Well, mid-terms are officially over. (Except for those who failed and have to retake the test...but I'm not worrying about them this week. Especially today. There is a 4-day weekend this week, starting tomorrow...and I'm leaving for vacation to Ko Samui in southern Thailand tonight. Eee! I am very ready for a vacation after mid-terms...there wasn't a lot for us foreign teachers to do, but we still had to be here the entire mid-term week. Every day. Every morning. I did some lesson planning for the rest of the term early on and did some grade calculating...that got old very quickly though. A week of doing nothing has made me desperate to get away. Soon!
Last Saturday turned from a quiet, boring, relaxing day, into an adventure. Friday Pook took me and three of the other teachers to get our work permits and visa extensions. The work permit is a cool little bright blue book. And I am now legally here until the 10th of October. Still not sure when I am done with school though...oh well!
Anyways, Friday one of the teachers had a motorbike accident...he fell on the motorbike and scraped his hand and arm pretty good, along with being bruised all over, so Friday night it was decided that I would go to his Saturday morning teaching job for him. 6 am was very early. I don't like being awake at 6am. The teaching job was in Bangkok, so it was a bit of a travel. Luckily, since it was the first day, Pook picked us up once we got to Bangkok. I had plenty of coffee that morning. Coffee, yay!
It was the first week so there was an entire little opening ceremony where the program's leader gave a speech, and then there were a lot of photos. Photos with the teachers, photos with the students, click click click. It took up a good chunk of the morning though...less teaching time for me! The ironic part is that I am not actually teaching most of the course, and yet I will be in a lot of the pictures.
The students were a mix of boys and girls, which was kind of different from what I'm used to. All girl's school all day every day here at Chomsurang...it was nice for a change. Luckily, Jacob, who is doing one of the classes, had a lesson plan I could use, so I wasn't trying to think of everything on the spot, or stressing myself out the night before.
La dee da, teaching until 12:30, and then we got to go to lunch. Pook took the four of us teachers out to a restaurant that served a sort of pad-thai omelet. The noodles were inside an egg, it was quite interesting and quite good. Afterwards we went to a temple...where you could feed fish. Pook bought an entire bag of kibble and we fed fish...a lot of fish. The fish go crazy, hundreds of them all crowding around pushing at each other, swarming to get the food the instant it touches the water. When it gets too crowded, a frenzy of water splashing occurs as fish that have been forced out of the water desperately try to get back in. I saw a couple huge albino fish too. They got crowded out rather quickly though. If you threw the food farther out into the water, smaller, slimmer fish would dart around eating it, and sometimes you could get them to jump out of the water to catch it. It was quite entertaining. Unfortunately, I hadn't brought my camera that day.
After the fish feeding extravaganza, Pook dropped us off at the shuttle to JJ's, an outdoor market. After a bit of a ride, we arrived and it was huge. JJ's was an open air market with stalls for just about anything you could possibly imagine. You could spend an entire day getting lost in there, shopping. I didn't buy anything, saving for my upcoming trip, but it was still amazing. Getting back to Ayutthaya after that took a bit of running around...getting misdirected constantly around a bus station is no fun. Still, we managed to make it back in the evening, utterly exhausted from the day, but it was a good one. And I still had Sunday to laze around in.
Tuesday, July 31, 2012
Friday, July 13, 2012
Closing Time
Today was the closing ceremonies of Chomsurang Upatham's sports weeks. What it meant? Classes cancelled. All day. All day sports day stuff. It was both fun and boring at times. It was really cool to see the entire area around the track transformed for the day. Every color had its own section and its own wooden bleachers. They were all decorated in the color and theme of their section. Each section had its own drums and cheer leaders, and I mean quite literally people leading cheers, not prancing around with pom poms. They also had their own extravagantly dressed dancers to dance and help lead the cheers, but again, nothing like what Americans normally picture when you say the word cheerleader.
After walking around and taking in the sites, there wasn't a lot to do until the mid-afternoon. The morning featured track events, sprints and pass-the-baton and endurance runs. Hah, I know most of those do have proper names, but I'm assuming you know what I mean. Still, watching students run gets boring after awhile. Especially when it's not something you particularly care for. So I switched between wandering around and watching and fiddling on facebook to pass the time. The cafeteria was all closed up for the day, all the teachers and students got take out and ate at one time. I ended up making a 7-11 run for my food, since we weren't associated with any color. I came back to find the students having a dance party in the middle of the track field. It was fun to watch, but eventually they resumed with the running. Ugh.
At that point it was sunny and warm and I am not at all ashamed to admit, although maybe I should be, that I found a bench on the second floor looking out over the track, and sort of dozed while watching the runners and waiting for something interesting to happen. It wasn't really quiet, but I was so sleepy...zzz.
I woke up fully as more people began crowding the area. The running had finished and they were getting ready to start the performances. They really were performances, or dance shows at least. Each color had one, with their magnificently dressed students dancing to a montage of music, each with their own unique backdrops. Some had glitter and streamers and one group even loosed a pair of birds. It was a lot of fun to watch. Of course, the day ended with the presenting of trophies. I have no clue what any of them were for. The only thing I could tell was which color won, and that was based solely on the fact that they were wearing their color. I'm fairly certain that red won the most trophies, considering it seemed like they were screaming every third trophy or so, and it looked like they had the most but I didn't really count.
Anyways, if you have access to facebook you should check out my pictures cause they will be fun! I took some video, because it was the only way to truly capture the performances, but we'll see if I get that uploaded.
I plan on taking it easy the rest of the weekend so I probably won't have anything exciting to report for awhile. Who knows though. Ta ta for now dearies!!!
After walking around and taking in the sites, there wasn't a lot to do until the mid-afternoon. The morning featured track events, sprints and pass-the-baton and endurance runs. Hah, I know most of those do have proper names, but I'm assuming you know what I mean. Still, watching students run gets boring after awhile. Especially when it's not something you particularly care for. So I switched between wandering around and watching and fiddling on facebook to pass the time. The cafeteria was all closed up for the day, all the teachers and students got take out and ate at one time. I ended up making a 7-11 run for my food, since we weren't associated with any color. I came back to find the students having a dance party in the middle of the track field. It was fun to watch, but eventually they resumed with the running. Ugh.
At that point it was sunny and warm and I am not at all ashamed to admit, although maybe I should be, that I found a bench on the second floor looking out over the track, and sort of dozed while watching the runners and waiting for something interesting to happen. It wasn't really quiet, but I was so sleepy...zzz.
I woke up fully as more people began crowding the area. The running had finished and they were getting ready to start the performances. They really were performances, or dance shows at least. Each color had one, with their magnificently dressed students dancing to a montage of music, each with their own unique backdrops. Some had glitter and streamers and one group even loosed a pair of birds. It was a lot of fun to watch. Of course, the day ended with the presenting of trophies. I have no clue what any of them were for. The only thing I could tell was which color won, and that was based solely on the fact that they were wearing their color. I'm fairly certain that red won the most trophies, considering it seemed like they were screaming every third trophy or so, and it looked like they had the most but I didn't really count.
Anyways, if you have access to facebook you should check out my pictures cause they will be fun! I took some video, because it was the only way to truly capture the performances, but we'll see if I get that uploaded.
http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.666585255972.2098260.33103631&type=3&l=42f1a49f5b
I plan on taking it easy the rest of the weekend so I probably won't have anything exciting to report for awhile. Who knows though. Ta ta for now dearies!!!
Sunday, July 8, 2012
When Getting Used to the Heat is a Bad Thing
Boo!
It's been awhile since my last post...and as usual that simply means my life has settled into a routine, and when it settles into a routine I often forget that my routine might actually be interesting to someone else...
A couple weeks ago or so we had the sports week opening ceremonies. The entire school is divided into teams, Pink, Yellow, Red, Green, Blue and Violet. Within these teams the students compete in many different sports. Sort of like the Olympics. Anyways the opening ceremonies were fancy. They started in the late afternoon with a parade. It was very elaborate, the students had made a ton of costumes, all different and all elaborate. Each team seemed to have some sort of theme, I'm not quite sure what they were. There was a parade, a speech, flag raising, and an actual torch that was lit. It was really a lot of fun to watch.
They started the sports off with a female teacher versus student council soccer match. That was not so much fun to watch, but eh. All an experience. After was a male teacher versus male teacher game. Both of my other English teachers participated, one on blue team and one on orange. I did try to cheer...though instead of cheering I just took some pictures. I mean really, this screaming and yelling thing what?
The closing ceremonies are coming up soon, the end of this week I believe. That is supposed to be a whole day affair with more costumes and performances and who knows what else...it will certainly be a fun day though!
Mid-terms are fast approaching here, even as the middle of summer is approaching on the other side of the world. I wrote my first 60 question multiple choice mid-terms last week. They start in the middle of the week, oddly enough. I'm not sure what the schedule is going to be like, but I'm just going with it. Thinking so much about them has made me forget that it's still only the first week of July...my mind is focused on the end of the month! Plus we're supposed to have a 4-day weekend coming up and oh the trials of figuring out where to go for that one...
My weekends have been pretty quiet, a lot of relaxing. So finally, this weekend, I decided to go somewhere. I researched train times, got up early and went to the train station. Of course, I either dawdled too much, or the train I planned on catching never came because I got a ticket for a later one. So I arrived at Lop Buri a few hours later than expected. No big deal. I started wandering and found a cool museum. I enjoyed the architecture and buildings more than the actual artifacts but that's not too surprising. And long story short, I got thirsty, drank a bottle of cold apple juice and not long after felt sick. It's like my body is telling me "screw you Emily, don't go adventuring". I still explored and trekked on a while longer visiting a couple more temples and looking at some of Lop Buri's ruins. Ayutthaya's are better I think.
Finally, when I was about to give up, I found some monkeys! They were just casually climbing along the power lines. I followed them to their nesting spot, where the entire family was hanging out on top of some buildings across from a small bit of ruins. There were a couple baby monkeys small enough to be carried around by their parents. It was very cute! Although I didn't find the temples where you can feed the monkeys, it was fun. I will have to go again (and print a map or something) to go to the monkey temples themselves.
I am a little glad for the formal clothing required by school. None of your collarbone area can be showing...and that just means that none of my teachers or students will see the little bag strap sun burn I have going on. I guess I sort of forgot about the sun...I'm so used to being in the heat and teaching in the heat that I figured I could just keep trekking. No problem, right? Wrong! Being used to the heat and being used to the sun are two different things...and a couple hours versus twenty minutes makes a difference. Next time I will definitely remember, hopefully that will help avoid issues with heat and the sun...somehow I shall adventure!
Well...there went my organized thought process that I began with. Tschuess!
It's been awhile since my last post...and as usual that simply means my life has settled into a routine, and when it settles into a routine I often forget that my routine might actually be interesting to someone else...
A couple weeks ago or so we had the sports week opening ceremonies. The entire school is divided into teams, Pink, Yellow, Red, Green, Blue and Violet. Within these teams the students compete in many different sports. Sort of like the Olympics. Anyways the opening ceremonies were fancy. They started in the late afternoon with a parade. It was very elaborate, the students had made a ton of costumes, all different and all elaborate. Each team seemed to have some sort of theme, I'm not quite sure what they were. There was a parade, a speech, flag raising, and an actual torch that was lit. It was really a lot of fun to watch.
They started the sports off with a female teacher versus student council soccer match. That was not so much fun to watch, but eh. All an experience. After was a male teacher versus male teacher game. Both of my other English teachers participated, one on blue team and one on orange. I did try to cheer...though instead of cheering I just took some pictures. I mean really, this screaming and yelling thing what?
The closing ceremonies are coming up soon, the end of this week I believe. That is supposed to be a whole day affair with more costumes and performances and who knows what else...it will certainly be a fun day though!
Mid-terms are fast approaching here, even as the middle of summer is approaching on the other side of the world. I wrote my first 60 question multiple choice mid-terms last week. They start in the middle of the week, oddly enough. I'm not sure what the schedule is going to be like, but I'm just going with it. Thinking so much about them has made me forget that it's still only the first week of July...my mind is focused on the end of the month! Plus we're supposed to have a 4-day weekend coming up and oh the trials of figuring out where to go for that one...
My weekends have been pretty quiet, a lot of relaxing. So finally, this weekend, I decided to go somewhere. I researched train times, got up early and went to the train station. Of course, I either dawdled too much, or the train I planned on catching never came because I got a ticket for a later one. So I arrived at Lop Buri a few hours later than expected. No big deal. I started wandering and found a cool museum. I enjoyed the architecture and buildings more than the actual artifacts but that's not too surprising. And long story short, I got thirsty, drank a bottle of cold apple juice and not long after felt sick. It's like my body is telling me "screw you Emily, don't go adventuring". I still explored and trekked on a while longer visiting a couple more temples and looking at some of Lop Buri's ruins. Ayutthaya's are better I think.
Finally, when I was about to give up, I found some monkeys! They were just casually climbing along the power lines. I followed them to their nesting spot, where the entire family was hanging out on top of some buildings across from a small bit of ruins. There were a couple baby monkeys small enough to be carried around by their parents. It was very cute! Although I didn't find the temples where you can feed the monkeys, it was fun. I will have to go again (and print a map or something) to go to the monkey temples themselves.
I am a little glad for the formal clothing required by school. None of your collarbone area can be showing...and that just means that none of my teachers or students will see the little bag strap sun burn I have going on. I guess I sort of forgot about the sun...I'm so used to being in the heat and teaching in the heat that I figured I could just keep trekking. No problem, right? Wrong! Being used to the heat and being used to the sun are two different things...and a couple hours versus twenty minutes makes a difference. Next time I will definitely remember, hopefully that will help avoid issues with heat and the sun...somehow I shall adventure!
Well...there went my organized thought process that I began with. Tschuess!
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