Thai'd

This past week has been a long, sad, but unforgettable one in Thailand. The time had finally come to say goodbye to my students, teachers, and friends in Pla Pak Village. Goodbyes seemed to be harder than I could have ever imagined. The amount of generosity that the Thai People have shown throughout the year always amazes me. I feel like I have been given and taught so much more by my students and co-teachers then I could ever hope teach or give in a year. My string tying ceremonies, a ceremony that is specially unique to the Issan part of Thailand, at both of my schools were definitely one of those times were I was humbled and put in 'aw' by the amount of kindness that they exude.

For a ceremony a banana leaf 'Kratong' is made and decorated with flowers. The strings that will be tied around the wrist are placed in the kratong and offerings such as chicken, fruits, rice, and whiskey are put around the kratong. The village elder is the one who conducts the ceremony, saying a buddhist chant. Next, each person ties a white string around the recipient wrist that is suppose to preserve good luck and happiness for the person, money can also be tied in as a gift. Many of my student's parents and other village people took the day off of work to come wish me good luck. Both of my string tyings were very touching to see all my students and parents huddled around me wishing me good luck, happiness, and hopefully a return to PlaPak someday. As I looked around I was trying to imprint each of their faces in my memory so I would never forget the day or the people that have given me so much.

My final wave goodbye from the students of PlaPak Noi school!

After a 11 hour drive to Bangkok, Today I fly to Malaysia to spent the next 6 days touring around! Only about 22 days left in SEA...

#17 Holidays

Throughout the year I've gotten to enjoy and learn about many new Thai Holidays. It has been refreshing and interesting to be a part of them and also teach about American holiday traditions.

The most recent holiday celebrated was Wan Meh (mother's day). This turned out to be amongst my favorite holidays celebrated in Thailand. All the mothers were invited to school were the ceremony was held. The students sang serveral songs honoring their moms then each student wai'd and gave their mom a hug. It was very sweet and I could tell the students really love them.

Here are pictures of the Holidays (thai and American) throughout the year:

Mother's Day- Wai-ing to their moms

Teacher's Day (Wai Khru)

informally called Budda's Birthday - Lightening candels at That Phanom Temple

Songkran- Thai New Years- water fight in Chaing Mai

Valentine's Day- making hearts in English Class

New Years in Chang Khan

Christmas

The King's Birthday (Father's Day)

Thanksgiving hand turkeys

That Phanom- Making Merit and Fire Boat

# 18 Teaching

This post is to teaching in general. I studied child development in college which isn't the same as an education major but rather how children grow, develop, and learn-the science of it. What makes some learning environments better, how do you create developmentally appropriate curriculum, Why do children do this or that at a certain age, What are appropriate ways to talk and interact with children? These are some of the questions my courses explored. I've had a great year actually putting a lot of the theories that I studied into practice and seeing what held up and worked in a rural thailand esl classroom and what completely failed. This is one of my main reason for coming to Thailand. I had been a student for the majority of my life, faithfully attending classes and following directions and when I graduated I was ready to do something on my own. I definitely had to learn as I went with aspects that had to be tailored to specifically teaching ESL that my major did not cover such as how to teach reading, how to be 'the foreigner', and how explain directions to a lesson or game using almost no english. I'm glad though I had a lot of experience before coming to Thailand working with infants and toddlers mainly because it made me use to having the language barrier with my students..saying something and not expecting an answers or an answer that needed some piecing together.

This past weekend the other volunteers and I put on an english camp for 130 students for the high school and surrounding schools with the participants ranging from 6th grade to 9th.We had a blast. I was very happy 5 of my 6th grade students from both of my schools were invited to participate. It was a day and a half long event that started at 8am friday and lasted till 12pm saturday. It was the perfect event to have fun and be silly with the students and get them excited to study english. We sung songs so much our throats hurt, danced so much our legs ached, and laughed constantly at the 'bad boys' and lady boys of camp. It also provided the opportunity for the Thai high school teachers to gather techniques on how to teach english in a fun and engaging manner during our 8 different stations we had set up each focusing on different english materials. The subjects included: time, clothes, verbs, prepositions, dance, verb-to be, and a station to practice their performance for a night show. It more importantly gave me a fresh boost of energy and ideas to finish my last few weeks of teaching strong. I'm very lucky to have the other volunteer teachers this year to generate teaching ideas with, rant about the absurdities of the Thai school system, and their general camaraderie through out the year. So here's to a great year of teaching and learning!

Team Boy and Girl with the volunteers! (each group of students came up with a team name and chant such as: Team Diamond, Lemon, Boy and Girl, X-Zone, Sea Flower, Lovely, and Lucifer. ---all on their own!)

#20 Thai Competitions

One thing about Thai schools is that they love competitions. This can range anything from the week long sport competition we had in December to an academic spelling bee or writing competition. Today though, I experienced my first school cooking competition between local elementary schools. Of course it starts off as any normal event would for me having no idea what it is for, where we are going, and what we will be doing. I've learned that sooner or later in the event I'll figure it out or at least get the gist of it. My scheduled pick up time was 8:30am so naturally they arrive somewhere around 9 am with a truck load of students piled in the back of someones pick-up truck. I jump in and see what the day has in store for me.

My 6th grade students are some days in charge of preparing all the student and teacher lunches, so I was pretty confident in their cooking skills and would fare well in the competition. They got started right away chopping up vegetables and preparing the fire that the meal would be cooked by.

Of course there has to be some entertainment while the students are cooking so all the pre-school students were invited to have some sort of dance competition. Many of these little ones are my student's younger brothers and sisters. They basically stood up on stage swaying back and forth or even one group hula-hooped their way through a song while the adults stood and laughed at their cuteness.

The end product was a lemon-grass streamed fish topped with garlic and a side of laab (minced meat salad). I am amazed at their skills knowing that when I was in 6th grade the only thing I would make was boxed brownies or chocolate cookies. That brings me to my next point. Although I have many issues with how the thai school system works I think they do a wonderful job in teaching the students life skills and things that they will be using in everyday. For example PlaPak Noi school has a student run garden and rice field, fishing pond, and cooking lessons. 2 hours later the food was ready to be sampled by the judged and the verdict read. PlaPak Noi came in second place getting to take home a trophy and 1,500 baht! yahh. The students piled back in the truck and we are on our way back to school.

Day in the Life of a Thai Student

Update, finally! I haven't had internet at my house for the past 2 weeks or so now and I haven't been very willing to sit outside in the cold at the high school to pick up their wireless for very long!

This is an account of what a day in the life of

one of my Thai students might look like. However, everyday I am amazed at the different cultures and routines each of my elementary schools has so this account is one specific to my smaller more rural elementary school PlaPak Noi. This school has already become very dear to me and acts more like an extended family for the students and teachers. The teachers are more like parents in charge of disciplining and teaching students life skills.

Every morning starts with a morning assembly. The time mainly depends on when the teachers arrive at school this can be 8:15-9am. Students line up in their grade levels in perfectly straight lines equally spaced apart. The flag is raised, national athem sang, buddhist prayer said, and a marched exit accompanied by drums.

School Maintaience responsibilities fall mainly upon the students. They are incharge of sweeping, mopping, picking up any trash, watering all the plants, and picking up leaves (by hand), and even helping with construction. Right now my students have been helping with the construction of a new building of classrooms(funded by donations) to replace the open-air wooden room that houses sometimes up to 3 grade levels. I will see my tiny 2nd grade boys hauling huge cinder blocks or digging out the side of the hill to insert steps. I find this involvement in the school and its upkeep very beneficial to the students who then respect and appreciate their school. I do sometimes worry about their safety with the construction though.

In the next block of morning classes grade levels will rotate through my english class. I found that the morning schedule really revolves around my class since the bell is manually rung only by my students exiting the class. I dont think the bell is used at all when I'm not at the school. Time at the school runs on daily events rather than a schedule. When the students aren't in english class they are maybe working from workbooks, cleaning something, or the older students helping prepare lunch. Everyday it seems like my students receive a small cooking lesson (which sometimes I wish I could join!).

Lunch is then served with the menu usually being sticky rice, steamed veggies, fish soup, somtam salad, fried egg, and pork. However frog and chicken feet occasionally pop up too! After the teachers are done eating my 5th and 6th grade students are in charge of washing all the teachers dishes and cooking bowls.In the picture you can see the wash tubs that are usually surrounded by dogs looking for leftover scraps. The afternoon I teach Kindergarden-2nd grade and the older students play sports, scrub floors, or work on their prized vegtable garden they started a few weeks ago. Here is a video of my students one afternoon working in the garden.

Drying rack of students family style lunch plates

The end of the school runs similarly to the morning assembly but without the drums and flag. Students line up say a prayer, thank the teacher, and are then excused to go home. The time for this also varies greatly on the teachers after school plans.

I find myself usually conflicted with the my student's school routine. On one side I think it is great that the students are involved in the upkeep of the school, how respectful they are to the teachers, and the flexibilty in the school schedule. If something important comes up or could be benefical to the students the schedule should be able to change unlike the strict American school system dictating teachers every lesson plan. However there is a severe downside to the Thai way. I feel like the teachers sometime take too much advantage of their "power". One afternoon my students were washing a teachers car or how they scrub the floors every week instead of being taught. My students are learning valuable skills such as growing vegetables but as far as more academic learning seems to be missing or involved classroom teaching. This is part of the culture of Thai Teaching that we as volunteers are hopefully modeling for the rest of school on how to make classroom learning fun, meaningful and relevant to the student's lives. Recently I was notified that the school board was coming to observe me teach at PlaPak Noi and videotape my english lessons to use as example for other thai teachers. Even though I hate to be videotaped or observed teaching for that matter, I'm happy that the school board is taking note to how we teach without a the use of a workbook and are willing to incorporate new teaching strategies.

Party Bus and Christmas

On Friday Wang Yang elementary went on a field trip to the city of Nong Khai and I joined along. With absolutely no english speakers on this trip I had no idea what was in store and ended up being fun because each place we went to was a surprise. The day started early with me waking up around 4:15am and being picked up at 5am to load onto the bus. In total there were around 60 students and teachers going on the trip however our only bus (which was so ghetto I can't believe it was still running) was seated for around 45. This meant that the students had to basically sit on top of each other for our 9 hour bus ride there and back to the city. It looked extremely uncomfortable but my students were so excited for the field trip it didn't matter. Next came the issue of who I was going to sit next to on the bus. Many of my teachers at this school are very nervous and scared to talk to me so who was going to have to sit next to me was a big deal. They kept pushing teachers near my seat but nobody was willing to take the plunge and was a little awkward to for me I felt like some scary creature. Ultimately it came down to my principle being the one who got stuck sitting next to the strange farange. My principle is extremely soft spoken and just only spoke his first words to me the past week(after 2 months!). The trip ended up being a good forced ice breaking time for us and I think after our time spent together he is much more comfortable in approaching me. In total we made 5 stops in Nong Khai seeing the highlights of the city. The first was the Aquarium which was filled with many strange exotic fish. Second the Thai-Lao bridge. For this we got to walk to the very boarder of Thailand only being a few hundred feet from entering Lao.

Third, a beautiful temple.

Fourth, a sculpture garden featuring many famous Buddhist symbols and gods. It was amazing to see the shear size of the sculptures there. Finally a free for all walk through the Riverside market.

Some interesting occurrences during the day were how my co-teachers (only some) decided to start cracking open beers on the bus at 8am. This continued throughout the day which lead to a finale of buying a 30 pack of Leo for the long ride back to PlaPak. The bus drivers assistant also decided to join along buying a 40 oz to sip on the way back.Crazy! I was pretty shocked by this but it seemed perfectly acceptable to everybody else. Next was the full out dance party on the ride back. The bus driver blared the music, turned off some lights and the students filling the aisle of the bus jumping up and down screaming and singing to the music. This lasted for a few hours and my head was throbbing from the volume of the music and down right exhaustion from the day. We arrived back in PlaPak around 10:30pm and I was happy to make it through my first field trip.Wheww

The next day was Christmas! Honestly I woke up and for the first hour I forgot that it was even Christmas. I quickly remembered I needed to prepare my veggie dish for the volunteer Christmas party that afternoon and evening.

The Poinsettia was the perfect tree!

Overall the Christmas party was a huge success complete with a fierce white elephant gift exchange, Secret Santa, and Potluck dinner consisting of everything from Mashed potatoes to vietnamese rolls to Mac and Cheese.

We had quite a spread!

After dinner a few of us walked over to the catholic church that is near Rita's house to catch a Christmas Mass. I was mainly just interested to see a church in Thailand and what it was like! We had a surprise treat afterwards of Fireworks that we lit off at the field that were actually pretty good! We ended our party with a movie of the traditional story of 'How the Grinch Stole Christmas'. Snuggled up together on the tile floor we called it a night and went to bed.

We got woken up first at 5:30am by the "village announcements". This consists of usually the village elder on a loud speaker echoing throughout the village blabbing away about what was happening today or what farmer has the best veggies. This is accompanied by Thai music blaring at 6! We all tried to sleep a little longer only be be woken up again at 6:30am by Ritas principle walking into the house full on sleeping people (him being completely aware of this) trying to talk to Jes. Thai people don't know the courtesy of being quiet if people are sleeping or waking you up. Anyways after eating left over fried rice and cinnamon rolls a few of us headed out to the road to flag down a bus to drop us near where our sawng tao can pick us up on it's route to PlaPak (this was a little bit tricky but we made it!). Finally arriving home I logged onto my skype account to catch Christmas dinner at my family reunion, perfect timing! Its been nice not having christmas shoved in my face here so you don't really know what you are missing. Seeing the red wine being poured and christmas food made me a little homesick, but I know this is only one of the many many Christmas' that'll miss! Having the worldteach fam around helps too!

Here are some pics of my students as we celebrated Christmas in english class!

The Daily Commute

I haven't really explained much about what a "typical" day looks like for me at my schools. This however is hard to define because each day seems so far from typical and there isn't really a normal either. This is how my day is suppose to look and on rare occasion turns out. My ride to school comes from either Pi Khem (Wang Yang days) and Pi Tok (PlaPak Noi days) who are married and work at both of my schools as the computer teacher (although computer are rarely used at Wang Yang ) and Pi Tok as the 5th grade teacher. Anyways Pi Khem picks me up at 8:20 in front of the highschool gates, this usually ends up being 8:30-40ish though due to "Bai Tueyyyy, sorry late No gas, No minute on phone, or some other morning errand" On PlaPak Noi days I bike to Pi Tok's house now because she was always late due to "Shampoo hair". Everyday she tells me that she wakes up at 4am and verry very work hard, which just confuses me on why she is late if she is up at 4 and doesn't get me till 8:30 haha. Her house is only down the street and I'm not exactly sure how this cuts out time to get to school and its a little bit of a hassle to load all my teaching materials on my bike but oh welll. Sometimes my favorite part of the day (besides my students of course!) is my commute out to PlaPak Noi.

It is only a few kilometers away but its out to the poorest part of the village through the "forest" as Pi Tok calls it which is actually rice fields that many of my student's parents own and work in all day. As we drive or sometimes motorbike to school ( with me side saddling on the back of the motorbike and grasping onto my teaching supplies) we pass our usual obstacles which include chicken with a trail of chicks. I always catch Pi Tok glancing in her mirror to see if she hit any of them sometimes saying "no die". Dogs who don't budge from their comfortable resting spots. And my favorite the hurd of water bufflo which we serve through on the motorbike. When passing the buffalo Pi Tok always exclaims, "many many cow" this has also been a marker on how late we are to school of where the cow are in their hurding journey. I arrive at school usually with only 15-20 minutes to arrange my materials for the next 4 hours of teaching different lessons. While I'm getting ready my students are doing morning assembly, cleaning the school, and gardening

(I'm going to do another post of the typical thai student day). My classes start quickly and I

do my first 3 hours, grades 3-6, have an hour lunch then my last hour of my Kinder,1,2. I usually have an hour and a half after my lessons are over to play with my kinder through 2 graders, hang or create any necessary material or help my students with their garden. Around 3:30-4 students are dismissed and I'm on my way home exhausted!

Lately I've been thinking about what my "daily commute" was before I went on my journey to Thailand. I was living at home with my parents working 40 hours a week at a place with a horrible work environment, and my least part of the day dealing with the jammed packed traffic from all the corporations in the silicon valley. People cutting me off or speeding illegally down the carpool line just to get a minute ahead of the next person and I slowly inch along highway. I'm not going to say Thailand's roads are any safer than the US since there are absolutely no traffic laws here and many drunk drivers but the main difference is people aren't stressed when they drive. There could be a motorbike going the wrong way while a car in the opposite direction is trying to pass someone but the driver doesn't seemed phased at all and somehow knows that they'll all fit by each other at once. My commute is peaceful and also exciting as we interact with wildlife and smile at the elderly lounging in front of their houses. Everytime I'm overwhelmed,homesick, or frusterated with the culture I always think back of what my life would probably be like if I stayed in the states this year and what my morning commute was like there and I realize how grateful I am.

Alright this post is starting to stray to different topics but I'm excited for the next few days of Christmas activities that I'm going to be doing at my schools, a school field trip on friday to Nong Khai and for our Christmas Party that is being held at fellow volunteer Rita's house this weekend complete with Secret Santas and a White elephant gift exchange! Hope everyone is enjoying the holiday season!

Khon Kaen Travel

Last week was a fairly easy week of teaching, only 2 days due to holidays on monday and friday and then a Worldteach meeting in the city on thursday. Both of my teaching days fell on PlaPak Noi elementary school days which contributed to a less stressful week. However I was very sad to learn on Tuesday morning that a computer, printer, and radio was stolen from the school. The robbers cut a square hole in the metal gate protecting the lower outside classroom taking the school's valuable equipment. I know they don't have money to replace these items since I can already see they are in desperate need of a new chalkboard, desks, chairs...basically everything. Currently one of my students has to sit in a 3 legged chair holding up the corner with a missing leg or my students have to squint at the chaulkboard when I write because it is so badly damaged. I've been in contact with worldteach and I'm hoping soon I can set up some sort of fundraising effort with them for those of you who might be interested in helping out.

This weekend, due to the 3-day offs, I decided to travel to a neighboring Issan city of Khon Kaen with 2 other volunteers, Kaitlin and Jackie. It is located about 5 hours south-west of Nakhon Phanom. We caught a bus early friday morning and started our ride to the city. Every so often the bus would stop to pick up passangers on the side of the road or let someone off. Only about an hour into our journey after stopping at the sakhon nakon bus station (another city) the bus became full with passangers lining the aisle way (emergency exits don't exist!). I had the aisle seat meaning I was next to the people standing and learned it was perfectly okay for the standing passangers to take over and plop down on the outside arm rest. As you can imagine that means their back and lower half are basically in my face. In Thailand and most other countries personal space is not an issue. Actually living alone or even having alone time is something that Thais seldom have. Many volunteers especially living with host families seem to struggle sometimes to have a few hours of time to themselves. Back to the bus ride. I end up having a lady with extremely long hair perched next to me and her hair for the next hour is flinging into my face. Luckey due to more passangers loading she is moved farther to the back and is replaced by a man with a bag jetting out in the middle of my seat..mai bpen rai. A little after 1pm we arrive, head to get some vietamese spring rolls and after consulting our lonely planet book decide to stay at the hotel across from where we were eating.

For about $6 each we share a room equipped with air conditioning, hot water, and a comfy king-size bed! luxury. For the next 2 days we explore the city on foot seeing its main attraction of a lake where we rented a paddle boat for a $1, did some shopping of the local silk and tourist center, and wandered the night market. By the end of the 2nd day we had mastered the city, mostly meaning we knew the sawng tao (public transporation) route and what color and number goes where. At night we were so content with our hot water showers and cool comfy room that we took the time to relax and unwind with some reading. Early on sunday we caught the bus back into the city and safely arrived in our home city Nakhon Phanom, which lonely planet describes as "sleepy". NKP doesn't have the hustle as the other Issan cities and contains far less foreigners, which sometimes I enjoy.

*pictures of Khon Kaen lake paddle boat, and most dec-ed out motor bike

As for this week of teaching, it is "sports week" at my 2 elementary schools. I found that out today after being at school for over an hour waiting for my 6th graders to show up. Finally a teacher came in and told me "students play sport today...no teach." So that got me thinking... why did you pick me up for school today and what has been going on for the past hour...I have learned by now not to try and make sense of issues like these. I also learned that "no school tomorrow and next day..sport." This is the typical Thai way of letting us know what is going on and when. Trying to figure out any kind of schedule is basically impossible, you just learn to go with the flow. Good news is I have the next 2 days to make teaching materials and lesson plan. I'm attempting to construct some type of christmas tree and will be having my students make cut out snowflakes for the classroom next week :) This is kind of ironic though because today was 90 degrees and extremely humid. It is only suppose to last for another day or two but is giving us a little taste of what is in store for us come hot season!

Picture of "Issan" northeastern Thailand and it's cities. Nakhon Phanom is far upper right on boarder. Also you can see how thailand is broken into 5 sections North, North-East, Central, East and South.