nilima en el mundo

Lorraine (one of our instructors and ESL teacher at the school. In her “spare time” she drives kids to Bangkok – 5 hours total – every weekend for music lessons, brings hurt puppies to the vet, has adopted a few children, and acts as emotional support/mother to many of the children here). So, we’ve started helping out in her ESL classes, even teaching when she’s not there. My first few days when I could barely sit through their classes, let alone feign enthusiasm, Read the rest of this entry »

I’m having a frusterating time getting the entries i wrote on one comp to upload, given shaky internet and thai language issues, but here are some pics.
The first is the girl who got really attached to me, her name is Angie.

 These are kids in an integrated, outdoor class

 Here are steps to the small mountain i climb by the school

Here are some cows, they are sort of blurry which is how they looked to me when they got scared, turned direction starting running at me all at once.

 This is some cilantro and who-knows-what sold in these bags at a local market.

 Here is a statue from some temple, it has a strong hindu influence.

 The other day Dr. Jumsai gave a very interesting lecture on different learning styles. First he discussed the accepted Western Model, which is called Brain-based learning. The main idea is that we have short and long-term memory and our processing speed is determined by the synapses in our brain. When we don’t use our brains enough for processing information these connections get weak and eventually die. Therefore in order to improve the academic performance of our children should expose them to the most experiences, academic exercises etc. as soon as possible. Read the rest of this entry »

Lost in Translation: Judaism meets Hollywood meets subtitles
So I was helping with a ninth grade class and one of the girls asked if I was Christian, to which I replied, “no, I’m Jewish” – the girls gave me a blank stare so I tried a few descriptors, all of which failed Read the rest of this entry »

(This was supposed to have been posted before the one on basket ball )This entry is not very interesting in terms of colorful descriptions, it’s a day-to-day explanation of what I’m doing here. I am studying at the Institute of Sathya Sai Education, Thailand (there are other such institutes around the world, in Zambia, India, England etc). Read the rest of this entry »

Today I helped out with a ninth grade ESL class, I sat with a group of boys and was instructed to have a discussion on anything, just to help them practice. Yesterday Dr. Jumsai (the head of School and famous educator) gave us a class on Human Values, how the mind processes information etc. Read the rest of this entry »

So, I’m in Thailand and it’s fantastic, this entry is some details of the trip. I took the 18 hour Singapore Airlines flight from Newark (after waiting 8 hours there) to Singapore, and then hopped over to Bangkok. In transit I slept a lot and read a book of travel-stories called “You Can’t to There from Here” ( or something like that) by Gayle Foreman – though I didn’t love every chapter, her descriptions of street children in Cambodia, black Jews in South Africa and prostitutes in Amsterdam kept my attention. Read the rest of this entry »

I got really excited about getting lots of psuedo-travel writing in one place, so here is an article I wrote for the VT Refugee Resettlement Program’s newsletter cause I doubt I’ll actually be going to Somalia any time soon, so spending time wtih Somali refugees is as close as I’ll come:

Read the rest of this entry »

Sure this is a travel blog, not Nilima’s personal forum to advocate about distressing humanitarian issues, but that’s what i need to do now. Please visit

So last night I went to a reggae concert in Winooski, with two friends, both of whom love to travel, are very smart and conscious and are studying international development, conflict resolution and environmental studies. One is of Indian descent, the other is Caucasian, Polish probably with some other European blood mixed in. Read the rest of this entry »