She/He

Prepare yourself for probably a lot of 13 year old boy humor.

I just got back from my third Thai massage after a long day of laying bricks. This one however wasn't the best. I was hoping to get the masseuse I had the first time but ended up with the one I got last time, who is a great back cracker but always seems unfocused. This time she answered her phone while she was on the table massaging me. Twice. And I was laying right under the A/C so I was freezing the whole time, even after she covered me with a towel. Then as if I wasn't already uncomfortable, half way through I realize I need to pee. Sometimes you forget to do that here; since you're always sweating everything out to the point of dehydration restroom visits seem relatively infrequent. But when a small Thai woman is sitting on your bladder you remember real quick.

Right as I'm sitting on the table thinking "could this massage get more bizarre?" there is a loud thud in the stall next to mine. There are 4 of us in the room all sectioned off into stalls with massage beds, and everyone in the room simultaneously asked "what was that?!" Molly, in the stall next to me, answers "she [her masseuse] just kind of fell off the bed... but she recovered well." I hope you can all envision that. I absolutely cracked up at this, and I continued to laugh while face down on the table for a long while. Then it turned into the giggles, at which point I'm sure I was near impossible to massage. I'm already the most ticklish of the group during these massages. At this point I have even learned the Thai word for ticklish (chakkachi or จักจี้) because the masseuses have asked me so many times when I start to laugh. However I have learned that I am only (or most) ticklish on my left side. Especially my left groin, which they always insist on pressing their whole fist into even while I laugh in agony.

One thing I always enjoy about Thai massage is the chiropractic aspect of it. They always do a good job of cracking my digits, back, and hips. I don't feel any different afterwards, not more relaxed or anything, I guess hearing the cracks is just satisfying. My hips especially since they generally feel a little out of place; now I know how to turn my leg to get it to pop back. And this masseuse does a fantastic back cracking, pulling me in every which way. I hope I can remember how she does it. I would go just for that.

Moving on to the rest of the day, Amy and I spent the morning teaching English to a small class. It was a group of 6 older students, maybe 12-17, 3 boys and 3 girls. We had a general idea of things we could do but their English was minimal to say the least. They knew the alphabet and numbers and it seemed like that was about it. Thankfully one older boy knew a little more than the rest and we communicated primarily through him when others didn't understand.

We started with easy questioning and writing up questions/responses on the board. They all copied this down unprompted into their little notebooks, then it looked like they translated the phrase into Thai below it. I could tell they didn't really understand what or why they were repeating these words though, and this bothered me. So I suggested we introduce subjects (I, you, he/she, we, they...) and then maybe verbs. Amy wrote out the subjects and we pointed to people while saying them until they got the idea. However they all burst into noticeable giggles every time we got to She/He. Eventually I asked the older boy why that was so funny and he really struggled to find the words to explain. Finally after a few minutes he just said "sex girl." We then assumed that 'he' means sex in Thai and agreed it was kind of funny.

But at lunch we clarified with Ava what 'he' meant in Thai. She looked shocked and asked us "did they say that to you??" That's when we knew it didn't mean just sex... We told her that they were giggling then she laughed and explained that it means vagina. But only when said with a certain tone, the down-up tone where you put more upward inflection on the end of the word. Turns out this is a similar inflection to what you use when trying to encourage someone to repeat after you...

What makes it even better is that Amy kept saying and writing She/He. She in Thai means nun, so we were basically repeating "nun's vagina" the whole time. Better yet, 'he' is not the most appropriate word for vagina, more of a c word in fact. "Nun's c." Yep, it was a memorable lesson.

These poor kids tried to suppress their giggles as I continued from subjects to verbs and demonstrated how the subject changes the verb conjugation. All without saying any of that. We taught them some verbs through demonstration, played Simon Says with them, and then I made really simple sentences with them. I run, She/He runs, etc. I'm sure they retained none of this but at least they humored me. I teach one more hour Tuesday, which I'll probably just do a word search for or something.

After a comparatively easy morning it was back out to the wall. We laid more brick and cemented it in place, and finished an hour early after the threat of rain. No one wanted to do that again.

At dinner we had panang curry for the first time, which I was pretty excited for. However we learned very quickly that panang curry is deceivingly hot. Not at first, but a couple spoonfuls in you start to really feel it. It was so good so we would take a few bites, then bitch about the heat and guzzle water, then after the recovery we would eat a little more and repeat the process. Finally, after dinner we got to talking about Thai lady-men, which we had discussed at lunch right after She/He. We found a website that had a bunch of pictures of ladies and lady-men and we all gathered around to guess about each picture. Then we clicked on the answer and found out, to our utter shock, that they were all lady-men! You should google it, it's amazing how pretty some of these lady-men are. Totally had us fooled.

I think that wraps up today, nothing too exciting but at least a little funny. As I write this in bed there is currently a gecko hiding behind our mirror on the wall opposite me. He has just started to make strange noises. Like a distress call perhaps? Somehow they're smart enough to find their way in through cracks in the door, but not smart enough to find their way out an open door. So I'm not going to bother with him, he can hang out and eat all the bugs instead.