Love is My Life

Hey, Hey! 

Well, I am finished for the year minus completing a few things for my curriculum binders, which will hopefully be done tomorrow. We had graduation on Sunday. It was a bitter sweet occasion. More sweet than bitter. We have some really wonderful graduates who graduated who will do wonderful things in this world. I hope they all live up to their potential. :) They will be missed at Legacy, but moving is part of life. I would love to see them come back and visit and tell us how they are making an impact on this world. They certainly have impacted my life. I still get a lot of emails asking how my kids are or saying I'm sure the kids love you as a teacher. I want to clarify. I don't teach kids. Maybe sometimes they act like it, but most of them are the same age as me if not older making this whole experience quite unique. Another thing that makes this experience unique is living, eating, teaching, playing, worshipping, watching movies all together. Sure we don't share the same rooms or live in the same house, but for all practical purposes we live together. We are all on the same property. This experience has been life changing. I look at things differently. I have much more patience. I appreciate things in ways I didn't before my year at Legacy. God has stretched me and grown me in ways that I didn't really ask. I pray on a daily basis that God will cause me to grow and be stretched. Well, remember the disclaimer... "Be careful what you pray for." This is very true. It will make you a better person, but you'll be stretched and grown in ways you really would rather there be another way. So I guess it's safe to say that I'll be forever changed by this year in Mae Sa Luang Thailand. 

Okay, enough for now. Some of you will here me talk about my experience, so I don't want to talk about all of it in my blog. :) (If  you do have specific questions that I've not talked about in my blog, feel free to email me or ask me when you see me.) So I'll move on to pictures!! Yay! I know you're all excited. It's been quite a while since I put any on here. So here they are! 

The first couple of pictures are two of my three students teaching at the local school the last week. They did a fantastic job! They had tough classes and it was their first teaching experience. I love teaching them how to teach. One of the reasons I love it is that I'm forced to reevaluate the way I teach, which is always a good thing. My class was kind of like "Survivor." However, no one was voting anyone off. They were dropping like flies. I was demanding and there was a lot of work. If you missed more than one class, you were out. Some didn't think they could commit and others for various reasons had to stop attending class. So I'm really proud of the three that completed the class. They all did and excellent job!

This is Jaseefu, 3rd year student. He is teaching 4th grade. They were learning about farm animals. :) We sang Old Mac Donald. Good Times! Miss Kathy, it made me think of the K-1 class. :) 

This is Lallian, graduate student. He's teaching simple past to the 7th grade class. Yay for English grammar! He is the student who is planning on opening an orphanage in Burma. 

Now on to pictures from the graduation weekend.

Erika, Me, Ben, Nathan

This is a photo of my er um... friends? :) Yes, my friends. 9 months ago I didn't know any of these three people. But let me tell you after you see each other nearly everyday for almost all day, you get to know people pretty well. None of us have killed each other either. I think there may have been a couple of close calls. :) We all get along really well! I think I may go through withdrawals going home for a couple of months and not being around them everyday. How are we ever going to survive!?!

At graduation... This is our lovely secretary Saew. She is amazing and does EVERYTHING! Her English is really good, but if you were to ask her, she would said it's not very good. 

These are the first year students. 4 boys. They are really good students. They were my Bible 1 class. We thought they looked like the Beatles. They were amazing! They sang a popular Thai song and then sang a song to the graduating students that Atiwat wrote! It was called "The Great Brother." Essentially it was talking about how the 3rd year students have been older brothers to them and they want to follow their examples.  

Our Thai students and can you spot the farang? We were singing 2 Thai songs. One of which Jaseefu wrote. Jay, the student on the far left of the photo has a tremendous amount of patience. He taught me the words, the melody, and helped me write it in English so I could read it. 

This is Goi. She is another one of the secretaries. She doesn't has as much English as Saew, but she is still great! 

All of the students, the Sextons and the teachers. I'm the short one.

The teachers, the Sextons and the graduating students. :) My students who I had them in Reading, Writing, Discussion, Journalism (minus a couple in this class), Teaching (only a couple) and Health.

With Norah and her girls.

Norah, 3rd year; Fon, 2nd year and Nathan sing the song, "Love is My Life" written by Jay, 3rd year student. I'm going to put the words at the end. 

Goi and Saew hard at work. :)

The four teacher and the seven grads.

The four boy grads. Buut, Jaseefu, Beka, and Jay.

The Sextons, the four teachers and grads before graduation.

The four teacher and the seven grads.

Our seven grads with almost all of them smiling! Believe it or not this is quite an accomplishment. Thai people don't like to smile in photos. 

Left to Right, back row Jaseefu, Hkawn Din, Norah, Seng Mai, Buut 

Left to Right, front row Beka and Jay

Lyrics to Jay's song, "Love is My Life" (hence the title of my blog).

Love is my life  Life to be with you

Love is what you do for me  I'm a happy man

A year is like a day  A day is like a blink of my eyes

Can you smile to me, in the blue moon

I want to see a beautiful smile from you 

Before it is too late 

I will keep what you do, for me because I know

That I can't find any you  You are my love

I will remember you from now on

I will see you in my dreams

The dream might not come true, but I'm waiting for you

Let me look at you again

I will tack you into my heart, my life is beautiful because of you.

I'm a lucky man in the world

Let me tell you a little bit about Jay. He calls himself Dr. Love. He one of the most interesting people I have ever met. He always has a story to make you smile. He tries to make people laugh all the time. He does not like it when people look sad or blue. He was a Budhist monk. He loves people. He loves love. He loves hamburgers. In fact, hamburgers are the perfect love food. I hope one day he finds the beautiful girl to share a hamburger with. He is one of the most respectful people you will ever meet. As I said before, he is very patient. I wish everyone could meet Mr. Jay. I could never forget him. 

I think that's all for now. I may write again before I'm home. We'll see. I'll be in good ol' Cali in a week! :) Yay! I'm really looking forward to seeing everyone. :) 

Love and Hugs,

Lainy J.