boiling

 search for time in the sweat and heat

to have patience for a tongue not easily touched
but is sweeter than sugar cane and stickier than rice

This week was our first full week of practicum where we get to be in the classroom actually teaching 8th graders, in my case. My partner and I have been doing lessons that are very English heavy, which  isn't what the Youth in Development (YinD) program is quite supposed to be. We're supposed to be the fun ones who teach kids adult skills like leadership and empathy while engaging their malleable young minds. With a goal that big and experience this little, at least we're teaching something, getting into it. It's hard to not be hard on my lessons when I know what this program is capable of accomplishing. YinD isn't just life skills, but life engagement--we're supposed to get to know everything we can about our students. Despite the language barriers, I feel like in small ways we can actually connect with the students personally. It's mostly been through sports or literally anything else that doesn't require speaking, but at least we can laugh at that complete inability to understand one another. We’ve done yoga, fitness exercises, taught them classic American camp games, and a handful of vocabulary. The life skills will come later, maybe when I can speak beyond what I like to eat. Hopefully empathy can be condensed into a half-hour scenario acted out by children who are used to light hitting.  And we'll teach leadership to the ones who kind of have the personalities already and can help coax it out of the ones who avoid eye contact at all costs.  
For comparison, what I wish I knew at that age is more of an understanding of my worth as a human being and the necessity to take care of that mind of mine. I wish I had known how to see what I am capable of, and I wish I had known that boys don’t actually have cooties. These are a few of the things I'd like to pass along. At least personal relationships will help, and just living by example will accomplish more than I'll be able to observe in the next two years. It just feels good to actually do something related to what I've been hired to do. We can lesson plan and do the plan and watch our expectations crash all while having fun! 

I called one of my students smart today and she clung to me--stayed by my side while we walked around and she tried harder, spoke louder. We encouraged one another, breathed into speaking and voice bread voice. I watched her volunteer answers when we’ve seen that it is not common for Thai children jump to volunteer. Fighting the desire for collectivism and sharing leadership through American individualism is what I projected onto that moment. It's impossible to separate what I believe makes me strong and how I grew up culturally, what Thais expect from children, and how my students are supposed to conduct themselves. The simplest things seem to help, if marginally. Breath seems to make things better; breathing to produce English, or breathing in exercise, or breathing through laughter. It's all breath. Calming, meditating, something so simple, every human on Earth has to do it. So far that's where we've started. Yet I thought I'd have to fight more while here, but then discovered that even when intimidated by a pack of 27 pre-teens, for them I can melt into honey. Courage is honey. 

   

I've seen plenty of personal growth already, and I've seen how I fundamentally view myself here change with experience. On the plane to orientation in San Francisco, I had the classic pit in my stomach. Deep empty oh-sh!t-what-am-I-doing-here feeling. Then I thought of fighting- physically fighting in a brawl with someone. I don’t know who, but it gave me a rush of adrenaline that dissolved my pit into fire. Fire is familiar to my core--passion, courage, resilience, and stubbornness. It has since been doused by milk and honey. It sticks like rice to the pit in my stomach and is sweeter than sugar burns. But I still hold fiery courage close, it knows me and I know it. This milk and honey do not sooth--it downs, calming the pricing burn of a fire. Even when I fight to hold my fire close, courage does nothing in the face of a smile. It is unnecessary. Thailand is smiley, yet not meek, it does not apologize, yet it is subtle. It cares--the honey drips off of my mother’s heart in the morning when she cooks me breakfast, it drowns me in welcoming when I come home, and tickles me when I don’t understand. It cycles back to how I cannot survive if I do not fall in love, and I cannot fall in love if I do not smile from the inside.

My students don’t know how to interact with me, and I don’t know how to interact with them, but we’re both so excited that it makes sense. We try, and we completely miss, but mostly we try. It is not as scary as I thought it would be and I'm glad that so far I do not have to fight as much as I thought I would.

Honey still slows me in the morning, words refusing to hop off the tip of my tongue. And when I'm still not rested, it sticks to my feet, but I drag myself to the bike for another day of life. I don’t want to think about how I am responsible for the emotional development of 27 children, but just being present gives more than I thought. And I don’t have to fight quite yet, but I do have to grit through fatigue. I want to teach young adults that they had rights I did not know I had at their age. Rights to assertion, rights to do everything in one’s power to actively care for yourself, rather than waiting to grow up. Things I knew were present but not things I knew were necessary. Things I wish someone had told me in the context of my own culture. We will see how it communicates, how we can develop them to the best of their ability without Americanizing them, but forming international understanding. And at the very least, I'll help them realize they too can incubate life into their passions. 

 

 This fire has been drowned by milk and honey, 
becoming a warm boil that steadily bubbles. 
The milk and the sweet rise and fall, evaporated by concrete
 or replenished by breathing laughter. 
Regardless, it's about keeping something warm in that stomach.