Wednesday, November 29, 2006

Signs Again




In a typical five day work week, our Peace Corps project has us working in 2 primary schools apiece, 2 days a week, for a total of four regular days in school per week. They may or may not be full days, for example, I usually don’t leave for my Monday-Thursday school until about 9:30am because we don’t teach English until 10:00. The fifth day of the week, Wednesdays in our case, is flexible. We might work at the school district office, or help judge an English competition, or do official paperwork or reports for Peace Corps, or visit a school that we don’t usually attend. Today we did a school visit.

It was a very delightful day. The school was located about 15 kilometers north of town in a small village. It was clear to us that this community takes a lot of pride in their school – the grounds were well cared-for and decorated, and teachers enjoyed showing us various student projects including agriculture, basket-making, and raising fish and pigs. In the morning, we did a 90-minute English lesson with the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd graders, and in the afternoon with did the same with 4th, 5th, and 6th.

One of my favorite things about this school was the abundance of signs with interesting sayings nailed to the trees. This is a very Thai phenomena – I have seen it at other schools and temples. Usually they remind the reader to live in moderation or take time to reflect on their life. Some of the signs at this school, however, had some unexpected sayings... Take the time to enlarge the photos and see what you can read!

When we asked about the "villains" saying, we were given a long complicated explanation about people who grow up in poor villages, then suddenly become rich, and eventually forget who they are and where they came from. We weren’t sure about the English translation.

3 comments:

CMT said...

"Love me, love my dog." It's universal!

LAV said...

next time my mom asks my gardening opinion, I will request more chrysan the mums :)

Emily said...

Those are great! Did you know that 'love me love my dog' actually does exhist in the US too? Liesbeth sent me something from an American ad that had that saying!