I am in my final week of final exams and the thought of going home in 18 days possesses me. My mind obsesses on what to pack, how to carry it to the bus station, how to get rid of 6 months’ worth of accumulated junk, what to do in Bangkok to bide my time until liftoff, and a million other thoughts that center around finally going home.






How will I get my security deposit back from the condo? How will I communicate to the bank to transfer my money to the US? Or can they even do that?






I asked Patti Dunn to call Joe Saturday and wish him a happy 64th birthday . I had asked Steve to send me the Beatle’s song “When I’m 64” and I emailed it to Joe earlier in the day. Patti said he sounded so happy about me coming home and was in a rush to finish the bathroom renovation before I got there. I tend to forget how hard this has been on him. A few times on the phone he has said how quiet it was with nobody to talk to. Ironically, we talk on Skype for a half hour every day which is more conversation than we have in a week face to face.






ThisInternett has been so finicky this month - I calculated 7 days off in one month- that Saturday I just gave up and went down to the street to a ‘gaming’ Internet café’. The young Thai boys hang out there all evening playing video games. But the internet was lightning fast so I searched for an airline ticket, immediately coughed up the best deal I’ve seen in 3 days on Gorilla Air and bought it . Bangkok to Wilkes Barre no less, for $920./one way. As you know if you fly much, one way tickets are about 10-20 % less than round trip, no big savings. I had to relinquish the ‘home’ portion of my original ticket over here as they wouldn’t extend the validity past 3 months. Unfortunately, the internet café had no printer (how much would it cost to hook up a printer when it’s your family business?) so I wasn’t able to print out the details and had to email them to myself.






The good news? I was in there forever and it cost 9 baht - 27 cents US. I had to ask him to repeat it thinking I heard wrong - did he say 90 Baht, which would still have been acceptable? No, definitely 9 Baht.






I gave the medical students’ English exam today . I was short 3 questions to make an even 50 ( and you know what a PITA it is to divide by 47)   so I added 3 sentence matching questions :






“ I know you only have a toothache,-------but you’ll have to take off all your clothes”,






“This is going to be expensive------I hope you have good insurance”, and






“Take two aspirin ------and call me in the morning .”






Not one kid even glimmered a smile. My talents are totally wasted here.






Just when I think they are only tolerating me, they wait outside the classroom and ask the cleaning lady to use each one’s camera and take end-of-the-semester pictures of themselves with the farang. I gave them my email address and told them to look me up when they come to America.






I am surprised to realize that I WILL miss these kids. I thought I hardly knew them but now they are so familiar to me. Did I make any sort of impact on them? Did they learn any English from me? Or was I just some blathering idiot talking jibberish that they couldn't follow? Was I a teacher or just a placeholder, filling in a university requirement for x number of western teachers? I wonder if I was necessary at all. How do you measure improved listening skills or pronunciation? How much of anything I said was actually comprehended?






On Friday, I picked one of my best students from Oral English 2 (2nd year students, should have a pretty good grasp of the language) and asked her to go from our room, 602, to our other room, 605, to get my CD out of the computer drive. She appears confused, so I motion and mime and repeat -”Room 605, get my CD out of the computer.” Remember that they all know numbers since first grade, and the words CD and computer are universal in any language.






A minute later, Ajarn John comes in to my room and says, “What do you need?” Apparently, she wasn’t able to communicate that much to him.

But as with any teaching job, it is always the students who make it worthwhile. Administrators can be bungholes, materials are often lacking, facilities are less than inviting, schedules and planning is nightmare, but one or two kids who say "Thank you, Ajarn. You helped me practice my English. I need to talk in front of the class and be more confident" - well, it doesn't take much to cajole this old coot. I'm a lap dog basically. Throw me a bone now and then and I'm content.