Hey everyone,
Just a quick update because I have student journals to mark.
Currently we have slightly over two months left in Japan. I realised we had about a million people to catch up with before we left, so I'm trying to be proactive about organising farewell dinners with people. Two months = eight weekends, which really isn't that much!
So our social schedule is full, I'm busy studying for my Japanese test (the same one I sat last July and failed by one point out of 180!), I have a bit of a backlog of things I should be doing with www.wideislandview.com, I'm roped in to play Snow White in the English Club play in June and I'm trying to build up to 10km runs again. In my spare time I'm trying to do things that will prepare us for leaving, like cleaning out my wardrobe. It's going to be a very fast two months!
But... I'm feeling seriously sad about leaving. School is pretty good right now with the April teacher changes all working in my favour and English journals (titled 'Kiwi Logs' this year in an effort to move away from 'Charly's Note' which is both weird English and sucks for whoever takes over from me and has to check them for the other nine months!) are starting to flow in. Our trip to Korea made us realise how adjusted to life in Japan we are and I'm getting very sad about leaving our awesome bunch of friends that call Japan home! I keep reminding myself that most of our friends are leaving at the same time as we are, so staying for another year would be a totally different experience, but I'm still sad about leaving here.
I think it's worse because when we go home I have to get a Real Job and we are looking at settling down with a house, a puppy, etc. I had this sudden deja vu moment when I realised this is exactly what I went through when I was 20. At that point I had lived overseas for almost two years and I was returning to commit to a university degree. It seemed a terrifying, boring (can those two go together?) prospect. Now, I've put myself in almost EXACTLY the same situation, where I have to leave three years of travel and well paid, low responsibility work to come home and get a job that should last me a fair while and maybe even cover a mortgage.
Hmm... this is coming out wrong. It sounds like I'm worried about money. I'm not. I'm worried about being tied down. But I got through my university degree - thoroughly enjoyed it even - and met Jeff and lots of friends along the way. So I'm sure that my future in NZ holds just as many enjoyable things. It's just right now I'm panicking about all the countries I haven't visited (we even looked into a last minute jaunt to Vietnam to go kayaking in Halong Bay, but the air fares were too expensive to justify it for only a few days). It's so hard to leave NZ because we're so far away and air fares are so darn expensive. I don't know why I can be such a proud Kiwi and love my country so much... and want to spend my whole life exploring other places. Go figure.
I guess I should be honest and point out I'm in the process of job hunting at the moment. That draining experience probably has a lot to do with my inability to imagine anything positive in NZ right now. I'm sure once I have a job to look forward to, I'll be much more excited about living at home again. As it is, I can't imagine anything past the first two weeks of catching up with friends and family and indulging in falafel kebabs and Hell's Pizza.
On that note, if anyone wants to offer me a job... I don't have any money in NZ to pay bribes right now, but I can pay the debt in compliments or in horse riding lessons if you can wait until August!
Sorry this has come out rather negative. Japan has been an amazing experience and a wonderful weekend with friends isn't making the prospect of leaving look any more enticing. I love you NZ, but you're awful far away from everything else!
Charly
xo
Sunday, May 26, 2013
Sunday, May 12, 2013
Land of fish and beauty products!
Hello!
After my week in Korea, I would like to greet you with 'hello' in Korean, but Korean is really difficult and I didn't get the hang of any of it, so English will have to suffice!
It's late and I'm super tired - too much sleep on holiday backfired when I couldn't sleep last night. My cold (going on six months here!!) didn't help either. I ended up getting up and lying on the couch, coughing away as I finished my book. So the good news is I finished my book! The bad news is I don't want to know how little sleep I got (purposefully didn't look at the clock!).
Sorry, my point about all that was that I should be getting to bed now. But tomorrow I will have millions of student journals on my desk (there were 127 when I left, plus whatever was handed in last week :( ) and after that I need to get back into Wide Island View so I wanted to write something tonight while the experience was fresh in my mind.
(Side note: I'm sorry I've been so shite at blogging this year. I changed my gmail address but google won't let me change the address associated with this blog, so I have to log out of one email and log in with another to blog. It's enough of a disincentive to stop me, turns out!!)
Anyway, I have two main conclusions from a week in Korea: Busan smells of fish, and we are way more adjusted to Japanese life than we realise!
We got to Korea by taking a boat from Fukuoka, in Southern Japan and spent our first three days in Busan. I didn't realise Busan is, basically, a large fishing village. For someone who hates the smell of raw fish so much that she avoids the fish section of the supermarket, that perhaps wasn't my best holiday destination... Lonely Planet says about Busan that 'cultural mores prevent most people from initiating contact with foreigners' and locals can 'giggle at the sight of international travellers'. This is perhaps something I should have read BEFORE we went there! It doesn't seem a big deal when I write it like that, but you have to understand that in Japan, often we are stopped in the supermarket so people can say "Hello-how-are-you?" to practise their English, before they walk away giggling. When we go to the post office or bank, people apologise for not speaking English (because it's not like we're in their country, right??). So to come to a country that DOESN'T bend over backwards to communicate with us was somewhat of a shock! In Busan's defense, on our last afternoon there, shortly after a conversation about how much less friendly the people were, we had not one, not two but THREE people talk to a us in one train station - one a European guy checking we knew which platform we needed, one a Korean businessman based in Canada and one a local guy who speaks English for work!
The highlight of our time in Busan was, without a doubt, a couple of hikes we did in the mountains near an old fortress wall. The first day we got there a little late and just went for a wander in the foothills, where we came across an exercise circuit which we ended up playing on for 20 minutes. Jeff was much amused by my attempts to jump onto the parallel bars. It wasn't that I couldn't do it, it's just that while Jeff could jump up and push himself the last bit of the way with his hands in one smooth motion, I needed to stand on a rock next to the bars, put my leg over the closest bar, tuck my toe under the other bar, shift my weight forwards until I was straddling the bar, then bring my second leg over so I was sitting on one with my feet on the other, then I could position my hands and drop into supporting myself on my arms. Yes, I did gymnastics as a kid, yes I quit when I was holding Holly back because she didn't want to go up a level without me and I couldn't pass the damn Level 1 test. Anyway, my 'creative' way to get on the parallel bars gave Jeff an excellent opportunity for a laugh and some unflattering photos!
The second day we were more organised on our hike - we found our way to the bottom of the gondola that would take us up to the fortress wall, from where we could walk around some of it. Sucks for us, the gondola was closed that day! We ummed and ahhed and walked a little way up the forest track under the gondola. Then walked a little more. Then pondered how far we had walked and how far the track was, and walked a little more. We thought the walk was about 5km, all uphill, judging by the inaccurate-looking map at the gondola. When we had walked about 4km we finally committed to making it to the top!
Up there we bought a cold drink and checked out a bit of the wall, before walking down another path. The wall itself actually was a bit of an anti-climax - it was much smaller than we expected - not large enough to walk ON and there was a roped-off swathe of mown grass between the wall and the walking track. On reaching the bottom we both agreed that the winding dirt path going up through pine trees had been the best bit. The funny thing about hiking is that I rarely enjoy it when I'm doing it (uphill = hard and sweaty, downhill = tedious and hard on the knees), but you always feel so amazing when you reach a vantage point or hit the top!
Next: Seoul. In Seoul we spent three days in the city centre, then two days staying in Gangnam (hence Jeff's facebook photo, 'drinking beer Gangnam style!'). Just a few highlights here:
* Beauty product stores. Korea is famous for them. Lucky for this cheap-arse Kiwi, they like to give away free samples to encourage you in the door! Admittedly I did buy a few things (mainly face wipes and nail polish), but I came away with 26 free samples and 5 boxes of cotton face pads! SCORE!
* Fortress wall - Seoul also had a fortress wall available to hike. Only this one is still an active military zone! They even had a tree displayed bearing bullet holes from when a group of North Koreans tried to sneak in and attack in 1968. Considering the wall was first built in 1396, it's pretty impressive that it is still helping Seoul defend itself! This hike was nowhere near as peaceful and natural, but it provided some stunning views of Seoul and the mountains you were cresting. Sadly, for military defense reasons, photography was banned on much of the track.
* Last but definitely not least, Jump! Jeff had never been to see a show that didn't star one of my sisters, so he didn't share my enthusiasm about going to see something at the theatre in Korean. However, having read a little about it - 'martial arts', 'acrobatics', 'comedy' and 'Edinburgh Comedy Festival award', I was super keen - and was pretty certain Jeff would enjoy it too. What I didn't foresee was how much it would like him!!
I booked us seats halfway back so Jeff wouldn't get targeted for any audience interaction - a recent karaoke trip had shown me that Jeff does not have an exhibitionist bone in his body. Even after hours of all-you-can-drink-karaoke, when all the rest of us were trying on costumes, he still stayed firmly behind the camera, not even trying on the fetching blue wig Denzel was so taken with (look at the facebook photos if you haven't already!). However, my measures were nowhere near enough. Much to the delight of me and the two young women giggling beside me, before the show even started Jeff was approached by an 'old man' who first sat on his knee, then made him give him a piggyback down the aisle to the stage. When Jeff finally returned to his seat, the old man rummaged through his pockets until he found a lolly, which he held out for Jeff, while Jeff traipsed all the way back down the aisle to collect his 'payment'.
The show began - and was awesome. If it comes to a town near you and you enjoy martial arts, acrobatics or comedy (and if you don't enjoy any of those then you should see someone about that!), then I strongly recommend you go see it! If my recommendation isn't enough, in the program there is a page showing clips from the media about the show and it includes a picture of Prince Charles shaking hands with cast members. A Korean comedy act good enough to meet the Prince? What a winner! (Incidentally there was also a clip from the NZ Sunday Times there. Go NZ! Even though you had to be familiar with the paper to recognise that!)
Anyway, halfway though the show one of the cast came down off the stage and started waving you to Jeff. "You," they called, "come here!" At which point Jeff sighed, then stood up and followed the man onstage. The deal was he was to 'fight' one of the actors (much of the show was taken up with the actors versing each other in comical but brilliant martial arts tournaments). Partly prompted by the man who had called him up and partly working it out for himself (necessary when the other actor does a forward roll, then a backward roll into a handstand then flicks to his feet - and you are told to copy!), Jeff's moment in the spotlight involved him being discovered with about ten knives on his person, doing a forward roll, then 'scaring his opponent into submission' by brandishing a very bendy sword. Audience and actors alike seemed impressed at how game he was, doing a forward roll onstage - I guess that's what three years of teaching little kids has done to him! Jeff commented afterwards on what everyone who has acted in a real theatre knows to be your saving grace when you're nervous - the lights are so bright, you can't really see the audience! Playhouse Theatre, I think I feel another actor coming along ;)
So that concludes most of what I wanted to say about Korea. I just wanted to add to that something about my earlier comment that Korea made us realise how well-adjusted we are in Japan. I guess I expected Korea to be something like Tokyo with more beauty products, but of course that was totally wrong. Despite some of the things that Korea is known for - internationally known beauty products and tri-lingual pop songs - we found the level of English to be much much lower than we expected. Or, perhaps it was our 'lens' that was wrong. We always discuss how differently we view each country when visiting from Japan, as opposed to if we were visiting from NZ. In this case I suspect that my surprise at how little English was spoken was ACTUALLY a misunderstood surprise at myself for understanding no Korean/understanding a fair bit of Japanese. I think we underestimate exactly how much Japanese we understand, and how much we understand the systems in Japan, so that we acutely felt the frustration of having ZERO Korean.
We had silly situations like a coffee shop which displayed a sign saying 20% off drinks with your Jump ticket. But when we tried to get a discount, they shook their heads and spoke rapid Korean at us. I let the woman rattle on at me for a while with my best confused face before I finally cut her off saying "I don't speak Korean!" They then called over another woman (assumably because she spoke English?), but she also just shook her head. The three of them could do nothing but shake their heads at me, even though this was in a coffee shop in a central shopping district of the capital city. I was really surprised because I'm pretty certain that in a similar situation in Japan, I would have got at least a 'Not today, sorry', or 'This coffee no, sorry' from the staff. In the end I ordered our two coffees, then was only handed one - turns out the coffee Jeff wanted wasn't available anymore and they hadn't TOLD me when I ordered (again, no sorry, just head shakes). To top it off, my 'gingerbread latte' tasted like toothpaste! Coffee shop FAIL!
Anyway, communication situations like this - plus the fact that Koreans, like Japanese, often don't look where they are going and walk into you, only in Korea they don't apologise for it - meant that we struggled a bit. Surprisingly, there were some situations where our knowledge of Japanese helped, as most places had signage in Korean, English AND Japanese. I chose my smoothie by reading the Japanese list of ingredients when the English name didn't enlighten me! All in all, the experience made us (me?) realise exactly how adjusted to life in Japan we are. "Futatsu kohi onegaishimasu!"*
So, we now have less than three months left in Japan. Jeff is bored mindless at work and is fretting about how long we have left to go. I have a 'Before We Go Home To Do List' as long as my arm and am fretting about how short a time we have left to go. Midway between Jeff and I, there is a beautifully successful person...
Ok, now I'm off to add to my google docs To Do list; 'put together folder of 2013 lesson plans for successor'!
Have a good week all!
C
xo
P.S. Totally didn't finish this in one go due to tiredness. But you figured that when it wasn't posted just after our holiday, right?
P.P.S. Oh my gosh, totally forgot to mention the zoo! I'll only say one thing... BABY GIBBON!!! So adorable I could have watched it all day!
*Two coffees please. May or may not be correct spelling and grammar. But does successfully get you coffee!
The highlight of our time in Busan was, without a doubt, a couple of hikes we did in the mountains near an old fortress wall. The first day we got there a little late and just went for a wander in the foothills, where we came across an exercise circuit which we ended up playing on for 20 minutes. Jeff was much amused by my attempts to jump onto the parallel bars. It wasn't that I couldn't do it, it's just that while Jeff could jump up and push himself the last bit of the way with his hands in one smooth motion, I needed to stand on a rock next to the bars, put my leg over the closest bar, tuck my toe under the other bar, shift my weight forwards until I was straddling the bar, then bring my second leg over so I was sitting on one with my feet on the other, then I could position my hands and drop into supporting myself on my arms. Yes, I did gymnastics as a kid, yes I quit when I was holding Holly back because she didn't want to go up a level without me and I couldn't pass the damn Level 1 test. Anyway, my 'creative' way to get on the parallel bars gave Jeff an excellent opportunity for a laugh and some unflattering photos!
The second day we were more organised on our hike - we found our way to the bottom of the gondola that would take us up to the fortress wall, from where we could walk around some of it. Sucks for us, the gondola was closed that day! We ummed and ahhed and walked a little way up the forest track under the gondola. Then walked a little more. Then pondered how far we had walked and how far the track was, and walked a little more. We thought the walk was about 5km, all uphill, judging by the inaccurate-looking map at the gondola. When we had walked about 4km we finally committed to making it to the top!
Up there we bought a cold drink and checked out a bit of the wall, before walking down another path. The wall itself actually was a bit of an anti-climax - it was much smaller than we expected - not large enough to walk ON and there was a roped-off swathe of mown grass between the wall and the walking track. On reaching the bottom we both agreed that the winding dirt path going up through pine trees had been the best bit. The funny thing about hiking is that I rarely enjoy it when I'm doing it (uphill = hard and sweaty, downhill = tedious and hard on the knees), but you always feel so amazing when you reach a vantage point or hit the top!
Next: Seoul. In Seoul we spent three days in the city centre, then two days staying in Gangnam (hence Jeff's facebook photo, 'drinking beer Gangnam style!'). Just a few highlights here:
* Beauty product stores. Korea is famous for them. Lucky for this cheap-arse Kiwi, they like to give away free samples to encourage you in the door! Admittedly I did buy a few things (mainly face wipes and nail polish), but I came away with 26 free samples and 5 boxes of cotton face pads! SCORE!
* Fortress wall - Seoul also had a fortress wall available to hike. Only this one is still an active military zone! They even had a tree displayed bearing bullet holes from when a group of North Koreans tried to sneak in and attack in 1968. Considering the wall was first built in 1396, it's pretty impressive that it is still helping Seoul defend itself! This hike was nowhere near as peaceful and natural, but it provided some stunning views of Seoul and the mountains you were cresting. Sadly, for military defense reasons, photography was banned on much of the track.
* Last but definitely not least, Jump! Jeff had never been to see a show that didn't star one of my sisters, so he didn't share my enthusiasm about going to see something at the theatre in Korean. However, having read a little about it - 'martial arts', 'acrobatics', 'comedy' and 'Edinburgh Comedy Festival award', I was super keen - and was pretty certain Jeff would enjoy it too. What I didn't foresee was how much it would like him!!
I booked us seats halfway back so Jeff wouldn't get targeted for any audience interaction - a recent karaoke trip had shown me that Jeff does not have an exhibitionist bone in his body. Even after hours of all-you-can-drink-karaoke, when all the rest of us were trying on costumes, he still stayed firmly behind the camera, not even trying on the fetching blue wig Denzel was so taken with (look at the facebook photos if you haven't already!). However, my measures were nowhere near enough. Much to the delight of me and the two young women giggling beside me, before the show even started Jeff was approached by an 'old man' who first sat on his knee, then made him give him a piggyback down the aisle to the stage. When Jeff finally returned to his seat, the old man rummaged through his pockets until he found a lolly, which he held out for Jeff, while Jeff traipsed all the way back down the aisle to collect his 'payment'.
The show began - and was awesome. If it comes to a town near you and you enjoy martial arts, acrobatics or comedy (and if you don't enjoy any of those then you should see someone about that!), then I strongly recommend you go see it! If my recommendation isn't enough, in the program there is a page showing clips from the media about the show and it includes a picture of Prince Charles shaking hands with cast members. A Korean comedy act good enough to meet the Prince? What a winner! (Incidentally there was also a clip from the NZ Sunday Times there. Go NZ! Even though you had to be familiar with the paper to recognise that!)
Anyway, halfway though the show one of the cast came down off the stage and started waving you to Jeff. "You," they called, "come here!" At which point Jeff sighed, then stood up and followed the man onstage. The deal was he was to 'fight' one of the actors (much of the show was taken up with the actors versing each other in comical but brilliant martial arts tournaments). Partly prompted by the man who had called him up and partly working it out for himself (necessary when the other actor does a forward roll, then a backward roll into a handstand then flicks to his feet - and you are told to copy!), Jeff's moment in the spotlight involved him being discovered with about ten knives on his person, doing a forward roll, then 'scaring his opponent into submission' by brandishing a very bendy sword. Audience and actors alike seemed impressed at how game he was, doing a forward roll onstage - I guess that's what three years of teaching little kids has done to him! Jeff commented afterwards on what everyone who has acted in a real theatre knows to be your saving grace when you're nervous - the lights are so bright, you can't really see the audience! Playhouse Theatre, I think I feel another actor coming along ;)
So that concludes most of what I wanted to say about Korea. I just wanted to add to that something about my earlier comment that Korea made us realise how well-adjusted we are in Japan. I guess I expected Korea to be something like Tokyo with more beauty products, but of course that was totally wrong. Despite some of the things that Korea is known for - internationally known beauty products and tri-lingual pop songs - we found the level of English to be much much lower than we expected. Or, perhaps it was our 'lens' that was wrong. We always discuss how differently we view each country when visiting from Japan, as opposed to if we were visiting from NZ. In this case I suspect that my surprise at how little English was spoken was ACTUALLY a misunderstood surprise at myself for understanding no Korean/understanding a fair bit of Japanese. I think we underestimate exactly how much Japanese we understand, and how much we understand the systems in Japan, so that we acutely felt the frustration of having ZERO Korean.
We had silly situations like a coffee shop which displayed a sign saying 20% off drinks with your Jump ticket. But when we tried to get a discount, they shook their heads and spoke rapid Korean at us. I let the woman rattle on at me for a while with my best confused face before I finally cut her off saying "I don't speak Korean!" They then called over another woman (assumably because she spoke English?), but she also just shook her head. The three of them could do nothing but shake their heads at me, even though this was in a coffee shop in a central shopping district of the capital city. I was really surprised because I'm pretty certain that in a similar situation in Japan, I would have got at least a 'Not today, sorry', or 'This coffee no, sorry' from the staff. In the end I ordered our two coffees, then was only handed one - turns out the coffee Jeff wanted wasn't available anymore and they hadn't TOLD me when I ordered (again, no sorry, just head shakes). To top it off, my 'gingerbread latte' tasted like toothpaste! Coffee shop FAIL!
Anyway, communication situations like this - plus the fact that Koreans, like Japanese, often don't look where they are going and walk into you, only in Korea they don't apologise for it - meant that we struggled a bit. Surprisingly, there were some situations where our knowledge of Japanese helped, as most places had signage in Korean, English AND Japanese. I chose my smoothie by reading the Japanese list of ingredients when the English name didn't enlighten me! All in all, the experience made us (me?) realise exactly how adjusted to life in Japan we are. "Futatsu kohi onegaishimasu!"*
So, we now have less than three months left in Japan. Jeff is bored mindless at work and is fretting about how long we have left to go. I have a 'Before We Go Home To Do List' as long as my arm and am fretting about how short a time we have left to go. Midway between Jeff and I, there is a beautifully successful person...
Ok, now I'm off to add to my google docs To Do list; 'put together folder of 2013 lesson plans for successor'!
Have a good week all!
C
xo
P.S. Totally didn't finish this in one go due to tiredness. But you figured that when it wasn't posted just after our holiday, right?
P.P.S. Oh my gosh, totally forgot to mention the zoo! I'll only say one thing... BABY GIBBON!!! So adorable I could have watched it all day!
*Two coffees please. May or may not be correct spelling and grammar. But does successfully get you coffee!
Tuesday, May 7, 2013
A Wee Moan
In a moment I'm going to give you a little update on our trip to Korea, but first I wanted to just complain for a moment. So that I don't start a blog about our week in Korea by moaning about my first day back at school, I'm making it a separate post.
As Monday was a holiday, I was at my once-a-week visit school today. Most of the teachers there are great but there is one particular teacher... He is TRYING to be a stickler for correct pronunciation, but the thing is his demonstrations of 'bad Japanese pronunciation' often sound like a Kiwi accent! I know I should just chill and ignore it, but I find it really pushes my buttons and I end up tacking on the end of his explanations 'if you want an American accent. Or you can keep saying it your way and it's like a New Zealand accent'. I KNOW I should shut up, but it's one of those moments where your inner voice is going 'ignore it, don't say anything, don't - oh, you just said it.' (Tell me I'm not the only one who does that??)
I know he means well with his explanations, but it really bothers me that when there is SO MUCH to teach these kids, he wastes time on such needless things as correcting students with 'Sa TER day, not Sa TA day' (has little chuckle at the students pronunciation). Drives me nuts because I feel like he's basically teaching the students that my accent is not acceptable.
However, it's worth noting that this is the same teacher who I mentioned on facebook as not knowing who Rilakkuma, a very common Japanese character, was. That's like being a Westerner and not knowing who Donald Duck is (if you don't, shame on you. Our friendship is over!).
Ok, that's all I had to moan about. Now I'm going to endeavour to write a BRIEF account of our time in Korea.
As Monday was a holiday, I was at my once-a-week visit school today. Most of the teachers there are great but there is one particular teacher... He is TRYING to be a stickler for correct pronunciation, but the thing is his demonstrations of 'bad Japanese pronunciation' often sound like a Kiwi accent! I know I should just chill and ignore it, but I find it really pushes my buttons and I end up tacking on the end of his explanations 'if you want an American accent. Or you can keep saying it your way and it's like a New Zealand accent'. I KNOW I should shut up, but it's one of those moments where your inner voice is going 'ignore it, don't say anything, don't - oh, you just said it.' (Tell me I'm not the only one who does that??)
I know he means well with his explanations, but it really bothers me that when there is SO MUCH to teach these kids, he wastes time on such needless things as correcting students with 'Sa TER day, not Sa TA day' (has little chuckle at the students pronunciation). Drives me nuts because I feel like he's basically teaching the students that my accent is not acceptable.
However, it's worth noting that this is the same teacher who I mentioned on facebook as not knowing who Rilakkuma, a very common Japanese character, was. That's like being a Westerner and not knowing who Donald Duck is (if you don't, shame on you. Our friendship is over!).
Ok, that's all I had to moan about. Now I'm going to endeavour to write a BRIEF account of our time in Korea.
Wednesday, February 27, 2013
How far would you go for a good meal?
Jeff and I often laugh about how far Japanese people will travel for a meal, or how far they will travel for a mini holiday (I think our 10 day international breaks are considered excessive by our workmates). This student journal made me smile because it's very very Japanese:
It is Saturday today.
I went to Shikoku.
I was with mother and father.
I went to eat udon.
It was very delicious.
If your Japanese geography is hazy (it's like NZ, but near China, with lots of geisha. Right?), school is in Fukuyama city on Honshu island. As in, not on Shikoku island. Actually, pretty darn far from Shikoku island. Ah Japan, anything for a good feed, aye?
It is Saturday today.
I went to Shikoku.
I was with mother and father.
I went to eat udon.
It was very delicious.
If your Japanese geography is hazy (it's like NZ, but near China, with lots of geisha. Right?), school is in Fukuyama city on Honshu island. As in, not on Shikoku island. Actually, pretty darn far from Shikoku island. Ah Japan, anything for a good feed, aye?
Thursday, February 21, 2013
Student journal win
Just a quick one to share with you a lovely student journal I just read. The question I asked was 'Do you think journal writing has been helpful or enjoyable?' I am very interested because it's been quite a lot of work for me and the teachers, so I want to hear if the students think it was worthwhile. This is my best reply so far:
I think that this is very meaningful.
English journal writing is the most difficult in all homeworks.
That have gave my hed the most, most, most thinking.
But, there are give me good studies at the same time.
Therefore, I think English journal writing is very meaningful.
Aww! Guess who is getting a big sticker!!
I think that this is very meaningful.
English journal writing is the most difficult in all homeworks.
That have gave my hed the most, most, most thinking.
But, there are give me good studies at the same time.
Therefore, I think English journal writing is very meaningful.
Aww! Guess who is getting a big sticker!!
Thailand... so incredibly overdue!
Hello my lovely readers!
I'm sorry it has taken me just shy of two months to write this! The first month, January, I had the excuse that I was horribly busy at work, catching up on journals the students handed in over the Christmas holidays. But in February, I just knew I really really needed to write this - but I also really really needed to do a couple of jobs for Wide Island View and I really really need to reply to a couple of emails. So what do you do when you can't decide which job is the most important? Err... you don't do any. Apparently. Dammit.
Anyway, today I realised it was almost two months since we returned to Japan and almost exactly two months since I last blogged. So here I am, writing for you. I apologise that much of Thailand will have faded from my memory in that period, but time helps you sift the important from the less so, so I think I'll now be able to write less, but about the things I found really special. So when I write a 10,000 word essay be thankful - if I'd written last month it would have been three times as long!
Where to start? For anyone who has been in a coma or doesn't use facebook (same thing, really!), Jeff and I spent a week in the Baan Dada orphanage in rural Thailand. We went with a group of JETs and were lucky enough to have three of our lovely Hiroshima friends also on the trip (the others were from near Kyoto).
As background, Baan Dada is near the border of Burma/Myanmar. There are some small communities who have been pushed out of Myanmar by the Burmese (Myanmarese?), but they are not welcome in Thailand and have become refugees in tiny, extremely poor border towns (I use 'towns' in the loosest sense of the word. As in, houses around a dirt track). Most of the Baan Dada kids (all?) are from these communities (Mon and Karen people), so were rescued from extreme poverty when they came to the orphanage. Some of the kids are not even orphans - one boy lives there but his mother works in the kitchen. At first this seemed surprising, but it only takes a moment of thought to realise how much better off her son would be playing with all the orphans, having the orphanage send him to school, eat the orphanages food, etc, in return for her being an 'employee' of the orphanage (I assume she is not paid and is allowed to live there in return for her work, all functioning as more of a family than a place of employment).
Before we went to Baan Dada I had been volunteering once a month at an orphanage here in Japan. The Japanese orphanage is run rather as you would expect - a staff to child ratio of rather more than a school, with plenty of adults available to look after the little ones. At Baan Dada I was amazed to discover there is one main Dada ('dada' means brother in Thai, while 'baan' means house) who has been there for about a million years (he's only in his 40's, so I may be exaggerating) and a second Dada who has been helping out for the last four years but may get posted to a different orphanage at any time if there is anyone else more needy. These two Dadas care for between 50 and 60 kids (estimates differ depending on how many are home from university/work at any one time). Dada 1 appeared to be more in charge of the paperwork and business side of running the orphanage, although he was super hazy on the kids ages and even seemed to have a tentative grasp on their names! Don't let that lead you to think he didn't care - he was a lovely man and I have so much admiration for him, but he was one of those people who is so laid-back you expect him to fall asleep on his feet. Dada 2 was a bit more involved in the kids and seemed to be in charge of the physical aspects of the orphanage - beautification, building a new mud hut playhouse, etc.
However, no-one was in charge of dressing kids (the youngest were three or four) or making sure they were ready in the morning. There were two rules that seemed to apply at Baan Dada - first, organise yourself because no-one else will do it for you and second, keep an eye on anyone younger than yourself. We saw the first rule in full force when we were riding the truck to school with the kids. One boy came out late and the truck had already started driving away. No-one even considered telling the driver to wait, they just watched in a disinterested fashion while he ran up the road clutching his bag in one hand until he was close enough to leap onto the bars of the truck. Watching this I had guilty pangs about all the mornings Dad had to drag me out of bed to get me ready for school before he started work.
The second rule I realised when we went to the markets with a small group of kids. Each kid had latched onto an adult with a one-to-one ratio, except for Jeff 'Child Magnet' Wigg, who had one on each hand. I was with the oldest girl, a 13 yr old. I had never understood how we managed to not lose children, because the Dada's never did head counts or anything. However, one hand in mine, this 13 yr old used her other hand to do a quick head count before everyone dispersed in the darkness. It was the strangest mix of childish innocence, hand-holding with an adult, and responsibility - having the ultimate say at the end of the night on if we had everyone and were ready to leave.
So that is a fairly general background to operations at the orphanage. As for the physical set-up of the place, it was a mix of concrete blocks and mud bricks. Buildings were far from fancy, but the small things lent it a charm - foot prints in the concrete from an old pet, murals on walls, children's art displayed and designs made by stones inset in mud brick exteriors.
The orphanage buildings for the children comprised the two gender-separated sleeping blocks, a music room, a 'library', the nurses room and the kitchen. Many of these had walls that didn't reach the roof or, in the case of the kitchen, were completely open.
If you followed the dirt path through the centre of these buildings you had the choice of a metal bridge on a lean, with only one handrail, or crossing the dry stream bed where snakes occasionally liked to sunbathe.
The path then continued with jungle encroaching on the left side and the orphanage gardens on the right. Most days an uncle of one of the boys could be seen crouching in the gardens, working, while his pet parakeet sat on a handy bucket or post, supervising (once when I was walking past, the boy asked me if I had seen his bird. I had just heard it squawk, so I helped him hunt the trees for it until we found it!).
Continuing on past the vegetable gardens, the path made an abrupt turn right and headed into a circle of wooden huts and the concrete block volunteer house. This was our little refuge, for when the demands of playing with kids or working in the hot sun got too much. Here we had a Western toilet (a toilet seat cannot be over-rated!!) and a warm shower (even if I never figured out which one it was!). We had a friendly (huge) bathroom lizard that I thought was art until Jeff assured me it was real. We also had a huge stash of bottled water and not enough coffee.
Our time at the orphanage was... magical. Being a senior high school teacher and being, well, me, I'm not so good with little kids. I'm awkward and don't know how to take the initiative. But watching Jeff with the little ones made for so many mushy moments. They loved him so much and he usually had two or three competing for his attention at any one time. This ranged from bigger boys trying to race around with him to (my favourite) the teeniest girl there launching herself onto his lap when she got a fright in the truck. I guess she figured the biggest person around is the best for fighting off scary tree branch noises?? I had always suspected Jeff's love of puppies would translate to liking kids, but I had never seen it for myself. Now I know that not only does he like kids, but they LOVE him! Of course he has been teaching elementary school for almost three years now, but I don't get to see it so I didn't realise the extent of his popularity with the wee ones! If you want further proof of Jeff's connection with the kids, just take a look at our (many!) Baan Dada pictures on facebook. There are many, many pictures of Jeff with a bunch of different kids.
So while Jeff was being all popular, what was I doing? Well, as you know, I'm better with girls and as you can figure, I'm better with older kids. The first night we were doing a 'meditation' session in the library - because nothing says relaxation like meditating with 20 kids leaning on you, right? (Actually, I can't blame them. My stomach rumbled so loud during meditation that I heard the next volunteer along giggling! Some things don't change...).
Anyway, while we were talking then meditating, the two girls on either side of me slowly slid towards me, leaning against me, then putting my arms over their shoulders. The one on the left was the one I mentioned earlier, who did the head count at the market (by the name of Nongdee, perhaps?), but the one on my right was Notoba.
Nongdee (we'll call her that. It may be right!) was an open-faced, smiley, confident girl. Notoba, on the other hand, seemed like a puppy that is used to being kicked. She often looked almost furtive, but seemed like her heart would burst with happiness when I put my arm around her shoulders or got her to sit on my knee.
The first night the kids went to bed shortly after meditation, but the next night was Christmas Eve and we did carolling. This involved vast numbers of children and all the volunteers wandering around in the darkness until we bumped into houses (I think the kids knew where they were going...), when we would sing a couple of Christmas carols. The occupants of the house would then hand over a little money or a gift - the huge bunch of bananas was a hit - which an older kid would collect, to later be shared out between all the kids. This singing/wandering in the Thai jungle thing lasted hours, but the whole time Notoba stayed firmly attached to me. The only times she let go was when she went to fetch me a banana and when another kid took my head torch and caused the strap to come undone. Fiercely jealous of not just me, but of my possessions, she leapt like a little wildcat, snatching my head torch from the other kid so she could fix it for me. I tried to take it and fix it myself, but she wouldn't let me, insisting on fixing it herself before she gave it back.
The whole week this type of behaviour continued - when camping she would ran to my side if I waved her over and if I walked away she would sit hugging my water bottle until I returned. Most nights she insisted on giving me a good-night kiss before bed.
On the last night, I told her I would be leaving early the next day. She gave me a hug that lasted ten minutes and I suspect she was crying. I felt so terrible leaving her. Finally I called her away from the others, into the darkness. I had a little toy attached to my backpack, a pink 'baby Elmo' that Jeff had won me in a game machine here. I asked her if she liked it and she nodded furiously, so I took it off and gave it to her. I told her it was something to remember me by. She looked overjoyed, but in a way that was almost too much for her to handle, that almost bordered on horror. She clutched it to her chest and ran away into the darkness, off to her bedroom, forgetting to give me my good-night kiss.
That was the last I saw of her. The next morning Jeff and I left early for elephant riding and river rafting and she wasn't up yet. However, I had told her she should write to me in Japan and when the non-rafting volunteers caught up to us, I was handed a letter she had written me that morning. She had asked another volunteer how to spell everything properly and wrote it out painstakingly. She finished it with an illustration of her and I, depicted as pink Elmos.
I'm sorry it has taken me just shy of two months to write this! The first month, January, I had the excuse that I was horribly busy at work, catching up on journals the students handed in over the Christmas holidays. But in February, I just knew I really really needed to write this - but I also really really needed to do a couple of jobs for Wide Island View and I really really need to reply to a couple of emails. So what do you do when you can't decide which job is the most important? Err... you don't do any. Apparently. Dammit.
Anyway, today I realised it was almost two months since we returned to Japan and almost exactly two months since I last blogged. So here I am, writing for you. I apologise that much of Thailand will have faded from my memory in that period, but time helps you sift the important from the less so, so I think I'll now be able to write less, but about the things I found really special. So when I write a 10,000 word essay be thankful - if I'd written last month it would have been three times as long!
Where to start? For anyone who has been in a coma or doesn't use facebook (same thing, really!), Jeff and I spent a week in the Baan Dada orphanage in rural Thailand. We went with a group of JETs and were lucky enough to have three of our lovely Hiroshima friends also on the trip (the others were from near Kyoto).
As background, Baan Dada is near the border of Burma/Myanmar. There are some small communities who have been pushed out of Myanmar by the Burmese (Myanmarese?), but they are not welcome in Thailand and have become refugees in tiny, extremely poor border towns (I use 'towns' in the loosest sense of the word. As in, houses around a dirt track). Most of the Baan Dada kids (all?) are from these communities (Mon and Karen people), so were rescued from extreme poverty when they came to the orphanage. Some of the kids are not even orphans - one boy lives there but his mother works in the kitchen. At first this seemed surprising, but it only takes a moment of thought to realise how much better off her son would be playing with all the orphans, having the orphanage send him to school, eat the orphanages food, etc, in return for her being an 'employee' of the orphanage (I assume she is not paid and is allowed to live there in return for her work, all functioning as more of a family than a place of employment).
Before we went to Baan Dada I had been volunteering once a month at an orphanage here in Japan. The Japanese orphanage is run rather as you would expect - a staff to child ratio of rather more than a school, with plenty of adults available to look after the little ones. At Baan Dada I was amazed to discover there is one main Dada ('dada' means brother in Thai, while 'baan' means house) who has been there for about a million years (he's only in his 40's, so I may be exaggerating) and a second Dada who has been helping out for the last four years but may get posted to a different orphanage at any time if there is anyone else more needy. These two Dadas care for between 50 and 60 kids (estimates differ depending on how many are home from university/work at any one time). Dada 1 appeared to be more in charge of the paperwork and business side of running the orphanage, although he was super hazy on the kids ages and even seemed to have a tentative grasp on their names! Don't let that lead you to think he didn't care - he was a lovely man and I have so much admiration for him, but he was one of those people who is so laid-back you expect him to fall asleep on his feet. Dada 2 was a bit more involved in the kids and seemed to be in charge of the physical aspects of the orphanage - beautification, building a new mud hut playhouse, etc.
However, no-one was in charge of dressing kids (the youngest were three or four) or making sure they were ready in the morning. There were two rules that seemed to apply at Baan Dada - first, organise yourself because no-one else will do it for you and second, keep an eye on anyone younger than yourself. We saw the first rule in full force when we were riding the truck to school with the kids. One boy came out late and the truck had already started driving away. No-one even considered telling the driver to wait, they just watched in a disinterested fashion while he ran up the road clutching his bag in one hand until he was close enough to leap onto the bars of the truck. Watching this I had guilty pangs about all the mornings Dad had to drag me out of bed to get me ready for school before he started work.
The second rule I realised when we went to the markets with a small group of kids. Each kid had latched onto an adult with a one-to-one ratio, except for Jeff 'Child Magnet' Wigg, who had one on each hand. I was with the oldest girl, a 13 yr old. I had never understood how we managed to not lose children, because the Dada's never did head counts or anything. However, one hand in mine, this 13 yr old used her other hand to do a quick head count before everyone dispersed in the darkness. It was the strangest mix of childish innocence, hand-holding with an adult, and responsibility - having the ultimate say at the end of the night on if we had everyone and were ready to leave.
So that is a fairly general background to operations at the orphanage. As for the physical set-up of the place, it was a mix of concrete blocks and mud bricks. Buildings were far from fancy, but the small things lent it a charm - foot prints in the concrete from an old pet, murals on walls, children's art displayed and designs made by stones inset in mud brick exteriors.
The orphanage buildings for the children comprised the two gender-separated sleeping blocks, a music room, a 'library', the nurses room and the kitchen. Many of these had walls that didn't reach the roof or, in the case of the kitchen, were completely open.
If you followed the dirt path through the centre of these buildings you had the choice of a metal bridge on a lean, with only one handrail, or crossing the dry stream bed where snakes occasionally liked to sunbathe.
The path then continued with jungle encroaching on the left side and the orphanage gardens on the right. Most days an uncle of one of the boys could be seen crouching in the gardens, working, while his pet parakeet sat on a handy bucket or post, supervising (once when I was walking past, the boy asked me if I had seen his bird. I had just heard it squawk, so I helped him hunt the trees for it until we found it!).
Continuing on past the vegetable gardens, the path made an abrupt turn right and headed into a circle of wooden huts and the concrete block volunteer house. This was our little refuge, for when the demands of playing with kids or working in the hot sun got too much. Here we had a Western toilet (a toilet seat cannot be over-rated!!) and a warm shower (even if I never figured out which one it was!). We had a friendly (huge) bathroom lizard that I thought was art until Jeff assured me it was real. We also had a huge stash of bottled water and not enough coffee.
Our time at the orphanage was... magical. Being a senior high school teacher and being, well, me, I'm not so good with little kids. I'm awkward and don't know how to take the initiative. But watching Jeff with the little ones made for so many mushy moments. They loved him so much and he usually had two or three competing for his attention at any one time. This ranged from bigger boys trying to race around with him to (my favourite) the teeniest girl there launching herself onto his lap when she got a fright in the truck. I guess she figured the biggest person around is the best for fighting off scary tree branch noises?? I had always suspected Jeff's love of puppies would translate to liking kids, but I had never seen it for myself. Now I know that not only does he like kids, but they LOVE him! Of course he has been teaching elementary school for almost three years now, but I don't get to see it so I didn't realise the extent of his popularity with the wee ones! If you want further proof of Jeff's connection with the kids, just take a look at our (many!) Baan Dada pictures on facebook. There are many, many pictures of Jeff with a bunch of different kids.
So while Jeff was being all popular, what was I doing? Well, as you know, I'm better with girls and as you can figure, I'm better with older kids. The first night we were doing a 'meditation' session in the library - because nothing says relaxation like meditating with 20 kids leaning on you, right? (Actually, I can't blame them. My stomach rumbled so loud during meditation that I heard the next volunteer along giggling! Some things don't change...).
Anyway, while we were talking then meditating, the two girls on either side of me slowly slid towards me, leaning against me, then putting my arms over their shoulders. The one on the left was the one I mentioned earlier, who did the head count at the market (by the name of Nongdee, perhaps?), but the one on my right was Notoba.
Nongdee (we'll call her that. It may be right!) was an open-faced, smiley, confident girl. Notoba, on the other hand, seemed like a puppy that is used to being kicked. She often looked almost furtive, but seemed like her heart would burst with happiness when I put my arm around her shoulders or got her to sit on my knee.
The first night the kids went to bed shortly after meditation, but the next night was Christmas Eve and we did carolling. This involved vast numbers of children and all the volunteers wandering around in the darkness until we bumped into houses (I think the kids knew where they were going...), when we would sing a couple of Christmas carols. The occupants of the house would then hand over a little money or a gift - the huge bunch of bananas was a hit - which an older kid would collect, to later be shared out between all the kids. This singing/wandering in the Thai jungle thing lasted hours, but the whole time Notoba stayed firmly attached to me. The only times she let go was when she went to fetch me a banana and when another kid took my head torch and caused the strap to come undone. Fiercely jealous of not just me, but of my possessions, she leapt like a little wildcat, snatching my head torch from the other kid so she could fix it for me. I tried to take it and fix it myself, but she wouldn't let me, insisting on fixing it herself before she gave it back.
The whole week this type of behaviour continued - when camping she would ran to my side if I waved her over and if I walked away she would sit hugging my water bottle until I returned. Most nights she insisted on giving me a good-night kiss before bed.
On the last night, I told her I would be leaving early the next day. She gave me a hug that lasted ten minutes and I suspect she was crying. I felt so terrible leaving her. Finally I called her away from the others, into the darkness. I had a little toy attached to my backpack, a pink 'baby Elmo' that Jeff had won me in a game machine here. I asked her if she liked it and she nodded furiously, so I took it off and gave it to her. I told her it was something to remember me by. She looked overjoyed, but in a way that was almost too much for her to handle, that almost bordered on horror. She clutched it to her chest and ran away into the darkness, off to her bedroom, forgetting to give me my good-night kiss.
That was the last I saw of her. The next morning Jeff and I left early for elephant riding and river rafting and she wasn't up yet. However, I had told her she should write to me in Japan and when the non-rafting volunteers caught up to us, I was handed a letter she had written me that morning. She had asked another volunteer how to spell everything properly and wrote it out painstakingly. She finished it with an illustration of her and I, depicted as pink Elmos.
This week I finally got my act together to reply to her. I am sending her some photos of the two of us, a one page letter, plus some Hello Kitty writing paper and pencils so she can write to me. Also some origami paper with Engrish instructions. I don't know how much use that will be...
Anyway, as you can see, Notoba and I were pretty tight and I felt awful leaving her. Apparently she has one buddy in the orphanage, but it's clear to see she doesn't get along with the other kids well, so the lack of a mother is especially hard.
I should stop here because it's past midnight and this blog is already incredibly long, but I just wanted to mention the camping trip. We had been told we would go camping in the jungle and we were not disappointed! To get to our spot we had to wade three rivers, ride in the back of a ute crammed with gear, then trek along a cow path for what seemed like hours but was, I suspect, about 15 minutes. We also had to avoid fresh poop on the aforementioned cow path. Easier said than done when you're wearing a backpack while carrying three pillows, a couple of sleeping bags, two days worth of water and a packet of toilet roll!
Setting up camp involved cutting bamboo to size, then using it as tent poles to hang tarps across (none of us were wilderness-savvy enough for this job - we just watched the older boys work!). The first girls tent looked like a real tent and even had mosquito netting on either end, brought especially from the bedrooms. The second, older girls tent, had one tent-like side and one vertical side. The boys tent,., well, what it looked like was irrelevant because it was full of ants. The boys ended up storing their gear under there at one end, away from the ant trails, and all sleeping round the riverside campfire under the brilliant moon.
I had really really wanted to sleep outside too, but I thought I was being stupid because I had a space saved in the tent with the mosquito nets, plus my bedding was all wrapped round Notoba (the space next to mine) and I would need to carefully take my pillow from under her head to take it outside. However, come sleeping time, one of the other volunteers didn't have a space to sleep AND there was a spare sleeping mat, so I decided it was a sign - I was meant to be sleeping outside.
Having just farewelled Jeff about 15 minutes earlier, I cheerfully trooped back to the campsite with my bed roll, sleeping bag and pillow and announced I was there to stay. I set myself up on the last bit of sand (most of the riverbank was stones), at the head of Jeff and the other male volunteers and lay there gazing at the beauty around me. It was an incredibly beautiful night - a full moon, or one night off it, and a clear sky. It was one of those brilliant nights when you could read a book by moonlight. I knew I should sleep, but I couldn't stop marveling at the moonlit jungle and the silvery river only metres away. Finally I managed to shut my eyes and drift off to sleep.
Kind of. The downside of the camp was that kids love to camp. And they feel sleeping on camp is a waste of time. A select group of boys (in all fairness probably the same ones who made the tents and set everything up) stayed up ALL NIGHT talking and feeding the bonfire. I am a pretty heavy sleeper, so I believe I got some sleep. Maybe even two hours of it. Cue spending the next day feeling like a zombie until I snuck into the little girls tent, lay down in my original spot and took a really long nap!!
There were two other incidents which I consider particularly worthy of mention during our camping trip. The first was quite early in the morning while we were all still lolling around in our blankets, not quite giving up on sleep. Suddenly one of the male volunteers looked down at his bedding and said, "Oh, hello little scorpion." Wtf?!?! While it was small, as I later told the guy, he deserves 10 million cool points for his relaxed response to finding a scorpion in his bed!
End of story is he lost the scorpion in his blanket, found it again, then one of the kids knocked the stinger off it and left it to wander around our beds again. Err... ok!
Our second wildlife adventure started off more tame. We were cleaning up the camp, preparing to leave, when one of the female volunteers shrieked and dropped the rubbish bag she was holding. Out crawled a decent sized spider - not as large as Avondale spiders in Auckland or the Huntsman spiders here in Japan, but with a larger body than either of those. Sarah, one of the Hiroshima volunteers, loves insects, so she came over to have a look, then picked it up and moved it away.
About half an hour later I felt something on my ankle. I looked down to see the same large spider on my leg. Startled, I shrieked and kicked my leg, sending it flying. I then felt foolish having reacted so badly to 'just a spider', so I went over to check it was ok. But this time one of the 'boys' (he's at uni) from Baan Dada saw. "Oh, don't touch it!" he told us. "This one is very poisonous! In the jungle there is this one and the tarantula; their bite can kill you!" Sarah, standing next to me, went a little pale. "So, umm, I shouldn't have picked it up, then?"
However all's well that ends well. The guy then picked up the spider with a stick and took it deeper into the jungle to throw it away. The kids had protected us from the scorpion and the killer spider, even while they poisoned us by cooking with river water (over the camping trip we had three volunteers go home early feeling ill!) and most of us returned to the orphanage with nothing worse than ant bites!
I'm going to stop now because this has got crazy long. Oh, ok, just a couple more points, in reference to some of our facebook photos:
* The pole pictures. The deal was the poles were greased with car oil and cooking oil. Prizes were tied to the top. Kids had to figure out how to climb up there to get the prizes. Kids are amazing. They will do anything for some free candy!
* The gift-giving pictures. On Christmas day we took the Baan Dada kids out to the Mon and Karen communities. I had come to Thailand viewing the orphanage kids as the ones to be pitied, but I realised on Christmas how wrong I was. The Baan Dada kids had so much to be thankful for - they were rescued from the lives of poverty and hunger that was their fate in the communities they came from. And they know it. They were amazing about sharing with each other and they loved the opportunity to give gifts to other kids. Christmas truly is about giving, isn't it? I realised the best 'gift' we gave the Baan Dada kids was the money to buy gifts to give to other kids!
The highlight of my Christmas day was watching one of the older Baan Dada boys who had returned to the orphanage for Christmas, dressed in his skinny jeans, smart shirt and shades, leaping off the back of the truck and running up to a little girl on the deck of a bamboo pole house, arms laden with gifts. The little girl, only a toddler, looked so amazed at all the gifts handed up to her and could only look to her mother for confirmation that it was real. Then the guy jogged back up to the truck, leaving the gifts next to the girl, the only colour or adornment in the bare brown house on its patch of dirt. This young man wouldn't have looked out of place in any big, fashionable city, but he had a background that meant he would appreciate the worth of everything he had, in a way we can never truly understand.
Ok, now I really really need to get to bed! I intended to get up and exercise before work tomorrow morning, but it's 1am now so I doubt that's going to happen! Never mind - this blog entry was something I had been meaning to do for the longest time. I hope to later tell you a little about our week being tourists, but it's much less important, to my mind, than sharing our experiences at Baan Dada.
I hope you're all well.
C
xo
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