All Settled In!

Week one flew by and I am already overwhelmed with the amount of stuff I have to do, and want to do! Nonetheless, I am comfortably settled into the school, and on my way to becoming more and more comfortable with this city.

The school is absolutely beautiful. The classrooms are wonderful; they are bright and cheery and they have tons and tons of great resources for children with special needs. The yard is great as well, complete with a swing set and nice gardens. My room is also amazing… it’s quite large I must say, with a king size bed, big balcony, and my own washroom (still unaccustomed-however- to the hose, and trying so hard to remember not to flush the toilet paper!). The area we live in is beautiful; we’re about 20 minutes outside of town which is nice, because we are far removed from all the people, traffic, bars, and lady boys (hah). And I get to fall asleep to noisy frogs, dogs barking, crazy bugs, and some things that sound like crickets. And then I wake up to cow bells and mooing, birds chirping, and cats meowing. Nature at its finest! I have only had one sleepless night, and only because I decided to let our one-eyed cat, Bert, stay in my room, and god bless is loving little sole, but he cuddled up to me all night, and it was way too hot (I don’t even sleep with covers here). Besides that, I have been sleeping well, and I am finally on a regular schedule!

THE HEAT here…… I don’t think I have stopped sweating since I arrived, but I learned a little Thai trick quite quickly- cooling powder. Everyone here seems to use it, so I douse my body in it every morning and it helps me to stay relatively dry. I cannot even explain the heat here, it is just different... and intense! The weather has been pretty nice. A couple of the days have been cloudy, and we have had some rain (as it is rainy season), but it’s never cold, and the sun is out for the most part (7 am to 7 pm).

The teachers here are such amazing people. They have been so warm, welcoming, friendly, and accommodating! I can already tell that I can and will learn so much from both of them. I feel so fortunate to be a part of this circle of people here, as they have all been so generous and enthusiastic about showing me around. Carol (the principal of the school) has taken me out everywhere; out to dinners, grocery shopping, shopping, etc. And Bruce, and his wife have showed me some of the night life here… which is crazy! And I am slowly learning about the… culture… shall we say, of this city.

The other two teachers at the school are Thai. One of them is an assistant to one of the students, and the other is the director of the school, and she teaches one of the boys Thai. So at the moment we only have 4 students.. and 4 teachers! Not a bad set up, but ideally they would like to have 12 students, so they are trying to find more students in the area. It is an international school, so all of the families (currently) are from Europe, and live here for business (some of the families have a Thai mother and European father). In general the school is for international families who can afford this type of education. There is a massive international community here, which is good, but it seems to have been tough to find more students. However, we set up a stall at a Fair today, to advertise the school, and Carol seemed to make some good contacts with other international schools and families.

I knew there would be a lot of Canadians, Americans, and Europeans here, but I didn’t realize how many! This area is highly populated with foreigners, whether they are tourists, or living here for work. I would say the fair today was 70% foreigners, and the Murder Mystery Dinner we went to last night was 99% foreigners. Even when you walk along the beach, you see mostly tourists and foreigners. I have been told that “this” is not Thailand, so I can’t wait to go down to the islands, and up to Chang Mai. Next weekend Carol is taking me to Bangkok to go to the largest market in Thailand… so excited… but I need to stop spending so much money! Things are so cheap here and I cannot help but pick something up everywhere I go! I am also super excited for a trip we have planned at the end of October… Bruce’s wife is taking us to her friend’s home village for a weekend, so I’m looking forward to having an authentic Thai living experience!

Working at the school has been great, and I am learning what it is like to work with special needs children in a school system. But I am also looking forward to the other volunteer experiences I will have while I am here. Every Wednesday I am going to volunteer at the Father Ray Foundation, which is a day program/ school for Thai children with special needs. It is very different from Mountain Smile International School. There are many many children there, and the quality of education is nowhere near the quality afforded to the children at our school. So I am looking forward to going in and getting the kids out of these tiny classrooms, and getting them moving around, and doing some fun activities, as well as arts and crafts. I am really nervous, but very excited, as I really want to be doing work like this. The only difficulty I think will face will be the language barrier, but some of the teachers speak a little English, so hopefully they will be helpful in translating for me. My first day will be this Wednesday, so I am currently planning some activities that I can bring! Furthermore, Carol and I are looking into other schools nearby that I can volunteer at.

I would like to note that a portion of the money donated will definitely go to these less privileged schools in the area. I will need to buy some supplies for the some of the work I do, and I feel that the money contributed to these schools is definitely money well spent.

On that note, I would like to send out a huge thank you to all of the people that so graciously donated money to purchase a Nintendo Wii for Mountain Smile International School! The school is very thankful for the donation, and we are looking forward to seeing if the Wii will be something that the kids here can use, and benefit from. We are looking into having the kids test a system before we purchase it; just to ensure that they can use it. If it doesn’t seem to work out for the kids here, we will put the money towards other supplies for the school. As well, as I said before, I will use some of the money towards activities and supplies for the other schools that I will be volunteering at. Furthermore, I already purchased some supplies in Canada before I left, as it is difficult to get Canadian curriculum supplies over here. So I already purchased workbooks, a language booster book, flash cards, recorders, fine motor activities, and a tubaloo. So I have just over $600.00 left to spend in other areas, at any of the schools.

In total, friends and family donated $700.00. I never imagined that I would be able to accumulate this amount of money, and I am so very very thankful for everyone who contributed because I think it is just wonderful that I can use this money to help out wherever I can at whatever school I volunteer at while I am here. So thank you again to the following people…

Julia Fitzsimmons
$50.00

Jason Prendergast and Susan Gillespie
$200.00

Ashley Hoszowski
$30.00

TAP Staff: Will Thorman, Cliff Murphy, Julia McNeill, Janice Gill, Siobhan Hope, Travis James, Tara Ferguson, Sarah Buttigieg, Meredith Lawrence
$75.00

Cari, Colin, and Alexis (and friends)
$220.00

Ashley Marcos
$20.00

Tara Ferguson and Family
$60.00

Denise Marler
$45.00

I promise that the money will be will spent!

So, before I leave you this week… Some Thailand Highlights thus far:

• 6 $ for a manicure and pedicure
• 8 $ for a 1 hour massage
• 3$ for your average meal
• Lady Boys!
• Fried frogs and bugs.. yum!
• Icecream sundaes for 1$
• Go Go Bars; enough said.
• Cheap cheap clothes and accessories
• Knock-offs of everything
• Lizards and geckos everywhere
• Crazy dogs
• Thai people singing American songs
• House music!!
• Spices in my foooood mmm MMM
• Outdoor kitchens
• Heat and SUN
• Beaches with massive jelly fish
• The smell that I can’t put my finger on, that comes out of nowhere, but is EVERYWHERE!
• Redbull vodkas that are actually served as redbull vodkas
• Thai variety shows on tv
• No one stopping at stop signs
• Seemingly no road laws, but got a 400 baht (12 dollar) ticket for not wearing a helmet (oops!)
• Riding motor bikes, and bypassing all traffic if on a motorbike, and pretty much following no road rules…
• U turns everywhere. Even on highways and highway on ramps.
• Turkeys roaming the city
• Dirty tourists
• Having a massage AND a margarita… at 10 am… with one girl on my feet, one on my arms, and one on my head (for 5$).
• Sunsets
• Strong and healthy nails! For once in my life yipppeee!
• Fuzion hair extensions for 130$....!!
• Markets, markets, everywhere!
• BIG malls, with lots of shops
• Having pets again!
• Peeing in holes
• Houses on stilts
• Shacks beside mansions
• High pressure sales situations
• Cold showers- soooo good
• Things being written in Thai on my computer’s internet… confusing!
• Learning Thai (I know hi, bye, yes, little, far, my name is, numbers… and maybe a few more)
• Being called Dee because Denise is too difficult to pronounce.

ANNND I think that will be it for now! Feel free to email meeeeeeeeeeeee, because believe it or not, I do kind of miss home and would love to hear from everyone!

Until next week, take care!

Peace and Love

Denise