Introducing...

Before we arrived in Pattaya, many of our friends joked that they were certain we'd come home with a baby in our backpacks. It was certainly tempting! The babies in the Pattaya orphanage were, as you probably know, the cutest babies in the world. I may have gone on and on about that at some point in the not-so-distant past.

Anyway. It turns out that we did end up with a kid, in a way, though not a baby, and not in our backpacks.

Over the two months that we were at the Father Ray Foundation, we became well-acquainted with a 17-year-old boy named Chap. I can't go into the details of his past very much, though I will say that he has certainly had a hard life. A childhood of poverty and struggle has the potential to make a person bitter and jaded. However, through all of this hardship, Chap has still grown into a pleasant and friendly young man. He's taken on an informal role as a big brother at the Drop-In Centre, taking the younger kids under his wing and maintaining an orderly, safe environment for everyone. He can frequently be seen tending the gardens, sweeping the yard, and taking care of the new family of puppies. He is thoughtful and considerate of the needs of his peers, the volunteers, and the staff at the Centre, even preparing and setting aside food and drinks for them when he thinks they need them. His attention and drive in his private English lessons with BG are inspiring. He is learning in leaps and bounds, and in the two years that he's been at the Drop-In Centre, his English skills have surpassed those of many kids who have studied for many more, in formal schools. He understands that a solid education is the key to his future.

We had a talk about his "goals" one day -- what goals are, and what he wants from his life. Chap enjoys meeting new people, and wants a job where he can talk with people on a daily basis. He would like to work in a hotel, perhaps as a waiter or chef, or perhaps as a desk clerk. His goals are ambitious, but perfectly realistic and attainable: a home to call his own, a garden, and a dog. There aren't many 17-year-olds who would be happy with so few material possessions, but Chap understands more than most people how little happiness is attached to material things. He finds joy in the people around him, and truthfully, he brings joy to every person that has the pleasure of meeting him. He has touched so many people from administrators to volunteers to infrequent visitors. Nobody has ever forgotten the day they met the impressive young man named Chap.

Because we want Chap to attain his goals, we've decided to sponsor his education. We've had some very generous help from many of our friends and family in setting up his sponsorship fund, and I am not exaggerating a little bit when I say that it wouldn't have been possible without them. Still, we have enough money to pay for Chap's schooling and any related costs for the next few years, meaning that the promise of a real job, a house, and even a dog is a very real possibility for Chap.

Telling Chap that we were sponsoring him was a particularly moving experience. He was quiet, and we weren't sure that he understood everything we told him. We were certain he'd gotten it, though, when he came to us the next day with handmade bracelets and flowers and the vow to work very, very hard in school so he could get a job and maybe come to visit us one day in Canada. Tears were shed, promises were made. Saying goodbye on our last day there was wrenching.

Still, now we have even more reason to come back to Thailand.

Meet Chap:

Remember Remember Remember

• The kids showing me a red, swollen sting on Joom's face and telling me, "Bee boxing. Joom and Bee boxing."
• The baby bath time production line, where they are back in the nursery in under five minutes: tooth brushing, diaper and clothing removal, bath, powder, diaper, and re-dressed again by six different people.
  
• Watching one little guy piggyback himself on the backs of the other crawling babies because he couldn't be bothered to walk on his own.
• "Boy" and "Joe" in our English class drawing skeletons instead of stick figures for all of the new words we taught them: "Run", "Dance", and "Jump".
  
• The sign language phrase for "BG": a "B", plus a symbol for a very pointed nose.
• Learning that elastic pants keep cloth diapers from falling down, but not from leaking.
• Learning that pinning all three corners of said cloth diapers is very important, but not as important as not pinning the baby too.
• Sticky rice and mango. Mango smoothies. Mango milkshakes. Mango.
• Jackfruit. Just -- jackfruit.
  
• Re-learing how to play Tic-Tac-Toe, make paper dolls, and fold endless paper cranes.
  
• The look of wonderment on 30 little faces when the bubble solution comes out.
• Taking Auntie and Mr. Lee ("The Old People") for walks in the morning.
• Cappucino cocktails at the Cocktail bus.
• Condo's bike getting run over by the pickup truck.
• The transsexual cabaret show.
  
• Garfield and Poon learning to walk.
• Realizing that BG actually cannot blow soap bubbles.
  
• Leslie's story that her 94-year-old mother asked for a six-pack of Heineken and a box of straws because, "You get a better buzz if you drink beer through a straw."
• Andrew and Mike getting into religious and philosophical arguments over lunch.
• All of our wonderful fellow volunteers, the nannies, the teachers, and our wonderful, wonderful friends. Never in my life have I been surrounded by so much kindness and love.
  

School of Hugs

I can't believe we have only one week left. This makes me so sad.

People tell us we're doing such a good thing, making such a sacrifice, but it honestly doesn't feel like that at all. It's been fun. Every single day has been amazing. There have been less-than-stellar times for sure, like when BG had fertilizer pellets sprayed at him with homemade pellet guns, or when surly teenagers make wise-ass comments at us in class, but I figure that's just karma coming around again for all of the jerk-faced things we (I) did in high school. (Let's face it, no way did BG ever do anything bad.)

Babies greet us with outstretched arms. Our classes chorus together, "Good MOR-ning, TEA-cher!" at the beginning of class and "THANK you TEA-cher! See you again to-MOR-row!" at the end. The kids at the Drop-In Centre come running when we show up. We've gotten hugs, and manicures, and back massages, and more hugs. Every day I get to make a baby laugh, inhale that sweet baby head smell, piggy-back a kid, laugh at ridiculous antics. They cluster around us when we give them a little treat, and press their hands together and nod their heads in thanks. They squeeze our hands when they leave class, sit on our laps during story time, rest their heads on our shoulders. At every moment they want to be near us. We spoon food into baby mouths, one after an other. We tickle baby tummies and feet, and dress an endless production line of infants after bath time. We rub away the bite marks, wipe runny noses, and play airplane. We've watched so many of them come to the baby room for the first time, terrified by the noise, the commotion, the people. We see them settle in until they're at home in a matter of days. We've seen them go from rolling to crawling to walking to running.

Every day we leave exhausted, but know that we only want to come back again the next day. This has been perhaps the best thing I have ever done in my life, and I'm sad beyond words that it's coming to an end.

OPB (Other Peoples' Bananas)

We did a touristy thing today, the first one in weeks -- nay, months -- we went on an elephant trek with the Pattaya Elephant Village. Here, rescued elephants are put to work taking tourists for a stroll through the Thai countryside, instead of in circuses or on logging teams like they would be otherwise. The premise was thankfully simple; we sat on the back of an elephant, waded through a river, stopped to eat some leaves (her, not us), and came back to the start point via Land Cruiser for a platter of fruit (us, not her.) Neither elephant nor tourist was subjected to any elephant football matches, elephant tug-of-war, or elephant dancing.


Asian elephants are significantly smaller than their African counterparts, but they are still massive. Our little lady, Phun, is 32 years old and eats 200kg of leaves and fruit every day, and washes it all down with over 100L of water. She carried the two of us and her mahout with ease, strolling through the jungle like we weighed nothing. We brought three hands of bananas to feed her, but she somehow managed to eat the whole bundle in one squishy mouthful, peels, twine, and all within the first 5 minutes. We were abashed as our fellow elephant-riders doled our their banana jackpot one piece at a time. Thankfully, Phun was happy to chase other peoples' bananas for the rest of the trek.

Riding an elephant is hard. The path was bumpy, and elephants don't have shocks (ha ha.) We got jarred and jolted along, but I told myself that it was a good core strength workout and concentrated on staying upright. Also, I got caught in some branches that Phun walked through -- maybe as punishment for not having enough bananas.

Our next Pattaya tourist experience may or may not involve a transsexual cabaret show. Stay tuned...

Why We're Bad Teachers

The first order of business in our Secondary 1-6 English class today was to explain this T-shirt:



In Pattaya, it's not the "Sex instructor" part of the shirt that's offensive; it's the idea that it would be a free lesson that does it.

This was in the pile of t-shirts that was given to the teenagers today. I think someone should do a better job of "editing" the donations in the future.

Wet 'n' Wild

For the past week Pattaya has been in the throes of Songkran, which is the Thai New Year. It's actually supposed to be celebrated from April 13-15, which was at the beginning of this week, but for some reason, Pattaya celebrates on the 19th. Of course, this just means that the wet T-shirt contest lasts for an entire week. Last Sunday we were doused with water as we walked down Beach Road, and our faces were smeared with a white goopy paste as we passed the restaurants, shops, and bars. Any time we've left the property this week we've been at risk of being sprayed with hoses and water guns. Actually, on Thursday I got a bucket of water in the face as I rode my bicycle on the way to the orphanage.



Today was the official celebration at the orphanage, and BG and I were honoured as guests alongside the other teachers and administrators. Everyone was dressed up in their most colourful clothes, and all of the children wore traditional flowered Songkran shirts. BG had his own "falang" version: neon green with orange and yellow fish, with bright orange fisherman pants, while I was a vision in Easter-egg pink and aqua. The ceremony was brief but beautiful; there was a simple speech, and some traditional Thai dances performed by the orphans. Then the children lined up to pour scented water and flower petals on our hands; in turn, we tied strings around their wrists to wish them good luck for the upcoming year. We were given garlands of marigolds to wear around our necks as well. It was beautiful: Simple, peaceful, and moving. The respect that the children showed to their elders was impressive and not at all like the experiences we've had with them in class!



After the ceremony, mayhem descended. The orphanage and Redemptorist Centre are located on the main highway into Pattaya. It's normally four lanes of fast-moving traffic, but today cars crawled by, as the sidewalk teemed with people and huge barrels full of water. Pickup trucks with containers of water drove by, and the people in the back sent cascades of icy water onto the heads of pedestrians. As we walked, we were met with greetings of "Happy Songkran" -- more goopy paste applied to our faces, more buckets of icy water thrown down our backs. (The Volunteer Coordinator's pleas to the ladies to avoid white T-shirts and PLEASE wear a bra were finally understood.) The sidewalk was flooded. Kids danced in the water as street vendors prepared snacks and beverages for the Songkran-weary. BG was a vision in his throbbing neon outfit and ten-litre super-powered watergun (and something has dyed him orange! He looks like Jessica Simpson with a bad spray tan.) The party will likely continue well into the night, but I'm hiding out in our room, dry and cool, away from the insanity of the Thai New Year.





p.s. I know pictures of the Biggest Water Fight on Earth would be awesome, but with someone else's camera. Ours is triple-bagged, Ziploc style. Sorry.

Fritters of Time

Don't ask me what I mean by the title. I just liked the sound of it.

Actually, it's vaguely related to what we've been doing. Our time here in Pattaya has absolutely been flying by. Neither of us can quite believe we've been here for four weeks already! The only sense we get of time passing is the changes we see in the little ones: babies on wobbly legs when we first arrived are now inveterate walkers, and as the older babies are graduating to the toddler room, wee infants are moving into the comparatively rowdy baby room. Our little friends are beginning to know us on sight. I don't think there's a better feeling in the world than the one you get when a baby's face lights up at the sight of you; certainly there's no better sound than his or her unbridled laughter.

Our time with the older orphanage children has also been rewarding. Our classes definitely keep us on our toes! This week, we participated in the Primary 2-4 weekly cooking class; the students make a simple snack (with a little help from the grown ups) and sell it to anyone who's lucky (or unlucky) enough to be on the orphanage property at that time. This week, we volunteered a recipe for apple fritters -- Canadian enough for you? We had to find a recipe that was simple enough to be made by children, in a wok, cooked over an open flame, and of easily-found ingredients.







The fritters were a hit! Deep fried apples -- how could they not be? I suspect we could have deep fried horseshoes and they would still have been tasty. I know I would have still eaten them.

I have also been commissioned to teach 'self defense' at the Drop-In Centre, a hilarious endeavour when you consider that many of those kids have come off of the streets. Still, they have humoured me and have come to two classes. Nice kids, those.

I Used To Wonder Why I Like Her So Much

Me, Circa 1977:



Pattaya Orphanage, 2008:



Resemblance? What do you think?

Can't get enough of the babies? Check out photos here.

A Thousand Apologies

I would like to issue a formal-informal apology to all of my elementary school teachers: Mrs. Bertling, Ms. Lang, Mrs. VanHooren, Mr. Whittington, Mrs. Carroll, Mr. Edwards, Mr. Stephenson, Mr. Bertling, Miss Evanoff, Mrs. VanDerHoeven, and Mr. Luciani. I would like to also apologize to the day-care providers whose names I cannot remember; those who watched me tantrum, whine, and cry so much every day that I was withdrawn from preschool after only a week. I would like to apologize to all of the babysitters we ever had, and to my parents, for all of the nights I refused to sleep and for all of the meals I refused to eat (though I suspect there were very few of those.)

Taking care of kids is hard. Teaching kids is a massive undertaking that requires endless energy and an ability to think fast and improvise in order to dump pieces of useful and relevant information into the minds that have attention spans of a fruit fly with ADD while keeping some semblance of order for the sake of administrators, all without sedation or restraints.

We've started resorting to bribery by candy. Is this wrong?

I'm still learning how to feed an impatient and distracted mini-toddler from a bowl of food that already looks and smells like baby barf -- I wouldn't eat it, how can I expect them to want to? And we don't have high chairs, so said unwilling/uninterested child sits in my lap for the duration of the struggle. It's a battle of wills and a battle of minds that I am constantly losing. My shirt and pants are covered in baby food at the end of every day, but it's no big deal because everything needs to be washed thanks to being soaked in sweat (mine) and pee (not mine) anyway. The nannies can each feed three babies in the time it takes me to feed one. My only consolation is that BG is worse at it than I am.

Check out videos of the baby room and the toddler room below!

Toddlers!

Babies!

More babies!

Out of Wit

I'm exhausted.

Our English classes have begun. BG and I, on the verge of killing each other having not spent nearly enough time together over the past six months, are teaching two English classes together every morning -- Primary kids aged 7-9 and Secondary kids aged 13-17. We had grand plans to teach our primary kids their ABC's and numbers, teach them some fun songs, and some fruit names over the first week. Imagine our surprise -- and chagrin -- when they completed all of these things in the first twenty minutes of our first class, as they knew them all already. We filled in the gaps with some lamely improvised "Simon Says" and general chaos. The second class was more of a success; I'm not sure how much English they're actually learning, but they do like to us draw animals!

Our Secondary class is full of teenagers. Need I say more?

We still spend our afternoons with the babies and toddlers at the orphanage. At any given moment there are crying babies, screaming babies, sleeping babies, laughing babies. There are babies falling over like soggy, bottom-heavy dominoes. There are babies hitting each other over the head, repeatedly, with toys. There are babies climbing on volunteers, crawling on their nannies, climbing on their cribs. They fight over toys, step on each other, pull hair, push each other over, and still hold hands when they eat dinner. When they sleep, their legs and arms poke out of their cribs and into the cribs next to them. They waddle around on their chubby legs like tropical penguins gone amok, always on the verge of teetering over. It's madness. It's mayhem. It's anarchy.

The toddlers, though -- they make the babies seem like sweet, docile little lambs. They are like the babies in many ways, except they don't fall over as much, and are way more demanding. WAY. And they've totally mastered the climbing thing. They've also mastered manipulate-the-volunteer-by-crying-pitifully thing. And the pointing thing. And the jumping thing. Still, when a two-year-old motions you over in the dining hall, pats the bench beside him, and offers you his spoon, it's hard to not plan to come back the next day.

This evening I ventured out on an exciting quest to do laundry. The laundromats here are not so much buildings or even stores as they are randomly placed washing machines on the sidewalk. So, I sat outside in the limpid heat of the evening at a streetside food vendor and observed two not-very-believable Thai lady-boys work their magic. They had the hair, the makeup, the miniskirts, and the high heels. They also had the square jaws, the broad shoulders, the muscled arms and legs, the beer bellies, and the five o'clock shadows. I have a feeling that anyone that picks up one of these two by "accident" is actually looking for a little bit of "by accident on purpose." Right.

Madness and Mayhem

This post heralds our arrival in Thailand (a little late) and the end of the first vagabond leg of our trip. How can you tell? My backpack is empty. We actually arrived here on Saturday and have decided that Pattaya is maybe the least attractive city we've ever seen while also being the most welcoming place we ever imagined. It's not pretty; the buildings are stark and soulless, and the streets are practically crawling with pseudo-couples where one half is old, fat, and white, and the other half is young, pretty, and Thai. It is di.stur.bing. It is true that some of those couples may actually be legitimate, but it's also true that they're probably not. They suck. It's gross and repulsive and I don't know how these old men can face themselves every day. Blech. On the other hand, Pattaya is loaded with the sort of creature comforts we've been lacking for the past few months, namely Western supermarkets and, of course, Starbucks.

Our home away from home at the Father Ray Foundation are positively luxurious by our standards, with an ensuite bathroom that has a flushing toilet and hot water shower, television, fridge, air conditioning, and daily cleaning service. We may never leave at this point. We are fed three times a day, and our fellow volunteers seem to be lovely people. The gardens are lovely, there's a swimming pool, and we have bicycles to ride around in. However, all of this pales in comparison to the work being done here. The Foundation runs a School for the [sic] Disabled, a School for the Deaf, a School for the Blind, a Home for the Aged, a drop-in center for street kids (and a home for them too) and up until very recently, the Orphanage. The Orphanage is no longer being managed by the Foundation, but volunteers are still welcome there, which is how we found ourselves being swarmed by toddlers on Monday morning. There's nothing like a crowd of toddlers grabbing your hand, hugging your legs, and generally crawling all over you to make you feel loved. Later that day we hung out with the babies and witnessed as their masterful nannies put all 30-odd babies down for a nap; this is no small feat, as you can imagine!

While we're here, our primary responsibility is going to be teaching English classes to the Orphanage kids who are on summer vacation from school. We've been instructed to keep it "fun"; having never had English and fun simultaneously, we are at a loss as how to make this happen. Please advise!

In the afternoon we spent some time at the drop-in center. This is sort of like a transitional home for kids who are just coming off of the streets or generally have no place to go. We played dominoes, coloured, played marching band, and tag. It was a good day.

Today we met some of the residents of the Home for the Aged and went on an excursion to the nearby shopping plaza for a coffee. In the afternoon we had plans to take the kids from the School for the Blind to the beach, but inclement weather had us swimming in the school pool instead. You have not seen mayhem until you've seen ten blind primary school kids in a swimming pool with eight fully-clothed, full-grown volunteers. I hadn't seen an expression of such joy until some of these kids got in the water and kicked their legs. At the beginning of the session, one girl wouldn't let go of my hands even though she had on a flotation ring and held a styrofoam kick-board. Half an hour later, she was moving herself along the length of the pool without me. I think I'm beginning to get this whole "good deeds" feeling, and it's pretty damn addictive.