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...

Learning Muay Thai and visiting the dam.

So it was the weekend (4th -6th October) and we were all geared up to visit the dam, we had been putting it off as the weather had not been the best , but it hadn't rained in a few days now and from the looks of it, it seemed like we were out of the wet season and it was blue skies and an average of 32-35 degree's ahead for the foreseeable future... it's a tough life I suppose.

We set off on the 50 km journey, and along the way we inadvertently ended up riding in a bike gang of Thai teenagers. Once they seen us they decided it was time to show off, with two of them on each bike they began to pop wheelies and drove for easily 100 meters, still on one wheel.

At this stage we have gotten use to seeing unusual sights on the roads in Thailand most of all the things they stack up on each vehicle ranging from 6 people on a moped to 10 large crates filled with pigs on a truck or large amounts of chopped wood,one man and his dog :) We arrived at the dam which was a huge water duct surrounded by islands covered in forest that forced me to hum the Jurassic park theme tune every few minutes.

In the area we could see on top of one of the mountains a large Buddha statue and decided to go explore. We got to the entrance of the temple and were greeted by 1500 steps leading up a mountain to the massive Buddha. Cue sighs of disbelief and we stretched and joked about sprinting up the steps rocky style. We prepared for the journey and i popped the music scene of rocky running up the steps on you tube and surprised every one when the music started but it set me and Aaron off sprinting. 

We got 1/4 of the way and then the 32 degree heat took its toll and we were out of breath and covered in sweat, the two girls strolled up and caught up with us as we wheezed out of breath, proper case of the tortoise and the hare. So we agreed to walk the rest of the way.

When we got to the top we found a car park beside the temple and realised we could have driven up “doh” moment, but the view on the way up was amazing. Once at the peak we were greeted by a huge Buddha statue on top of the temple and some monks in full gear strolling around with i phones and tablets which was a bit of a surprise to us but turns out they can have electronic devices for studying on-line.. “go the future”.

Up there the view was serene and the temple was filled with religious icons and areas were you could bang gongs and hit symbols so we tried our hand at a few rock songs, future band in the making...

They had 3 smaller Buddha statues which were possibly  stone a piece and the idea is you kneel before them and bow 3 times and then try to pick them, if you cant pick it up on the first try then you bow 3 more times and Buddha himself gives you the strength to lift it and good luck if you couldn't the first time which is what happened to me. 

The area surrounding the temple was also beautiful and full of nice views of the ocean. There we seen what we now learnt is Thai humor were large over hanging rocks which look like they are close to falling are held up by hundreds of small twigs holding it up.

We also got to make the cover for our next album as below :) 

On Friday we went to our first Muay Thai training session and loved it so much that we signed up for the whole month. Our trainer is a fun loving guy names Id and he has trained Muay Thai champions from the Issan region and Bangkok and people from around the world come to train with him to improve fighting style in the aptly named “Art of 8 Limbs”. Muay Thai is a combat sport from Muay Martial Arts from Thailand that uses stand up striking along with various clinching techniques. It's a physical and mental discipline which includes combat on foot. It is characterised by the combined use of fists, elbows, knees shins and feet. That makes a full contact fight very efficient and also very painful to learn.☺

Before each session he plays the traditional Thai music which is always played before a fight and we are asked to do the pre-fight ritual which is like a dance which limbers up the whole body using stretches and bows to each corner and the ring called Wai Kru Muay Boran. Every one is slightly different and some fighters will throw in funny moves such as shooting and opponent with a few arrow, usually met by the opponent pretending to catch it and break it over his knee. Here is one version of the dance. Wai Kru Muay Boran (click link)

We have now gone to 5 sessions and its usually 2 hours at a time. We are hoping to go 5-6 times a week so should be pretty proficient by the end of the first month in kicking ass.. well at least a punching bag!! After the first few sessions both of us have bruised ankles legs and elbows but its an amazing experience. 

On our off day we found a swimming pool in town were you pay 50 baht (just over a euro) for the whole day and beside the stadium.  We said the next time Khon Kaen are playing football we will be going to watch a game. 

On our third day training an older gentleman got in to the ring, maybe in his 60's. He put on the pads and kept asking me to hit them as he held them up in broken English  A bit weary of hurting him i agreed. He would shout 1-6 and ask for different moves (punches and elbows) I had learned but on every six count he would pull away and i would miss and lose balance and he would laugh his arse off in my face which forced a smile to my face every time. After a while i tried to stretch to hit it and keep my balance at the same time and once i did he said in almost perfect English  “very good”, "Better better".

This frail old man then walked over to the bag and unleashed a flurry of punches the likes of which would have winded me 10 times over and walked back and pointed to a poster on the wall from the 70's and said i was the champion of Bangkok when i was younger. Once again I learnt “don't judge a book by its cover” that and be weary of old men in Thailand as they may have been a Muay Thai champions :)

The trainer has been immensely impressed with both of our progress in short space of time regarding our stance and guard , Kristine took a sneaky video of me training and has no made me put it in so you can see for yourself.  -  

(Video link) Stephen doing Muay Thai training 

“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….