Update

It’s late Tuesday night and I am on dorm duty at a migrant school in Mae Sot. The students are busy participating in a special ceremony for someone’s daughter’s birthday so things are quiet. One student has remained behind, noisily chatting with her brother in Burmese on a cell phone. Otherwise, the only sounds I can hear are of the crickets and other night creatures humming happily away in the dark, and the occasional murmur of discontent from the ginger cat who has taken to following me around.

I’m not sure how it got to be the end of July but suddenly a month has passed and it’s been a long time since I’ve posted anything or even updated anyone about what I’m doing.

This month and next month I am teaching at the Wide Horizons migrant educational project in Mae Sot. I teach every afternoon for three hours from Monday to Friday and I live at the dorm two nights a week helping students with homework and being on call if any emergencies arise. Emergencies occur when students get arrested outside the school compound (which happens a few times a year), when word comes of a police raid (which is rare) or when someone lobs a bomb at a building next door (which happened once last year).

Mostly dorm nights are quiet and are spend in the same way I spent so many nights in the refugee camp, living on a different time frame almost in a different world. So much of my evenings here are spent in conversation, just talking to people, eating together, washing dishes together, chatting about homework, hopes and whatever else people care to share.

Usually sometime after dinner I have a shower but not tonight because our water has been cut off for two day and soon there won’t even be enough to flush the toilets. Showers can be taken in one of two ways. The first way is to get a big bucket, fill it with water from the cistern, go into the bathroom, strip down and use a scoop to wash. The second is to scoop directly from the cistern outside, wearing a sarong the entire time. Although showering outside in public can be quite refreshing and is always very social, I prefer the more private method, personally.

When it gets dark and people get tired, they go to sleep (if their teachers haven’t burdened them with piles of homework) and they get up early to go to the morning market, to light cooking fires or to finish that last minute homework.

I get out of bed at the last possible moment, climb into clothes and find some hot water for a cup of coffee but I wake up fairly early myself. The compound where the school is located is also the home of several families and their various animals which include a large flock of ducks. Ducks, for anyone who doesn’t know this, are loud animals. Much louder than chickens, or even roosters. Every morning, it is the sound of the ducks under the house that wakes me up and I lie in bed drifting in and out of duck influenced dreams.

In the morning I sit at a little desk in the wooden house that is our office and type out the assignments I have for my writing job. Every week I rewrite ten articles about news relating to Iceland. If that seems a little random, it is. But in this fashion I have learned several interesting facts:

• Icelandair flies from Canada and the US to Europe and offers free stops in Iceland. Their prices are right and their business plan is brilliant.
• The government of Iceland recently opened up commercial whaling which is mostly supported by the local population but which draws huge international protests
• A lot of cool music and art comes from Iceland including strange woolen hats with knitted mustaches attached
• Iceland has glaciers as well as huge black sand deserts. It wasn’t always this way. Once it was green. People blame it on the sheep.

I also write a number of travel related articles every week, post a number of comments on my own travel related articles and post a number of articles about travel to various regions in Thailand.

Occasionally, I also plan lessons and correct homework, of course.

I was hired to teach two things: tools for critical thinking and teaching skills. This week marks the end of the first phase and today we started the unit on teaching. For the last two weeks of August I won’t be teaching at all, but rather observing my students as they take up two-week teaching positions in migrant schools around town and offering them feedback.

I’m living in the same house I’ve lived in since October 2005, a Thai style house made of wood with lots of windows high up on stilts. The house is shared with a beautiful cat named Frankie Baby who recently developed hereby unprecedented abilities to cuddle, a development which I am rather enjoying. Around the corner lives my boyfriend, a charming Australian whose wit, insight and general company I also enjoy.

Frankie Baby’s three kittens live at the school and one of them is currently curled up at my feet, mother of four newborn kittens herself. She follows me around everywhere meowing loudly whether she is fed or not. When I’m teaching, she often curls up at the edge of the classroom, if the dogs don’t chase her away. Chickens wander through the class as well and, of course, the ducks make up a lovely symphony in the background.

I have a ticket home to Calgary, Canada on December 18th 2007 and I plan to return from those cold climes sometime in January. Beyond that, plans for the future are rather thin on the ground, but when has it been otherwise?