July 25, 2006
The last two days has been spent at Ban Triem School planning for the upcoming “English for Tourism Camp” that will be all day Saturday and Sunday. Moosa and I have put together a booklet for the kids. Looks like the Camp will be exhausting (for me) and hopefully fun for the kids. The first entire day we are going to spend visiting different sites and learning about them. I am hoping to add some English in here, but most likely it will be mainly Thai. There will be games and such. And best of all…they want to all spend the night at the school. Ugh. I think I might be able to get out of it and spend the night at my host family’s house. The school does not have the best facilities and I can only imagine the chaos of 25+ kids 11-14 plus some teachers I guess. Then all day Sunday too… We will see what happens. Pray that it doesn’t pour all day Saturday. Moosa promises me to do some Black Magic to keep the rain at bay, we will see. Today was slow at school, I am used to working on a project and making good headway and need to give that up. With constant interruptions (legitimate as to Moosa’s teaching schedule) and sometimes just laid back time, I usually itch to finish. I am sure when Jeff gets here it might be even a bigger stretch for me to spend long hours at school. Just not used to the pace. Today I longed more for friends, family (Jeff of course) and just familiarity. As I have been open to living abroad, I have become more aware of my sense of home in the United States. However I constantly struggle between the two worlds – being comfortable in a community of friends and then the itch to see the world and feel that I need to be out in it more. Oh, we will see. I think the alone time has done me good but I don’t think I would do it for so long again. Perhaps research that I have designed and am more active in rather than being part of a program that does not really have the same direction as I do – i.e. working with school kids and a bunch of bureaucracy. Speaking of bureaucracy, I think there will be some pomp and circumstance at the “Camp” this weekend. Government officials from around have been invited and are expected to attend an opening ceremony. Seems that most things function around this kind of structure, but might not always have the meat inside. Even the boy scouts here are into long marches with sticks, seems more on the militant end. Then there are the constant recitations in school “Good Morning Teacher” and “Thank you Teacher” after each class – yet some chaos in the middle. More spoon fed information. The kids of course also seem to not have the same respect for teachers in the States, at least not in the rural areas. Sometimes I see a kid do something that would make me want to clobber him or her, but sometimes they do it right in front of the teacher. I have seen a few ruler smacks to the knuckles but more in jest and the kids seem to play along with it, not a painful or even disciplinary result. The kids just want to have fun and Moosa tells me that they don’t think about their future in the rural areas, so school doesn’t matter that much to them. They will eventually probably work in a garden or the ocean as their parents have. Some are already doing it and don’t show up for school for a week at a time or so because the demand on the families are great. It is a pretty poor area and even today when Moosa and I went out to eat lunch, a student of his brought us the food. Working. The parents were of course there and gave us fresh rambutan when we left. The ride too and fro the restaurant was my first try at riding Thai style on the motorcycle, sidesaddle that is. I decided my skirt was a bit to short to straddle without making too much of a laugh as I needed to get on the motorcycle in front of a ton of kids and teachers today. It was OK, but not for long distances. Moosa took me home today on the bike – the longest ride yet, probably about 25 minutes, he let me where his helmet. And of course I straddled the bike!Thinking of you all. Drop me a line if you have the chance so I know you are still out there. (No reading for free! J)