Ngoo chin de.

Do you know how with some people, you can pretty much perfectly pinpoint the moment that you two become friends?

Meet Kyaw Myint. He is one of the office staff, does not speak English very much, and is quite awesome. One night last week, I ran out of bug repellant (I had been using OFF! DEEP WOODS!, which meant that I smelled like poison and I still got mosquito bites all over the place), so I asked ML and Jasmine if they would be going to the market at some point the next day. ML tells me to go with Htwee Nge that night, as she is always looking for an excuse to get out of the house anyway. We end up at the local Tesco with A-Pu (Htwee Nge’s father), and after some poking around, I found a nice bug-repellant lotion that smelled like flowers, versus a second flower-smelling one that cost slightly more.

Upon returning home, Kyaw Myint helped me close the gate behind the truck. My student Kyaw Eh was also outside, and asked something vague along the lines of “what did you buy, teacher?” to which I replied, “Chin gai de. Seya-mat ngoo chin de.” Kyaw Myint laughs at this, and repeats “Ngoo chin de! Hahahah!”

With that simple phrase, a couple of mosquito bites and my desire to cry, we were suddenly friends. Joy!

The bug-repellant lotion has about the same effectiveness as the poison spray, meaning that I am averaging 3 to 4 new bites per day. In the beginning, I was bandaging the bites so I wouldn’t scratch. I ran out of band-aids rather quickly.

Sigh.

Ngoo chin de.

Movie Night

On the weekends when they are free, Min Lwin and Kyaw Myint will take a projector, laptop, and speakers over to the new campus for movie nights. I piled into the truck with the kids boarding at the old campus, we drove over, and after rearranging the mats and benches in one of the kindergarten classrooms, commenced to watch the Lion King with English subtitles. It was 8:40 at night, pitch black outside, and I was in no condition to stay awake after the Scar-playing-with-mouse scene. I foolishly reclined and pretty soon was dozing off to the amusement of the students.

Aye Chan Aung, one of the boarders who goes to the nearby high school, asked me to give her an English name. For some reason, I first thought of Isabelle, which would have been my name if it wasn’t Florence (I much prefer Florence. In retrospect, it was pretty thoughtless of me to try to give her my reject name.) She looked reluctant, so I suggested Elizabeth (after the queen!), but it seemed difficult for her to remember the name, which I took as a bad sign. By the time we got to the scene where Scar leads Simba into the dried canyon, I finally figured it out: Alice.

“What do you think?” I asked. She smiled and agreed that she liked it.

I checked out for most of the rest of the movie, collected a couple more mosquito bites, and came to in time for the credits. Nothing like the Lion King for some good weekend entertainment.

What day were you born?

So the kids took me to temple on Saturday evening after dinner. I had just finished a day of cooking, which seriously consisted of waking up around 5:40 to the birds and the dogs, going to market at 7, shopping around and hunting for prices until 11:00am, making lunch foods until 3ish, then after doing my laundry, I made dinner until 5:30, 6ish… lunch was fried rice and Kung Pao chicken, whilst dinner was sour soup with catfish. I had never spent so long cooking before. I would blame it on the unfamiliar terrain, but Thin Thin Nyunt, Aye Chan Aung, and Kyaw Eh helped me navigate the marketplace (btw, just bc the kids are locals doesn’t mean they know the prices of things. better to go with adults first to see what fair prices look like).

I spent maybe 300 Baht on the food, which took all 3 of us to carry back. I think I may have paid more than I should have for the durian (40 per kilo, so 80 for the thing), and everything else seemed fair upon We also got some gorgeous orchids for temple later that night, which were only 10 Baht per 7 stems.

But the food turned out well (miraculously), and even though it took ages, I was pretty content with spending my Saturday in the kitchen. Luckily, Htwee Nge came back in time to help me kill the fish for dinner, which she accomplished by taking the stone pestle and whacking their heads with it as they were still in the bag of water we got them in after purchase. I hoped that being vegetarian during the academic year would garner enough good karma for me such that fate would not be too angry with me for causing the downfall of these three catfish, and all the other animals I have eaten this summer at home and abroad…

After dinner, I got changed (and hoped the smell of death was not following me) and went with the students to the temple down the road. I put on a purple ta-meh (Karen traditional sarong-wrap), but some of the kids were pretty much already dressed in their pajamas, while the rest of them were in shorts. They told me there was no dress code, but I insisted that they not bring their shower towels along...

At the temple, there were shrines for Hindu and Muslims gods, along with the expected Buddhist ones. The kids asked me what day I was born, and I told them January 22, but they wanted the day of the week, which I did not know. I then called home (it was 5 am in California, I am a terrible child) and of course my dad and mom had no idea either. I will do the math when I am not so lazy, but as it is the era of technology, and I am more than likely to mess up the leap-year math, I will Google it some other time.

Note to self, and to travelers: know the day of the week of your birth, it’s useful for Buddhist prayers.

Burmese Hospitality

So I arrived here exactly one week ago from Bangkok. It was 5 in the morning, pitch black, raining like mad, and I was quite the hot mess by the time the bus pulled into the station. I called Mr. Min Lwin, the headmaster of the Parami Learning Centre, and he was rolling my suitcase into his truck bed within ten minutes.



When I arrived at his lovely house, which is also the nursery and kindergarten campus, a young boy in shorts and a rain jacket rolled the blue gates open (Kyaw Eh!) and took my backpack for me, whilst Min Lwin lugged my suitcase up the stairs. I was delighted to see that the stairs and top floor were completely made of hardwood, and everything was quite tidy. He then went into one of the rooms, and came out with a young teacher.

"This is July," ML tells me, "Do you mind-- share the room with her?"

Of course I didn't mind! So I went into the room with her (which is actually three times the size of my room - bigger than the master bedroom at home), and as we sit on the floor doing introductions, we find out that she is 30 whilst I am 20, so she points to me with her hand and says "Nee-mat", then points ot herself and says "A-mat".

"What does that mean?" I ask.

"Nee-mat is younger sister, a-mat is older sister," she says, with her lovely Burmese accent, where she speaks more towards the top front of her palate.

A few minutes later, after gathering my shower stuff (boy was I sticky), I tried to figure out the proper bathroom etiquette. Big tub of water, small tub of water, squatty potty, no TP, three plastic tubs of different sizes, green tiles on the floor, two water scoops. TP was not normally provided in China, either, so I was prepared for that. But how would I shower? The tubs were filled with clean water- I could not just step in- and where was the drain?

I asked July where the water goes. She said something about the hole and the toilet.

I spent the next hour or so washing in a big plastic tub, then laboriously scooping the soapy water into the toilet to drain. Later that day, I noticed a hole in the wall that served as a drain, located behind the toilet...

Anyway, I digress- I met Min Lwin's wife Htwee Nge (A-Mat, later Mat-Mat), Great-Grandmother (A-Poa), Grandfather (A Pu), Jasmine, and Kyaw Myint later that morning.

There is a banana-stalk and fish-paste noodle soup that they serve every morning with various condiments, which costs 5 Baht (about 15 cents American) for the students who come to eat, and also gets packaged into little plastic bags and delivered to parents who have ordered them. I can now rubber-band little plastic baggies of food like no other.

That night, I found a mosquito net set up for me, and July was not in the room by the time I went to be (all the lights were off everywhere else, too...). July was sleeping in another teacher's room, and when I asked her later about why, she said "so you can sleep well," with a big smile. I was riddled with guilt for kicking her out of her own room, and even more so when I realized I had the only mattress in the entire building (it's rather large- queen sized, I think, and firm).

The students stand at attention at the beginning of class, and say "Good Morning Teacher, How Are You Today." in unison and do not sit down until told to, then at the end of class, they all rise and say, "Thank You Teacher, See You Tomorrow (or Again), God Bless You." I've been wondering if I ought to ask them about the God part (I think most/all of them are Buddhist), but have not had the guts to bring up religion to the class yet. I guess religion is a touchy subject in the states, though probably not so tricky here.

If I am not fast enough, the students or the other teachers will bring me my lunch, and buy me special foreigner food (bread and butter for breakfast, with milk tea), and not let me help with the simple chores. However, with enough speed and sneakiness, I managed to assert my desire to do my share, with some success.

I made dinner for everyone Sunday evening- it was bun rieu, the Vietnamese noodle soup with a tomato broth, and I don't think that they trusted me to do a good job- they had 6 cups of rice cooked.

Htwee Nghe took out two tiny portions of clear rice vermicelli and asked me, "Is this enough?"

"Noodle soup," I said. "Where are the noodles? Of course that's not enough."

"Can we eat it with rice?" asks Jasmine.

"Umm... It won't taste as good. Didn't you say there were noodles, like the ones from the morning?"

"I think we ate them all yesterday. What if I eat it with half rice, half noodle?"

"NO! IT'S A NOODLE SOUP! NO! NO! NO!"

I never realized how offensive it is to have your culinary attempts questioned and nearly sabotaged. They went to get noodles as I finished preparing the soup with some of the kids peeling stuff away. Skylar, the Canadian volunteer, helped to shred some of the vegetables for the soup.

By the way, don't you worry about our little rice vs noodles spat. Jasmine, Htwee Nge and I got very close very quickly (I am Ne Mat -Li, little sister, since Day one-half, when I decided to try to learn Burmese), so we w ere smiling the whole time the goaded me, and as I threw my mock tantrum.

The noodles were a success. I love bun rieu! Sky is going to cook French food for us next Sunday, since he worked as a sous-c hef at a French restaurant for a year. I hope he is able to find cream and tarragon at the store and markets. It will be exciting!

Anyway, I wake up every morning at 5:20 or 5:30am, as the dogs howl starting at 4am. I do not have to teach tomorrow, but I should probably go to sleep. The students and the rest of the boarders wake up by 5:15am, and it is very difficult to sleep in the heat once the sun rises. And the dogs will howl.

Mingala a nya ba!

Seya-mat Myanmar thin chin de.

So I have been learning Burmese. School is tons of fun, my science class has 10 students (8 boys, two girls; 7 7th graders, 3 8th graders), I bought a shiny blue bike armed with a shiny blue bell, a basket, a rear rack, lights, lock, and pegs (1650 Baht, + 40 Baht for pegs, + 16 Baht for registration = $52ish), and teaching science to these kids is probably the most fun I've had in my life! I kid you not.

My students are Ko Myo, Kyaw Eh, Thin Thin Nyunt, Myo That Aung, Mya Aye Than, That Pying Soe, "Podolski", "Jack", "Juck", and "Lucky". Kyaw Eh is basically the school leader (he calls attention and parade rest during morning assembly every day, and sings the tuning note for the Thai Anthem). Juck is just brimming with confidence, has a hilarious pair of stunna glasses that he brought to school today, does backflips, dances, and flirts with Mya Aye Than by bothering her (she kind of does the same, hehehe). Lucky keeps up with popular movies and knows tons of worldly stuff (Pluto got nixed in '08, mummies are in the pyramids, etc.), Ko Myo wears a green pisou and recently came from Burma, Jack is tall, dark, and quiet, That Pying Soe "likes math" but Thin Thin Nyunt is better than him at it, and Myo That Aung raises his eyebrows back at me when I make weird faces to him. As I said, oodles of fun :)

You see, between my rudimentary Burmese (chai la? chai de!) and their rudimentary to pretty decent English, I stick in a lot of illustrations and acting and demonstrations, and it is basically like a huge party. So far I've had them act out "attract", like girl to boy, then "attract" like gravity (we were a huge mass all trying our best to squeeze Jack to death), a lot more gravity demonstrations, and others.

Today we acted out the difference between ice and water densities as a class, measured 10 meters outside using rulers (33 rulers' length + 10 cm), had a race to learn to calculate speed, figured out scientific notation, and discovered that the students are about as fast as a cockroach. One was slower (actually, Jack just decided not to run). Cockroach max speed: 1.25 m/s. Student speed range: 1-5m/s.

And then someone ran the dog over. It was 1:45ish.

"Teacher! Parami dog-- dead!" said Podolski.

I looked out the classroom, and saw two guys carrying the poor thing away by his legs. I gasped and was very distraught for most of the rest of the day. I was just petting him two minutes ago, and there he went... Poor baby. He was a beautiful, friendly little thing...

We finished calculating everyone's speeds, and then a couple of students pointed outside again, where one of the school trucks got stuck in the mud. There it was, its tires spinning out pathetically in the mud, so, since we were the highest level class, I waved all the students over, and we pushed the truck out. TEAMWORK!!! It would have been great, but the dog was still dead. I wondered if that was the truck that killed it. Sigh. Mud= no good. We need a road.

Anyway, I ended the day with the eighth graders. They wanted to learn a song, since it was supposed to be some other class time anyway. The teacher assigned did not show up. We listened to some songs on my iPod, and all decided that "Friday, I'm in Love" is quite awesome. As Kyaw Eh flipped through my Physical Sciences textbook, he chanced upon a penguin picture. We talked about animal baby names (chicks, joeys, calves, cubs! super cute) and then discussed why my iPod was scratched.

I told them, "I was running in the morning two weeks ago when I tripped and fell, so my iPod got scratched."

That turned into an English lesson on progressive tense + when + simple past... We will see how that goes tomorrow, when we start combining the basic sentences they will write tonight for homework.

Day two in Thailand

Today was Friday, and the students planted flowers and shrubs at the school in anticipation of World Environment Day, which is celebrated tomorrow (in Thailand, that is). I have only been here for a day and a half, and already I feel quite at home. I learned to count to ten in Burmese, I talked to the kids about how to sneeze and cough properly (into your shoulder or elbow!), I supervised the children as they colored during afternoon activity hour, and the others seem comfortable enough with me to let me pitch in on the easy work (like making lunch bags for the students’ parents, washing dishes, etc.).

But I have not even described the school yet! Let me backtrack…

I arrived in Mae Sot (pronounced Mae Sod in Thai) yesterday at 5:00am, by bus from Bangkok. It was raining, and Mr. Min Lwin picked me up. We got to Parami (the old campus) in about 5 minutes by car, which is where I will be staying for the rest of the time. The female teachers and the boarding female students all live here; the boys, male teachers, and 4 other female teachers live at the other campus. My roommate is a lovely young lady named July who teaches science classes. I will be teaching science to the 7/8^th grade class Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays from 9 to 10am, and leading an English class for the teachers Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays 4:30 to 5:30pm.

The students here are all very polite and friendly. They seem fascinated by us foreigners, but we are nothing new- they’ve had volunteers here at Parami for at least two years now. I suppose I am the only volunteer that rooms at the old campus, so perhaps I am around more than they are used to. The Bishop’s University volunteers live together in a house about 10 minutes by bike from the campus, and teach at multiple schools. Their volunteer this year is Skylar LePoidevin, who I discovered one day last month when frantically researching (ie. Googling) information regarding the Parami Learning Centre. He will be teaching English 4 days a week to the same 7^th/8^th grade class at Parami. I also asked him to help me teac the teachers, as there are 20 of them who have different English levels.

The old campus is a nursery and preschool/kindergarten campus, whereas the new school is for grades 1-8. They have 8 classrooms, 300 students, and 9 or 10 teachers at the new campus; I am not sure of the specifics for the old campus, but there are about 80 students in nursery with 4 teachers, and four small classrooms for preschool and kindergarten classes. The children are aged 3-17.

I’ve been slowly trying to learn Burmese; today I learned to count to ten, and make the proper number combinations following. Thap! Is drink, sa is eat, gaun de is good, chai de is like, yue is leaf… As you see, my Burmese lesson time typically coincides with meal times, so I suspect I won’t be able to say much more useful information until later. The students seem to be talking about me now (“she-amat” is female teacher, and it keeps coming up in their conversations), so I know it’s time for me to learn more Burmese, quick.

We are sitting downstairs at the boarding house (this room is used for nursery classes), and since it is Friday night, the children are drawing and reading picture books (it’s a Pooh animal encyclopedia!) as I am trying to blog coherently. You see the thing is, there is so much that happened today alone that I can hardly put the right words together to describe what it is that has happened before, even though I am only one day behind in blogging. I suppose it is because I am so desperately impatient, but I cannot bear to leave anything out, for I feel like my writing efforts are the least I can contribute to these students. They have endured so much, they are so resilient, and they are so kind that any word I leave unsaid is unfair to them.

But I digress. Let me continue to talk about the logistics of this school. Tuition costs 210 Baht per month per child (~$6.50 USD), school is 9-3 with a one hour break at 12 for lunch and a free period from 2 to 3. Two trucks with benches and thick tarp roofs installed on the truck bed serve as the school buses, which take students to school and home every morning and afternoon, for those who live off campus. Mr. Min Lwin and his wife live at the old campus, and there is a breakfast of noodles provided every (school) morning for 5 Baht. The HWF (Help Without Frontiers) provides clean drinking water and lunch every day to the school, as well as dinner for the 20 boys in the boarding house. Their work is amazingly generous, and I cannot express how amazing it is that their services are provided to the children.

You see, these children are refugees from Burma, most of the Karen ethnic minority, and though the school treats them well and they are well looked after, they and their families are the victims of the violent attacks by Burmese militias (including the SPDC and the NKBC, who were originally on the side of the Karen). After reading the KWO’s (Karen Women’s Organization) annual report on terror, I tried to be as sensitive in choosing my topics of conversation as possible, but I remained unprepared to hear of the atrocities firsthand. Min Lwin’s wife, Tri thi, was orphaned at a young age because her mother was raped to death—not raped and killed, but simply killed by the sheer violence of relentless raping. This was told to me by her great-grandmother, whose English has a beautiful—almost European—lilt and is very good; this is most likely thanks to the help of Church volunteers, for she told me that she felt it important that the children know of the importance and significance of Jesus.

I typically am a little suspicious of religious appeals, but given the fact that she is still able to find comfort in Christianity despite her history, I feel that in this case religion may indeed be beneficial to those who are receptive.

Tit, nit,do, lit, ngah, chap, kun, shit, koo, tit-set…