cold days and warm milk

I have been wearing my only pair of socks for the last couple of days in a row. I pulled out the Nepali sweater/jacket I made before I left, and have been wearing my only pair of pants as well. It’s winter in Thailand, and I had definitely underestimated what the temperature would be! After endless crystal blue, the last full week only had grey skies. So sad! My kids are wearing toques, earmuffs, balaclavas, and mittens. *sigh. Today I taught two of my classes outside with a little white-outboard on the lawn because it was too cold in the concrete-walled centre.

This week I have really enjoyed my friend Brad being here, being able to ride on his motorcy rather than biking everywhere, and sitting for hours chatting and reading in a coffee shop downtown. Recently we drove to a large cave south of here, borrowed a gas lantern, and wandered through cave tunnels for an hour. Yesterday we went to the second-highest mountain in Thailand, Doi Tung, a gorgeous forested peak that I can see out the office window. The top was mostly pine and the smell was both nostalgic and heavenly. I’m also enjoying sweetened warm milk. I don’t think the milk men know how much they mean to me...

I went to the little mission Church again this Sunday with Brad. Oh... those kids sound like angels. Really. After Church we were invited to have lunch with the teachers again and then played half-court basketball with some of the younger boys. It was so funny to see such a tall Dutch guy play with little Thais half his size... haha. Its awfully humbling to be called 'teacher' just because I am white. Even after Brad said he wasn't a teacher all the kids still called him that. Very humbling. Though, maybe its because they can't pronounce our names...

One thing that I’m having a really hard time with is planning lessons/creating syllabi without knowing what my students have learned (the last teacher took no lesson notes) and where I can take them from here. I feel like I understand the Thai language much more than the English language (if you have never tried to teach English before; let this be know: English has few rules; only some of them make sense, and all of them are always broken.). I have seven classes and no syllabi for any of them... and have so far planned 12-15 individual English classes each week.

I’m getting very attached to my little town, to the weekly highlights of church, the Sunday market, and going to the coffee shop. I feel like I haven’t had stability in such a long time… and believe it or not, these 6-7 months that I’ll be living here will be the longest I’ve lived anywhere at one time since… Bible College 4 years ago. It feels good :).

The high light of today was reading with some students after lunch. I wish I had volunteers to read with them! Practice helps SO much… I really think one book is far better than a 50 minute lesson. I had six kids sounding out the words at the same time while I held the book up for them all to read. If anyone has the books about Jane and Tom (See Jane run. Jane runs fast.) that build off each previous book's vocabulary… we need to have a chat. I can pay for postage if you’d like ;).

Right now my days are filled with lesson planning, trying to come up with ways to teach all the different levels in one lesson, forming syllabi, etc… I’m beginning to feel so comfortable and busied with teaching here that I am forgetting why I came. I often forget that these kids are so directly at risk of being exploited. How could they be? That happens to people know one knows, doesn’t it? Little Seelee-pong, Lannoi or Sang-dtee… they’re all becoming close to me, and thinking about what could happen in the future without huge preventative measures makes me burn with anger and weep at the same time (oh… and comes the tears. Why am I so emotional?). Even today some of my kids stopped calling me ‘Teacher’ in favour of ‘Phi Nicci’... a tag name inviting the person into one's family: Phi means ‘older sibling’. Yet, why do I have only three kids in grade six, and thirty-one in grade one? Walking through the villages around here you can point out every house that has external income… brightly coloured concrete buildings with gates and balconies right next to wooden shanties on stilts. I always tend to think the best of people and couldn’t bear to think of all the children in the community that would have had to be sent away for most of the houses to look like that… I still can’t believe it, but that’s what the Thai staff who have been here for twenty years say. *sigh. Anyway. I’m not trying to sensationalize, I’m just trying to remind myself of the reality that my growing bubble of comfort and joy sits right in the middle of. H’anyway. Love to you all.

Oh! I also got my first letter! Thank-you Owen Sound Alliance Church! Hurray! It's sitting on my desk :).

Blessings all.

Nicola