Life in Rayong

What a difference a dozen kids make.. ;)

Just four boys here and all 17 and older, quite something else then 19 kids around ages 10-15. They do everything themselves, they don't ask for attention every single minute of the day.. It's like I'm living with four roommates, or five if you count Dada. :)
I love it, it's not like in Sangklaburi that I'm living in a home for boys; no, here I'm just living in a nice little town in Thailand with some friends, a few minutes drive from the beach. The sun is shining almost all day, except for a thunderstorm here and there.

We've got a car, an old pickup truck and I get to drive around in it, which is quite fun :) although Thai traffic can be a bit scary at times, there don't seem to be many rules, just drive as fast as you can. Actually the only thing the traffic police seems to do is to encourage everyone to just keep moving along swiftly. I hadn't really expected that I could get to drive a car here in Thailand, I completely forgot to get the necessary international driving permit, but apparently that is not an obstacle at all, licenses don't seem to be important. :)

As for work, I try to teach the guys English twice a day, in the morning and the afternoon.
Next week I will be teaching computer skills to a doctor who helps out with the kids, a lady in her fifties.
And they want me to start teaching yoga in the local fitness center, there is already a yoga class every evening, but the teacher is female so of course the Thai men can't go to her class.. :)
The solution is to get a man to teach, and that happens to be me, the only problem is that I don't know any yoga and I'm quite stiff limbed.. so I've been going to yoga class all last week now, trying to get into it.. It all seems quite funny to the teacher and the ladies who go to the class, first of course because I'm a Farang trying to join in with the Thai (that seems to be funny in any situation where there's a lot of Thai) and secondly because I can not make half of the postures. ;)
But I'll keep trying, even if it was just for the exercise. And about exercise when it's 30 degrees... pffff, I'm already hot and sweaty just when I walk slowly, can you imagine how bad it gets when I start doing exercises? But for the Thai it's no problem at all, they just as easily do an hour of aerobics!

But I'm not complaining, I really love it here and although I miss the kids in Sangklaburi a little bit, I think it's really quite a bit easier here and also more varied and I'm getting really involved in this community, meeting new people..
And all that just in my first week!
Who knows what the future is going to bring.

City of Angels

Krung Thep, City of Angels, that is what the Thai themselves call Bangkok.. (actually Krung Thep is just the start of a huge name which is somewhere between 50 and 100 letters)

Until now I couldn't really see a 'City of Angels' in the grey, busy, poluted Bangkok.. But I have to admit that it is really starting to grow on me, everytime I come back I like it more. :)

And it looks like I'll be seeing quite a lot of Bangkok the coming months, I finally met Dada Prema yesterday, he is the one running the project in Rayong, where I will be working the next few months. He is busy with a few different projects which require a lot of planning and meetings, with many of those meetings in Bangkok. And since I will be helping him I'll spend quite some time in Bangkok.. I think I'm going to enjoy the coming months. ;)

We will be leaving tomorrow afternoon, so the next update will probably be from Rayong.

Where are the updates?!?

Everybody has of course anxiously been awaiting new updates and I had quite a large new log entry about my last two weeks at Ananda Vidyadharma ready to be posted. But unfortunately at the moment it is lost in cyberspace, and I'm in back in Bangkok again, while my log entry is still in Sangklaburi.. :(
So I, and you with me, will have to wait until the new volunteer out there (Alex) can email it to me, which might be another week, considering the distance between the home and town.

Meanwhile you can check out the photos I took up until now here, enjoy. ;)

And a real update will follow tomorrow (I hope).

Metta

Second week at Ananda Vidyadharma

My second week here at the boys home has come and gone, I've been teaching some English in the evening and these kids are really motivated to learn, some are already really quite good. Reading and writing are of course the most difficult, it's a completely different alphabet and the way sentences are built up is very different from Thai, but still most are doing pretty good.
Also I help out with the computers, showing the kids how to use programs like office, so they can do their homework on the computer. And even helping out the Dada, who runs the place, with computer stuff, writing project proposals, researching how we can raise more money for the home and related projects, because money is very tight here.

It is all being done on donations, the boys all have a sponsor, most of them in Italy, who provide the money to buy food, clothes and to pay for school.. The rest of the money is even more difficult to raise, money to pay the staff, to keep up and expand the home, it all has to be found in little bits and pieces here and there..
So if you have something to give, send it here, it will be used well:
Neo-Humanist Foundation
Siam Commercial Bank
Account # 679-2-06258-4
Sangklaburi Branch
Thailand

Meanwhile, in between the time I started this log entry and posting it, my third week is already almost coming to an end, sorry that updates are a bit irregular in coming, but it's a half hour drive from the boys home to the nearest place with an internet connection, Sangklaburi, so we can't go there very often. And then when I get to the internet cafe it's always a fight to get everything I want to do done because it's all so very slow, computers keep crashing and yesterday the power went out just as I was finishing an important email.. Oh well, try again today. ;)

I've had some more interesting visitors to my hut this past week.. :) two days ago I saw my first rat running around my roof, I don't know why I was even surprised to see it, I live three meters from a pond, so of course there would be rats around.. And then a few days before that I found a small scorpion sitting on my mosquito net, a good thing I have a mosquito net or else it would probably have been waiting for me in my sleeping bag.. :)
They're not dangerous for people, but their sting can be very painful, so I was very careful when removing it, but I got my visitor out safely.

These kids learn so quickly, they really like to learn new things! Every time I read English with them I can notice improvements, they can read more words, they pronounce them better.
And also on the computer, most of them I have to show them only once how to do something and they can do it themselves after that.. Last week I taught one of them how to use MS Publisher and he just jumped on it, started experimenting and a few hours later already had made some very nice looking publications and the next day he was showing others how it worked and teaching them himself.

As for me, I've learned to play tabletennis! :) I had always been very bad at it, but some of these kids are so good at it, lightning reflexes, and they wanted me to play also, so I just joined in and of course the first few days I lost every game 10-0 or 10-1. But now after two weeks of practice I can play along with the lesser players, win a few games even.
I still don't stand a chance against the good players, but against the best three kids here nobody stands a chance.. ;) The best is a small kid of just 9/10 years old, he can just look over the table, but he's so fast.