We woke up to a cloudy, rainy morning and were exhausted from the weekend... I felt like I could have stayed in bed all day! My perspective of the day changed quickly when I got to school and was asked to teach K1 (2-3 year olds) by myself for the day. Of course I accepted! There were six kids in the class and they were adorable. They listened very well and knew more English than I expected them to. I loved having my own classroom for the day. I feel comfortable in the classroom with my cooperating teacher but it is a different feeling when you have your own class and you aren’t being constantly evaluated. I cannot wait to have my own class all the time!
Every day at lunch there is a man outside of the school selling cooked corn on the cob. We had seen a couple of people eating it so decided to try it. It was SO good! It tasted so fresh and juicy. Yum, yum, yum. After lunch I went back to teach K1 and left for one period because I was scheduled to teach my own K3 class a science lesson. We had a writing center where the kids had to write the word of something that is red (Ex. Fire truck) and then draw a picture of it. It took longer than I expected but it went well!
We had heard about a place called the Platinum Mall, so after school we decided to go check it out. Nobody had done their research to find out where to go, so we took a taxi to the sky train, we took the sky train to one stop only to find out that we were at the wrong station so we went back to a different station. When we got to the “correct” statement we walked for about 10 minutes only to find out we were walking the wrong direction. Finally someone pointed is in the correct direction and we walked for another 15 minutes before we arrived at the mall. We arrived at the mall at 7:10 to find out that it closed at 8:00. By this point we were tired, annoyed and frustrated. We quickly grabbed some food and walked around the mall for half an hour. We were clearly not in a shopping mood and didn’t buy anything. We left the mall around 8:00, went to McDonalds for ice cream (which cheered us up a little bit) and then took a tuk tuk back to the sky train station. From there we took the sky train back to our original station and took a taxi back to our apartments.
When we got back to the apartments we just hung out and talked about our plans for the week. Around 10:30 or 11:00 we received an email with our course registration information for university this upcoming fall. A lot of things had changed with the class sizes and courses we were to register for so we stayed up for quite a while trying to figure that out before going to bed.
For those of you who are wondering... my sun burn from our weekend in Koh Samet didn’t turn out too badly! I peeled a little bit on my shoulders and forehead but nothing like I had anticipated!
Tuesday, June 14
Today I taught the first lesson of my Patterns unit. I did a few activities with the kids to see where they were at and they pretty much knew everything! We watched a couple videos about patterns and played some games, they really enjoyed the lesson! After math I had my second last science lesson on colours. For this lesson we split the students into two groups and took them on a tour around the school playing “I Spy” to recognize different colours and shades in the environments. They seemed to enjoy this lesson too!
We had been meaning to take a broom up to our apartment for a few days, so we finally did today! We spent about half an hour cleaning the apartment... for those of you who know me well, it was very exciting for me! After we finished cleaning we just relaxed in our rooms for a while before going for a walk. On our walk we stopped at Pizza Company to order pizza for supper. While the pizza was cooking we walked a little bit further and came across a couple temples not far from our apartment. They seemed out of place and weren’t as nice as some that we have seen but it was still neat to see them! When we got back we went down to a common area in the apartment to have our pizza and then headed back up to our rooms.
On Monday Geordie (Amanda’s fiance) sent me an email to tell me he was at the Winnipeg airport and was on his way to Bangkok! He was supposed to come on June 23 but decided to come early to surprise Amanda. He called us around 10:45pm to tell us he thought he was close to the apartments so we quickly ran down to the street to watch for him. We took him up to the apartment. Amanda was watching a movie in her room so I knocked on her door and asked if I could come in. Instead of me going in Geordie did... she was so surprised! I was so happy for them, but was sad at the same time. Our walls are paper thin and I assumed they would want to stay up late to visit and catch up on our trip so I had a sleep over in Jill’s room!
Wednesday, June 15
Wednesday is our long day with our students; we only have one prep class all day. Today we got lucky! The students had an assembly during the first and last periods of the day! It was a little girl named Aileen’s birthday today and her mom brought us an ice cream cake from Swenson’s.... BEST CAKE EVER!!!!! So right after lunch we had a little birthday party for her, the kids were so excited! Between assemblies and birthday parties I did teach a math lesson, which went very well!
After school we were planning on going to Siam Paragon to go to the Ocean World Aquarium. We had put our leftover pizza in our friend’s fridge for the night so we grabbed it and quickly ate it on the way home. We then took a taxi and the sky train to Siam Paragon. The aquarium was really cool. They had all different types of animals (penguins, water rats, sharks, etc.). It cost 900 baht (approx. $30) to go in and look around. It was very interesting but I wouldn’t say it was work the money we paid. Once we were finished looking around in the aquarium we went to the food court in the mall. It was HUGE! They had every kind of food that you would ask for, and two or three restaurants for each kind of food! I wasn’t hungry since I had eaten leftover pizza, but I got the most amazing cinnamon bun!
After we ate we went back to the apartments. We got home around 9:30 so we just relaxed and got ready for Thursdays events!
Thursday, June 16
We tried something new today! A few people have mentioned taking a “motorside” taxis to school. “Motorside” taxis are essentially motorcycles that you hop on! It was pretty cool, and it was nice to get to school a few minutes early! This morning we had a Wai Kru (Teacher’s Day) assembly. The important teachers and head administrators sat up on the stage and the students went up one by one to give them flowers. The assembly took about an hour and then we went back to our classrooms. When we got to our classrooms Winston and I each tied a piece of string onto each student’s wrist. The strings symbolize good luck and happiness and if you get one put on you, you are not allowed to take it off until it falls off.
Because of the assembly we only had to teach two classes all day! At 4:00 we had our weekly staff meeting. Since we are required to stay at the school until 4:30 it doesn’t cut into anyone’s personal time, which is nice. After the staff meeting we had plans to go to Khao San Road for the evening. Khao San is the backpacker’s street where there is tons of shopping. We went a few weekends ago and had really good luck shopping and had a lot of fun so decided to go back one more time! Our plan was to run home and change and before we went. We were all fairly hungry so we decided to finally try food from a street vendor on our way home! We got chicken skewers from a vendor by our apartment and it was really good! We were all nervous to try it, but we wanted to at least once before we left. We ate our skewers on our way home, changed and went on our way to Khao San Road. When we got there we were all still hungry and tired so we went for supper before we started shopping. Amanda and I shared a really good clubhouse sandwich with fries and I go the same banana smoothie I got the last time we were on Khao San... it was just as delicious as I remembered it to be! We all had really good luck with shopping again! I got a ton of stuff, I think my shopping sprees have almost come to an end... my bank account will thank me! Oh I forgot to mention, we were walking down the street and a guy pushing a mobile food vendor ran my foot over! It really hurt at the time, but the pain went away quickly and I was fine... just a little surprised! He didn’t even stop to say sorry or to see if I was ok!
We got back to our apartments around 11:00 and of course needed to go through everything we had bought and try everything on! We then realized that we still had to pack for the weekend as we were flying out to Phuket the next night, so we quickly got a few things organized and decided to do the rest quickly after school the next day. We ended up going to bed later than we had hoped to but it was totally worth it!
Friday, June 17
We were running a little bit late this morning so we took the motorside taxis to school again! I had another math lesson this morning, and had the kids do the same activity as yesterday but using three elements instead of two. They thought it was lots of fun and all did a great job! This afternoon Winston evaluated me teaching a GrapeSEED lesson. It went fairly well, I had all of the activities planned out and we got through everything, the only problem was that the kids were very chatty!! I felt like it didn’t go very well and was really worried that I was going to get a bad evaluation but Winston said he thought it went really well and I did a good job dealing with the chatty kids! During one of our classes today we were playing a game and somehow it came up that I asked the students if they liked Mr. Winston & I. One little boy said he didn’t like me... when I asked why he said “because you are not cute!” I pretended to be sad and Tan (the little boy who reminds me of Aiden) said, “I think you are very cute!” I think I might just bring little Tan back to Canada with me!
After school we walked home and got packed up to head to Phuket. I will fill you in about our trip to Phuket very soon!
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