This is the latest blog (slightly edited) from the aloys old boys in Northern Thailand on their service year with The Cardoner Project. Tom Lawson writes: I suppose the only real place to start is in saying that the company could scarcely be better. We’ve been together since January 4 (with the exception of Tim and Tim, who both rocked up shortly after) and morale has been consistently high, despite sleepless overnight bus rides to and from Laos (memorable for seeing us into Paddy’s 18th birthday), a fortnight long intensive Thai language course (intensive honestly is a little over the top – we averaged less than 3 hour days), Now to bring everyone that might be a little out of the loop up to speed – James Begbie, Tim Russell, Tim Robinson, Zach Martorana, Paddy Jenkins, Hugh Logan, Liam Thorne (a pom) and I have been living together in Huay Tong, a beautiful village in the north of Thailand (2 hours from Chiang Mai) with a population of about 500 since late January. We’re here to teach English as part of the Arrupe Education project run by the Jesuits to achieve better educational outcomes for the tribal children in the mountains. The Aloys boys listed above, as well as Zigi Blau, Sion Freed, Mark Jeyaraj, Fr David Braithwaite and Fr Chris Middleton spent January in Vietnam, Laos and Thailand, doing volunteer work ranging from working in an orphanage for the disabled to helping construct a church. We had an awesome three weeks, but that’s not what I’m commissioned to discuss – I’m just filling you in. This entire year – both the immersion and our stay in Huay Tong, was made possible by The Cardoner Project, and of course that wouldn’t be what it is without Fr David Braithwaite, so a big thanks to you, Fr. Dave! Now, as I said, we got to the Colombière house in late January – that’s the house we’re staying in, as I’m sure the astute amongst you will have guessed. For anyone interested it’s named after the Jesuit, Saint Claude de la Colombiere and is owned by the Boonlue family. As I was saying we arrived in the house in late January, and spent the first couple of weeks getting our bearings. It didn’t take long to appreciate the sheer magnitude of the “mai ben rai” (never mind/don’t worry) attitude of the locals – Zach ran out of fuel on one of his first trips on the bike. I came home, and Maliwan (an incredible human who is effectively our host mother) filled my water bottle with petrol, before I rode back to him. Neither of us were quite sure where the petrol was supposed to go, so we figured it must be where the oil goes – the only visible place to put any liquid (if anyone’s interested, the correct place to fill a bike is under the seat! That’s a piece of knowledge that I hope none of you learn the hard way). Anyway, Zach and I were both fairly concerned about the busted bike when we got home, but Sangvien (Maliwan’s husband, also a great human) just laughed about it the whole time he was fixing the thing, completely unsure of the extent of the damage. It was fine by the way; potentially very expensive problem averted! As well as getting to know the people, we explored the village itself. There are some really nice places around – the dam is stunning, we swim in it most days, and there’s a killer view from this Buddhist temple at the top of a huge hill (which we’ve been doing many a run over, and I’ll have you know this is maybe three times the Lavender Bay steps), which looks over the mountains and northward villages. The next thing we noticed was how incredibly strong the sense of community is in Huay Tong, extending to an extraordinary hospitality. From day one there’ve been smiles and greetings from just about every one passing on the street. When Maliwan’s cousin was married, everyone in the village got a free lunch. Just yesterday, us lads and stacks of the students we’ve been teaching went round to the houses of maybe the twenty most respected elderly people in the village to offer them a basket of goods from Maliwan’s shop, and receive their blessing – it’s a part of the Song Cran festival we’re in, which has been first and foremost a three day water fight. It’s seriously impressive to see the amount of respect accorded to the elderly by the young, and to see how nonchalant everyone is about having a dozen youths rock up at their places unannounced. To recap: we’re living in a paradise populated by extremely relaxed and friendly people. Teaching: it has been phenomenal. This is a little tricky to talk about because each one of us has had a different school, and so a different experience; I’ll try to be generic and speak on behalf of everyone, there are many commonalities. For one thing we all think we teach at the best school. The students are unreal, they have perfect balance on the fine line between being respectful and sometimes real cheeky and generally hilarious, they’re super keen to learn, and go mad for pak pon (free time)! They make each day tremendously interesting and fun. We’re actually right in the middle of the main school holidays, during which we’ve been teaching at this camp for Burmese students (the Karen people are generally more severely persecuted in Burma than Thailand). It’s been a really nice change from teaching primary for a couple of reasons; first because we’re now spending our days together; we’re even in pairs in the classroom, and secondly because their level of ability is miles ahead of our primary school students. It’s stacks of fun teaching simple vocab, but it has been refreshing to have some older students, who have conversational if rather basic English. There you have it, a miniscule percentage of some of the anecdotes and details of our time thus far. It would take a great deal more time or a far more concise writer to give you a half decent appreciation of what’s really going on, but hopefully this has provided some inkling of what we’ve been up to. Ask any one of us and we’ll gladly discuss Zoey’s, the death or slide, the quarry, Rocky, Ochi, big Kev, Addy’s, the chicken incident, Catherine, Mary, Bebe, Heblutsay, Ciril, or any of our students at the camp – so many hilarious characters, Sangvien’s rifle, 500 ten calls, the night of the 20 uni students, the night of the fire, football, the house rules (there are only two), the bike stacks, whiskey, debating Pokémon ethics, cricket, DQ, Bom and Raedo, the Don, building the dam, bizarre happenings at each of our schools, or just relaxing out the front of the shop; saying g’day to whoever’s there and trying to learn a bit of Thai or Karen. It’s been sensational.
Posted on: Sun, 20 Apr 2014 09:18:55 +0000
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