Thailand Trip (Day 19)

Day 19:
Today breakfast was awesome! Crepes, eggs, watermelon, and coffee. I headed to school at 8:45 for another solo class. This time a second grade. Although I'm not sure how it happened we never had taught this class and the students were very excited to have a "Farang" teacher for the day (I may as well explain "farang" now. The first visitors to Thailand were overwhelmingly French and the word for French sounds a bit similar according to one theory. Today "farang" has become a term for all foreigners.). The class was pretty well behaved for just one teachers and learned a good amount of numbers. They particularly like the game where I let them hit numbers on the board with fly swatter as I called them out. Following this class I met up with Steve since he would be assisting me in the First grade3 class. It was a full sized class, so teaching letters was once again a challenge. Some of the students were content writing letters, drawing pictures, and writing the associated words. Others preferred drawing on the boards or chasing each other with chalk. Steve commented to me later that he was glad that he mainly taught 5th and 6th grade and was amazed that we were able to teach the young kids everyday! At the end of class we brought out stickers and a as Steve described it later "the children came at us like a swarm of locusts." Since the class was such a handful we were almost glad to hear that the afternoon classes were canceled since the school was planning on an assembly the next day. After being invited to the assembly in the morning, we headed back to base for a lunch of Veggie burgers (mainly potato based) and fruit. In the afternoon I took advantage of the day off and took a nap before heading to the pool in the late afternoon with Karen and Morag. For dinner we had a delicious pad Thai dish and afterwards headed to Nong's for beers with Steve, Shaun, and Morag.