Oh my goodness, where has the last week gone!? Things are going great so far, the girls and I have been extremely busy which hasn’t left us much time to feel homesick.
Monday, May 9
After I wrote my last blog, I met my cooperating teacher. He is from Winnipeg, and has taught at Lertlah School before, so it is comforting to know that he knows how things go around here! After I met him we found out that we had to go to training for a new program for teaching Kindergarten students English as an additional language. The program is called GrapeSEED. We had this training from Monday – Thursday from 9-3, and on the last day we were all presented with certificates for being certified GrapeSEED teachers (a bonus for my resume and portfolio!). The program has only been around (in Japan and Korea) for a couple of years, and Lertlah (our school) has just become a pilot school for the program. It is different from what I learned in University for teaching English, but as far as I can see it is going to be an awesome and effective way to teach students English.
The students that are teaching from Winnipeg had already been here for a week, so at lunch time they showed us the shops and good places to eat around the area. There is a restaurant right across the street from our school called Bee’s, it is really good... they have Canadian food (BLT’s and grilled cheese), as well as some good Thai food (we have tried the chicken fried rice and cashew chicken so far). To get one of those meals and a canned drink or water is 45 baht (Thailand currency) which is the equivalent of $1.50 Canadian!!! Just an FYI, 1 baht = 3 cents. Also, there is a guy with a fruit stand on the street with unbelievably fresh watermelon and pineapple... it only costs 10 baht (approximately 30 cents Canadian!)
After school on Monday we unpacked and organized our rooms. I am supposed to be living with Amanda but she isn’t coming until the 29th, and I was too scared to stay alone, so Tori, Jill and I put all of our beds in one bedroom, and all of our clothes and computer desks in the other bedroom, and mine and Amanda’s apartment is empty for now. Now that is the definition of true friends!
Once we finished redecorating, we realized we hadn’t had supper yet so we went down the street to a place called Pizza Company (I know, we’re supposed to be experiencing Thai food, but our stomachs aren’t ready for it yet!). The pizza was really good! Once we ate we all showered, separately. There are no bathtubs or closed showers, it is just a shower head in the corner of the bathroom, so you have to make sure it is in the right direction or you will soak the whole room! Once we got that figured out, we went to bed around 9:30. Although our beds are as hard as laying on a piece of plywood, we all actually slept through the night, yay!
Tuesday, May 10
Tuesday morning we headed back to training for GrapeSEED. Later on we had a meeting with Chris Brown (the Professor from BU who came with us), and William (our go-to guy at the school). William told us about the Thai culture and things we should and shouldn’t do. For example, you can`t sit with your legs crossed because it is extremely rude to point your feet at people, don’t step on money because the King`s face is on it, if you talk poorly about the King you can go to jail and be kicked out of the country, if you get caught with drugs you will be executed (either shot or lethally injected)... don’t worry mom, we won’t have to worry about that! Another weird thing is that you’re not supposed to flush toilet paper; you are to put it in the garbage or hose yourself off. At our school, you can’t even flush the toilet; you dump two pails of water in the toilet to flush it. Oh, and don’t forget to get toilet paper before you go into the stall, or you will have to drip dry! A few things we ARE supposed to do at school are: wear black pants or long skirts (no capris, because it shows too much skin), wear closed toe shoes in the hallways, but remove our shoes when we go into the classroom. There is a camera in each classroom which goes to a control room where parents can come watch you teach their children.
After school, we hung out at the pool at our apartment for the first time. The water was fairly cool, but it was nice to cool off as it has been at least 35 degrees with the humidity during the day, and it only cools off a few degrees at night. After the pool we walked about 10-15 minutes to a place called Carrfour. Carrfour was awesome, it was like a Walmart/Superstore, and there were a lot of English labels so we knew what we were buying!
Oh I forgot... when we were eating lunch today a Gecko was crawling up the wall behind me!! Needless to say, I was done eating my lunch pretty quickly!
Wednesday, May 11
I flagged down my first taxi today!! The Winnipeg people told us about a mall, and we were on our way in a flash! I thought we had to call a cab, but apparently I’m sheltered and you flag down taxi’s like in movies! The cab ride was about 20 minutes and cost 75 baht ($2.50). When we got to the mall we had supper, which was McDonald’s! The mall was 4 floors of heaven. We started at the top and made our way down, but we only got through two floors. Other than stores and restaurants there was a movie theatre, bowling alley, karaoke, water-park, and kids play land (which was pretty much like Magic Kingdom). We did get through a few stores and bought a few things. For the girls, OPI nail polish was only $1 a bottle! The three of us also chipped in to buy a cell phone in case of emergencies, which was only $20 total!
Thursday, May 12
Today was our last day of school for the week, as Friday, Monday and Tuesday are holidays here. We put in our hours at the school and then vans picked up the Brandon and Winnipeg students from our apartment to take us to Hua Hin for five days (a famous beach two hours from our apartment). We got here and checked into the hotel, which was absolutely beautiful. We lucked out and got a three bedroom room so nobody was left out! We were all exhausted when we got here, so we just put a movie on and went to bed early, in comfortable beds!
No comments:
Post a Comment