First impressions

Today, I ate an omelet with red ants.
Before I started teaching the first class of today, the teacher told me: "Mitchal, if the children don't listen to you, you can hit them! OK?"
Every day there are several of these moments, that I'm amazed or left speechless by what my colleagues or students tell me. Sometimes it's difficult, or frustrating, but most of the times it's wonderfull and it reminds me of the fact that I have to enjoy every moment I'm here.

Every Thai person that I have already met is really sweet, they all want to help me in every way they can and even if they don't speak English, they come to say "Sawadee" to me every day and just start talking Thai. Today, during lunch, the teacher sitting in front of me took out a small paper with the English translation of the food we had in front of us. That's how I know that there were red ants in the omelet. She even took me with her to the school garden to have a look at the trees where these ants live. How much more local can a dish be?

My host mother, Miss Ja, is a kinder garten teacher here at the school and every lunch, she entertains the other teachers with funny stories about me. Apparently I do something weird every day, which they all find hilarious. Like the fact that I wanted to wear the same skirt 2 days in a row. Here at the school, everyone wears a different outfit every day. On Tuesday, everyone wears a shirt with bright colors, on Wednesday they wear a scouts uniform, on Thursday it's sport clothes and today, on Friday, the children wear their normal school uniform and the teachers don't seem to have a special dresscode. So I asume it's casual Friday today :-). I'll discover the Monday-dresscode next week.
The funny story of today was the story of me being afraid of the huge spider in the shower. Miss Ja even imitated how I was screaming :-). I must say that the spider really was huge. And I already have to cope with 2 small frogs jumping around in the bathroom and the occasional beetle on my shoulder during showering. So the spider just was too much. I tried to drown it, but apparently spiders can breath under water and then I tried to crush it with a heavy bottle of shampoo. By that time, Miss Ja had arrived and she just grabbed and crushed the spider with her hand. I was impressed (the spider was bigger than my hand, so I had not considered this option).

But apart from these "little" inconveniences, the house of Miss Ja is very comfortable. When I first arrived I was a little bit shocked, as the first thing I saw was a car wreck in front of the house and 7 dogs welcoming me. The dogs still irritate me, as they follow me everywhere, but yesterday a teacher told me that the dogs prevent snakes to come into the house, so now I am really gratefull that they are there!

Host mother, Miss Ja, with her students

Correcting the exercises of class 4/1 (10-11 years old)

Front of my house

Living room: actually a covered terrace. People literally live outside here.

Dinner with host mother, Miss Ja and host brother, Ban-Ban

Wednesday is scouts day!

Lunch with the colleagues

Schoolbus

I teach all levels, from Primary 1 (7 years old) to Primary 6 (12 years old), together with the only English teacher in the school, Pongsuda.
Most children have a lot of difficulties with English, but in every class there are some students that are very motivated. Like the girl with the book in the picture above. She and her friends follow me around school with their book and constantly ask me questions in English. "Kru Mitchal, what is your favourite color?" "Kru Mitchal, what is the time?" "Kru Mitchal, what is the name of your dog?". I really enjoy these little conversations, because when I return the question, they are able to answer. This is really unusual, as most students don't understand what they are saying, they just copy their book, or repeat the teacher, without knowing the meaning of the words. So this week, I used my classes to find out the level of English of my students and to see who the motivated ones are. The age of the students doesn't really say anything about their ability of speaking English, in every class there is a very big difference in level of knowledge. The challenge is to keep the motivated students motivated and to talk with them as much as possible, and also to teach the students that can now hardly speak any English, the basics of an English conversation.

Visit to the Buddhist temple in Surin with colleagues Poe and Pongsuda



On Wednesday, I visited the Buddhist temple of Surin, with Poo and Pongsuda. Poo teaches Primary 4 and Pongsuda is the English teacher. They both speak English very well and told me about all the rituals in the Buddhist temple. This was a very interesting and relaxing experience.

It's impossible to write about all the experiences of this week, but I hope to give you a first image already of my life here :-)