4th of July celebration in Chiang Mai

Welcome back to school everyone. Thought I would update my blog and attempt to keep it up to date for the rest of my time here. Hard to believe it has been over one year since I have been out here. I hope you all had a great summer! We are now in monsoon season and it rains in the afternoon a lot. I am now teaching grade four Math and Science to a class of fifteen and seventeen boys. It is a really great group and I am enjoying my year very much. We are having a problem with Swine Flu and as of writing this we have missed about a week of school and will have to make it up on our October break and that doesn't thrill me at all. It just began to rain and that is a shame because I had planned to take the boys out and teach them to play frisbee at the end of the day. I hope you all enjoy the pictures and I would love to hear from my old students. Just e-mail me at the address below.

Dear friends, family, and students,
Happy Holiday! I hope you all have a great vacation!
I am sorry that I have not written in quite some time. To say that I have been busy would be a lie so, I'll just tell the truth. I forgot my password and couldn't get on to update my blog. Please keep in touch. I am hearing that my students are upset with me for not writing. I believe that I have answered all e-mails sent to me. Please send your e-mails to carolhinsdale@yahoo.com and you will get a reply. The weather here is perfect. I am still wearing shorts and sandals. Everything is green and flowering and the swimming pool is still warm. It is like the perfect summer day in Vermont. OK, OK, I will stop rubbing it in. Heard you had a big storm last week and that school was closed. Snow days are my favorite days. I will be working in a different position here at Montfort and I am thrilled about it. It should be much better than teaching in a classroom of 55 students that I meet with once a week. I spend a lot of time sitting around doing nothing. I have really missed all of my students at home and hope you are all doing well.Toby is here with me and we will go out tonight for dinner with my Thai teacher to celebrate my birthday. Toby is having the time of his life over here. I bought a fake tree and a few decorations for my room to make it feel like Christmas but, without the snow it really doesn't feel like Christmas. I am off on holiday to an island beach in the Gulf of Thailand the day after Christmas and will post some pictures when I get back. Elliott, I have not forgetten the asian toliet for you. I will post that picture as well. Take care! Now that I figured out my password, I plan to update more often.

Thailand in October

Toby teaching in the computer lab

Sawasdee Mc

Beach at Pattaya

View from my Condo

Students on a field trip to the Orchid Farm

Teaching with Mam

Our third quarter of the year began this week after the students had a two week holiday. My son is here with me and is working in the computer lab. He is living on campus and enjoying Chiang Mai. Toby even made it to the beach over the holiday. I was not so lucky. The weather here seems to be changing from the rainy season to dry beautiful weather. We were listening to a couple of the teacher talking about the weather. The teachers have been here for awhile and were talking about how cold it gets up here in the north of Thailand. It can be as cold as sixty degrees. That's a far cry from our Vermont winters. I have to say that I did miss fall in Vermont. Toby and I went up into the mountains to the holy temple. It was very beautiful to look down at the city and be on the mountain with the monks in their orange robes strolling around the temple and praying. Swimming in the pool is still a daily event for me. The water is still warm and the weather is still quite hot. Toby and I went to a birthday party over the weekend. It was a wonderful experience. A van was sent into the city to pick up ten of the foreign teachers and friends. We were then transported to the country and arrived at a large party with tables and chairs set out on the terrace. Neighbors, friends, and teachers attended a delicious buffet of Thai food and a special dish for the farang.After the dinner we were treated to music from the school village marching band. They were all dressed in northern Thai costumes. The children marched down the street playing music and once at the house turned to the crowd and played for us. The band ended with the birthday song. The evening was ended with the lighting of paper lanterns into the night sky. Blobs of light floated up into the sky until the fire burned out and the light disappeared. The ride back home was filled with songs and laughter from people representing five different countries. Mostly we sang old American songs. What a night! I hope school is going well for everyone. Feel free to keep in touch with me at Carolhinsdale@yahoo.com

View from on top of a mountain temple

Welcome Back to School

Hope your first few weeks of school have gone smoothly. I can't tell you how great it feels to know that everyone is back in school as I have been teaching since the middle of July and am soon to be on break. It is still monsoon season here and the rains have been like no other than I have experienced before. It is a lot of fun to sit and watch out over the river during a storm. Soon the weather will turn beautiful and I will be able to swim each day.
I moved since I last wrote and am now living off campus in a twenty-five story building on the 12th floor in a studio apartment overlooking the Ping River, the mountains, and the city. I have a nice balcony and a great swimming pool.
Teaching bilingual science to the boys can be a challenge when I am teaching without my Thai teacher. Fifty-four students in a class is hard to handle. Luckily it is only on rare occasions that I am left alone with them. They don't mess around with a Thai teacher in the room. My favorite times are working in the computer lab classes a week and teaching conversational English to other teacher is also fun.
One of my favorite adventures so far was our trip to the border school. It is one of the queen's special projects for the hill tribe living on the border of Burma. (Myanmar) This is where my son Toby will be a volunteer and spend a few months up there. We traveled for about two hours by van and turned onto a dirt road for another half hour up into the mountains. The school is in a valley surrounded by mountains and vibrant green forests. About thirty students attend the school and are of all ages from about five to eighteen. The children were all dressed up and ready to greet us when we arrived. Our Montfort boys brought each student a large bag of rice. The people of the village are very poor. The people of the village have been taught to grow cash crops like corn in the place of what they used to grow in the past. It was a great trip and I would like to volunteer a week up there myself.
I am learning how to cross the street without getting hit and this is no easy task. I usually walk to school each morning which takes me around fifteen minutes. Most times people will stop and offer me a ride when they see the uniform or the Montfort shirt. This can be embarrassing if they stop on a motorcycle and you are wearing a skirt. The women here ride sidesaddle in skirts and dresses on these small bikes and they hold on to nothing. They must have exceptional balance. I had to tell the man I preferred to walk because I knew that if I tried to
ride that way, we would have ended up in an accident and that would not have been pretty.