Milestones

Greetings to the three people who haven't given up on this blog for lack of a timely update. As at least one person out there can attest, I love to write about my adventures, so when I fail to do so you can assume I have good reason. Life at NATR keeps me pretty busy.

Simon Says ...

Much like they were at Transworld, English lessons here are an emotional rollercoaster. A few weeks ago I taught my first class, a food-themed lesson on likes and dislikes, and it went astoundingly well; it was filled with fun activities and laughter, and by the end everyone was freely using the language. As the students exited the room they bowed to me with their hands clasped together and said "Thank you, teacher." It was perhaps one of the finest moments of my life.

That night, slightly buzzed on Singhas, I walked down one of Khuraburi's few side streets for several kilometers, until well after the sounds of blaring televisions and barking mongrels gave way to the ambient music of the jungle. I was practically skipping, reveling in having found something else that I'm great at and in such an amazing place. Then, a week later, I gave a grammar lesson on the verb "to be" that was so arduous I could barely keep from weeping before it was over. Things did pick up the next day when we played a game of "Simon Says" to act out some action verbs (I shall forever regret not getting a photo of me with the class as we jumped around singing Johnny Cash's "Ring of Fire").

We're starting several new sections of English this month, including an absolute beginner class and several classes aimed specifically at guiding. The team and I have been working through our bloodshot eyeballs putting all this together, having zero previous real-world experience designing needs analyses or syllabi. Luckily a new teacher with three year's of TEFL experience arrives in a couple weeks to help out. Solid.

Visa Run

In a waste of time and energy so colossal it could only be official bureaucracy, last Tuesday I made my first "visa run." My first month in Thailand--as long as I was here last year--had already passed, and my Visa was set to expire. Several others in the same predicament piled in the NATR truck with me that afternoon and headed to the port town of Ranong, where we took a forty-five minute boat ride to the port in Kawthaung in the Union of Myanmar (Burma). An imposing, breathtaking gilded pagoda stands sentinel over the poverty-stricken city, whose welcome sign, written in Burmese with its loops and curls, made me think of lollipops. We walked around town for ten minutes, surrounded by a mob of urchins trying to sell us Burmese currency, while the boatmen dealt with our passports.

Back in Ranong, we found a "farang" restaurant and dined in pizza-induced bliss. With all due respect to the local Khuraburi cuisine, I can't believe I've survived a whole month without cheese.

CBT

All of my writerly energy of late has been focused on creating an article about our new community-based tourism (CBT) program for the coastal fishing villages in this area, targeted at the Crooked Trails audience. Crooked Trails is planning to incorporate NATR's CBT program into their Thailand itinerary next fall! Check out the article if you're interested in learning more about this awesome new program. (Warning: It's been described as "phosphorescent prose").

Happy Birthday!

Last Thursday marked the first birthday in several years that I didn't spend on a beach in Baja, Mexico, with the Green Tortoise drinking my fill of home-made margaritas (and, on one occasion, waking up the next morning to collect my clothing, which was mysteriously scattered all over the beach). Instead I rang in the big 25/34/44 (whichever age I've told you) in the coastal fishing village of Tung Nam Dam piloting our aforementioned CBT program with a family from Boulder, CO (from them I learned my favorite coffeeshop there, Penny Lane, has closed). We spent the day hiking, collecting and processing natural rubber, roasting cashew nuts, and talking with our host family through an interpreter. I was in bed by 9:00 pm having--as it is a Muslim village--celebrated my first birthday since age seventeen without a single drink.

The visiting family had been at Golden Buddha Beach when the tsunami hit last year, and we spent the next emotional day at the site of the resort on Koh Phratong together. Their stories were incredible--the father was videotaping the twenty-five-foot-high wave when it was still some fifty miles away, then ran for high ground with only seconds to spare. Their descriptions of the sounds and emotions from that morning made the tragedy real to me in new ways.

That night I made up for my birthday sobriety at an raucous NATR party, where I was privileged to get nicely acquainted a lovely young French woman from another tsunami-relief organization who'd joined the festivities. Viva.

Et Cetera

A friend in Shanghai recently told me that she can't read this blog. These revolutionary ramblings are apparently censored in China!

If you clicked on the word "fun" in my last entry and watched the movie, that is in fact a small watermelon I smashed. Watermelon cricket is all the rage in our little NATR circle right now--the goal is to round the bases without getting hit by the watermelon shrapnel being hurled at you in all directions ... or to simply not lose an eye.

NATR legally became a corporation last week. I'm on the Board of Directors.

Opening my birthday gift--a Rublik's Cube!

The NATR gang in formal attire. That's cake on my face.