September, October, November

I fretted over making several nice orderly posts on different parts of the last few months, and then figured I’d never post anything at that rate. So here’s a mix.

This photo was taken in mid-October (note bright green rice field).

This photo was taken at the very beginning of November (same field as above).

And just 2 weeks after the previous photo was taken, the farmers had mostly harvested the rice.

Home sweet home (my street).

Back to PaaKow’s visit (October). We spent an afternoon with my host family. The fed us lunch, of course. (They’ll feed you lunch regardless of what time of day you show up).

Jeannine and Grandma out in the field. Farmers build these little bamboo huts where they keep things and rest during the days they’re working in the fields.

These kids were playing at the temple in my host family’s village. The girl in front goes to my primary school, although she’s not my student, and the boy in the orange shirt is my 7th grade student.

I wanted to show PaaKow a temple that’s hidden a little bit, away from a village. It’s more peaceful than the other temples around, which are located right in the villages. We ran into 4 village grandmothers, who were not very friendly at first. I had met them previously, at this same temple, but they didn’t seem to recognize me (or maybe they were just thrown off my PaaKow’s presence). They scowled at us and looked us up and down until I finally thought to tell them who MY grandmother is. Then they remembered where they had seen me before and smiled and pinched our arms to see if we were being well fed.

The flooding touched my area but not in the dramatic way it hit provinces in the center of the country (like Ayuttaya, were my pre-service training was).

(These days I really do do things until the cows come home!)

My co-teacher invited PaaKow and me to go to Nongkai with her family to see the ‘Bang Fai Payana.’ Every year on the full moon of lunar month #__, a dragon-like creature living in the Mekong River shoots up balls of fire. While the legendary fireballs were a bit underwhelming, it was lots of fun to go and sit by the river and watch people play with fire.

I forced a silk worm down PaaKow’s throat before he left (see green plate).

PaaKow and I spent some time in Khon Kaen (It’s the 4th biggest city, I think). We met up with some other volunteers there. Khon Kaen is a little ugly (see background).

I’m on the ‘ICT GIG’ (information and communication technology global initiative group). We’d planned to meet in Bangkok on Halloween, but that didn’t work out because of the floods. So we met in Khon Kaen on Halloween to discuss the very important business that is ICT.

I ‘helped’ at another PCVs English Camp in Ubon Rachathani province. It took place at a beautiful national park.

This semester (which started the first week of November) is off to a much better start than last semester. The students still try to pull “can we go to the bathroom?” on me, to which I want to scream “don’t insult me with your lame tactics for playing hookey after attendance has been taken!” but hey, at least attendance has been taken (most days).

The school director at my secondary school decided that we should have English lessons for teachers at lunch. There’s a lot of talk about ASEAN and the fact that English will be the common language. Well, the English@Lunch ‘project’ has brought teachers together to eat on Mondays and Tuesdays (usually there are very well-defined lunch groups) but… the teachers are even worse at listening than the students.

I’m working really hard on the Peace Corps look.

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