Teachers make the best students

7.17.12

Oh goodbyes. If you do too many at once it feels like you are breaking your heart into tiny little pieces and handing them over to everyone you leave. And boy, does it hurt. Our teachers at Jao Mae School were the first real goodbyes we had to do. They were an awesome group of teachers eager to learn English! We had a fantastic time teaching them and it was sad to see our time come to an end.

 Going over the lyrics to English learning songs. Those expressions are priceless.

We gave our 'students' small gifts from America--pennies and Jolly Ranchers

 And here's what they gave us..Thai culture is so extremely generous!

The principal. He lovvvved us.

Presenting them with their very own CD of English learning songs produced by our group for them to use after we leave.

We love our students/teachers at Jao Mae and we'll never forget them!

Thailand video of greatness!

We took a whole day last week and whipped up a tribute movie documenting our time in Thailand. For our sake (and yours) it's only one song long, but we had enough video footage to make a much longer one. For that reason it's pretty fast-paced, so watch it a couple times ;) It shows the best of our time in Thailand! We also chose this song before it got popular in the U.S..that's annoying, but we used it anyway.

Eventually we'll catch up on all of the blog posts we've missed (...), but a movie is probably more exciting anyway. We sure miss Thailand and the adventures we had there every day, but we are happy to be home with family and friends and catching some summer before school starts up again. Be sure to catch up with us on our regular blog! just-an-adventure {dot} blogspot {dot} com.

Enjoy ^_^

Why HELP International

There are a lot of programs that send kids like us out for the summer to cool places in the world to do some sort of service, but here is a list of reasons why we chose HELP in the first time and have been really pleased with our summer. Maybe some of you are curious!

• My favorite thing about HELP International is that it focuses on sustainable solutions to problems. Many humanitarian groups walk into places with poverty and just pour money or resources in, and after these are used up the people are still in the same situation as they were earlier. Instead, we work to develop projects that will not only alleviate a problem, but that will also carry on after we leave at the end of the summer. Help the people help themselves! This model constantly has Justin and I asking ourselves, "Is this project going to last after we leave? What needs to happen to keep it going? What individuals from the community need to be involved?" We don't have all the solutions, but we have skills and knowledge from various educational backgrounds, some resources to offer, lots of passion and manpower, and the desire to serve. We work with members of the community to develop culturally savvy projects that fit the needs of the community, address the problem, and provide a solution. By involving the community it ensures that we aren't way off-base with our Western way of thinking (which, believe me, it is way off sometimes), but we are able to give them fresh, innovative suggestions that may or may not fit with the culture. It's long and tedious but it's awesome! Connecting with local NGOs is another great aspect of HELP, and the use of these partnerships also help projects to last longer than our stay here. In this way we really do "fight poverty and empower people".
• HELP International cares a ton about its volunteers. Yes they want us to help the people here, but they are just as concerned about us as individuals. They want us to be able to develop the critical thinking skills, innovation, and diligence to observe, create a project, and implement it, which is why there are no 'cookie cutter' programs that we are just plugged into.  It's like they actually want us to LEARN something while we're here..weird, I know! ;)  From the very beginning they stressed SMART goals to improve our time here in every aspect, from culture to projects to personal life.  Also they sent two board members out during the summer to give us feedback and answer questions, and they were extremely helpful in keeping us on-track. They are invested in the success of their participants and programs and are anxious to improve anything possible. I really admire this about HELP!
• Having taught English before, that was an obvious opportunity for us to consider to travel abroad. BUT we are both in health related fields and wanted some exposure in that area. It's been exciting to explore project options in this area, and although we weren't just 'plugged in' to these types of programs, we have been able to find opportunities to serve in this area.
• There is no better way to get to know a country's people and culture than to actually live there. It was important to us going into a summer-long trip that we would be able to spend more than a couple months making a difference. HELP International sends people out in three waves (six weeks each), and you stay for at least one and any other consecutive waves you want. All for the same price! We stayed for wave 1 and 2, and even though we got a lot done in 6 weeks we were glad we could stay for 12! Development work is sometimes slow and requires a lot of planning, networking, waiting, brainstorming, collaborating, contacting, and then finally action, and we definitely needed wave 2 to deepen our efforts. Basically we never want to spend just a week anywhere again because you can't do an awesome place justice in that amount of time!
• We didn't want to miss any school, so May to August is perfect for us.
• We put in full days and get evenings and weekends off. So much free time! We also have days off that allow us to see a ton while we're here.
• They love spouses: one of us got 1/2 price on our program fee. Which is great because everything costs double for us!

No NGO is perfect, and HELP would be the first to say it's a refining process every summer to make tweaks to make the experience better, but we're so grateful to be involved! We've loved our experience so far and would definitely recommend it! It's a great way to get a foot into development work, build a resume, and experience an amazing culture for 6-18 weeks. We are more than happy to answer any and all questions so please ask away!

And for any who missed the chance to donate to our trip before we left, it's not too late! We're continuing to do a lot in our last month and there's a lot of good to be done in this area of Thailand. Click here to find out how you can contribute to our experience! 

We appreciate everything our friends and family have done to get us here!! I hope you can imagine yourselves right along here with us, riding elephants, building a sink, teaching English vocab words, getting to know the migrant villagers, filming a video about AIDS prevention and treatment--because it would NOT have been possible without you! Thank you for investing in us so that we can invest in a better future full of life-changing solutions for the people we have come to love in Thailand--Thais, hill tribes, and migrant workers alike.

And we'll save you a Google search-- click here for HELP's website.

Coolest Kids at School

Sometimes we feel really popular at Huay Nam Yen school.

Then we remember it's probably because we're white and have cool iPhones, and then it makes sense.

But still, we love it!

One of our fifth graders and a first grader playing iSlash.

The chubby ones are the best!

Going through Justin's pictures

Project updates—English, Water Filters, and HIV (oh my!)

As far as projects are going, every week is different and we never know quite what to expect. Our first couple of weeks were hardcore manual labor, which was exhausting but satisfying to see the end result of our hard work and sweat. The past several weeks have involved more planning and communicating with local NGOs to create projects. Here’s an update on those!

First of all, teaching English to our 5th and 6th graders is going great. The kids are learning a lot and we are getting pretty attached to their funny personalities. They are getting used to us coming, and really enjoyed when we showed them pictures from home. 

 Thai kids meet the Grafs

Thai kids meet the Lambs

We teach each class for two hours, which is admittedly a lot of time, so for the last half hour we always play a game. It breaks up the time for all of us ;) This week we taught directions, so we played "Go forward, stop!" or in other words, "Red light, green light."

 It got pretty intense at times!

Justin and I teach English to two classes and some teachers on Mondays, which is great, but we also teach a group of teachers from a district about a half hour away on Tuesdays. It’s probably a rule somewhere that teachers should never choose favorite students, but if we did choose a favorite class to teach, it would be our Tuesday group. They are very anxious to learn and have a basic foundation of spelling, grammar, and vocabulary, but need help with speaking and pronunciation. They are willing to practice and make mistakes, which is exactly what we need from them! The idea of teaching teachers came up as a result of wanting the group’s English teaching to make the greatest impact possible, and this will come as we teach the people who will be around students year after year and hopefully make a difference there.

Our school is tucked back in the mountains about 40 minutes from where we live. We ride that little van out every Tuesday.

Justin showing off the school

This picture tells so much. During the middle of our lesson, a dog just walks into the room. This happens in Thailand ALL the time--whether it's a restaurant, a school, or the internet cafe. There are dogs everywhere!

Justin is pro at teaching! They have a sweet set up for us, complete with projector, laptop, and microphone.

A major project that has been in the works but that we can’t quite get into the implementation phase is installing water filters in communities where they collect rain water and use it as drinking water. We’ve been very excited about this project but we can’t find any Thai people who know exactly how to build the filters and would be willing to oversee the construction for us. It’s hard working with a culture that is much more laid back and less business-oriented than ours, but hopefully we will be able to start this soon!

UHDP headquarters

And the biggest project news of all! Justin and I are working with a small team on creating an HIV/AIDS awareness video to be distributed throughout the hill tribes of this region, people who have immigrated to Thailand from Burma or Laos because of political problems. HIV is a problem in these areas, so we are working with members of a local organization who help at a health clinic where people can go to be tested for HIV/AIDS, and they hope to spread the word about prevention and also treatment availability. They visit the tribes and hold community outreach meetings, where the video will eventually be shown. We came up with an idea about a man who has HIV and how it changes his life, had the Thai people we’re working with make necessary cultural changes to make sure it will be well-received, and we will hopefully begin shooting as soon as we find locals who are willing to act in our video! To make this project self-sufficient, we want to make this video for the group and then sit back and let them make a mental health video by the end of the summer based on what we teach them. We’re really excited for the opportunity to be involved and hope to make a difference with this project! It will probably take up the majority of our time from now on, which is fine. It’s actually really hard to not have enough to do here! It makes us long for American food or summer in Utah, so we’re happy for the chance to work hard. The time goes by at a perfect speed!

I am goose!

Monday was our first day of teaching. We have both had experience as volunteer English teachers, me in China and Justin in Canada as a missionary, so we weren’t too worried about it. We didn’t come into this with any set curriculum, but we knew what we wanted to teach for the day and figured we’d find out soon enough what to plan for next week. We got dropped off at our school and had an awkward couple of minutes where we just stood there before they sent the second grade teacher over to talk to us. Her name is Sumalee and she’s very nice and helpful and, as it turns out, the only teacher who is not afraid to speak English. She told us we would be teaching the 5^th and 6^th graders for two hours each, 5^th before lunch and 6^th after, which sounded great to us. 

We started our 5^th grade lesson at 9 am and it was going really well. We started with the basics of ‘hello’, ‘how are you?’, ‘how old are you?’, and the appropriate responses, mostly concentrating on giving them conversation practice. Just as we were starting to have each student come to the front of the room and introduce themselves to the class, a group of sixth grade boys came RUNNING into our classroom shouting and holding bamboo brooms. They ran straight to the corner and started moving boxes and chairs away from the wall, obviously after something. The kids’ teacher ran out of the other door in the room, and at this point Justin and I were just wondering what in the world is going on. I thought maybe a mouse or a snake, and since the kids didn’t know enough English to explain, we just stood there dumbly and waited for the commotion to end. I made a slithering motion to one of the kids asking if it was a snake, and he did this funny pantomime with his arms and legs and makes a “too-kae” noise, which could only mean it was a gecko! They make the funniest noises at night, and the tones of the Thai name “too-kae” mimic the noise perfectly. I drew it on the board and the kids all nodded yes, and then drew little polka dots on it. We felt better that we weren’t going to get attacked by a vicious creature, and went over to try to get a look at it. We got there just in time to see it had come out of the corner and the boys were mercilessly beating it with their brooms. After it was dead, they brushed it outside onto the front steps of the building and went back to their classes, and we continued with our lesson. Uhhh. What?? We couldn’t believe what had just happened!

The poor little fellow. He even has his tongue sticking out in defeat!

After lunch we watched the kids played a game where two kids hold a rope made of rubber bands and everyone else tries to jump over. They start low and gradually get higher, like a sort of backwards limbo. Once it’s over their heads, they do cartwheels to catch the rubber band with their feet and pull it down for the rest of their bodies to go over. It was fun to watch! It made us glad that Thai mommies know to send their girls to school with shorts on under their skirts, that’s for sure.

 

 

 You can always count on a kid or two asking to take pictures of you with your camera

6^th grade went comparatively more uneventful than 5^th, but we did have a huge rainstorm start up during it so that’s exciting. There are no screens on the open windows and the doors are usually left open, so other than not getting wet it felt like we were right outside in it! English teaching is exciting because you know that it’s a lifelong skill that opens doors to many opportunities (one of Thailand’s main industries is tourism, and English is so universal that it could mean the difference between getting a job or not!), but aside from the warm fuzzies that come along with knowing about that, there is also the humor factor. Kids telling you they are ten instead of 13, mistaking ‘how old are you?’ for ‘how are you?’, the kids all repeating ‘my name is Justin’ instead of saying their own names, and the consistent response of ‘I am goose’ instead of ‘I am good.’ Oh ESL, so many priceless moments.

One of these things is not like the other..

Afterwards we met with the teachers about starting English classes for them. They are all very nervous about speaking to us but we’re hoping they’ll open up with time! It should be a good opportunity to help the teachers develop their language skills, and then be able to help their students continue learning English.

Annnnd pretty exciting, we’ve been married for two whole months today!! It’s crazy to think how much we’ve done and accomplished in such a short amount of time, and we’re so happy to be here having this great adventure so early in our married life. Every day is an adventure for us, but it’s just a little easier to find excitement when you live in Thailand ;) Thanks for all the love and support everyone has shown us as we’ve started our life together and gone on this amazing trip! We love every day of it!