MISPRONUNCIATION = MISCOMMUNICATION

Almost halfway through our 3rd week of "changing the world, one Thai kid at a time," and it's starting to become clear and organized. I don't think I will ever consider teaching easy, but I will say that I'm feeling more and more comfortable as each class passes.

This past weekend we went to Koh Samet again. This time we met up with Connor, Becca, Katie, and Chelsea. We actually stayed in Ban Phe the first night. We stayed at the Bedrock Guesthouse, which was pretty chill. Some old Aussie owned the place with his much much younger Thai wife. This lady made the best hamburger I've had since being in the Orient. I was in heaven at this place. I had an ice cold beverage, a hamburger, and Sportscenter all at my disposal. There was no way Steph was getting me to go on a walk with her. I just couldn't pass up the opportunity to feel American. It rarely happens here.

The next morning we caught the ferry to Koh Samet. This time we found a cheaper place to stay called Naga Bungalows. Though Steph and I aren't too worried about money now that we have a second source of income. Three nights a week we tutor three Thai's in English. I help 25 year old, Byrd, and his 30 year old sister, Ning. Steph offers tutelage to a 4 foot, 100lb 9 year old boy named Mammouth. So we got that goin for us.

Anyways, Saturday we chilled on the beach for awhile, then we decided to go on a sunset boat ride. During the ride we stopped twice to get out and snorkel, which was mildly entertaining due to the lack of fish and aquatic foliage. Also, the sunset was blocked by some unexpected cloud coverage, so we missed that. Not to worry, the crew had a backup plan. "We are going to a fish farm!" The fish farm was actually pretty cool. We got to see some sea turtles and other large marine life. Before we took off for the fish farm we were fortunate enough to get this glamour shot.

That night we went bar hoping along the beach with our flyers that got us one free drink at several different places. Then we split up. Connor and I went to Naga Bar to watch a few Muy Thai fights, while the women drank at the Sunrise Bar and had young chiseled Thai boys paint all over their bodies. We met up later and stumbled across a group of puppies huddled together on the beach. This is no joke. I thought it was a dream myself. There were 5 fresh puppies huddling together for warmth out on the open beach. Needless to say we played with them for awhile and then built them a defense system in case some drunkard stumbled across them in the middle of the night. I couldn't leave until I felt they were secure. Cue pizza and slumber.

The next morning we got some breakfast and jumped on the ferry back to the mainland. Funs over. Now it's time for school.

Fast forward to Monday of week 4. Steph and I realized that all of our lesson plans are following the same pattern. Class starts with the students screaming vocab at us while we write it on the board. Then we teach them "model language" that is related to the vocab for the lesson. This week our lesson plan is about shopping. So the model language is:

"How much is the ______?"

" It costs ________ baht."

"Would you like to buy it?"

" Yes I would" or "No, thank you"

The students get into pairs and run through the dialogue that they will surely use one day and we go around and check all of them for pronunciation. MISPRONUNCIATION = MISCOMMUNICATION. After this we change the dialogue a little by adding a preposition here or changing a verb there. This is difficult for most classes. Only the upper levels of each grade can grasp this step. And then if there's any time left, or if my voice still exists, we will play a game.

I'm getting very bored with these lesson plans, and I'm sure the students are too. I want to incorporate more materials and activities. I want my classes to be fun. I want the students to walk into my classroom gasping for air, because they just sprinted across campus in hopes of getting their first to get a seat up front. But I guess that's every teacher's dream.

My Name is Mammoth.

To be succinct, the last 11 days have been challenging for me. They have been challenging, but also different and rewarding... they're why I came here.

Last week was my first week of teaching in the classroom, and Lee and I are both teaching all grades in Matthayom 1-6 (which is like US school grades 7-12) as well as a wide range of learning levels within each grade (/1 is the best, /8 is the worst). I am happy to report that the first week went smoothly overall, less one minor incident involving a small but very loud 14-year-old boy yelling inappropriate words in my last Friday class... but as someone back home said, boys will be boys. My class experiences ranged from my Matthayom 5/2 class understanding me so well that I was able to make jokes with them, to the lowest level Matthayom 1/8 class not being able to understand when I wanted them to ask their partner what his/her name was. I have quickly realized that the real difference in how and what I teach is not in their grade levels, but in their learning levels. I have also found that teaching English has not felt so different from teaching group fitness classes back at home - you have to be "on" the whole time, and while this takes a lot of energy, it feels great at the end of the class when you feel that some of the kids may have really enjoyed the class. Doing this 4 times a day with some rowdier classes, however, really took a lot out of me last week, and on top of that I was left with almost no voice by lunch on Friday. I sounded suspiciously like a man, and I had to make it VERY clear to my students in the afternoon that I was sick and had no voice, lest they mistake me for a ladyboy.

One of our friends from orientation who doesn't start teaching in Samut Prakan until the 15th came and visited us in Dog Town for the weekend! Coincidentally, it happened to be probably the best weekend to be in little ole DT because there was some buffalo racing festival going on. The highlights included a huge techno party with Chang on tap and AMERICAN music every night down the street from the school, food stalls with french fries and chocolate frosted donuts, and an all-day street event on Sunday including takraw tournaments, muay thai boxing, a talent show, and of course buffalo racing. We missed the buffalo racing, but I'm sure it was gnarly. We had a really good time experiencing these different cultural aspects in our little town, and even better sharing it with one of our friends!



Back to the classroom on Monday - my voice was starting to come back, but my throat was also starting to feel awful, but I taught anyway. It was also much warmer outside, and since we don't have A/C in the classrooms, at several points I got pretty frustrated with trying to tell the kids to be quiet with a raspy voice and sore throat while sweating profusely. Lee got sick on Tuesday (main suspect: fried cashew chicken?) so we both took a sick day. It's quite terrible being sick and away from friends and family, feeling lethargic from many days of mental exhaustion coupled with not enough exercise and perhaps inadequate nutrition ("pat" means fried and "pak" means vegetables, and they always seem to think i say "pat"), and also being disconnected from everyone due to internet failure in our apartment. We coped by getting a couple movies (Robin Hood and HP & The Half-Blood Prince) and taking it easy.

Things started to turn up on Wednesday - we were both feeling much better and returned to school. We went into town to run errands in the afternoon, and on the way back there was an OUTDOOR AEROBICS CLASS going on with the instructor on a big stage at the outdoor jogging track. I couldn't believe it. I hurried home, threw on my sneaks and ran back to the track and caught the last 10 minutes of the class. The music playing was very high energy Thai or maybe Korean pop, and the instructor only used visual cues but was still energetic nonetheless. After some confusing exchange and hand motions with the ladies in the class, I was able to decipher that the class was at least every Wednesday at 6:00. Boom. On Wednesday, I was also able to get into the "English library" at school (one cabinet) and obtain a few Harry Potter books. Boom.

Today, however, may have been one of the best days so far in DT. The school didn't classes today and tomorrow, but we came in at 8 so that I could help an M. 2 girl prepare for an English speech contest, and so that Lee could help an M. 3 girl prepare for a spelling bee. My student had written and memorized a page and a half-long speech about the environment, and I helped her with some of the grammar, content flow, and pronunciation. The tougher words for her to pronounce were "variety", "surroundings", "first" and "waste" - the first two because Thai people tend fo emphasize the last syllable in every word, and the last two because "st" is a difficult sound for them to pronounce. I felt that my native accent was very helpful for her, and it made me glad to feel needed there. In the afternoon, I went on a 3-mile run for the first time since leaving the U.S. which made me feel more like my old self. I also found out that the aerobics class is Monday-Thursday every week, which makes my life even more complete. In the evening, Lee and I tutored some kids - well, he tutored a brother and sister that were 25 and 30 years old, while I tutored their adorable 8-year-old little cousin. His name/nickname is Mammoth, so you know he's a badass. He was extremely shy at first and I was worried that he didn't want to talk to me, but after about 15 minutes I realized that this kid was more advanced in English than at least 60% of my Matthayom students, and he's in Pratom 3 (like 3rd grade in the US). He did really well at the reading and speaking exercises I had prepared for him, and we played several games of Categories towards the end of our hour-long session. I also learned from his older cousins that Mammoth is the Scrabble champion in his school, and that he will be competing in a Scrabble tournament in Bangkok sometime this semested. BAMF. We will be tutoring this group 3 times a week starting next week, and I am really looking forward to it. Lastly, I figured out how to say correctly pronounce the name of my new favorite dish in Thai so that people don't look at me like I'm crazy when I try to order it. It's "pak piao wan gai", which is chicken and vegetables in some delicious sauce over steamed white rice. After dinner, Lee and I rented Quantom of Solace - we are probably going to go through the DVD store's entire English DVD collection by the end of December.

It's 3 a.m. now; I couldn't sleep but I suppose I'll try because we have to be at school at 7 a.m. to go judge some English contests or something. Until my next imsonia episode...

Cribs: Wangchan edition

As promised

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7b33etrQfgc

It's Mr. Lee to you...punk.

It's our first weekend here in Wangchan. We just finished our first week of teaching and I can honestly say that I really enjoy it. I love the feeling that I get when I notice that what I'm trying to teach is actually getting through to them.

We are teaching at a secondary school which means it has grades (Matthayoms) 7-12 (1-6). There are over 1,300 students here and we get the "privilege" of teaching each and every one of them. We have on average over 35 students in each class which seemed a bit overwhelming at first, but actually isn't that bad. You just have to show them who's boss.

I'd like to think that I rule the classroom with an Iron Fist. If anyone steps out of line it could possibly cost them their daily rations. If there is any sass in a student's response, it's met with fierce lashings across their back.

Like I said before, I'd like to think that I rule with an Iron Fist. However, this couldn't be further from the truth. I like to make class as enjoyable as possible. We don't test these kids and the school has not come close to attempting to help us come up with any sort of curriculum. So we drew the conclusion that we're here to help with pronunciation. Not only for the students, but the teachers as well.

Steph and I both try to make class fun and informative. I start every class by introducing myself and by also laying down a few basic rules. Then I pick one student to come up and write the alphabet on the chalkboard while the rest of the class shouts out the letters. By the way, chalkboards are terrible, they just make a huge mess. The funniest pronunciation is "Z." They pronounce it "say." I just shake my my head and say "Z! Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz!" This always gets a huge laugh. Other difficult letters are G, H, V, & X.

For the last 20-25 minutes of class I like to play games with the class. "Telephone" is my go-to game due to the disappointment of Charades. Getting the students to come up with team names is always interesting. You get "The Winners," "Rose,", and "Snakes" a lot, but every once in awhile one team will go rogue. One group came up with "Team Semen" and another came up with "Silly Fool," which I'm almost certain was a direct reference to me. A few teams have written words in Thai, and when I repeat them the whole class erupts in laughter, which makes me believe it's something inappropriate, or something about me, or quite possibly both.

Everyday Steph and I go across the street to the "Noodle Lady" for lunch. It's cheap and it the tastes dazzle our welcoming taste buds. Did I also mention that she has puppies running around? Fresh out of the womb puppies? We have renamed the establishment N.R.P (noodles, rice, and puppies).

COMING SOON...........

A special treat for you guys: Cribs: Wangchang

Welcome to Dog Town

We left Chiang Rai on Tuesday - went to the bus station at 12, and got on the bus at 3:45. I had gotten a little sick that morning and was semi-delirious during the wait with a mild fever, but I thankfully survived the 3 hr. bus ride and dangerously unsanitary public squat toilets back to Chiang Mai with the help from my friends Pepto, Cipro, and Ibuprofen. (Thank you Marianne, my traveling pharmacist!) We arrived in Chiang Mai and immediately searched for an overnight ticket to Bangkok with our favorite bus company, NCA, but unfortunately all of their buses were booked for the evening. Our 2nd second choice was Sombat Tour, which was a little cheaper (by about 85 baht) and looked pretty decent... not quite. The seats weren't as comfortable as comfortable as NCA so it was challenging to sleep, and although we had a toilet on the bus they still made a community lights-on pit stop at 2am at a very mosquito-infested bus station. The real highlight, however, was when they turned on the lights and began playing Kpop, which is just extremely cheesy Korean pop music, at full blast on the speaker system at 6am, and we weren't arriving in Bangkok until 7:30am. Insert grumpy face.

So we're waiting at the BKK Mo Chit bus station for a couple hours for our school coordinators to come pick us up from Rayong. I'm super excited at this point to finally get to our apartment, settle in and rest after almost a full day of transit across Thailand. After getting into the school van, our coordinators told us that not only were we going to spend several hours shopping in Bangkok first, but they also had about 8 other Thai teachers with them who were at the market. I was in a gray t-shirt, running shorts, hair up, glasses on, and stinky. You may also recall that I likened shopping in Bangkok to shopping in a TJ Maxx on Black Friday in an earlier post. Lee and I just looked at each other and were like oh my god... pleeease just take us to our apartment. We picked up the other teachers who were very nice but most of them didn't know English, so they kind of ignored us (which was fine at this point in my homely state) and headed to the Platinum Fashion mall, which seemed like a slightly smaller mall than the others I went to my first week but it was still 7 stories tall. Lee and I did get some sweet beach towels, but most of our time and efforts were spent in the massive food court getting rice and chicken dishes, papaya salad (one of my fave things here), a chinese vegetable bun that was terrible, and ice cream cones from KFC - delish. Thank God For KFC.

We finally arrive in our town of Wang Chan around 5:30pm (it took about 2.25 hours from Bangkok by van). During orientation, one of the current CIEE teachers who has been teaching since May in the neighboring province told me that the former participant in our town/school nicknamed Wang Chan "Dog Town" due to all the stray dogs in the area. Fact: there are stray dogs everywhere in Thailand... but within 5 minutes of our arrival, there was definitely a stray dog brawl right outside of our apartment. I shall be referring to Wang Chan lovingly as Dog Town from here on out. Our apartment is pretty decent; it's a little 2-bedroom house with A/C in the bedrooms, a seat toilet, a shower that's almost right above the toilet (no hot water), a kitchen that i plan on never using due to fear of ant infestation, and there's several geckos in and around the house that i have fondly dubbed as our Gecko Patrol since the eat mosquitoes... we watch them set up a perimeter around our house every night, and it makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside. If i could catch some and put more inside our house to increase the small army of small gecko foot soldiers, trust me, I would. We also refer to the downstairs as the Blue Dungeon because the walls, floor and ceiling are all a violently bright acid-Carolina blue color, and we keep the windows shut in order to keep bugs out. Pictures coming soon...

I got up early the next morning and decided to see what this town was all about. It's very small, and absolutely everything we need is within a short walking distance. We live on the school grounds and it's like a mini college campus inside a gated area. I exited the gates and did a walking tour around the market and main street. On the way to the market, I passed a sketchy looking body of water that is surrounded by a cement jogging track, which is perfect for me! I estimate it to be about 525 meters around. At the market, i bought a bag of pineapple chunks and 2 mini pumpkins for Halloween which made me very happy. Most people I saw assumed I was Thai at first and would begin speaking Thai to me after I said "sawatdee kaa" (hello) and "tow rai kaa?" (how much is it?), to which I smiled and pointed at myself - "sorry, I am farang". At orientation, they told us that Farang means foreigner; to be exact, farang actually means Guava, which is a foreign fruit, so they use this term to refer to all foreigners... and that is how you tell a lie.

After I got back to the apartment, I was reading something online and noticed that it said Farang meant white person... we went to dinner with our coordinator that evening, and I asked her exactly what Farang meant. She said that Thais use Farang to refer to someone who is from Europe or America, generally. Temporarily reassured, I said oh, so it's not just white people, but anyone from Europe or America? And she said no, it's only white people. Therefore, people who are Asian that come from America like yours truly do not fall into the Farang category... therefore, there are probably many shopkeepers in my town that may or may not think I'm delusional... Good thing I'm responsible for educating their youth.

More posts about Koh Samet and our first week of teaching coming soon!