Learning Thai

After enjoying a couple of weeks of slower-paced life over the Christmas and New Year's holidays we've found ourselves busier than ever since then. Earlier in December my English teaching had slowed down and most students took a break over the holidays. I was thinking about my options for advertising again in an attempt to find new students, but it turns out that I didn't have to do anything. I've had a number of new people contact me recently and I'm now at the point where I"m telling people they'll need to wait until someone else stops studying. Candice has also resumed her teaching at a nearby church and we are both trying to keep up with a little bit of language study (Candice goes to a school for several hours on Mondays and I have a tutor come to help me practice reading on Thursday).

I'm currently teaching a young man, a group of three siblings, a group of 2 six year old girls, a group of 4 five year old boys, a group of 3 ladies, and a group of 2 teenage girls. The picture above is of the five-year old boys (along with a grandmother who keeps them in line during the lesson). I'm teaching them five days a week. So far it's going well but it takes a LOT of energy and creativity to keep them focused.

Last week I was asked to put together a proposal for teaching a class of hospital employees. I'm really excited about that prospect although it will involve a lot of preparatory work.

I've also gotten back in touch with one of my former students - a nurse who is interested in studying English so that he can work in America at some point. We've been getting together once or twice a week just to talk - he practices English and I practice Thai. It's been a lot of fun and I hope that our families can have some interaction as well. We've had some very interesting discussions - we talked for a long time about Thai cremation/funeral customs. He also taught me a Thai phrase of disgust - his English translation was "dog feces." I tried to explain that feces is a rather technical term and offered an alternative word that could be used in equivalent situations in English. (I also explained that it was an impolite word.) The next time I saw him he asked for clarification on the pronunciation of this new word and pressed me for examples of exactly how he could use it in a sentence. Not exactly the kind of English teaching I had in mind!

We've also had a number of meetings with our team and the REACH team - so our lives have felt very busy. But it's good to be back to work and making new connections in the community. One issue that is still up in the air is Claire's school. Several weeks ago her teacher left and we've now heard that she's not coming back. They still don't have a replacement so we've been keeping Claire at home. We're hoping that the school will find a replacement soon and that we'll be able to work out a way to keep her in school for at least a couple of days a week. Now that I'm a lot busier with private tutoring I won't have as much time to volunteer at the school.

If you want to pray for us you can pray that we would clearly sense God's leading in our relationships here, that we would continue to have opportunities to meet new people, that we would have wisdom in our teaching, and that we would have the energy that we need for each day.

Thanks!

-Tom