Happy Harroween!!

That's how Thai kids say that. Its weird how if they're suppose to make the "l" sound, it always comes out as an "r" sound. And vise versa. So if I were to tell them to say whole, they would say whore. And if I tell them to say whore, they would say whole. Of course I would never tell them to say things like whore. Today was Halloween! I told all of my classes yesterday that if they paid attention and participated in the lesson, they could dress up for today! Not surprisingly, only my third graders made it and got to dress up. They were all zombies. Zombie football players. Zombie super heroes. Zombie students (for those who forgot to dress up). There was even a zombie baby. We had so much fun going to other classes and scaring them and throwing candy at them. The other teachers would smile at me but I knew they were cursing me in their heads. When we got back to the classroom we had a scary face drawing contest. You got 5 points for participating and some people got 0s. And this one girl who finished early helped my try to remember everyone's name. It was so sweet. Some of them have weird nicknames because they just pick words they see. So we have First, Cartoon, Nut, Ape, and Titty. That last one is lovely. I haven't mustered up the courage to call her that yet.

My last class today was fourth grade. We did pretty much the same thing but no dressing up. And one kid brought a football and after everyone turned in their pictures we went to the courtyard and played some football for the last half of the class. My team won of course, because do you know who my father is?? We won 3-2! The girls did girl stuff like jump road and something where they all sit in a circle on the ground and giggle every few minutes. We had a blast! And even though it rained harder today than I've ever seen in my whole life, it was super sunny and super hot while we were playing and I sweat all the way through all my clothes. Luckily, I have a pool at home and I took full advantage of it when I got back.

Tomorrow, I plan to explore Phuket town and spend most of the day at the beach! Hopefully while I'm there I can look for alternative housing and maybe a weekend job or something like that. But today is Friday and I am a teacher and I will eat ice cream and watch TV by myself and go to bed early! Such is the life of a 24 year old teacher in Thailand.

First Week of Teaching

Sewadee krap! That means hello in Thai. I'm sure you're very disappointed in me because I haven't really told you anything that's happened to me in a really long time! But fear not, I've gotten into a groove so I have more free time to write on this old blog thing.

So it's Thursday of my first week of real teaching. I teach P1-P4 which is like grades 1-4. Let's start with my 1st graders. They're awesome and energetic and I love them so much because they actually give me the energy I need to teach them! We've been learning about transportation this week so there's tons of running around the classroom acting like a car or a plane. They love it. There are roughly 35 of them in the class so that's not too bad. There are a couple trouble makers, but they sit at opposite ends of the room which makes things a lot easier. They love high fives with all their little hearts! I actually taught them how to say high five to make it even better. So in my first grade class, there's a small stage under the white board where I stand when I write. It makes me look silly. But this one boy always moves his desk right up to the edge of my stage during my class. Which, ironically doesn't help him pay attention any better. He's the one who always wants a high five.

4th Grade

My second graders started out as a bunch of little sh*ts. But They are slowly getting better. Their homeroom teacher stays in the room when I'm there and my partner Thai teacher, Bim, always talks to her instead of helping me control the class. That's very annoying when 40 kids are yelling and screaming and fighting and making paper cell phones while you're trying to teach. I almost lost it today with this girl who just does whatever she wants, but she always makes sure I can see that she's not participating. And she does it with a smile, which makes me even more angry. So I put a chair in the very back of the classroom and made her sit there for the rest of the class. It worked! There's a boy who sits in the front who always looks at me and says NO when I tell the class to do something. He's a really smart boy, but he doesn't apply himself all the time. Do I sound like a teacher now? He has excellent English handwriting and always gets all the questions on the worksheets right. I just wish he had a longer attention span.

2nd Grade

My third graders are my stars. There are no bad kids and they all pay attention all the time and are so smart and intuitive and ask good questions pay attention and basically everything a teacher wants from a class. Of course there are those couple boys who are always whispering and giggling... like little girls. I took up their workbooks the other day to grade them and they all did so well! I was so proud of them, and myself!

Then there's the fourth graders. They're a little better than the first graders, but not as good as the third graders. They're good like the third graders, but not smart like them. We've been doing a lot of grammar lately because there's a lot of grammar randomly thrown in their books but doesn't explain it! And since I'm a grammar Nazi, I go over it in detail! And they're ok with it all! I really like those kids a lot.

2nd Grade

So my schedule is awesome. I don't have class in the morning until 8:30, but I like to get there early to watch assembly and see my students outside of the classroom. They're always smiling and waving and saying, "teacher Ben!!" It makes me morning to walk around the corner and hear my students yelling my name. I teach two classes in the morning and at 10:30 I go on my 2 hour lunch break! Sometimes I go home and eat a little something there and take a little rest. Or sometimes I find a nice street vendor for some Thai food! It doesn't usually take me 2 hours to eat lunch, so I go back to school and chill in my office. Yes, I have an office! I use it for my afternoon grading. At these Thai schools, they don't have 5 minute transition periods in between classes, which sucks for them, but also sucks for me because I have to carry all my stuff to every class! At the end of the day I go back to my office for about an hour and grade and work on lesson plans for a bit. Then I go home and relax and watch TV and check on my awesome Xplore Asia friends that I miss so much.

Ok I just wrote all that during lunch and now school is over and I'm back home where it is raining. If you've seen some of my Facebook statuses, you know that it rains a lot here during the rainy season. Go figure. But it could be bright and sunny with not a cloud in the sky over the school, and be pouring down buckets of rain over my house. And I don't like it. Today was the first day this week I didn't get completely soaked while driving to or from school. It started sprinkling a little when I was on my way back after lunch and I just kept praying "just hold on I'm almost to school!!" Thankfully I was spared this lovely day.

Fancy schmancy motorbike

I finally took the workbooks from my insane second graders. I haven't graded them yet but they're sitting on my bed right now glaring at me. I would have done them at school but I needed to go to Tesco and look for a plunger to fix my toilet that had been broken since the first day. If I have to go number 2, I just drive somewhere where they have a bathroom. It's really annoying, but it works. They didn't have a plunger! I don't know where else I might get one so if you know how to unclog a toilet without a plunger please let me know! It's very annoying not having a bathroom on site.

Ok so also during lunch, I filled up my motorbike with gas. FULL. How much did this cost? About $4. I drove away from the gas station in shock. But who cares! Its awesome! Well tomorrow's Friday and it couldn't have gotten here sooner. These days are moving faster than I am and its hard to catch up. Luckily today I had my 1st graders last and they spend the whole beginning of the class copying something from the class before, and my Thai teacher, Bim, told me to let them finish before I start. I thought, who cares as long as I still get my 350B for this hour, right? It was nice to get a little break.

Week 1ish

Wow, it’s been a really long time since I’ve posted anything, but the days are so packed that I literally don’t have any time at all between homework and classes and excursions trying to find something cheap to eat for dinner. So on Monday, all 150 of us got up and were loaded onto a luxurious version of a minivan and taken to our training town of Hua Hin. Now the thing about these vans is that the windows don’t go very high, so we’re all straining our necks trying to look at the ginormous billboards and attractions on our way there. My van was van 10, which was the last van, so there were only four of us riding which made it all the more luxurious. Sitting next to me was a girl named Katherine, who I just found out is friends with a girl in my grade who went to Hutchison. Her airline had lost her luggage so she was a little worried about that, but eventually she got it later that day. Behind me was a South African guy named Jaco. He didn’t talk at all, even when I tried to have a conversation with him. He slept most of the time though. There was also a girl named Jordan. She slept most of the time too. Actually I think we all fell asleep at some point during that two hour trip. And when we weren’t sleeping, we were trying to look out the window.

When we arrived at our residence, we unloaded our vans and then immediately left and went to the mall. It’s about the size of a regular American mall, but here that’s considered small. Connected to it were some little restaurants, including KFC, which delivers. Our leaders took us to the bank and the main grocery store and gave us much too wordy talks about each; I thought they should have been a little more self-explanatory. I exchanged all my money at the bank I would soon have an account. Then I went to this place called Tesco, which is just the Thailand version of Wal-Mart. I got a fan and some snack food and drinks for my room. I couldn’t stop complaining about the fact that we hadn’t even seen where we’d be living for the next month so we really had no idea what we needed to buy or what we would already have. I didn’t get a phone the first day because we were so rushed and I didn’t want to just get the first crappy phone I saw, so I thought I’d wait and get it another day.

We finally went to our residence, which is called Suchaya House. It’s like a dorm-style residence. It’s basically just a room with an en suite bathroom and a small balcony. There’s also a TV that I got excited about until I realized it probably only plays Thai TV shows and stuff, which it does. But I did connect it to my laptop via HDMI cord and just play DVDs through that.

The next morning I woke up around 5, wide awake. That sucked because we weren’t leaving Suchaya house until 8:45. So I watched some episodes of Friends and ate the Thai version of coco crispies I bought at Tesco the day before. So straight from there, we went to the school where we’d do our training. It is actually a very big government Thai school. We were in an air conditioned room, so that was nice. Our first class was basic orientation and an overview of what we’d be doing. After three hours of that, we had our lunch break. Some people and I found this great little Thai restaurant near the school. It was a little pricey in local terms, but it was delicious! After we got back from lunch, our songthaou, which is a long truck with seats lining the back, to a Buddhist temple. We learned all about the religion and practices and how most everyone is Thailand is Buddhist. We learned the rituals and were even blessed by a monk who gave us all bracelets that would protect us from evil. I really wanted to say, “Thanks, but I have Jesus.” But I didn’t because that would have been very disrespectful and rude. Next, we went to a street dog rescue place that’s connected with Xplore Asia. It was awesome because now if I want a dog with all the stuff it needs, I could get one for free!

 

I don't remember what day it was but it looked like the sky was about to collapse on us. Regardless, we loaded up the songtow and drove pretty far out to a pineapple farm. We took a bunch of pictures like this one. We could all feel the looming clouds above us ready to rain down the apocalypse. So we all took one last group picture and drove to an elephant sanctuary. That was really fun because we got to feel the elephants the pineapples we had just gotten! They loved them!



I meant to post this weeks ago but lack of interned prevented it. Sorry and keep reading!