Friday Crafts

On Fridays at the primary school, they have a Thai handicrafts lesson instead of English. I was invited and went to it last Friday. We made very interesting hand brooms out of string, bamboo, and some other plant that it kind of familiar  but I can't name it. The teacher kept laughing at me, but I couldn't figure out if it was because I was doing it well or badly...Whichever, it turned out pretty good!

Out of Reading Material

You'd be surprised how impossible it is to find a book written in English here. All they had was Harry Potter, which I've already read (of course :)). Siriporn found this book that used to belong to her daughter. Never heard of it, but I'll tell you if it's any good.

Primary School

At ten, Melanie and I go to the primary school to teach English. Most of the students are from HOB. Today we took Melanie's motorcycle. You might not be able to picture me going within 10 feet of a motorcycle, but yes, it happened. Actually its kinda fun. Anyway, Today I taught second and third graders, with Melanie translating where necessary. We played a game with the alphabet as a warm up, then went on to parts of the body. We sang "head, shoulders, knees and toes" (faster! faster!) then played "Simon Says..." for a bit. The have a version in Thai that is slightly different called "Moses says.." :). Then I taught them how to do a relay race, and we made it so that they had to spell some of the words we had learned. The first team to get all the words spelled right wins. All in all, it was a very fun lesson. Tomorrow I teach fourth graders.

Melanie!

You might notice that everyone has the same haircut and clothes. This is kind of interesting. The government runs public schools in Thailand and requires uniforms and a short haircut with bangs. Siriporn tells me this is because its a very cheap and simple haircut that anyone can afford. Also it makes their hair easy to clean and manage, and keeps them from spending hours doing their hair in the morning. In high school, girls are not allowed to wear makeup in addition to the uniform and haircut rules. If they are in their last three years of high school, they can grow their hair out, but only if they wear it up some how (like a ponytail or a braid). I'm pretty sure these rules don't apply to private school students, but I'm not sure.

Stuffed Animals

A middle school in Iowa sent HOB 100 stuffed animals! Apparently a teacher or staff person had been here with a team a while ago. Siriporn, Ing, Melanie, Nam, and I unpacked them. Each stuffed animal had a note from a student on it. The girls were so excited! I took pictures of each of them to send back to the school. Here are a few of them.

This is Malee, she translates for me

I call this girls Kitty for three reasons 1)her name "Gittiaporn" sounds like "Kitty" 2) She reminds me of a kitten and 3) I just finished rereading Anna Karenina :D :D :D

Joan

Pah

Bahng

Names! Names! Names!

As you can imagine, learning names is essential in the kind of work I'm doing. The kids get so excited when I remember their names and it means a lot to them. If they feel like I'm making an effort to know them and speak Thai  they work harder at learning English and enjoy it more. The difficult part is that I have well over a hundred names to learn (including the village children that I teach at the primary school). I've given a few of the girls English nicknames, but I usually try to use their thai names. Most girls have nicknames, but the hardly ever make sense as a shortened version of their full names. Nicknames are usually one syllable, and much easier to remember. I think I'll start posting pictures of people I mention in my posts to help me practice and so you can get an idea for what people are like. Pastor Sayan and Siriporn told me that it would be a good idea if I had a thai name as well. This would help the girls to remember me once I am gone because I wouldn't be just another american name that has no meaning to them. Thai names always have special meanings so he said the girls would try to pick a name that described me, and I could choose which I liked best.  I told pastor Sayan how at home I prefer to be called by my middle name, Grace. This reminded him of a Thai name with a similar meaning, "Garuna". Garuna means "compassionate person". The girls all voted and I liked it as well, so I am now "Garuna". It's pronounced GAH-ROO-NAH, with the last syllable stressed.

New Violin!

I've been teaching some of the older girls to play violin, and now that I have a smaller violin I can begin another class for the primary girls! I think I will have the older girls help me teach because there are 15 girls that want to learn!

First Week of Teaching

Right now it's Saturday morning, and pouring down rain. The rain is very welcome as it is needed for the rice and corn. I have been an English teacher for an entire week now, and am exhausted. For the first three days, I was teaching three lessons a day. Then if you take into consideration all the prep work, I was extremely busy. I do love the work though. In the mornings, I go to the primary school which is close to HOB. Every day, I teach a different grade level. I try to make the lessons very game oriented to hold the kids attention...especially when I taught the first graders. About eighty percent of the students are from home of blessing. The rest are from the village right next to it. As you can imagine, There are hardly any boys. I taught things like "How are you?" and "What is your name" and went over the alphabet for the younger classes. When I get home, I teach a class for the staff. This class includes Suwanee, Melanie, Ing, and Nam. Melanie is about 22 I think and is quite good at English. She even translates for me at the primary school. Nam and Ing are just beginning. Suwanee wasn't originally going to come to the lessons but I've been making friends with her and she says she wants to be able to talk to me and other English speakers more so I invited her. So all in all, it's very difficult to plan a lesson in this class that will be at the right level for all of them. This week we focused on physical descriptions, but I might have to go even easier for a while so Nam and Ing aren't confused. I made little notebooks for the staff class so they could write down English words they encounter and don't understand. We go over these as a warm up before class. My last class is in the evening. I teach High School girls levels 1,2, and 3 on one day and then levels 4, 5, and 6 on the other. For this class, we read children's books that I brought from Portland and discuss new vocabulary in them. Malee, one of the best English speakers of the girls, helps me translate. Thankfully, on Thursday there were some changes made in my teaching schedule. I will now only teach the staff 2 days a week instead of every day and will take Mondays off from teaching at the primary school. This will make life much easier for me!!!

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Home of Blessing Tour

Sorry, the internet has been very unreliable of late. Here are some pics I took around Home of Blessing to give you a feel for what it's like!

Meeting area

Sign as you enter HOB

Pastor Sayan and Siriporn's house

road out of HOB

feild

Primary girls dormitory

high school girl's dormitory

new office building

HS girl embrodering. (Girls make and sell beautiful handicrafts as a fundraiser...I'll post pics later)



New meeting hall (Hopefully will be finished by Christmas)



Girl's cafeteria/HW room

Kitchen

Rice (The girls grow rice and corn to eat/sell)

road into HOB

Guest house (my home)

"Flower Girls"

A few days ago, some of the primary girls got over their shyness and came to visit me at the guest house. We sat on the porch and with bits of Thai and English, they were able to tell me their names and teach me a few words. Seeing that I like flowers, they showed me a very cool way of making daisy chains and we made crowns out of little yellow flowers. Eventually I had to leave to go to lunch and expected them to do likewise, but was surprised when I came back that they decorated the porch with various flowers and vines! It was so sweet and adorable. They made beautiful boquets and arranged petals in circle and heart designs on the floor. Then they would act out "camera" and we would take pictures with the flowers. They also helped me learn their names, as they soon found out how liable I was to forget. Every few minutes they'd ask waht I worked out meant "What is my name?" in Thai, and I'd go around practicing their names. There are about 8 different girls that come several times a day. I have boquets all around my house now! We also play hide and seek and I tried to teach them tag, but slipped and scraped my knee so that I had to go clean it. When i got back, they had left some new boquets and a mango by my door that had "sorry" written on it. They are so darling and sweet!

flower crown

Pia in her hmong outfit

Fish for Dinner...

I caught 2 catfish and a tilapia!!

First Day at Home of Blessing

At last I'm almost caught up! I've been at home of blessing for almost a week now. Many things have happened, but most are likely to occur again so I will save their description for a time when I can recollect them more faithfully. Here's what happened from where I left off yesterday.
I slept in till nine and then waited for Pastor Sayan to pick us up. While waiting, we stopped at a small cloths shop and got some Thai fisherman pants. I'll just briefly describe these. Thai fisherman pants are very interesting and comfortable. They are huge, and can be worn by men or women. To make them fit, you sort of wrap them around you and tie with a string. They're light weight and great for hot weather. At last, Pastor Sayan and his son Kittipong arrived. The ride to Chiang Kham (where HOB is) was 4 hours. From the very first, I liked HOB very much. It's surrounded by fields of corn and rice that the girls grow and then HOB sells to raise money for the home. Here is an explanation of what HOB is in case I have told you yet. Home of Blessing is a girls home that currently has almost a hundred girls. Most of the girls are here because they are in dangerous situations at home or are at risk of being sold or led into prostitution. In addition to accommodation, HOB provides the girls with practical life skills and christian education. The girls attend nearby public primary and high schools. We got to HOB about an hour before the girls were due home from school. I met Pastor Sayan's wife Siriporn and some of the staff. There are four main staff people that I will be teaching. Nam is in charge of cooking for the girls. Melanie speaks English pretty well and is interning as part of her studies at seminary. Jo and Ing are married and Jo also speaks some English. Ing is only seventeen and they were married two years ago! At last the girls came home. I was a little nervous to meet the for some reason, but they were so completely and charmingly sweet that I loved them at once. In Thailand, you greet someone with a slight bow with your hands in front of you like you're praying, and say "Sawatdee ka" (sawatdee krap for men). So just imagine 100 adorable girls walking up to you bowing and saying sawatdee ka over and over again. They were so excited to see us and we them. Some of the girls changed into traditional Hmong outfits and they all had a little greeting ceremony for us. They gave both mom and I bouquets of flowers and sang for us.

Siriporn showed us to the nearby guest house were I would stay for the summer and we unpacked and settled in. Then it was dinner time so Mom and I went with Pastor Sayan, Siriporn, and Kittipong to a good Thai restaurant.

Chiang Mai part II

The next night we decided to stay at a sort of boarding home instead of the hotel. This was a new experience for me, but one I rather liked. The owners of the house didn't speak English at all, but they were very hospitably and friendly. The house was just few blocks away from River View Lodge and very cheap-- I could stay there for a month and pay less than $500 dollars!

elephant bath

We had one day left as tourists so we decided to go to the elephant camp that Pastor Prachan had suggested. It is called Maesa I think. Anyway it was incredible. I had no idea the kinds of things elephants are capable of!!! 

Painting!!!!

http://www.gallerymaesa.com/gallery.php#

 I promise, I watched an elephant paint this without help. All the trainer did was pick out the colors and hand them the brush. Mom was speechless :D

After the show, mom and I payed extra to go on an elephant ride to a remote villages including long neck karen, Karen, and Hmong. The elephant ride was insane. We were going on these really steep mountain trails on a very wobbly elephant in the jungle! It lasted about 20-30 minutes and our elephant kept going off the path on to the hillside to nibble at some grass. Scared me half to death.

JUNGLE :D

The villages were very interesting...we got a few handmade scarves and stuff. It was very special for me because I was able to speak a little Karen with the people. I think they were very exited by this because not many people bother to learn Karen; it is a pretty obscure language after all.

This lady let me take a picture of her and her loom. 

Things for sale at the longneck village.

They have a church!

The school

The church

Rice 

A Karen spinning wheel. They make their own string out of cotton that grows on trees, then weave it into beautiful material that can be sown into clothes or bags.

Last on our to-do list was TIGERS!!!! We had our taxi take us to "Tiger Kingdom". This was a must for me because it has been a life long wish to pet a tiger. I can still hardly believe that I got to do it! We decided to see the adult tigers and the baby tigers. The pictures say it all :D

we got a coconut while waiting :)

It was so amazing! I couldn't stop smiling all day. I just kept thinking "Wow, I am sooooo lucky!". When we go back to the hotel, we met Pastor Sayan, founder of the home of Blessing and a friend of Pastor Prachan. We all went out to dinner and planned to leave Chiang Mai the next day.