Our New Town of Inburi!

So I am finally starting this post and so much has happened it is hard to believe I only got to where we will be living for ATLEAST the next 4 months on Sunday (it's Thursday now).

Last Teacher training day in Juvie!

To sum up my last day of practice teaching in Phuket at the Juvenille detention center..things went great and it was a wonderful end to my week. All week I had been teaching younger kids, and loved it and got a lot of good feedback that I would be good with kids. This is all great but since I would be in a high school this kind of bummed me out. Juvie was all 18 year olds and we had heard horror stories of lessons gone bad trying to teach there as we had pretty advanced lessons and there there are VERY LOW english level and again..older than what we were used to. It ended up so much better than I could have expected though. I think it was my best lesson of the week! Throughout the week I have kind of had the attitude that if I am going to go up there and teach I might as well throw all inhibitions out the window and pretty much make a fool of myself and do everything all the way and be very animated because I know the students will respond well (even if they are laughing at me). I went up for my lesson and started out with the Samarai game again and that ended up being hilarious, they only half understood the game and would just all attack each other but it made everyone comfortable. We then played BOOM SNAP CLAP (magee!) a game I played lots with the kids in Nicaragua which is basically be doing a boom/snap/clap sequence and they repeat. I am pretty sure they were making fun of me the whole time but they all still did it with me and the rest of the lesson went great because they were comfortable around me. The kids there were so great. They barely knew any English but they tried REALLY hard. You could tell these were good kids who just because of whatever circumstance ended up doing things to get them in trouble. They were very affectionate with each other which I have noticed with kids in Thai culture or atleast in the orphanages and places like this. They were 18 but yet sat in rows and always had their arms around each other and leaned on each other, even kissed each other on the head often. You could tell they were all just friends but here they aren't embarrassed by these actions. They could barely speak any English, but they would repeat things I said as best as they could and it's interesting here, even if they language level is low the kids are always good at READING things. If I would write the questions I was asking them on the board they always could figure out the answer. The boys were covered in tattoos mostly on their legs but also their faces that you could tell they gave each other in juvie. Again they were incredibly sweet though. The detention center was also verrry nice they had places to read and even a music area with drums and guitars and during lunch they were all banging on the drums and singing together very loudly (where I got my idea to do a musical game for them). Anyways, all in all it was a great experience and gave me much confidence in going into my first week of teaching in a high school :)

Bangkok!

I took an overnight bus to Bangkok on Friday night after my last practice teach and got there around 7am on Saturday. Felix and I spent the day there and met up with his friend from his training group who will be teaching in Angthong (about 30 minutes from us). We went to an area with a mall which was hand down the nicest mall I have ever been to. I can't really describe it but it wasn't anything like any mall in the U.S it was very very very technological..I guess what you would think when you think of an Asian super mall. On the top floor (of many.. one floor being the best aquarium in Southeast Asia) we went to the movie theater (also looked nothing like our typical movie theaters) and saw the Michael Jackson movie which was good. We kind of just walked around Bangkok from there. We were staying on the huge tourist road with all the clubs that is pretty famous in Bangkok. It is kind of the cultural melting pot where (it was the street that was also made famous in the movie the Beach) alll the tourists from around the world meet. It was incredibly busy being Halloween. We had dinner at a really nice Indian restaurant complete with a shesha (hookah). The streets were jam packed with people all dressed up and lots of stuff going on. I saw my first bug vendor (scorpions, cockroaches, beetles, etc.). Everything was very lively there was live music at every corner..I unfortunately didn't feel too good from traveling though so we called it an early night but I got a little taste of Bangkok that was enough to tide me over I think for a looong time. In the morning we got a taxi all the way to INBURI (a part of Singburi) at got there around noon..

INBURI!!!!!

Finally we got to Inburi and our homestay. The homestay owner's name is PiTuk (Pi is a name for an elder so lots of people have this before their name) and she is incredibly nice. She speaks english OK, enough to communicate with us but not much more. She always refers to herself for everything like "PiTuk don't understand..PiTuk has to go to town etc. which is really cute haha. Our room is great and overall we realized we are verrrry lucky to be in this place as we know that some of our friends had apartments that were pretty desolate looking and with nothing but a bed in it and we have everything taken care of for us here. Our room is large and was already decorated and with our own bathroom. It is much different than what you would expect of a room by western standards.. by that I mean no hot water, no toilet paper only a HOSE (this is like this in every Inburi bathroom), we have to pour water into the toilet to flush it, and we have a big frog who makes a special appearance every night in our bathroom. Even if that sounds bad though those things really don't matter once you are here so we still live very comfortably and are happy with everything. The house is on stilts with PiTuk on top and under is just a giant open air sitting area with lots of benches and chairs. There is also another foreign Filipino teacher staying with her mom in the room beside us. AH my favorite is the dog ahah... it's name is MuYung which we found out means "Little Pork". Dogs in Thailand are like squirrels in the U.S..they are every where and just kind of considered as an after thought. They wander in and out of buildings and Thai people pay no attention to them they are just kind of there.. if they walk into your classroom it isn't a surprise it just kind of happens. ANYWAYS, every now and then someone has one as a pet though and this dog is very interesting looking. It is miniature and looks like some kind of poodle mix but has these super long legs that are attached to a shrunken body. MuYung reminds me of a camel minus the hump. Since her legs are so long when she runs they flop all around and she looks like one of those floppy puppets on strings. She is vveeeeeeeerrry sweet though and loves attention. She kind of looks like she has been hit by a car though her hair is matted and everywhere and she is pretty ugly but adorable nonetheless. At PiTuk's there is also a large outdoor kitchen, and a path to the river which it is right beside. PiTuk has bicycles so for now we are using them to pedal around town and now ride them everyday to school!

Once we got our stuff settled in Felix and I took the bikes to explore around town. Inburi is incredibly peaceful and quiet. Singburi (about 15 minutes away) is a lot bigger and has more traffic, stores etc. but this is just a nice little town which we think is great after being in busy Phuket for a month. The house is about 10 minutes from the market and only about 5 minutes from our school which is awesome. We soon realized though that almost no one here would speak english and they had never really seen foreigners before. We were starred at by evvvveeeerryone. I also took living in Phuket and having English signs and MENUS for granted because there is nothing like that here. We went to the market and sat at a restaurant but with only thai menus everywhere we just had to go up to the cook (restaurants are always open air buildings outside with the cook just beside all the plastic tables) and say any thai word we knew for food and hope for the best. We only know "guy pad thai" which is a chicken and rice dish so we ate that for about 2 days haha. After lunch we just kind of toured around..it is very pretty here, right on the river which is pretty brown looking but still makes for good scenery and a good water breeze. There are many schools all around our road, one is a school for monks so there are big temples everywhere. That night we got on the bikes again for dinner at another market area and had yet another good guy pad thai. There was a pancake vendor too which are amazing.. they take thin dough and crack an egg in it and then when it's all cooked they pour vanilla creme and suger in the middle and roll it up for you. Best dessert ever. We rode to our school to give it a look before our first day of teaching. Some boys were playing basketball so Felix joined them for awhile for a game. After all of this we were extremely tired and headed home. We met our host thai teacher there from our school and she said she would pick us up in the morning and came with a giant bag of grapes to give us (we soon find out that thai people love to constantly bring us food..). School starts at 8 and if you want breakfast you come early so after an overwhelming day we went to bed to rest up before teaching on MONDAY!

FIRST day at Inburi School

When we first got to school we headed to the cafeteria for breakfast (chicken and rice again). It was reallly good though and only costs us about .50 cents for each breakfast and lunch we have at school! The head of the english department came to meet us then and show us around. The school is really nice and much better than I expected. It is pretty small for a thai school and has about 1,300 students. The english department has a great teacher lounge with couches, INTERNET where I am typing this now, and lots of coffee, food etc. There are lots of supplies here for us to use (which we were told not to always expect) and Felix and I each have our own desks in the lounge :) We didn't teach our first day and instead just observed some classes and wandered around. We did teach one class however, we went in to observe and all of a sudden the teacher left and was like you teach! and so we were kind of like uhh ok and started duo teaching which was just basically us telling about ourselves and having the kids play games.

The kids couldn't stop starring at us. We heard whispers, and giggles, and "farang farang", which means foreigner, everywhere we went. They didn't mean to be rude but they told us Inburi school has never had a foreign teacher so this is something incredible for them and being both blonde and tall and light skinned we kind of stick out like sore thumbs. When we pass kids in the hallways and if we turn a corner unexpectedly we always accidentally scare them. The girls will kind of yip and grab each other, or sometimes jump haha. Today I was trying to get around the students and one tiiiiny boy was in my way and he just FROZE and wouldn't move like a deer in headlights I looked like I terrified him finally I had to move around him because he couldn't move haha. They are starting to get more comfortable everyday, they always yell "Hello, Hello!" or "Goodmorning!" and when we answer they all giggle. Some brave ones even try to shake our hands, a boy shook my hand the other day and when I tried to let go he wouldn't he was trying to get his friends attention to show them so I just kind of stood there it was a bit awkward. In class they also say funny things like "Teacher I love you!" in the middle of class or sometimes they will look in a dictionary and then come up and say "You are very beautiful and pretty!".

Everyone is very nice including the other teachers.The English teachers don't actually speak much English.. but told us how they really want to learn and try their hardest to teach the students but it is also hard for them as they don't know that much. They seem very very grateful to have us and tell us they like listening to us to learn everything they can and they all practiced their English before we came! They always tell us they want us to teach them English. OH they are extremely nice too in terms of feeding us. We are always getting food pushed on us. The first day I already was given the giant bag of grapes, then when I came back on my desk was a big thing of peanuts. When we got in the car to get a ride home from school our thai teacher she gave us a bag of a sweet sticky rice that is cooked in coconut milk and then wrapped in banana leaves and has banana and I think taro in the middle so we have been eating that for the past 3 days. A very nice teacher also told us she is a baker so yesterday when we got to our desks there were two little cake boxes for each of us filled with delicious homemade coffee cake! She told us she will bring us a chocolate cake tomorrow because they know as Americans that we like chocolate. Today they brought us bags of coffee because they know we like to have that too and a plate of rose apples which is kind of a cross between apples and pears. For lunch, they made us a FEAST with tooons of different delicious (a roy!) foods for us to try and they said on Monday they will make Pad Thai for us too and teach us to make it. They packed up the whole feast for us too at the end to take home. They like to teach us thai words but so far the only words we talk about are FOOD words which we like to learn about as we never know what anything is haha. I have a feeling we will be visiting many of their homes in time as they tell us they want us to come and feed us :)

Loy Krathong Day!

We came on a GREAT day! It was a holiday for them called Loy Krathong day which is a day honoring the river goodess. They told us that a long time ago people bathed and washed things in the river and made it dirty so now they make krathongs (very intricate pieces of floating wood that is covered in banana leaves and shapes they make from the leaves and different flowers with candles in the middle) that they light and put in the river for forgiveness. This holiday is huge maybe comparable to a Easter but they wait all year for this and it was a very happy day. 8 students from each class spent all day in the courtyard making this krathongs which were incredible. After lunch there pretty much were no more classes. Felix and I were just wandering around and walked towards the library and before we knew it we were being ushered in by all of these people. They put necklaces around our necks that they made and sat us down and gave us coffee and water. They didn't really speak much English so we kind of just went with it and didn't know what was going on. The lady talking to us started to teach us a dance that they do for this celebration and they wrote down the song they sing in English for us and told us we were going to sing it on the microphones. It was time for the celebration then so we headed to the courtyard to wait. All of a sudden little girls with giant drums and a band came through and starting playing music. Before we knew it everyone was dancing around and we were being pulled into the middle of the courtyard to dance in front of the whole school! Then everyone started marching around the school to the pond and we were dancing the whole way. We were actually getting really hot and sweaty but every time we would stop someone would grab us and push us to the front of the drum line to keep dancing. EVENTUALLY.. we came to the pond and everyone put their krathongs in the water to float around. The little girls with drums put on a show where they were balancing and dancing on top of the drums and all of the older girls kept dancing and pulling us in the middle still. I got a lot of this on video so hopefully I can eventually upload videos and pictures, but the internet is very slow so I am not sure if I can now. All in all it was a wonderful first day for us. We got to dance and celebrate and all the teachers told felix he was a beautiful dancer for the rest of the day haha.

Loy Krathong Festival in Inburi!

Our first night after all the excitement and exhaustion of a full day we still had the town festival to go to that night. PiTuk our homestay owner was the MC there so we think she is big stuff in Inburi and we came early with her. There were lots of vendors with food so we just kind of mosey-ed around and tried out different stuff.The festival was right on the river and they put neon lights everywhere to decorate the area and everyone was shooting off big fireworks and had sparklers etc. We bought a Krathong and lit the candles and placed it in the river with everyone else. It was really pretty seeing the krathongs all floating down the river and there was a full moon too. I don't know what they are called yet but everyone was floating the things that are giant white squares made of a paper like material that you light and then float off into the air. They are really pretty to watch so all of this was going on during the festival and it was nice and peaceful to be there. Many of the town people have started to get word of who we are so were very nice.. everyone WAI's us (bows) and says hello. Many of our students noticed us later in the night and tried to give us cups of whiskey but as we are the elder and respected teachers of the town now we have to say no haha. Overall it was a great end to our first day in Inburi and we already feel very welcomed and glad we can spend the next semester in this quiet little town :)