In the tradition of not letting your blog die, I offer you this

It is lunch time in. I am at the SAO thinking about the list of self-imposed deadlines and expectations that I now need to deliver on. This week I have been tired, really tired; more on that in a moment. I arrived today at approximately 9:30 am, my pants soaked through from the 10 minute bike ride, yet shirt in pressed condition protected underneath my North Face water coat (yes, it is the rainy season, and it rains enough to say it rains every day). About five minutes after arrival I am called into a meeting of all abotaw (SAO) personnel at which time the Nayoke seems to give a pretty thorough ass razzing to all who were present. This was the most serious I have seen Thai people, for the longest amount of time since we have been here. The meeting lasted about 15 minutes during which I think I heard the term "pak-pon" many times, which means to recover. I estimate that I understood about 40% of what was being said which seemed to have to do with the community thinking that the abotaw workers just screw around all day and that they all really need to change the way they act while in the office. Of course none of this is being directly at the one guy in the room who doesn't really speak Thai, but I definitely got that cool feeling  that comes in a meeting of this sort. I tried to ask my friend about the meeting after we got out, and for the most part she seemed to substantiate my thoughts, although was not able to offer a whole lot more detail other than that there was a smaller meeting with the higher ups yesterday afternoon that was much worse. The investigation shall continue.

This is the second week that I have been working at a bratom (primary) school across the street from our house. This is the only school in the village that Erin does not work at, and very small with less than 50 students. I have agreed to teach grades 4-6 environmental education as well as computers. On Monday night, I will hold a computer class meant to help adults build their computer literacy, though I do not yet know what participation will look like. So now the tired part...

It is exhausting. I have taught only two and a half hour sessions on Tuesday and Wednesday morning, Tuesday being computers and Wednesday being environment, and am ready to go to sleep by the time I leave. So far this has been my experience with teaching kids, that any knowledge I can give them leaves me in the form of my ability to think, walk, or forecast the future of my life (eg. to take a shower). I think I need to find a more relaxed way to instruct. The constant reformulation of approach that necessarily occurs when teaching a subject in a different language while trying to also impart English language vocabulary, seems to be more than I can give right now which must mean I am doing something wrong. Next week I will try with better lesson planning. I mentioned that phrase to my fellow teacher yesterday and she said that lesson planning "gives you a headache". This goes a ways to explaining the copy and repeat learning style in many Thai schools.

I am also teaching at the hospital two nights a week with a classroom of doctors and nurses who want to speak better English. This course was thought up by myself and the district director to be of 6 week duration with a focus on terminology for health and medicine. The "students" for the most part all speak some English, understand a lot more and are mainly interested in pronunciation and phrase order during day to day interactions. PC Thailand has a workbook available that was made up by several previous volunteers which is what I am using for the framework of the curriculum. This class if often a lot more fun to teach because I am able to use adult commentary which as many of you know is a specialty of mine :) We talk about shots, and allergies, and everything else you talk about when you go to a hospital too.

So these are sort of the forefront of my daily activities right now although by no means the whole picture. Other projects that are in the works have to do with waste management/recycling, sexual education and drugs. I am still reaching out to as many places as possible to try to paint myself a better picture of the state of Thailand. Next up is visiting a large recycling plant in Phitsanulok and hopefully a visit to a university science department to discuss Thai environmental issues with the science faculty. Although many volunteers complain that they were not sent to the middle of no-where and living in a grass hut, Thailand is a fascinating place to be as soon as you start to see this big picture. It is a country in rapid transition and despite the very questionable effectiveness (or unquestionable ineffectiveness) of the government, things are happening here and they are happening fast. They have electricity everywhere, internet is fast becoming ubiquitous even in remote places, everybody has a cell phone (or 2), there are 7-11s and gas stations and many of the other modern conveniences people are used to in the so called first world countries. On the other hand, there are huge disparities in knowledge between the wealthier city class, and poorer rural class. Many modern conveniences just got to most of Thailand, and many of them are flooding in now. People have access to the internet, but most of them have little idea the capabilities that brings. In some places I meet people who have studied abroad in China or Texas, and in others I meet people who have no idea how small this country of their's is, and that we don't teach Thai culture in American schools. Everybody asks me "majok bratet arai" or what country are you from, and a select few have a friend who is living there or sister who married over, but the rest could not find it on a map and are not sure if America is in Europe or not.

These contrasts make project work difficult because in some instances you are not bringing to the table anything people don't already know while in others you observe behavior or hear ideas that take you back 50 or more years. Thailand is not the US and we are not here to help make it the US but there are many things Thais today can still learn from us Americans. I am on the look out for parties who are interested in learning those things, while at the same time soaking up as much of their non-judgement, non-dollar, non-western religion based, community value philosophies as I can. I invite the reader to just ask next time I see you and I promise, you'll get an earful.

Some new pics are here: http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.3987598327100.2153124.1195059725&type=3&l=5156bb79fe

RED