Cover Your Life

Hello again, friends and family (predominantly family)!

Last week was awesome and completely random and absurd, and so is worth blogging about.

First of all, the food was much improved all week! Normally the cafeteria food is tolerable at best, but last week with the exception of fried fish Friday, the food was actually good! Lunches included, pad thai, fried chicken wings, regular fried chicken, and something else good that I'm forgetting. Great week for food. Yesterday it sucked again, but today was good (cooked kale with rice). I'm hoping we can stabilize at a minimum one bad day to one good day ratio.

Last week began being great on Monday when I was given the task of organizing the American teachers into two groups for required DANCE PERFORMANCES!! That's right! All the American teachers have to perform in either the Thai style dance number, choreographed by "Jesse," or in an American style dance number which is whatever we want it to be. I, with 8 other Americans, have been learning and am going to perform the Thai dance and I am choreographing and teaching the American dance to "Whip my Hair" by Willow Smith (song choice derived from a vote.) So, I found out about that on Monday.

On Tuesday, we had our first Thai dance practice. It was hysterical!! We were so bad! Miss Pat was there for the beginning and she started cracking up. Amidst laughing very hard, she managed to say to Nick, "No one can help you!...Not even God!" We were all very awkward and the teaching style was a little different. We would begin with the feet, the steps, and that was fine. It was either marching in place or step, step, step, touch repeated over and over. So our instructor "Jesse" (his nickname not his real name) would lull us into a false sense of ability by having us do just the feet for a long time, but then he hit us with the hands and it all fell apart. The arm movements in and of themselves are alright, but the hands have to do all of these intricate poses that require thinking a lot about which hand is supposed to be doing what. We all failed miserably during our first practice at this. There was a part where the guys had to do one thing while the girls did something else and one of the guys asked Dylan what they were supposed to be doing, to which he responded, "Improv it. Just be smooth with your pinching," (referring to the Thai hand gestures). Later Jesse was explaining to Dylan that the move was the man trying to seduce the woman. Dylan said, "Oh! This is what I've been doing wrong all these years," as if to say he hadn't been great at picking up women because he hadn't been doing the "pinching" dance move. Basically our first practice consisted of more laughter than dancing, but it was fabulous. Especially because it ended in free snacks!! (Anytime you do something extra at St.Gabe's you get free food or drink which is amazing!) The snacks were "orange drink" (essentially a very sugary orange flavored beverage, like uncarbonated orange soda) and mini hot dogs wrapped in a mini slice of bread and topped with ketchup and the Asian sweet mayonnaise. That probably sounds disgusting, but it is surprisingly delicious. I had two.

Also Tuesday, I found at, oh, 1pm that I was no longer going to be teaching Primary 3 (3rd grade) for Period 8 (afterschool class), but instead Secondary 3 (9th grade) beginning that afternoon. Now I had done a lesson plan for my P3 kids, so I had to run that over to the primary office to give to our newest arrival Nick who was involuntarily volunteered to cover my P3 class on my days for the rest of the term. He wasn't even there at the time so I just had to drop everything off and tell Ashley what to tell him. I felt pretty bad, but at least I gave him something to do that day. I, on the other hand, had nothing to do in my first class with M3, so we ended up just doing introductions, talking about the rules and how the class would be run, and repeating all of that every so often when more kids came in late. Nevertheless, we still ended 20 minutes early the first day. Having taught them more now, I've pretty much figured out what level they are and there are only 8 of them when they are all there, so that's pretty manageable as well. They're less cute than my 3rd graders were, but they're better behaved and nice kid. I also have them teaching me a Thai word before they leave each day. So far I have learned "Kang-keng" which means "pants" and "kra-prong" which means skirt.

On Wednesday, Miss Pat came in first thing in the morning to tell me I wasn't going to any of my classes that day, instead I was going to be recording listening exams for St. Gabe's scholarships as well as certain pages of the student handbook which were to be played over the loud speaker before school. (I actually heard myself yesterday morning and this morning and, let me tell you, it's weird.) What free snack did I get out of this, you may be wondering. Iced Coffee!! It was actually like an iced caramel latte and it was fabulous. Win! Anyway, recording entailed me chilling in a recording studio while the sound tech "Bob" (again, Thai nickname) gave me instructions and recorded. It was a little interesting when I would have to spot correct grammar in the questions or when I would expect a certain question only to find it was slightly different resulting in some, shall we say, "unique" inflection, but I'm sure the kids won't notice.

In the afternoon, I had some time to do some grading. As I was reading Draft 2 of M 6/6's letters of application I noticed, where on one Draft 1 I had rather cheesily written "I'm from Maryland!" (mostly I was pretty pumped people knew Maryland existed and 6/6 was the first set of Draft 1's I graded so I wasn't sick of them yet) below some kid's made-up qualifications that said he had done some kind of training or something in Maryland, he had then written below that--presumably upon having been returned the paper--"Gorgeous! Miss Jennifer" with the i's and the point of the exclamation point dotted in hearts. This cracked me up. Now, when next I have 6/6 I have to scope out who #49 is and assess whether or not he is one of our ladyboy students (you know, given the heart-dotted i's) and I'm just curious.

Thursday, I did more recording with more free coffee. This time I was recording listening tests for performance exams for every primary level in every subject...every subject. Yes, these kids have listening portions in English to Math, Science, and Social Studies exams in addition to their English exam. It is absurd to read out math problems. This time Bob and I had a few good laughs whenever we would get to social studies. From Primary 3 onward, the passages I had to read would contain names or places in Thai, like Rattakakosin, Ramkhamhaeng, and Dvarvati. So I would have to stop mid-sentence, let Bob pronounce them, and then do my best to mimic his pronunciation. I never actually heard the end, edited result, but there's no way it was good. It was pretty funny though.

Friday was a regular school day, but it ended with a meeting where we got paid (literally handed and envelope of cash) and the health insurance people came to tell us about the benefits we would be getting in a presentation given in semi-successful English, but containing gems like the one in the title of this post and "protect your health." It seemed they were really big on generalization. At the end of the presentation they asked if there were questions. The only question anyone asked was if we would be getting the information in writing. They said yes and then everyone returned to their previous occupation which was being anxious to leave.

Later in the afternoon, we had Thai dancing again. We were much, much better this time, but it was still a laughter-filled rehearsal. And again we got the same snacks! I'm honestly looking forward to them at tonight's rehearsal.

Saturday we went to see the Reclining Buddha at Wat Pho, then stopped in a local, absurdly named temple, and then visited Wat Arun. It was a good day and photos are on facebook.

Sunday, we went to JJ market again this time with Baht to burn. We just split up and went as individuals because that is really the easiest way to maneuver and bargain. I bought a school bag which I needed and a purse, t-shirt, green sort of moo moo (Don't judge too harshly. It's actually really cool.), and some jewelry I didn't need. Another good day.

Last night we had our first American dance rehearsal. It was fun and some people seemed to have a really good time. I think some of it is a little more difficult than I had thought, so I will have to bear that in mind while choreographing the rest. We'll see how both of these dances turn out come a week from Thursday.

That's been pretty much the week. Sorry I got behind and this is an absurdly long post. Kudos to you who make it to the end!