First Day of School

I went for my first run in the heat and humidity a little before 8:00 this morning. I came back looking like I had been in a sauna for an hour. I didn’t last very long, but I’m sure I’ll get used to it and build up my endurance and tolerance to running in this weather during my time here. It was a beautiful run to the beach with all of the locals staring at me- I don’t think they exercise here, at least not in public. I saw one guy running- he must be Thailand’s track and field star for the Olympics.

Today was our first day of teaching and hitch hiking. These were both fun and challenging experiences. On the way to the school, we were walking and sticking our thumbs out like good American hitchhikers, but we had no luck for about 5 minutes. Then a Thai guy saw us and gave us a helpful tip: wave your hand up and down while facing the cars. As soon as we began practicing the art of Thai hitching, which by the way is not as common and part of the culture as we all thought it was, our friends Weaw and Brian pulled up in their truck and gave us a ride to the school.

The “English teacher” at the school tried to explain our schedule, but he didn’t really seem to speak English, which had us all a little worried before our first class. 6th grade is our biggest class, about 20 students. We tried to get them to repeat after us, but they didn’t understand the words “say”, “repeat”, or any of our hand gestures. At some point they understood though, and our review was much smoother from then on. There are 1-2 students in each class who seem to be picking up English very well. They were very helpful when other students didn’t understand what we were doing or asking. Our 4th grade class consists of about 6 students and there are about 9 5th graders. We teach each class for an hour, which went by quickly today. The school is pretty unorganized. There always seem to be at least a few kids running wild and just roaming around the school. They run in and out of the classrooms while we are teaching. One little kid ran into our first class with a spoon in hand and remnants of yellow baby powder all over his face. He handed the spoon to his older brother and then left the room.

The kids love to give and receive attention. They give so many hugs that it feels like I have extra limbs attached all day. Some of the kids really like to practice certain English words and phrases such as “I love you” and “You are beautiful”. We all came home with “I love you” written on our hands, candy from the kids in our pockets, and cramped hands from signing autographs (writing our Thai nicknames) all day.

We have the coolest “ghetto baby” at our school. She’s a little over 3 feet tall, but she wears baller XL clothes. Today she was wearing a bright yellow and green outfit that looked like something by Fubu. Her bling bling was an oversized silver chain link necklace.

Ghetto Baby

Thursday September 22, 2005

After our last class got out at 3pm, we went to the road to try our luck at hitching a ride home. Another helpful tip from Brian: stay where you are because if you are walking people will think you only have a short ways to go. We got a ride within just a few minutes- success! (It’s about a 20 minute drive from our house to the Ban Lam Pi school.) I love riding in the back of pickup trucks here. It’s a surreal feeling to have the wind blowing in my face and cooling me down while we drive along the beach and observe the vibrant greenery that surrounds us. It’s part of the incredibly comfortable culture here- Sabeye, Sabeye (literally translated- relax, relax. English equivalent- take it easy).