The [Mis]Adventures of Asians and Underwear

First off, let me apologize for the tremendous lack of posts in the last couple weeks -- I keep sitting down to write one, then get distracted. You know how it is living and working on the other side of the world.....sometimes you gotta live it rather than write about it.


I honestly haven't written in so long, I don't know where to start. How bout I start with these last couple days of teaching and work my way back to Thai culture in general (and how it pertains to me specifically).

Today we had a test -- no, more like a quiz -- in the vocabulary we've been studying these last couple weeks. I teach 8th graders, and in many ways these kids are much like typical 8th graders in the states.
In fact, in my first class of the day, a couple boys showed their true age when in the middle of the 5-minute journal writing time, I look up and see a boy with grey underwear on his head. And I'm not talking laying neatly on the top of his head -- it is pulled down like a bonnet. I laughed and asked him why his underwear is on his head instead of in his pants. All the boys are laughing at this point too, and the boy says that they aren't his. When I ask why he has someone else's underpants are on his head he points to the boy behind him and says that he got it from him. So I question the 2nd boy why he's giving his underwear away and if they're clean. He could barely breathe, he's laughing so hard, but he says that he took them from another boy's locker so he wouldn't have clean underwear to put on after gym class.

Mature? I think not.

Hilarious? Most definitely.

About 20 minutes later, the same two boys are arguing over who is more Asian.

THEY ARE BOTH FULL-BLOODED ASIAN.

Underwear-boy says he looks more Asian because he's more tan and his eyes squint more since he's Korean. Underwear-stealer said that he is more Asian because he's more culturally aquainted with Asian culture being Chinese by birth, but Thai by culture.

To break the tie, and based solely on appearances, I had to bestow the honor of "looking more Asian" to Underwear-boy. (Fun fact: 'bestow' was one of our vocab words on the quiz today.)

I thoroughly stumped the class though when I said, "I bet you didn't know I was Asian too."

The class had the automatic response of, "Whaa.....??"

"What did you think I was?" I said.

Underwear-boy says, "I thought you were Mexican."

Underwear-stealer pipes in with, "Yeah, or at least Latin-blooded." (Latin-blooded?)

Good grief. I'm not even recognized by my own kind. And worse, not accepted as such. Even the other halfsie (half-and-half) in the class who doesn't have the Thai features but the Thai skin tone is seen as more Thai than anything else.

***

How can I universally be seen as Mexican?? We don't even have Mexicans here to compare me with.

But anyway.....These 8th graders who can be so childish and act their age one minute can turn around and act like the academically-crazed Asians that we all know and love. With even the mention of the test, they ask a million questions about how many questions their are, is it multiple choice, will we need to spell out the word, if we get just part of the question wrong is it only half a point, do we need to know the parts of speech....and on and on and on.

I hadn't even handed out the quiz at that point.

These kids worry too much. Just do your best. Don't be stupid. Sound out the words. Remember what we've been doing for two weeks. You look like you're about to have a panic attack, and we haven't even started yet. Do you need to lie down for a minute? Smelling salts? (yes, they carry these with them).

Somehow it took over ten minutes to explain the very simple instructions. How can this be difficult?

1. Write the word down as I say it it.

2. Write the POS (part of speech) that it is.

3. Define the word, making sure it still coincides with the POS.

4. Fill in the blank with the correct vocab word.

5. Extra credit available if you want.

Seriously, they needed to know every possible hypothetical situation imaginable. It's students on academic steriods.

They didn't do as bad as they thought. Then again, I haven't exactly graded the quizzes yet. But after they were done, they said it was easy. That better mean they got 100%.