My memories of highschool, college, papers and tests is that things actually got done because there were repercussions for not doing them. School and professors... they were moderately fearful to the extent that I did my work most of the time, even if it meant leaving it the very last possible moment. And if things couldn't get done because i couldn't find time to write the paper between stage crew, eating, doing other work and playing dr mario on my computer, i would at least have had the decency to lie about it.

Exactly how am I respond to my 12 year old fourth grader, Nok, who tells me "I'm too lazy to work today. And I didn't feel like doing my homework last night." Couldn't she have at least tried to spice it up a little bit? Then she proceeded by disrupting class every 10 seconds shouting "booring boooring boooring" while lying on her back and feet waving in the air. Finally she sat up straight at her desk. But only to comment that I sure forgot a whole bunch of Thai in the three months I was gone. "How are we supposed to learn English from you when you speak Thai the way that you do?" She was going out of her way to push my buttons, and it was working. If there were a principle's office to send her to, I would have sent her there.

Yesterday at a staff soccer game, the kids on site cheered our players "Go team go!" and Nok sat behind the rest of the cheerleaders shouting, "Die team die!" with a smile on her face.

I hate to admit to this, but at one point Nok actually was one of my "favorites" during my last term. She was always focused in my class and expressed enthusiasm for being there. But since October, when I left, she has had a growth spurt and she now has what the thai staff refer as "arom mai dee" which means, a really bad attitude. In other words, this is puberty. And she's no longer a sweet little girl. And she's no longer a she. She is a genderless monster and I obviously lack the command of the language to have a warm felt chit chat with her.

It's things like these that make me not want to have children. They're way too moody and shifty and I take behavior like that way too personally from people who are 12.

One of our larger sponsors came over this week for a follow up meeting on a risk assessment they had done last year. The four foreign volunteers on site pulled an all-nighter writing a report and making a large power point presentation explaining work done in the year 2006 in response to this. This never happened during my last term, but there's been a turnover in English speaking staff. While all of those documents existed, they existed in Thai and they were all in the hands of about 16 different staff members on 5 different centres in the Chiang Rai province.

This last minute compliling of information wasn't our fault. And let's not even mention the fact that all four of us were pretty new to this kind of writing and the sponsor. And all four of us are under 25. It felt kindof like those college all nighters excepte it wasn't interrupted by banging my head on the desk for procrastinating so much. There wasn't any planning on my part that could have prevented that from happening. It just got to be worrisome when the sun started to rise, and I was past my second, third and fourth wind. I'd check over some of my sentences and they'd read like, "Preventative education is imporant for education prevention because it is a tool for preventing people from being educated." I'm glad there were three other people to read over my dada-esque treatise on NGOs in northern thailand.

I'm also glad that this responsibility of answering to sponsors and donors is being shared between four people. At least for now. We're learning from each other and I think it's refreshing that none of us are confined to that one position at all times.

Things got polished enough for the actual meeting, I think. We took turns typing up the minutes and I could feel myself falling asleep while typing words at the same time. I'd type every single detail that was going on because I was worried if I stopped typing I'd fall asleep and that would have looked more than just a little bad. And sleeping afterwards was sooo good. I rolled off the mat in my floor and passed out on the tile, once for 4 hours, then again for 7 hours, but it was after 42 hours of staying awake.

Unfortunately, I've been feeling braindead this entire week because of that one night. I've been moving pretty slowly. My reaction timing is all off. Someone once told me that sleep deprivation is possibly worse for you than crack. Crack, I bet, is a lot more fun than pretending to be well rested and alert while sitting in a conference room for 8 hours. I could never hold a job that required these sortof sleep patterns regularly.

Sim City Mae Sai

In only three months of not being here, this town has undergone rapid development. It was only yesterday that I was riding on the back of someone's bike that I noticed what was off the sides of the roads: posh looking stores with irredescent lighting and paints selling gourmet teas exported from china, frozen foods that were not available 3 months ago (I've yet to check it out) and a now a small amusement park with a toddler carousel and inflatable slide. Right now I'm sitting in a new internet cafe. It's two floors tall and they serve various beverages and cake. The chair underneath me is shaped like a hand and it is neon green and feels like velour. It looks like it should be in a museum of modern art. All of these things are novel for Mae Sai. I won't say that I don't like being in a comfortable internet cafe where there is wireless internet. I will say, though, that it's a little sad that everything that looked authenticly Thai and rustic along the back roads of Mae Sai is slowly disappearing in the midst of this overwhelmingly growing development.

Among the new developments are the new houses built further east of Mae Sai. I'm actually looking into one right now to share with one or two of my friends here, Dtii and Duan. My current single house rents out for 3000 baht a month. We just put a down payment on a house with two bedrooms for 2,300 baht. My share of the rent will be $25 US a month. That's 1/3 the price of my current house with more space.

At work, I haven't embarked upon the fundraising position full time. All the foreign representatives have been sharing it. We're each taking a funding organization to write reports for and it seems to be working really well. No one is getting burnt out and we all have the leverage to interact with the kids, teach, play games and dj over the radio with this flexibility. Amy will be working at a different centre in a few weeks at which point I'll probably be taking on more administrative work, but for now, things are very good in the work place. The only thing that could be better is if I had a day off. The community learning centre is now open for informal education on saturdays and sundays and I'm now on that time slot. At least it's only a few hours on the weekends...and this also makes me feel justified doing things like update the blog while it's still a Friday morning.

Thailand 2007

I'm back in Mae Sai.

In fact, the reality is that I knew I would be back here when I left in October last year. I told them I was about 95% positive I'd be coming back in January. It just didn't feel like it was at that wrapping up point but at the same time, it was time to be home for a little bit.

It felt weird to be in transit to Thailand. I made a few stops along the way to visit my Aunt Frances, Betty and Mary Clare in Tennessee, and then my sister Emily in Los Angeles. Those two stops along with the 15 hour layover in the Beijing airport where I paced back and forth endlessly, I was wondering to myself why I chose to work out this experience this way. I answered that question, "How was Thailand?" at least 1000 times. The way it was talked about in conversation, the experience was all in retrospect. It was all wrapped up and neatly filed away in the archives of life experiences and I led enough people to believe that I was ready to move onto the next thing.

But now I'm back. I was very warmly welcomed back by kids and staff alike and I spent my first day at work for 14 hours. To my surprise, everyone has said to me, "You lost weight!". No really, very much to my surprise, because I was referred to as the fat teacher for my last 6 months of working there. I guess the last month of my diet of holiday pies and chocolate paid off.

There were meetings with foreign sponsors and classes that needed to be substituted at the very last minute. Unfortunately, even after all that time in the work place, dusting off my Thai and interacting with various staff members, I never actually sat down to talk to the directors about what I'd be doing this term. After all, now there are other people taking care of my previous responsibilities. About a month ago, our grant writer figure left the organization and volunteers have had to fill in for her without having had the experience before. This new volunteer, Amy, a very bright woman, very proficient in Thai, has been filling in for her. I remember recieving her application while I was working last year and I knew she was mostly interested in working at our centre for victims of trafficking and not an administrative position. It looks and sounds like she's been doing an excellent job in place of Elaine, but it might be against her volition that she's ended up with that job. She's been in Thailand for 2 years working for NGOs, and she's really eager to be involved in the work that is personally active in working with victims. This isn't what she signed up for exactly.

Tomorrow we're having a meeting with all of the volunteers to talk about responsibilties...our desires, capabilities, how we'd each be most useful in the workplace. Until then, I am just a radio DJ and substitute teacher.