One full month of teaching down! That is, if you count only having seen some classes once so far and having at least 3-4 classes cancelled or not show up each week a full month... ah well. Lee and I have grown accustomed to asking our coordinator almost daily if there's something going on with the school that would cancel classes for the day, because i've lost count now of how many times I have shown up prepared for the class, only to stand around and wait for 20 minutes before going downstairs to the gymnasium and realize that the all the students are watching their peers play an intense game of Chairball (kind of like basketball with no dribbling, and a human stands on top of a chair with a basket in his hands for his team to score in). On one day where there weren't classes in the morning but they were scheduled as normal for the afternoon, I asked my coordinator again whether there was really class in the afternoon. She looked at timetable, and said "yes, yes there is class..... but the students are lazy... and they may not come." I'll let you guess what happened.
I have 2 classes in particular that are easily my most favorite to teach, and I really look forward to seeing them each week. The first is my M. 3/2 (like US 9th graders). Not only is the classroom setup WAY better by being a little smaller with just 3 rows going across so that they are all fairly close to the front, but there is a group of 10 girls that always sit in the front and are just freaking English superstars. During the first week at the end of the period, I asked the class "Was this easy?" and they screamed out "YES, EASY EASY!!!" During the next class with them, the theme of the lesson was Food and I played Categories with them. The first category was Drinks, and I actually just had to stop the round at one point because they were getting quite creative with it and there was no end in sight. The 2nd category was fruits, and they must have named at least 50 fruits before the smarty girls in the front finally won. I've never seen a class of more excited kids in my life. Adorable.
The second class I love is my M. 5/2 (US juniors). During my first week, they seemed to understand me well enough in class that I was able to make some jokes with them, and trust me, I don't have many classes like that. Again, there is a group of 7 smart girls in the front, and Lee and I had a chance to get to know them much better during the region's English Competition day in the nearby city of Klaeng on the second Friday of school. Lee had written a play for them to perform in the competition entitled "Water Devil" about the flooding in Thailand, and we watched them practice it before the show and then we hung out with them at the competition until it was time to go back. Not only is their English pretty good, but they are hilarious and love speaking with us. They kept buying us little treats like popsicles and dangly phone accessories which we had to put a stop to, and also taught us how to say some different food dishes in Thai. Love love love them.
On to the WEEKENDS! it's crazy because the more I read my Lonely Planet, the more I think i'm not going to have enough time to see everything I want to see... so we've wasted no time, here's a recap of our weekend excursions since Koh Samet (see Lee's post below)
Rayong & Khao Chamao: While Koh Samet is definitely the gem of our province, we decided to spend a day in our capital city for 3 reasons: 1) see Harry Potter 7.1 in English at the movie theater; 2) go to Tesco Lotus and replenish our dwindling peanut butter stock (I also got some cheese similar to Laughing Cow FTW); and 3) eat as much Western food as possible. Great success. I even found one copy of HP&TDH in English at the bookstore and definitely dropped 500 baht on it. So worth it. On Sunday, one of Lee's M. 6/1 student's mother gave us a ride to Khao Chamao National Park (about 45 minutes away). It has a beautiful waterfall that requires a fairly rough and steep hike; we made it to the 6th step which was 1660 meters up; the 7th and last step was at 2660 meters so we may have to go back and try for that next time. I've realized that trekking is definitely my favorite thing to do here (besides eating).
Bangkok & Lopburi: Post-Thanksgiving Friday, we hopped onto the 5pm bus to BKK and met up with our friends Connor, Becca, Nell and Sarah at Victory Monument at this sweet pub called Saxophone. Tons of yazz flute going on. We took a cab back to Connor and Becca's place and I really needed some late night food... the only that was open was a Family Mart (like a 7-11), and I decided it was time to try out the packaged ham & cheese sandwich and hawaiian pizza slice. It was not disappointing. Saturday morning we hit up the huge Chatuchak weekend market where i finally made my first clothing purchase: a Chang tank top.
Then we piled in a minivan and made our way up to Lopburi to check out the Monkey Buffet, which we had only heard of a day before. It's pretty self-explanatory; the city is completely overrun with wild monkeys and one weekend out of the year (that happens to coincide with Thanksgiving) they set up an extravagant feast for the monkeys at one of the wats. We hung out with tons of people from orientation and other ESL teachers on Saturday night, buying out the local supply of Changs and Leos and playing rounds and rounds of flip cup on the rooftop of a hostel. Repeat convenience store pizza and sandwich late night combo. Sunday morning we went to the wat with the Monkey Buffet and spent the morning hanging out with the monkeys... and now I'm sad that there aren't monkeys running around in my town. They are hilarious and love to climb on you, especially if you have a backpack on. One did manage to steal Lee's sunglasses, good thing they were $4 knock off ray bans... another one stole our can of Off, but luckily we managed to get that back before a disaster occured.
On another random note, I finally got bit by a dog the other week here in Dog Town. The dog's name is Taniwah and belongs to our next-door neighbor. Don't worry, it wasn't deep enough to break the skin - he just wrapped his teeth around my calf and thrashed me enough so that it left a nice bruise. I'm not a big fan of him.
Aaaaandd.... Happy belated Thanksgiving from my 5/2 students and from us! gobble gobble gobble
Gotta run, we have next week off and it's time for some new adventures...
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