Wai Kru (Teacher Appreciation Day)

 With two of the English teachers before the ceremony

Today marked the day that all students acknowledge what their teachers do for them, here in Thailand. It was about an hour and a half ceremony in which students recited several buddhist prayers, sang songs dedicated to the teachers, and presented them with these flower displays that they made themselves. It's been an ongoing project for most of the week with my M.6 students preparing the actual ceremony and students from every class helping to create the offerings. Instead of having morning assembly today, we started off the ceremony at 8 am, raising the flag and saying the normal prayers. All of us teachers had seats (in the shade of course) and the student representatives from each class stood behind us. They were meant to carry their offerings and present them to the directer/ older teachers. First the M.1 students lined up to offer their flower displays (I'm not sure what they are called in Thai) and they had a certain way to sit and bow in front of the teachers taht I didn't quite pick up on. I was, of course, wandering all around taking pictures, esp as many of my students had helped to set up the whole thing. Once the flowers were offered and received, the students 'walked' to the end of the procession (on their knees), and M.6 students took the offerings and placed them on tables behind the teachers.

Raising the flag every morning 

two of my M.6 students and their offerings 

M.1 students to start off the ceremony

Kneeling before the Po'ow (Director)

When all this was finished, going through each grade seperately, there were prizes for the best display. The prizes consisted of bags or tins of cookies, and like in many competitions, all students received some sort of prize. Afterwards, the students seemed to be dispersing and those that had extra roses or incense or something went off to find the teacher they wished to honor for the day. I'm happy to say I got a few roses - but from students I don't teach...hmm. To further wai kru day, the students all had strings for the string tying ceremony. We didn't actually do the string tying ceremony with these students with the official singer and all, but we did say things like 'out with the bad, in with the new', 'good luck and good fortune', 'happiness and success', which is what they say in Thai. You brush the strings over the wrists and then tie them while the student holds up one hand. I'm not sure exactly why this is done or how it truly originated but we do it fairly often.

M.6 with their prize cookies

String tying in the office

I had been informed yesterday that M.4 students had 'camp' Thursday, Friday, and Saturday but I didn't know that they first had a party! M.1 students and M.4 students are considered to be new students at the beginning of the school year. M.1 has come from another school and M.4 are now in the 'upper' school. So they had an initiation of sorts this morning after the wai kru ceremony, which just turned into this massive party. Again, M.6 was in charge of organizing most of it so I spent most of my day in the grand hall with the students. We did the official string tying ceremony here and it was chaos of hundreds of students trying to find certain teachers to tie the string on their wrist. All of a sudden the karaoke came on and some of the M.6's started singing some popular Thai songs. It was incredible. All attention turned towards the stage and all of a sudden everyone was jumping up and down. The teachers told me it was a mini concert for the kids -while I was loving it and having a great time watching it all, they were grimacing with the noise. I got to take a lot of pictures with the kids and then there were a couple dance performances. Again, my students. With the language barrier, it's hard for me to find out anything about my students, but with activities like this, I get to see who is involved in which clubs, etc. Some of my M.6 students and some of my more mischevious M.4 students are involved in the "A Two High's Crew" which is a break dancing group. They were great, and I realized I've seen them practicing before. I never thought it was an organized thing though. The students went wild when the group came on stage and were enthralled for about 10 minutes. Lunch came next and school returned to normal for the most part. I still didn't have any classes as M.4 is involved in this bootcamp and yet again, M.6 is running it.

The B Boy break dancing 'crew'! Mostly M.4 and M.6

More M.6 students - some of them were too shy to look at the camera

And M.6 again 

The 'altar' that's part of the official string tying ceremony

'Blessing' some students - 'out with the old, in with the new'

Dancin time

M.4 students

The bootcamp seems to consist of a lot of chanting and reciting, but other than that, I don't quite understand it. It reminds me of our HS lock in, but where we had fun and games, these students are being drilled by actual soldiers. It's three days and the students sleep on campus, wake up at 5 am, and then do bootcamp activities until about 11 pm. Just a few minutes ago I had about 6 students come to my house to use my shower as 500 students have an hour to shower in the few bathrooms on campus. Or something like that. I'm planning on checking the whole thing out tomorrow as I will have a light classload.

 We had a heavy thunderstorm this afternoon and the students took this as an oppurtunity to p
lay in the rain - who wouldn't? It started off with the boys just running through and then turned into this pushing competition.

M.1 EP students running from the rain. Most of the students were soaked by the time they were meant to go home - the storm came from out of nowhere and most were in the field or at the benches hanging out.

Classes this semester are going wonderfully - lots of singing and games but I feel like I'm teaching at a different school. It's been fun getting to know the M.6 students and hopefully we'll start having class again on a regular basis...even so, it's an improvement from last semester!

Everything but the learning

As I was sitting in the office yesterday afternoon, I heard a loud noise and looked out the window to see a huge white cloud enveloping campus. Apparently it was time to fumigate the school grounds as it's the beginning of the rainy season.  Of course, no one was told - not parents, teachers, or students - and all over campus you could see children running from the white cloud. It smelled sickly sweet; another teacher remarked that it smelled like peaches gone wrong....as long as you were inside with closed doors. As soon as you stepped outside, it was an overpowering smell. It's amazing that something potentially so toxic isn't even considered a health risk here. Safety isn't a priority, and it seems that learning isn't either. As soon as the fumigating started, classes were essentially canceled because of the smell and 2000 students were roaming the campus before they were allowed to leave.

Today brought another interference to English learning on campus as M. 1 had evaluative testing all day - in the new English building. Us teachers were told to 'find our students and teach them wherever we could'. But word had spread even by first period that there was no English classrooms today and the students disappeared. I was told that they 'ran way' and we wouldn't find them again. This is nothing new though, students 'run away' all the time according to my Thai teachers, and there's really nothing you can do about it. Even after 8 months, I have a hard time coming to terms with this. My last class of the day yesterday was a full 35 minutes late to my 50 minute class and I just about lost it with them. When asked why they were late, the students said that they 'didn't know what time class started'. After some stern talking to (none of which they understood) and a threat that I would go to the director, I finally found out that another teacher had been teaching them during my class time. When I asked who I could go to to get this figured out, I was told 'no problem ajahn, do not worry'.  My thai co-teacher ended up telling the English director, so hopefully everything will be straightened out again by class next week.

Friday was another interesting day here at N.P.W.  The students had a twice as long morning assembly to talk about safety! It sounded great in theory but in practice proved to be quite unsafe. All of the students sat in a plus formation (+), with the center of the cross empty for teachers and directors to speak in. On Friday morning, the fire department came to visit. They were doing a fire safety lesson that involved propane tanks and fire extinguishers. At first, all seemed well as the firemen showed the students how to work the fire extinguishers. However, afterwards, they bring over a propane tank, set it in the middle of the students, and light it! Then students were able to take turns using the fire extinguisher on this extra large flame that had the potential to burn multiple people. For about an hour, students kept lighting and extinguishing the propane tank. It was definitely one of those things that you would just never see in the States. Imagine the uproar if you had 12 and 13 year olds playing with propane tanks on school grounds...

"The world is so narrow"

On Friday, I will have been outside the United States for exactly 8 months. It's hard to believe as it feels like time has either completely flown by or crawled at an excruciatingly slow pace. What's even crazier to think about is that I'm more than halfway finished with my program and I only have 4 more months before I head home. For that reason and probably a bunch more I haven't though about, I'm prepared to be much busier this semester, both at school and on the weekends. I want to make sure I hit all the spots in Thailand I want to go to (within reason, of course) as well as make sure I make the most of my situation at the school. As a volunteer, I'm given almost free reign to do whatever I want with the students. While it bothered me for quite some time, as I prefer to have structure than to be making my own schedule, it's turning out to be beneficial with my group of students this semester.  I came 'wanting to make a difference,' as I'm sure almost everyone else did, but it's nearly impossible to see the difference with 500 students. So I've taken that idea back a notch and hoping that I at least influence some students' interest in studying English. This means making my English class fun and engaging while trying to put some educational value into it.

One of the things we've been doing recently is tongue twisters, and they're a huuuuge  hit. It also manages to get almost the entire class engaged, which is a struggle for me sometimes. One of the favorites is "How much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?" It's one of those sentences that's fairly easy for an English speaker to say quickly and clearly, but it's difficult for ESL students. I'll read the sentence slowly for the students, have them repeat it and checking their pronunciation, and then say it really fast for them. Immediately the class explodes into cheers or laughter or incredulous faces. It helps in class for them to see my acting silly or making mistakes, because it means that they're able to, too. In Thailand, as far as I can understand it, making mistakes causes you to 'lose face' which you never want to happen. One of the hardest parts of class is getting the students to participate because they are 1) nervous speaking English in front of a native English speaker and 2) they don't want to be wrong.

I'm trying to spend more time on the English floor but recently it's truly been too hot for me to stay up there after I'm finished with classes. On cooler/breezier days, I'll just hang out with the other Thai teachers or any groups of students that are wandering around. I've started tutoring one of the Thai English teachers in conversation three days a week and it's a blast. Yesterday we worked on spoken English, and understanding native English speakers, since they speak so fast - things like 'wanna', 'gotta', etc. A couple of the new Thai English teachers were around and we had fun just joking around.  They say a word in Thai, Isaan, Lao or some other Thai dialect and have me repeat it. I never know what I'm saying and I'm always saying it wrong as made clear when they are nearly on the floor laughing. It's a good time though and I'm always surprised with how much time has passed when I'm chatting with the Thai teachers.

Last weekend I went to Sakhon Nakhon (one of the neighboring provinces) with Haley, Tew (English director of the school Haley works at as well as a member of the family Haley lives with), and Nan (12 year old girl, another member of the family that lives with Tew). We picked up another teacher along the way and then had lunch at the pizza company! It apparently is the place to go on holidays/ weekends. Tew saw about 7 of her old students, we ran into Caitlyn (another volunteer) who was with a family we know from Nakhon Phanom, a teacher and her family from my school, and a couple other teachers Tew knew. Afterwards, I saw several teachers from my school in Big C (the huge department store...sort of like Thailands Target), and then 5 of my M.6 students eating lunch. I hardly ever see that many people when I walk around Nakhon Phanom!  Haley and I got some pepperoni pizza, which was wonderful. I also accidentally ordered this seafood loaded pizza when I was trying to explain what kind of crust we want. oops, got lost in translation.  Turns out no one really like seafood either! I ate a piece as I was the one that actually ordered it and the rest we took to go. We had a good time shopping around Big C and then it was back to Nakhon Phanom. The rest of the weekend was fairly quiet and very relaxing.

Next weekend I'll be helping out a couple of the other volunteers with an English seminar that one of the teacher's we know is helping to organize. I'm not quite sure what it entails yet, but it usually means some games or songs. The following weekend is a joint birthday/ early 4th of july celebration party with a couple us volunteers have grown close with over the past few months. It's a Western guy and his wife, and while I actually have never met them, I've heard they're awesome people and they offered to host a party for us. It's the little things that sometimes hit you the hardest, like being away from home on the 4th of July for instance, or missing someones birthday. I've been okay for the most part, but these get-togethers and parties are always very welcome and a wonderful chance for us to check in with each other. It also feels 'normal' in a way that teaching and living here doesn't, if that makes sense. And then, it's off to another area for an English camp at a temple the following weekend! I'll be taking pictures for sure and I've still got to add the ones from Vietnam and Cambodia so I'll try to be a bit better about posting.  It's off to lesson plan for the rest of the week. Until next time.