Say Hello, Wave Goodbye

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After a weekend of sightseeing in Ayuttaya of big Buddhas, Wats & monkeys, another week at the school begins. I'm so excited to get back to the children and see their smiling faces!

Every morning they line up to sing the National Anthem at 8am (this happens in all public places) and every morning a boy and girl are chosen to raise the flag of Thailand to full mast. Then we all pray towards the temple and the day begins.

I walk into the kindergarten to the familiar greeting of 12 kids running towards me and jumping up for a cuddle. Certainly no Monday morning blues! There is one little girl who always gets to me first, and does so by means of running at me so hard her head hits me right in the stomach and I almost fall over!... I'm trying to remember all the kids names but it's so hard as they're all so long and not the easiest to pronounce. I've found that a lot of the boys names end in "Pong" and a lot of the girls names end in "Porn" much to my infantile amusement!... Thicumporn being my favourite name so far! This particular girl always makes me laugh. She never smiles at me but instead pulls piggy faces, so me & Talissa had started calling her the piggy face girl, but now I know her name I don't know which is better! Piggy face or Thicumporn?

There are a few with shorter names which I find easier to remember; Baow & Bepong, my two favourite boys in kindergarten (I know I shouldn't have favorites but when each time I see them they run up and kiss me on the cheek several times and make me read book after book whilst they're sat in my lap even though they don't understand a word of it, it's hard not to love these two!). There is also a boy named Chi (which incidentally is another one of my many nicknames so of course I remember him) and a little girl called Pailin, possibly after the godfather of travel himself, my hero; Michael Palin, or possibly not.

This week we continue teaching our own lesson plans, and more in the swing of it now, it all comes quite naturally. In the beginning I prefered teaching the younger ones as it was easy to draw pictures and write the words underneath but now I'm enjoying the challenge of class 5 and 6, teaching them full dialogues and sentences, and feel a sense of pride when they get something right. There is one boy in class 5 who is very naughty, though. I repeatly have to shout at him, point the cane and say "back in your seat!" but he has such a cheeky grin on his face I can't help but giggle. He brought some worms into class the other day, and dangled one in front of my face... It made me scream and of course they all laughed at teacher... I laughed too, I couldn't help it, and even though I tried to tell him off we were all laughing for about 5 minutes. One of the teachers told me he is very naughty and won't learn anything so to just ignore him, but I go through a dialogue with him, make him read it out loud and, with a bit of help, he gets there. I'm really pleased! This is one of the best things about teaching for me - Sure the four girls that sit at the front of the class and get everything right all the time are really clever and I have taught them a lot, but when I can actually get through to someone who doesn't want to learn, that's real satisfaction of the job!

We teach English for most lessons and occasionally art which is fun. We made masks with class 1 and 2 which they all loved doing, apart from one boy which was quite happy to just have a plain white face for a mask which I have to admit looked a little scary! (see photo)

However, One afternoon we are asked to teach class 6 agriculture... There is a small allotment at the school and the children look after the crops. Now I don't know the first thing about plants (ask my mum, she gave me a tomato plant once and said "its easy to look after" - it died within 2 days) so after watching the kids run around with watering cans & trowels and me not really knowing what to do, when one of the boys says "Volleyball teacher, Volleyball?" I jump at the chance and we all play volleyball & badminton for the rest of the lesson.

One day there is an exhibition being held in Bangkok, where schools from around the region showcase their talents, and sell food & crafts so we go along. Our school are selling Pad Thai noodles and these little yummy mini sticky rice pudding cakes with coconut. We wander round the exhibition, trying lots of new foods, watching the amazing performances of singers & dancers on stage, and see students making various crafts, from painting pottery to weaving mats. I watch a young boy making clay vases on a Potters wheel... He must be about 12 and the pots are amazing, he does it so fast! This particular school is based up in the hill tribes, north of Chiang Mai and they specialise in teaching many types of art & sculpture. They have an amazing aray of beautiful vases, and I'm drawn to one that is tarnished bronze with a decorative engraved pattern. It is beautiful. It is also very big and very very heavy. I ask how much, and the boy says 150 baht. (about £3!) so I pay him the money and walk away with my beautiful vase, cursing myself. How on earth am I going to fit or carry around such an enormous thing when my rucksack is already bursting at the seams!?!

I decide to post it to the UK and wince when the lady (I think it was a lady) in the post office back in Bangkok tells me it will be 1,400 baht (about £30) to post home... I send it anyway, convincing myself I would have paid much more for it in the UK, and it's a much nicer purchase than just some cheap tack from the market. It will take 3 months by boat apparently but hey, it can take 6, I won't be home for a while yet!

The following week there's a temple fair at the school & temple. There's various fundraising activities going on and things such as golden Buddhas for sale (which I help the monks to put about 100 of them into gold boxes with tacky gold bows on) and other such items to raise money for the school. The kids are very excited, running up and down, spending their pocket money on the teddy stalls and eating icecreams. It's a sight you might see at any school.

And so the end of the three weeks draw to an end, I can feel it creeping up way too fast, every day is flying by and I'm dreading having to say goodbye! Our second to last evening in the house, me & Talissa cook a European dinner for the family, consisting of fish, chips & mushy peas, tomato salad, mash potato & ratatouille. I'm worried they won't like it but they tuck in and eat it all so I take that as a good sign!... They laugh at the mash potato but agree that it tastes good! Pao, their eleven year old nephew is not so sure, but he loves the fried fish & chips and wolfs them down in no time. He also has a big bowl of rice on the side (they eat rice with everything!)

So the last night in the house and the family return the favour - a feast of tom yum soup, spicy cocounut fish, sweet chilli fish, pineapple fish, stir fry vegeatables, rice and a couple of cans of Chang. Followed by sticky rice with coconut & mango. It's delicious, and we all eat sit round on mats on the floor, proper Thai style. They have also borrowed the talents of a couple of young musicians in the village to come and perform a few tunes for us on their traditional Thai instruments. Though One particularly chubby boy was playing a song for so long I thought it would never end! I went to clap about 4 times because I thought he'd finished but he just kept right on...

It was a lovely evening and we go to bed, preparing ourselves for the emotional day that lay ahead...

Our last day is only a half day teaching, as we get picked up at noon to be driven back to Bangkok, away from this lovely tranquil village life, that I've become quite accustomed to.

We finish off our final class of teaching with a round or two of hangman which the kids love. Then it's time to say goodbye...

All 200 children gather in the main hall, the head teacher does a speech, in Thai then in English and then asks us to say a few words... I burst into tears! I've been on the brink all morning and eventually it all gets too much. I compose myself and manage a small speech which the teacher translates. Then they ask us to sing "if your happy and you know it clap your hands" with the children. I burst into tears again. Talissa doesn't know the song (they don't sing it in Switzerland) so it's up to me to sing it to 200 children, through teary eyes and a lump in my throat, and they all join in, their smiling faces beaming back at us! I will never forget this moment!

They take it in turns to come and thank us and each and every one gives us a hug (or a high 5 from the boys) goodbye. I embarass both Pao and the naughty boy from class 5 by giving them a big hug and kiss on the cheek and the rest of the kids cheer & laugh. Some of the girls have written cards which they hand to us, with drawings of us, or hearts or rainbows and saying "I love teacher" and I come away with a bundle of them.

Finally we give a big wave goodbye to them all as we ride our rusty bicycles back home for the final time to pack our belongings and leave, passing the the locals one last time, shouting our last "Sawaati Kah" as we race by, and yelling our last "piss off dog!" to the hungry mutts yapping at our wheels.

What a truly amazing few weeks this has been. To see children with nothing so genuinely happy every day, so eager to learn (most of them!) and appreciative of the smallest things has been such a humbling experience. I am so thankful to these children for bringing me so much happiness and joy - I came here to teach them, but ironically it's them who have taught me so much about myself and to appreciate the important things in life. I only hope I have helped, in whatever small way, to make a positive difference to their lives as well.

Xx

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