Teaching part 3, karaoke and buckets by the river

So we were preparing for our third attempt at teaching a live class and this week we were covering prepositions of place i.e.: under, above, behind, in front of, on top of and between, just to name a few. We would use a similar style as before, with a warm up followed by a story, using the main vocab we wanted to teach and using (Where is ...?) as the main sentence structure, as you can see in the pics. 

Tom and Jerry

Kristine chose her story based on Tom and Jerry, even if the kids didn't recognise the cartoon, it’s the well renowned story of a cat chasing a mouse, which has been done everywhere I’m pretty sure. 

Spongebob Squarepants

I on the other hand went with what I thought would be the internationally recognised "SpongeBob", as I had seen plenty of toys, pictures and dolls of him scattered around town, they even have them as seat covers of many mopeds flying around the city... Well... it didn't quite pan out that way. When the kids came into the classroom, we had pre-prepared our boards with the story laid out.

I opened by saying: "OK students, do you know who SpongeBob is?", I felt my heart sink a little when all I got in return was blank stares, as I held up this square sponge man who lives in a pineapple under the sea and took a quick glance at the board I had made up featuring, Mr squid ward and Patrick starfish. How am I going to explain the premise of this cartoon when it makes no sense to me. It was squeaky bum time as I attempted to tell the story of SpongeBob's birthday party and mean Mr. Squidward hiding his present in various places i.e. under the table or between the pineapple and the rock...
Luckily it went off to plan and they enjoyed the imagery and funny characters... Maybe the luck of lifting the Buddha statue was coming back to give me a helping hand. Kristine’s story was Tom and Jerry in the garden and Tom was chasing Jerry who would hide in various places around the garden i.e. in the dog house, under the tree and so on. I could hear her from my class room and knew she was killing it from the interaction and it sounded like the whole class was having fun. We both walked out afterwards and she looked at me and said “nailed it” which was confirmed when her assessor gave her the grade sheet and she had scored 100%. Could not have been more proud as now she said she was finding her feet and a lot more confident moving on when we have 5 times as many students... There was High fives all round.

The best part of this class was the role play, where we would have the students come up and hide the characters and ask "Where is Spongebob's present", while the others closed their eyes and then opened them and tried to find it's location. The kids did their best to catch each other out and I sat down with them each time and announced "OK now you’re the teacher" and jokingly held up my hand when I wanted to answer saying "Ooh, ooh pick me". One of the girls actually corrected another student when she answered the SpongeBob is between the cloud and this 12 year old temp teacher replied with “between the cloudssss”, could not have been prouder, as plurals is something they struggle with. The job satisfaction of teaching non English speaking kids is amazing, when you see them learn something new that you have spent time preparing and put work into and as I said before you leave each class on a euphoric high the likes of which we have never had in any other job. 

Aaron went with Doraemon a Japanese character that was huge here and loved by Thai kids. The story if you don't know it (shock) is of a half cat, half robot, time traveler who has gadgets that can take pictures and they come to life or you can be shrunk down by walking through a trumpet and oh yes his hat makes him fly.. sponge bob they struggle with but they lap this stuff up.. are you kidding me :)

So of course it was time to celebrate..

So during the day on Friday it was Rainny’s birthday and she wanted to do something so she suggested showing us the river where we may be able to go for a swim.. so with a convoy of myself, Kristine, Aaron, Anthony, Dylan and Rainny we set of on what had been dubbed “adventure day” and that it was. As we were about to set off Rainny turned up with buckets filed to the brim with mystery cocktails, both of which turned out to be delicious. After driving through small villages, back roads and past lakes we arrived at an area beside the river with hammocks and some amazing views. 

Chilling by the river

Anthony had brought his guitar and we chilled there for the day having a sing song by the river. Unfortunately it wasn't really suitable to go in for a dip and the thoughts of the many snakes I know are in this region, was enough to keep me satisfied with the swimming pool, in town... Maybe on our next break we will head down to one of the islands for a couple of days by the beach. 
That night Rainny had the idea for karaoke and told us of a place not too far from our local hangout where you could rent a room and order food and drinks. We got excited as we knew we had two singers and performers with us both of which have been in multiple bands. The two guys are Anthony and Dylan and two of the nicest and talented guys we have met, we recently listened to a CD Anthony gave us and thoroughly enjoyed it so much, so I’d like to share his Facebook page which I hope you can check out: https://www.facebook.com/anthonybradymusic. These two guys both hail from the states and get this!, it turns out Anthony used to be in a band with Dylan’s brother years ago. The first time they ever met, was playing a live gig at Supan’s House on the opening night here in Khon Kaen .... if your not singing the Disney ride song "It’s a small world after all" in your head right now.. you should be.. damn it now that I've written it I can’t get it out of mine..

When we arrived at the karaoke bar we walked in and down a corridor which had lots of sound proof doors behind which where what could be described as a westerner style living rooms with a screen and 4 or 5 mikes set up and a couple of couches. And of course the karaoke machine with a limited range of songs .. Mostly Thai unfortunately but what did we expect and the few English ones we found which were not your usual karaoke ballads. As the beers started to flow, we chose sillier and sillier songs to sing ranging from 8 of us screaming the words to "I’m a Barbie girl" and Limp Bizkit’s "Keep on rolling". Kristine recorded a few videos but I haven’t brought myself to watch and listen to any so far and maybe its best for them never to be viewed - No "Jolene" from Kristine this time I'm afraid...