Our first local festival, job hunting and Kristine landing the best job ever!!!

So last weekend the surrounding area of where we are living, which is a small enough village area beside the campus, came alive. The streets were filled with markets and street food, as well as what we would call a carnival atmosphere (Thai Style).


One of Thailand's biggest rock groups Carabao (the Thai Metallica) was set to play a gig next to the temple at the end of our street, so we figured we would stroll up for a look.
When we got there they had alot of the games you would find at a western carnival, including a few you might not, such as throw the basket over the bottle of whiskey to win the bottle or fire a dart at balloons to pop them, only the balloons seemed to be made out of some NASA style material, which would cause them to bounce back and narrowly miss passers by, which would excite the Thais to no end, and we got a good giggle from it also.

A friend of Rainny's was visiting so we all went out that night to try some pizza that we had heard alot of good things about, claims that it was as close as you could get to an genuine Italian pizza here in Thailand, and we can confirm it was amazing. We washed it down with a few German beers and the owner brought out speakers so we could throw on our own music and enjoy the night.
We put our heads down over the next few days to finalise our CV's in preparation for job hunting in Khon Kaen, we were advised the best way is to go into the schools and ask for the head of English department and try sell yourself straight away. So we packed up the bike on Wednesday and traveled around a few schools and made some phone calls.

That night, tired from the hunt we got a phone call from an English teacher who we had met the first week of the course who asked if Kristine and I could come to his school Thursday morning, so Kristine could do an interview for a kindergarten position, teaching 5 and 6 year old kids and for me to meet with the head of the secondary school across the road as they both needed teachers.

Ecstatic we woke up early and went down to the Sathit school, which means demonstration school and is very well recognised in Thailand and is also affiliated with the university, which means good pay and a lot of holidays as well as very good classroom set ups and facilities.
Kristine did the interview with the head of the school and the head of the primary school (she was there to translate) and they went through the questions and she nailed each one, so much so, that they asked her to start on Monday straight away, which we were both over joyed with.

P.E. ground

They advised me (Stephen) that on Monday they would bring me over to the secondary school, which is right beside the kindergarten and introduce me to the head of department there, as they are looking for a teacher to teach 13/14 year old's in English, Its in no way a promise of a job but they said they have a lot of pull so with Kristine starting on Monday in the same company hopefully I can mention that and could be starting next week as well, but we are so happy one of us has gotten a promise of a start already, as we thought we may have to wait a month or two.

Main Hall

So now let me introduce you to Kristine's new school. We started the tour by being shown the main hall were each morning the kids would attend an assembly, to go over any news and maybe sing a song or two (warm up the vocals). Not mandatory, as English teachers are free to head to the canteen for free coffee and tea. Then your classroom begins and here is that part where I (Stephen) was very jealous.

The day consists of 1-1.5 hours of warm up teaching such as date, weather and alphabet followed by that days lesson plan. Then the kids get ready for either  P.E., music class, or some times they go to the library. After all that they are ready for their lunch followed by a nap, yep that's right, a two hour nap followed by a recap of that days lesson and some story time. The kids we met where soooo well behaved and each room has an English teacher, a Thai English teacher and 2 assistant teachers for explanations and helping out with controlling the room.

The other half... 

Half of Kristine's new class room

The respect the kids give the teachers is amazing and Kristine was grinning from ear to ear during the tour and the facilities where on a par with a private school in the western world. Kristine would also once a month have to put on a show for the morning assembly, usually a song and in costume for 5-10 minutes of singing and acting. Oh, did I mention they had an entire room devoted to funny and unusual costumes for each show and previous performances have included gang-nam style.... The wages include free lunch, tea and coffee as I've mentioned and a housing allowance which pretty much covers our rent already so I (Stephen) may not bother with the job and just be a kept man for the time being :-).

Library

She has two months paid vacation in April and May and all other holidays, which Thailand has a lot of.
They have a summer camp every few months on Saturdays, so we asked if we could attend this week to show interest. Working as a teacher is all about presentation and commitment, as a lot of teachers are backpackers who only want to work for a few months and then move on.

1 of 4 playgrounds

If you are willing to hang on with a school, you will get a wage increase every semester. So it's safe to say that we are extremely happy that the job hunt took one day and fingers crossed that I (Stephen) will have some good news come Monday, but even if they already have someone lined up, I have a few part-time work offers on the back burner, which should allow me to make the same as a teacher just without the contract, this will mean I've to do visa runs every 2 months but it's also a mini holiday. But for now I'm hopeful that this job will happen, as it would be perfect for the both of us as the schools are so close together and we will have the same holidays.

Now this Friday we have the Halloween party to celebrate and then we will head off to Laos on Sunday for our first visa run.

Creatures and creepy crawleys we have encountered in Thailand

This week has been a slow week as we have been working on our CV's and will start job hunting, so we thought we would take the time to introduce you to some of the creepy crawleys we've seen since arriving here. Now they're also a snack to a lot of Thai' s and we did try some first time around and they taste like burnt popcorn. They all taste the same as they are deep fried so its more like an empty shell its more the visual of putting a large beetle or cockroach in your gob.

We will start with the ones who have rudely invited themselves into our rooms unannounced, and who then proceeded to scare the crap out of us. If you are not a fan of creepy crawleys, look away now, cos Thailand has some weird ones and we have only seen the ones from wet season. We still have the dry season critters to arrive.

We will start with the enemies first and show you the allies later, the allies are the creatures working with us who eat these critters so we are more than happy to let them hang around.   
So first off we have the dragon flies. These guys are beautiful and they are everywhere, they move at lightning speed but hover like helicopters, so it's pretty amazing to watch them swarm around after a heavy rain fall. Near water and lakes, which are everywhere, you see huge groups of them also.


With most of the bugs around here they keep to themselves and are not afraid of people, so they stay quite still for pictures.

Next we have, what we have described them as "Fish bugs".
We have seen a lot of them around but they move so quick it is very hard to get a pictures off but these guys are crazy looking. They look very similar to fishing lures but not knowing what they can do, we usually avoid them.



This next group are bugs that, whoever created them was pure evil, as they are the things of nightmares... 
So everyone knows centipedes and cockroaches and thank fully we don't see that many cockroaches very often, as something about the way they move, seems unnatural to us, they move like a shadow. Then the centipede we seen was quite big and we know that they have some centipede that are poisonous so we got the picture and got out asap.

They have a lot of these beetle things around also and we've seen some on the road bit enough to make me swerve to avoid from fear that they may try to topple us and bring us back to their layer.
Oh did we mention we are not a fan of bugs, at home I (Stephen) would spend hours chasing a common house fly out of the house or leave the room if a small spider came, usually happy to sign over the apartment to him and pack my bags :) 


Thailand also has some cool bugs like these green guys a mix between praying mantis grasshoppers and these can be found everywhere, and I mean everywhere. 
They seem to enjoy the camera so I've taken quite a few pics of these guys. If you hang around too long though they will get bored possibly as the last one decided to fly directly into my face and flutter about.
I (Stephen) screamed like a girl before he was happy he had humiliated me and got out of there. 
Kristine was in stitches, pointing and laughing at me...

So we mentioned earlier that we are not a fan of bugs and if you go further north we found one of these guys on our last trip but the one we found was already dead, after seeing this pic I may leave trekking off for a while...

The allies

Now we have the guys who eat the critters our friends and allies.  The lizards and geckos hang around outside our apartment and eat a lot of the mosquito's and other bugs and some of the smaller ones will hang out in our room, they keep to themselves so we have no issues with them. 

In the campus we see hundreds of small bird who do the same and they are friendly enough to come up and eat food from your hands.

 
We have also seen some snakes around but were advised they will not come close to us and they eat spiders, so well done snakes.
They are also suppose to taste quite nice but we haven't seen anywhere were we can sample them. Not too sure if we want to either. Spiders are suppose to be tasty as well but that will definitely never happen. 

We have also seen some frogs outside but they don't do too much and a couple of crabs who are curious enough to wander over to us. The crabs are closer to the lakes so no bare feet running for us.




So we had mentioned the Tarantula we've seen while jogging but just to remind you I feel he belongs in here.

So that's a few of what we've seen but I assure you, there are many more out there but they keep to themselves, so don't let any of them put you off Thailand, as it's still one of the most beautiful countries we have ever visited, but with scenic beauty comes wildlife to share it with.

Teaching class 5 and Graduation day

So here we are, the final assessed teaching class and it's the main one we have been dreading: “The story lesson", were we have to tell a 10 minute story of our choosing and then hope that the students understood enough of it to answer 10 straight forward questions relating to the content and 5 much more difficult questions where they would have to think for themselves to give answers, followed by asking them to write a 6 line summary of the story we had told.

Kristine chose a story called "The Honest Woodcutter" about ..wait for it.. yep an honest woodcutter, the title is a dead give away. She started her lesson but because no other students had turned up I (Stephen) had to wait around for 1 hour 10 minutes till my students were ready to go. She once again delivered a flawless class getting another 100% and came out grinning.

She asked the kids if they knew the story and one girl had previously heard it from an Indian teacher, a few months ago. She thought Kristine's was better as she had more visuals and her story telling and her acting was better and funnier: Hollywood here she comes...
The rest hadn't so it was new for them and they were genuinely interested in the way she told it. Quick recap is a woodcutter loses his axe in a pond and a water fairy offers him a silver and gold axe instead one by one but he refuses each time saying his was a simple wooden axe and for his honesty is rewarded with all 3 axes and sent on his way and continues with him telling his landlord about it. The landlord then tries the same trick and lies and the spirit punishes him and changes him into a frog. That's the short version but one of her students did turn around and said "Oh that sounds like the story of the boy, sheep and the wolf, and about telling lies”.

So one hour later I was in my class ready to give my lesson and because a few students hadn't turned up I was given one girl from Kristine's class, who was happy to take another free English lesson and a few other students who eventually turned up 1 hour late (it's Thai time and its something we have to get use to), we have been told that sometimes while teaching your entire class might not turn up without warning... no complaints here. ☺

So then I was about to start my class and I was telling the story about the “boy who cried wolf” as I exclaimed at the start of the lesson only to see one girl laugh for no apparent reason. It was only after my class that Kristine told me she had her as well and she had brought up the boy who cried wolf story.

The next day was the last day of our course and graduation day we knew it was going to be good as on our way to school just outside our apartment we seen a man walking his baby elephant down the road, ”the norm” here we suppose, everyone say it with me “Ittttsssss Thailand”

In the morning we had to assess a students proficiency by sitting with one pupil and having a chat in present simple form ie, "What is your name?" "What is your favorite hobby?" and so on and if they preform well bring it to past and then past continuous ie, "Have you been in school long?" and "Have you been studying long?". This was tough as it's one on one and if they don't understand your question they stare at you dumbfounded while you try and think of something else to say, and I said before going in that speaking to any person constantly for 1 hour without pause is tough enough... try it with a 15 yr old Thai kid... like getting blood from a stone. We found common ground by talking about movies and Tony Jaa.

Afterwards we took our graduation pics and were given our certificates making it official and we were now teachers of English as a foreign language and the job hunt could begin.

The owner of the school brought us all to a restaurant for free lunch and afterwards showed us her school in Khon Kaen, which we fell in love with straight away. 
She kept saying how impressed she was with me and Kristine, as she had evaluated 2 of our classes and they happened to be two were we got 100%, so it was a good boost of confidence. 

She then went on to say that we are first on the list for private classes as students contact her agency for lessons and pay 400 baht an hour so we should be expecting calls soon for some side work. 
Then she mentioned she had part time work for the next 3 months in her school but couldn't offer a work permit til next may when her new semester starts so we said we will consider but may try get a permanent position for this semester as other wise we could go crazy waiting around. And would have to keep doing visa runs to Laos every 2 months without a work permit. Still she is a damn good contact to have as we found out she owns half the business's in Khon Kaen and we were advised she is one of the wealthiest woman in the city.. might have to get me a sugar mama, if Kristine gives the green light :)

Now to celebrate.. roll on next weekend and the trip to monkey village.. which I'm hoping is a village run entirely by monkeys (one can dream)

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!

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...