Into my fourth week...

 I ended my second week and began my third just north of the city of Nakhon in a little beach town called Khanom. A fellow teacher decided this was where she wanted to celebrate her birthday, so on Friday afternoon, Meghan and I piled into another van and set off. It was the perfect little getaway. The beach was just covered in the most beautiful shells! Originally intending to stay one night, I packed my bag accordingly. But one wonderful night turned into two- the beach was spectacular and so was the company and the weather. And I am so glad I stayed. Because on the second day, as we were all lounging about the “resort”, I spotted the elusive pink dolphin just offshore! I shouted it out and everyone ran down to the beach- it was just a couple dolphins swimming together lazily, but we got to watch them until they rounded the corner and our view was finally obstructed by the rocks. Apparently, pink dolphins are a very rare occurrence just offshore like that- people I was with who have been living here for 9 years hadn’t seen one single dolphin until this outing! Such a special sight!

This sent me back to the classroom excited and refreshed, ready to start a new week. Because we did a name card activity and a birthday/zodiac activity the first week, I now have every student’s name memorized- if they have to learn mine (Meaghan had to practice it with them- when they first heard it, they thought it was “Teacher Elephant” and went into hysterics), I should know all of theirs by the end of the first week at the latest! Thai people have their formal first names, such as Chontiya, Warakorn, and Worawut, and then they have their nicknames, which is what everyone calls them by. So I have students in my class whose nicknames are Thai-based, like Engprai and Sai, and then I have students with English ones, like Milk, Drive, Boat, and King. It’s been a lot of fun helping them explore their names- most haven’t really thought about their English meaning, or why their parents/grandparents might have named them these English words. As much as I would like to say it isn’t, these classes are very much like many American middle school classrooms I’ve been in- kids growing up, exploring their identity, testing boundaries with authority and with each other. Meaghan and I had to stop our after-school enrichment program at one point last week because about 6 of the girls were in tears and some of the boys were sitting sulkily with their arms crossed over their chests, and instead make the lesson about emotions and friendship and teenage angst (although obviously we didn’t call it that).

We have also been having fun learning from each other- cultural differences, funny words, expressions, and mannerisms. Here’s an excellent example of that: Students at the school call everyone, male or female, “Sir.” Well, today I decided I had enough of that, and taught them about the word “Ma’am”, saying this is what you call females. I watched as huge grins came over many of the boys’ faces, and had them practice saying it. There were some giggles, but I thought nothing of it, until after class, when one of the students was kind enough to tell me that “Ma’am” sounds exactly like a very inappropriate Thai word. Aha. Another one is every time I express my frustration, I say, “Ay, ay, ay [insert whatever is frustrating me here]” and look up at the ceiling. They get a huge kick out of this, and I now catch them saying it to each other, or when they catch another student being out of line, they’ll say “Teacher! Ay, ay, ay, ay, ay, ay! [insert name here] is making me ay, ay, ay, ay!” We’ve been learning about figurative language, and they think the expression, “Kick the bucket” is hilarious.

One thing I love is how excited they are to help me learn, too- we’ve started “Teach the teacher”, where they teach me one new Thai word/phrase they think is important for me to know every few days- not a lot is sticking to my brain, but it’s good practice for them to explain meanings in English, and a fun way for me to learn some Thai. Today, I asked one student to write down in Thai directions to give to the motorbike taxi so I could get home by myself, and then help me practice what to say to the driver. I ask them for help nearly every day, asking about food, what the Thai writing on my bottle of tea says, etc. They’re just such great kids, and I like them more and more every day.

My technology class seems to be going well enough. This week I started a unit on Wikis- I’m trying to teach them about the benefits of them by having the students create a class wiki of book reviews in Language Arts class for silent reading. Each student creates a page about the book they are reading, with the basics like the author, publishing date, setting, main characters, plot; and then they give the book a review, rating it with stars and commenting on why they would or would not recommend the book to others. The idea behind it is that when it comes time to pick out another book, they can use the wiki as a reference to help them select what they’d like to read next, add commentaries to existing reviews, edit other’s reviews, etc. And they’re getting to play around with wikis AND it crosses over into Language Arts! They actually seem really excited about it, so we’ll see how it goes. Here's a link if you want to check it out: NICS Book Reviews

The little, yet long and abundant wooden bridges.

Haad Yuan

This weekend will be my first weekend spent in my new home city- every weekend thus far has been spent away. I am pretty excited about it, even though I have been loving traveling around Southern Thailand. Last weekend was spent on the island of Phagnan, where I divided my time between two beaches: Haad Rin and Haad Yuan. Both were spectacular, but for different reasons. Haad Yuan was just a few little bungalow-style resorts, some along the beach and some along the rocks, with little wooden bridges connecting them and making them accessible. The water was excellent, and so was the weather, except on the day we left! THAT was definitely an adventure.