Opportunist

View of the Burmese mountains across from Sunshine Orchards, as seen from the village of Mae Salid, about 5 k away

The Steck's station wagon

Everybody has a water buffalo...

Mountain near a river cave

Hannah Steck, Sharon Steck, Hannah Powell and I Soler in the back of Gail Haberkham's beastly truck

Do what you must while you can...

This week was exam week for Sunshine Orchards. I spent Sunday afternoon and parts of Monday preparing six exams for my three classes. Because the students sit so closely together, it's very easy for them to cheat, so I have written two different exams for each class.
As hard as I worked on those exams, and though I finished them, I wasn't able to give them to the students.
Just as I was about to print the exams yesterday, the power went off, and stayed off until this afternoon. When I told my students, only one out of eighty-four of them was disappointed.
 Teachers have to be ready for anything. I wasn't ready for the power to go out, but I do work fairly well on the fly, so we got through the makeshift classes today.
I'm teaching fourth and fifth grade to write in cursive. They like cursive handwriting a lot, and are eager to learn.

The biggest new development in my life is violin class. When I took inventory of the violins, I found seven that would work. I figured I could teach seven students at a time, and teach the same ones every day, just like all the other vocational classes do. I looked up easy music online, and scratched my head a little, wondering how to teach seven students at the same time. When I've taught violin before, I only had one at a time. I had never been to a masterclass, so I wasn't sure how the instructor was supposed to individualize the teaching for the students. I also wasn't sure I would be able to add seven more students to my memory. That would put me at ninety-one new names and personalities to get to know.

Well.

This is what happened. I figured that it would be really hard to fairly pick seven students out of the three hundred and so who are here, so asked Thara Joko (the principal) to ask his ninth and tenth graders to sign up if they wanted to learn. Sixteen of them signed up!
Then, I realized that I could just teach a new batch of seven students every day! And then I realized that I was actually teaching for two vocational class periods, so I could take fourteen new students every day. Having that decided, I asked the seventh and eighth graders to sign up if they wanted lessons, and lots of them did. So now, instead of seven new violin students, I have a grand total of fifty, and they are all new students that I don't already teach in my normal classes.

Yay! Fifty new names!

Since I'm here, and I may be the only person who is qualified to teach violin who comes through here, I might as well share my knowledge. I can't "withhold good from those to whom it is due". 

I have met about twenty eight of them already, since yesterday. I've taught each group the same lesson (which I made up on the spot), but they are already at different places, though none of them have every played before.
Why? Because some of the groups listen, and some don't! Yesterday I had a group with Tay Tay Aye and Moo Koh Paw...and if you knew them you would shake your head in sympathy for me.
They are both really energetic, low attention span girls who like to express themselves freely.

"Teacha! Fix this for me!" Tay Tay Aye interrupts class and holds out her shoulder rest for me to put on her violin.
 "Teacha, me too!" Moo Koh Paw holds hers out in front of me.
 "Me too! Me too!" chime in all the other students. Seven violins are now hovering in my face.
I systematically take them and start fitting shoulder rests to violins.
Moo Koh Paw gets impatient, "Teacha, mine is broken! I will throw it away!"

No, Moo Koh Paw! Don't do it!
Tay Tay Aye is already chattering away, and the class is in disorder.
Ok. That's fine. One of my rules for class was to "Have fun" so I guess they're following the rules.
One of the other ones was "Listen to the teacher", and they're still working on that one.
With that class, I didn't even finish the little I had to teach them. 

The last class I had today was all seventh-grade boys, and were they ever quiet! They listened carefully to everything I said, didn't talk much to each other, and wrote everything down.
It was so entirely different from my teaching experience here so far, that I was a little unnerved. They were actually behaving like good students! I had to think up new things to teach them to keep them busy, because they learned everything else so fast.

I thought I would drown under the weight of so many students and classes, but I'm actually enjoying it! Not that it isn't hard, but I think taking eighteen credit hours at OHC, on top of doing photoshoots, taking music lessons, and doing all the other impromtu activities I end up with at school was actually harder. It's really fun to interact with so many different personalities at once, here.

Right now, Dwee May Saw and I are yelling gibberish at each other. He probably thinks I'm a little mentally retarded, since I don't respond properly to what he says. He's gotten well enough to scoot around on the floor, which has turned him into another person. He's not always where I expect him to be anymore!
This evening I put some citronella on my hand, because I like how it smells. When I let Dwee May Saw hold my hand, he said I smelled good, so I gave him some citronella too. He was happy about that, but he still likes smelling my hand instead. He grabs one of my fingers (which is about all his little hand can hold), and rhythmically swings it up to his face and back away again. Every time he smushes his nose against my hand he says "It smells good!" (in Karen) So cute. If you could just hear his little voice, you would melt.

He was gone to worship tonight when I got back from finally printing out my exams, and I thought he had left for good. My heart started to sink a little, but I was thankful for the time he has been here. I wish I could tell him that now, while he still is here. 

On another note, last night at about dark-thirty in the morning (last night in the morning? get that. You know what I mean), I was semi-awakened by a scratching noise right above me, to the side. I was sleeping on my side, knees bent. Just as I started to wake up, a live, furry body fell on the floor beside my knee. It was the rat.

The rat. 

The rat who pulls my food out and chews through the wrappers to get the food inside. 
The rat who went into my suitcase and peed on my clothes. 
The rat who makes loud noises, and runs around on the roof when I'm trying to sleep. 

Yes, that rat. He almost fell on me.
 The nerve!

It's a good thing for the rat that I am incapable of killing anything. He escaped, and Hannah never even knew he was there. But If he comes that close again, I'm going to catch him and make him my servant forever. I've caught bare-handed and been bitten by guinea pigs, sugar gliders, wild mice, chipmunks, and other creatures; I'm not afraid of this rat. If he's clumsy enough to fall on me, he shouldn't be too hard to catch.
I would have caught the snake under Hannah's pillow, too, but I wasn't sure if it was venomous or not.
The geckos I'm still a little creeped-out by. I've heard they bite really hard and don't let go. Which is what all the little Five-Lined Skinks in Kentucky did, but they were five inches long, and these Tokay geckos are more than a foot long!

Anyway, God is really the One making it possible for me to do this teaching and living stuff, and I'm thankful He's patient with me. There's nothing like working with and for God to make a person realize just how far they fall short of the mark...But I have to just keep getting up, and moving forwards, even if it's an eighth of an inch at a time.

I'm so privileged to be refined. It's a pain that heals.