Celebrity Status

It’s day three at Bandon Sriserm School today, and day three of air-conditioned office sitting. I was supposed to teach my first class of third graders at 10 am, but turns out they were learning math instead.  My co-teacher, Teacher Angelie, seemed to feel that I should start tomorrow anyways, so I just met the class for a hot second before returning to the office oasis.  It’s nearly lunchtime, which is always exciting:

Katie and I usually walk down from our office around noon and make our way to the canteen.  Meanwhile kids are swarming and waving and hugging Teacher Katie like mad.  They don’t even know me and I am a celebrity, too!  We got lots of trinkets along the way too, like candy, cookies, partially eaten snacks, roses, and art projects. Pretty sweet. It’s a bit like the Pied Piper—a crowd gathers around us until we really make moves to the canteen and then a small group hovers outside the door waving while we eat.

But after lunch is my favorite event.  Each of the kids has a little drawstring bag that they carry around during lunch, most of them have it dangling around the neck or hanging from their arms, and inside the pouch is a cup, a toothbrush, and toothpaste. At the end of lunch, a song comes on the loudspeaker and all the kids fill up their cup, squat around a trough in the ground and brush their teeth, with the occasional wiggle dance move thrown in.  It’s a school wide brush-your-teeth-time! My favorite time of day.

Other news from Nan: we met three new friends, also farang from America, who are teaching high school on the other side of town.  P’ Benz, the ringleader of our Thai friends, is master at befriending anyone who is visiting Nan, especially if they speak English.  So he introduced us to them last night while we were at the Riverside skate park. Yep, skate park.  We are friends with a bunch of skater dudes.  They are all really nice and speak a fair amount of English.  There’s Benz, Tuti, Bass, and Daum.  We went to P’ Daum’s house out in the country last weekend.  His grandpa has tons of chickens and ducks and rabbits, lots of fruit trees, and a small pond in the back that is stocked with fish.  Tuti tried to fish while we hung out by the pond, it was real sabai sabai.

Kun Yai continues to be a source of entertainment for us.  Katie and I brought Kun Yai and Kun Dtah some fruit yesterday, then got a full tour of their (huge!) house, then we ate snacks, then we were served a giant mug of corn milk (who knew? it tasted exactly like an ear of corn), then we took a drive through town in their air-conditioned car.  They are just a hoot, and all too willing to look after us.  You know what they say, you give a neighbor some fruit…