What's Happening?

Weekends have turned into less of a time for my leisure activities (whatever those might be) and more of a for intense physical struggle.  Last weekend it was vomit off the side of a mountain. This weekend it was starvation in a nearby province.  

I made a trip with 4 other teachers in the English department to Uttadarit Province a few hours South of Chiang Mai.  We were going to teach English to 4th, 5th, and 6th graders at a weekend English Camp at a school run by one of the Ajarns families.   See above for a charming picture of 4th graders matching school vocabulary with school pictures.  The entire day was about as cute as imaginable.  The kids liked to sing and dance. They also liked my nose which was written on several of their evaluation forms under things they enjoyed from the day: "Ajarn Rena's nose."  Please, call me Rena.  

Their English was limited to memorized songs which they could not recite out of order, and the phrase "Merry Christmas" which was said to me repeatedly as I walked around the school.  I taught them American marvels such as Duck, Duck, Goose and all of them took turns dancing with me during the dancing games.  

How is this an act of survival you might ask?  This was not.  This was bliss.  

What was survival were the housing conditions, or rather the culinary conditions of our 48 hour sojourn.  We were staying with the family of one of the Ajarns.  48 hours in Uttaradit and meals were sparse.  And by sparse I mean they occurred twice.  Breakfast and dinner were completely ignored, even after the 10 hour day of dancing with 9-year-olds.  To bed without supper.  Even when Lauren and I broke down and asked for it we were informed that the nearest food was 20 kilometers away.  

The reasons for our starvation were clearly physical and not financial.  Everyone watched their waistline as they squeezed into their Madonna brand jeans and Lauren and I ate small morsels of granola that had been smashed into the bottom of our backpacks from weeks of being forgotten.  

What they lacked in food they made up for in showers.  I was encouraged to shower so frequently that I ultimately took more showers in this 48 hour span than in a normal week.  

When we left Uttaradit I was intensely clean and starved to the point of potential diabetes.  Amazing Thailand.