Popping the Bubble

Rewinding to last weekend, two very important Isan Holiday's were celebrated and it was an extarordinary weekend. On Saturday morning we left to WAT PHRA THAT PHANOM" (วัดพระธาตุพนม) where each year a festival is held in That Phanom to honor the temple and also the anniversary of King Rama V’s death . This is the most famous temple in the Isan Province and is ledgened to contain The Buddha's breast bone, and as such, it is one of the most important Theravada Buddhist structures in the region. For this event we witnessed over 300 highschool (including the highschool that I'm living at, PlaPak Witaya) Thai dancers preform traditional routines, they were gorgeous!

Along with watching the dancers we had a chance to tour the temple. Within the temple there are mutiple places to make merit. In the picture I'm lightening an ensence stick, say a prayer, then stick it in. part of this process is then sticking a gold piece of paper to the statue.

After celebrating at That Phanom, we headed over to Nakhaon Phanom to celebrate Fire Boat Festival, “rua fai.” Wikipedia describes it best as,

"Communities from the province build large scaffolding out of bamboo, which they put on boats and float down the river in the annual fire boat festival. Tin cans are filled with kerosene and stuffed with rags, then arranged on the scaffolding to form images of temples, the king, dragons, etc. At night the boats float down the Mekong river for the appreciation of spectators. Held one night a year, at the end of Buddhist lent."

For the festival we stayed at Pi Dtao’s house, who is hosting our volunteer Sara, and is a very small lady but contains more spunk than you can image. Her apartment sits right next to the indo-chin market and on the mekong river, prime location! In all the festival was amazing seeing these gigantic boats containing hundereds of lit candels float down the mekong on a full moon night.

On a different note, yesterday was our last day in orientation and our group split up and moved to our seperate villages. Since we have literially been living on top of each other this past month it was sad to see everybody off to their own villages and schools while my roommate, Amanda, and I stayed at home in PlaPak Wit. This is the start of a new adventure and the security of our English bubble is now gone. Starting Monday our formal teaching begins. Being the only volunteer at our schools and for most, the only english speaking person the language barrier and classroom experience begins. Yesterday after moving in, my co-teacher from Pla Pak Noi, Pi Med, invited me to the local womens aerobics class that is held every evening. Very happy about the invitation, I accepted, and experience my first class being 1 of 4 attendees. I was the youngest by at least 20 years but enjoyed the time to bond with my co-teacher and meet some of the other ladies in town. The aerobics was held outside with loud Thai electronic dance music played and consisted of some simple steps and hand motions. It was a little embarrassing doing this little dance number basically on the side of the main road but I tried to embrace it and have fun with the ladies.

I feel there is so much more to add about my house for the next year, my schools, and important people I've met but this post is already too long! After a long day in NKP of collecting school supplies for monday and other house essentials I'm ready for bed! Also since Thai people get up around 5:00am, roosters are crowing, dogs barking, children screaming, and rice trackors already on the road, there is no sleeping in!

Here is a picture of a little boy we saw in the back of a truck during the fireboat festival with his bottom sticking out and is how I'm feeling about now! too cute!

Thai Teaching

Today was our first day of Practicum Teaching before the start of the second semester. In typical Thai fashion our day got off to an usual start when we showed up at our school to find no one there. Confused, we called our field director, who then called the english director, and notified us that he had gotten the days mixed up. The Thai teachers were notified that we were at the shool and around 15 student ranging from 1st-6th grade trickled into the classroom around 40 minutes later than our scheduled start time. Originally, we were suppose to have 2 separate class (divided grades 1-3 and 4-6th) but since only 15 students showed we decided to combine our lesson plans with the other group and improvise a class.

Our class was a success and the students and volunteer teachers had a blast! We started out with teacher introductions, then moved on to have the students create name cards for their desks. After attempting to pronounce their names such as Euu and doondtaan, I know it'll be awhile till I get them all down. Having such a wide range of ages in one class the other group (Sarah, Peter, and Kerry) had planned an ABC activity singing Chicka Chicka Boom Boom with each student being in charge of raising a letter when it came up in the song. Next, Rita, from my planning group did a lesson on weather practicing vocabulary such as Sunny, Windy, Raining, and Cloudy. I was extremely impressed by the english knowledge of the students many already knowing the phonetics of the alphabet, colors, and weather. To end our lesson we played the infamous game of Duck Duck Goose (but changed the words to Down Down, Up: to aide their vocabulary) *Shown in video above . The students loved this game with one little boy laughing and smiling so much he could barely say the words.

Overall it was a great first intro day to teaching and has made me so excited for the beginning of school. The children are so wonderful and polite. For example as I placed a paper down on each child's desk for them to create a name tag they Wai (hangs together in lotus/prayer position) and huge smiles across their faces when they learned they would be using markers. The classroom materials are at a bare minimum and the black chaulk board almost crumbling and hard to read. I know being creative and having fun with teaching this next year will be key to a successful classroom!

Here are some of my students:

Thai Dance Lessons

This is our embarrassing first day of Thai Dance Lessons! I can say we definitely all improved by the end of the week!

Tid bits of Orientation

Most of our time in orientation this first month is spent learning Thai and completing the necessary lessons and coursework to receive our TEFL certification. However, we do get some breaks to do some fun activities and start to explore our surroundings.

On Sunday we had the chance to take our first big trip into the city, Nakhon Phanom. We all squeezed on to a Sang Tao. which translates as Two benchs, consisting of a pick-up truck with two benches in the back for passangers (pictured above with the boys hanging on the back!). In the city we got to visit the Fresh Market, Indo-China Market, a Temple, see the Mekong river and its view of the Lao Mtns in the background. Here are pictures from the fresh market:

On Tuesday we receive our first Thai dance lesson. We were first exposed to Thai dance at our welcome dinner party and it looked fairly simple to the untrained Westerner. We quickly learned that it is nearly impossible to look half as graceful. The class consisted of many laughs and a few simple moves learned.

One evening after class was over, I got a chance to play in a pick-up soccer game with a bunch of Thai high school boys and 3 of the male volunteers (Ben, Peter, and Zach). Since girls in Thailand never play soccer, I think it was quite a surprise to them to have a female player. Since it has been a few YEARS since I have even touch a soccer ball, I had to jump right back in to attempt to keep up. However it felt so good to play again and I was very impressed that they included and welcomed me into the game. Here is a group shot of us after the game!

Last night, we had the chance to walk down to the night market which I know I will be visiting frequently this next year. The market consisted of very yummy food and I tried an empanada type thing, waffle with something on it, and my favorite bubble tea! I'm slowly going to work myself up to the fried crickets. I also got lured into buying some Thai clothing, $1 shoes, and head wraps!