“We don’t generally know what day of the week we were born on.”

- us to our Thai teacher

We’re learning days of the week and other calendar information right now.  I can now tell all interested Thais when my birthday is. Pretty cool.  

Apparently in Thailand the newspaper horoscopes go by day of the week rather than astrological sign. So rather than being an Aries, Cancer, or Pisces, to read your horoscope in the daily paper you need to know which day of the week you were born on. Magazine horoscopes go by sign, because they’re published monthly... or something.  

Right after she teaches us the days of the week, Ajaan Jang asks us “Wan gud wan aray?” - On what day of the week were you born?  We’re like “Jigga wha? Making that shit up...” and then said random days. Drex was happy we just answered the question rather than being honest and saying we didn’t know. He tried to stress that a lot before our midterm - “You don’t actually need to know how to say all the different dishes of food,” he would tell us. “Just learn one or two you can say right away, without thinking about it. That’s all you need to do in order to pass.”

This story came from a few weeks ago, but in the flurry of Emily getting sick, I forgot to post it.  

Emily and Holly are teaching Burmese orphan refugee children English for their volunteer project.  The whole group of children are rather unwieldy and petulant.  Something about being starved of attention and suffering huge trauma before the age of 5 will do that to children.  Even in the midst of all this rambunctiousness, a few particularly bad kids stand out.  The first I heard about was Oo-Oo.  They’re pretty sure his name isn’t Oo-Oo, but he wouldn’t tell them his real name.  And he thought misbehaving was just the funniest thing ever. But apparently he’s coming around; he saved Emily from small(er) child tickle-tackle attacks the last time they went to school. 

Along with Oo-Oo another stand-out is Rock Throw Kid. The gist of the story is that one child likes to throw rocks at other children. He also hits them and runs around class a lot. (Recently he did something bad enough to warrant a visit from the principal, who carried him off by his ear.) One day, when much rock throwing occurred Em and Holly came back and discussed for a while what a problem child Rock Throw Kid was. The conversation ended like this:

Emily: “As much as I give rock throw kid a hard time for acting out, he did get kicked out of his country.” 

Holly: “Yeah, but so did head rock kid.”

*giggling*

Emily “And that is one thing that we've learned - social injustice does not beget social injustice.”

*more giggling*

I think our next installment will have to be Holly’s Song-Taow Chronicles. She has some great stories. All the exciting things happen to her.  Included will also be Andy and Chris’s Great Tuk-Tuk Adventure.