Monday 22nd November
I'd been told to be ready to start at 8, so I set my alarm for 6.30 with a view to getting up, showering, shaving and seeing if there was any breakfast at any of the stalls down the road.
But at 6 I get woken up by knocks on the door and calls of "Nick!" from the same guy who took me to breakfast yesterday. He was there to take me to breakfast again. It was pretty much the same as yesterday with a greater variety of meats. It was very good... but I made a big mistake... asking what it was. There followed a great discussion over the correct English word (I managed to ask with my Thai dictionary). Eventually one of the women went "Ahhhhh" and pointed at one of the stray dogs in the street. Grand.
Breakfast over and I return to school at about 6.45. I go into my room and gather my things for a shower and the dreaded shave. I head out of my room about five minutes later and there are already kids in the school! Before 7!! How mad! So I just felt it was not appropriate to get a shower now. Ah well.
So we open up the morning activities. Some music, the school bands, flags and prayers. Then we go straight into what will turn out to be one of the most difficult things I could imagine. My timetable said I had kindergärtners for an hour. So I decided to do some ABC songs, counting and singing. Five minutes later I ran out of things to do. I am so traumatised by this experience I actually remember very little, except after about half an hour giving up. Playtime for the next half hour... which was much more fun.
Then I had a 1 hour break. I was already pretty much prepared for the rest of the day, my plan was pretty simple to be honest, just to get to know what the kids already knew. Simple, but will make life easier. In my break I had a blast on what turned out to be an awful computer... freezing and crashing every ten minutes. In my break I got handed a sheet with 'what to teach' for each class. Turns out kindergartners were half an hour teaching and half an hour playing... so didn't go too badly in the end!
Turned out 3/4 knew everything on the list, so nope, need to come up with new things for them and reinforce what they already know. Lunch time passed quickly, ate soup and rice, so really wasn't actually that great since I don't like soup! Then, stupidly, played football in the stunning heat of the middle of the day.
More lessons and it turned out 5/6 knew what they were supposed to be taught. They seem really good and know more then was on the list. I think these guys will be the most fun. Then the final lesson of the day was 1/2. Wow was this difficult. Long story short they were getting out of control. Right as it started getting almost totally mad the other volunteer arrived with Suvanna and a few others. Suvanna took over the class and taught it for the rest of the lesson.
The day ended and we headed off for dinner with all the teachers and volunteer people. I ate a lot of strange things including frog... which was actually really good. The night ended with the new volunteer heading off to stay with one of the teachers, so I still get to keep my own room! Yay!
Went pretty much straight to sleep and had nothing really planned for the morning.
Check out the pictures at;
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=263416&id=620438469&l=16a606d7eb
that sounds very interesting, am glad you enjoyed your first day. but did you eat dog for you breakfast?
ReplyDeleteThanks. I'm almost positive it wasn't dog now. Over the two months I got to know a lot of people in the village, particularly that family, pretty well. They enjoy a good joke... and it turns out very few of those dogs are actually strays.
ReplyDelete