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.