Motor Biking and Job Hunting

Well its official....I have faced my fear of the road and rented a motor bike! I am happy to report that in the 4 days that I have had my motor bike there have been no accidents, injuries, or tears. This is a huge accomplishment because when I first arrived here I was shocked by the lack of a traffic system and by the moms, dads, and babies on single motor bikes. In my mind there was no way I would voluntarily join in on that craziness. Things started to change when I realized it was kind of annoying to always take the tuk-tuks or songtaews everywhere. They are usually dropping multiple people off so you end up being late a lot and the money can add up when you are paying for transportation everywhere you go.  So when people from class started renting bikes and saying how easy it was to drive around I started to slightly warm up to the idea. The official decision to rent a bike came after Richard drove me home on his motor bike after class one day. That one ride was enough for me to get the courage to decide that I wanted one for myself. I realized that it wasn’t bad at all and actually pretty enjoyable! On Sunday we (Kelsey, Kyle, and I) met and rented our motor bikes!  Kels had some errands to run so she went off on her own and Kyle and I headed out of the city toward the mountains.  I was a little nervous about driving on the highway and up and down mountain roads but it was actually fine! I think I did an excellent job driving if I do say so myself. Kyle might tell you different because supposedly I was driving in the middle of the road and got beeped at a few times but i don’t think that ever happened ;).  The view was awesome from the mountains and I would definitely do that drive again.  It was really refreshing to get out of the city and smell fresh air and get a glimpse of non-city scenery.   

Kelsey and I have had the bikes the past few days and have used them to go around the city and apply for jobs. They are so convenient and I cannot wait to buy my own for the rest of the time that I am here.  I can proudly say that today I made it home from the city center to my apartment all by myself!  (For those of you who know me well know that this is a HUGE accomplishment since I have ZERO sense of direction).  I used a map and figured it out all by myself and everything! Yay! :)  

I need to pay rent soon so I asked mom to transfer money from my bank account to my debit account and she kindly reminded me that I need to be aware of my budget because money doesn’t grow on trees...well apparently neither do jobs.  Kelsey and I have been job hunting for the last 3 days now with no luck. We have probably applied to about 15 different language schools, colleges, and a few primary schools. Apparently it isn’t the best time to apply for jobs because it is the period between the 1st and 2nd semesters and I guess most schools hire before the start of the first semester.  I am staying optimistic and I am sure something will come up within the next few weeks. I am pretty anxious to start working so hopefully something will come up sooner rather than later!  

 

Last Weeks of TEFL

So the last few weeks of my course were very very hectic. I already wrote about my first teaching practice and after that I had 5 more.  We had to prepare a lesson plan, worksheet, and a verbal learning activity for each practice so it was a lot of work.  I felt like I was living at school because there was more than one occasion where I was there from 9am until 7pm.  It was pretty exhausting but very much needed because by the end of the 6 practices I felt a lot more confident in preparing a lesson and also teaching a lesson.  One of the teaching practices was at a nursing college.  After the lesson our graders had our students write comments that they (the graders) translated for us during our debriefing session.  It was really awesome to hear all of the comments and it was so culturally different from the kinds of comments you would hear in the states. Most of the comments for the girl teachers were “Teacher was so beautiful, so lovely looking, so cute” etc.  They also said things like “Teacher was so kind, so nice, I really liked this lesson...I hope the teacher comes back to teach again”. Everything was so sweet! If they did have anything negative to say they would blame themselves. One of the comments for someone in my class was “teacher was hard to understand but he is very handsome...or teacher was hard to understand but I don’t know a lot of English”. They would follow any slightly negative comment with a compliment and they also blame themselves if they couldn’t understand the lesson or the teacher! To me that was so interesting because I have never once said “My teacher is so beautiful” in an evaluation. Haha that makes me laugh just thinking about saying something like that to one of my old professors. 

My last teaching practice was Kindergarten.  Im not going to lie, I was actually pretty scared for this practice. Kids scare me a little bit in general and these kids are so cute so I knew that if they were being naughty there was no way I was going to be able to discipline them. I envisioned 30- 5 year olds wrecking havoc and me just standing by laughing and thinking it was cute. During the morning assembly, Ying (one of our instructors) announced who was teaching each class. When she said Kindergarten and then “Teacher Megan” all the kids stood up in a line, walked toward me, and their ‘leader’ took my hand and lead me to their classroom.  My heart melted when the little girl grabbed my hand! It was so cute! Surprisingly, the class went really well. The kids were so well behaved! I was teaching them 6 new vocabulary words and there was only one out of control thing that happened. I did this activity where we got in a line and ‘choo-choo trained’ around the room. I had them stop at a vocab word that I had taped to the floor and they were supposed to say the word. Trying to get 30 kindergarten kids to all gather around a picture on the floor was a little bit of a disaster. They ended up like piling on top of each other over the word. So then, most of the kids couldn’t even see it, and there were little tykes getting squished at the bottom of the pile! Of course this happened right when Ying came into the room to observe. Their teacher was in the room so she helped me diffuse the situation and I decided to try out a different game.   Other than that little mishap the kids were so cute and it was really really fun to teach them! At the end of the lesson their teacher said to me, “the children really want to touch your hands”. I said “ok” and she said something in Thai and I was bombarded with kids grabbing my hands and arms! I started giving them ‘high fives’ and the LOVED that. So overall kindergarten was a success! 

My first Teaching Practice

This week I had my first of six teaching practices! Our instructor gave us the level we were teaching and the target language we were supposed to teach. I was assigned to P2 (which is the equivalent second graders in the states) and I was supposed to teach them 'like/likes and do not like/does not like when describing food preferences'. I had to come up with my presentation to show them how to use that language and then a practice activity (a worksheet) and then a production activity to get them to actually use the language verbally.  My class wasn't until 1:30pm but other people in my class went before me. While I was waiting I wasn't really that nervous because I felt that I had prepared enough and at that point there was nothing else I could do. However, I did start to get nervous when people in class who were teaching older kids were coming back saying that the kids had no idea what was going on. Hmmm if the 6th graders are struggling what are hell are the 2nd graders gonna be like???? When it was my turn  I went into my classroom with my director (who was observing me) and started to prepare my black board. I was still pretty calm but that changed as soon as I heard the students come in. I got super nervous and I didn't want to look at them and get them all worked up (they LOVE foreign teachers) so I just kept preparing and when I was ready I took a deep breath and turned around. The energy level that has to be used with kids that age is ridiculous. I had to be really energetic, loud, and keep that energy otherwise they would instantly start to drift.  I was immediately sweating and was highly rethinking my long sleeved outfit that i wore that day. (Side note- it was soooo hot that people were coming back soaked with sweat. It was funny until that person was me. One girl said she dripped sweat on a students paper when she was leaning over to help them. Another girl said that the observer asked her if she was ok because she was sweating so much. So yeah, it was hot.) Anyway, I started teaching the vocab (food) and they were repeating me and doing pretty well. When I moved on to the grammar portion it was a different story. I started modeling and drilling the difference between like/likes and the correct pronouns to use with the different forms. (Me:  "I like" the students repeat, "he likes" students repeat) you get the idea. Ps-this was so boring I actually felt bad for them. If I would've had to sit through that lesson I would've poked myself in the eye with my number two pencil. Anyway, I could tell they were just repeating what I was saying and weren't really getting it. It is so hard to not use other language to explain what I was trying to explain, do you know what i mean? I can't say "so for these pronouns you use the word 'like' and for these you use the word 'likes' blah blah blah" because that would mean nothing to them. So I was starting to lose confidence but obviously just kept going. I knew it was worse than I thought when I passed out the worksheet and walked around the class and NO ONE knew how to do it. At this point I was worried because if they couldn't even fill in the blanks on a worksheet how was I supposed to get them to get into groups of three and reproduce the language! Ahhh! My instructor pulled me aside and said it wasn't my fault that they weren't getting it...the language was too hard for them and we just overestimated their level. So I powered on and tried to get them into groups to use the language ("Do you like apples?" "I do like apples" "She does like apples") and it was definitely not going to happen.  I ended up just walking around and asking the students to repeat those phrases after me.  After doing that for about 10 minutes the lesson was FINALLY over. The kids were super cute and all stood up and said "Thank you teacher" and then came running up to me with their worksheets. They were also helping me take stuff off the board and everything. The icing on the cake came when I turned my back for one second to clean my board and some little girl came running up to me and started speaking in Thai and pointing. I had NO IDEA what she was saying but i followed her gaze and saw a little girl crying her eyes out in the corner.  It was so sad and I couldn't do anything because I don't speak the language! :(  The only thing I can say is that I am glad she was crying after my lesson for other reasons and not because my lesson was so awful that it brought her to tears.  We went back to our TEFL school and got debriefed on how we did, what we could improve, etc.  I ended up getting a 'B' for that teaching practice so yay for that! As horrible as I thought the lesson went and as much as I felt like I got hit by a bus afterward, it was still really rewarding. I can say without a doubt that I really liked teaching which is odd considering the failure of a lesson that I had. At least I know that I didn't make a horrible mistake by coming here! Also, I have a new found respect for teachers, and especially foreign language teachers. Sorry Mr. G for giving you such a hard time in Spanish in high school. Oops! Well anyway, one lesson down, five to go! Wish me luck! 

Hi everyone! I told some of you that I would start a blog so here it is! I have only been in Thailand for a little over a week but I feel like I have so much to tell! 

Kelsey and I got to Chiang Mai at about midnight on friday night. We were both exhausted from the traveling and could not wait to get to the hotel that our TEFL program director had reserved for us. However, when we got to our room we were NOT pleasantly surprised. Our room was sweltering hot, there were bugs everywhere, and the worst, most unbearable smell was coming from our bathroom! We were so tired and didn’t know what to do so we turned on a fan, ignored the bugs, shut the bathroom door and went to bed. The next morning when I went to go to the bathroom I literally gaged. I wish I could explain what the smell was but I can't. The only thing I can think to compare it to is a mixture of rotten garbage, dead animal, and porter potty. Keep in mind that I grew up on a farm so I have never really been sensitive to bad smells, so this was completely unbearable. Anyway,  we decided to switch hotels after neither of us could go into the bathroom without gagging. 

Besides that bad hotel experience I have been adjusting well.  The first few days passed in a blur because I was so jet lagged and in complete culture shock.  Chiang Mai is a pretty cool city and I know I will learn to love it but I am still adjusting.  It is completely different from home (obviously). I would describe the city as definitely a ‘developing’ city. There are areas of the city that are pretty westernized and nice. Our instructor told us the buildings and things in that part of the city have just recently been built within the last 3 years. Other areas of the city are pretty poor. Most of the places where I eat lunch would never ever pass health inspection in the US.  They are just open buildings where bugs are flying around, they are usually dirty and I have even seen some dogs walking around some of the restaurants. It sounds pretty disgusting but the food is so good that I can’t complain! 

The people are very very nice.  The Thai culture is really laid back. No one is aggressive. Everyone is very soft spoken and polite so its a nice change of pace. Oh and the Thai kids are soooooo cute. One afternoon when Kelsey and I got in the back of a ‘song taow’ (which is the Thai version of a taxi-basically a red truck with sides and a roof on the cab and  you just hop in the back)  and there was a girl about 12 years old and she couldn't stop smiling at us. After awhile she finally said 'Where you from'. It was so cute and we could tell that she had been pondering that question for a long time to make sure she said it right. 

 We started and finished our first week of our TEFL course, and are now well into our second week.  There are 11 of us in the course. Everyone is either from the US, UK or Australia.  The people in the class are all really nice and we are all getting along. Some of them aren't staying in Chiang Mai after the course but hopefully we will get to know them better before everyone goes their separate ways. As for the actual course, it is pretty boring at times.  We have to have a grammar lesson every day which is basically torture but obviously we have to know it well to be able to teach it.  We also have a 1 hour Thai lesson every day.  The language is really hard because its a tonal language, so one word can be said with 5 different tones and have 5 different meanings! So for me its pretty difficult to catch on. Even though its hard to learn it’s really rewarding to be able to use the phrases outside of class with the Thai people. The people love it when you speak Thai to them. They often start going off in Thai because they think we know a lot if we just ask them one question. It can be a little embarrassing to be like ‘um actually that is all i know’ after all you have said is 'hi how are you'.  

This last friday was  'cultural day' in class so we got to go to a temple and some museums around the city. The temple was really really cool. We got to give an offering to the monks and then they did a chant while we poured water from one cup into another small bowl. It is tradition that as you pour the water you think of friends, family, or even enemies and send your good (or bad i guess) thoughts to them.  I thought of my family and all of my great friends so you guys can thank me later if good things happen to you :).  After that, we all went down to a river near the temple. By the river there were people selling creatures that you could buy to set free for good karma.  There were birds, turtles, eels, snails, fish, and some others that I am probably forgetting.  Anyway, depending on what you set free it has different meanings. Setting free birds will help you have freedom in your life, turtles will give you a long life, etc.  I chose to set free a turtle. I didn’t really do it for the meaning but I did it because he was crawling on two of his buddies in the bucket trying to get out so I thought I would help him out.  It was really neat to set my turtle free and to watch my classmates set their creatures free.  The temple was a really great experience. 

Kelsey and I did find an apartment at the end of last week so we are happy with that. It was nice to move out of our hotel and actually settle in. We are living in the nicer part of the city and so far we really like the area.  We are living in separate apartments and each of us has a queen size bed, desk, fridge, and a nice size bathroom. We also have a balcony and there is an outdoor pool in our building. We pay less than $200 for all of that so it is such a good deal! Even though it is super cheap to live here I am excited to start teaching in another couple of weeks. It will be nice to have a different schedule and also to be making some money! 

 Well that is all I have for now! I miss you all! I will write again soon! xoxo