Every Night, I Blog in the Morning

Today, Shawney and I decided to go to day two of the English Teaching conference. We had every intention of leaving after the morning session, but were having so much fun that we went back in the afternoon. We got to play games (which we included in our activities list for the schools!) and get to know some Thai teachers better. One woman in particular, Lorra, may be the most hilarious person that I ever met (and I’m totally stoked that she just friended me on Facebook!). She was cracking jokes all day and I couldn’t stop laughing! My personal favorite joke was when she told us that her boyfriend wasn’t handsome, but he was kind to her. And nice. And he had money. Yes, she totally knew what she was saying. To Lorra’s boyfriend: I’m sorry.

The lady running the conference also made a hilarious comment, but hers was more of an accident. When teaching everybody to make more complex sentences, she said something like, “Don’t just say ‘I woke up.’ Say, ‘Every morning at 6:30, I wake up at 8:00.’” It took everything I had to hold myself together on that one. In fact, as I was typing this post, I started cracking up at it again. (Warning: I’ll probably be saying phrases like this for awhile! Kind of like the title of this post, which oddly makes sense...!)

On a more serious note, God's hand played a more important role today than just a positive experience at the conference. We had a meeting with all of the volunteers this afternoon, and it got me fired up for the rest of the summer. One of our country directors asked us who would benefit from our help the most. Immediately, we realized that it's the tribe people, many of which are immigrants from Burma. Many of these people do not have citizenship, which means that they are not recognized by the Thai government and don't have the priveleges of citizens, one of which being public schooling. It's amazing to me that in the U.S., we take something like education for granted when there are so many people in the world, including the ones that we're about to impact in Thailand, that just don't have the opportunity to be educated. Now, our game plan is to continue the projects we've started, but to also head into the hills so that we can make a difference in the lives of the tribe people in any way possible. Please pray that God's hand continues to be shown as clearly as it was today so that we can make miracles happen here in northern Thailand... both at night AND in the morning!

The Smart Kid in Class

So here’s a recap of the past few days (with some hilarious side comments included):

On Sunday, we decided to create our own “Spa Day”. Like I briefly mentioned in my last post, we started it off by tubing down the river. For some reason, I didn’t share this, but now that I’m thinking about it, it’s truly hilarious. As I’m floating along, minding my own business, I hear a few kids yell, “HELLOOO!” I look up, and there are four monks on the riverbank. They then proceeded to say something in Thai, the only word of which I caught was “phalong” (white person), and then raced me on foot. Because this is a fairly slow moving river, they clearly won. Yes, I lost in a race versus four monk children in the jungle. Monks – 1, Meg – 0.

Then, some of us painted our nails and got Thai massages. Although it felt fantastic, it was a bit awkward. See, we basically laid down on mattresses in this woman’s living room. With that being said, I can’t complain as I paid $8 for an hour long massage. Between tubing, painting my nails, and getting a massage, I would consider Sunday Spa Day to be a success!

On Monday, I taught English at a new school in order to fill in for another volunteer that had left. I’m pretty sure that this is the school where I will be volunteering for the remainder of the summer, which is perfectly fine by me! Christie, the other volunteer at this school, is great and we got to team teach all day.

Today, Shawney and I were invited to a conference on Teaching English so, naturally, we decided to go. Needless to say, I felt like the smart kid in class as we were the only “phalongs” in the conference and they would have us present things just so the Thai teachers could “hear our accents”. I found it very interesting to see the staff development that these teachers are receiving, and I think I want to organize a training for the teachers once we finish our list of activities and games. We’ll see though, as only time will tell!

On that note, I think it’s time for me to go get a chocolate roti from my favorite Thai person so far, the street vendor named Mr. Honey. And no, I’m not joking. If you can find a better name than that (or “Boss” who was at the conference today), then I’ll give you a high five. Good luck!

Finding God's Hand

On Friday night, I had a long conversation with Shawney about how you can see God’s hand on a daily basis, meaning, no matter how good or bad your day is, God was a part of it. We then decided to verbalize a list of all the ways that we “saw” God in that day. I love this concept so much, so be prepared to hear more about it!

The conversation began because on that day, Shawney and I observed a few English teachers at a local school. We went in with the mindset of seeing how our units and lessons that we’ve spent all week working on could be incorporated into their classroom. What we found instead was an extremely humbling experience. The Pratom 6 (6^th grade) teacher handed us a copy of her lesson plan and we watched in awe as she took full control of her classroom. Although different from what we’re used to, I could tell that these students loved and respected their teacher and, most importantly, they were learning exactly what her lesson plan had laid out.

Upon this realization, I was frustrated and disappointed. All of this work that we had done was, in my eyes, for nothing. Afterwards, we spoke with two other English teachers and, exasperated, asked them how we can help other than the teaching that we’re already doing (because at this point, I wasn’t sure what else I could do). Their response was something like, “Help with vocabulary… with pronunciation… help with getting my students to love English. It’s very difficult and they don't like it.”

That’s when the light bulb went off. I know I’m not world’s best teacher, but I also know that I can make lessons fun. I asked if they wanted us to come up with songs, games, crafts, and activities for their already wonderful lessons so that the students are having fun during English and still learning. The faces of these women lit up and they practically jumped up and down with excitement. That's the moment when I saw God’s hand as I could see just how beneficial my trip here could be to these two women and to their students.

So, Shawney and I are now archiving all of the units that we created for the HELP team next summer. Now, we’re devoting our time to teaching on Monday’s and Tuesday’s, and then sharing with these teachers various ways to make learning fun for the rest of the week. I’m looking forward to this change in plans and am thankful that we were guided in the right direction sooner rather than later.

As for elephants, we put that on hold until more volunteers could join us. Instead, we did some shopping in Fang this weekend, had an AMAZING dinner at a Thai barbeque restaurant (below), and went tubing down the river this morning. More updates about the work week to come soon! Until then, may you find God's hand in your day, no matter if it's good or bad it is. :-)

Nom Yen

Just a quick update to say that things are going well and I'm feeling (mostly) successful here thus far. We planned all day today and have now completed two units in our curriculum! We had a great dinner tonight, where Shawney and I convinced everybody to go around and say why we appreciate Nicole since it was her birthday the other day. It felt like I was right at home! I had an amazing chocolate cake for dessert tonight, which is always a success. I've napped for the past two days. The weather has cooled down a bit (which is really like 2 degrees, but I can tell!). What can I say? Thailand is enjoyable not just because of teaching, riding ostriches, and going to orphanages. The little things still keep me happy on the other side of the world.

The only failure was nom yen. When writing a poem to include in a lesson today, Shawney and I needed to describe something that was pink. We asked Nat, our country director who is native to Thailand, for some advice. He told us to write about nom yen, and then made us this drink as it's his favorite. Imagine a liquid that is the color and consistency of pepto bismal. Now imagine a taste of something like cough syrup. Boom! Nom yen. Although Thailand has MANY good things to offer, I'm afraid that this isn't one of them.

In the meantime, be prepared for the following:

• Many mentions of Shawney as I spent 99% of my day with her currently. I hope she doesn't get sick of me and my weird sense of humor!
• We're planning on riding elephants this weekend! I may or may not cry from excitement. I'll keep you posted.

Please send me e-mail updates about your lives! I miss everybody very much and hope that you all are doing well. If you'd like to Skype or chat, I'm typically online around 9 or 10 A.M. EST. I hope to hear from you all soon!

No Vampires Here!

Yesterday and today have been very busy as I have either been in the schools or creating an English curriculum. Yesterday, Shawney and I decided to write out a curriculum for both volunteers and local English teachers. When HELP arrived in Thailand, they found that the biggest need for the schools was to teach English. Apparently, the country wants to have all students proficient in the language by 2015, so everybody is begging for teachers. Unfortunately, not everybody that speaks English knows how to teach it, so Shawney and I decided to bridge the gap with thorough lesson plans. We worked all morning yesterday on this and all day today. Let me tell you, this is quite the project we're taking on, but I know that it will be beneficial to the teachers and future volunteers here. (Side note: If you teach, please let me know if you have any good songs, games, dances, etc. for ELL students that are very basic and easy to understand! Any help is appreciated!)

Yesterday afternoon, we went to Fang (I learned how to spell it!) to teach English to the teachers. Nicole and I, again, gave them scenarios for conversation as that's what they really want to learn. They had so much fun role playing and learning how to say various phrases. Afterwards, they asked how often Nicole and I could come back because we were so helpful. I'm telling you what, I could keep myself VERY busy here as English is in high demand!

It also rained a lot today. Afterwards, the air smelled so badly of garlic. That's when I realized that we have a garlic factory literally across the street from our house, which probably explains why I keep seeing pick-up trucks FILLED with garlic cloves (and I mean, like PILED on top... so much so that the garlic is higher than the cab of the truck!). I guess it's safe to say that I can cross vampires on my list of potential predators in Thailand. You can now breathe a sigh of relief, Mom and Dad!

Queen of America

Today, I got to teach for the first time here with another one of the volunteers, Nicole. I was ridiculously excited and had the wonderful opportunity to teach "Pratom" 1, 2, 3, and 6 at an amazing school (equivalent to grades 1, 2, 3, and 6). The kids are absolutely adorable and I already want to adopt a Thai child at some point in my life. The classes had limited resources, so we had to be really creative in order to get things to stick. Currently, they're really just learning common words/phrases in conversational English. My personal favorite lesson today was teaching the months of the year while doing the Macarena.

After school, we had the opportunity to teach English to the teachers. They were HILARIOUS! They wanted to learn key phrases when shopping at the market. We came up with short conversations and then we role played them. We were laughing so hard when they were saying that a pen was worth 1 million baht because it was made out gold and diamonds or when they decided that they wanted to pay with a credit card because they had "too much money".

Two of the teachers drove Nicole and I home at the end of the day. They were playing Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber, telling us how great they are. They also told us that they were big Yankees fans (I knew I liked them!). It was seriously the funniest car ride that I've ever been in and I was crying from laughing so hard. Because my name is too difficult for them to say (first, it was "Mekkon". Then, they asked my nickname, so it became "Mek"), they have now dubbed me as "Queen of America". I gladly accepted. Thank you very much.

Once Time In Your Life!

Today, we went to an ostrich farm and I rode an ostrich. Yes, it was awesome and hilarious. No, I'm not joking. And yes, I finally got the chance to upload pictures! You're welcome for all of the above.

Dance Like Nobody's Watching

Last night, after dinner, our land-lady (I don't know how to spell her name, but it's pronounced Pee-You-EE which is just plain AWESOME) invited us to go to a spiritual ceremony with some locals. Why wouldn't we go?!

We got rides on the back of mopeds to the ceremony (Does a moped count as a motorcycle? If so, can I cross this off of my bucket list?) which I found to be terrifying. When we got there, we had to take off our shoes, go upstairs, and they blessed us by individually tying bracelets on our wrists while chanting something in Thai to give us luck and good fortune. Then, they gave everybody sticky rice, and led us to this dance party downstairs. We sat down and just observed while they gave us food. At one point, I'm not sure what happened, but this man said something, I gave him a confused look, and then he peeled a banana and put it in my hand. Thank you?

At one point, this woman came up to us and pulled us on to the dance floor one by one. Next thing you know, we're all learning how to dance like the Thai in the middle of this spiritual ceremony. The best way I can describe this is to imagine how you would dance when nobody is watching. Now do this five times crazier and you too could receive the double thumbs up of approval from some locals!

I Speak, You Laugh

I've learned a handful of new words, but most of the time when I speak, the locals laugh. I have a feeling that this is going to be true for the next 6 weeks!

When we got in last night, I was introduced to the other 15-20 people that are currently living in the house (some are on a mini vacation in Bangkok or Phuket, so I'm not exactly sure how many people I actually met!). The woman next door makes us traditional Thai food for dinner every night at 6 P.M. After dinner, we went to a street vendor who makes "roti" (which is basically dough, sugar, and condensed milk. It's delicious!) and then just hung out at the house.

Today, we took a tour of the town. I truly thought that we'd be back in like 30 minutes, but there's a Buddhist temple at the top of the "hill", so we decided to walk up and go see it. (Let me tell you, in the eyes of a Northern Virginian, this "hill" is really a mountain. If you're from Hampton Roads, you can consider this "hill" to be a really, really big mountain.) Needless to say, two and a half hours later of blood, sweat, and tears (scratch that -- can I say sweat, sweat, and sweat?), we were back in town for lunch.

The temple was VERY cool though. It has nine different levels on the way up the hill, and each level has a Buddha statue. The temple is at the top of the hill, and when we got there, we could see for miles. It was absolutely breath-taking.

After lunch, we had the opportunity to bring mosquito nets to an orphanage down the road that some other people in the organization had bought earlier in the week. It was so neat being able to interact with them and help them set the nets up! This is when I realized just how comical my Thai must sound, as the only things I could say to them were, "Hello," "What's your name?" and "Thank you". Any time I uttered one of these phrases, the kids would start giggling. Hopefully, I didn't mess it up and say something too terrible!

The town that our house is actually in is called Thaton, which is located 20 minutes or so outside of Phuong. (I have no idea if that's how it's spelled, but it sounds like my friend Phuong's name, so that's how I'm going to spell it. Thanks, Phuong!) I like to think of it as the Lucketts outside of Leesburg (or for Hampton Roads, it's the equivalent of Poquoson and Yorktown). It's VERY small, but has everything that we need!

Lastly, I'd like to share that I constantly feel like I need to shower. Never again will I complain about Virginia's humidity!

I hope you all have a wonderful Friday. Just think: you're getting ready for work, but it's 5:00 somewhere! (Yes... the correct answer is in Thailand!) TGIF!

The Thaton temple.

The view of Thaton from the temple.

Sawasadee-Kah (Or Something Like That)

Sawasadee-Kah from Chiang Rai, Thailand!

So I'm here. And that's the only thing I've learned in Thai so far. Oh well, it's a start!

And when I say "here", I really mean at the Chiang Rai YMCA. It's close to the airport, and they have some other people that they need to pick up later today, so we're just making a day out of chilling here. Apparently, our house is an hour or so away from the airport in a very rural town, so it's easier to stay in the city for the day. The YMCA has a lot of ceiling fans and WiFi, so I'm totally okay with that at the moment!

Everything worked out very well this morning. I got to my gate at the airport, and literally 5 minutes later, I hear two girls talking about HELP International, so I picked up my stuff, walked over to them, and introduced myself. We hung out for the next hour or so, took a short flight to Chiang Rai, got our baggage, and then waited outside for our country directors to pick us up.

... And we kept waiting.

After an hour and a half (of trying to learn Thai, photoshoots, videos of "first impressions of Thailand", etc.), we decided that maybe it was time to call. After we figured out how the Thai phone system works, we got a hold of one of the country directors. Turns out, they were waiting for 45 minutes at the other door. Who knew?! Anyway, I'm here and I made it in one piece!

In case you were wondering, my first impressions of Thailand:

• It's very green here. Like VERY green.
• There are mountains, but when I asked which mountain range they were, nobody seemed to know (both people with the organization and locals!). If you happen to find out what mysterious mountain range I'm looking at, please let me know!
• It's hot. Picture a hot July day with a lot of humidity, but a slight breeze. Apparently, because it's the rainy season now, it's much cooler than it was a few weeks ago. I can't even imagine!
• There are massage places EVERYWHERE. It's like nail salons in New York City, but you can get an hour massage for the equivalent of $10!
• Magnum ice cream bars are sold for a little over $1 here. I really just put that in there for my mom.

Word on the street is that there's an internet cafe across the street from our house, a warm river that everyone's made a hobby out of tubing on, and a sand volleyball court nearby. I think I'm going to like it here. I think I'm going to like it here a lot!

The Light Lasts Forever!

I'm currently sitting in the airport in Tokyo, and I'm finally really, really excited. (Finally?!) See, these past couple of weeks have been ridiculously stressful with packing and everything that encompasses finishing up an amazing school year. This morning (or maybe it was yesterday morning? I just spent 13 hours on a flight where it was daytime the entire time, so you can decide if it was today or yesterday), I cried when I said bye to my parents. I cried again when I realized that I was travelling totally on my own for the next two days. Whenever somebody asked me if I was excited, I couldn't completely say, "Yes" because I'm totally out of my comfort zone here.

When the plane landed in Tokyo, it marked the exact moment that I became very excited. Yes, it took a long flight of keeping busy, worrying about all of the "what if's", trying to sleep, etc... but when the plane touched down, my immediate first thoughts were something like, "I'm in ASIA! I'm doing something meaningful on this continent this summer! Oh my gosh... I'm in Tokyo!"

Just like that, all of those worries and stresses went away.

As I mentioned, now I'm sitting in the airport in Japan eating sushi. I just wanted to put that in there to maybe make you jealous.