The Books are Here!

The books are here! The books are here! I have been working with my coteacher for a couple months now on a Mentor Reading Program plan and grant application. With funds from Friends of Thailand we planned to buy library books for the school and start a Mentor Reading Program. After working so hard to get the project planned out and funded it is so exciting to begin to feel the tangible rewards of the effort we have put into the program.

The money for our program arrived last week and this morning I rode into the province capital with my coteacher and her husband to pick up the books we ordered for the library.

There they were, waiting for us in perfect little boxes when we arrived.

And then they were all taken out of the boxes? This was quickly turning into a much longer trip than I had anticipated. My coteacher kept telling me we can trade out whatever books we don’t want for other books in the store. “But I like these books,” I thought to myself. Turns out she wanted more books that were written in both Thai and English. I tried to help with this book trading process but it all seemed pretty arbitrary to me. The most imput I had at this point was convincing her to get more hardback books so that they last longer.

I pretended to look around the store for books to trade out, but in reality I liked the ones we already had so there wasn’t much work to be done. Plus I was fighting the urge to buy cute Thai children’s books, so I found it best to hide back by the dictionaries.

In the end I think the coteacher was happy with the selection

Two hours later, we grabbed some food for dinner and came back to find the books loaded in our truck bed, ready to go.

Nothing like coffe in a bag to pick me up after an action packed morning. This picture had to have been taken at one of the first sips. Soon after this I began retching my face uncontrolabley in disgust. This was officially the sweetest, grossest coffee I have yet to drink out of a bag.

Dropped the boxes off at school! And then went home and crashed on the floor for a while.