Working hard

Yesterday marked my first class in a week. What with the long weekend and Bangkok visitors and religious days I've not fully taught a class for a while so it was sort of nice to get back into it. Admittedly Wednesdays are with the Hospitality English Programme first years so they have relatively reasonable English (enough for a few mimes and repeating of words to usually do the trick) so I don't mind teaching them. I teach them a fair few times in a week so I am slowly starting to know the class as well which makes teaching them quite enjoyable. Since they were doing personal information, I thought playing human Bingo would go down quite well. For example "find someone who has a brother", which encouraged them to at least move around the classroom. I'm not entirely sure how successful it

Workin' hard or hardly workin'

was (I heard a lot of Thai) but they seemed to have fun and were well behaved so I'm not complaining!

I then managed to teach the second year of the same course who are fast becoming my favourite class. I know you shouldn't have favourites but I can't help it! There's only around 10 of them in the class but they are all such great characters and there English is very good by the rest of the schools standards so it's easier to get some

EP 1 in their swanky scout uniforms

friendly conversation with them going as well. But they're so funny as well (also I have learnt that one of them has a mum who is a Thai masseuse so maybe if we're super nice to them... haha!) Teaching them is quite uninspiring because the teacher I work alongside wants me to use the text book to run my lessons by but a lot of it is very dull and un-engaging. In desperation today, with 15 minutes left at the end of the lesson, I had them playing "heads down thumbs up" (a game which, if you need the rules explaining then your childhood was poor) which they genuinely seemed to love. Even one girl who doesn't enjoy participating because her English is very weak was giving it a go.

For their next lesson I'm currently working on a Powerpoint on about me/English life. Me and Flo reckon that the reason that the students are all adding us on Facebook (even though the British Council have told us all that we cannot accept) is partly that their curious about our lives and culture. It also gives them all a break from learning out of a textbook. So, friends and family back home, 20 Thai kids may all be shown pictures of your face soon just a heads up!

Kip was not impressed..

I feel like teaching has been really rewarding so far. Admittedly there are times when it's hard and frustrating and all you want to do is throw forks and storm out of the classroom. Which, believe it or not, is what the director of the school did today in a class. Recently, no matter what class you're teaching, the students will not arrive until around 9am when classes are meant to start at 8.15am and apparently the director had had enough. So much so he threw a load of forks across a classroom and stormed out after yelling at them all. In the UK this is pretty shocking and unprofessional behavior but in Thailand Thai

Students that give me sweets are the best students

teachers will have no hesitations in smacking a child who has been misbehaving, apparently. I have never witnessed this so far and am glad I seem to be in a school where the teachers do not do it but Glenn was telling us it is very common in primary years as a way of controlling the pupils. I think I'd be very uncomfortable if the teachers just started hitting the kids in my lesson but I guess it's a culture thing.

Before I came out to Thailand I was a bit nervous about just how long the period of time was. I really wished it was just a month because I did not have any idea how I was going to cope for 9 weeks without my family or friends. But, if it was just a month of teaching that would mean that

aaaand... pose.

I would be leaving the school next Friday- just one week away. That seems mental to me. I feel like I have only just settled in and got into the swing of things and I feel I definitely would need longer than a month to have any worthwhile effect on the students. Although, it is sometimes hard being on the opposite side of the planet to everyone else (and yep the time difference does not help at all. Something my parents still don't understand the concept of stop trying to skype me when it's 3am here!) I am coping A LOT better than previously thought and I'm having an amazing time. I am very grateful I get to be out here two months! Although I think after two months I will need to eat something English again rice is beginning to get very unappealing very quickly...