Our Third Week Teaching!

First of all, it's crazy that we are now officially done with our third week of teaching... time is just flying by. It's actually depressing- I feel like there is a quite a bit that we still want to attempt to do in our short time here in Thailand. Less than 30 days people!

This week, we taught the students the months. They knew them for the most part, but some of the students had trouble with pronouncing some of the words.

For example,

January turns into "Jan-u-R-y"
February turns into "feb-ru-ary"
March turns into "marshhh"

We had to repeat those several times over, as well as write them out phonetically on the board for the students to comprehend what we are saying. 

We also taught them to actually talk about the months. By having the students practice with a partner while asking the phrase, "what month were you born?", they were able to put together complete sentences. They would answer by saying, "I was born in ____". This may seem quite easy, but some of the classes really struggled with it. 

Monday evening was a bit uneventful, as I went home afterwards and had a lazy night at home. 

Tuesday, Arunrat took me grocery shopping for some food that I can make for dinner... she was impressed at my sandwich making skills.... haha if only my roommates back at school were impressed by that skill as well! 

Wednesday evening, Ari came home with me because we had to be at the school at 7 am the next morning to hop on the bus for our field trip.. talk about early. We watched Monsters University and then went to bed... not much different than a night after teaching back home!

Thursday, however, was a completely different story. The field trip was for boy scouts. Apparently, all students are just in boy scouts- it isn't an after-school activity, and Ari and I cannot figure out if they are even remotely similar. The girls are also a part of boy scouts- very different as well. They are still split up by gender though, so perhaps there is girl scouts?

After arriving at the school, we hopped on one of the buses. The buses were coach, which we thought was nice- nicer than a school bus. However, I would have taken a school bus any day for what happened next. Not only was this the LOUDEST bus ride I have ever had, but it was one of the most ridiculous as well. Don't worry- the bus had a karaoke machine/tv and microphone. This, of course, encouraged all the Thai seventh graders to scream at the top of their longs Thai songs. The music was blaring, the students were screaming, and it was 7:30 in the morning... let's just say it wasn't ideal. They did, however, play "baby" by Justin Bieber for us because he's American.... A special shout out to him and his DUI that he received- making America proud! 

Once we got there, all of the students did some sort of ceremony thing for about an hour... We just sat there. Only one of the teachers spoke English, so it was a bit tricky to understand what was going on. After the directions were given, the students walked away in a single file line. Keep in mind- there are about 400 kids in the seventh grade, so it was a single file line of 400 students... two other teachers went and we decided to walk with them. We were told that the other teachers weren't going to go because they were too old and didn't want to walk... We walked around, saw some pictures of the animals, and were happy. Then, however, we were led off the main road and told to walk down a dirt trail instead... after walking this for awhile, we came to road and were told to follow that... we walked a total of about 4 miles... up hill. quickly. because Thai people walk generally slower than American people (at least compared to Ari and myself), so we wanted to get out of the back of the line and into the front. 

During this walk, about 8 students got heat stroke or were dehydrated (we aren't really sure). They were crying and brought to the site where the students were camping. When Ari and I got there, the teachers were not taking care of the students really, and there wasn't a medic or anyone certified to help. Ari and I panicked a bit- some of the students did NOT look good. After a long time of us asking for water (which they didn't have any), the students began to sit up and act a bit better. By this time, however, Ari and I were furious and had left the room. It was unbelievable. 

While we were sitting outside, eating lunch, and enjoying the sun, we saw a teacher hit a student across the face. This, apparently, is okay in Thai culture- just another thing we cannot understand. the student was caught smoking in the woods during the walk, and that is the punishment for doing so. In shock, Ari tried to explain that it wasn't the right thing to do, but the only response we received was that it was a part of Thai culture.. I can only pray that someday they will see that there are much better ways to discipline a child rather than publicly humiliating him in front of everyone. 

After this, we asked to be brought back to Udon Thani- we were taken to a bus stop, hopped on the bus, and came home. It was time. The rest of the teachers were spending the night (although they weren't doing anything actually with the kids, so it was unnecessary for them to be there..). We had told them before that we didn't have anything for camping and that we were much more comfortable spending the night with our host families. 

Needless to say, I don't think that a field trip is at the top of my list of things I would like to do again.

Today, however, was great. We taught three classes of 8th grade, and then we took the public car home because our last class ends at 1:30 on Fridays- it's wonderful.  We had four students from UDRU (the university that we are technically attending right now..) observe us teach our last hour. Unfortunately, this is our lowest level and worst behaved class, so things didn't go as smoothly as we would have liked. 

Oh well, another week in the books. Ari and I have great plans for this weekend, and I'll hopefully post on Sunday!

Xoxo Kenzkeg