Starbursts & Peanut Butter M&M's

Strange heading I know....but that is 2 things that I miss and crave! So, for those of you who want to make my day...you can send those to me!  I will cover a few odds and ends before moving on.  First I have realized that the Thai people LOVE John Denver! I have heard his song, "Country Roads, Take Me Home," more times in the 3 weeks I have been here, than in the 27 years of my existence! And I am NOT exaggerating! Fortunately, I happen to love that song! Also, as one of the girls that lives at the Ecohouse, was walking back to her room, she saw a ginormous, long, black snake go across the path! Thus I am paranoid every time I walk on the path now!  When I talked about how my people from the school came to take me shopping for skirts, I forgot to mention that I was looking for shoes, and was asking about sizes...they have 34, 35, 36, etc. Well, I've never thought that I've had big feet until this moment, when he had to get me size 40, which was okay, but I asked if he had anything bigger, and he looked at me like I was crazy! Cailin and I saw another teacher slap and pinch a student. I just don't think I could bring myself to do that! Shortly after that, Cailing was randomly looking outside our glass classroom door and saw a student...naked! We were trying to figure out what the reasoning behind it was....and we pegged it as a form of punishment...but we still aren't sure!
Finally a few days ago, we got to do some actual teaching! We basically taught all day because there were 3 teachers that were absent. In one class we split the class into 2 teams and then found different objects in the room and the 1st student would say, "what is this?" The 2nd would reply, "it is a ....."  Then the whole class had to repeat it.  That afternoon, we took the kids outside and walked around the school.  The students, or myself, would find an object and say, "what is this?" If the students didn't know, I would say what it was. The kids had to spell the word. Most of the time they didn't know how to spell it and then I would sound out the word using phonics.   

The next day we took pictures with our class, and with Nan, our Thai assistant/translator,

and Pat, the MEP program coordinator.

Our entire MEP class.

This is James, the school assistant we work with daily, and one of my favorite little

 students, Maprow! I KNOW we aren't supposed to have favorites, but I can't help it! He is

just such a little sweetheart!

We had to go to Bangkok this past week to get our certification. We had to bring a copy of our passport, copies of our degrees, our contract with the school, and a few other documents. To get to this point, we were supposed to have had our TEFL (teaching english as a foreign language) training...which we haven't had. It's been a point of frustration for us. I don't care about the certification as much as I do getting the actual textbook training.  Everything went smoothly getting our teacher certification. After that we went to the US Embassy because I thought I could get my visa extended their, but I found out I had to go to the Thai immigration.  I'm not sure if I mentioned that I was supposed to get a year visa, but when it came back, it was only a sinle entry for 3 months. Another frustrating subject!

Lunch made Cailin and I feel better! The director at the school bought lunch and for dessert we had some fresh mango and sticky rice...it was sooo delicious! Sticky rice is rice that has coconut, sugar, and a bit of salt. That evening, we were encouraged to go to this Rotary club meeting because Pat, the program coordinator was giving a speech. We asked if any of it was going to be in English and we were assured that it would be! In the 2 hours we were there, there were roughly 5 words spoken in English! I think we were there as proof that they have teachers for the MEP class! 

This next picture is the "bus" that takes us to school in the morning!

The next day in class we observed the kids playing this game in Math where 2 kids played against each other and they were counting from 1 to 20 and they could say 1 or 2 numbers at a time and at first whoever said 20 was the winner and then after they did that whoever said 20 was the loser. Then they could pick someone else to challenge them. One of the kids picked me. I was quite excited about the challenge.  Unfortunately, I didn't win! I was not happy! Cailin lost too so I felt better! That afternoon we spent writing objectives for Science class by looking at the standards and indicators. We needed to figure out what the goal was or what we wanted to students to accomplish. After we had all the objectives for the Unit, we could appropriately place them with individual lesson plans and standards.

Later that evening, Cailin found out that there was wireless internet at the ecohouse....and we were both a bit irritated since we have probably spent almost 1000 baht in the past 3 weeks going to the internet cafe next door! That night for supper we had quite the treat...fried onion rings! They were quite tasty! We also discovered that the lady across the street gives massages! So...we had to give her some business! I did some quick math and figured that I could get 2-3 massages a week for a month for the price of what it costs to get 1 massage back home!

I will leave you with a quote that I got from a t-shirt of one of the girls that lives here. "For beautiful lips, speak words of kindness.  For beautiful eyes, see the best in people."