“Teaching Bad”

Week 3 of the course, our second assessment was only a few days ahead and we found ourselves just as nervous as the first time around. This week we would be teaching the “Restaurant lesson” which brings into play the use of the verbs; would, can and like, as well as a lot of foods from western countries and they were not allowed to ask for Thai dishes. Not a good lesson to have skipped lunch for, as we were talking about pizza, burgers, fried chicken and steaks when we hadn't eaten western food in over a month, which was really tough. The lesson was based on a waiter taking orders and a customer ordering food, it would be a bit harder than the first week, as now we were introducing amounts and quantities i.e. (a piece of…, a slice of… and how many scoops of ice cream, or how many cookies they wanted for dessert. 

So all week we ran through role-plays and got our pictures to explain the types of food, drinks and desserts we were using. We found out that colour pictures were 10 baht a sheet to print and black and white were only 2 baht so we decided to have a “colouring party” to save money, as we were printing off up to 50 sheets. 

It turned out to be fun and there is a surprising therapeutic affect to reverting back to a 5 year old by spending your evening colouring in pictures while listening to the pulp fiction soundtrack… well the first part anyway. 

Once we had all our work done and realised that soon we would be paid to do this, we went to our friends bar where they were having a Breaking Bad finale night *Relax No Spoilers* ☺They had a big projector set up and had an offer for all you could consume blue cocktails (baby blue meth colour) while it was airing for a good price to get us into the mood. 

We all sat and watched Walter White for one last time, if you haven’t seen breaking bad I highly suggest you go start it now… 

like right now… ...go... I’ll wait………………………….. .....……… 

Amazing right?

On Thursday we got ready again and prepared our classrooms, this time we had an extra kid or 2 and I (Stephen), got lumped with what I swear could only be described as a 30 year old kid, he was sporting a mustache and was about 6’5" tall. 

We put up 3 pictures from each section of food, drink and dessert and we had created a lot of extra pictures of food/drinks types for the section were we asked “OK so what other western foods would I have in my restaurant” and anything they said I just happened to have a picture ready to add to the board, making them think I was some sort of a psychic magician, shouting “BAM” every time I  had a picture ready to go, only to get amazed laughs back.

The only one that caught me out was, when one kid said “milk” for, what other drinks would I have. I checked my pre-made pics and cursed myself for not thinking of milk, but then it dawned on me and I said “What type of milk would I have” and one kid shouted “Chocolate milk”. And what did I happen to have purchased prior to the class and had in my drawer... you guessed it!... and with moves that would make David Copperfield jealous, I acted upset that I didn't have a picture to show and the kids laughed and clapped that they had finally caught me, until “BAM” the desk flew open and I proudly held my chocolate milk into the air… Cue amazed gasps and I’m pretty sure one of the kids heads actually exploded with astonishment. ☺

Kristine’s class went just as well, she was happy with all the kids being able to say “like” by the end of the class rather than “lile”, as most Thais have issues with R’s and L’s. But by using repetition and getting them to shout answers and have fun they were all able to walk out with a better understanding and pronunciation and I’m pretty sure one of them is now teaching advanced English literature in the university, so she was chuffed as well. Also this week she took on 5 kids, 2 more than her first weeks so stepping up her game already. 

After spending the day talking about western food we had a craving for fried chicken. 

Knowing there was a KFC only 5 minutes from the school we set off to try out the Thai technique of eating a Zinga box meal with only a knife and fork. The KFC was beside the arcade so myself and Kenny got our street fighter fix. Kristine and i rocked out on guitar hero also. I think it was "act like a kid week".

Roll on the 3 day weekend, don’t think we will get tired of that….