MRISA

Last Thursday began the 3 days of volleyball competition for the 8 schools that participate in the Mekong River International School Association at our International School on the Eastern Seaboard. Remember in October when we traveled to Cambodia where the MRISA basketball games were held? In May we will travel to Laos for the MRISA 2009 soccer matches. Our school's families hosted about 300 children from Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand. We personally hosted 3 boys from the New International School of Cambodia or NISC. We requested to host Zeeth, Dustin and Nathan stayed with his family in Phnom Phen in October. They were excited to see Zeeth again and hopefully it brought some comfort to his mother, whom I met while visiting Cambodia earlier, knowing that we would be caring and watching after her son here in Thailand. Zeeth's family is originally from India and have been in Cambodia for over 10 years. We also hosted EJ born in the Philippines and Paulet born in Cambodia but has spent several years living in L.A. California, his father is in the Cambodian army. They arrived at 3:30 pm on Thursday afternoon to begin their tournament play early Friday morning. The matches were culminated on Saturday with a pool party and awards assembly. Dustin's team came in 4th and Nathan's came in 8th, they didn't win a single match. Nathan was disheartened but every team had one member chosen for the All-Stars team and Nathan was chosen from the ISE 'B' team. Both Nathan and Dustin were chosen as their team's captain.

Our 3 guests were very courteous and a pleasure to host. We were excited to get to learn about their cultures and lives. Nok, my housekeeper was concerned that I wasn't serving any Kao Pao or steamed rice to these Asian boys so she brought over a huge bowl of rice to make sure they survived the weekend. Paulet commented that he gets rice breakfast, lunch and dinner at his house and refrained from eating any here but he did have olives for the very first time. EJ did seem excited to have some rice to add to his eggs, bacon and cinnamon rolls! They seemed to really enjoy our pool and pond, so much so that I gave them the alternative to go to a local mall, visit the Crocodile Farm...but they all voted to just hang out here with our guys. Their flight was 7:30 out of Bangkok so I had to have them at the school at 4:20 a.m.! on Sunday. Poor Songkran, our driver, we didn't get to our bon until 10 p.m. on Saturday night after the pool party and awards assembly and Songkran still had to drive to his bon only to return at 4:00 a.m. the next morning. It is still hard to get used to depending totally on a driver and I don't know what we would have done if he didn't show up or overslept, thankfully, we haven't had to deal with that yet.