Why are there tire tracks on my cap?

Having personal experience of a Bkk hospital came in handy. We brought Kelsey to the hospital that treated me last year and she had a check-up complete with ultra sound and a visit to the headache clinic. The good news is that every thing's fine. We even got to see the ultra sound image. Kelsey said it was the best medical experience she's ever had and it only cost $150. including some meds.
After her check up we went to Bkk backpacker's heaven, Keo San Rd., where she got a room for $5. She hasn't decided if she's going back to Ayutthaya or not. I helped Liz find the airport bus and she's now back in Australia. If Kelsey doesn't return I'll be the only volunteer for awhile. It was neat to hear the young Thai students replicate her Liz's Australian accent to perfection. Now they'll learn so speak Minnesotan!
Bkk traffic comes to gridlock Friday after 3pm. Trying to get back to my guesthouse from Keo San Rd. was a bit difficult. Cabbies only shook their heads when they heard where we wanted to go. A Tuk Tuk driver said he'd take us to a Sky Train stop from which we could catch a train back. After endless delays he finally hit an open stretch of 8 lane streets. The sudden surge of speed caught me by surprise and the beautiful white cap Lars brought me from Norway went flying. The driver saw it go in his rear view mirror. He worked his way to the side of the street and backed until he was parallel with it. Dodging traffic he worked his way through 5 lanes of traffic to retrieve it with only one set of tire tracks on the cap for a souvenir.

In the Wat Salapoon Computer lab.

Imagine my surprise finding a computer lab with 30 computers in the temple school. So here I sit in a/c comfort reporting on my experience. I helped with a 5th grade class, they'll be all mine next week, played ping pong at lunch with the students and now am blogging.
Some things don't change; students are students. They behave well but are not regimented at all. They are comfortable moving around the room and collaborating on their work. Liz had a work sheet of a simple word find and a third of the class of 18 was able to compose an impressive list. I was quite impressed with the ability of some of the students to work in in English. Liz's experience and mentoring is very helpful to me. Of course I'm a curiosity here but they are used to a steady stream of volunteers coming through. One volunteer was 17 years old and most of them have been young. I suspect I'm the oldest they've had.
Last night the school's English teacher and her husband, also a teacher, took Liz and me out for dinner. Kelsey chose not to go. We went to a floating restaurant on the river for a lovely fish dinner. Their English is quite limited, but, by carrying a Thai-English dictionary we were able to converse. It was delightful to sit and watch the barge traffic going by (every barge has a family living on it).
After dinner the three (Liz, Kelsy, Al) of us went to the Chinese New Year's festival. About a mile of the main drag is blocked off for three nights of festival. You think you've seen red at a Pentecost Service wait till you see Chinese New Years. Both sides of the street were lined with food stalls, merchandise, performance stages, acrobats, etc. This was the 2nd of three nights
The class rooms are quite basic opening to the north. Overhead fans keep the temperatures quite comfortable. Students are used to doing drills and are comfortable responding as a group and almost totally unwilling to speak individually. Thailand's traditional resistance to colonialism blocked the teaching of English until 18 years ago. This means they have bit of catching up to do relative to some other countries but these youngsters are well on their way.
Sitting on the 2nd story deck of our house this morning I struck by the sounds; motorbikes purring by, Thai music floating from the distance, monks chanting at the temple, roosters crowing, a pickup truck with loudspeakers blaring an announcement, doves cooing, sparrows chirping, dogs barking, trucks rumbling past. Morning is glorious, perhaps 75 degrees, a slight breeze and after a cold shower I'm ready for the day.
Now we are about ready to teach a 4th grade class. It will be interesting to see the difference is English capability.

Cold showers!

Even in the tropics I don't like cold showers. It seems the older I get the less I like cold water but the a/c makes the night bearable and blocks the noise of the dog fights and the rooster crowing under my window in the morning. The sleeping pad I bought yesterday is a great help. Hey, but life is good as I continue to try to master a few words of Thai.
Gai, the woman who is looking after us, said this is a part time job. She lost her fulltime job as a dining room hostess in a Japanese restaurant because tourism was hit so hard by the airport closure and the weak economy. Everyone she knows she says is hurting. She's full of stories about the irresponsible behavior of some of the volunteers. My previous career makes some people nervous.
Tomorrow I will observe Liz as she teaches and take over her classes when school resumes on Monday. She's taught everything from grade 1 to 5.
Friday Liz, Chelsea and I will go to Bkk. Liz, on her way home, and Chelsea for a medical check up. I told her I knew something about medical care in Bkk. After seeing a doctor she'll decide about continuing in the program.
It is hot here...no sign of the cold front nor any snow! Probably a good thing I don't have a thermometer!
Keep those lesson plans for ESL coming ajnegstad@gmail.com

Can't wait!

The plot thickens. I had a delightful day. Gai, she's a combination cook, language teacher, guide and administrator of volunteer activities took me under her wing. She spent her morning trying to teach me Thai...good thing I brought my hearing aids! Then it was off to the temples; Ayutthaya was the ancient capital of Thailand until it was destroyed by the Burmese in the 1700's. The capital was then relocated to Bkk. There is a huge historical park filled with ruins. Once again I found the buildings less interesting than the people. She took me to the local version of the Mall of America where I invested in a sleeping pad...the mattress on my bed had padding equivalent to a couple of towels.
I have the downstairs of a house, bedroom and bath, and share a kitchen/dinning room upstairs with two other volunteers, Elizabeth, 47, a real teacher from Australia who leaves Friday,and Chelsea, age 22?, from Canada who's 3 months pregnant and not feeling very good. We make our own breakfast and Gai brings in dinner.
Liz and Chelsea have been filling me in on the teaching. None of the school's teachers speak English so we show up, someone will give a schedule, and teach. Liz has taught everything from 1st to 6th grade and I expect I will too. I will observe Liz on Thursday, as best we can tell there is no school on Friday and on Monday I'll take over Liz's classes. They report that the students do know some English, are very well behaved and motivated. I think it will be a blast. There were about 5 weeks without any volunteers because of the airport shut down. It seems the English the students do know is because of the volunteers. Any ESL teachers out there feel free to send lesson plans to ajnegstad@gmail.com

Well this IS an adventure!

Mr. Kai picked me up the guesthouse for the drive to my teaching site outside of Ayuthaya. He was unable to answer any of my questions about what was to happen so I began to wonder. Eventually I discovered he was only the driver to get me to Ayuthaya. He said Ms. Kai would explain it all once we arrived. I relaxed. Arriving at Ayuthaya we picked my Ms. Kai and drove to the yellow house on the outskirts of town. She showed me my room, which does have a/c but no hot water, said she'd bring dinner at 6pm, asked me how spicy I like my food and told me to call her if I need anything and, oh yes, there are two volunteers upstairs.
I wandered upstairs to meet the volunteers and learned the rest of the story. The school is a block away, there is no English teacher there and they put us in front of a room full of elementary students and say "teach". This should be a trip! One of the volunteers has been here a week the other a bit longer. This will truly be what we make of it! Seems that since we are volunteers they don't expect much of us other than suddenly being ready to teach a foreign language.
So, once I got settled in, I hopped a tuk-tuk and found this internet cafe. I raised the average about 50 years when I walked in.....there are at least a gazillion adolescents plainy video games. Wish I could transmit the sound that accompanies this experience.
Well....I'm going to explore a bit. I'll report tomorrow on the classroom!

Off to School

Soon I will be picked up and brought to the school where I will teach for the next three weeks. The information I've been provided my teaching /living situation is very sketchy which adds to the adventure. I've never been one to need to know all the details....I wouldn't remember them anyway.
I'm having trouble sending notices to my g-mail group that I've posted a blog. When I try I get an error message that says, '''' is not a valid e-mail address, please remove and resend. I have been unable to find '''' any place in my address book. If anyone has a solution please send it to me at ajnegstad@gmail.com

Why me?

The flight was less than half full and about an hour long. Thai Airways made it seem like the good old days with lunch served on a flight that began at 10:00am and included complimentary wine. Thus I returned to Bkk.
And, what a way of cruising the Mekong yesterday, sipping an Anchor Beer while sitting on the upper deck watching the scenery while eating Cambodian delicacies? That pretty well sums the day. And, it was a day, embarking at 10:30am and docking at 6pm. Twenty of Ravy's friends/family made up the group. The weather cooperated with a light cloud cover keeping temperatures moderate, upper 80s, and a light breeze besides. We went upriver several miles to a private island that the family had reserved for our barbecue picnic. True, there was no red jello, but those Cambodian women have the same understanding of the importance of food as the Scandinavian Americans with whom I grew up. Every two minutes someone was handing me another plate of food.
After a very leisurely picnic lunch we boated to another island and beached the boat at sandy stop for swimming. The claim was made that the water was clean enough for drinking, a claim the seemed belied by all the farmers I saw washing their cattle in the river. (Here a little sidebar. I also went boating on my first trip to PP in 94/95 when I witnessed a novel approach to off loading cattle. A cow was led to the edge of the deck, several people would give the cow a quick shove overboard and it would swim to shore. [Here a little sidebar on a sidebar. The next time somone tries to tell you they've been cow tipping ask them the last time they saw a cow sleep standing up.])
The boat hugged the shore as it traveled giving us a good view of the farmers and fishermen at work. Many of the fisherman are of the Cham ethnic group who are mostly Muslim. I saw fishermen on their tiny boat doing their 5pm prayers. One woman was in a sparkling white robe and I wondered how she could keep it so white living on a boat about 25 feet long.
Late afternoon must be bathing/washing time as the shoreline was filled with people either bathing or washing clothes or both.
The only shadow in the experience was the persistent question, Why me? Why was I on the boat and not one those struggling to eke out a living along the river? The answer doesn't provide a lot of comfort..."an accident of birth."

"New Day" Loves Emily

"When is Emily coming back?" "How old are you?" "Where are you from?" The delivery of books to "A New Day Cambodia" about doubled the schools library. When the children understood that I was Emily's friend they really got excited. Davin, her dad who drove us, and I had a delightful time visiting the orphanage, a misnomer because it is more a boarding school. The children were charming and very interested in hearing about Emily. From the top floor of the school you can see the huge garbage dump where the children would be working as scavengers if it were not for New Day. The dump is scheduled to be closed sometime in the future which will make it difficult for the students to walk home for the weekend. New Day pays the parents the equivalent of what the students would earn it they were scavenging. They study English at New Day and also attend the local elementary school. The experience makes me hope that my teaching experience in Thailand will have such wonderful children.
After our visit to New Day we had lunch at the Friends International Restaurant which is combination training experience for orphans from Friends and also a money maker for the orphanage. I forgot the combination that Emily gave me, for whom to ask, etc., so we had to be satisfied from looking from the outside.
Tonight Davin is taking me out for the latest Cambodian experience.

No Gideon Bible here

Greetings from dusty Phnom Penh! Thai Airways, "smooth as silk", fed us dinner on the 55 min. flight from Bangkok. The airport in PP has modernized in many ways. Now visa applications are handed out on the plane but there is still a table of 8 glum officials who pass each passport down the line each one doing some mysterious action. Entry visa is $20. paid in US dollar only. I'm perverse enough to enjoy seeing the French have to cough up US dollars in their former colony. Our Cambodian friends, Davin, her dad and nephew were waiting for me.
Here's a little of the Negstad/Cambodia history. In 1993 (hope I get the dates right from memory) Lisa came here to do a summer internship with Church World Service while in grad. school at Yale. The Vietnamese had left the occupation of the country which was now under UN supervision leading up to the elections in 1994. The day Lisa landed here the UN was evacuating UN dependants because of threats of violence by the Khmer Rouge. After her summer here Lisa went back to Yale and finished her degree and then was hired to be Church World Service's fiance and administration director for Cambodia. She served in this or similar capacity for three and half years. Lars and I came to visit her in very early '95 and he stayed on for a year working for the International Conference to Band Land Mines. A couple of years later Joanne and I visited. I accompanied Lisa when she came back for her first visit after she had left and I've visited 2 or 3 times since. It has been about six years since I was last here. Lisa became very close friends with a Cambodian woman, Ravy, who is about Lisa's age. She also was 'adopted' by Ravy's extended family. Ravy came to visit us in American several years ago and this winter Ravy's niece, Davin, spent some time over Christmas with us.
This may be more than you want to know but it gives context to my brief visit here these days. In an hour Davin will pick me up and we will travel to the orphanage where Emily volunteered and I'll deliver the educational books collected on her behalf. I'll report on that visit in my next blog.
While I'm here I'm staying in a guesthouse, $16. per night, across the street from Ravy and her family...thus the title of this blog.

Off to Phnom Penh

Last fall a remarkable young women, who attends the same church we do, Grace University Lutheran, spent several months volunteering in Cambodia. Her name is Emily Foecke and part of her work was at New Day Cambodia, and orphanage in Phnom Penh. Through the church and other contacts in America she collected educational books for the orphanage. Her sister, Leah, planned to deliver the books on a Thanksgiving trip to visit Emily. The shutdown of the airport in Bangkok prevented Leah from traveling. So I will deliver the books tomorrow. I suggest you read Emily's blog, this is a GOOD blog, :) at http://www.emilyincambodia.typepad.com beginning from her first days.
It has been five or six years since I was in PP and I'm looking forward seeing how it has changed and visiting the family that became good friends of our daughter, Lisa, when she lived there several years ago. I'll return to Bangkok on Sunday and begin my teaching stint on Monday. Stay tuned for an inside view of a temple school, 600 boys and girls, age 3 to 12. The school is near Thailand's ancient capital Ayuthaya which is about an hour north of Bangkok.

Struck Again

Yesterday after breakfast at the guesthouse I took the Sky Train to my favorite, family run e-mail cafe. About half way through my post something went "rurrruppp". It turned out to be my stomach and my annual bout of food poisoning. I decided to make a dash, that is as dashing as one can be riding the Sky Train luckily only about 4 stops, for my room and I just barely made it. Seems I get food poisoning every trip and usually when I've eaten in a reasonably nice restaurant. But this is the first time I've been poisoned by the Bangkok Christian guesthouse. It was bit milder than in the past and by dinner I was eating Pad Thai before a two hour Thai massage.
Last year the guesthouse was doing a survey re: should they put TV in the rooms. Well they did...a nice flat screen with a cautionary note about not damaging it. "Good" I thought, "I can watch CNN and BBC." The problem is that neither channel is available but I can watch the Russian version which is filled with beefy Russian men in bad suits standing around at endless ceremonies. At least I can surf the news on the guesthouse computer without the $$ meter running.
I picked up a book at the airport to read and it turned out to be exceptionally good. It is "Out Stealing Horses" and comes from Norway written by Per Petterson.
No snow yet.

International Marriage

Greetings from Bangkok!

An easy trip to Bangkok; I had two seats on both legs of the journey, was made more interesting by my seat neighbor to Tokyo. She, like many others on the plane which was only two thirds full, was heading home for Chinese New Year. Although she is ethnically Chinese, she is Malaysian by nationality. Ten years ago she married a Finnish American from Hibbing, MN. She moved to Hibbing in November and almost did not survive her first winter after having spent her entire life in tropical Malaysia. Her husband then took a job in Houston, TX, and that is where they now live. She has a managerial position with Wells Fargo. In a long conversation in which she talked about how lonely she is; no family in America, no Malaysian community in Houston, her husband's refusal to do anything in Chinatown, and his emotional unavailability, she said she felt trapped. After living ten years in America with a good job she no longer feels at home in Malaysia yet has no family or real community in America. Toward the end of the conversation I asked, "So, will you go back to Houston?" She replied, "Yes, because I have three dogs."
Bangkok is enjoying a long cold snap which is predicted to last two more weeks. The temperature got down to 59 a few days ago. I hope the cool spell lasts until I begin my teaching stint a week from today. My apartment when I'm teaching has neither a/c nor hot water.
Bangkok sight: steel workers several stories high wearing flip flops.