My New Home

This story about my adventures in Thailand is continued from my previous blogs

...After my memorable trip to the morning market, Pastor Lawan brought me to the orphanage. It was an old, run-down, two-story cement house with a mud yard on the side. The walls were covered in grimy blue paint, which was peeling in most places. When I walked in, I saw the center courtyard, which was open to the sky. Since it was rainy season, the circular stone tables, which the children used for eating meals, were pushed around the edges under the shelter of the roof overhang. Doors opened around the courtyard to the boys' bedrooms, and one to the kitchen. The doors for the meeting room opened towards the front of the building, and stairs ascended to the second floor on either side. I met Miwi, an energetic hilltribe girl my age who was the main caretaker for the children. She grabbed my bag and I followed her up the stairs to my room.

-In the courtyard with two kids

Upstairs, the stairway led to a homework room with tables and chairs, where the children could work in the evenings. The main hallway consisted of a rickety wooden balcony around the edge of the courtyard, which led to the girls' rooms. The girls' bathrooms were in the back of the building. In places, the wood was rotting from the constant exposure to the rain, which blew in through the courtyard side. Some leaks in the roof had caused additional damage. Miwi brought my bags into the staff room, where I would sleep for the next few years. I shared it with Miwi and Maema, who was in charge of the kitchen. They were the only staff for this orphanage of about sixty children! The three beds were side-by side, and we had a private bathroom (hooray!) on one side of the room. They had provided their best for me- a wooden bed with a thin, hard matress made of rag rolls, a big cardboard box for my clothes, a wire to hang dresses and shirts on, and a rusty metal folding table next to my bed for me to work on! They had placed a bright red cloth on the table to cover the rust spots, and given me a red plastic chair to match it. Above my bed was an open window with no glass or screen, just rusty metal bars. Green shutters could be used to close it during a rainstorm.

I went to check out the bathroom. There was a squatty (an asian toilet), a sink, a bucket and scoop for bathing and flushing the squatty with, and a round, shallow, plastic tub for washing clothes in. Miwi had been thoughtful enough to put a roll of toilet paper in there for me! (I later learned that toilet paper is not usually available in rural Thai bathrooms, since they use water.) However, when I reached out to take some toilet paper, a large cockroach crawed out of the center of the toilet paper and onto my hand! I yelped and dropped the toilet paper! After that, I always checked the toilet paper for insects before grabbing it.

Vocabulary Words: parts of a house (nouns)

Walls- the structure that forms the side of a room or building

Courtyard- an open space in the middle of a building or buildings

Roof- the cover or top of a building, vehicle, etc.

Doors- the entrance to a room or building

Stairs- a series of steps that go from one level or floor to another

Hallway- a walkway from one part of a building to another

Balcony- a raised platform on the side of a building with a railing

Window- an opening in a wall or door

Shutters- a pair of outside covers for a window that open and close

Cloze Exercise: use the vocabulary words in the blanks

Sara looked at her new house. It had brick _____________ and a tile ___________ on top. The ___________ were large, allowing plenty of light into the house. They had charming white ____________ on the outside, which could close during a storm to protect the glass. When entered her new house, Sara noticed that the front door was made of beautiful carved wood. Inside, the _________ led to the living room on the right side, and the dining room on the left side. Beyond the living room, wooden ____________ led up to the second floor of the house. Sara walked to the end of the hallway. On the other side was a beautiful __________ with flowering plants, some benches, and a stone fountain! It was surrounded by brick walls, and the sun shone down from above. To the left, glass _________ opened into the breakfast room. To the right, glass doors opened into the office. Straight ahead, in a quaint one-story brick wall, was an adorable doorway out to the garden. On the second floor there were three ____________ overlooking the coutyard and garden from the bedrooms. It was the most beautiful house Sara had ever seen- and it was hers!

Grammar Point: relative clauses

Relative clauses describe or provide information about something or someone that we have usually already specified.

Examples:

I tried to help a child who was crying. ("who was crying" is a relative clause describing the child.)

I had to translate the whole text, which was difficult for me. ("which was difficult for me" describes the task of translating the whole text.)

Relative clauses usually begin with a relative pronoun. These include: that (to describe anything), which (to describe a thing or event, NOT a person), who (to describe people), whose (to describe something belonging to a person or people), where (to describe a place), when (to describe a time).

Exercise: Each colored sentence (other than black) in my blog contains one relative clause. There are ten of them- try to find the relative clause in each one! Then, identify the relative pronoun that begins each relative clause.

Culture Shock

Story continued from my previous blog...

I arrived in Mea Kachan at eight-o-clock in the morning. I hadn't really slept in over 65 hours, and I had just shifted time zones by twelve hours. I was feeling carsick after the twisty bus ride through the mountains to this small village. When we got off at the bus stop, Pastor Lawan informed me that the children in the orphanage had already left for school. Then, she took me to the morning market to show me around and buy some breakfast.

At the market, unfamiliar sights and smells filled my senses. I walked past pig heads and intestines hanging up on hooks. Eels twisted and thrashed in barrels. There were grilled whole frogs on sticks, pickled brains, and huge cow hearts laying out on the tables. The mixed odors of fish, animal blood, and trash surrounded me. I felt sick to my stomach, and I thought, "How am I supposed to eat breakfast from this place?"

Pastor Lawan excitedly brought me to the back of the market, where an old woman was sitting behind two large bowls. When I looked in the bowls, I was horrified by what I saw! They were filled with large white grubs crawling all over each other! Pastor Lawan smiled at me and said, "Thai people like so much! You want some?" I almost fell over; I felt so weak from shock, exhaustion, and nausea. All I could think was, "Do they cook the grubs first, or eat them alive?" I tried to smile as I shook my head, but I don't think it was a very convincing smile.















a plate full of fried grubs!


Vocabulary:

Here are some vocabulary words from the blog. They are NOUNS that are PLACES.
(Remember, a noun can be a person, place, animal, thing, or idea.)

mountain- a large hill, a very high section of land
bus stop- a place where people can get on or off a bus
village- a small town with houses where people live. It is much smaller than a city.
orphanage- a house or building where children who have no father or mother (called orphans) are taken care of
school- a place where children go to learn. There are teachers and students at a school.
market- an area where people buy and sell food and other things.

Now fill in the blanks with the vocabulary words.

Hi! My name is Joan. I used to live in an ________________ in Thailand. Many children who had no parents lived there. The orphanage was in a small _____________. I used to help take care of the children and get them ready in the morning. Sometimes in the morning I went to the __________ to buy food for breakfast. Every day, the children went to __________ to learn. They rode the bus to school each morning. After school, I always met them at the ______________. After the children got off the bus, I liked to play games with the smaller children while the older children did chores. After dinner, I helped the children with their homework. I loved the evenings in the village. When the sun went down behind the _____________, it looked so beautiful. At night, I used to sing songs with the children before they went to sleep.

Grammar Point:


When you have more than one of something, you usually add s to that word. This is called plural. So for one dog, we say, "a dog." For two dogs, we say "two dogs." Do you see how I added an s onto the word dog?

Look at the words in italics in my blog. Each of them is a plural noun. I added an s onto those words because there is more than one of them. There were many mountains, there were a lot of tables, and there were several pig heads. I would say, "one mountain," and "many mountains." We say, "There is one table," and, "There are many tables." You can look at all the words in italics in my blog, and see that they are all plural (there was more than one of them).

Grammar exercise:

Directions- change the singular noun to a plural noun by filling in the blank.

1. one dog- three _________

2. a cookie- many __________

3. a book- five ___________

4. one hand- two ____________

5. one cup- four ____________