(Sorry, no pictures yet, something is screwy with my camera and it deleted all the pictures that I took this morning.)
I got my placement! I decided to go for something a little more remote, and remote is what I got. I have been asked to be a little vague determining where I am, but it is safe to say that I am about 10 km from the northern part of the border. I am near a small village and I am living in a community school which reminds me a lot of Scattergood Friends School, my high-school boarding school. The place caters to students who very not able to attend high school due to either their lack of funds or their status as an illegal resident. The founder of the school wants to give these students a real chance, so he teachers them different trades and encourages English so that they will be able to get a job in either a different country or in a government office. There are about 32 students and ten teachers, and I am even getting another westerner who will come tomorrow to split my students with.
I have a little room in a mad-brick house. Mud-bricks are made of up sand, clay and cement (People tend to drop the ends off of words so it took me a while to realize that he was saying “cement” and not “semen”, which gave me some interesting and disturbing pictures in my mind). The school will allow people to supply the sand, clay and cement and will make the bricks for them, selling them at 3 baht a pop (about 1 penny, I think. I still haven't quite figured out the exchange rate around here.) There's also a garden, numerous amounts of cats and dogs who are well-treated, and a field of rice-paddies that surround it, complete with picturesque burmese tending them.
To get here, I had to take a very long and sickening ride of Mae Sot to Mae Sariang. We rode in the back of a pickup that had been enhanced with a roof and two benches that ran along the sides. After 6 hours of this, I hopped gratefully into an air-conditioned bus that took me to Mae Hong Son. Upon arriving in the nearest large city, I was met by three of my future students who rode up on their motorbikes looking like they had just flown in from a recent Anime movie. The two girls wrestled by duffle onto theirs and the boy took me on his. They had helmets, but had neglected to bring me one which made the forty-minute bike ride to the site a bit terrifying. After about ten minutes I managed to calm down enough to enjoy myself and watched the dizzying display of stars above my head as we zoomed through the night. The only sign of human life was the well-maintained road and the constant stream of signs that warned of a sharp left, a sharp right, or a zigzag ahead. Fortunately my driver was a very competent biker and got me here okay.
Sarah, I am afraid that I am not going to be seeing you here. A huge cockroach found its way into my bag about five minutes after I put them down. The bugs here are terrifying... the cockroaches have angry yellow stripes down their backs and there is a spider in the corner with two legs sticking out and that's enough to keep me away from that part of the room. But, I also made friends with a little yellow and white cat who slept in my blankets curled up with me last night. I told him that he could stay provided that he took care of the bugs. Which he does, the problem is that he keeps killing the ones outside and bringing them in to eat them. We're going to have to have a little talk.
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