Just some pictures

My first semester teaching at R35 is finished! So, I'm taking off to travel with my friend and fellow teacher, who lives in Chiang Mai for the next two weeks. During our break from school we will work our way from Northern Thailand south to Bangsak. Until I return to post what will hopefully be some fantastic pictures and stories, here are some pictures from the last couple of weeks... Enjoy!


After a harrowing motorbike ride, a bit of exploring revieled this quite bay where the Moken keep their fishing boats.


James and I getting ready to go surfing for the day not far from Bangsak on Pakarang beach. Surfboards work remarkably well as wings for motorbikes...!


The ESL office staff (Lak, me, Nate, Ian, and Mark in front) out for dinner.


Sitting in the hammock on my front porch during a rain storm.


A new beach, Pakwip, that has jet black rocks jutting out into the Andaman Sea. The tide was coming in, crashing spectacularly on the rocks.


A waterfall just outside of Bangsak that has a great pool for swimming and rocks for sliding. The view from in/under the waterfall.


To follow the waterfall, we hiked up the jungle clad mountain and waded through the river until we reached someone's property and couldn't go any further.


The culprit who's been rooting holes in my front yard.


Maprow (coconut), the adorable puppy at the local general store, who was really interested in a big green bug she found, and a praying mantis who was having none of it!


A baby house gecko that looks to have hatched fairly recently.


The first mud-skipper I saw, which was hopping around a murky pool just off of one of the local beaches.


The texture of gold leaf offerings on large marble spheres at one of the local wats.

Lead climbing

This is our last week of regular class at R35 and as a result most of my classes are full of reviews. It is the perfect opportunity to bust out some of the student-centered activities and games I have been working on! All in all it is pretty mellow. Final exams will start to be administered on Saturday and all the students will return home by the end of the month for a three week break before the second term begins the end of October.

Since Mark wanted to get in some rock climbing before he leaves in a couple of weeks, he and I met James and Laura, both PiA teachers working in Phang Nga town, in Krabi to catch a boat over to Railay for the weekend. We rented gear and rope and hiked to one of the many limestone walls covered with climbing routes. It had a beautiful view.

We settled on a nice 5.5 climb to start as we were a mix of beginners and intermediates who had not done much climbing in the last year. For most of the morning and early afternoon we were the only group at the wall and tried out a 5.7 climb as well. It was a good start to our weekend and the highlight was my first lead climb on the 5.5 route!



After a snack we walked to phra nang cave beach where we found the tide out far enough to make the islands off shore accessible.



We all did a bit of exploring, then I decided to walk all around the nearest island and found some caves that surely have some treasure hidden in them somewhere, some interesting sea life, and of course some beautiful views.









Back on the beach we did some bouldering on an overhang until the sun went down. The sunset was beautiful, but I still think that sunsets back home on Bangsak beach are the most impressive I’ve seen yet. After showers, we ate some delicious Indian food and played cards for most of the evening.

The next morning, Mark, Laura, and I got a little lost on our way to Ton Sai beach and ended up on a grueling hike to the other side of Railay, but did eventually make it.

Ton Sai beach was lovely and really is a climbers paradise.



James met us there and we had to wade through waste deep water since the tide had come in, but we found an excellent traverse on the far side of the beach where we spent the rest of the morning bouldering. We scrambled back to Railay west by a short cut and then back to Railay east, where we had rooms, just in time to take showers and check out. We caught a long tail boat back to Krabi, a songteow to the bus station, and buses back to Phang Nga and Takuapa in time for dinner on Sunday.

It was a wonderfully full and active weekend and we had excellent sunny weather despite technically still being in the rainy season. It does seem like the weather is starting to change though… the air feels much less humid here than it did even a week ago. Just in time for vacation, yahoo!

And here is a little more information about Grassroots, the NGO where I have started volunteering. Grassroots is legally called The Foundation for Education and Development (FED). It was established as Grassroots Human Rights Education (GHRE) in 2000 near the Thai-Burmese border and moved here to the Takuapa district of Phang Nga province following the tsunami in 2004. In 2007, it became the first Burmese-led organization in Thailand to receive legal Thai Foundation status. The organization seeks to promote human rights and democracy for Burmese migrants living in Thailand, and to build and promote leadership and organization in the migrant community. FED provides educational opportunities to the children of migrant workers, including two day-care nurseries, implements a child protection policy, offers health education and medical care for the community, supplies legal assistance and advocacy, provides human rights education- including economic, social, and cultural rights education, maintains a women’s empowerment program, and supports migrant development activities. Needless to say it is a small but very busy NGO.

In addition to teaching science at the secondary school supported by Grassroots called Youth Outreach, I am working with the Women’s Education and Development Association (WEDA) program within FED that focuses on gender equality and works to empower and encourage women of the migrant communities in Phang Nga province. WEDA runs workshops and training sessions on women’s rights and gender issues, basic health care, vocational skills. The current education program shares information about women’s rights and domestic violence awareness with the migrant women. The health care program teaches Burmese migrant women about issues such as family planning, HIV/AIDS prevention, and basic health. Vocational skills development includes training sessions for migrant women looking to increase the income earning capacity of their family.

I am working on a WEDA project to enlarge the women’s center building and offer a more comprehensive women’s education program including more complete business skills training. It is a complex project and it seems to get more so each time I attend review meetings with WEDA staff. My current task is writing the grant to secure funding for the project, and then to submit the proposal and applications to various funding organizations, which I am still trying to find more of. If you would like to know more about Grassroots, the project, or have any suggestions about where to go for funding please send me an e-mail.
All the Best!

New Digs

These past couple of weeks have been full of change and new opportunities. The first week was split between settling into my new house, which is located in the Taptuwan Moken village about 5 minutes drive north of R35, and preparing for my first science class at Youth Outreach for the secondary students that are part of the Burmese NGO Grassroots’ education system. This last week, I spent more time developing science lessons and began writing the grant for Grassroots’ new women’s center.



Settling into my new house included buying a few pieces of furniture and figuring out how to transport back on my motorbike (the big items such as the mattress, fan, and mini-fridge were provided), making bug screens for all of my windows, and setting up “kitchen.” Now that settling into my new house is complete, I will take you on a little photo tour of it:



The front porch is definitely my favorite part of the house. It is complete with a few hanging and potted plants (my cherry tomato and basil sprouts now have more room to grow!) a hammock, and a little gate to keep the roaming dogs, pigs and chickens out. From my porch I can relax and watch as most of life in the village goes by- fruit and sweet bun vendors, gangs of dogs, many people on motorbikes or bicycles. Also, several of my young students live in Taptuwan. It is delightful to hear them call out “teacher” or “tareewaa” as they walk or drive by. The Moken people are traditionally sea gypsies and this community was originally only inhabited seasonally, but post-tsunami, the Thai government settled most Moken people and their lifestyles have changed dramatically as a result. All the children in the community attend R35 and are the first generation to go to school.



The front room has a desk and a bookshelf which were both items I have missed dearly. It’s a comfortable space, and in case you were wondering, I cannot claim the extra frilly extra blue curtains as part of my decorating scheme… they came with the house. The next room is my bedroom, which is nice and simple with a mattress and a clothes hanging rack.



The next room is my bedroom, which is nice and simple with a mattress and a clothes hanging rack.



That completes the living part of the house. Down a short set of steps is a big tiled room where I have a clothes-drying area, my makeshift kitchen, and bathroom.



The bathroom has a sky-light and a giant water basin, which I emptied because it was attracting mosquitoes, but will serve nicely as the occasional bathtub/mini-pool. The bathroom is where I made concessions in life style too. I no longer have a shower, a flushing toilet, or a sink, but I am now fully adjusted to bucket showers, which are both fast and water-conserving, and washing my dishes and clothes in small basins as well. Unfortunately, the water cut-out in Taptuwan for almost three days this past week, so I spent a lot of time running water from the giant rain-water urn outside (see below) into buckets to bring inside. A little rustic, but character building, right?



Here are a few of the characters that frequently mosey around my house, but my closest companions are definitely the multiple families of geckos that live in my house. The roosters in Taptuwan have no schedule for their crowing. Instead, they prefer to crow much like male dogs mark territory, and often get into crow-offs from different parts of the village that last for several minutes.



I found this nest of gecko eggs in one of my windows when I was putting up the screens (none of them have hatched yet, but I see tiny baby geckos running along my walls all the time), and this is the fantastic baby chair that my landlord left with me just in case I should start a family or adopt a small child in the next 7 months. If you can’t read it from the picture, on the top it says, “We Have Funny,” and on the bottom it says, “Hey Bird We Are Can Fly.” This brings me to English, and the challenge of teaching the subject.



At R35 we have just come out of a vicious bout of congunctivitus, more commonly known as pink-eye in North America and red-eye here in Thailand. I managed not to contract it, but being a boarding school, just about every student got it after at least one person brought it to the school. There are only about 3 weeks until the end of the term at R35. So, I have been working on the lessons and worksheets for the last units… telling time for P4, subjects and parts of the school for P5, and fruits and vegetables for P6, and various grammar for the older students; and helping the Thai teachers however I can with developing the final exams. I feel like I’m finally making progress with lesson planning, classroom management, and worksheet or activity development after several months of hands-on practice.
This increased efficiency is especially useful now that I am teaching at two schools. I taught my second science class with the Burmese students at Youth Outreach last Friday and am really enjoying the experience of teaching a subject that I love to students who want to learn. It also helps that I have experience teaching English as a foreign language, because the Burmese students are definitely still learning English, but are much more proficient than even my oldest students at R35. I sort of combine the two, science and English instruction, together when planning my lessons and further developing the curriculum. The curriculm we are using was created by an awesome organization called the Curriclum Project that is working to develop curriculms for many subjects specifically for Burmese migrants in various parts of Asia. We are working through a short introduction to experiments and the scientific method. We don't have any fancy glass-wear or instruments, but we do have sodium bicarbonate and acetic acid (aka baking soda and vinegar) and my students have really gotten into this experiment business. Our next unit will be an introduction to the breadth of science, technology, and more use of the scientific method. Eventually we will work through units on biology, chemistry, physics, and earth science. Mark, another PiA teacher at R35, volunteer taught some science at Youth Outreach, but I’m happy for the opportunity to teach their first long-term science class.
I will write more about Grassroots as an organization and work they are doing for the migrant Burmese population in Phang nga province, as well as the draft of the women’s center grant I’m working on in my next post. If you'd like to check it out before that time though, here is the Grassroots website address: http://www.ghre.org/en/
Cheers!