During the three years or so we "worked together" she did everything she could to avoid meeting me.

Are you sure it's related to the French language only? I work with Thai teachers of English for years. They avoid me. Not because they're not able to communicate with me. They simply avoid me because they don't like me. Perhaps my armpits smell bad. I don't know.

Petch01

At the two huge matayom campuses where I worked full time, each school had over a dozen Thai teachers of English. They did not ignore me, and they were always civil. Sometimes they trusted me enough to have me interpret difficult passages, help them with their handouts, define strange words, help them with master degree assignments, etc. For all their faults, they were nice folks, almost all of them trying to do their best at something for which they had been poorly trained, a job that even decades of experience had somehow not prepared them. It is the system that creates and perpetuates the worst problems. In their way, they took their jobs seriously and usually tried to help students.