The ESL Class

Last night I felt like I was in the middle of Maeve Benchley’s novel ‘Evening Class’. Yui, my former Thai teacher, invited me to work with her class and then have dinner with them afterwards.

There was the engineer, who sold huge boilers for factories. When I said to him he must sell one a month he replied; no… one every six months and had to supplement his income selling his tutoring skills in math. There was the really good looking sales executive who had to learn English to advance in his company, a guy who wanted to break away from his parents’ business selling used parts for motorcycles but felt he needed English to do this. In fact, when I went home with him on the BTS, he told me he lived in a house with his parents, grandparents, aunts ,uncles and cousins and could absolutely not imagine ever moving out. When he gets married, he said, the wife will move in with him.

What was wonderful about this class, other than all of the stories I could flesh out, is that it brought together people from all walks of life who were learning English for different reasons. There was the chambermaid who wanted to advance in her hotel, learning English at the same time asthe marketing executive. I imagine their incomes were similarly disproportionate to their job titles but when we went to the restaurant they all shared metaphorically as well as practically, both the food and their stories. In fact, it is a long week-end in Thailand (as well as all over Asia because of the May 1 labour day holiday ) and they were all talking about taking a trip together to the beach.

Two or three have cars and two or three probably can’t afford the price of a BTS ride. One pretty women could not raise her eyes to talk with anyone even though her English was pretty good, I imagine because she somehow must have felt inferior, but she was the exception. It was so great watching and listening to them practice their English and taking such delight in serving me the food and watching the smoke come out of my ears from eating all that spice.

Bangkok is so huge that I will never absolutely know all of it. I am continually astounded by all the areas just off the main streets that I never knew existed. We went to a restaurant called ‘To Sit’ which had a great singer, an outdoor area to eat (which I love since I hate air conditioning) and beautiful trees for shade, although we did not need the shade at night. It was funny when an apple fell on Yui’s head ( at least for the rest of us). Because I walk everyone I would not necessarily ever find these places until these guys drove me.

I am now doing an administrative job; in fact in a few minutes I have about 5 interviews lined up for a new school we are opening in Hanoi but there is nothing like teaching. I know I would be happy spending the rest of my life teaching an ‘evening class’ and learning their stories.