Renovations

"Miss Brooke 29."

"Yes, that's right! I'm 29. You are four."

"When Miss Brooke 27, I two."

Kids just never freakin' cease to amaze me. Especially at this age when you can literally HEAR the synapses popping and the dendrites forming. The fact that this little kiddo was able to figure out both of our ages two years ago and compare them sent me into total shock. Another student that same day suddenly became fully switched on to how rhyming words work and now thinks that it is terribly funny to wander around the classroom, making up all kinds of rhymes:

"Miss Brooke! Play dough, say dough, may dough, tray dough!"

"Very good! Now it's time to put the play dough away and get ready for snack!"

"Snack, pack, track, dack, quack, sack....."

I have another student who is only going to be in my class for a few weeks while his Thai school is on summer break. Both of his parents were killed in the tsunami, and he was found on a beach when he was seven months old. He was then adopted and named by, oh, let's just say a Very Important Family here in Thailand. He is devastatingly sweet and has these wide, wizened eyes. He prefers to observe our morning circle time from under the safe haven of the art table, but every once in awhile he will emerge, curl up next to me, and look up at me with an expression that is equally hopeful and quizzical. And then I have to resist the urge to unhinge my jaw and swallow him whole, because, OMG what a delicious little soul.

The other day he picked up one of my "letter of the week" cards, stared at it for a little while, and then looked over at our alphabet wall. His wide eyes got even wider as he spotted the same letter on the wall. He practically sprinted over to it, pointed to the card, pointed to its equivalent on the wall, and looked at me with surprise. He then proceeded to find the letter in other places: in his fellow classmates' names, in the poem that was hanging on my teaching easel, in the titles of books in the reading corner. And every time he showed me where this letter was hiding, it was as if he was letting me in on a great secret.

The days lately have been these long, breezy, humid stretches of perfect ease. There is still hard work, there is still the occasional difficult moment, but mostly it's been peaceful and, dare I say it, blissful. Bangkok has taken its nonchalant scalpel, carved around my Worry Tumor that has been there since, um, birth (remember the Worry Tumor?), and ground it into a material of substance that can be actually useful to me. Which is not to say that the process of carving was not painful or full of all kinds of sharp, throbbing aches. I sometimes think that the brain has to sear itself in order to rewire itself. Any renovation involves destruction, tearing, severing, demolishing.

And while I've been putting the finishing touches on my own internal renovations, my students have wedged their tiny little feet into the door of literacy, and these small moments of recognition, of emerging ownership over this vast and crucial expanse of the written word, have become huge and important fanfares of purpose for me and my students alike. We are temporarily bound together in the long and important journey of lifelong learning, and holy crap will I miss them when our time together is over.

In other news, what I feel has been noticeably absent from my blog postings is the little detail about getting two hour massages twice a week (and, um, sometimes more), and fabulous mani-pedis once a month. And eating out every day. These are luxuries that I will surely not be able to afford once I'm back in the U.S., and their impact on my life should by no means be underestimated.

So, um, I'm off to get a massage, and I will be sure to instruct the masseuse to pay extra attention to the area where the Worry Tumor used to be :)