Teaching went very well this week. Our primary school serves the local village and therefore only has 50 kids. The 50 kids are broken into five classes, and we teach each class about four times a week. The kids love English class. They beg us to teach their class next; it feels very different from teaching in Vermont. Their love of our classes isn't surprising however, because their other subjects are taught almost entirely using a TV--history, math, etc. When we leave, the children are training to simply turn on the TV. I have no idea if they pay attention, take notes, or are assessed on the material. But it is very clear that the teachers in our school do very little teaching as we think of it.

The other Openmindprojects volunteer who is working with me is named Kara. She is a 33-year-old American who has been teaching math for the last three years in Spain. She is actually Vientamese, so many of the people here think that she is Thai. When we arrived at our school, we met the previous English volunteer whose name is Sally. She left the day after we arrived, but it was great to be able to ask her questions.

The people here continue to amaze me. It is clear that the teacher we live with, Somai, is sort of our adopted parent and guide. Each day after school he has a new place to take us to. The first day we arrived, after eating the coconuts on the canal, Somai as well as the headmaster took us to a local waterfall. I asked Sally if we needed to wear clothes in the water, as Thai people are very modest and I thought Muslim Thais might be even more, but she said that she thought bathing suits would be fine. So the three of us put on our bathing suits under our clothes and drove to the waterfall. When we got there, we saw that all of the people swimming were fully clothed. . . oops. But we were so hot, we decided to just jump in wearing everything. When we came back up to the car, the headmaster was sitting at a table where there was a little food cart. He had a bottle of wine there and began to order various kinds of food for us. We were totally soaked, but we sat and drank and ate with him for about an hour anyway. What were we to do!

We have only been here a few days, but Somai has already taken us to the town that was worst hit by the tsunami. We saw the massive reconstruction effort as well as a police boat that was beached 1 km from the coast. It is amazing and scary, but also inspiring to see how life has sprung back to life here. The town we are living in was actually not very effected by the tsunami physically, but most people know at least one person that died.

Kara, who is a self-proclaimed city person, had the idea that we meet up with two other volunteers and go to a resort on Koh Kho Khao Island. I was up for anything, so we met up with the two other volunteers and are now staying in two bungalow. I feel like a queen here! When we got off the little shuttle, there was a man with a tray of matinis for us! Our room is equiped with slippers, robes, and umbrellas! Today we are planning to just sit by the pool and enjoy the sound of the ocean.

This Monday and Tuesday are actually Buddhist Lent, so there is no school. We are planning to go to an island off of Phuket for those two days. Thanks to everyone who is sending me e-mails. It is so nice to get little messages from home.