Kids and Motorcycles

In one of my past blogs I talked about motorcyclesand how in Thailand it is not uncommon to see children driving them. I had mentioned how, even though it is against the law for children to drive motorcycles, it almost always goes unnoticed and unenforced. The other day I was walking home from one of my many trips and saw one of my neighbor kids driving a motorcycle with his baby brother...and no that is not a white child, this little boy is albino and really loved by the community. I took this picture partly because I wanted to show how children drive motorcycles and partly because every time I see the older child he yells at me to ask me where I am going and where I have come from. The little boy driving is still in elementary school and is only 9 or 10 years old. I often times complain of living in a country where there are no rules...its because many of the ones that they actually have are really never enforced, so people ignore them. I dont mean to say that all rules go disreguarded, but a lot of them often do.

Theatre Festival 1

I have had one BUSY week! The day after my HIV/AIDS camp Becky, her Mom (who came to visit), and I all headed off to Korat for the 4th annual Theatre Festival put on by the Peace Corps Volunteers. Korat is in the region known as Issan, a very dry and large area of Thailand to the east. The festival was 2 days and had 250 students from about 6 different provinces attend. I didnt bring a group this year, but I helped with teaching and planning of the festival and made all of the red and blue Thai Youth Theatre t-shirts . I made 300 of them and they were really fun (sarcasm) to take on a 10 hour bus ride where we had to keep taking them on and off as we changed vehicles. The first day of the festival we did workshops about different aspects of theatre. Emily and I taught about theatrical make-up. The second day the children actually got to perform the plays. This year the festival was held at a high school for the performing arts. It also had a national theatre on the campus that all of the students at the festival got a tour of and had the chance to see a professional production there on Sunday. The festival was very successful this year, and we leave the project in the capable hands of group 118.

Photo 1: When the students arrived on Friday they were all really tired and pretty much went straight to bed, so they were ready for the next days activities. Here is a picture of a little boy that took a train all night from Chiang Mai. He was plum tuckered out!

Photo 2: For every meal the students who actually attend the high school did performances for us. Here are a few doing traditional Thai dancing from Issan while an orchestra plays Issan music in the background.

Photo 3: Here is a student doing a make-up design at one of the workshops.

Photo 4: These students are learning about costuming with Bryn.

Photo 5: These students are getting to actually practice using theatrical make-up. Im pretty sure this students inspiration is drag queen...what do you think?

Theatre Festival 2

The Productions Performed by the students!
Picture 1: This is Merissa's group from Chiang Mai. They did a dramatic play about a woman and a soldier who fall and love and have a baby. Then the woman kills herself leaving the child with his father and his new wife. It was very creativly done and they made wonderful masks, one of Merissa's specialties.

Picture 2: This is Sarah from 118s group. They did a story about a queen and her subjects who plan a party for her. They comes from down south, where the majority of Thailands Muslim population live, as you can see from the girls who are wearing the head scarves. It made for a wonderful cultural mix at the festival, since most of Thailands people are Buddhist.

Picture 3: This is one of Liesbeths group. They did a really fun production of " The Wizard of Oz".

Picture 4: This is one of Katie's group. They did the story of " Cinderella". The costumes were really big and frilly...which were perfect for a Thai production of " Cinderella".

Picture 5: This is another of Liesbeths groups. They did the story of " Snow White and the 7 Dwarves". The little boy with the dark blue hat on played Sneezy the dwarf and was so cute as before he said a line he let out gigantic sneezes.

Picture 6: This is Robert from 118s group. He did a take off of "Cinderella" called " Spiderella", as all of the characters played bugs. It was really adorable!

Theatre Festival 3

Picture 1: This is the play Katie did. She directed a traditional Thai fable that comes from her province of Pitchit called "Chalawan". Its about a crocodile who can turn into a man and steals two girls for his wives. It was really fun to watch.

Picture 2: This girl is from a group that Liesbeth invited to the play, but was entirely produced and directed by Thai people....which is awesome considering they dont have much dramatic theatre in their culture! I did this girls make-up. She told me she was Dracula when in reality she was playing the ghost of Christmas yet to come in " A Christmas Carol". I guess thats not too far of a stretch, but I might have done it a little differently if I had known that was actually the part she was playing. At least I didnt put blood marks around her mouth.

Picture 3: This group comes from Chumphon Province, down south. They had a volunteer at their site 4 years ago and have continued to do plays since he left! They did Macbeth, which was so amazing. It is a community group of high school students that make up this group and their performance was almost professional! The sound affects and sets were just very well done!

Picture 4: These are some of the volunteers, watching the plays, that either helped get the festival together or just came to watch. From right to left Bryn, Merissa, Emily, Natalie, Tara, and Becky.

Picture 5: This is a picture of most of the students that attended the festival. Unfortunately, they didnt get all of them in the picture. There were about 250 in all. Instead of Where's Waldo think Where's Wesley;)

Super model Poses

At the Theatre festival Emily and I did the theatrical make-up workshop. At the end of the day we decided to be goofy and do each others make-up. My inspiration for her was a rainstorm... because I gave her lots of blue make-up and way too much eye liner. She nick named me jack because after she finished it looked like someone jacked me up. Then we did a montage of super model poses.

AIDS/ Leadership Camp 1

As many of you know Becky( another Peace Corps Volunteer in my province) and I have spent the past 5 months of countless hours and stress preparing for and developing an AIDS/ Leadership camp for high school students. Well, it finally happened. It was a 3 day camp taking place on the 22-24 of January. Ten students and 1 teacher from 7 schools in my community came to participate. The premise of the camp was basically to help build students leadership abilities, teach them about HIV/AIDS, and then have them take the information they learned and go back to their schools to peer teach. The camp was ran by teachers, nurses, and community members. We wanted to do this type of camp because children generally listen to their peers more than their teachers and we thought it would be the best way to get the information to a lot of people on a small budget and with little time. We couldn't have asked for the camp to go better or smoother, but I guess thats what happens when you have a great community helping you and have spent the past 5 months working on it. We worked really hard to get about 1000 dollars by writing grants to the United States Government through Peace Corps and through community donations to be able to pull this project off. We were able to create a camp that was almost completely taught by Thai people so that we could facilitate and not have to worry about the children trying to understand our accents. This was also wonderful because it will help to show Thai people in our community that they are able to do projects like this on their own in the future. HIV/AIDS is very misunderstood in Thailand, but with programs like this it is slowly becoming more understood and people are better able to prevent themselves from contracting this disease and help the people that do get it.

Picture 1: This is a picture of our sign for the camp. Yes I know it is grammatically in correct. It was suppose to say Kids Teach Kids in Kampangphet, but the printers messed it up. Just think Tinglish people!

Picture 2: This is a picture of me helping to explain a leadership activity called the matrix. This is an activity where the children have to figure out how to make it through the grid with no talking.

Picture 3: A nurse at the school introduces the topic of HIV/AIDS to the students, how it is contracted, what it does to the body, and how you can prevent it.

Picture 4: The students do a game where they pretend to be penis's and condoms. Can you tell me apart from the students??

AIDS/ Leadership Camp 2

Picture 1: The kids learned about how you can get HIV by sharing needles. They used eye droppers and food coloring to help demonstrate this process.

Picture 2: This is a leadership activity where the kids get into groups and have to work together to keep the balloons in the air. More and more balloons kept getting put into the group so it got harder and more fun as time went by.

Picture 3: A nurse at the hospital helped the kids learn how to use condoms. They each got a partner, a condom, and a cucumber and they practiced putting the condom on and then learned how to properly take it off.

Picture 4: My friend Bom came to help with the camp to teach the kids how to teach. They did two sessions where they learned the basics of teaching...Plan, Practice, and Perform, as they will be taking the information they learned from this camp and teaching it to their peers. This is the second day after Bom gave each group of kids a topic about HIV/AIDS. Each group made a plan, practiced it, and then taught their topic to the rest of the students.

Picture 5: This is a picture of P. Keeow ( a nurse at the hospital) and two members of the community. One has HIV and the other has a family member with HIV. They came to tell their stories with the students and then answer any questions that the students had after they finished. These two women are extremely brave to do this as this is not a disease understood in rural Thailand and by their community knowing about them it can lead to bad outcomes. We wanted to show the kids that people with HIV/AIDS can look just like everyone else, that they aren't scary, and are still wonderful people.

AIDS/ Leadership Camp 3

Picture 1: This is a picture of Bom blowing up a condom. We were preparing to play a game called Condom Time Bomb. This is where you blow up condoms, like balloons, and put a statement about HIV/AIDS in the condom. The students all sit in a circle and pass around the condoms, one at a time, to music and when the music stops the person with the condom has to pop it, read the statement inside and say if its true or false and why.

picture 2: From left to right this is Bom, Becky, Julia, Arnold, Me, Conner, and Maeve. These are all of the Peace Corps volunteers, and Bom, that came to help. It was really fun to blow up the condoms. We were all making jokes while we were doing it. The only bad thing is the condoms were lubricated, so we had to wipe them off before we could put them to our mouths.

Picture 3: This is a picture of the kids actually playing the Condom Time Bomb game.

Picture 4: This is a leadership activity called Points of Contact. The kids had to work together in groups and only have so many body parts touching the ground. For example, if we said 4 the group of 8 would have to figure out how to only have 4 points of contact touching the floor. So if you are standing, you have two points of contact on the floor because two feet are touching the floor...and with 8 people thats actually 16 points of contact.

Picture 5: This is a leadership activity called human knot. This is a game where the kids all reach in and take someone elses hand and have to unwind themselves to make a circle without ever unlocking hands. This is really fun to play with Thai people because its impolite to step over anyone in this culture, so they think this game is really funny and strange.

AIDS/ Leadership Camp 4

Picture 1: At the end of the camp the health teachers of the schools that came, the nurses, and the students all sat around to make plans of how they were going to take the information they learned with them back to their schools to teach their peers.

Picture 2: Each school got up and presented to the other students when, how , and what information they were going to teach to the schools. Some schools decided to teach in their health classes and some schools decided to have day camps similar to this one.

Picture 3: This is a picture of Becky, P. Keeow, and I. P. Keeow is the nurse in charge of the HIV/AIDS program at the main hospital in my province. She was an awesome and indespensable helper for this program and without her Becky and I couldnt have made it what it became.

Picture 4: This is a picture of all of the students at the camp and a few of the facilitators and nurses.

I am so happy with the turn out of this camp. I dont think I could have asked for it to go better. Everyone told us how impressed they were and happy we did this camp. In a few weeks the kids will teach the information they learned at their schools. The nurses, Becky, and I will go and help them...or just observe. Im really kind of sad this camp is over after months of planning...And in the words of Becky......." Wesley, what will you and I have to fight about and put termoil into our relationship now that we dont have anything to work on together?" My answer...." Nothing Becky, its just pure love from here on out;)"

Happy Birthday Welly

This Past Tuesday was my 25th Birthday. I have to say this was one of my favorite birthdays in the past several years. I woke up to my land lord giving me a birthday cake. It said Happy Birthday Welly. Now to give him credit my name is really hard for Thai people to say. The Thai language doesn't use the "s" noise in the middle or at the end of words, only at the beginning...so most people pronounce my name Welly instead of Wesley. This definitely put a smile on my face and seemed very apripo to see my name written this way for my last birthday in Thailand. Then in the middle of the day my Yai(grandma) came over with a garland of flowers for me to wear. She even dressed up to do this. She is sooooooo cute! Giving people garlands of flowers to wear is normal for weddings or any special occasion really. This past weekend I had bought some tortillas in Bangkok and brought them back. My friends and I made burritos, or really Thai/Mexican fusion food...as I had to substitute a few ingredients. No one had ever eaten Mexican food before, so that made this night even more special. Here is a picture of Ink trying his first Mexican food. He wasn't really sure what to make of it or how to eat it. Then at the end of the night we got out the cake and everyone sang Happy Birthday to me. Ink even learned how to sing the happy birthday song in English for the occasion. My landlord and his family was there and so were Bom and his family which made the night extra special. Now let me tell you something about cake in Thailand. It is generally really goddy and usually looks very delicious. In reality, it almost never does. Thai people have yet to learn the art of making frosting. This frosting was 100% made of pure butter. I ate it anyway;) This was the perfect last birthday for me in Thailand!

Tinglish

Thailand is well known for its TINGLISH. This is basically where something is printed and it either makes no sense, the spelling is wrong, or the grammar is just really bad...In other words, Thai and English put together. Here are a few great examples of things written in Tinglish. First is this sign in Pai, where I went for New Years. It Says Caution, Be slip down. This sign was posted at a waterfall where people can crawl over the rocks and up along the side. What it means to say is Caution, Slippery. The second two pictures are my favorite pieces of Tinglish ever! While in Lampang I spotted this shirt. Merissa thought it was so funny that she had to buy it! It says "Conquer Carry On Dancing Truly Madly Deeply Pinky Pinky A Frenzy Sayonara". This makes absolutely no sense. We think its basically just a bunch of song titles that they thought would go well together on a shirt. In reality its just ridiculously funny.

The Gibbon Experience, Laos 1

This year I had the most unique Christmas of all time. My friend Liesbeth, another Peace Corps Volunteer, and her brother and I went to the country of Laos on Christmas to do the Gibbon Experience. This is a conservation effort to help raise money to protect the black gibbons, which were thought to be extict until the 1970s where they were found again in the area of Laos known as Bokea. They were also recently found in China. In Laos there are now more than 400 individual black gibbons living there. Basically what we did was spend three days and two nights in Laos living like the gibbons. The local villagers have set up zip lines all across this part of the jungle. You get to trek through the jungle and every hour or so you come across a zip line where you zip line over the jungle. Then at night you stay hundreds of meters off of the ground in tree houses that would make any American child jelous! They dont advertise this project as they dont want the wrong kind of people coming and trying to exploit the gibbons and the project. The word of mouth is so good for that they are never lacking for people, which is how I heard about it...through backpackers. We spent the three days in a small group of 7, us three and a German and British couple. They were really nice and we had a really awesome time with them. We never actually got to see any gibbons, except for one that the villagers had found abandoned by its family...but we did get to hear them singing to each other when we woke up each morning.
The first picture is of a group of monks crossing the river from Thailand to Laos. We had to cross a boat like this over the border. The second picture is of the road we took to get from the border to the Bokea reserve where we did the gibbon expereince. It was rediculous as it was nothing but a dirt road into the mountains for 2 to 3 hours. They are trying to develop a road, so hopefully in a few years there should be an actual road there. The third picture is of the village we started in. The people in this village are an important part of the project as they provide a starting point and guides to help lead you through the jungle. It was so different from my town in Thailand as there were naked children running around everywhere. The fourth picture is of Liesbeth. We started our trek going through corn fields. It was more corn than I have ever seen in my life. The last picture is of us in the jungle. Sometimes there was a path and sometimes only the guides could see the path. It was really cool to be around all of the bamboo and different types of plant life.