my hands with hers, covering the girl’s eyes. Without alarm, the blinded student allows us to switch hands, then attempts to figure out who the new pair of hands belongs to. A blind detective, she feels my hands with her fingertips, then lead her hands to my wrists. She feels the hair on my forearms, and, wondering what it is, pulls at some of it. With the pull of my hair, she realizes I’m not Thai. She ducks away from my hands, twisting her head back to confirm her fear, that yes, it is Ajarn Dustin, and she dashes into the classroom, completely embarrassed.

I forget that I’m tired, that I didn’t know what I was going to do with my lesson plan, and sit down to take roll. Roll is uneventful though the students laugh every time I mispronounce a nickname or when a student states, “Absent!” instead of “Present!”

I stand up in front of the class and see 45 pairs of eyes staring curiously at me. I remember its not so much the content of my lesson that dictates whether the kids will learn, but how I present it. I teach with energy the kids find contagious and soon we’re having fun, and just happen to be learning some English in the process.

I teach a dialogue of “How are you feeling?” with a follow-up question to ask why they feel that way. When I picked the nine feelings to teach, I did so quite arbitrarily, and only now, in the middle of teaching them, do I know which parts of my dialogues are successes. For these kids, the feeling of “happy” is fun to talk about, because the reason I gave them for being happy is, “…because I’m in love.”

Though their English is bad, every student knows what the phrase “I’m in love” means and no one can say it with out a smile and a giggle. I start choosing two students at a time to practice the dialogue together and everyone thinks it’s a dating game. I pick one boy and shouts of a girl’s name are called out, and applause erupts when I give into the match making. The couple sheepishly mouths the dialogue and after, sit down to an applause and high-pitch “woo’s” from the girls.



My third class does not go so well. I walk in and immediately the students tell me they are hungry and want to go to lunch early. I laugh and take roll, marking late students tardy. The late students huff and groan, unhappy with my unfair record keeping.

Half way through the class five more students show up. “Where were you?” I ask. They all look at each other, hoping someone will step up to be the spokesperson for the group. One finally does. He offers the one word explanation of: “toilet.”

These students do not speak a lick of English. They are difficult to teach because they have given up on English years ago. They will be farmers, policemen and sticky rice vendors. I ask them if they all went to the toilet together. They don’t understand a word, sit down, and pretend to ignore me. This is why I don’t care whether the students wai me: if they want to show me respect, they have the opportunity to do so in the classroom. I bring the boys up to the front of the classroom for interrogation.

I ask them again, but this time in pigeon English: “You go toilet?” All the boys nod nervously. “You go? Five boys?” Looking at each other, they all agree and say nod their heads again. “Five boys, one toilet?” They nod again. In front of the class I give a overexaggerated look of surprise and disgust. I look at them again and they all begin to look worried, like they might have said the wrong answer to my question. “In America,” I explain, “one boy, boy toilet.” Their eyes open up, realizing what I’m getting at. “But in Thailand, one toilet, FIVE BOYS?!” I say in astonishment.

Each of their faces turn even more red as the entire class laughs at the thought of all five of them simultaneously using a single toilet. “No, no…” they plead, waving their hands negatively. They try to explain, but in two words their English vocabulary has been exhausted. I tell them to go sit down and they waste no time returning to their seats.

The call on the same boys repeated through the lesson, hoping to teach them that if they don’t want to learn, they should just play hooky. The rest of the class, though enjoying my picking on the boys, continues to beg to go to lunch early. I now decide I’ll keep them speaking English through the bell.

I look down at my watch and see that twenty minutes remain in the class. As I continue my lesson, a sudden shift in my stomach makes me instantly uncomfortable. I immediately regret having the cup of coffee. I continue to speak though I hardly concentrate on the words coming out of my mouth. I suddenly feel very hot and sweaty and realize twenty minutes is far too long. I quickly mobilize the students into pairs for practice speaking them sneak out the door, and down the hall to the nearest bathroom for a nightmare date with a squat toilet.

By the time I return, only a few students remain and I excuse them to lunch. I too walk to the cafeteria wondering if I can muster up an appetite for an omelet on rice. Still sweating and a little light-headed, I give a student 10 Baht to fetch me lunch. I sit at the teacher’s table and look at (not read) the daily paper reminding myself, No More Coffee.