In the past few months I've spent a lot of time at several
schools in my community in an attempt to start developing some youth. Although I haven’t really accomplished any
‘development’ yet, I've been able to meet and get to know a lot of the kids in
my community. They’re cute, fun, smart
(contrary to what some of the teachers tell me), and on the particularly tough
days they remind me why I want to be here. They become more confident saying ‘good
morning’ to me every time I see them and I’m quick to praise their efforts and
return their smiles. They laugh at me a
lot and have picked up my frequent use of the word 'okay' and use it themselves, always laughing at the same time. They laugh at my language
mistakes and (at my request) now correct my grammar when I say things
incorrectly. I teach them English words
they don’t learn in the classroom and they teach me the local ways to say some
of the Thai words I already know. In short, they're awesome.
This week kicked off a three week span of competitions,
tests and evaluations leading up to a three week break from school in
October. This week is competition week and includes contests in various areas like math, art, singing, aerobics, paper airplane
throwing, and spelling. I was
unknowingly designated part of the ‘English committee’ and given the
responsibility of administering the spelling contest. Although happy to help, considering the fact
that I was pronouncing words for them that they’d never heard me speak before
and then had to write down correctly, I felt bad for them (they’re used to
hearing it a specific way from their teachers, which often includes incorrect
pronunciation). This also unfortunately
caused me to miss most of the paper airplane throwing competition, but I managed to catch the last few contestants (this contest explained why I had seen so
many little boys making and throwing paper airplanes all day long in the past
several weeks, all throughout the school day).
Next week is test week, which I'm sure won't be nearly as exciting...but it's Thailand, so who knows.
Some pictures from two days of competitions:
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