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UMF Fulbright Scholar: Lost in translation

7 mins read
UMF graduate and Fulbright Scholar Lauren Crosby with her student, and competitive singer, Mike.

Lauren Crosby is a 2016 University of Maine at Farmington graduate with a degree in Secondary Education. After being awarded the Fulbright Scholarship, she was placed in Thailand to teach English.

It was a Saturday morning, and I was en route to Bangkok with one of my students with whom I had been training the prior two months in English singing. Mike (my student) would be fighting for gold at the high school boys English singing competition at Thammasat University with the song “You’re Gonna Love Me”— a spicy love ballad performed by Jennifer Hudson.

The six-hour van ride was shared with three other teachers, and four other students who would be competing in different areas of academics: Thai manners, crossword puzzles, and science projects. Thai people love their competitions, and this was not my first rodeo. Mike had to make it through two other competitions in order to make it to this one, so I knew what I was getting myself into.

However, this is not a story about Mike’s English singing competition.

All of the teachers and students would be staying in a hotel near the University. There was one other female teacher and a female student who would be staying with me. I didn’t know either of them prior to this trip, and I was quite intimidated by the teacher. To get a picture in your head, think of the character Mike Wazowski from the Pixar classic Monsters Inc., and then mix in a rough n’ tough grandmother who speaks ZERO English, and who would probably make you eat something even if you didn’t like it: this was my roommate for the night. To say the least, she had a fierce personality and didn’t care to give me the time of day.

I was already feeling Greng Jai (a Thai word used when you feel bad, but don’t at the same time) because the teacher preferred to sleep on the floor, and allowed the student and I to share the bed. In past generations, Thai people slept on the floor, and you will find that a lot of older Thai people still prefer it to this day. In my American culture, a younger person would sleep on the floor out of respect, so I was naturally feeling Greng Jai because of these different cultural norms.

Around 8 p.m. we were all exhausted. While the teacher was using a towel as a mattress on the floor, talking to one of her family members on her cell phone, I found myself curled up reading on the bed. It had been a long day of traveling, but I couldn’t help but eavesdrop on the phone conversation that was happening in the room. I can understand a little Thai, and I usually have a sense of what is going on in a dialogue, but in this particular conversation, I was being tripped up by the word “men.” I know that the word men means smell bad and the teacher kept using it.

An hour earlier I had shocked the female teacher and the female student by saying I wasn’t going to take a shower, because I take showers in the morning. They were in gruesome awe, and both laughed in my face after giving me very disapproving looks. In Thailand, simply washing yourself with a washcloth suffices as a shower. A western shower (as all you readers know) involves a whole lot more, and therefore, we have something that is called “lost in translation.” I started to feel extremely self conscious that the teacher was talking about me smelling bad and so I did what any respectful, young Fulbright Scholar would do: I got up to take a shower.

After my shower (I made sure to apply extra perfume-y lotion) I sauntered back to the bed all fresh and clean, only to hear the teacher STILL using the word men in her conversation. With frustration, I messaged Mike (yes, you remember, Mike, the student) to ask him about this men business. He explained that men was northern dialect for the word yes.

Here I was all of this time, thinking the teacher (whose name I have not shared because I’m still a little frightened of her) was telling her family members that she was sharing a room with a smelly white girl. Mike died laughing the next day when he explained some of the differences about northern and southern Thai dialects. There are several different words used for the same meaning— much like what we have in the States. For example, yes in southern dialect is chai, and no is mai. If the teacher had been using this dialect, I would have understood because this is the original language I had learned in Bangkok. In the northern dialect, yes is men and no is baow so I had learned.

Ah, but alas, after this cultural confusion, Mike took home 11th place in the country for High School Male English Singers, and we made it back to Thungsaliam late Sunday night, smelling really, really good.

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