Saturday, June 21, 2008

One week down

So I've finished my first week of teaching. It was crazy and hectic and not as bad as I thought it would be. I teach grade 2 (if you say second grade here no one understands, it's grade 2) so the kids know a good deal of english, nowhere near fluent, and spellings and issue but overall they understand pretty well with the exception of a few kids. I definitely have some ADD kids in the bunch to who can't sit still at all. Hopefully the load will be lessoned when they find another grade 2 teacher (which I really hope they haven't given up on). There was another grade 2 teacher but she had to back out at the last minute because her husband had a health problem so now I have all 24 kids, which in the US would be a snap, but here, doing ESL it's a huge challenge. Now I'm faced with lesson planning for next week which I am very behind on. I teach English, Science, Art and PE, that's a lot of lesson plans. Thank goodness I have Mrs. Lorina helping me out in my classroom. Her kids go here so she volunteers her time in order to lower thier tuition. She and her husband are missionaries from the Phillipines, so, since she isn't a native english speaker she can't teach her own class, but she's doing math for mine right now and helping out with the rest.

Here's my classroom and kids




After school got over yesterday all of us teachers just wanted to go out and have fun so we went to see an exhibit downtown called Earth From Above. It was amazing (and it was free). There were at least 100 photos and they were all taken from the air, so there were landscapes and animals and people and so many different settings. They were some amazing shots, things you just can't take from the ground. If you want to check it out the photographers website is Afterwards we all got ice cream and sat by a fountain outside of Siam Paragon. Then the group decided to break up. A bunch wanted to go back to school, but some of us weren't ready yet so we ended up taking the skytrain to Lumphini park and the Lumphini night bazar. We didn't actually do any shopping, we just sat in a huge beer gardenish area and listened to a terrible thai cover band, or I should say more of a group because they did songs by groups like the Black Eyed Peas and Avril Lavigne. Everyone got drinks, I got a strawberry smoothie and it was terrible, I have no idea what was up but it had the worst aftertaste.
Today all of the clouds blew away and the sun shone very brightly. Merideth and I took a cab to the Chatuchak Market (or as they call it around here, JJ's), which is the largest outdoor market I believe in the world. Anyway it was huge, totally overwhelming, and very hot. I'll definitely have to make a few trips back, you just can't absorb it all. I found the most amazing purse, so gorgeous, handmade with a leather handle, beautiful but it was 2800 Baht which is like $82. In reality thats a really good deal, in my budget it's a not so good deal. I did end up getting a really pretty purse, it just wasn't the amazing one and I got a cool thai skirt and this bamboo vase thing with some fake flowers to put in it. It's really hard to describe what it looks like, I guess I'll have to take a picture.
This afternoon I finally started putting pictures up in my room. It's just such a big space I don't really know what to do with it. I've decided on a paint color too, if I ever get around to painting, I just hate the white walls!
Anyway, here's some more pics,


1 comment:

Jennifer said...

Hey, I just caught up with the whole blog. Sounds and looks awesome. So I am starting my internship at the Federal Way World Vision office tomorrow and as soon as all my paperwork is finished they'll be buying my plane ticket and I'll be off to South Africa. I'll be using howtosavethekosmos.wordpress.com most to blog about it all. Good luck with teaching and I will keep a second Grade 2 teacher in my prayers!