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  Thaura, Thailand
Wednesday, July 18, 2007

Yup, just a month to go now - I know; hard to believe, eh?
We've had a busy time since I last wrote so I'll do my best to fill you in now.

On the 5th of July we celebrated 'Wai Khruu Day' ('wai' being the Thai bow, 'khruu' meaning 'teacher'). It is a day for students to give thanks and show their respect to their teachers. It felt like a very special occasion to be part of; a challenge to think of any equivalent back in Britain!
It involved a long ceremony during the morning; the students sang a beautiful song which, resounding round the hall, was - for me - really quite powerful and moving. They said a prayer then, in rows, began the process of individually bowing to a teacher. A line of teachers sat on chairs before all the students. The front row of students, sitting on the floor, would put their hands together in a wai and lean over in a low bow with the teacher waiing in response. They would then present the teacher with flowers (mainly garlands made of roses and jasmine), bow again then move away for the next row to take their placed and perform the short 'ritual' again. It was quite surreal to be sitting there with all these students bowing to the floor before me. A unique experience.

That weekend, we had a very enjoyable final trip to Nakhon Sawan. Nici and Clare are leaving a bit earlier than us so we wont make it up to their project again before they go. Two of Nici's friends from home were out visiting so the six of us were trainers for our last English Camp. They teach in a Vocational College with mostly older students making it quite a different camp to ours. It was interesting to experience a different type of teaching. We even got some lessons on Thai cooking on a traditional stove before the evening of watching each team's 'show' which they'd been told to prepare. Nici, Clare, Caz and I then rounded off the evening with a short play in which we had a role-reversal and acted like Thai students - they all thought it was very funny to hear us farang using all their cliched expressions; 'alai wa?!', 'mai khao jai', 'ngong!' to name a few.
On the Sunday evening we bid farewell to the city and made that train journey, which had been such a significant part of my year, one last time. Some lovely old men got on at Lop Buri who we chatted to for the rest of the way. It was nice to see how much our Thai has improved over the months; its little conversations like that that are one of the very rewarding aspects of having been here for so long.

I turned 19 on the 12th so enjoyed rather a different birthday to the previous 18!
Up early, we went to the nearby forest temple called 'Wat Beung' to make merit by offering food to the monks then headed back to school where I had an extremely fun and busy day.
I had exuberant renditions of 'happy birthday to you' sang to me countless times throughout the day... by my M4s crowding into the English base bearing gifts of cards and cakes, my M3 and M1 classes standing to sing as I walked in, in place of the usual "Good Morn-ing teeecher!" , our Extra Class students gathering outside our house... In one M3 class, every student presented me with a red rose so I ended up with a ridiculously large pile of them on my desk along with other presents I'd been given including a huge soft-toy dog and pig... I was very touched by it all - I now have hundreds of lovely cards proclaiming "I love Som-O" and wishing me a "HAPPY BIRTDAY VERRY MUSH".
Actually, many of my students got mixed up thinking it was the 10th , so I had a bit of a practice run on the Tuesday!

On Saturday we went to out M6 friend, View's, house which was a wonderful day. Her house is about 15minutes on the bus outside of Tharua right in the countryside. It's a beautiful old Thai house and we spent many special hours sitting out below the coconut trees eating papaya salad and chatting with her family.
On Sunday we spent the day interviewing students from schools in Ayutthaya who were hoping to go away for a year with AFS; strange to be on that side of things! Quite a different process to Project Trust selection, however. Most of them had their hearts set on America - one, more specifically, was desperate to go to Texas as she was in love with 'Linkin Park'...

Better go now as I have a class next period, hope you're all having a good summer :-)

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