The Forest

I am told that most of Southeast Asia used to be covered by a deciduous dipterocarp forest. This kind of forest is hard to imagine if you've never seen it. It's a very open forest, covered at the ground level by small shrubs and grasses (and water, in rainy season). If this were an airline, the trees in this forest would be flying first class because they've got all the room they can handle. It's an unusual (read: Weird!) kind of environment, one that takes a lot of getting used to. It can be beautiful, although capturing the beauty on film usually requires standing in one place long enough for something to bite you. This forest is home to some truly evil biting ants.



Anyhoo, my coteacher Miyuki and I spent a couple of weeks near a village in the forest, teaching English. Hard-core birdwatchers go up to this site to catch a glimpse of the giant ibis and white-shouldered ibis, two endangered bird species. We managed to tag along on a couple of these birding trips but honestly can't tell a parakeet from an ibis, especially as everything we saw was pretty far away. Miyuki later did her "sleeping ibis" impression for me.



Our job was to teach the local committee some basic English to help them interact with the bird-watchers. We had 4 hours of class every day, 2 hours for the committee



and 2 hours for teenagers from the village who are on school break and have more free time than they know what to do with. Everyone's favorite unit was when we had them play Bingo to practice numbers, although the unit that provoked the most hilarity was practicing "th" sounds for "this" and "that." Having students watch each other struggle (and sometimes fail) to get their tongue out between their teeth is not good for classroom decorum but excellent for morale.

Aside from teaching, Miyuki and I didn't have a lot else going on. We read through a whole box of books, played long games of Skip-Bo, and fantasized about food of all kinds. I also spent a good deal of time asking Miyuki stupid questions about Japanese culture, the answers to which I have now forgotten.

But that's OK, we'll have a chance to go through them all again, as we're going back to the village to teach for another couple of weeks. Woot?