On Thursday I had a sore throat. I woke up Friday morning, up in Umphium camp, able to speak only in a whisper and feeling otherwise fine. I was two hours from any substitute teacher and faced with only four weeks of class to go and a lot of things left to cover. I couldn't afford to cancel class just because I couldn't speak. On with the show!
It was quite the hilarious day. I taught in a whisper, writing things on the board, having students speak for me. Actually, I didn't do a lot of teaching, I got my students to do it for me. Not being able to speak kept me incredibly student-centered, always our goal, and focused on my 80:20 (student talking : teacher talking) ratio. What struck me afterwards is how easily my students went along with me. They never seemed to question my ability to teach a class without a voice. We had a great time. Of course, by the end of my five hours of teaching on Friday, I was quite exhausted.
The weekend went by fairly well also. I slept and read a lot. But it was not any more frustrating trying to communicate with people than it normally is around here. I went to the market where I don't speak Burmese or Thai, so not being able to speak at all was no big loss.
Three days later, I am gradually getting my voice back, but it is still quiet. I went out to the bar on Saturday night armed with a pad and pen, scribbling little notes to people and communicating mostly through their lip-reading skills and my body language. It was less difficult that I had imagined.
I encountered only one annoyance: a Norwegian woman who couldn't believe that I didn't lose my voice regularly. "If I couldn't speak, I'd be freaking out! You're dealing with this so well, you MUST have done this before." She actually didn't say that to me, she wrote it down on my pad of paper. Perhaps she was under the impression that my hearing was temporarily out of service along with my speaking ability. Her writing was almost illegible though. She kept bringing the conversation back to how
As I need to return to work tomorrow, I am going to have my first adventure with the Thai medical system this afternoon, which should be fun, particularly as I can't speak. But this weeks little ranting blog has a point:
Take a minute out of your day right now and think about all the things that you have that you are thankful for. Don’t just sit there and nod at another gushy cliché that belongs in a chain-email, really think about it for a second. Because being silent for a few days has made me learn a lot of things: about listening and judging how important what I have to say is before I have said it. But I am really looking forward to going back to being the big noisy girl that I am. I am thankful not only to be living in a world of lush greenery but that I have the capacity to see and appreciate it. I work in a place where you need your feet to get you where you're going and I have two healthy feet to take me there.
Amen.
1 comment:
Got back from a trip to NYC, where we were snowed in and had to sleep in the van. But waiting for me was the scarf and precious letter dense with love.
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