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burma/thailand
barb looking into a dark yet very intriguing reality Crap (said in american accent)
Yeah..it has almost been one month since I left, how crazy is that... I thought six months was a long time before I left.. but it seems to be passing quite quickly surprisingly enough.
Did I ever tell you guys that I was working with devil grade 3's?
Wait, let me rephrase that: Did I ever tell you guys that the grade 3's I am working with
appear to be devils?
A BIRD JUST FLEW INTO MY HEAD!!!! ..that is not a joke by the way. There is a birds nest like right on a porch so I went to go look at the supposed baby birds and they flew out like rocket-ships full speed at my face.. there is a little cut on the side of my head.... hahaha that is funny
Anyway, the point is.. I was mistaken, and even harder to say , i never wanted to stoop to this level but.. with all this new found responsibility of holding lives in my hands, and classes in my hands I kind of forgot they are children. They are not looking for careers ( maybe part time jobs for their families)
surprise
foreigners at the boarder wanting pictures with other foreigners but they have no responsibility but to live their youths until they can no longer. Because someday, probably sooner than children in North America experience, they will have their innocence and their fun, and their beautiful smiles taken away to face other realities.
So why on earth would
I want to speed up that inevitable process.
Some of you may recognize this quote, and if you do, y our heart will smile, and take two steps back..
This is a quote from one of the most beautiful books ever written by Antoine de Saint- Exupery. If you have read his book, I hope you remember his words, and their beauty. On the other hand, if you have no idea who he is, I dare you to search and find this book. It is a short read, but if you sincerely let these words into your heart, you will understand why i just went on a rampage lol.
Grown-ups like numbers. When you tell them that you have made a new friend, they never ask you any questions about essential matters. They never say to you, “What does his voice sound like? What games does he love best? classic dog you see here
very sad dog, alone and shivering at the boarder market Does he collect butterflies?” Instead, they demand: “How old is he? How many brothers has he? How much does he weigh? How much money does his father make?” Only from these figures do they think they have learned anything about him.
Grown-ups forget about all the important things in life catching worms during the night right after it rains, and wearing your socks upside down, and playing truth or dare and thinking kissing boys on the cheek is a big deal. Remember those days.. sometimes I still have days like that.
What a privileged to be around children that experience that all the time.
The point is, I have had a lot of difficult with the grade 3s for a bunch of reasons and I realize now that it is not my students with the difficult learning, it was me all along with the problem teaching. I work with these students the last period of everyday, only for 45 minutes. Not only are they anxious to go outside in the beautiful sunshine and play, but who the heck in their right mind at 8 years old wants to learn an extremely different foreign second language at the end
snail
they can be very pretty sometimes of the day? NO ONE!
I wouldn't want to, unless it was french.
These kids no very little english to begin with, so I need to trick them into learning slowly with very hands on activities..
Today. was my best day with these students and I felt so proud of them at the end of the class. They worked harder, were not disruptive at all and even stayed after class a bit.
Anyway I added some pictures of the students for you guys so you can see. none of the students in the pictures are the really energetic crazy ones though.
Okay, a side from school, lets talk about other things:
-weather: amazing day out today, very hot with lots of sunshine, but just enough clouds and breeze that you are not dying.. except when you get to school after waking up late from lunch break and therefore biked to the other school like a crazy person and made it there fortunately on time , but very sweaty and unorganized. ..I wish there was a pool here, well there is somewhere but I don't know how to get there.
OH OH
the other day, Natasha, Barbara, Megan and
more snails
they are huge I went to the Boarder Market. This is like a 45 minute bike ride and mind you I had Natasha on the back of my bicycle so it was like doing a freakin marathon.. maybe my legs will be in shape by the time I go home.
this market though is a crazy giant mad house.
it is right beside Friendship bridge which is the boarder crossing ( that is closed) between Burma and Thailand.
So we were all right beside Burma, which was actually really weird. Burma as some of you may know is a very secretive and mysterious country. the Military Junta that controls the country is very repressive, so all we really know about the place is what we hear from the people that have escaped into bordering countries.
Standing right on the boarder with the burmese selling just on their side and the thai police circulating the thai area was so strange. There is a picture of Barbara looking into the Burmese horizon- with the mountains and beautiful green..
The market itself is like a giant giant carport with everything you can imagine buying: jewelry, home decorations, clothes, food, cosmetics, appliances dried squids...like literally everything.. not
mae sot
typical ride home in stores though, but like telephone booth sized areas. All compacted together. It takes about 20 minutes to walk from one end to the other, and there are roughly 5 colombs that size. It is huge.
Remember earlier when I talked about the nasty dogs here, the picture I uploaded on this blog is one of the many dogs that look like this in Thailand.
They are very sad, diseased, and very much not pets. The ones that are domesticated are kind and very taken care of. But let me tell you that the wild dog population here is probably just as high as the migrant population of burmese people.
You come out at night, and there are packs of dogs running around. No one can afford to spade or neuter the dogs let alone feed them. So there is a giant cross bread of EVERYTHING.
The dogs chase after your bikes and bark, but if you brake hard enough they run away in fear.
They are just like bullies: aggressive and convincingly confident but inside, they are terrified of being picked on by others and really just want someone to show them a loving hand.
It is very
millipedes
size of my forearm no lie sad.
OH MY GOSH!!!!
I took my clothes in the other day to get washed and it is like a full dry cleaning service! Except like 100 times cheaper.
I mentioned that it took like a week for my clothes to dry here, and I spent a couple hours just washing them, so this time I was like screw that, Imma take them to the cleaners.
It took two days for them to wash: 12 shirts, 20 undies, 3 sportsbraws, 1 pullover sweater, 3 dresses, a towel, sheets, socks, a pair of jeans and some skirts..
THEY SMELL LIKE MAGIC AND CAME IN A SEALED BAG AND guess GUESS how much it cost... you don't even want to know.. ( mind you this is all hand washed..)
8 dollars.. 254 bht.. EIGHT DOLLARS. that is crazy and definitely worth it, because I don't want my clothes to get mouldy.
I might go traveling to a close by city.. its the capital of Tak ( the province I am in) and its only 3 hours away.. who knows.
Anyway, thanks everyone for updates, and messages, comments and concerns.
I miss you, whoever you are, and love hearing from
grade 3's
some of the students you, from Canada, from the world.
"That is the hardest thing of all. It is much harder to judge yourself than to judge others. If you succeed in judging yourself, it's because you're truly a wise man."
kathy
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