My First English Camp

This past weekend I went to my first English Camp at my friend Wesley's school, and it was so much fun... the point of an English Camp is to play games and sing songs and get kids interested and excited to learn english... which is very hard since most of the kids in the schools never use english in their daily lives and most of them dont get help with school work at home... It was two and a half days and the Volunteers there were wesley, arnold, brian and me, the kids were 11-12 years old and the little girls liked to ask me if i have a boyfriend (and then after PCV guys arrived, telling me that they thought they were cute and asking if they had girlfriends) and they laughed when i told them i dont have a boyfriend and i dont want one because i dont have time
I also went to my first thai funeral with pee-lan this past week because i happened to go to her house for dinner and she had to go to the wat (temple) after dinner so she invited me, funerals here are very different, they go on for several days more that funerals in america, the "service" consists of 4 monks chanting for about half an hour, and another thing is that in addition to flowers on the coffin, thais also like to put blinky christmas lights there as well, as new cultural experiences go, this one was one of the most interesting and different,
my birthday is this week and the girls at my office dont want me to miss home on that day, so they have decided to throw me a party... there will be chocolate cake, lots of food and i am sure a kareoke machine
I have PST2 coming up in a week and we are going to southern thailand to the beach... life is so hard sometimes...
Things i have in the works right now(even if just in my brain)
- HIV/AIDS Camp for thai high school kids
- world map project (conjoined with a local history project with the kids at the high school)
- and TYT (Thai Youth Theatre) with an English Club at a school in my Amphur

things that i have realized...
- you can be married off without actually meeting a guy as long as the mother likes you enough (one of the teachers at the English kept telling me that she has a son who is 25 and she kept calling me her daughter-in-law)
- it is impossible to get half an hour to myself after getting home in the afternoon, due to the 5- 11 year old girls who stake out my house after they get home from school so they can come over to talk to me before i even get to put my bag down (although they are so cute and sweet, i dont mind all that much)
- that i am HORRIBLE at the humdinger cards in the boardgame Cranium
- it is amazing how much people can care about you even though you cant really speak the same language (ie- the thai people at my site)
- that after a bad, frustrating day, one phone conversation in english can make everything better
and
- my nayoke has no rythm, we started aerobics at my office and for some reason the 45ish man decided to join in with the women, (just try to imaging the mayor of your town jumping up and down like, and with, a bunch of girls) this memory is in my top 3 funniest things i have seen at site since my arrival

i love you and miss you
becky

New/ Not so New Pictures

Just a little up date... This week I have began learning how to read thai if you have seen the alphabet you will understand how difficult this will be so far I can remember 21 of the 76 letters... yeah i know there are a lot...
This morning I got a call from my pregnant sister she is going to have a little girl in October... thats right y'all im gonna be Aunt Becky... scary but i am excited, as one of my friends here said... "you are going to spoil the (pardon my language family) shit out of that kid aren't you"... and my response was "you got that right"
now for pictures...
first and formost... Eddie



I like this picture of myself better than the other one that i have where eddie looks cuter... so this one makes the blog















Eddie was being a lovey with my friend Wesley, who is the guy who got eddie for me
















He is so cute... i love him

















This is a very unhappy eddie after i had to give him a bath the day after i got him... he was so smelly i had to do it











And now the inside of my house (these pictures are dark sorry):




the main room/ kitchen/ dining room












my huge bed with my mosquito net... i know its exciting














my bathroom... yes i take cold bucket showers and its not very fun






alright this computer is being slow and i am being an impatient american...
so other pictures are gonna have to wait
love y'all
becky

Update

Hey y'all
I wanted to post pictures this time but i was in a rush when i left my house and grabbed the wrong cord to connect my camera to the computer in the internet cafe, so pictures will have to wait... sorry.
Many things have happened in the last 3 or 4 weeks since my last post, first my friend Wesley found and gave me a kitten, he is tiny, Dark grey and white, and adorable, his name is Eddie and he keeps me from being lonely when i am at home by myself (Pictures to come)
Next last weekend I went to the Province just north of me called Sukothai, where there was massive flooding, I went to help my friends Maeve and Arnold clean their houses up after being flooded out, I have some cool pictures of the flood water that hadnt been pumped away, but once again (pictures to come)
I am currently trying to find a tutor to help me with my thai since this language is one of the hardest languages in the world and i dont have a particular talent for languages.
also one of the women from the office thought i was lonely so she rounded up some 11 year old girls from the neighborhood I live in and had them come over to "play", so far we have played badmitton, and gone to the temple to watch the monkey that wanders around there,
Pre Service Training 2 is coming up and we are going to the beach for 2 weeks and i am so excited cause i have never been to the beach in thailand

alright ill write more when i remember the cord for my camera...

and jacki- just remember to trust... its hard i know... being hard and cynical is a great way of protecting yourself but its no way to live... just go with the flow and have fun... you never know what will happen ;) (and now i have to follow my own advice haha)

love ya and miss ya
Becky