4 MONTHS!!

So, I've now officially been in Thailand for 4 months! Yay me! Over the last month my whole feeling about being here hasn't changed much (unlike how much is changed over the course of the first couple months), I've finally just settled into the routine of day-to-day life here. And I must admit, I'm quite enjoying myself. Which is making the time just fly by. When I think about the last month, it really doesn't seem like it's been a month long, instead mybe only a couple of weeks. Yet, soooo many things happened (massage course, optional trip, changing host families, starting back school...). It's strange how a month can seem so short while it contains soooo many things. One thing that's deffinately nice about being four months in though - I'm now halfway to my parents coming to visit me!! (they are coming in March, when I'll have been here for 8 months) Also, only 1 more month until I will be halfway through this entire thing.. Feeling kind of excited yet a little sad about that fact. Excited because everyone says it's the second half of exchange that is really amazing.. once you've done all the hard work in the first half of learning the language and adapting to the culture, the second half is supposed to be when it all pays off. I'm sad because once I'm halfway there, well I'm halfway there.

Today in the afternoon Patch and I went with 7 other students (and Ajarn Tassanee) to Pailin's school (Bromsgrove International School) as the first people to partake in Pailin's new quest of creating a relationship between our school and hers. I think it is a good idea because, well frankly, the impression I get from the students at Pailin's school is that they think a little too highly of themselves, and seem to look down on the students from my school... and I find this attitude really bugs me. Her school is super fancy, and full of foreigners, but everytime I go there I can't help but get the feeling that these teachers are there simply to get their Thai students (half of which are Thai, the other half are foreigners) to act like British citizens. Speaking English, wearing English school uniforms, going through the British school system. Forget their own Language? Forget their own culture? I mean really, if these teachers were here simply to help Thai students learn English, then they would be international teachers are public Thai schools, just like so many kind people I have met through AFS. But instead they are here to force English upon rich private school children? I don't really know how to explain it. My English seems to be failing me. It just seems to me like they are trying to repress something. Turn the "barbarian" Thais into "proper" British citizens. Besides the fact that they're still living in Thailand. I know it's not on the same level at all, but the whole Bromsgrove thing makes me think of the early years in Canada when Native American children were forced into Residential Schools and forced to speak English and forget their Native language. Not on the same level at all, really. It's just what it makes me think of. Not going to lie though, I really enjoyed eating the European food in the cafeteria there at lunch. Using a fork and knife (no spoon!) to eat my food for once. Eating an entire meal (complete with asparagus!) without rice... It was nice. The only thing I didn't enjoy about the meal were all the weird stares our group was getting from the rest of the students... esepcially staring at me. The only foreigner wearing a Thai school uniform, not a Bromsgrove one. But believe it or not, I actually felt proud to be wearing my Thai uniform. The Bromsgrove students just didn't seem to understand that I would come to Thailand and go to a THAI school. What is so hard to understand about that, I'm not quite sure. Maybe because they themselves would never dare attend a public school in this country? Eek, okay I could go on about this for ages... but I won't. There was one other thing (besides using a knife to cut my beef at lunch!) that I enjoyed quite a bit about visiting Pailin's school.. it was seeing cute little blond haired, blue eyed, freckled, school children. Don't get me wrong... Thai children are quite possibly the cutest kind of kids I have ever seen in my life. But after not seeing any little foreigner children for 4 months, they are quite a cute thing to see too.