Down and Out -Update Since Tuesday

Tuesday

This morning we got up around 5:45. For some reason our alarm went off earlier this morning and I did not realize it was too early until after I came out of the “shower.” I taught my adult class at 8 and then made lesson plans until my next class at 11:30. Two of my 4, 11:30 students showed. They were such a pleasure to teach. I was teaching them prepositions using hand signals, and after showing them a few times I wanted them to repeat it themselves, so I started back with the ‘on’ preposition, and said “so.” And just as the word came out of my mouth, the children did the exact same thing and said “so.” Sometimes I feel like I am creating little robots as they copy and repeat everything we say. It is funny sometimes.

My other two students showed up at the end of the class, so I redid the class for them as it was only my noon hour. They were quite the handful as they are only 4 years old and do not understand much English. The little boy is a character, looking at my stickers and winking for me to give him some.

After that class we had the older students. One of them was incredibly difficult to engage, and just shut down at the end of class. He is incredibly shy and does not like to speak much English. Sometimes we are able to get through to him, and other times he doesn’t say a word.

We took a motorbike taxi home. It was a little scarier then normal as there were some big trucks on the road and a few times we were swerving in some pretty tight places.

When we got home we grabbed something to eat, and as I was drinking water, Misty made fun of me and said I drink water like her mom. Just as fast as she took the bottle from me to show me how her mom drank, Misty started chocking and coughing up the water. I think Karma came around and hit her good. Linda, I don’t know how you managed to teach her a lesson from so far away, but well done.

We came home and slept for a few hours and then hopped back on a songtheaw and went back to Mercy to teach an evening class. As we were sitting at one of the longer stops, our three students came on the songtheaw as they were coming home from school. It was nice to ride with them, even if it was only for a few minutes.

We taught our last class of the evening, walked around the slums for a bit, checking out the night vendors and local markets and then took a songtheaw home.

We booked our hotel for the weekend. The whole weekend away is going to cost around $30 CDN, minus the food (which shouldn’t be more than $15 CDN for the whole weekend). This includes our transportation to and from Bangkok and our hotel. The place we are staying has 3 swimming pools, a hot shower, air conditioning and a King Sized bed.

We also called to book a room in Chaing Mai for the week of Songkran, which is the Thai New Year. It was once just a way that people were blessed with water, but it has now become a huge water fight that everyone must take part in, whether you want to or not. Since Chaing Mai is in the utmost Northern Part of Thailand and takes over 11 hours on a bus, we decided to go here for our extra long weekend and everything in Thailand shuts down from Thursday to Wednesday. This trip would be a little too much for a weekend. We are also talking about staying until the next Tuesday as we would only miss 2 days of school, and going to Burma and Laos for a few days as they border along the north.

We were worried that we were already too late for booking as some of the people we worked with told us that everyone would be booked up by now. When we called one place they said they might be all booked up, but joked with Misty, saying that we could stay in their house. Needless to say we were able to get a room there in the end, and not in their house.

An interesting thing about Thailand is that they do not ask for a Visa or way of paying in advance. When you stay at a hotel at these vacation destinations, they just ask you for your first name and only once have we ever been asked for our phone number. When you arrive they hand you the room key and do not ask for any kind of billing information, but just tell you that you can pay when you check out. So basically they hand over the key, knowing only your first name, and trusting that you will give it back in person so that you can pay.

When we were in Ko Chang, at the end of the stay when we were checking out, they asked us if we used the mini bar, but never actually went to look. Also, everything is paid in cash, so even if you did use more than you said, there is no way they can later take money away from you. It’s so strange for us to see that people are so easily trusting here. Hopefully people wouldn’t take advantage of it, but it would be very easy to if someone wanted to. A downside to this is that sometimes when you call ahead and reserve a room, they can still give it away on a first come first served basis. To avoid this we usually call a couple of times, and then call again on the way to confirm that we are indeed on our way there and give them notice as to what time they should expect our arrival.

Wednesday is going to be a pretty okay day for us. We teach classes from 8 – 2, and then are done for the day as we are now alternating our university prep classes with another volunteer. He teaches them math every other day and we teach them English in the odd days.

Speaking of Schedules, I will share my new schedule with you.

Monday – off (it has been hard to maintain this as our off day, but we have just had to stand our ground and be firm about not taking on anymore classes. I think many times if we did not say no more we would be there all hours of the day. Thankfully, we were warned of this before we came and again from American staff here)

Tuesday –

8:00-9:00am = Adult English with the Accounting Class. I teach 5 students, 4 from the Accounting Department at Mercy and a male who is the head of maintenance and building repairs. Two of the students speak English very well, two are quiet but do understand English and one is at a lower level than the others, but tries hard.
11:30-12:30 = Mercy 6 children. I teach 4 children, ages 4-6. Their English level varies greatly. One child is a niece from one of the workers. Two of the children are quite the handful as they have a very short attention span, which is even shorter when learning a different language.
Sometimes on Tuesday we also teach the evening English class from 3:00-4:00, depending on how our schedule goes with the other volunteers. However, we have tried to keep our Tuesday afternoons relatively free so that we can begin to take Thai language lessons.

Wednesday –

This day by far is the most challenging.
8:00-9:00 am = Adult English
10:00-11:00 am = Recreation for the older children. This class is a handful as the boys like to be typical boys; running around and playing. It makes explaining things very difficult.
11:00-12:00 = Recreation for the younger children. This is more of a drop in basis activity, most weeks we have over 50 children between the two groups. The first group is the younger children and children from Mercy 6.
1:30-3:00 = Seagypsies. These children are from the Southern Part of Thailand, Phukett. They were hit by the tsunami. They are only staying for the month of April so we will begin teaching them next week. All we really know is that they never really had any formal schooling as most of them spent their whole lives working on fishing boats with their families. This should be an interesting class. I am expecting it to be a lot of work to just keep under control.
3:00-4:00 = Evening students. We teach English to 3 students. We focus mostly on grammar and vocabulary as well as reading comprehension and normal conversational language. These students are teenagers. They enjoy learning English but are not at a very high level yet. One of the students is incredibly shy so it makes class hard as often times it is like pulling teeth to try and get him to talk. He often shuts down half way through class and it is hard to get him to come back. One time we taught him one on one and it was so much more enjoyable. We had him laughing as we were telling jokes and doing silly things.
5:00-6:00 pm = Evening University Prep Girls again

Thursday –

8:00 – 9:00 = English Adult Accounting Class
9:00-10:00 = tutoring a 19 year old girl in social studies as she prepares for her GED. She is very good in English as she studied in Singapore for a few years, however dropped out in her final year because of family problems. She is the oldest child in the family and since her mother’s passing, she has taken on the parenting role, which often means that she puts everyone else before herself.
10:00-11:00 = Rom Klao Preschool. This is located about a 10-15 minute walk from Mercy, so we have to make a mad dash for it. It is a preschool located in the heart of the slums. It is actually quite difficult to find as it is hidden in some back alleys. The children here are very easy to teach as they repeat back every word to you. I think most of them are around 5 years old. I am guessing that there are about 40 children in the classroom because it is summer holiday. For more information about the preschools, please see the blog from last Thursday and Friday.
11:30-12:30 = Back to Mercy to teach the Mercy 6 children again.
1:30-3:00 = seagypsies again
3:00-4:00 = Evening English students again
5:00-6:00 = university prep girls again

Friday –

8:00-9:00 = Adult English with Accounting class
10:00-11:00 = Fat 12 Preschool. This school is a little closer to Mercy than the other but is still a good walk. The facilities are much nicer. The children seem a bit older, minus the three year old who is in the summer class, but does not speak a word yet. The staff here are very helpful so we can do more with the children. The staff also write down the words to the songs we teach, or translate things for themselves so they can teach the children when we are not around. One teacher is the mother from one of the students we teach in the Evening class.
1:30-3:00 = Seagypsies
3:00-4:00 = Evening English
5:00-6:00 = university prep girls.

Saturday –

10:00 – Mass
Off, however most Saturdays are filled with activities at Mercy, so it may not always be a day off.

Sunday –
Off.




Wednesday

Everything has finally caught up to me. I figured it would sooner or later, but today it hit. I have not been 100% since Sunday, and it seemed that every day I started to feel a little more and more useless. Finally on Wednesday it was the day my body decided to keep me home. So that also means that I have nothing new to report besides a few bed sores.

Having a sick day here is not a luxurious thing. The boys are so loud that it is near impossible to fall asleep, and you cannot just stay up and watch tv all day because we do not have a tv. Also, the thought of soup or toast, can only remain a thought as there are no real cooking facilities and one would laugh in your face if you requested chicken noodle soup. I miss my mommy.

Today was not eventful at all. Stayed in bed all day, as able to keep crackers down. Watched a movie with Misty when she came home, talked to SiJie when she called and then went back to bed for the night.

Since I don’t really have any news to report, I should tell you a bit more about Thailand. Thai people revolve most of their social activities around food. Even though they eat all of the time, they are still stick thin. Misty did an activity with her adult class, asking about what food they thought was healthiest, and we were both surprised to find out that Thai people think western food is healthier. Yes, in some cases it may be more sanitary; however, Thais do not fry a lot of their food in grease. Most of their food is made from scratch, and they do not eat a lot of processed food. The children are more likely to grab a fruit and a fruit juice as opposed to a bag of chips and pop.

Also, a lot of people eat out. It is cheaper for a smaller family (3 or less) to buy all of their food at the street vendors than to buy all of the ingredients and prepare it at home. I would not be surprised if half of the houses do not have cooking facilities. Also, cooking is usually done in a pot or wok on top of a charcoal fire, or propane burner. I do not remember seeing any ovens.

It is also a well known thing that Thai people like to do as little walking as possible. Not only will they tell you this, but it is also evident when you do any length of walking with them. Most people will grab a taxi or bike if something is just down the street. However, one can often find Thai people exercising in the early hours of the morning or in the evening as the weather is cooler. Exercises include aerobics or a brisk walk or jog at one of the local parks.






Thursday – So far today is looking a little better then yesterday. I was awake from 4 am onward with the splitting headache again. After taking some Advil and knocking myself out I was able to sleep until it was time to shower. I am still not the best, but I am going to attempt to go in today, and if anything I will go to the doctor.