English is fun

I have no idea how to summarize what I’m doing or what’s happened the past few weeks…..we’ve been so busy and scheduled that it’s easy to sometimes wonder what I’ve gotten myself into, but I’m starting to get more days of realizing why I signed up for this in the first place.  This week we had our first experience teaching English.  I was able to go to the Nonformal Education Center in the village where we have classes all week to teach English with another volunteer for 2 days.  Our students ranged in age from 16 – 40 and we spent an hour a day with them, teaching them basic English greetings and a few other things.  I’m not a teacher and have never taught English to anyone, but I truly enjoyed it.  It’s interesting to be on both ends of the learning/teaching spectrum in the last couple weeks, and it makes me appreciate how far I’ve come in such a short amount of time and how eager these kids are to learn English.  Two other volunteers that are in my language class have been teaching a group of 10-11 year olds at a nearby school, and I also got to practice English with them.  They’re so eager to learn and so patient with me when I speak Thai to them.  I love speaking Thai to kids here and I love it when they get so excited about what I say.  I’ve never seen kids get so excited when I tell them what Thai food I like to eat (although I think I’m more excited than they are).  Every once in a while some of them will just bust out a sentence in English and it’s awesome. 

 I’m slowly becoming more confident in my Thai speaking abilities and am able to converse more with my host family.  One of the best nights I’ve had with them so far was when I gave them a picture calendar of my family and friends (a gift I made for them) and we talked about my life in America and the people and things in my pictures.  They asked about my family in America and I told them as much as I could in Thai (by the way Ashley, they have a really, really hard time saying your name – but they said you’re beautiful every time they saw you in a picture).  My host family also likes to see how many mosquito bites I get every day (my host mom has given me several home remedies to stop the itching).  I explained to them one night that the mosquitoes here like to eat me for dinner, and they could not stop laughing at me (they never really do, but most of the time they just laugh at me for no reason).  Language has been one of the toughest things to adjust to, and sometimes I still find myself in conversations where I have absolutely no idea what’s going on….but when I do know what’s going on and am able to respond, it’s awesome.

It’s still hot, and I’m a little apprehensive about the upcoming ‘hot season’, but I think I’m acclimating to the change.  I thought it was cool the other day…when I looked at the temperature it was 86 degrees.  It gets cool enough at night that I can still sleep comfortably with a fan and a blanket, which is awesome. 

We find out our permanent sites next week – so exciting!  I’m anxious to find out where I’ll be living for the next two years.  Also, I ate chicken blood a couple weeks ago.  It looked like dark red tofu, and kind of tasted the same.  I haven’t eaten any bugs yet (at least not intentionally – I’ve caught several unintentional ones in my mouth on late bike rides).