Sister Thai Time

I have realized that all of my blog posts have been about huge travel experiences and not really about the little day to day happenings. So I am going to begin to try to recognize the more little day to day things and capture them and share them on my blog.

Last week upon returning from Phu Kradung I had a bout of culture shock and “OH MY GOODNESS WHAT AM I DOING HERE!!” So along with expressing this to my field director she invited me into NKP to spend the weekend with her and her Thai roommate Nok along with their new roommate Heather, my great pal. We had a wonderful girls weekend walking all over the place, watching the Bachelorette, playing with Jes’ pregnant belly, eating huge and amazing meals and just being girls. Well, more like sisters. We joke constantly with each other and the laughter seems to never stop. More because Nok is one silly lady and comes up with the most interesting stories.  Nok also takes pride in having all the World Teach volunteers come to her house and we have all become her brothers and sisters. Upon entering her home she always greets us with big hugs and saying “kittung” (I missed you)! The four of us pick on each other to no end and never feel like we have to tip toe around our comments or thoughts. The four of us have a relationship that works with no drama.

An added treat to the weekend was the arrival of a package from Teddy, the world’s most awesome brother. He sent me mice makings that I am not able to get here in Thailand so this winter season didn’t go without me making my traditional Christmas mice out of oreos, cherries, and Hershey kisses. The girls loved them and thought they were darling, all except Heather that is (who knows why). 

The weekend came to a close Sunday afternoon, sadly. I returned to my village to prepare for the long five day week ahead. The last time I taught for five full days was well before Christmas so I was nervous for the week. Surprisingly and thankfully it was a wonderful week and I wasn’t burnt out from my kiddos. I loved every minute of being around them and I had many feelings of “teaching is what I am meant to do in life”. Such a relief as last year I questioned if teaching is what I really wanted to be doing. The highlight of the week came when my Pratome 3, 3^rd graders, reached 20 points for our behavior system and I gave them all prizes. Among the prizes were pencils the Tullars gave me for Christmas (winter themed), monkey silly bands Liz gave me in a package, stickers, pencil sharpeners and a toy I got it a cereal box. As I passed out the prizes to students one at  a time they were cheering each other on and clapping and helping on another pick the best prize even if it meant they wouldn’t get it because their name wouldn’t be called until the end. I couldn’t help but compare to American kids and how they wouldn’t be so overly excited and how they would tell a friend not to pick something just so they could get it when their name was finally called and then at the end complain about what they got. (Take a breath after those 2 run on sentences.) These kids never once complained and even once all students had received something they were still saying thank you and wanting to see picture of the people (Elsa and Liz) who had given them the presents. So thank you Elsa and Liz for helping bring the biggest smiles to my students. Also throughout the process of handing out gifts I told my student the characters that were on the pencils; one being a snowman. I directly translated it snow= he mat and man= phoo chai. They died laughing and I can only think they thought of the word in literal terms which would be pretty funny. A man of snow I thought to myself and enjoyed a big laugh along with them.

Friday came along and I made my way back to Jes, Heather and Nok’s house where we went to aerobics class in a park. I bet we were quite a scene to watch as we had no coordination and couldn’t keep up with the fast steps and many times I felt so goofy that I was overcome by extreme laughter. I still got a complete workout in before eating Som Dtam (papaya salad), Kow Niao (sticky rice) and gai yang (grilled chicken) for the 3^rd night in a row. Perhaps my most favorite meal this far in Thailand and the meal I know I will be sad to not eat when I get home next year. This weekend was more of the same sister time as last weekend with pancakes (that were made into fun shapes such as hearts, stars, elephants, people, angels etc. . .) or French toast and eggs for breakfast and elaborate dinners followed by backing cookies and watching the Bachelorette. We also tried to go swimming at a local high school. We got there around lunch time and they told us the pool didn’t open until 3:00. We really wanted to just see if it was a decent pool first but the building was so locked up we couldn’t even see the pool. We walked around the back and I climbed onto Heather’s shoulder to look over the edge of the wall. It was a huge pool and well taken care of and worth a return later that afternoon. So we went and walked around town and did some errand and met up with other volunteers for lunch. We made the trek back to the pool at 3:30 only to find the pool still closed because the people didn’t feel like opening it because they had other things going on. There is a set pool schedule of hours of operation but all the people around told us that they don’t really follow the schedule if they don’t want. Tis Thai time!!! Speaking of more Thai time, Sunday seemed to slip by and we ate lunch at 4:00 not realizing how late it was. That late hour also meant that I wasn’t going to be able to catch the last bus home so I spent a 3^rd night in NKP and got a ride with a teacher to school and of course she picked me up at 8:45 when I need to be teaching by 9:00 and we were a 45 minute drive away. Thai time yet again!