*Yawn* Good morning teacher!

I know it has been two weeks since I posted an entry but to be honest, nothing interesting happened so I decided not to bore you with my futile stories. You’re welcome.

But hold on to your seats because this just in: the new school year started and in this eventful week the teachers provided us with no more than 8 hours to teach!

On Monday and Tuesday we were to help two Thai teachers teach the new pupils revision lessons before they entered the English classes in our school. I was shocked at the level of English these children ‘mastered’. Some pupils couldn’t count to twenty and some had difficulties reciting the alphabet. They have been getting English lessons since they were 8 years old so I wonder what the hell the teachers have been doing.

On Wednesday it was the official start of the new school year. A long morning ceremony followed by no classes pretty much covered the entire day. So after half an hour of socializing with colleagues we skipped school (after we had asked permission) and went home to get some other things done.

On Thursday most of the teachers still had to go over the new rules, aims for their courses and so on. Since all of the lessons would be in Thai today we ended up spending an entire day in the library with no internet. I do love Thai schools, don’t get me wrong, but spending 8 hours in a room where fans are non-existent? Not cool.  

We put on bold faces and told the teachers that if we didn’t have any classes on Friday, we would just stay home. Luckily they created a timetable for the upcoming two weeks so we would have something on our hands. Seems like I’ll be teaching more than any regular English teacher, but hey, I am not complaining.

After four lessons (Introducing yourself and revising numbers + alphabet) I was back in ‘the zone’. The negative vibe we picked up in the last couple of days disappeared once we were back in front of the classroom, trying to help Thai children understand a tad more of English than they can possibly learn by their normal teachers.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot to mention I spotted a strange looking gecko (or chameleon) in one of the hallways.

A private hairdresser please!

Because we only had to teach on Thursday this week we had a lot of free time on our hands. On Monday we decided to book a hotel room in our all time favorite town: Surin (not that we have a choice, it’s the only ‘town’ near us).

We had a swim, had a couple of nice meals, bought (even more) souvenirs and I got a haircut. Not that special you think? Guess again. I entered the sleazy looking ‘shop’, was assigned a seat, waited five minutes and gulped. A pair of rusty scissors, shampoo bottles with greenish mold on them and some other dirty artifacts.  Luckily the woman that came in had her own materials and they were clean as a whistle. Phew. Before she started cutting my hair she spent at least 10 minutes blessing my hair, making ‘Wai’s’ and asking me of it was okay is he touched my hair. Of course I said yes, otherwise she’d have troubles actually performing her job. After twenty minutes she was done and I had to pay 1.75 EUR.

Tuesday and Wednesday: nothing special to report. We did some work for school, watched a couple of movies, and that’s it really.

On Thursday we finally had something to do. We gave our final day of English Camp at Surappinpittaya (our school name) and we were rather excited. We again gave the pupils the assignment of creating a booklet about English Camp and we were going to receive them today. Everyone single pupil had finished them so we were happy as can be. After doing some more activities, we had lunch and after our meal we started the closing ceremony. First we awarded the prizes for the most beautiful booklets, we gave every pupil a certificate of attendance and we had a few bags of chips and some refreshing drinks. After we said goodbye, we cleaned up and said goodbye to Sally. She is going back to her school for the remainder of our time in Thailand.

Now it’s Friday and we are sitting in our room with a fan blowing. We just went out for a drink (Ice-Chocolate for Nele- I already dread the time she has to go cold turkey – and Iced Green Tea with milk for me) and we had to run back inside. It’s just too hot. Well, beats rain, doesn’t it?

What happens in Cambodia, stays in Cambodia

Our first week of English camp in Lamduan is finished, 4 days of teaching grammar, pronunciation and vocabulary really is quite tiring. Luckily we try to make these lessons as fun as possible to throw in a couple of games and fun activities.

Because we will only be holding this camp for 5 days, it was a real struggle deciding which parts we really wanted to teach. We managed to provide a lot of variety for the pupils and still let them experience what it feels like to follow a coherent course.

We noticed that the level of the pupils in this school is higher than the level of the pupils in Sally’s school. This could be due to the fact that our school tries to hire a native speaker for at least one year. I don’t need to tell you that this really does help the pupils’ progression, do I? This, plus the fact that we only have 7 pupils, makes the pace of the camp a lot higher.

Like I said before, the organization of this camp is far worse than on Sally’s school. On Wednesday they forgot we like to eat during lunchtime so we only had 10 minutes to gobble up our meal. Not that bad, but if you are having trouble eating rice in the morning, it is hard to skip lunch. And in this heat (approximately 40°C) you really need your nutrients and sugar. Especially the sugar.

On Friday we gave out pupils the task of creating a booklet about English camp. Because we had already received some beautiful ones during our other camp, we wanted to extend our collection.
On Friday night I had the realization that another week had almost passed. Time flies when you’re having fun. But time is flying really fast now...

On Saturday we left the country. Just like that. We were sick of Thailand and we wanted to leave. Just kidding! We needed to get a stamp on our visa in order to prolong our stay for at least one month. Otherwise we would be illegal immigrants and since this can cost you around 20.000 Bath and some jail-time, we decided to get the stamp.

P’Mook picked us up on Saturday morning together with a Science teacher and off we were! After a one hour drive and a nice lunch we arrived at the border where we were ushered to a man sitting behind a register, checking our ID cards. We were often passed by some Thai people throwing money in his booth, and what do you know, they didn’t have to show anything…
We followed our ‘guide’ out of the office and we were in Cambodia! The first thing you noticed: four big casinos. Since gambling is illegal in Thailand, there are a lot of Thai people hopping the border every weekend to try their luck in one of the big and beautiful casinos right across the border. Cambodian marketing at is best.

After having our picture taken, paying way too much money (money you know never reaches the right person) and waiting for our visas we were back in Thailand. In the end, I think we passed four control booths for two stamps. Hail bureaucracy!

After this we went to a famous market just near the border. You could practically buy everything you wanted here. Name it and they sell it. Car parts, furniture, clothing, army supplies, food, wooden structures, plastic plates, tablets made by Apple running on Android, “Sumsvng” cell phones and so on. A nice place to browse for stuff you don’t really need.

At night we watched a movie and went to sleep peacefully. Tomorrow’s plans? Doing laundry and doing some work for school. That’s all folks!

Strawberry and Chocolate Potato Chips

Lamduan, we're back!

On Saturday, we packed our bags for the last time. The next time our clothes go in our rucksack, we say goodbye to Thailand. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves, shall we? First we need to focus on our second English camps. This time we will be doing them in the school where Nele and I have taught the first three weeks of our stay here.

On Sunday, P’Nee, our host, picked us up at the university and drove us to our familiar house in Lamduan. We thought we would be saying goodbye to Sally (she will be staying with another English teacher for two weeks) but her host wasn’t home yet, so she spend the day in ‘our’ home. We killed time by playing childish games like Oxo, reading (I admit, I secretly slept for half an hour until Nele busted me…) and so on. We had a nice lunch and dinner and about half an hour after the meal, Sally was gone.

We unpacked our bags and got settled quite easily. That’s the nice thing of spending our last 5 weeks in our first host family; we already know everything there is to know so we can adapt really easily.

On Monday, we had a day off, well; we were supposed to meet P’Mook in the afternoon so we set our alarm clocks at half past 9. Only to rediscover the thrills of speaker boxes in the middle of the street, sprouting Thai nonsense at half past 6 in the morning… Eventually we got up at 10 o’clock, had breakfast and slept some more. At about half past 12 in the afternoon we leave for school. We told our host we would be walking to school and so we did. Never again! It was way too hot and we stopped 2 times to buy a refreshing drink. When we almost made it to the front gates of the school, some teachers picked us up and drove us inside. Much obliged!

We met P’Mook and discussed some formalities about the English camp. One thing we immediately noticed, it wasn’t organized as good as it was in Sally’s school. We didn’t know in what room we would be teaching, didn’t have an exact number of participants, and so on. We told ourselves it would work out just fine and left for home. On the way back I drank a Thai Ice Tea with Milk (looks really orange, almost chemical), it’s so delicious! In the evening we had dinner and watched a movie, nothing special to report.

Today (Tuesday, the first of May) we had our first day of our second English camp. We were assigned a room with a beamer and a whiteboard so at least we had that. Then again, no speakers (luckily we brought our own), the classroom covered with a layer of dust (which we quickly took care thanks to some nice pupils), benches and chairs all over the place, and so on. A fine mess it was. But being the neurotic types that we are, it ended up being quite ‘cozy’.

12 pupils showed up and 2 left after half an hour (not sure why though). We also had the pleasant company of Mr. Chatchai (the radio host) who wanted to see us in action. He told us the activities we did were very stimulating and he was going to use some of them in his courses as well. Yes, we were quite proud to have a man from the English Consulate tell us that he wanted to ‘borrow’ our material. Or is that just naïve, ah well, he’s a nice guy so were happy to oblige him.

Our first day was quite okay, the children being still very shy and all, but we were surprised about their reading skills. They ended up being quite good and we are happy to say that they all did a wonderful job today. Onwards to day 2!