Hello Mr. Buffalo

I feel like I am finally starting to get my bearings set around here. Yesterday it was my job to get myself to a meeting spot with my program facilitator and I was able to do it just fine. And throughout the past couple of days I have been able to know where I am or how to get to different places in the city which is pretty cool. I know it’s something small, and I definitely still get turned around, but knowing some basics gives me a little more sense of security.

Yesterday I went to the school that I will be teaching at every Friday and met with the teachers.  I’m only needed from 12:30 to 2:30 so the hours aren’t bad at all. So I will probably start coming down the mountain on Friday mornings instead of Thursday nights.

After the meeting one of the teachers, Bee, took me to lunch at this little guest house/bungalow place. We had passion fruit juice (with mushed up fruit on top…basically it was heaven) and a chicken dish that was very sweet and had pineapples and tomatoes in it. It was super yummy. They also brought out the famous Thai soup, and Bee insisted that I tried it because it is part of the cultural experience. I was all for it, but I saw a lot of shrimp in it…a lot a lot. But I have been pushing myself lately to be more open. Why not, right? I mean, I don’t know when I will get the chance to be in Thailand again, so I might as well take it all in. So I tried it and it wasn’t that bad. I wouldn’t order it for myself, but it was definitely doable.

 When we finished lunch I was able to go in and meet the kids I was going to teach and there are a lot of them. And it was super weird seeing them all in desks with uniforms on and all sorts of school materials about. I’m used to the orphanage now where they believe in classrooms without walls and so teaching is done anywhere and everywhere. It just seemed so formal here. But the teaching requirements are a lot less formal I think. Basically what I gathered from the meeting is that they want me to teach them songs and a little bit about my culture. Haha so since we had some time I taught them If You’re Happy and You Know it and gave them their American names, which they were very excited about. I basically just named them after all my friends and family, and honestly it just cracks me up when I think about the cute Thai kids and who they’re named after.

I did make one major mistake. When I entered the first class, they were already half way through their English lesson, so the teacher had me finish the exercise they were in the middle of. They were working on plural forms of words (ie: mouse to mice). But when I got to “foot” I pointed to my foot, but the kids in the back were straining to see, so I lifted up my foot. My foot was about 2 inches off the ground when it registered that this was a very bad idea. But my foot made it 2 inches more before I was able to do anything about it. In Thai culture anything with the foot is super offensive and just straight up not acceptable. The kids didn’t really know how to react and the teacher was just bug-eyed. I’m sure I was bright red. I started apologizing and saying I was an American farang (don’t know why I gave that as an excuse) but the kids started to laugh and I think that was enough to move on. Haha rookie mistake.

On the way home from school I was taking a rot dang and I was sitting across from a Burmese family. There was a 3 year old boy who was very shy but very curious about me. He was the cutest little kid, with big round brown eyes and beautiful dark hair. I was smiling at him and making faces until he worked up the courage to reach out and quickly touch my hand and retreating even faster to make sure this farang didn’t turn into a monster or something :) He did this a couple more times until he was sure I was human and then started playing with my fingers. I turned my arm over and showed him how if you press on my arm a white mark stays for a couple of seconds (a big hit at the orphanage) and he was completely enthralled. For the next 5 minutes I was being poked by the whole family. And when he tired of that he held my hand the rest of the way until I had to get off. That, I think, might have been the highlight of my day.

Today we woke up early and went to a rice paddy. I have watched the Discovery Channel and Animal Planet since I was little and so I knew water buffalo are big animals, but I didn’t know that would be that big. Holy smokes. I looked at those things and took inventory: ginormous horns, big hooves that they keep kicking, and they smelled worse than Tillamook on a hot day. Nope. There is no way I’m getting on that thing. But the adventure was too good to pass up. The guy showed us how we were supposed to get on… 1. Get a running start 2. Put your hands on the back of the buffalo 3. Jump on 4. Pray to the Lord above you don’t jump too far and get shish-ka-bobbed by the horns (ok, I added that last one...). We watched our facilitator try to do it, but with no luck. So then everyone looked at me. Yikes. My run towards Mr. Buffalo seemed to last forever, like some slowmo action. I had time to think to myself, “what the heck are you doing??” But I just kept going, put my hands on, jumped like my life depended on it, and prayed. I made it! Haha First try and I stuck the landing :) That thing is bony though! Not very comfortable. We just walked around a bit, he ate some grass, and I pretended that I was in control.

After riding Mr. Buffalo we got a chance to work with him and plow the rice paddy. The mud was so thick, but it was nice and cold so it felt good between the toes. I was told that I had a good technique for plowing fields, so who knows? Maybe if this Social Worker thing doesn’t work out maybe I could plow rice fields. Haha! Then we got to plant some rice and separate the rice and chaff. We were told if we were able to do that, we would get boyfriends and if we couldn’t we would be out of luck. Thankfully we were all able to fulfill the requirements…haha so look out Provo! :)

We went to a waterfall after and swam around a bit. That was fun until we got out to go up closer to the falls and all of a sudden tons more water came out and started flooding the area and it became too dangerous to go back in. Some girls got swept down some mini falls but thankfully some people were able to grab them before they went down anything too crazy. Scary stuff.

We had the rest of the day to chill and hangout around the city. We saw the Avengers (in English this time) and it was really good…again! I am a fan. We also rode around in a tuk tuk which of course was an experience to say the least. Those little 3 wheel cars (if they can even pass as a car) are nuts, but it’s a pretty fun joy ride.

It was a great weekend. I will go back up the mountain around 4pm tomorrow, so I am going to keep it low key. So more adventures to come! And all the pictures of Mr. Buffalo will be on facebook.