Sunday May 8, 2011
Today is Monther’s Day in America. I would never have known were it not for my mom sending me an email! I was up at 7:45 to get to church. I got there but didn’t see any kids so I just hung out on the front step. Field came around the corner and stopped at the clothing store next door. I went to see what she was doing and there were about 5 kids there! This morning we ended up with 12 kids coming with us in all, and 15 for lunch! Let’s see, we had Nat, Sunny, Francie, Naya, Willow, Peyton, Faith, Penny, Molly, Ewan, Yvonne, Gabby at TS and then we met up with Faa, Ning and Bim at church so I saw their kids for a second, then we saw Abby coming with Penny’s little brother Pip. We all went upstairs where we grabbed Sophie and Winnie and headed into church. It was so nice to have all of us together. From end to end it was Field, Abby, Sophie, Faa, Bim, Ning, Winnie.
Faa and Sophie were both so fidgety! It was cool to see Sophie writing down all the Bible verses though that he was talking about. I have to say, I wasn’t really that into paying attention either because he basically was saying the same thing over and over again for an hour. It was a 10 minute sermon expanded into an hour, so I was paying more attention to Sophie and Faa than the sermon too.
After church we all went to lunch, then the kids started breaking off for home. We ended up only taking 5 back to Taw Saeng where I worked with the kids teaching them juggling and I learned a Thai song, practiced my alphabet and played with the kids and hung out with Field.
We sent them packing at 4 and I went to the bookstore where I finally got a book to practice writing my letters in and a book for Faith’s birthday this week. Then I headed to the walking street market and got some more beanbags for juggling and saw Fiona with her cousin, little Annie at the walking street. Last week they stayed home, but today they were there with Lucy and Fiona’s parents. I was so excited to see them!
On Friday, Annie was so sick, poor baby. She’s only 4 and she was crying cause she felt so sick. It was nice to see all the older kids trying to take care of her, but in the end we put her under a blanket on the couch upstairs and I sang her to sleep with the lullaby from Waitress. Haha. Inna came up and sat with us too. I told her I was singing her lullabies in English that she can’t understand, so she was welcome to sing her Russian lullabies that she doesn’t understand as well. Pretty soon, the poor thing was out cold, snoring with her little arm flung over her head. She slept a solid 2 hours!
Anyway, so it was nice to see her up and about and playing today. I ran across the street and she plopped right down on my lap and was playing with me while I talked to Fiona. I always talk to Lucy a ton, so when I came over, she was like “Lucy is in Chiang Rai.” I said I knew, but I wanted to talk to her! I never get to hang out with Fiona so it was cool to spend some one on one time with her today at the market, watching people go by. Her English is not nearly as good as Lucy’s but she knows a lot, she’s really smart. She’s in 10th grade this year and she was at camp last week with Winnie, so I didn’t see her all week. We were talking about the rain and flooding last week and what she did at camp and I was having her teach me some more Thai today, so it was nice.
Monday, May 9, 2011
Today was a great day. Got to TS early, a little before 9, to meet Lucy for one final English lesson via Switchfoot. Today we studied “Hello Hurricane” and “Always.” I think those are great songs to give to the kids here since they (the songs) deal with trusting in God even when we feel like life is so hard and he’s so far from us. I think Lucy really got it today, and it was really cool. After we did Hello Hurricane we had about 20 minutes and so I asked if she wanted to study another song or read from a book. She was like “song!” The first couple songs were from the mix I gave her, but I thought “Always” was a great song to do since it talks about God always being with us, even though we live in a fallen world and things can be hard. After we studied that one, it was about time to go downstairs for our staff worship and meeting. I was like “OK, I think you’re ready. Are you scared about the test tomorrow?” She said yes, so I asked if she wanted to pray and she said yes, so we did. I just prayed over her test and her nerves and everything. I don’t even know how much she understood, but at the end, she just gave me this look of utter gratitude and said “kup koon ka” which means thank you.
Then, we had a good meeting with MC and Em about the upcoming week. We finally went to Airport Plaza for lunch and a movie! My first Thai movie and it was fun to see. It was called Jukkalan and it’s about this girl who is a bike messenger and she beats up all the bad guys with just her kung fu and her bike. She’s kind of bad ass. I like this movie! J Then back to TS where I hung out with Ning as she typed up a letter for Sophie’s school since she starts at a new school tomorrow. Sophie and Winnie came by and I quickly taught Winnie how to play Mary Had a Little Lamb. Sophie wanted to play too, but Winnie was like, “Hey you already get to play guitar with her! I want piano!” haha
Tuesday-Thursday, May 10-12
This week we had a team of nurses come from the States. They are in their final year of nursing school, so are energetic to play with the kids and help out. It’s been great! They did songs, a skit, taught about germs, and have been helping in our classes.
Wednesday, I woke up with my hand all swollen and covered in spider bites, I think. I ended up taking some Benadryl because it really hurt, but of course that puts me to sleep, so when I got to Taw Saeng at 9:30, I was ready to crash. But, Orowan was there to give me a driving lesson, so we did that, then I slept for 2 hours. I was out cold, because P’Bua, Ning and Field were all watching a Thai sermon on the computer and I was sleeping through all of it! I really needed that sleep because Ahna and Jaz’s friend Natalie had been staying with us for a few nights and my door creaks, so when she would get up in the night to use the bathroom or whatever, it would wake me up, so I haven’t slept a full night in days. Thursday I woke up with a sore throat, but it seems to be getting better today (Friday).
Wednesday evening, as most of the kids had left, I was sitting with Sunny outside and we were chatting a bit. She’s such a sweetheart! She asked me where I lived and I sort of described it to her, and I asked where she lived, and she said she is neighbors with Lucy and Fiona. Then she said, “P’Heather, me kwam soo tee nee mai?” which means: are you happy here? I thought it was such a profound question. Not are you happy, or do you like it here, but are you happy here? I said that yes, I am very happy here. I wish I knew the words to say,“I’m happy here because I get to see you every day!”
Sunny is so patient with my Thai, even when I say things wrong, she understands what I mean and will either correct me or say that I said it right. It’s so cute. Thursday I was asking her how to say “When is your birthday?” And I asked about the word order so she explained it to me a couple times so I could write it down.
Thursday, I went with Ning to the school of a bunch of the kids. When we walked onto the courtyard, Francie came tearing across the yard yelling “kroo Ning!” (which means teacher). Then she grabbed my hand and started dragging us both toward her class. Then out came Naya who ran over and gave me a big hug and grabbed my other hand. Their teacher wasn’t in the class, so we went upstairs to see Cody’s teacher. He’s in 3rd grade so they weren’t at recess. We found out that we needed to go see the school accountant to pay for his books, so we trooped back downstairs, the girls still clinging to my hands, and when we got to the bottom, little Annie came tearing over to us. She was so excited to see us too. It was so cute! Now I had 3 little girls clinging onto me. So, Ning led the group up a different set of stairs to the secretary’s office and went in while I waited with the girls outside. There were a bunch of teachers around, and I’m sure they were all wondering what this farang chick was doing with their students, but I think the girls babbled something about Taw Saeng and they were satisfied.
After Ning was done, we went downstairs again and Annie was grabbing onto me and saying to her classmates “Do you know who this is? This is MY teacher. Not YOUR teacher, she’s MY teacher.” It was hysterical! Finally, we left the munchkins outside and went in to talk to Naya’s teacher. It was an interesting conversation. I understood that it was about food, but that’s about it. But, what was cool was that the teacher totally spoke to both Ning and I as if I could understand everything she was saying. I guess I do a pretty good job of not looking confused. I was trying to take my non-verbal cues from Ning, so if she was smiling, I’d smile too, and if she looked concerned, so would I. haha I bet the teacher had no idea I couldn’t understand but 25% of what she was saying.
I asked Lucy to stay and help me teach my class because I’m having a hard time getting them to focus and I think it’s because they just don’t understand a lot of what I am saying. So, it would help to have a person to translate. Lucy is amazing. She is going to be such a great teacher! Those kids snap to attention when she tells them what to do, and she is not shy about taking away points either! It was great to have her explain to the kids about the drama that we are going to do and what they will be graded on, etc.
We have been working on learning vowel sounds and yesterday they finally got what sounds ‘a’ and ‘e’ make! We learned a Bible verse too: Psalm 150:6 Let everything that has breath praise the Lord. We started learning the song too. I am going to teach Willow to play it, so she can accompany the other kids singing it. That will be one part of our drama. They will need to come up with another part for themselves so they can get creativity points! I need to start keeping track of the words they are learning so that at the end of the quarter they can integrate them into the drama and get good points.
Piano club starts Friday, so I’ll have 4 other students in addition to Winnie and Ning. Oy, lots of music!! I never in a zillion years thought I’d be a music teacher.
Friday-Sunday May 13-15, 2011
Friday was intense because there were only 4 of us there to run the whole place. Actually, Orawun ended up helping a lot too, so 5 for half the day, but she leaves at 6, so the end of the day was just me, Inna, Field and Ning. We have 4 “clubs” on Friday, which each of us teaches. Field does guitar lessons, I do piano lessons, Ning does crafts and Inna does art. Poor Inna, she had 15 kids all by herself! And I was feeling sorry for myself because I couldn’t figure out how to do piano with 4 kids and one keyboard!
Some highlights: The past week, Em has been helping P’Bua with dinner every night, so I haven’t really helped at all, which made me a bit sad cause I do like hanging out with her and helping cook dinner. But, today I was like Hey! I can help because nobody is here. J Of course, as soon as Gabby and Yvonne got there they wanted to help me help P’Bua, which is a nice byproduct of being adored by children, haha. So, I put them to work chopping guavas (don’t worry, no knives involved!) Made the work go 3 times faster!
Yvonne was very excited to be in keyboard club that night. But then, when we actually got to club time, she didn’t want to play and was just sitting there while the other kids played with her head down. Eventually, she just went over to sit on the couch and mope. Finally, I went over and was like “Honey, what’s wrong? All day you wanted to play keyboard, and now you are not playing. I’m sorry but if you aren’t going to play the keyboard, you can’t be in keyboarding club. It’s kind of a prerequisite..” I think she didn’t understand what I said, but she got the message that I was sort of upset with her, because then she started CRYING! Great. Now I have a language barrier and moodiness. Of course, with these kids, my mental spectrum goes from “I’m having a bad day” to “something traumatic happened to me” and I have NO IDEA where on the spectrum any emotional breakdown falls. Sigh. So, I just sat with her while the other kids played and gave her a hug, and eventually, she came over to the keyboard with me and sat down and played. I have no clue what it was that got her to overcome her sadness, but I’m glad she did. Ah, teenagers.
Friday night was great because my neighbor Sacha had a prayer night at her house and it was just like WP, my LA Bible study, a bunch of girls getting together to discuss their week and pray for each other. It was very needed and very awesome. We did some worship music at the beginning and then did a lot of praying. Of course, I was up til 1am, but I think it was worth it. Sadly, I have been battling a sore throat for a couple days, so the late night did not help that at all.
Saturday morning I was awakened by the phone ringing and it was Ning. My first thought is of tragedy of some sort involving the kids, like Sophie’s mom being in the hospital again, but it was just that she wanted someone to go with her somewhere and Orawun had just backed out. So, when my heart stopped racing, I was like, OK, Yeah, I will meet you in an hour. When I got to Taw Saeng, I asked her “so, uh, what are we doing again?” and it turns out we were going to check out this place that we are going to for the Dolphins’ day camp next weekend. Fun!! We took a yellow Song Thaew toward Doi Saket and got off at Horizon resort and botanical gardens. We met with the lady there who gave us a map and an idea of the cost and then we walked over to the lake. I was like, “it’s so beautiful here! Now what?” Ning says: “Now we rent bicycles and ride around.” Seriously? How fun is that? So cool. We spent $1 each for bikes and took our map and were off. This place is huge, it has a zoo, a swimming pool, a topiary labyrinth, a HUGE playground, a stage, waterfalls, fountains, a big herb garden, a rose garden, a conference center, greenhouses, a palm tree garden and a whole section of topiary dinosaurs! It’s so cool. We rode around for about 3 hours and took a ton of pictures and just hung out. It was so nice to spend some more time just chilling out with Ning with no work pressing and no kids. Despite the fact that my throat was killing me, I am really glad I went. At the end of the day, after we returned our bikes, we sat down with our planners and planned our special events for the next 6 months. So now I know all the days we have off and what we are doing each month. Stay tuned for details on that as our events unfold!
Came back, hung out with Jeow and Tara and Jaz (don’t know if I’ve mentioned them yet. Jeow is a friend of Jaz’s and Tara is her baby. She’s 4 months old and adorable! She’s staying with us for a week. For those of you keeping track, yes that is nearly 2 weeks straight of guests. No wonder I never sleep and am now sick.) I called Jane, my friend who is a doctor and told her my symptoms to find out if she thought I should start taking my antibiotics that I brought with me. She said I either have strep throat or tonsillitis, so either way, yes. Great. Just what I need.
Sunday, up early for church, met the crew at TS, got the Song Thaew to church and dropped the kids. Met up with Ning, Faa and Bim and spent the morning in service. Afterwards, we saw Gabby, Yvonne, Sophie and Winnie who had snuck in late, and then when we got the kids, Willow and Peyton had come as well! Now we had 15 kids instead of 6, so we went to Pantip Plaza for lunch instead of the more expensive Kad Suan Kaew, and headed back to TS for playtime.
It’s so funny, now all the kids somehow know that I can’t eat MSG because I’m allergic, so Sophie had gotten some Som Tam, which had MSG in it so she told me not to eat it. At the other end of the table, Field told her to share with me, and Sophie, Winnie, Willow and Yvonne all say “No! No! It has MSG!!” It cracked me up!
I asked Winnie and Sophie what they were doing the rest of the day, and they said nothing, just going home, so I told them to come with us and we’d play guitar and piano. So, they did. It was a fun afternoon, the little kids were playing pretend downstairs, while we kept an eye on them from the second floor windows and did some piano lessons and guitar lessons. Field was working on her life story on the computer. She’s about as prolific as I am becoming.
After the kids went home, I headed to Thapae to see Lucy and her parents and to get some shoes. I need more flip flops. She was dubious about whether any of her shoes would fit my big farang feet though. Haha. We did find a couple that fit, so I was happy. So was Lucy since she sold 2 pairs at once and I let her keep the change. Her parents were very nice too, instead of just wai-ing when I said goodbye, her mom grabbed my hand and said thank you. She’s so sweet.
Another full week! When Ryan gets back from the states, I can post some more pictures of the kids because I can password protect them!
No comments:
Post a Comment