Today we went back to the school. All the children were dressed in the clothes that my sister- in- law and niece sorted out from the Salvos and garage sales. After we had left the school yesterday the teacher must have taken the clothes and given each child something (of my 31 kg of luggage, over half was books and clothes!) they looked so cute...boys in girls clothes and girls in boys clothes...they didn't care! They were again excited to see us. We brought out some of the things that we bought yesterday, puppets, beading, construction and plasticine and worked with the children so the teacher could see how to use the supplies. (The teacher's husband was quite excited about the construction, one of the mums loved the threading and the teacher's sister (20) drew a lovely picture. they were just as excited as the children! Then I read a couple stories to the children...they loved Possum Magic..and we brought out the crayons and paper so they could draw pictures from the books. The teacher speaks a bit of English and Big translated if we got stuck!
After lunch we went to a Baptist dormitory school where 41 students from 3 to 17 live and go to the Thai English school. The children sang us several songs and they had such beautiful voices. The minister and his wife look after the children. The property belonged to Big's dad and they have made it quite self sufficient, pigs, chickens, roosters, ducks, pineapples, bananas and all sorts of vegetables. All the children have their jobs, washing floors, sweeping the dirt ( yes they do a lot of that here to keep it free of leaves!) watering, chopping firewood for the kitchen fire, washing clothes or cooking and were all hard at it while we looked around.
Quiet night, catching up on some sleep.
We don't realise how others struggle to live until you actually experience it. It must have been rewarding to see how they liked the things you gave them.
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