Bamasega nene pyo ta te

Dabeme jama pyo-tha thei' ma koun bu.

Odd to think that I've been here for less than a week, already it feels like I've been in this class a long time, and I know I've learned a ton.  Perhaps best is just the opportunity to have lots of practice speaking and listening to different people, and practicing the phrases.  Even though I already knew a lot of the vocabulary, I couldn't generally get them out without stumbling through.  And _finally_ I am able to (haltingly) read!  There are still many combinations (it's not one sound per letter, but rather, one syllable per grouping) I don't know, but the main cohort, I can handle.  

There are a number of people that have come back after taking his class last year as well.  I look forward to returning next year, and wonder how much progress I will have made.  He also teaches in Rangoon in the spring, and if I can manage a visa, I'd love to attend that class as well.

Saya O'Kell is a fantastic instructor.  He is a retired professor from Oxford, who spent his career focussing on Burmese language and etymology.  He retired a few years ago, but was loathe to give up teaching, and so began his trips to Chiang Mai and Rangoon to teach eager students suffering from an international dearth of good Burmese language study materials.  There are a handful of books on learning Burmese, and John O'Kell has written most of them.  

He is a quiet, proper, old English gentleman.  Not in the stuffy up tight way, but rather in an endearing, trust engendering way.  He so clearly loves to teach and loves Burmese.  His lectures are sprinkled with anecdotes about the origins of words, and the ways in which the language has changed over time.  It is an absolute treat to study with one the world's most eminent Burmese scholars.  Quite a lot about him also reminds me of my grandfather: some of his mannerisms, and gestures, and even the way he holds his pen.  The self satisfied amusement he gets out of achingly bad puns.

The class itself is very mixed.  A hugely wide range of abilities.  Some attendees have lived inside for quite a while, and others are living in Thailand, and just starting to study.  The most shocking case is perhaps the head of a large well known international NGO who has lived in Rangoon for over ten years, and cannot speak even the most basic phrases.  We often in Mae Sot warn each other against the dark future of becoming one of those expats who lives abroad, but remains in his wee national bubble, failing to connect at all with the people or culture in the midst of which he is living.  The kind who is driven from place to place in an SUV with tinted windows, and has no need or desire to learn the local language, because he has no cause or desire to ever interact with locals who cannot speak his.  I was surprised and a bit disappointed to find that this man seems to be one of those types.  Well, he has come now to learn.  I am about in the middle of the class according to ability.  It actually puts me in a rather odd spot, as I know most of what the beginner classes go over, but I cannot speak well enough for the expert class.  There is an intermediate class, but it requires being able to read and write, which I cannot do, and so I a bit stuck in the middle.  There are a few others who already have some grounding, so he created a sort of advanced beginner class, and this is where I have been studying mostly, popping into other classes as my ability allows.

I think by the end of these 2 1/2 weeks I will have progressed quite a lot.  Hopefully so, as many of our local partners are eager for Jade and I to return and harbor hopes of holding meeting entirely in Burmese.  We'll see.