Changes In Bangkok Part 10
Her mother wanted to pay for a big wedding reception at the largest hotel in town but my wife and I decided to have only a small family wedding as we could see no reason for the family to spend a very large amount of money.
After our official wedding at the Amphur her father gave us his city house as a wedding present. It is an 8 year old four storey building in the city center. Well we moved in and had problems with her older sister as she wanted to have that
building for herself. More about this in a later edition. Never mind, we had an armed truce with her ever after. She always tries to make problems for us.
As this house is very big with 6 bedrooms and a farang style bathroom on each floor we converted the 3rd floor into a dormitory for high school girls. The building is only half a block away from the government high school which made it very
popular for the young ladies who lived up to 100 kilometers or so away and had to come in every morning and go back at night to their parents. This way they only went back at the weekends. However most of them did not want to go back and preferred
to stay with us.
We also run classes tutoring in English conversation, this was very successful and at some stages we had 168 students. We split them up into small classes of not more then 8 girls. We actually had more applications than we could handle and
had to refuse quite a few. My wife prepared and wrote all the study material on her computer and had them copied and bound into proper study books.
A gigantic effort, but very successful. After the second year we reduced our students to less then 30, it simply took too much time and effort. The money was not important as we had enough and did not need more.
My wife also traded her BMW for a 4×4 long wheelbase so that we could drive off-road if we wanted to. Actually we did this quite regularly and enjoyed it tremendously.
Sometimes, at weekends we just bundled our dormitory students into the back of the truck and went up the mountains to visit hill tribe villages. We took food for all of us and the girls really liked this.
After the first year during Christmas our tutoring students ganged up on us and prepared a dinner in our kitchen. They bought all the food and did the preparation themselves. I don’t know who taught them to cook farang food, but it
was a full success, they even baked three cakes. A chocolate cake, a fruit cake and a vanilla cake with many layers of cream. They kicked us out of our own house at 11 am and told us not to come back before 6 pm. Well we went to visit my parents
in law and stopped there for the day. As we came back we found our roof garden set up with tables, plates, forks and knifes, like a western restaurant. Anyway we had a very enjoyable party. Of course no alcohol at all, only coke and coffee. This
become an annual event, and continues today.
Many times, after our students finished high school they came to say goodbye before they left the city to go to University. Most of them cried and promised to stay in touch. Actually practically all send E-mails or write letters to me telling
me what is happening to them. During holidays they always come to visit and sometimes spend a lot of time with us.
One astonishing thing was that the students always talked very freely with me about their “love” affairs and wanted to have advice. But if my wife was around they just shut up and would not talk about any private affairs at
all. I tried to give advice as applicable; after all the young ladies were between 16 and 18 years old and should know what could happen if they are not very careful. Many of them wanted to become too friendly and I had to put a stop to that.
It is very easy to lose your face in a small city and simply not worth it.
As we had ADSL I put a networked computer into the dormitory so that our live in students had internet access and could do their homework more easily. The computer was running red hot. Mostly E-mail and chat channels. I once caught them hacking
into the high-school computer changing their grades. Well I pretended not to see it and did not say anything. I would have to give them good marks to be able to break into the system.
This lifestyle of our continued for the next 6 years and I was extremely happy and content. I loved all our students and they considered me like a father figure.
Enough for now will send the last chapter soon.
Stickman's thoughts:
Good stuff.