Feeling productive and I love it!

I know I just updated this a few days ago, but this week has been action-packed and I already have so much more to update ya'll on...

So I'm pretty sure it took the first month at site for everyone to warm up to me and understand why the "forang" (foreigner) is actually here. Now that most everyone understands my purpose, they are no longer shy to ask me for help. This week was the first week that I finally started teaching. Monday was my first class at the SAO (where I work). I taught English from 4:30 to 5:30 to about 10 people. My counterpart has also been advertising this class to everyone we talk to so I think next week's class will have grown in size. On Tuesdays, I teach one of the local kids in my village from 6-7 pm at my house. Apparently his parents are friends with one of the people at my work so that is how this got set up. I teach for free since the Peace Corps won't allow us to profit from any of this, so in return for me teaching English his mom said she would help me with my Thai, which I feel is a great exchange. They also bring me food each class because I live alone and apparently have no idea how to fend for myself, but it is delicious so I don't argue with her :) Then on Wednesdays every week I will be teaching at one of the local schools for an hour from 2:30 to 3:30. The Paw Aw (head of the school) originally wanted me to teach a group of 80 students, but I obviously put my foot down and said that I would draw the line at 20. He was definitely trying to take advantage, which I have learned from the Peace Corps is not acceptable, haha. Then to finish off the week, I teach yoga to a group of health volunteers at the village health station on Friday from 10-11 am. This is obviously the most interesting of the classes that I teach, seeing how I have never been a yoga teacher and have only been to about 10 yoga classes in my life.

This was my first week for each of these classes and overall, it was amazing! The SAO class on Monday is a little boring and difficult becuase the level of English varies dramatically with each person. Teaching at the school was a BLAST!!! We played a game for most of the hour dealing with the names of the body parts. I drew two bodies on the whiteboard and then taped little pieces of paper with body part names written on each one next to the bodies. I then split the class into two groups so they could compete against each other. I gave each kid a number and then would call out a body part and a number and the two kids from each team would compete to see who could match the right name with the body part the fastest and then sit back down. The kids loved it!!! I gave candy to the winning team, which clearly upped the intensity.

Yoga was also a lot more fun than expected. I was a little nervous going into this, which is understandable from the lack of knowledge on my part. I looked up the positions online beforehand at the office and then practiced it once at home before the class. I understood each pose, but actually demostrating them was a little more challenging. The women were great though and just had fun with it. In fact, so many women showed up that I had to give two classes. They also want to continue the class and do it again next week, which is definitely promising. Usually Thais tend to flake out and classes don't last very long. It is still the first week though, so we'll see. I did meet some new friends from the class though. One lady even invited me to a monk party today. She showed up at my house this morning around 9, and hour before she said she would be there. I hurried to get ready so that I could go to this party and dance in the street to a Thai marching band for about 2.5 hours. These parties can be fun, but I have been to so many that I've lost count, and after awhile they start to get old. The songs are usually the same and everyone tries to pull the "forang" up infront of to dance, while the other 40-50 people watch. Being the live entertainment of the party is only fun if you have some liquid courage to help you out...aka liquor! Being sober at 9 in the morning and forced to dance for multiple hours in the hot hot sun starts to lose its appeal after awhile. It was fun though and I was able to meet quite a few more people from my village that I had yet to meet. It was good IRBing I suppose (intentional relationship building). They want me to come back tonight for the dinner and performance, aka ladyboys singing and dancing on stage to tacky Thai music. I'm not sure if I will go. I hope it rains and then I will just blame it on that, I do have to ride my bike there, haha :)

All in all, this week was fabulous and I have finally starting helping my community! They are definitely small steps, but in the right direction...