Tuesday Night's with P'Moo's Family

For the past two weeks we were invited to privately tutor three amazing Thai boys in Chiang Rai. The boys are nephews, we think, of P'Moo who is one of the founders of the Mirror Art Group. When we were first asked to tutor the kids we had no clue what to expect, all we knew is that they would feed us and the kids were very bright. Little did we know, our private tutoring lessons would be one of our favorite responsibilities while at Mirror. We are sad it only lasted two weeks.

Uno, Ingvy, and Lavin who are 13, 11, and 10 respectively, are probably the smartest children we have ever met. Not only are they book smart, they are also able to speak fluent English, and possibly Japanese. It was very hard for us to find things to teach them, especially Uno, because their skill level is so high. To compensate, we found games at Mirror and taught them about special topics, such as sports in America. A Mirror volunteer donated a game to Mirror called Headbandz - to play, you choose a card and place it on your head and then ask questions while trying to guess the object. Through this game we were able to evaluate how smart these boys actually were. They often guessed the object within four or five turns with questions such as Am I Alive? or Do you eat me? Sadly, it takes us seven or eight rounds.

While at the boy's home we were treated to the best dinners, ice cream cones, and entertainment. After lessons the boys pull out their musical instruments and perform for us. Not only are these boys smart, they also are musical! Uno plays the piano, Imwee plays the guitar, while Loren sings. The songs range from beautiful Thai songs, which we do not understand, to popular American tunes such as Linkin Park's Numb, Sean Kingston's Beautiful Girl, or our favorite - Love Me Tender.

Even though we had only spent a short time with the boys, it was very hard to say goodbye. We had so much fun spending a few hours a week with such lovely, bright men. They will definitely go far in life. Spending our last night with them is the start to a lot of goodbyes in the next few days, it is going to be much harder than we expected.