Random Monday's: Saturday Story Time @ Neilson Hays Library, Bangkok

Source: Pinterest

Hello Steemian friends,

Yes, that's Thomas Sanders from Vine (may Vine rest in peace)! But, no, we're not going to talk about his story time. Instead, we are going to talk about Saturday Story Time at the Neilson Hays Library in Bangkok.

Source: Neilson Hays Library in Bangkok, located in the Sathorn area

Every Saturday from 10:30AM, the popular children story time session takes place. The library is filled, from babies to toddlers and their parents (most, if not all, are expats). It offers a sanctuary for children to engage, learn and practice their English listening skills in a natural and relaxed environment. In today's modern society, this precious time can be lost amongst the many distractions. Story time (lasting 30 mins) is followed on by an hour of Arts and Crafts, which is related to the story's topic. The story time and in fact the whole library is run by dedicated volunteers, but more on that later.

Dedicating your time

In future posts, Sam will talk about his time volunteering at a community farm as well as going out to Mozambique and South Africa as a volunteer football (soccer) coach. However, we cannot stress enough the importance of giving back through volunteering. The immense pride and satisfaction you get from doing/making something without a monetary purpose. You do it because you feel you can contribute or even learn something new - get out of your comfort zone. When it comes to story time at Neilson Hays Library, it is Sam's sister who volunteers her time every six weeks (as there is a 'rota' of story tellers) to read to the young and keen listeners. She is good at public speaking as she is a journalist/video journalist. Therefore, her skills for reading to the children is greatly appreciated.

20th century library in a 21st century world

This past Saturday, she was invited to read and voluntarily accepted. We (as a family) thought we would come, see and support her. We had never been to this library before, but we heard so much about it. The library recently received the backing and the funding of many advocates for conserving this 20th century library. It has been a library since 1922 (the colonial style building has been there since 1869). Unfortunately, Bangkok is ever so changing and this library sits on a prime real estate site. It takes millions of Baht (thousands of pounds/dollars) to run the library yearly and it was in desperate need of restoration in 2016. At first, the support was limited and the library faced closure if it did not receive the funds it needed to fix all the internal issues. However, support came when they desperately needed it (especially from the expat community, but we cannot forget about the Thai support too). The library set up a type of 'Go Fund Me' site on asiola. They managed to raise and go beyond their target of 500,000 baht ($16,000/£11,000). This might not seem a lot to most, but with modern society drifting towards digitization, the library finds it hard to gain any members. Membership costs as little as 1,000 baht per year ($30/£22). We hope the future is bright for Neilson Hays Library and that the committee can take on the leeching real-estate developers hoping to seize the land for yet another shopping mall or condominium.

Source: Neilson Hays Library bags

"The wheels on the train go round and round"

This Saturday, the topic for Story Time was about trains. To get the kids awake and active before story time, the main committee lady asked the kids to sing-along with her. "The wheels on the train go round and round, round and round, round and round. The wheels on the train go round and round, all through the town". This continued for an agonizing five minutes, of course, with two other songs as otherwise "The wheels on the train" would have been derailed if that song continued for more than a minute! Then the main event (at least for us), was Sam's sister introducing herself and the books she will be reading to the kids. Obviously, engagement with the kids is key, otherwise they become relentless and bored. The task of story telling is more than just reading a book out loud. It's acting, it's being silly and it's making sure everyone is having fun. This is straight up Sam's alley (cough cough)...

Almost story time - kids and parents gather together

Kids are engaged to hear the stories about trains

Sam's sister reads to the Saturday Story Time kids

Seeing all of this, made us miss a) volunteering our time for something we are passionate about and b) embracing more of what life has to offer us. This beautiful library has been standing in Bangkok for over a century, and at least Sam, who has been to Thailand many times before living here for the past year, has never been to this library. The reality is, this library could have been destroyed and we wouldn't have seen its beauty. We are glad we did not use our Saturday morning to be lazy. Yes, sometimes we need it, but sometimes we just need to seize the day! Carpe Diem!

Stay Classy Steemians!

Random Monday’s is a post written by the @travelling-two every Monday to keep their blog spontaneous and to not focus solely on travel, food, nature and their other passions.

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