Grooming habits

Elaine erupts with concern during our English lesson and thoroughly distracts the whole class. I’m confused until Marie comes over and points to a small scab on my leg. ‘Oh’ I go, rubbing at it a bit ‘I just shaved this morning.’

Four sets of uncomprehending stares are levelled at me.

I act out shaving, pretending I’m holding a razor and running it over my leg. They don’t get it. Thai women, I remember, don’t often shave. So I have them feel the hair on my arm and then the lack on my leg.

A Burglar in the Garden

Yesterday evening was an interesting evening.

On Saturday morning Amber, Kenzie and I had headed to an early morning market about 30 minutes south of us. Among our purchases we had several plants; some parsley, some mint, some tomatoes and a chilli plant that had been given to us despite protests that we’d never eat the chillies. We hoped to put them in our garden or some pots (We hadn’t really thought beyond ‘We want a herb garden, let’s buy some herbs’) and didn’t realise until we got home that we had neither pots or tools with which to garden. There was a brief escapade with one of our kitchen utensils by Amber, but the soil turned out to be too hard. So we put them in the fridge and left it for a day.

Fast-forward to Sunday afternoon. We’ve just left a cafe we’ve sat in for a few hours, more for the internet than the drinks, and Amber and Kenzie are planning to catch a songtaow to an evening service while I’m heading home with the noble intention of lesson planning, writing emails, doing my washing and other such mundane week-end trivia.

Get home, hop in shower, hop out, put on clean clothes, throw nasty-dirty-smelly clothes in the wash, bring all my work downstairs and then...

Perhaps I’ll put the sprinkler on. I bet the grass could use some water. 

Deliberate Distraction.

Spiders and flies is a game we’ve taught to the kids in PE. It’s not stayed there, emerging during mornings and breaks as group entertainment. It’s like tag, but the spider (It) has to stay on a line rather than run around, and flies run from one end of a space to the other, across the spider’s line. It’s great fun to watch.

We’re in the school bus (Recently acquired, and still a vague novelty to the kids.) dropping off the second to last child, and instead of leaving straight away we stay. The child’s mother bakes, a lot, and it’s amazing. All the teachers get bread and pastries from her and Joel’s (The schools ‘director’. Even he’s not sure of his own title. He was part of the founding group though, and is the westerner-in-charge. Cru Ooy is the thai-in-charge. We call her ‘boss’) taking the opportunity to order some. It’s probably also a subtle check-up; she’s recovering from cancer, and has been kind of adopted by the school family. They’re very good at looking after their own.

So, I hop out with the last two kids. Well, fall out. They’re laughing quite a lot, and getting stuck in the seats and dropping bags and I’m finding it too amusing to really be much use. I joke with the second child that we’re going to leave her here. “You’re going to live here now, ok? Really? You will sleep here? Ok!”