So David, a friend of a friend of mine here in Thailand – who has become a great friend to all of us helping us find a place to live and work and navigating us around Chiang Mai – hooked Jeremiah and I up with a job at the YMCA. We were counselors for a weekend-long English World Camp. Thirteen and 14-yr-old Thai kids have an INSANE amount of energy.. and are “awesome!”

Today Freddie meets some local children working odd jobs in one of Quito’s central squares.  He takes them to a fried chicken lunch and hears about their life and it turns out they have a lot more in common with him than first meets the eye.

Chances are, when you visit a traditional Vietnamese village, you will encounter the adorable, dirty, pantless village children on your journey. I used to have a tradition of sending my mom a postcard of such a scene, which I knew always made her inevitably cringe as she gazed upon their dust-smeared smiles. While in Sapa, we were not let down. Perhaps most importantly of all, I was very happy to find that they didn’t once approach us asking for money or candy but simply waved, grinned and yelled “HALLO!”

I’m glad to see the no-pants-dance is still going strong in Asian villages.

Thus far, there are two significant reasons why I think tutoring kicks English teachings ass (in a school anyway)

1) Its more personal. You get to know the children better, and its becoming easier and easier for me to understand the culture here through my interactions with these kids. Not to mention, they’re all pretty awesome and well-behaved, which tends to help.

2) The dress code. I hate, and I mean hate, dressing up in any way, form, or fashion. Getting to wear jeans and a t-shirt to my tutoring sessions definitely beats having to wear uncomfortable shoes and a button down blouse. My boss in Los Angeles had a hard enough time asking if I had even ever worn a dress in my life, much less business casual clothing.

If this upward trend continues, maybe I’ll be able to make up some of the money I lost during my first jobless month in Saigon.

The other day, one of the teachers came into my classroom and handed me a stack of papers, each bearing the outlines of four flowers. She explained that we needed more decorations for the third floor, and even though the kids had colored at least 8 of these flowers each already, we needed another 8 from each of them. I gave her a funny look and told her that I’d do my best but I couldn’t promise I’d get a page from each kid, much less two.

Our school suffers from a serious flower deficiency

When I showed the kids the pages and asked them to color the flowers their responses ranged from groans to outright refusal. I felt so bad for them that I finally conceded that if they’d color just two flowers each, I’d color the other two flowers for them and we’d throw the other four in the trash.

Now, you’d think it would be easy to simulate the artistic style of a 6 year old, but you have to forget a lifetime of pesky adult coloring habits, like staying inside the lines and using colors actually found in a real flower. Some of the kids were much easier to emulate than others: for example for one little boy uses a style I’m going to call ‘the lazy rainbow’. You just grab, roughly, one of every color crayon and scribble in circles until… well, I’m honestly not sure… he always manages to stop at the point where it’s not quite finished, but close enough that nobody will call him out on it.

The most difficult style to fake was that of one artistic little girl who draws princesses on everything (this includes her desk, chair, books, arms, etc). If my flower didn’t have a princess on it, nobody would believe it was her work. I decided I had to use a bit of trickery here… I started coloring in some flower petals and then told her that I really wanted a princess on my flower but didn’t know how to draw one. Before I knew it she’d grabbed the crayons and not only drew a little Cinderella, clad in blue, but also finished off the rest of the flower in pink and rainbow colors.

Compare my flowers (top) to actual children's artwork (bottom)!

Now, I know I could just have forced them to color the flowers, or told the other teacher that they refused, but she’d only have forced it on them later and as much as these kids drive me crazy, it’s sad to watch the fun and creativity sucked out of something as simple as coloring.

A peri-urban schoolyard in Saigon's low-income District 7.

After two weeks of working on our hands and knees with (literally) hundreds of Korean 4 year-olds, Brian might actually kill me for saying this, but I love kids. That’s because, when it comes down to it and I’m surrounded by screaming, crying and broken glass, one fact remains: kids are the same wherever you go.

As you’ve guessed from Brian’s positive updates over the last week, we’re teaching kids. A lot of kids. I’m struck though at how similar their personalities are to the children I met at home, in Vietnam, and saw riding the Tokyo subway alone at 6 in the morning. There are always the same old personalities: the smart one, the dumb one, the girl that’s way too into herself and her ability to color inside the lines. Reliably, if a child is significantly bigger than his classmates, he’s a bully. If a kid’s balloon pops, he’s going to cry.

It seems so strange to me to feel most at home with that part of a culture I can communicate the least with. My classes essentially consist of me shouting as loud as I can, while on my hands and knees showing them what to do through more of a mime-act than actual teaching. I guess it’s reassuring in a culture as xenophobic and anti-American as this, to know that there’s some segment I can truly get through to just by making a silly face.