You won't believe my day!

I've just got in from what beats last monday as the craziest day in my life. I hope my mondays don't continue to be like this.

Today, I was a bit early for Grade 1 at 10am so I went to Kindergarten for half an hour before I started teaching. Baby was awake and happy. But she didn't like her little hairband that Meme made her wear, so I wore it instead.





Grade 1 did the balloons.

When I was in Grade 2, a lot of people came round the corner and they were looking in the classrooms. I asked a teacher if she knew who they were and she pointed to the uniforms and said Thai Police. There were many others though & I caught one guy on his own and started to make conversation. He was a journalist. Then I asked why Thai police were there and he said that they had arrested some people nearby and that they were coming back to Hle Bee next week. At lunch time, I went to the grade 6 classroom and the Thai officials asked if I knew any Thai & I said no, not much but I speak some Burmese. I thought that would be quite obvious as I was visiting a Burmese school but they said if I was in Thailand I should know the Thai language. Then they went away.

Then they came back. But only three police, one woman translator and two male officers. This is when Emily arrived to teach in the afternoon. They saw her & asked for her passport. Then they took me out of grade 3 and asked for mine. I only had the photocopy and I hadn't had a photocopy of my visa taken yet. My passport was at the homestay because I knew I'd lose it if I carried it around with me. The woman took me aside and told me that I should apologize and said she realised that maybe the difference in culture has caused a misunderstanding. So they said they'd take me to the homestay to pick up my passport & check it. Emily came along too, even though they didn't really care about her passport. Maybe because they didn't see her teaching? I don't know.

On the way, the translator was talking about work permits and I said that I wasn't teaching there, only visiting so I didn't have a work permit but she said they saw me teaching the kids. I said we were just visiting. They must've asked the kids about me because they told her that mum had taught at the school. Then she started asking if mum had a work permit etc. I said that because both Tha Zin and mum were head teachers, they were good friends and that is why I was visiting.

We picked up the passport and they looked at it and asked for a work permit then they took us to the base of the Tourist police. This is where we talked about how beautiful Thailand was & I spoke about how beautiful the temples were. One of the police officers said that afterwards, we would visit a temple, which I took as a good sign that I wasn't going to get shipped back to Scotland. The woman told me that if we see the boss man again, I should apologize. Then they led us into his office where they spoke in Thai for a while then I apologized. He smiled and was surprisingly nice and they said it was just a misunderstanding.

Then we went back into the police car to visit the temple. The temple only opens on Saturday and Sunday but because we were with the police, one of the monks opened it for us. Can you believe how this day turned out? It's very perplexing. This is a photo of the incredibly huge Buddah.

And a photo with the older police man. When we were around here, there were a few children playing & the officer said that there were many Burmese children here.

Later on, I asked him if the Burmese people were welcome in the temple and he told me that this was a Burmese temple and the monks were Burmese so I said 'Mingalaba' to the kind monk who opened the temple for us. The officers were thrilled that I could speak some Burmese. This was very confusing, because that was part of the reason that I was with them in the first place because I couldn't speak Thai, but I could speak Burmese so I continued my simple Burmese and they loved it.

This is the gorgeous room they opened for us.

All the walls were mirrored.

They also drove us to the friendship bridge to look, but we didn't leave the car. Then we headed back to Hle Bee because I had left my bike there. On the way back I got many phone calls from GA. Tha Zin had phoned him, he had phoned Sylvia, the owner of homestay & Sylvia had phoned Lisa. Everybody was waiting at Hle Bee when we came back and we decided I shouldn't go back to Hle Bee for a while.

So I said goodbye to everybody and went for ice cream with Lisa and her kids and Sylvia and her little girl. I came home and was extremely bored so I called GA and he said he would pick me up and take me to the market. We visited Phyu Phyu Win and Si Si Win and spoke about the day.

Insane day..

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