Visiting the Rural School

Today we got up at a little early to go and meet up with the kids at the rural school to give all the gifts that we brought from the States. We arrived and the little kids were waiting in lines segregated by grade and they had been there for the last 30 minutes because we were a little late getting to the school. When we got there the kids had a traditional Thai dance ready to perform for us which was very fun and cool to see a variation of the dance that we are learning to perform In front of the entire university in Chang Mai. We then were asked to go up and dance with the kids which was very fun. We then started playing games with the entire school and learned a very fun game that I will run as a drill when I am a basketball coach in later years. The game is like this; you have a balloon with a rubber band tied to the end where you blow up the balloon, then you put the rubber band around one of your legs so the balloon is secured to you leg. Then the object of the game is to smash everyone elses balloon with you feet and to not have anyone smash your balloon, the last person standing wins. We then did sack races and then made our way down to the new playground that we bought for the kids this year. This playground cost our program 500 US dollars and it bought about 5000 dollars worth of stuff if you were to pay for it in the US. We had a dedicating ceremony and then we were told that we needed to paint the fence around the play ground so we then preceded to paint the fence in 100 degree heat and directly in the sun… My arms were very burnt after this but I didn’t notice that until later in the day when I could finally feel them.

Then we were taken to the cafeteria to have some lunch which we provided of hot noodle soup which again cost us 100 US dollars and it fed the entire school of 100 students and additional faculty and our group as well. The kids were really happy for the good food and were very excited looking at all of the toys that we had brought to the states. We then put all of the toys and gifts on the front table and preceded to teach the entire school the “itsy bitsy spider” and “mary had a little lamb” that was fun to see the younger kids have a good time with the songs. Then we gave out all of the toys and rain jackets to all of the kids at the school. They were very excited to have all the new things to play with and it was fun teaching these kids how to throw a Frisbee and what a whiffle ball is and what you do with them. It was very humbling to see these kids get ecstatic over receiving the smallest gift just because it was from the United States and because it came from us.

We then were given the opportunity to go into the classrooms and teach the little kids some small English phrases and things like that. I was chosen to go into the first grade classroom so this was the first day of the semester and they were very shy but they knew how to count to 10 and how to say hello so we practiced that and they did alright but they were again very shy and I think quite scared of me and how tall I was. On another note I have been pointed out so many times because of my height, It is almost getting annoying that anytime that we go into a grocery store or something like that we not only stick out like sore thumbs because we are American but I do especially because I am one of the taller people that they have ever seen in their lifetime.

After hanging out in the classrooms for about 45 minutes we were directed to go back to cafeteria to say our goodbyes and hop back on the bus to go back to the Swedish village. Thinking back on the day and what we as WSU students have done for this school is amazing and if we were not allowed to go on this trip because of the education abroad office freaking out we would have never been able to have the playground built and been able to give these kids the much needed rain jackets and toys that the kids love so much.
When we were back the village we celebrated one of the members birthday the only good way a group of Pullman kids could do…. We ended up drinking outside in the outdoor sitting area and watching an incredible thunderstorm roll in and dump rain on us for about 45min then it was gone and the humidity was gone for a short time.
Well that’s about it for today… we have to get up early tomorrow again to get on the bus to get to the private island on time.