tangled, teaching, & thailand

after our long weekend of fun, the Thailand Team was back in action this week.
our three main areas that we are focusing on include work at the hospital, education at local schools, and work with DEPDC. Although my primary work and interest lies at DEPDC and human trafficking, this week I did a bit of everything! 


monday, we were set to teach our first class at DEPDC. i'm getting pretty use to the commute up to mai sai, yet still not thrilled about it. a hour & a half each way on a rickety, hot bus that stops every five minutes to pick people up and includes two stops where the police walk through to check documentation and such becomes tiresome. however, its all worth it! when we finally arrived monday morning, we found out that they currently have no teacher for the kinder gardeners. we were under the impression there would be about 20-25 kids to teach for an hour & a half, and then a second group after that. instead, we were greeted with 60 students handed to us for 4 hours. it was a bit hectic, to say the least. it was there first day at school. ever. depdc doesn't separate by grade, but by level. so our "kindergarteners" ranged from about 4 years old to 13 years old. trying to think of activities for such a wide age group was an instant struggle. however, we made it through and for the most part, i think the kids had fun.

bus ride to mai sai

police check && crowded bus

dave, krystal, & me w/ a few of our DEPDC students

tuesday was less hectic as we had half the amount of students and actually had a classroom to teach in. courtney and i planned the lesson and went over animals, numbers, greetings, and of course, some fun songs and games! they absolutely loved 'heads, shoulders, knees, & toes' and 'simon says'. there was one burmese girl (13 years old) who we just couldn't stump with 'simon says' and she won every time. before we were able to finish class, we were encompassed by smoke. yes, smoke. apparently it is a good time to fumigate and kill off mosquitoes in the middle of a school day with children there. we had no warning that this would be happening and the men who were spraying this smokey chemical everywhere just didn't seem to care! we had to get the kids out of the classroom and outside. only to be chased down by these workers spraying deet everywhere. so, let's just imagine me and the three other volunteers running away, with 30 kids, outside of the school. it was quite the site. regardless, it was a successful teaching day and i am just loving these kids more & more everyday!

escaping the deet fumigation

wednesday, i decided to check out a school that some other volunteers are teaching at. i had a great time. i taught five classes, grades 1, 2, 4, 5, & 6. the classes were extremely small in comparison to DEPDC. it is a very rural school, and very poor. there are only a few teachers there (who are actually thai interns) and there are fewer teachers than there are classes. this being said, when the teacher isn't teaching, the students are left alone to work on their own. as we moved to the different classrooms to teach throughout the day, the previous students would slip out of their own classes (in which they no longer had a teacher) and would stand and sit by the doors to watch us teach the other students. these students also have a soccer program for an hour after school and i was able to get showed up by these little pro athletes. eventually, i moved to the volleyball court with some of the girls.

they're honestly too cute.

todd & me playing pictionary & writing words w/ them

thursday i decided to go to the hospital and help with the non-smoking campaign. we helped them with a little parade and walked around the hospital handing out pamphlets to anyone and everyone. being at the hospital was, once again, a very sobering experience. on wednesday, the guys at the hospital took a call with a doctor on site of a motorcycle accident. there, they saw the lifeless body of a 17 year old in a ditch off the side of the road after a crash. our country director, dave, was the one to go through his phone to make the call to a family member to explain what happened. they were all present to see the mourning of the mother and brother of this boy. motorcycle accidents are a huge death factor here in thailand. one of the projects that some volunteers are going to work on is creating an awareness of the importance of wearing helmets and promoting street safety that so few people follow here. thursday afternoon, we met with AIDS Access. we will be working with kids (mostly teenagers) who are HIV positive. the goal of AIDS Access is to promote an awareness of HIV and its effects and to diminish stigmas. many of these teenagers struggle w/ self-esteem and self-worth and AIDS Access aims to improve this. here, i will be able to work with these teenagers and do activities with them to help. it will most likely just be a weekend thing, but i'm really looking forward to it.

a small portion of the waiting area

 

ready for the no smoking parade...we don't mess around.

our meeting w/ AIDS Access

friday has been spent researching. lots of researching. about the issue of statelessness. this is something that has really stood out to me since arriving in country. it seems to be the underlying factor to so many issues. without thai citizenship, individuals do not have access to state services and protection, which cripples their education and job opportunities while robbing them of public health care benefits as well as political representation. by law, the hill people can't even own land because farming is reserved for thai citizens. what really concerns me is that lack of citizenship is the greatest risk factor for a hilltribe girl or woman of being trafficked. what is frustrating, is that no one seems to understand the process of actually attaining citizenship. i've talked to the people at DEPDC as well as many others at a couple different organizations, and i hear different things every time. it's as if there is no structure to the whole system. it is also difficult since the government and agencies are corrupt and often take bribes from some people or choose not to help, etc. i've heard many different methods to getting citizenship including DNA testing (if their DNA matches a family member who has citizenship & legal documents) or having 12 (yes, TWELVE) witnesses sign a document that they saw an individual's actual birth in thailand. it's these kinds of things that are so frustrating...it's as if the government is trying to refrain from granting anyone citizenship. it's hard hearing about this and realizing there is so little that i can do. however, it's still something that i'm trying to understand better and learn more about. but for now, i'll continue to focus on my effort of prevention and working with these many stateless students at DEPDC.


&& of course, to balance out all the work, we make up with some fun events on nights & the weekend...

 saturday we took a trip to the white temple, the most unique watt there is in my opinion!

 to contrast w/ the white temple (which signifies the ascent to righteousness & nirvana), we then headed over to the black house (representing the elements of death)

 the designer, himself

me & krystal

rachel & me getting our ice cream/chocolate fix. i ate every bite.

 late night search in the rain for some good snacks...fail; everything was closed 

just another back of the truck journey in the rain w/ todd & courtney

...

one of my favorite experiences so far: a 'tangled' kind of night lighting floating lanterns

 prepping & lighting the lantern

 sending it off w/ a wish

holiday weekend recap

so, i was indeed spoiled again this weekend and able to join in on a lot of fun due to the holiday here in thailand-that being buddha's birthday, of course! saturday afternoon, we all packed our backpacks and ventured to chiang mai for the weekend. it was so fun to walk around the city and see all the attractions, but it also made me love chiang rai even more! although i love the convienences that the city has (like big malls and three story starbucks), i absolutely LOVE the feel of chiang rai--and malls just can't replace that. chiang mai is very crowded, loud, and a complete tourist city. i've kind of gotten used to being one of the only white people in the whole city! regardless, we all had an awesome time & i'm sure we'll visit again soon!



our first night in the city, ordering the "city's best curry" which, btw, wasn't the best curry in town-krystal & i found the best curry on monday and it left our mouths burnin for more!



somehow i ended up walking around the night bizarre every night. it was really cool seeing all the cool booths and all the different people out & cruising the town. the first night, krystal & i joined todd and hudson at the tailor and helped them pick out some material for some custom-made suits, pants, & shirts--look how snazzy they look!

night bizarre bonus: rotis. hudson introduced us to these, and it tops any funnel cake or anything i've ever tried-it's an middle eastern dish; think naan bread fried in butter & drizzled w/ sweetened condensed milk (and if you're like me--throw in some chocolate and bananas) divine.

 my favorite part of this picture is hudson in the background engulfing his roti--watching hudson eating roti, think about roti, talk about it, etc. has become one of my favorite things. we remind him of it often.

one night we walked down a pretty sketch road. no one in our group seemed to even notice except for krystal & me. up and down the street were "massage" parlors w/ young girls standing at the entrances. it didn't take much to figure out that these "massage" parolors acted as sex parlours for tourists. it was really an experience for me to walk down this street and see all that i've been reading about right before my eyes. besides our lost group walking down the street, the only people walking around were older men; this was a common occurrence:

younger thai girls coupled w/ older white men. it was kind of hard for me to look at this after having read many books that explore this whole industry. i think it's easy to look at these girls and simply deem them as prostitutes, but we really can't be sure of their situation. it's very possible that many are victims of trafficking or underage girls being forced into this business. many members of our group initially thought krystal & i were exaggerating what was going on and really believed the parlours to be legit. by the end of the walk, however, they were thoroughly convinced. after googling the name of this street also confirmed what we assumed to be going on as the first link said "sex massage...the biggest cluster of girlie bars is located in chiang mai..."

on a brighter note,

i enjoyed a nice, nomal, chicken-free, breakfast at a cafe around the corner & ate some muesli, yogurt, & fresh fruit which were all delish!

i also couldn't leave chiang mai w/out exploring some of the wats around the city!

i love when they have my "coca cola light" ! (the thai equivalent to diet coke)

okay. now, don't get too jealous for this one. but, monday i got to spend my afternoon with some adorable baby tigers :]

and i had to try to scare myself a little and face these big boys...however, they were just too cute for me to be scared!

as yesterday was buddha's birthday, our group walked down to the nearest temple to sit in on a ceremony in his honor

we walked around the temple three times: once for buddha, once for our old life, and once for our new life--we finished off w/ some fireworks that the monks made themselves. they literally exploded all over the place and even left some memorable holes in my shirt as the sparks burnt through my shirt.