Turning 30 in Thailand and Teaching part 4

Full Irish

So it was the day of my (Stephen) birthday 12th Oct. We went out that morning for an Irish breakfast which consists of as much fried greasy food as you can imagine not what you may assume for a full Irish in the picture :-), The fry up was something we hadn't eaten in nearly 2 months and our mouths were salivating on the bike ride over. It turned out to be a good choice on our part, as we got talking with the owner, a guy from Australia, who had been living here for a few years and said he is deciding to open a school and that we should come back for a chat later that week and discuss it.

Should I stay or should I go???

So with a full belly we set of home and arrived at the first set of traffic lights.I think we have mentioned it before, Thailand is a little different than the rest of the world when it comes to rules of the road. From the unusual things we have seen, to the way they drive, which can only be described as controlled chaos, as we have yet to see a crash but so many near misses and for that reason I'm happy we have a bike, as they have bike lanes on all roads. Then you come to traffic lights and you play a little game of whoever is there first and go when they can :-)

We had dinner that night and keeping on the western theme we enjoyed some steak and mash which was amazing, Aaron and Pim went Italian and it felt weird paying 300 baht for a meal since we had been getting our lunches and dinners for 20-30 baht. But when we thought about it we realised it was only 7.50€ for a nice steak dinner.. but we are now thinking in baht so it seemed a little expensive for us.

So that night was the Thairish birthday party in Supans. The owner Rainny was having her 25th birthday party and had decided to do a joint night for Stephens 30th. Calling it a Thairish birthday party the theme was to wear green and a friend had brought face paint with her (thanks Gagan...) to give shamrocks to whoever would take them :) Gave us a feeling of St Patrick's Day as the sound system was playing all Irish artists and folk music.

 We had a great night and drank green drinks till the early ours of the morning. Even our teacher from the course Boris came down as well as the staff from the complex.

So we listened to Christy Moore, the Frames, the Pogues, U2 and more as the night went on.

We had a quiet week leading up to our 4th teaching assessment and at this stage we were less nervous and more excited to get into the class room. This week we had to teach about "the past", something which isn't used here a lot, as we have mentioned before, they will say a sentence and put "already" at the end to talk of the past but will not change the original verb. IE: I eat food already, instead of I ate food yesterday.

So telling them a story about what we did yesterday or last week as we did, we could then explain by asking them directly what they did yesterday and I (Stephen) had one lady answer "yesterday I fight with my daughter" and then started laughing hysterically, so I would explain "yesterday you fought with your daughter" and so on, I then turned to  another girl and said "did you fight with her daughter yesterday" and unsure she answered "yes", so I played up and said "ooooh did you hear that she fought with your daughter". It took them a minute to realise her mistake and she began laughing and saying "oh, no, no I didn't fight with her daughter", and this was enough to win them over and they were very receptive for the rest of the class so much so that they asked me to teach them next week. That was the awww moment for me and it was capped by my assessor standing up at the end and saying well done 100% I couldn't fault that lesson.

 Kristine had 6 students in her class and everything went perfect again but at one stage she said she went bright red, she had 2 of the boys in again from her first lesson she had done " the id card" lesson 3 weeks prior. In the first class she had ever done, one of the teenage boys not seeing many foreign female teachers kept, how can I put this " adjusting him self, Hormones and all that :) But she had asked them in the first lesson ask Teacher Kristine

The culprit ☺

"what is your address", and she would answer my address is "Columbo Soy 5". So 3 week later and she asked the same teenage boy what did you do yesterday, to which he replied with a huge grin " yesterday I rode my bike to Columbo Soy 5" She said it took her a second to realize why he was grinning an then went red but laughed it off and continued with the class happy he had used the correct past tense :-). I told her afterwards I may have to start having a word with these young men before each class :) I explained to her that when I was 13 I had the choice of 3 languages to do, I made my choice based on the fact the German teacher was hot and well equipped, so she may have to get use to some admiration if she teaches teenagers.

We finished off the night with a movie night in Supans where she has now got in a large projector and movie suggestion box and what we were most happy to see was Guinness, she had ordered it online from a brewery some where.. Cheers!