Thailand Letter
(This was received as a paper letter to some of Mom's friends and Bob scanned it and emailed it to the family. I am including it for its journal value)
July 20,1997
Dear Friends,
WELL - here I am in the Tippets' old "stomping ground"1 !! I have thought about them so often and tried to imagine them living here about 25 years ago. I am sure it has changed a lot. I met a man this morning at church who teaches at an International School here and I asked him if the name "Tippets" rang a bell. When I told him they were here 25 years ago he said he would not have been a member of the church at that time and didn't remember them.. He also said there were many International Schools here now.
I am having a marvelous experience - something new each day!!! We teach English in a different school every day and the principals and teachers are just wonderful to us - I will come home spoiled rotten. The teachers pick us up in the mornings and take us to school were we are given an once and then they bring us fruit juice and a little meat - they keep bringing ice water every few minutes - in a couple hours we have a break with more juice and more treats. - at noon we are served a delicious Thai dinner (they call it lunch). We start again at 12:30 and at 2 we stop for a break with more fruit juice and treats. They bring us home about 6 p.m. and they always have some fruit for us to take to our apartment.
I am old enough to be the teachers' mothers and they act like they are afraid I am going to break. When I teach in the non-air conditioned classrooms they bring in fans and ice water and one day they asked me if I had my own teeth - it is really funny but they are SO sweet there is no way I could take offense. I am SO surprised in how nicely they dress - I brought a11 the wrong clothes. They look like fashion plates and wear gorgeous jewelry. The clothing teacher in one of the schools has made me a dress and the workmanship is just beautiful - I chose too light of a material and you can see through it so now she is making me a full length slip.
They teach EVERYTHING in their schools - beautician and barber class besides al1 the basics. They also teach agriculture and have gardens on their school grounds where they raise most of the vegetables they eat and they have chickens and ducks for eggs and meat. I am VERY impressed with the quality of their education - the teachers really work hard and the students are so respectful. They have some schools with over 3,000 students - they wear uniforms, take off their shoes off before entering their classrooms, have the funniest bathrooms I will ever see and yet there are very few discipline problems. The bathrooms are the "squatter type" and I flushed with pans of water. They have 45 -50 students in each classroom.
Our "townhouse" is really quite nice - it is new so it is clean and we haven't seen any roaches yet and just a few "geckos". We have two bedrooms but only one has any furniture in it - Virginia and I share a king size bed and that room is the only one that is air-conditioned so we spend a lot of time in it. We have had to furnish our townhouse and we have big boxes that we use for dressing tables but that is okay. My hair is my biggest problem - it is nothing but a big frizz ball. Beth Lucas gave me a tight permanent before I left and she would laugh if she could see it now - it is SO frizzy and of course all the Thai women have beautiful black smooth hair.
I had my first letter from home last Thursday and I WAS SO THRILLED. My son Bob and his family wrote me a long letter. I am only sending one letter to my family and then Bob is duplicating it and sending it to the others. I have sent cards to some of my neighbors and I hope they have received them. We mail them in a funny little mail box at the end of our street and I don't know when they get picked up.
We are in a very "QUAINT" part of Bangkok. Our townhouse is between two canals so I worry about snakes but the front of our place is gated with cement walls and the back is the same way without the gate. A Monk passes our place early in the morning and we have been able to catch him sometime and give him some food. The street vendors pass by constantly and their food looks so good but we are advised to not eat it. We drink only bottled water and so far we have been okay - we have both had little upsets but nothing serious. Beverly Jenkins was ill for about ten days but is better now.
Have you heard about the fighting in Cambodia? They have brought all the missionaries to Thailand and they are working with us. We have a couple teaching with us - Reed and Velda Wight from Ogden. They raise chickens and turkeys on a 300 acre ranch West of Ogden and they were sent to Cambodia to help with a big "feed mill" they have built there. They said it was very frightening with gunshots all around. They would like to go back to Cambodia but the church won't let them. There are about 500 members of the church there.
We are very impressed with the church and its members here - they are all so interested in learning English. We go to church at 9 a.m. (it takes us an hour by bus and taxi) and after Sacrament at noon we have lunch there and then teach the members English. They are very high-class people and so very nice. I can understand why President Hinckley loves the Asian people so much - there is something very basic in their dispositions that sets them apart. They don't hurry like we do in America and they are very polite and kind - even the people on the streets.
When we go anyplace we have to pass by some very poor housing areas and I could cry. Little families are being raised in such poor circumstances and it is SO hot and I know they don't even have fans to keep them cool.
We went with some school students to the Buddha Temple close by their school and that was REALLY something. They decorated a truck very elaborately with little Thai children dressed in the Thai costumes sitting on it - the children all marched to the temple with drums beating and when they got there, they did Thai dancing all around it. There were probably 3,000 students sitting in kind of an assembly hall with ten monks chanting in front of them. Our principal, Pra Pa, was sitting by me and she translated what they were saying. They have three basic rules: Don't lie, Don't steal, Don't covet someone's husband or wife, Don't kill people or animals and Don't drink whiskey. It took over an hour for them to chant that message. We crossed over a little bridge to get to the Temple and on the way back they gave us old bread to feed to the fish in the canal under the bridge - that was interesting - HUGE FISH.
The church has bought us a computer and we are enjoying it SO much. We have only had it for a couple days - it will cut out a 1ot of work. I love and miss all of you very much.