what's in a name?

Our human neighbors were fantastic. We lived in between the two assistant directors, one a man and the other a woman (we have no idea what their names are because everyone called them "assistant director"). The female assistant director we came to find out was not very liked and this poor old lady lived by herself and did not show her face much. The male assistant director was who led the construction of our house and was married to a woman who worked in the canteen. They had a son and a pitbull tied up in the back yard. He would often be building stuff out front and although his English was not great, he was always very friendly.
The most important of our neighbors were Pi Kung, her husband and their son. Pi Kung became like a mother to us while we were living there, always being sure that we had food and some times even entertaining us by taking us out on weekends and bringing us to people's home for dinner. We really had our strongest bond with her and her son Chev and we will miss them terribly.
We were introduced to Chev, a two year old, for the first time and he would not even look at us. We scared him because we looked so different, and he would hide behind his mom, sometimes crying until they left. One time, Pi Kung and Chev came to pick us up in a truck and Pi Kung said "look Chev is in the Chev." This is when she explained to us that Chev's full name was Chevorlet Colorado, named after their blue truck. I couldn't make this stuff up. Then she said that this other girl who lived near us was named High, for the Highlander her parents drove. We had thought that vegetable was weird, but these names were beyond our expectations (we later met two of Pi Kung's nephews, Toto and Yoyo, named after the dog in the wizard of Oz and the toy).
As we got to know Chevorlet Colorado and more importantly he got to know us we really fell in love with him and he provided hours of entertainment.
The more that

our house, our neighbors and their names

We spent the first three weeks of our stay with the family of Pi Ray one of the english teachers. As we mentioned in an earlier blog one of our housemates was "Pak" or "Anong", Pi ray's son, who was our first intro into how Thai people name there children. Everyone called him "Anong" which is the general thai word for " little kid" but his birth name is Pak. Over dinner one night we learned that Pi Ray loved to eat vegetables or in Thai "Pak". Her love for vegetables was its strongest during her pregnancy with "Pak" and therefore determined his name. We thought is was funny but kinda cool and didn't really think about it much more.Our stay with them was lovely but we were excited when they told us they were "building" us our own house. We soon discovered that by "building" they meant fixing up an already existing house (which actually was where Pi Ray's family had originally lived). Our house consisted of two floors. The first floor was all tiled, had a leather couch (Brigid's seat) and three leather chairs (Brian's seat), a TV that didn't work, a refrigerator, and a bathroom (including non flushing squatting toilet and cold shower). Upstairs were two rooms, one of them was scary and we shut the door and never went into and the other was the bedroom complete with school view, porch, and a "mattress" (two long hard pillows on the equally hard wooden floor). It soon became our home and we began to appreciate all of the little things that came with it. The geckos that lived with us that helped too control the large bug population. One of our favorite pastimes was watching the geckos hunt and eat bugs on our wall. We named all of the geckos, Max, Sam, Pedro, Julian, Becko, Nubs and Big Mama (about 6 inches long ). We also had lovely backyard neighbors, the roosters who would wake us up always in time for school with their crowing, frontyard neighbors, the cows who became increasingly more friendly as time went on even poking their head in the front door, and everyday visitors, the random dogs, Leo, Boom, and Fanta who had no real home but were taken care of by everyone and lived on school property. Brigid really struggled with these last neighbors because all she wanted to do was pet and love the dogs which she was not allowed to do because they were dirty street dogs.Even though she was not allowed to have contact with the dogs she still found ways to sneak food to them when Brian wasn't looking, and therefore ensuring their continual presence.
We had human neighbors as well....

what we taught

Somewhere between being famous and being embarrassed we have been teaching. We teach three classes a together a day and the age of our students range from 12-18, except on Fridays when we teach in the primary school where the students 8-11.
We started out a little rough with introductions. We were nervous and the students were shy so it was tough to get them to participate. However, we quickly learned that Thai students are really competitive so board races became our "go to move". It is important to note that when we say that we "taught" English (pahsat angrit, see we are learning to speak a little Thai!) it is more accurate to say that we played games with the students that were centered around English words. The most important thing for the students was to hear native English speakers talk and we left the grammar lessons to the teachers. We tried to think of lessons that they would have fun doing and to teach them words that would help them to extend their English vocab. Our next lesson idea was "Simon Says." We taught them verbs ranging from run and jump to dance and sing. This was certainly a hit with students. Once we had taught this lesson a couple of times to different classes we decided to spice it up a bit by adding "high five". Needless to say this resulted in ending many classes with a high five to one of the students and random high fives being thrown our way throughout the school day.
Another lesson that we taught was "Daily Activities." We taught students how to say things like brush your teeth, wash the dishes and shampoo your hair. They ended up teaching us how to say these things in Thai as well. After we went over all the phrases we would have board races where students would act out the phrase and the other students would have to say it in English while one person on the team wrote it on the board. This resulted in the following reinvention of daily activities:
"brush your teets"
"button your shit"
"shampoop your hair"

Amongst others. Each time we tried to keep a straight face while we corrected them. However, I can't tell you how many times Brian took a shower and said "I am just going to shampoop my hair."

We really loved our students and we like to think that they actually learned some English from us being there. There were a few students who would sometimes find us during the day and just sit and talk with us in order to practice their English. Learning English is really a means of leaving their tiny village of Ban Kram and some students saw it as their only way. We really hope that it was these students that we were able to help the most.

So I guess this is our 15 minutes of fame

Clearly, Brian and I stick out. Not only are we the only white people within 100 mile radius of our little village Ban Kram (if not more), but we are also giants, hovering a good 4- 12 inches above everyone (Julie, we finally know how you feel, we literally have to bend over to talk to people) and we speak only english with a few Thai words in a funny accent. Little did we know that it was exactly this that would launch us into star status.

First, it started with the yelling. A lot of "Hello," "How are you?"Brion," or "Breeget." We thought this was fun and we always yell back hello and ask students their name, even though only a brave few answer.

Then one day Brian and I sat outside at one of the tables at school and a small group of girls from another table started talking to us. Suddenly, they were at our table and then just as quickly we were surrounded by about 50 students. They started throwing paper and pens at us and asked us to sign our name. But not just our names, they wanted us to write "My name is." It was insane. Pieces of paper torn from text books or other little scraps thrown in front of us for our autograph.

Then people started drawing pictures of us and giving them to us. First, one of the girls in the house we were living in with the English teacher P'Ray and her family drew pictures of me and wrote in Thai that I was beautiful (once again, I had to believe P'Ray on this one, it really could say anything). She then drew a picture of Brian, her and me with a house in the background. P'Ray explained that this girl was not in fact her daughter, but that both of her parents had died and that she had just taken her in. She said that the picture said that she would like for Brian and I to be her parents. It was one of the hardest moments we have had so far in terms of realizing the suffering of some of these kids, in the poorest part of Thailand. On a lighter note, we also received a portrait drawn of Brian and I from these three girls that take us to lunch everyday in the canteen. Written at the top in English was " When you leave, I will miss you forever, I promise. Love forever." Rather intense seeing that this was given to us after sharing only two lunches with these girls (they have since requested a photo of Brian and I for them to keep).

Our fame recently reached new heights when we spent a weekend in Ubon Ratchathani for the Candle Festival there. This is one of the biggest festivals in Thailand celebrating the Buddhist monks and Ubon holds the largest parade/party of all. When we arrived at the parade we took our place near some of these giant floats made of wax that were candles to be offered at the temple. Within the first 30 minutes, 3 random Thai people had asked to take a photo with us. Then it became a regular thing. Either we would catch people taking photos from across the street or people would ask to take photos with us about every 5 minutes. Then as the day progressed and we started walking around, people would line up waiting to ask us questions (practicing their English) and then they would take a photo. At one point we were surrounded by about 15 Thai people and their was this father who started grabbing at our arms saying "my son wants to take a picture with you." It was crazy and honestly really exhausting. By the end of the day we were trying to cover our faces just to get out of there and people still chased after us. Brian said that now he can see why celebrities get so fed up with photographers, but we decided if we were making millions of dollars, we may have less of a problem with it.

When we return, if you could treat us like mini celebrities, that would REALLY make the transition easier. Thanks! B&B