“Darling I Need Your Assistance!”

Dear All,

 Thank you so much for your email notes. It’s good to feel connected while so far away.

Quick question: does anyone know about Instagram? A Yangon student told me about it, and I thought maybe it could be an option for sharing my pictures with you from here, because though I have a Flickr account from last year I have no idea how to figure out my username and password.

Wish I could capture the scenes I see from the motorbike on the days I go into town: the 6 yr old and 9 yr old little nuns skipping down the road, the old woman bent over under the load of a sack larger than her, the young women balancing three clay pots one stacked over the other as they walked down the road….

December 7

   

   Yesterday, I took my morning class out onto a platform under the trees, as the principal had suggested I do, since often it’s too loud in the classroom to hear or speak, and it was a great idea, much quieter and quite lovely.  

I rested/slept pretty much from the end of my afternoon class at 3:30 yesterday through this noon

the main room with eight 9th grade girls

my room

(Thuzar took my morning class).  My sore throat having progressed into a cold/flu, I managed able to sleep through everything, even the machine noise across the way.  (Though after another night of talking and chanting into the wee hours of the night, I'd asked Thuzar to ask the girls if they could speak a little  quieter, and last night was in fact quieter.)

Aung checked on me where I was resting in the teacher's guesthouse up at IBEC during yesterday's lunch break (it's too noisy from the rock-crushing machines on both side of my own guesthouse to rest there during the day), and fetched from

teachers' guesthouse at IBEC

somewhere a much needed box of kleenix for me. I declined his offer to bring me to the hospital clinic, as even had my condition warranted concern, which it certainly didn't, I’m not at all sure about the state of Myanmar medicine (but maybe it has improved from its reputation last time I was here eight years ago). Anyway the garlic treatment is working and I am feeling better, with only cough and congestion left, along with high consumption of kleenix.

      Was invited with a few of the other teachers to the midday “birthday party” of a teacher’s niece in town, actually a naming party. There were several tables set up for the generously ample meal, followed by fruit and dessert. The baby was three months old. There is usually a naming party either at 7 days or a 100 days, depending on the

the baby of the naming party

parent's choice according to Aung, and the name is traditionally decided upon under the guidance of an astrologer.  Aung Khaing Soe’s name means Auspicious Endurance Influence.  Birthdays on the whole are not traditionally celebrated, but under the Western influence they are beginning to.

Aung Khaing Soe, Thuzar Win, and two other teachers

This evening Thuzar excitedly showed me the email of her new friend from Africa —and so I added to her English pronunciation education a short lesson on spam, and on being wary of any email from Africa with a subject line like the one she’d showed me: “Darling I Need Your Assistance!” 

9th grade girls watching Korean film on dvd player in Thuzar's room