Culture Day

A very crowded bus terminal

I am sitting at the Northern Bus Terminal waiting for my night bus to Mae Sot which will get me close to my final destination of Um Phang. We have a 5 day weekend so I am going to a remote part of the country that very few people ever go visit. Mae Sot is a small border town with Myanmar. I won’t be leaving Thailand since I just spent the day extending my tourist visa. I would love to check out Myanmar, but this trip up north is about getting to Um Phang.

To reach Um Phang (pronounced um pong) I’ll have to take another bus or rent a motorbike to do the 5 hour drive down the Death Highway. It got the name because there used to be a lot of guerrilla activity back in the 1980s and also because it winds down a narrow road through the mountains. It’s supposed to have some great views tho.

On Thursday at school the kids put on a performance. They were adorable! I am very impressed with their acting and singing! It was a cultural day at school so there were a few activities in the morning and no class for the whole day. It’s been a week long Christmas! I can’t remember if I mentioned it, but I only work in the English Program at DSRU which is a small section of the school. The rest of the kids are all in the regular Thai school. My kids take classes in Thai too.

This morning everyone gathered in the gymnasium. The program started off with Thai announcements and then all the English teachers stood up on stage to sing jingle bells. It was fun and pretty funny. Oh, before our singing began someone somehow lit one of the decorative xmas trees located at the back of the stage on fire. It didn’t burn much but I was cracking up about the whole situation.

Then our students acted out the whole nativity scene. They did a great job, but it was weird seeing them act that out since they are Buddhist …

Some of the Thai students did a slutty dance to K-Pop and a fashion show. It couldn’t have been more opposite than our kids performance. The EP kids were way better. Then a few groups got up and covered a couple songs. Once again the EP students were great!

The kids had a free day so we were done around noon. I headed off to the Immigration Office on the other side of town and extended my visa for another month. It ended up being a really easy process and took just under an hour once I arrived. (I think I might have gotten lucky too) The only thing that took a long time was getting around the city. I am sooo looking forward to moving to a tropical island with no traffic.

Christy and I were asked to teach for another month here at the school. It's not set in stone but if it happen it'll be perfect. I have definitely committed to the first 2 weeks and need to figure out what is going to happen with diving before I can decide if I can teach for the entire month.