Jim's quiet musings . . .

Well, our play “The Three Little Pigs,” was a tremendous success!

I was doing fine, last Thursday, as I walked to school…until I reached our classroom and saw all the kids adorned in their costumes, huge smiles on their made-up faces, tittering on the edge of excitement.

Then I became nervous.

I went through a series of terrible, “What ifs,” which threatened to dampen my past optimism. The “stage father” was fretting something awful. The kids noticed this of course and surrounded me, hugging me, and cajoling me to smile and mellow out.

They succeeded of course, as they usually do, and I slowly began to take deep breaths and tell myself everything would be fine.

Once we entered the backstage wings, the rest was a blur. It went fast! Seemingly much faster than in our rehearsals and it was all over in no time flat. None of the problems I envisioned ever happened. Things went so smoothly it wasn’t even funny.

To say I was proud when the applause burst forth would be a terrible minimization. It seemed I couldn’t stop smiling, even though my cheeks hurt.

I love those kids and right now, as I look back on that moment, I cannot think of anything that would possibly have made me happier than to see their happy faces as they bowed to the appreciative audience.

I look forward to doing this again next year.

Speaking of “Next year,” I am prepared to sign another contract for yet another year here in southern Thailand. Although I have had a numerous amount of job offers from other provinces in Thailand, I have decided to stay here another year and teach these wonderful children again.

The “unobtainable one” is another reason I have decided to stay, but certainly secondary to my beautiful, wonderful Thai children.

-Jeeem-