A Thai School
Even our Thai guide needed several attempts to sound out the name of this school. I was dying to ask them to sing their fight song, but we only had a short visit planned.
We’ve been lucky enough to visit several schools on our trip, which always starts off with my kids feeling shy at first. But, we always leave full of smiles and so glad we went. So when we had the chance to stop in for a tour of a Thai school just outside Chiang Mai, we jumped!
We met the principal, a lovely woman whose name I didn’t catch but who showed us around proudly, with our guide One translating for us. Her school is pre-K through 9th grade, and there are some 250 students in all, a mix of local Thais of many ethnicities (this being the Hill Country, there are many non-ethnic Thai tribes nearby) as well as the children of the guest workers who come in from Myanmar.
We were especially taken with the students’ art, which was lovingly framed and displayed, along with the many trophies and awards they’ve won. Another impressive thing: look how neatly they lined up their shoes outside their classroom.
All schools sound the same at recess—happy shouts and general hubbub—and this one is no different. We joined a couple classes in progress—8th grade science was learning about the kidneys, and I can tell you that the Thai word for urine sounds pretty much like “urine,” and Thai 8th graders find the subject of peeing as funny as American kids do.
But the real fun came when we joined an English class. The kids were shy, but they shouldn’t have been; their English couldn’t have been worse than our Thai. We had a little Q&A about what Westerners like to eat, what we think about Thailand, and what are the most beautiful places we’ve visited.
I’ve been struck by how few Thais we’ve met here have traveled outside their home country—short vacations are the norm here, with most people taking less than a week at any one time—but who knows: maybe someday I’ll be picking one of these kids up from the airport! Kids, you are welcome any time!
