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!