Well the English Camp was a huge success. The only complaint was the kids wanted two days! That would have meant no weekend at all, so we're happy that didn't happen.

Susanne's activities went well. She was ever creative with kids making "paper sandwiches" and learning various songs. Anything to build vocabulary. I did diamond poems where kids used adjectives and nouns to describe themselves, than antonyms with the Beatles "Hello Goodbye" song. It was a long day, but the enthusiasm of the students was fun to see.

Sunday morning at 7:00 we were at the radio station as featured guests of our teacher friend Santi. We answered 4 questions he had prepared about our impressions of Thailand. Very easy to do given the experiences we have seen. Beam interpreted for us and all in all a good time. Two regrets, it wasn't taped (they forgot), and I didn't have the website a day earlier. Possibly Eric could have accessed the website and heard and tape the show.

Last night we were again humbled by our hosts. Our time will fly by this week and soon we have to leave. So Beam's brothers took us and three other guests to a very exclusive Chinese restaurant in hat Yai. This is the featured dining place in Hat Yai and whenever the prime minister or government officials or famous people come into the city, they usually dine here. Their family is proudly part Chinese and her brother Santi is the president of a huge Chinese/Thai group that regularly meets (over 1000).

Anyway, the meal again as very similar to the wedding meal (earlier post). It consists of 8 courses, one of them being shark fin soup (very expensive) and VERY DELICIOUS! They called the outing "our welcome, thank you and farewell" and believe me it was pretty emotional at the end of the meal. Words cannot explain our feelings and humbleness. They have done EVERYTHING for us since we have arrived, including going to morning market everyday to bring home breakfast, cooking wonderful suppers every night, driven us around on tours and the list goes on. The have opened their home and arms to us and they called us "family". We also received some beautiful souvenirs from them and one other guest. In fact, we are being showered with going away gifts by many teachers as our time gets closer. And this evening and the meal was VERY expensive for them, but they wanted to honor us one more time!

Susanne and I will be forever impacted by their love, selfless generosity and care. We now know how we failed to honor foreign guests we have come in contact with in Delavan. And yes, it is the difference between U.S. and Thai cultures, but shouldn't we do more? Especially because we have so much more!

So, as the adventure comes into the last week, we will try to really appreciate and celebrate the time we have left. Today we go back to a school two Province's from here which will be fantastic again. Wednesday is the Queen's birthday, thus a holiday "Mother's Day. And we'll have to say goodbye to our students (not an easy task).

I'll try to do one more post on the weekend. Bye for now.