Can it be Tuesday already?

We feel a creeping sadness setting in. We are part of the Say Ta Nar family and are in comfortable routines preparing for school, working with the children and teachers, waving them all off at the end of the day and then sitting with Pho Cho and his family. We are already organised with leaving presents and have bought storage containers to hold all the resources we have brought with us. Tomorrow will be difficult!

There were Italian visitors in school this morning from the charity supporting Say Ta Nar. They were impressed with the school and the Scottish link and were soon admiring the display of abstract art. They observed Claire and Natasha leading maths games with the kindergarten supported by the Burmese teachers. Neesha, Pho Cho and Emily were all teaching this morning.

Neesha teaching

I sat with Pho Cho on the computer and we opened up the blog and talked about all the good work and joint projects that both schools were co-operating on. Pho cho and Neesha both enjoyed the photographs and we agreed that we looked forward to the future and working together for our children. We then talked about our Eco Green Flag and were able to show the North Edinburgh Newspaper article with our flag flying and Malcolm Chisolm and Tom Farmer who joined us for the opening celebration.

Look at the article below at:

www.northedinburghnews.co.uk/assets/pdf/2009/feb09.pdf

This lead on to talking about raising awareness of the Burmese situation and we talked about Mark Lazarowicz and his support of the two Global Partnership schools in North Edinburgh. Amazingly we were able to access Mark`s blog and show a picture of Pirniehall children holding the Burmese book we feature in with Say Ta Nar, Forthview and Hlee Bee. Pho Cho had a copy in school and was impressed to see this. I know Mark reads our blogs and we told Pho Cho that he would be happy to see that a Headteacher of a refugee school on the Thai/Burmese border was reading his blog!

Mary and Pho Cho sharing the blogs and news article.

Pho Cho has been writing an Environmental/Social Studies textbook for five years which has now been published and a copy is in every refugee school in Mae Sot. Dr Thein Lwin has written his praise and support for Pho Cho in the introduction. We are all very proud of Pho Cho who is a forward thinking professional who is passionate about education and the rights of every child. He would like to address the UN and I think he could achieve that one day.

Pho Cho's book

There was a lovely relaxed atmosphere as we ate another great lunch of Thai fish, hot chilli sauce and an intriguing prawn dish which became a talking point. Claire's face was a picture as we encouraged her to try it!

There were two main teaching tasks in the afternoon , one discussing Aung San Suu Kyi and the other a chalk art lesson about hands linking our two communities and this will be replicated in classes in Pirniehall next session. Pho Cho enjoyed seeing how involved the children were in their discussions. The children were happy to receive the photographs that they took last year. The day ended with an upper school singalong and everyone joined in as Claire lead us with her usual enthusiasm. Charly Cho was demonstrating the actions for all to see!

Showing off their work and enjoying seeing their photographs.

After waving the children off, Scottish and Burmese teachers sat and drank coffee together and munched on shortbread biscuits. We chatted and laughed together as good friends would and just savoured the moment.