Where I am now

So I think I've mentioned before that there are cows and water buffalo everywhere. Herds of maybe 10 or herds of about 60 or so and traffic stops so that the cows can walk on by. This is just one of them in the village next to where I am staying these days.

These next pictures are from our school visits a few weeks ago.

At one of the schools another volunteer is teaching at, they specialize in uni-cycling. I tried to do it and it was extremely hard...had to have two people on either side of me to hold me up! Maybe I'll learn before the year is up.

When we went to the schools there were often other children around just to watch. These two girls weren't in the elementary school one of us will be teaching at but stopped by to see the commotion. They were adorable and pretty shy. I think they said that they were 4 and 5 years old.

These two sat in front of me at one of the visits - they seemed to be the troublemakers of the group! They were 4 years old and were also quite shy. We have been told that it is okay to take pictures of the children if we show them the camera and ask. If they smile and nod then it's deemed okay. If not then you just put your camera away. Simple.

This is when I was making Som-Oo - Green Papaya Salad! The dish that the Isaan region is known for. It's super spicy and has a lot of fish sauce it in so it's not my most favorite dish but it is good. Great for anyone looking for something super spicy. It's made with very simple ingredients and you mash it with a sort of mortar and pestle...they sell them all over the place here.

This was one of the middle school bands that played for us at one of the various ceremonies.

Meeting place at my school where the teachers and principle introduced themselves! It was air-conditiond. woohoo!

This is all of us! We were getting various electronics at the main store in town and the owner invited us up to his house. He has a rooftop terrace which is where we took this picture. You can see all of the city as well as into Laos - it's gorgeous! We are actually going back there for dinner tonight so I'll take some more pictures. We get invited everywhere...it's turning out to be a bit exhausting. We went to a 100 day funeral celebration last night - lots of food and a sort of karaoke machine.  We also went to a wedding celebration in town. There were she-men dancers (more on that soon) and singing and lots of alcohol. We mostly just stayed for the food!

All of us at a "western" restaurant! I think it's the only one in town. We just got some beer this day as we needed something cool and refreshing that wasn't water. We'll get the American food later.

We are constantly packed into this bus. 11 people in 8 seats! Someone is usually on the floor. But it's always a good time.

The night market! Sort of hard to tell in this picture but it goes on for several hundred yards. It's got tons of wonderful street food! And no one has gotten sick so it's all good. And there are moto's eeeeverywhere...all part of the experience.

Breakfast time here - off for some eggs and potatoes! Sometimes we even get pancakes.

Random facts

*Just had an impromptu English lesson with the girls here. One of them, a junior, told me that she wants to move to San Francisco and she wants to be a designer! So I told her she was welcome to come visit and I'd show her around. :). She also showed me one of her dress designs and it was wonderful. We're finally getting to the point where we can really communicate with the girls and talk in a mixture of Thai and English which is awesome cause it means we can have meaningful conversations...more than just the 'hello, how are you'. The fact that we can talk about what we want to do in the future and I was able to help with homework was a pretty big breakthrough for the past couple weeks.

*Egg is in EVERYTHING here. breakfast, lunch, dinner, and in all sorts of forms you've never seen before. Get ready for some egg if you come to the Isaan region!

*tomorrow I'm going to shadow some teachers at my school and talk to the Thai teachers I will be working with - I'll let you all know how it goes.

*been learning a lot about the culture here and what is right and wrong in terms of being a foreign teacher so will blog about that soon enough. We're really quite busy these days and all of our free time is after 8 pm. We're getting ready to run an English camp this weekend as our 'practicum'. Pictures soon!

Thai Dancing and String Ceremonies

 **Again, no pictures yet but in the next post or so**

A couple days ago we went to an area of Nakhon Phanom called Renu Nakhon and it's supposedly known for it's beautiful women. The secretariet of the Senate in Bangkok is from this area and so he greeted us and welcomed to the school we were spending the day at. He mentioned that much of what he is doing in the Senate is helping to get English out in the rural area's and he was so happy that we were there, but that he had to leave because he had another meeting. It was a very short and blunt message as seems to be the Thai way.  But it was still a wonderful introduction and great to know how appreciative he was of what we will be doing. He also told us to call if we ever have any problems or want a tour guide around Bangkok. We seem to be getting a lot of invitations from people to stay with them or to go to their province/ town. I'm never quite sure how serious these invites are or if it's Thai custom to be polite and invite us since we're new to town.

The day was fantastic and we got to participate in a traditional Thai dance! First they put on a show for us and everyone (Thai) was involved - grandmothers and grandfathers, two little 8 or 9 year old children and a bunch of university students who were home for break (it's their mid year break for another week or so....classes begin again in November). Afterwards they invited us to dance too and we got to wear traditional dresses and everything! It was very possibly the hottest day here though and I was just sweating constantly (I know you all wanted to know that). But we had to put the costumes on over our clothes and air conditioning is a rare thing in our villages. Then we basically did the show again, which consisted of different classical Thai dance moves that we hadn't learned yet.  We ended up just copying the Thai dancers as best we could.  It worked well enough, among a lot of laughter. Most of us were paired with another Thai. I had an older woman who made sure I knew what I was doing and it was great. She mostly laughed at me but I sometimes got it right! We just walked around in circles in the dancing area (as is custom I think) and then we sat down in one huge circle. I'm sure there are cues to the music but I wasn't paying attention/ couldn't tell. Next, a guy would get up and dance around in the middle of the circle of people and "pick" a girl to dance with. There were three brothers dancing with us and the youngest got up and attempted to ''pick'' his older brothers girlfriend and everyone got a laugh out of that. It was very interpretive and a lot of fun.

I was the first person from our group 'picked' to dance which was a little nerve-wracking as I had no idea what to do and most of you know that I hate being the center of attention! So luckily a couple other people got into the circle at that time and showed me what to do...I just sorta stepped and moved my hands around and waited until someone told me to sit down. It was an experience and I'm so glad we got to do it! There is a festival here on November 2nd and we've been invited to dance FOR a whole community so at least we got some practice.  We have also been taking classical dance lessons!

After the dance they asked us if we wanted to "see the elephant" which confused us all. I thought it was an actual elephant, other's thought it was drugs as we're located in the Golden Triangle. It turned out to be this rice whiskey that they make specially in Renu Nakhon and the female gets the longer straw and the male gets the shorter straw and you drink out of this rice whiskey jug at the same time for like 20 seconds.  They also do some sort of chant or song and throughout the whole thing we could hear them commenting on "farangs". So, no idea what they were saying. We were told it was nothing negative however.

During the whole ceremony, somewhat in the beginning, the district head asked us to bring our chairs into the middle around a table that had been set up. The table had a nice tablecloth, some eggs, and custard cakes in these urn type things. It's a bit hard to describe so I will post a picture soon. The district head then gave a little speech (in Thai of course). Next, all of the teachers and some of the students grabbed some of the pieces of string hanging on the tree and tied them around our wrist. It's a sort of ceremony - it was described as a love ceremony but I think it was closer to a welcoming ceremony meaning that it was lovely to meet us. That's about all I picked up. So we had about 20 pieces of string tied to our wrists and this is actually the second time we've had this ceremony in our honor. The first time we left all of the strings on our wrists because we thought it would be disrespectful to take them off. Turns out, if you leave them on longer than overnight it means you are married! So we got it right this time and left them on only for a day - they are supposed to bring us good fortune and luck.

Nawa Pictures and other happenings

So I'm a little behind on blogging - it's been a very busy couple days.
But here are the pictures from Nawa - the silk factories and instrument making villages.

This is me, my field director Nell and John, the guy whose house we are staying at with all the silk weaving ladies! They were so happy to meet us and got a lot of laughs out of our Thai names (mine is rose -gu laap, others are "coconut", "doll", "lotus", etc. We didn't quite pick them ourselves but they were given to us by the teachers at our schools. They seem to be pretty amusing to everyone else but they haven't let us in on the joke yet.

the below picture is of the silk weaving. we had a couple demonstrations. 

Above is one of the other volunteers playing a classical Thai instrument. All you have to do is blow into the reeds. It's pretty easy and sounds wonderful. 

We also went to a few temples (wats) in the past few days. We went to That Phanom, which is one of the top wat's in Thailand and met a monk and everything. We also burned some incense in front of one of the alters...what exactly we were doing, I'm not sure. This is one of the wats, though.

There was also a market outside of the wat at That Phanom (there are markets everywhere) and I guess you can buy some of these snakes to set free? Or you eat them. Something got lost in translation but they sold these snake/eel things by the bag and there were dozens of them.

looks good, huh?

Me and some of the other volunteers enjoying some fresh green mango! It was the first we had seen here in Nakhon Phanom....ton's of pomello ( a grapefruit type orange thing), and guava. We have guava with everything, so it's starting to grow on me. 

And then of course, we were blowing off some steam. There's this metal rocking horse type thing we were hanging out on. Right beneath the light so there were crazy bugs but there is this fly zapper thing we've got - a picture to come soon! 

The bugs are enormous here. As there are 8 girls in one room and not an efficient way to keep bugs out (there is a crack between the floor and the bottom of our screen door), there is generally a lot of screaming before we go to bed. And during dinner. And breakfast. We're talking 3 inch grasshoppers and 4 inch long scarab (rhinocerous?) beetles. One was flying around at dinner the other night and everyone freaked out. One of the girls here, big Nom, just grabbed the thing out of the air! It was ridiculous. But she showed it to us and also made it hiss. So that was an experience. She tends to grab huge cicadas out of the air as well. I have to say I'm not a fan of the bugs but we've been reassured that there has been no malaria here in recent memory. So all the bug bites we are getting are of no worries to us! Someone's got a picture of the giant beetle so I'll see if I can get it to show you all :).

Instant Stardom

Since we are the first volunteers to come to this province with WorldTeach, we've become instant celebrities.  When we went to visit schools, they put together these banquets with traditional Thai dancing and dozens of platters of food.  When we go to visit a store, we are always invited into the owners house. (In Nakhon Phanom, you can only own one piece of land so almost all shop owners live above or behind their shops). We were invited to the governors house and have since been invited to two other dignitaries houses for dinner and/or lunch. Everyone wants to meet us, and once they have, they want to show us off to their friends! We're getting completely spoiled. I knew when I signed up that we would stand out quite a bit as this province generally isn't visited by foreigners, but I didn't expect the reception we receive almost everywhere we go. It helps that the couple we are staying with are very well connected in the area and surrounding provinces. So he sets up a lot of outings and get togethers for us.

Part of this newfound "celebrity" status has included a radio show and a tv interview! Earlier this week we were featured on a radio station. Our field director and a couple volunteers talked about the program and someone translated it into Thai. And just yesterday, all 11 of us were interviewed for a TV news program! It aired three times today - 8 am, noon, and 6:30 or something like that. We don't get cable out here but we stopped by the electronic store in town (which happens to be where we've spent a bit of time and where the tv station is located) and they had a copy of the interview for us to watch. So they brought us tea and chairs and put the DVD in a huge flat screen tv and we had our own little movie theater! The interview was completely ridiculous as there was on editing. We all did okay and pronounced our Thai names relatively correctly except for my friend Kate. She mis-said her name and it came out "cicada" instead of "doll", which the newscasters thought was absolutely hilarious. We're expecting to get our own copy of the DVD soon so I'll see if I can find a way to upload it so that others can watch! Most of it is in Thai though and we spent much of the time wondering what was being said about us.

Where we sat for our interviews!

That Phanom - a famous temple we were taken to yesterday and given a tour of. We even got some pictures with a monk who has lived here for about 20 years...have to take that picture from someone else's camera tho!

On Saturday's here there are English classes all day for village students who are willing to go to school an extra day per week. There were probably about 15 children, ages 8 to 13 or so. They spent the morning singing and doing some speaking exercises in the church on the grounds here and then split up into smaller classes for afternoon teachings. Us volunteers and the children all had break after lunch and we spent an hour playing games. It was super fun and we tried teaching the girls some hand games from the days of camp and the boys all played soccer together. The children are so willing to learn and seem to have so much fun that it's a blast teaching them. It's going to be much different when we are in our own placements with children who aren't nearly as interested in learning English, but I'll cross that bridge when I get to it. I'm looking forward to next Saturday and playing some more games with the students.

Nawa - the town in the middle of nowhere

**Pictures soon - internet too slow to upload them at the moment**

Yesterday we started the morning off as usual with breakfast at 8:00, Thai lesson from 8:45 to 10:45, and TEFL lessons from 11:00 to 12:00. Then we all piled into two vans (one of which had some sweet karaoke equipment in it – all in Thai though) and took off for a town called “Nawa”. Our field director had told us that she wanted to send us some information about it but all she could find was that “it is a town in the middle of nowhere”. So we didn’t quite know what to expect. It turns out to be this little village about an hour from where we are staying that specializes in silk and instrument making. It was quite the place. We got tours of the wats, and there were a lot considering the small size of the town. We also got to tour several silk factories. It wasn’t a factory in the traditional sense though, definitely not industrial. There were maybe 40 looms in each factory and they had a store selling their products. Everything was beautiful and the looms were so intricate! I can’t imagine making silk for hours every day. It seemed so tedious. All of the workers (who were all women) were so happy to see us and took dozens of pictures. They took our arm in theirs and towed us around the factory and chattered with (read: at) us. It was a ton of fun. We didn’t buy any products but I’m sure we’ll go back before we leave.

After the silk factories we went to a smaller part of the village where they specialize in handcrafted traditional Thai instruments. Again, everyone was so receptive and quite happy to see us. I’ll have to find the name of these instruments but they’re quite different than the ones we have in the US. And completely made by hand. There were several men working on them when we arrived. They went into an improptu song and dance for us which was awesome to watch. Then they let us play the instruments ourselves, which was pretty tough! Just a couple of those instruments together makes a wonderful song though. Again, most of us want to go back to purchase some of the instruments before we leave Thailand.

Biking in the Village

The other afternoon a bunch of us were craving soda’s or iced tea or something as we only get water around here.  Which is great with this heat but it's starting to get old! John had told us that there were three bikes at our disposal if we wanted to bike into the village.  Another volunteer, Haley, and I decided to try this out so we went to get the bikes in the back of the house. One was in working order and the other had a completely flat tire. We tried to put two people on the bike and just about ran into the house. So we commandeered another bike that the girls around here use. It worked well enough but it was super small. As I was shorter, I got the small pink bike! Our place is on the outskirts of town so it was about a half mile to a mile away and it was great ride. There isn’t much chance to get much physical activity around here as it’s too hot to really do anything unless it’s super early in the morning or later in the evening and it's getting dark around 6:00 these days.

 

We passed what looked like a outdoor market that had balloons and decided to get some! They looked so festive.  So the men told us that it was 10 baht and we had learned our colors that morning in Thai class so we were able to ask for certain balloons! Haley picked pink (sii-chom-puu) and I picked green (sii-kiao). However, the whole time we were trying to buy the balloons people were laughing and pointing at us. Now, we’re getting pretty used to this as we’re the only “farangs” (foreigners) in this area, but it seemed a little more pronounced than usual. We tried to ask but our Thai isn’t that great, so I’m still unsure as to what was going on. Either way, we had a good time. We also stopped at a little street cart for some street food (its good!!). I got a dinner crepe type thing while Haley ran into the store and got some drinks for us. It must have been at least 80 degrees with above 80 percent humidity and we were soo sweaty. fun, huh? It was a great ride though. Completely worth it. Can’t wait to do it again!

A Rude Awakening

This morning we all woke up to the sound of a rooster cock-a-doodle-dooing very loudly outside our window. We all debated throwing rocks at it as it was quite loud and went on for a half an hour but didn't want to offend any local Thai's around here.  It still hadn't stopped when we went down for breakfast about an hour later.

We just had our first Thai lesson. A woman and a man came to teach us and they may or may not have been married. We aren't sure. We learned a bunch of fruits and other random phrases. It's very informal teaching. They ask us what we want to know and then we go over a bunch of vocab words. We learned a couple key words like "this" and "that" and "what is that" so we can now ask questions at the market in Thai! However, understanding their answers is a whole different story.

Here are some of the pictures of NKP that didn't upload with the last post.   The first picture is the Indo-China market on the banks of the Mekong. A lot of Lao come over from Laos and sell things here. The next picture is a Wat (temple) close to the Mekong in the center of town. And the last picture is the Mekong! Not the greatest picture as you can't see the mountains on the other side, but its actually so hazy they are hard to see with the naked eye.

Here are some pictures of where I am living for the month of orientation. I know it's a lot of pictures but it's so hard to describe!

This is a main house, where the two guys and John and his family sleeps.  That's the van that we take everywhere in the driveway.

Thats where I sleep! The room on the left, upstairs above the blue awning. Our classrooms are beneath us, as are our bathrooms.

This is most of the girls and what our sleeping arrangement looks like. I'm over in the back corner. It's basically one huge sleepover. But we're asleep by 10 every night.

look at those leaves! 

This is for you Kel...bugs like this everywhere and they fly in our faces while we are sleeping! I'm starting to get used to it though.

So that's a little about where I am now. More to come later!

This is where I will be living when teaching begins! I got my assignment right before I left and I will be teaching high school in the city (Nakhon Phanom Muang). The high schools here go from grade 7 to grade 12, and I will have 8 and 9. Great ages, huh? There are about 2200 kids in the school! Not what I expected but at least I only have two grades. There will be another volunteer at my placement who will be teaching grades 7 and 8. At the moment we are trying to figure out a good schedule for teaching because the principle originally wanted us to each 15 classes per week, which would mean we only see each class once per week which really isn't conducive to learning English. To top it off, the students don't get all that much support for learning English, especially in the villages. The parents and older relatives don't think that English is necesarry as they are rice farmers or construction workers and the like. We've been warned that it's going to be tough to get the kids excited about English.

So I will be sharing the house with the other volunteer at my placement in the capital city of the province. There is another volunteer who is at a home stay (she's the only one) and it's a gorgeous house with air conditioning! That tends to be rare here. So I'll be over there a lot. Plus it will be nice to have a family around for the year!  Here are some pictures of the school I'll be living/ teaching at. It's huge!

Thats my little house on the right! And the above picture, my house is on the left and those are a bunch of the school buildings in front of it. I'm about a minute away from my classrooms :). 

This was the reception we had for us when we got to the school. They had coffee and little cakes for us as well that the students brought over while the principle and some of the Thai English teachers told us a little bit about what we would be doing and how happy they were to have us! Us 10 volunteers are mostly all teaching at different schools throughout the province and everyone got a reception of some sort, most got flowers and the principles was so grateful to meet us. We had to ceremonies complete with Thai dancers, a Thai band, and toooonnnss of food. One of their specialties over here is Green Papaya Salad and it's soo spicy. But some of the Thai teachers taught me how to make it! It's delicious.

Here are some pictures of the city. We spent a couple afternoons walking around and exploring the markets and such. The province borders the Mekong River and you can see Laos on the other side. It seems to be pretty hazy and I'm not sure if it's from pollution or just the weather. In any case, there are mountains on the other side of the Mekong that hopefully we will be able to explore when we go into Laos! Border crossing is very close and it's something like $30 to get a 30-day visa into Laos. \

Yaa, the Thai Wonder Drug

I’ve just started the blog so I’ve got a few entries to write to catch you guys up on what’s been going on for the past week...I’ll start with today and perhaps write an overview of the past few days when I've got more time.

So it’s not even one week into the program and I’ve managed to get myself sick.  I went to bed last night with a slight fever and body aches and woke up this morning feeling a bit worse. I called the Field Director, and we decided that I would just stay home and rest so they all left without me to see the governor of the district we are teaching in, which was our activity for the day. I told everyone to take pictures and in all honesty it’s nice to get some rest. We've been pretty busy since we arrived.

We are staying on a mission in the province Nakhon Phanom in a small village. It’s verrryy hot and about 80-90 percent humidity every day. There are 10 of us in the group, 2 guys and 8 girls. Us 8 girls are sleeping in a big room with 8 floor mats and these square pillow things. They are about the size and comfort of a shoebox. The guys each get their own room in the main house! Slightly unfair but hey, we’ve got lots of quality bonding time in the girls’ room.  John and his wife Meao (pronounced Meow) live here and run the mission.  John also happens to be the English liaison between this province and the ministry of education in Bangkok. He is part of the TLCB (Thai Lao Cambodian brotherhood) and has lived here for about 35 years.

There are 4 girls who live in the room next to us, big Nom, little Nom, Eh, and Bped. Thai names tend to be very long so everyone under the age of 25 and even some older than that has a short nickname. I got the name 'Gu-lap' meaning "Rose", probably because my face turns red often as it's so hot here...but the girls seem to think it's a good name. Three of the girls are in high school and one is in college. They are staying at the mission and attending school as their parents couldn’t afford to send them, back in their own villages. The girls are very sweet and take every opportunity to learn English from us. Much of the time around here you’ll see a makeshift English-Thai lesson going on in a little straw gazebo thing right outside of our rooms. It’s a lot of fun and I’m learning some good Thai phrases in the process!

The most outgoing of the girls, little Nom, brought me some hot water and “toast” and some medicine to take this morning. The toast consisted of bread slathered in butter with a little peanut butter on top. She even served it to me in my bed (which consists of a mat on the floor)! The medicine is called “yaa” and John told me that it is the “Thai wonder drug”. So we’ll see how that works! I took them a little while ago and I’m feeling better. John’s Thai wife (who doesn’t speak much English) took a look at me this morning and deemed me safe to stay at the mission, meaning I didn’t have to go to the clinic in town, which was a relief. Everyone right now is off at the governor’s so I’m gonna go get some more sleep and perhaps watch some movies that other volunteers brought along.

Oh, and one of the best parts about this mission – wireless internet everywhere!! Who would have thought? Definitely not what I expected. Pictures soon!