Thursday (11/20):

Today was a really good day. I woke up on time to go to school but then Golee told me I didn't have to come in the morning because she would just be teaching her Moral development classes. So I stayed home and cleaned the bathroom which OBVIOUSLY hadn't been cleaned in a LONG time! It was good that I could get it clean. It was gross. I also got to clean my room and bit and do my laundry.
Golee returned in the afternoon and we went back to school . At school I gave 6.2 another quiz/game. We played Bingo with the words that we had been studying. After class Golee had to leave but I stayed grading papers for an hour and then playing Scrabble with the girls for an hour. Then we had a meeting after school about the King's Award. Nawarat and Niyana talked about how the school was in competition with another school in the area for the King's Award. (Every year the Kings gives out awards of recognition to schools and this year Santitham was in the running for the Kindergarten level in a middle sized school). So the following Monday we were to have representatives from the King come to visit the school to evaluate it for the award, In order to receive them we had to set up the school really nice and fix it up.. pretty much for royalty.
So the meeting on that went until about 5:45pm. Golee and I rushed home to get ready for dinner. That night we were to have the family from Canada and two other families with small children over for dinner. I just had time to change before the families arrived. We had a ton of very good food including Tom Ka Gai (chicken in coconut milk soup), pork sticks, pork chili, and an amazing dessert of bananas in coconut milk. YUM! :) After dinner the younger kids played some English-Thai games. They were so cute! Then the kids and their parents played some games like “feeding each other bananas while blind folded” which was very entertaining to watch. Then we all played a game “staying on the shrinking boat” which got families very close to each other!
It was a really fun evening and it was a perfect end to a very busy day. I was glad to talk to the Canadian family and play games with the kids but I was also happy to get to bed after a very busy day. =D

Friday (11/21):

Went into school a little later today, around 11am. When I got to the school everything was pretty much out of order. All the teachers were around starting to set up for the King's Award committee so there were only a few teachers actually teaching which meant that each of these teachers had maybe 2 or 3 classes for maybe 2 or 3 hours! How exhausting! A lot of the older kids were just hanging around and helping sweep or something. I was immediately put to work when I got there and you'll never guess what they had me doing....they assigned me to cleaning the leave of all the plants in the area! Do you know how many plants are in that “area”?! I would have never thought to do such a thing but I suppose it did make a difference and it actually does help the plants grow but really?! Well, I was glad to help of course but it did shock me at first.
So I did that for the rest of the morning. At lunch Golee wasn't around so I ate by quickly by myself and then went to see what else I could do around the school to help. I think it was pretty hard for the teachers in charge of the whole 'preparation project' to tell me anything to do. They never really asked me to do anything that was complicated or important it seemed so at times I did feel kind of useless but I was there to help anyway I could. After lunch one of the teachers told me to take the 6.2 kids up to the classroom and to teach them! I was a bit hesitant, Golee still wasn't around and I had no idea what to do with them. Unfortunately, this was the roudy class too. It was a bit frustrating trying to tell them what I wanted to do because half of them were running around and to the other half I was trying to explain what it was I wanted them to do. AH! It turned out okay I guess. Golee showed up 30 minutes later and we played Hangman and they worked in their work books for the rest of the day. Again another very tiring day!

Saturday (11/22):

Woke up early today and went straight to the school to help out. There wasn't much to do that morning so we came back to the house and I helped Pat and Fon prepare food for that evening. We were suppose to have Feast at our house and we were going to have a “hot pot” style dinner. It was weird to see that after cutting the raw meat on a cutting board they would use the same board to cut the vegetables on without watching it. This, no doubt, had me a bit worried but I guess with a 'hot pot' dinner everything gets boiled anyways but still. Are Americans just over-conscious of and sensitive to things like this and they aren't really a big deal or are Thai people just completely unaware of health issues like this?
Anyways, we headed back to the school in the afternoon and just in time to meet up with the JY group. The family from Canada also showed up and we played some games together. I practiced some English with the JY group and then the kids played some soccer. Later in the afternoon, I went with Golee to run some errands. I got to talk to her a bit and I noticed I was feeling really comfortable around her. I liked that I was getting use to things.
For Feast that night we said prayers and sang. We went over the October 20th letter from the NSA about the conferences and I talked with Nadim and Christina (the Canadian famliy) about situation of Baha'is in our home communities and Thailand. It was very interesting to hear from them. Then we had the “hot pot” dinner which was really good – AND I didn't get sick from it! The rest of the evening we talked and sang and ate! It was another really good night.