December–Christmas

The students practiced all through November to be ready for their performances of Hosanna Rock, a musical telling of the birth of Christ. The whole school went with them, first to a home for people with long term illnesses and then to a Thai public school.

They did their final performance near the beginning of our all day Christmas party on December 23.

Two Thai teachers (one that speaks English) and I were in charge of planning it. Most of the day was filled with performances by different groups of students. The teachers had the students ready to perform. We just had to organize the day.

English Narrators:

oops!

The 3^rd grade did their English Little Red Riding Hood puppet show that day that I had worked on with them. Less than a week before the party, the teachers decided Hannah (my twenty year old assistant) and I should plan the teacher’s performance. Since we had so little notice, a language barrier, and we had 10 teachers plus a principal, I decided we should act out “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” while I sang it. They play that song all over the place, in English, near Christmas, so the children had heard it before.

That meant Kru Ew went from being this evil looking biker to being Rudolph as quickly as possible. I’m not sure why he dressed up in that mask, except maybe he couldn’t find a Santa suit.

The crafts for the day ended up being squeezed in just before lunch. They came out of the English curriculum. The office manager told me on two separate days that the teachers would have a meeting with me to learn how to make the crafts, but they didn’t. I don’t know if they were expecting me to call the meeting. Finally, I managed to show one teacher the one more complicated craft. The others figured out some way to have the children do the crafts I gave them on their own.

:J

November–Sports Day

My first full day at school after my accident was their Sports Day. Maybe it was good I missed that week and a half when they shortened all the classes to leave time for preparations and practices. Several of the boys were pulled out of classes to set up the coverings the teams sat under and to line the fields. They marked out lanes on the back field by dribbling lime by hand.

When I arrived that morning they had just finished their distance run. They were heading in side the gate to join in the opening ceremonies.

They sent off some floating lanterns and set off a few fireworks, even though it was day time.

The rest of the morning was filled with running events. In between, the cheerleaders for each team encouraged their team members.

The afternoon started with a tug of war between the school staff and the parents (parents won). Then the teams competed as teams.

They began with the tug of war and then went on to relays and the team sports of Chair Ball and Football (Soccer). Finally the cheerleaders competed against each other. They gave home made medals for each event and some kind of special snacks for the winning team.

The rest of the blogs

School is finished for the year. Whew! The last term was hard to keep up with. First, I had less help. Then, when Malee’s husband, Brian, returned to New Zealand I took on four of his classes. It was good for the students learning English, I think, but hard on my schedule. Not much besides class preparation and grading fit in anymore. Now I am back in Longview with lots of time between visiting people and presentation preparation. The next few blogs are to catch up with the events of the rest of the school year.

:J

Experiment

For when I am weak, then I am strong.

Posted in the teacher's room at BSF when I stayed there recovering from my shoulder break.

The Return of the Pope

Coming back is as traumatic as going. Probably in the same proportion. The trauma of coming back will be as traumatic as the trauma of leaving. Of course this will depend a lot on how much of a melodramatic person you are. Me? Personally, I’m not.

I can also tell you being in the middle of a traumatic experience is not a reliable source of the significance of either the going or coming. That only comes with reflection.

This only counts for traumatic experiences. A traumatic experience only allows you to deal with the trauma at the time and only reflection allows you to analyze. You have to analyze, because people want to know how it affected you. How are you different today then you were when you left? What happened to you? They watch how you act and physically look. They wonder if you’re different. One of the ways you can tell if it was a traumatic experience is that you are never the same afterward.

The process of going leaves marks. You don’t leave behind everything you know and understand without feeling loss. The feeling of loss does not occur until after you’re gone. This is because you don’t know what you have until you don’t have it any more. You can say, “I’ll miss you”, but you don’t feel it until you’re gone.

There are some easy things to discuss when you come back. Weather, food and language are a few of those. Feelings are not. How to be fair about both cultures. Biases exist and you don’t want to insult anyone. What the cultures do to you, is harder.

Most of the time the discussions come down to differences and similarities. But this is not a fair methodology. Cultures and people are more complicated than this. You have to consider ambitions, desires, and tastes. The world is so intertwined it is not easy to see the pureness of a culture.

Contrasts are easier to see the closer you are to the experience. Live too long in one or the other and you lose perspective. This is because the differences are most noticeable in the beginning.

The more we try to be different the more we are becoming the same. I mean the human race. Deep down we have probably always been basically the same. Sure we look different: white or brown, tall or short, fat or skinny. I’m talking about the inside. Didn’t God make us all? Yes, people act differently as a result of thinking differently, but the motivation?

I guess what I’m trying to say is, we all do the same things for the same reasons. It doesn’t matter where you live. The difficulty is understanding this in context of the culture. We are all alike. Deep down. Every where else, we are different. We focus so much on the outside, which is easy, and forget about the inside. I think I’ve learned it is easier to be accepting of another culture if you don’t focus on the outside, but the inside. I wish I had internalized that lesson earlier in life.

GP