After I left off yesterday, Misty and I walked to the preschool. She was their once with SiJie and knew roughly where to go. However, I was quickly reminded of Misty’s terrible sense of direction as we soon found ourselves walking in circles in the slums. Eventually one of the motorbike taxi drivers saw us and asked if we were looking for Mercy School, and she lead us there.
The school is located in the heart of the slums. We had to walk through a narrow pathway of shacks until we came to a gate that leads into the school yard. The school is basically a small two storey structure, and can only be recognized as a school by the posters on the walls and the children working in their notebooks. Even though it is summer holiday for the children, there are still children attending school. Mercy keeps the 29 preschools open all the time so that children have some place to go and are not left at home unattended.
It looked like there were two classes, one of older children and one of nursery age children. As far as I am aware there are three levels of preschool and students are grouped according to age.
As soon as we entered the building, children swarmed around us smiling their curious smiles and greeting us with the traditional Thai wai. Because this preschool is not at the central Mercy location, they do not often get foreign volunteers. Misty and I taught them some children’s songs using a cd she brought from her primary practicum in Canada. The children especially enjoyed the chicken dance. They picked up on the moves very quickly and repeated back everything we said to them in English. Following our dancing we got children to identify colors and shapes on our flash cards. They were familiar with the colors but had trouble identifying shapes. We also read them “If You Give a Mouse a Cookie.” However, this book was way above their level so it required a lot of acting. We ended the class singing the alphabet and then doing some more dances.
I should also mention that the children do not have desks here. Instead they sit on the floor to learn. The usually sit in rows, one behind the other. The whole time we were dancing with one class, the younger children watched and imitated in their rows on the other side of the room. This whole experience was very exciting and has probably been one of my happier moments at Mercy. It has also helped remind me of why I want to be a teacher, as some of our other classes are more one on one tutoring at a much higher level.
I can also tell you that this experience was an incredible workout. There was no air conditioning in the building, and even though it was only 10 am, I am sure it was likely about 35-36 degrees outside. Walking back was exhausting as well. We stopped in to the preschool that we will be teaching at on Fridays to meet the teacher and the children. One of the teachers is the mom to one of the older students we teach.
We had to quickly rush back to Mercy as we were teaching more children in half an hour. Misty and I taught separately. She taught an 8 year old boy, and I taught three students from the AIDS ward that are 4, 5 and 6 years old. They were so cute but hard to engage. It is difficult to teach children another language when you cannot explain or describe things to them in their own.
After class we had 30 minutes to spare to grab a lunch and then teach our next class. We moved the evening class to the afternoon now because students are on school holiday and it would mean that we would not have to stay until 8 pm. Misty and I found that this made a big difference as we had more energy now. Afterwards our next class was waiting for us and we finished our day at 3 pm. What a jammed packed day, but an exciting one.
We had a personal ride home on our own sonthaew. They drove us from the front door of Mercy to the front door of Soi 40. It felt pretty exciting to feel like such royalty. Also, our front door here is not like a front door at all. Most doors in the slums are actually large garage doors. So every morning we need to use all of our body strength to slide the door on the track to open it and then close it again. Instead of having a door lock, most locks here are padlocks. The process of opening and closing the main door to this building is quite the workout.
In a previous post I mentioned that Thai people take off their shoes to enter buildings. This is a very smart tactic as it does not require you to clean the floor as often. It is also a pretty neat feeling to be walking around your work in bare feet all day. Most mornings I leave my shoes outside the main office and then don’t see them again until I switch buildings or at the end of the day.
We came home at around 5 and fell asleep. When SiJie called at 7 pm I thought it was our phone waking us up for the day. I was just about to complain until she said that it was time to eat something. What a relief. I don’t mind being woke up for food, knowing that I can soon go back to sleep.
One of the boys in this building has Autism. I am not sure if he has ever been formally diagnosed but the house parents pointed it out to me, and he is very much a text book case. Because of my own experience in my undergraduate degree and through summer employment, I have been asked to give a presentation to the staff and some of the house parents at Mercy, on how to work with him. I will be given a translator to translate with me as I present. They mostly are looking at ideas on how to engage him in activities and how to connect with him better. Now he tends to do his own thing and the house parents do not really know how to work with him or deal with his behaviors. I already have a few ideas that I have been trying out and that I think he might respond well to.
Another interesting thing to note, that I’m not sure if I mentioned before. It is not unusual to see a Thai person sitting on the floor. Even at Father Joe’s house we often find ourselves sitting on the floor or on pillows on the floor. It is also common for people to sit on the floor while they eat. Today at the preschool we were shown where the students eat lunch. This area was basically a large room, no tables and no chairs.
I am going to end this post now and get back to our progress report. Every week we are required to submit a report on what he did with every student we taught during the week, including what worked, what didn’t work, what behaviors were presented, who attended, what time they arrived, etc. This takes a lot of time. Even though our schedule says we are done at 6 pm, our day does not end here. We usually come home and plan lessons for the next day. This is a job in itself as we cannot repeat the same lessons for each of our classes as everyone is a different age and is at a different level of understanding and speaking English.
I see that today is the first day of spring. It is weird to think that Misty and I are going to not see a day of spring at all this year. However, Misty has reminded me that spring is usually just another name for winter. Well, I hope the snow starts melting soon and the flowers and bunnies appear. The flowers are in full bloom here, and I guess the dogs can fill the void of the bunnies. I am curious to see how we are going to find the Canadian summer after spending so much time in the overwhelming heat that is anticipated to arrive in April. I guess the weather we are experiencing now is nothing compared to what has yet to come. I pray that I will be able to withstand the temperatures. Surprisingly, we have both gotten quite used to the heat and find it bearable now. However, a lot of our time at Mercy is spent in air conditioning.
I hope everyone has a good Easter together with their loved ones. We don’t have too many plans, maybe get dressed up and go out for a nice dinner somewhere. We have also tossed around the idea of buying an ice cream cake to celebrate our one month milestone. I can easily think of excuses to have ice cream.
Once again my apologizes for not posting pictures. I have not been able to connect to the internet from my own computer so I have been using the computer at Mercy and it does not have our pictures on it. I should also thank you for reading all of my posts and ignoring my spelling mistakes. I do not have time to read over my posts before I upload them and was embarrassed to read some of them over yesterday. Sorry.
Different food attempted today: Fish balls. Verdict: Tasted a lot like chicken balls, with a bit of a fishy after taste. Overall Rating: 8.
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