Books. Check 'em Out.

Yesterday I was feeling sorry for myself.  I'm lonely beyond any lonliness I've ever felt before.  I'm tired.  I'm hot.  I'm feeling useless.  My brain is fried from attempting to live in another language and culture.  I feel like my life is on hold and everyone else is moving forward.  And there is a good chance I'm coming down with some weird illness.  Again.

So if you talked to me yesterday, I apologize.  Because no one should be subject to such bitter depression, anger, and pleas of "WHY ME???." 

I let myself mope ALL DAY to anyone that would listen, then left work early to buy a salad at the market about 3k away (surprise, the Salad Lady wasn't there, only upsetting me even more).  On the way home, I decided to stop at a school and give away some books that Peace Corps mailed to all volunteers from an organization called Books for Thailand. 

To make a long story short, this visit resulted in a photo of me "giving" the books to the pricipal and scheduling a reading session the following morning for the kids.  I promised to read aloud in English if they, in turn, would read aloud to me in Thai.  Suddenly, my terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day made me remember why I decided to leave my home to help others: to improve literacy rates, encourage reading, and impact the quality of education in developing nations.

And today, that's what I did.  I started to achieve the goal I set out to do, and hopefully, planted the seeds of reading in 63 Thai children's minds.  I read to the kids, the kids read to me, then to each other, and then we played some games.  All in all, I'd say it was a pretty good morning. 

One of my more eager students reading to the class. This guy
in the front loved the book so much he kept standing up to see
the pages. The other students were yelling at him to sit down.

The boys actually chose this book themselves.  It had English,
and Thai so they begged me to read it to them in English.
Proving once and for all that pink and princesses are a
result of nurture not nature.   :)
 

One of the students reading to the class.  It's a huge deal to get
students to participate like this.  So proud of her!