November 6, 2006
Hello everyone, greetings from Phi Phi.
We wanted to fill you in on on the happenings from our last update. Things have been in a constant state of change. The school is still undergoing a massive rebuilding and construction project. Since moving into the school faculty housing about a month ago, this construction serves as our 6 AM wake up call every morning. Supposedly, the construction is to be completed by the end of the month, but we have some serious doubts as to the validity of that statement. If you think construction timelines fall behind in the States...visit Thailand. It has introduced us to a whole new level of patience...whether it's waiting for food at a restaurant, scheduled meetings to begin, or for the water to get turned on so that we can take our long awaited showers, we are constantly reminded that we are on "Thai Time" and might as well embrace it.
As for school, we just began our new term. Now we are primarily focusing on leading the teaching in grades 1-4 as opposed to playing a supporting role to the Thai teachers. We spent some time during the past month meeting with the Headmaster and English Coordinator assessing the goals and scope-and-sequence of the upcoming term. We helped to write a structured curriculum based off the poor books they were using. The school cannot afford new books for every student, so our efforts in modifying what they do have has proved to be very beneficial. We just began our second week of the term and things have started off on a positive note. The kids seems enthusiastic as ever and are responding well to our structured lessons. Future volunteers will also be able to add to and use these lessons to better benefit the students.
Currently the school is sponsoring the island's sports month. Since the moment it started we have enjoyed watching soccer (football, to rest of the world) with most of the Phi Phi community after school and into the evenings. It's been a great opportunity to meet our students' families. As we look around the concrete playing field (yes, they play soccer on asphalt) we constantly notice that we are the only western faces in the crowd. We've also had the opportunity to eat true traditional Thai food without western flair. They are in no way trying to cater to the tourist and we have found this to be some of the best food we've ever experienced. Sports month is an event that is looked forward to annually and we have enjoyed being a part of it. We learned today that before the tsunami there were 62 various teams competing in the sports tournaments. Now, there are 29 teams. Each year as the island continues to rebuild they hoping for more and more teams to participate.
Last night was another great cultural experience. Thai people celebrated their annual Loy Krathong festival. This festival takes place every year during the 11th month's full moon. The purpose of this festival is to release bad luck from the previous year. One does so by building a float out of banana trees and flowers and casting out into various bodies of water with burning incense and candles. People also drop in cut fingernails and hair for good health and money for financial stability in the upcoming year. When we learned of this festival we went to the Thai Market and bought the necessary supplies to make our own float. We released it into the ocean with the rest of the Phi Phi community. We'll let you know how our luck turns out....
As you can tell from this email, things are going great and we are really enjoying our time on the island. We know this could never have happened without all your support.
