Today was our first full day of classes with our students and it went great! The students wear school uniforms, because mine are so young the girls were little plaid tunics and the boys wear plaid shorts and a plaid shirt. All of the teachers wear uniforms as well, green pants and a yellow(ish) coloured top. Since we will only be in the school for seven weeks we are only required to wear black pants and a white collared shirt. We have to wear black closed toe shoes to and from school and in the hallways. However, everyone (including teachers and students) have to take their shoes of before entering the classrooms, library, computer lab, etc.
I taught the first lesson of my Science unit, Colours. The kids are SO smart and know most of the colours, but they still enjoyed the lesson and there is always room to learn more! We had “library” today where the kids could choose books and read them in the library for an hour. Most of the kids chose Clifford, Berenstain Bears and children’s books. However, one little boy came up to me to show me he had chosen a Harry Potter novel! I couldn’t believe it!
The school system is much different here. Each class has a foreign (English) teacher and a Thai teacher. The English teacher teaches 80% of the subjects, and the Thai teacher teaches a couple of Thai language courses. Our students also go to another English teacher for gym, computer, swimming and music. The English teacher’s sole job is to teach the students the courses in English (math, science, ELA, social studies). The Thai teacher is responsible for most classroom management and is responsible for cleaning the classroom and dealing with the children when they are upset or need anything such as going to the bathroom. The Thai teachers also get the students settled in the morning, ready to go at the end of the day and get them lined up and ready to switch classroom when they need to do so. Thai teacher’s name is Jumpy. It is like having a full time EA in the classroom that barely speaks English!! It’s really neat.
After school the girls and I decided we needed a night off from exploring. We came home from school and relaxed. We found websites that we could access to watch Grey’s Anatomy and One Tree Hill on so we were pretty excited about that! At one point, Tori went to go to the other room and there was a GECKO in our apartment!! The three of us freaked out and jumped onto our chairs! I’m not sure why we thought that would help since the gecko could climb up the wall. Tori was brave and ran to get the other BU girls from next door. Thankfully our friend Julie wasn’t scared. She scooped him up with some toilet paper but dropped him in the hallway. I was going to kill him with a shoe but then they were all upset that I was going to kill him! Julie finally got him again and threw him out the window. I’m not sure why the girls didn’t realize that throwing him out the window would do the same thing as hitting him with a shoe, but at least he was GONE! We had heard stories about people having geckos in their rooms, we just thought we were special and would never get one I guess!
Later on we headed down to a restaurant called Old Bar for supper. We had delicious Mama Phad Guy (stir fried noodles with chicken and vegetables). Jill and I ordered the exact same thing except she got rice and I got noodles. For some reason she only had to pay 45 baht and I had to pay 75! I guess the guy didn’t like me! After supper we came back to the apartment and hung out for a bit before going to bed.
Tuesday, May 24
Every morning we go down to the main area of the school for the “word of the day.” All of the Kindergarten students gather there and one teacher presents an English word of the day. The students have to repeat the word and use it in a sentence.
I took part in my very first candle ceremony at school this morning. Every day after the word of the day we go back to the classroom, sit in a circle and pass a candle around the circle while the students and the Thai teacher sing a traditional Thai song. When the candle is passed to you, you have to “Y” (bow) to the person passing it to you, and then “Y” to the person you pass it to. This morning our Kindergarten class learned the ABC’s using play dough, they loved it and so did we!
Classes are done for the students at 3:20 but the teachers all need to stay at the school until 4:30. During this time we prepare for the next day’s lessons.
After school the girls and I headed to Carrfour to have supper and get some groceries (all in re-sealable containers so we don’t attract bugs, of course... ew!). We were about to head home when we realized it was pouring outside so we got Dairy Queen, naturally! We walked around for a while but the rain wasn’t letting up, so we went to a place called HomePro (similar to Home Depot) to get fuses to replace the ones we had blown in our power bars! We then walked to the main road to catch a taxi in the rain! When we got back we just hung out and went to bed.
Wednesday, May 25
One month from today we will be flying back to Canada!!! Despite what you may think I have been eating SOME Thai food! Every day for lunch we go to Bee’s across the street from our school and have either chicken fried rice, chicken fried noodles or cashew chicken. We have tried a couple of pork and hamburger dishes, but we are the most comfortable sticking to chicken! Today after school we planned for the few weekends we have left in Thailand! This coming weekend (Saturday, May 28) we are doing a tour of the palace, temples and floating market in downtown Bangkok and on Sunday we are going to Catuchak, a famous weekend market. On the weekend of June 3rd we are going to Koh Samet. Koh Samet is a beautiful island where we will spend our time on the beach! On June 10 we are going to Chaing Mai which we have to fly to! Chaing Mai is a famous place in Thailand where we will see tiger and elephant temples and explore the history of Thailand. Our last weekend in Thailand is the weekend of June 17th. We have booked flights and hotels to go to Phuket for the weekend. Phuket is another famous beach area down south. It is often referred to as the “party beach.” We wanted to go somewhere beautiful for our last weekend where we can work on our tans before we come home! Once we finished our planning we went to a restaurant called the Sizzler for supper. It was AMAZING. They had everything from ribs to chicken breasts to steak. The salad bar was massive, so I just had the salad bar. They had the freshest vegetables and fruit I have ever eaten! If you have seen the pictures of our meals that Tori put on facebook, she forgot to mention that I had four plates full instead of only the one she posted! When we got back to our apartment we caught up on some more TV shows before going to sleep.
Thursday, May 26
Today was a great day at school! We had our students all morning, and only for one hour this afternoon. This afternoon during English class we took our students to the multimedia room to watch Toy Story 3! We haven’t started the GrapeSEED EAL program that I had mentioned earlier so we can’t start our English classes yet. The multimedia room was really cool, it was dark and comfy and the movie was projected onto a big screen. The kids (and the teachers) loved it! I haven’t talked about the fruit guy in a while... I LOVE HIM! Well I don’t love him, but I love his fruit! It is SO fresh and so cheap (10 baht, so 3 cents) for a big bag full of fruit. I get either pineapple or watermelon after lunch every day! After classes today we had our first staff meeting. It was just like a staff meeting in Canada, going over expectations and new information. We went to Old Bar for supper and had Mamma Phad Guy again, and I didn’t get charged more than everyone else this time! We then went back to our apartments and relaxed as our weekends will be extremely busy until we leave! Friday, May 27
There is a little boy in my class who reminds me of Troy’s nephew Aiden SO much. He looks like him (somehow, even though he’s Asian) and has the same cheesy smile and personality. For those of you who don’t know, Troy’s nephew is a little sweetheart who is always attached to me whenever I am around him. When I got to school this morning this little boy in Thailand (his name is Tan) came and gave me a hug and then looked at me with a big cheesy smile and said “I missed you!” This morning I had my first evaluation by my supervisor at the school. I did a lesson on the alphabet which involved reading “Chick Chicka Boom Boom, playing a game with flashcards and making the lower case letters out of play dough. I was extremely nervous but everything went great and thankfully my supervisor was pleased with what she saw!
This afternoon Tori, Jill, Michelle & I went with William (the international exchange coordinator) to Campus 2. Campus 2 is another school run by Lertlah where other Brandon University students are teaching. The campus was HUGE! They had separate buildings for the library, gymnasium, cafeteria and for the Kindergarten classes. They even had two pools! The bad part about the school is that they don’t have the LIPS program (Lertlah International Program School), they only have the EP (English Program). The EP is 50% English and 50% Thai, whereas the LIPS program is 80% English and 20% Thai. Not only do their students speak less English than ours, their class sizes our HUGE! The average class size in our program is 10-12 students, whereas the EP teachers have two classes of 30 to teach each day!! Also, the people who teach at Campus 2 have a 30-45 minute cab ride to school and back every day, whereas we only have a five minute walk!
After school we moved our rooms back as Amanda will be here on Sunday morning. Tori & Jill’s apartment was getting really dirty from our shoes and hairspray and stuff so we washed our bedding and did a clean sweep of their rooms. Once we were done cleaning we decided to go to Old Bar for supper. We were on our way down when we saw a HUGE spider. Seriously, it was at least as big as my hand! I wish I would have had my camera, because it sounds a little bit ridiculous. Tori started crying and ran up to the second floor to get a guy to kill it. Jill and I tried to be tough spies but every time we would look around the corner it would come running towards us and we would run away screaming! The guy came down, told us it had teeth and it would probably bit us, but he refused to kill it, he just swept it outside with the broom. That was not sufficient for us, we wanted it DEAD! So, I took a dust pan and chopped it in half. I was the hero for the day! When we finally made it to Old Bar I had Mama Phad Guy, of course. We then came back to the apartment, finished our laundry and got ready for the tour we were going on, on Saturday morning.
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