Thai Time Gets The Best of Me

Thailand is so unorganized, we need some Germans up in here to get things in order!*


Last Wed Vip (owner of studio) called me to tell me that four people were in the studio because they showed up for my class. I was getting on a plane to Hong Kong so I told her I wouldn't be able to start class in 5 minutes. Then she said I could start this week. I asked her to email me the information (time, day, price for students) which she agreed to do.

I checked my email when I got back on Tuesday (almost a week after speaking with her) and nothing. So I emailed two email addresses for the studio and called her. No response from the emails and just a lot of recorded Thai when I called.

On Wednesday I emailed again. A few hours later I got a phone call, in the middle of class. Knowing it was the studio, I answered, hoping to get any information out of them I could. My friends had been asking things like, How much? What time? What day? and I couldn't answer them.

Vip told me my class would start that night and for sure she had three people coming. Then she followed with "How many people do you have coming?" I responded with, "Well, considering you just gave me this information 15 seconds ago...no one." She ignored that and went on to tell me about a production in December she is creating that I should be in...

So I went home after school (instead of taking my Chinese class) put music together, made a lesson plan, made a quick choreography, and rushed to Central World with a few bites of dinner.

I got there and Vip was yelling at the receptionist in Thai and then in English she said, "Tell her!" He looked at me as if he was going to cry (she only weighs 90 pounds but she is very powerful)and then looked away because he didn't speak English.

She took over for him and told me that "HE" did not follow up on the four people that were there last week to tell them that class was starting, and that there might not be anyone coming. Then she told me I could take the Contemporary class that was starting right then... instead...of teaching...my class...that was supposed to start in half an hour...that I had stressed about and prepared for all day... But I figured I should at least get a free class out of this mess.

I went into the class and was saddened to see how many people wanted to roll around on a dirty floor and do handstands with the frizzy haired, English Boy, Ballet dancer turned freak instead of take my class, even though it had been nonexistent up until just a few hours earlier.

One friend of mine did show up but she didn't want to take the class by herself because, "then she would be paying to hang out with me for an hour and a half and we can just do that at school." Which is true. I can't blame her. I'm not that fun, at least not to get paid to hang out with.

So after rolling around and handstanding on the dirty floor barefoot in bellydance clothes with the frizzy haired English boy ballet dancer turned freak, I went home and cried to Andy who told me it was hard for students to know when the class was starting when the teacher didn't even know. I agreed.

On a positive note...
I got accepted to present at the Bangkok Teachers Network Conference! It's like a trial for the big SE ASIA conference in Malaysia. Of course I'm stressed and nervous and feeling overwhelmed and overbooked...but like Bryan said, "What else is new?"
* Germans refers to a time when Danielle, Tommy, and I were on a bus in Central America. There were about 8 people on the bus so they told us it was open seating. An American girl had been sitting in her seat, bags sprawled, comfortable, for a couple of hours when a German couple came on board, tickets in hand. They were told, as everyone else was, that they could sit anywhere. This apparently is a very difficult concept for Germans (I hear they number their park benches and trees) so they found their seats by their ticket number and guess who was in their seat? They showed the American their tickets politely and she politely told them they could take any seat. The Germans looked at each other and smirked, because OBVIOUSLY they could not sit anywhere but where their ticket told them to. So there was some yelling, a lot of cursing, and one pissed off American girl who gathered her things and huffed to the seat behind them. The Germans proudly sat down and looked at us with an expression that conveyed, "Can you BELIEVE she didn't want to move?" and then they showed us their ticket to give them more credibility. That's when Danielle said, "It's fun to watch Germans try to organize Central America!")