First Days, and Sammy Snake

Wednesday December 3

Dear all,

I am trying the office computer, downloading what I write to a usb stick to later bring to the internet café to email; we'll see if this works.   It is SO much easier to type on a computer than a kindle!!!!!!!!

Very few of the children understand English at all, even rudimentarily, and the same is true of the older novices and monks. The principal and the visiting head monk, as well as two of the monks in the office, and the volunteer coordinator Lin Kyu are the only ones who speak English well.  Thuzar Win, the teacher helping me, speaks adequately but communication is sometimes difficult; the other English teacher whom I've met, Aung Khaing Soe, speaks more fluently, but again with frequent mispronunciations that impede understanding.  

three young novices on road from IBEC down to road where my teacher/student  guesthouse is

I was given three primary level classes to teach.  Aung Khaing Soe invited me to also help teach in a couple of his afternoon higher level classes (10^th & 11^th), where I focused on pronunciation and speaking/listening. He stayed in the classroom, and translated where needed. We did introductions, and how many sisters and brothers they had, focusing on the consistently omitted final “s”, and then did a little game around catching if phrases given were "right" or "wrong." 

The little ones are harder to teach as they have essentially no English comprehension even if they can repeat sentences back and even read and write.  They will repeat back "Where is the door?" and "Point to the door" but they don't understand what I'm asking.  So I'm trying to learn a few phrases like "Answer me,” “ Do what I say."  Every day I write in my notebook a few more phrases like these to learn.  Occasionally I'll ask a neighboring teacher to explain a concept.  (For instance, I/you, my/your is difficult for many of them to get.)  But they are sweet.  One or another will always run up to carry my bag in, or to erase the board at the end, or wave at me when I pass their classroom. 

The classes all start with the students saying the three-time "Namo tassa Bhagavato, Arahato, Samasambussa" homage to the Buddha, followed by the school motto about promoting the ethics and education to be brilliant in the future, and "Good Morning/Afternoon, teacher!" The class ends with another something, ending with "Thank you, teacher. See you tomorrow!"

I'm currently teaching three 45-min classes a day. I do a lot of individual practice as opposed to the more rote everyone-repeating-the-teacher's-phrases-back at the top of their lungs.  If nothing else, hopefully they'll learn about saying the "s" on plural words, something no one of any age or teacher level seems to do here. I shared the Sammy Snake story with Aung’s older classes (about my having had to take speech lessons myself when I was little because I could only say Thammy Thnake). 

Tuesday after the morning classes, Lin Kyu brought me with him to the internet café in Sagaing which was so slow I only had time to send my kindle emails and answer two short ones in the whole hour; afterwards we had lunch at a Shan café. Lin Kyu is from a village four hours away near the principal's town (I later learned he was also a nephew of his). He said about ten years ago everyone in his village had to move because they were building a dam there (the electricity was all sold to other countries), so it was hard for them. Apparently some of the villagers were rich because there was gold in their property, and others very poor. The ones who had some gold mostly left, so mostly those left are very poor.  Most people from the countryside cannot afford high school or university. That’s why the abbot is trying to provide that opportunity for young people.

Tuesday evening, Thuzar and one of her friends who works in the kitchen and I walked thru the little adjoining village and up long stairs to the Pagoda of 30 Buddhas. Apparently it’s a major tourist attraction and as you climb the approach there was a long arcade of little shops with t-shirts, traditional crafts, fancy longyi and handicrafted jewelry for the tourists. At this hour however, there was no one except us, so it was great. At the top, we watched the sunset, the light golden on the pagodas (and cell phone tower) dotting the hills.  We ran into two novices from IBEC, one older one and a younger one, Shwe-ma-ma (shwe means strong), who’s in my 4^th grade class).  I went further on with them down steps to a path which led past another monastery and on to a very old pagoda, and then back as it was growing dark—it was good they were with me, I would have taken one of the paths in the wrong direction. (There are literally more than a thousand monasteries, nunneries and pagodas in the Sagaing Hills.)

On the way back, the nuns at one of the nunneries we passed invited us in and chatted with us (they go to another school in Sagaing).  They ranged from ages 13 to 30, and also in the courtyard was the mother of one of the women; she was 66, nearly blind and hard of hearing. 

 
After we left there, we stopped at the stall of a food vendor roasting skewers with a hand-turned bellows blowing air for the fire, and I had a skewer of quail eggs.

Had a scare here—saved my file to the usb stick, and then tried to open it to doublecheck if it took—and it wouldn’t let me, giving me messages like “corrupt” and “file unknown” etc.   But one of the monks was able to open it on another computer.  I would have been a very unhappy camper if not, and was very relieved.

nuns by women's restroom

Tonight, Wednesday, I helped out again at Aung’s 10^th and 11^th grade. The girl students are very shy and talk in a whisper, or are very giggly, and very reluctant to speak in front of class. As before, I helped them with their “s”s, and with the pronunciation of whatever it was they wanted to become (mostly initially unintelligible).  Two or three wanted to become soldiers—I asked them Why? Hope I’m not training future government soldiers!, though to the one who said he wanted to become a “high-ranking” soldier because he wanted to bring peace to his country, I said that that sounded like a good thing. The first one’s response was “to protect his country,” only his pronunciation was more like “protest” which led to a short lesson on the difference between “protect” and “protest” and a little plug about how the laws in my country (in principle at least) protect the right to protest.  The third student didn’t know why.

IBEC building where older grades are

Even simple responses like “farmer” are often unintelligible, and even with Aung Khaing Soe's own attempts to say the words to me (often equally unintelligible) sometimes it requires spelling out the word before I'm able to comprehend.  I like working with the older classes. Though I love the young children, and my young classes were great yesterday, today I was feeling very discouraged, as I don’t have the voice to speak over the students when necessary, while also competing at the same time with the rote shouting in the next rooms, and today loud outside music on top of it all.

Afterwards, I happened to be going by the teacher's guesthouse at the school, where Aung was meeting with some friends ငည အ့န ါက်အ့သက်န—အ့ေအ (again I’ve apparently hit some combination of keys that turns everything into Burmese and have had to restart), and he invited me to join them. One of them was a woman who’d started a construction company (her contracts for house-building is with the government, so sadly probably not so beneficial to the country as a whole), very nice

and friendly, and she invited us all to dinner in town and her driver drove us all in to a little café where

internet cafe

we were served myriad little dishes that were very good. Afterwards they were going to drop me at the internet café, except once we got there we found out the internet has been down all day.  

  Next time, if I come again, I may get a smartphone as SIM cards have better internet connection than computer wifi. Supposedly Facebook is also easier to connect to than gmail.      

Thursday morning:

adjacent monastery

Today I will accompany Thuzar, my young teacher friend, to her Chinese class at the adjacent little old monastery (she wants me to also teach her French and German, of which she knows a few phrases—but I think that’s challenging as in French you drop the last consonant sounds, and I’m trying to teach her to include the last consonant sounds in her English).  I also helped her correct the English of the exam questions she’s giving her third-graders later this week. 

Hopefully the internet in town will be up today, and may get this sent to you,

Zoe