Khon Kaen Travel

Last week was a fairly easy week of teaching, only 2 days due to holidays on monday and friday and then a Worldteach meeting in the city on thursday. Both of my teaching days fell on PlaPak Noi elementary school days which contributed to a less stressful week. However I was very sad to learn on Tuesday morning that a computer, printer, and radio was stolen from the school. The robbers cut a square hole in the metal gate protecting the lower outside classroom taking the school's valuable equipment. I know they don't have money to replace these items since I can already see they are in desperate need of a new chalkboard, desks, chairs...basically everything. Currently one of my students has to sit in a 3 legged chair holding up the corner with a missing leg or my students have to squint at the chaulkboard when I write because it is so badly damaged. I've been in contact with worldteach and I'm hoping soon I can set up some sort of fundraising effort with them for those of you who might be interested in helping out.

This weekend, due to the 3-day offs, I decided to travel to a neighboring Issan city of Khon Kaen with 2 other volunteers, Kaitlin and Jackie. It is located about 5 hours south-west of Nakhon Phanom. We caught a bus early friday morning and started our ride to the city. Every so often the bus would stop to pick up passangers on the side of the road or let someone off. Only about an hour into our journey after stopping at the sakhon nakon bus station (another city) the bus became full with passangers lining the aisle way (emergency exits don't exist!). I had the aisle seat meaning I was next to the people standing and learned it was perfectly okay for the standing passangers to take over and plop down on the outside arm rest. As you can imagine that means their back and lower half are basically in my face. In Thailand and most other countries personal space is not an issue. Actually living alone or even having alone time is something that Thais seldom have. Many volunteers especially living with host families seem to struggle sometimes to have a few hours of time to themselves. Back to the bus ride. I end up having a lady with extremely long hair perched next to me and her hair for the next hour is flinging into my face. Luckey due to more passangers loading she is moved farther to the back and is replaced by a man with a bag jetting out in the middle of my seat..mai bpen rai. A little after 1pm we arrive, head to get some vietamese spring rolls and after consulting our lonely planet book decide to stay at the hotel across from where we were eating.

For about $6 each we share a room equipped with air conditioning, hot water, and a comfy king-size bed! luxury. For the next 2 days we explore the city on foot seeing its main attraction of a lake where we rented a paddle boat for a $1, did some shopping of the local silk and tourist center, and wandered the night market. By the end of the 2nd day we had mastered the city, mostly meaning we knew the sawng tao (public transporation) route and what color and number goes where. At night we were so content with our hot water showers and cool comfy room that we took the time to relax and unwind with some reading. Early on sunday we caught the bus back into the city and safely arrived in our home city Nakhon Phanom, which lonely planet describes as "sleepy". NKP doesn't have the hustle as the other Issan cities and contains far less foreigners, which sometimes I enjoy.

*pictures of Khon Kaen lake paddle boat, and most dec-ed out motor bike

As for this week of teaching, it is "sports week" at my 2 elementary schools. I found that out today after being at school for over an hour waiting for my 6th graders to show up. Finally a teacher came in and told me "students play sport today...no teach." So that got me thinking... why did you pick me up for school today and what has been going on for the past hour...I have learned by now not to try and make sense of issues like these. I also learned that "no school tomorrow and next day..sport." This is the typical Thai way of letting us know what is going on and when. Trying to figure out any kind of schedule is basically impossible, you just learn to go with the flow. Good news is I have the next 2 days to make teaching materials and lesson plan. I'm attempting to construct some type of christmas tree and will be having my students make cut out snowflakes for the classroom next week :) This is kind of ironic though because today was 90 degrees and extremely humid. It is only suppose to last for another day or two but is giving us a little taste of what is in store for us come hot season!

Picture of "Issan" northeastern Thailand and it's cities. Nakhon Phanom is far upper right on boarder. Also you can see how thailand is broken into 5 sections North, North-East, Central, East and South.