11 year olds are the same no matter where you are...

Yesterday in the morning after breakfast, we went to teach at the Jalae Childcare Center....So, same place we spent our homestay. That means I got to see little miss Sawanee again, plus a bunch of other darling kids. We were super unprepared since we only found out the night before that we were teaching. But kids don't care. We sang songs with them and had them color, mostly. They were pretty much darling. I got some great videos of them.

This thing--apologies to those who are of weak stomach lol--is the head and tail aka remains of a mole the cat decided to eat during dinner. So appetizing to have that going on as I was eating.

This thing--this disgusting-looking thing--is one of the dogs. They just got shaved this week, and they all look ridiculous. This one just happened to lay on the ground like this for awhile, so I thought I'd snap a shot.

I just thought this was another funny shot of the weird dogs. Animals are all so strange here. The dogs were chasing after the pony they have grazing around here. The pony got all riled up and starting chasing the volunteers. Kinda scary lol. 

After volunteering yesterday, we just stayed around Mirror. Most of the volunteers went into town for Alinta's birthday. Nella and I stayed and watched a couple episodes of Lie to Me. I took a needed nap as well. Woke up sweating bullets. Lovely. I got eaten alive by mosquitoes last night. Also, I can't even begin to explain how many spider webs I walk through a day. It's awful. At night especially, when my spidey sense isn't quite as good, I'm constantly getting the willies as I feel spider webs all over me. Yuck. This morning we had to leave at 9 to teach at Huay Fai School. Pear and I were in charge of teaching the 4th graders. My gosh. 4th graders are the same all around the world. Full of energy, little punks. It was so hard to keep them under control. We failed miserably. We were teaching them numbers. Trying to get them to understand and identify the difference between 15 and 50, 14 and 40, etc was absolutely impossible lol. We played a game where there were two teams. I'd shout out a number, and the first person to write it on the board got a point for their team. I'd say, "The number is...52!" And then all hell would break loose as the kids panicked and then someone would shout out the number in Thai. Then one would write "20" on the board, and the other would write "15" lol. They never got them right. It was crazy how off they were. But hey, we tried. At the end of the class, when we said thank you and goodbye, they came to us with blank pieces of paper, wanting our autographs. Sooo cute. I love seeing the cute Thai kids "wai" us when we leave.

In the afternoon, we went to Namlad School to teach the 6th graders for an hour and then the 5th graders for an hour. Our topic was "favorite things." Try getting Thai kids to pronounce "favorite." It comes out "favohwiss." It's great. The kids were pretty into the games, but on the whole, much better behaved than the 4th graders. After teaching them, we got some delicious, icy chocolate milk drinks plus donuts. So great. I watched as two little Thai students came to talk to the gym teacher. They kneeled down on a mat while talking to her, out of respect. Thai culture is so cool.

Another cool thing...the amazing caterpillar I found at Namlad School. Right out of the bug books I looked at growing up. 

All the Asians and South Americans I know are super grossed out by caterpillars. They thought it was absolutely insane of me to be holding a caterpillar, even on a napkin. But I was too excited to resist. Anyway, on the whole, a good day teaching. I'm exhausted though. Janella and I are leaving Mirror tomorrow night so that we can be in town to do a border run on Saturday morning. Crazy that we're leaving!