I think God is calling me to play Dutch Blitz...

Over the past couple weeks I have been playing games with my students and realized what a fun way it is to connect with them.  This year I supervise study hall with high school students twice a week.  Two weeks ago, during study hall, I was invited to play UNO with them (with some Thai rules!) and it turned into a huge game with about 6-8 high school boys.  I haven't interacted with them too much before but after that game we had a connection and would laugh and talk more often.

Another day during study hall a 10th grade boy asked me if I wanted to play chess.  I had never played before so he taught me the basics and we played for the rest of class.  (I was doing pretty good when the bell rang!).

A few days after all this started I went away with the middle and high school students to Overnight Camp - three days away at a camp playing games and hanging out.  I was able to play some  more UNO, Whoonu with the Grade 9 girls, and also teach some students my favorite game, Dutch Blitz.  I first taught it to a 9th grade girl, Pin, and she loved it!  The next day I taught it to four 7th graders and they also loved it.  They ended up playing it for the next two hours!

After Overnight Camp, we were back at school and a student asked me about Dutch Blitz because he had really enjoyed playing it.  It was then (or maybe a little before then) that I got the idea to start a Dutch Blitz club in my classroom after school.  There is already a chess club, and there is cheerleading, basketball and soccer practice.  So why not Dutch Blitz?

All of this coincides with me trying to figure out where to put my focus and where to really invest my time and energy.  I really want to build relationships with my students, but with over 200 students coming through my door every week (being the art teacher to all grades) it's hard to build deep relationships... I just have a lot of shallow relationships with a lot of students.

While praying and journaling about it, God brought to mind some specific students to be investing in (mostly ones I already spend extra time with through tutoring and other avenues).  But he also brought to mind this Dutch Blitz club again.  What a great opportunity to combine wanting to get to know my students better and doing what I already love!  And what a great way for me to invite students into my classroom to just hang out and have fun once a week together -- to build friendships and pray that God uses them for deeper purposes.

It seems like a silly ministry but building friendships through fun and games is a great first step to building deeper relationships and trust.  My students aren't likely to open up to me about deeper issues without knowing me and being comfortable around me.  If nothing else, it will be a fun thing they can do after school and way for us to spend time together.  I am so excited to see where the Lord takes this!

And so, I have 6 packs of Dutch Blitz in my Amazon shopping cart and hopefully in the next month or so this will be underway!

Some pictures of my new Dutch Blitz fans at Overnight Camp :)

Teaching Pin how to play with some other teachers

Teaching four 7th graders how to play

We had four teachers who knew how to play, each paired up with a student while they first started learning, helping them get the hang of it.

They caught on really fast and were soon playing all by themselves... and pretty good, too! 

Neighborhood Elephant

I finally saw it!  The neighborhood elephant!  I saw him a couple times my first year but haven't seen him in so long.  My roommate and I were getting sad that we never see him, and other people told us he was out fairly often (they are often out at night when it is cooler.  It is illegal for them to walk around during the day because they burn their feet on the hot pavement).  Tonight my roommate was walking down the street and texted me that the elephant was on his way down the street.  So, being the crazy foreigner who still finds elephants in the city fascinating, I grabbed my camera and ran to the street and took some photos while the rest of Thailand pretended life was completely normal :)

Here's my (new) buddy walking down the street amidst taxis, buses, motorcycles, sidewalks, and 5 story buildings.  Just a normal night in Thailand.

Kanchanaburi

In the beginning of August it was the Queen's birthday so we had a four day weekend.  I took the opportunity to go up to Kanchanaburi with a group of friends and had a great time!  Kanchanaburi is where the Bridge over the River Kwai was built during WWII along with the Death Railway.  We were able to go to a war museum and learn more about the POW's and were able to ride a train along part of the Death Railway.  On a lighter note, we were also able to explore a huge cave, climb and swim in the Erawan waterfalls, ride elephants, ride a bamboo raft and swim in the River Kwai, eat lots of delicious food, and pet and walk a tiger.  It was an awesome group to travel with and I was so blessed by spending time with them and getting to do some really fun and cool stuff.

Here is the Bridge over the River Kwai.  The first day we got there we got on a long shallow boat and rode around to a few different places...

We stopped at one place to explore a large cave!  It was really big and so fun to keep walking and exploring more and more rooms and pathways.  There was one room blocked off called the Ja-Ae room (Ja-Ae is what Thai people say when they are playing peek-a-boo with little kids).  Apparently this room is such a maze that you can easily get lost and you never know what is going to pop out at you!

 Here is some wildlife we saw on the way to the cave... cacti, peacocks, flowers and cows

 A great view of the River Kwai - beautiful mountains!

 A great big Buddha at the view point

 We also stopped at the Jeath Museum, (apparently they didn't want to call it the Death Museum).  The museum had pictures, explanations and artifacts about the POW's in Thailand during WWII.  It described their lives, how they were treated, and even had a bomb that was dropped but never exploded.  Here is also two views of the Death Railway the POW's built.

After our trip on the boat we checked into our resort and spent some time just hanging out and talking.  We looked out a window and saw a man wearing a Celtics jersey!  I was so excited about the possibility of meeting someone from Boston all the way in Thailand that we convinced Ryan to go introduce himself and figure out if he was from Boston while we all looked on.  Apparently the guy was from Germany and couldn't care less about the Celtics, but it was a funny story!

Our second day in Kanchanaburi we booked an all day tour to do lots of different things.  In the morning we hiked the Erawan falls.  There are seven different levels so we hiked up to the top and then slowly worked our way down, swimming in a few different pools.  The top right picture is the group I went with (from the back).  From left to right is Carrie, Panya, Ben and Ryan.  The bottom right picture is a picture of Carrie and Ben.

Here are some of the beautiful sights of the falls.  The bottom left picture shows a cave that Ben climbed into.

 The bottom left picture here shows the fish in the water.  There were tons of fish in each pool and they would come and eat the dead skin off your feet.  That was something I just couldn't get used to!

 At one of the levels there were some rocks you could slide down.  It was so fun!  Here is Ryan and Ben having a blast!

After lunch we went to ride elephants.  Here are Carrie and Ben riding their elephant into the river.

Here is Ryan and me riding an elephant.  It was the first time I was allow to sit on it's neck!  It was really cool!

After the elephant ride we went to the River Kwai and rode a bamboo raft up the river.  On our way down the river we jumped into the river and swam/floated for a while, which was nice.  (Sorry, no pictures of that experience).  After that we went to another section of the Death Railway and had some time to walk around.  Then we rode the train for a while.  Here is a picture of the section of railway we walked and some pictures of me and Carrie.

 On our last day we went to a Tiger temple.  We were able to pet some of the tigers and watch them play.

We also got to walk a tiger on a leash!  So crazy!

On our last day we went to the Bridge over the River Kwai one last time and took a group photo.  From left to right is Panya, Ryan, me, Carrie, and Ben.  They were such a wonderful group to travel with and spend time with!  So much fun!