Mynameis Gold!

Hello again! There are a few things I left out when last I blogged and also much has happened since.

Among things I neglected to write about are the the fabulous traffic and other motor vehicle happenings in Bangkok. The other night, returning from our chicken venture, I witnessed my first motorbike overturn. When a man and woman, laden with a few parcels, emerged from the opposite side of a bus stopped at a light, they fell to one side, landing half on the curb, half in the street. They were not moving fast at the time, but still it was alarming. I wish I could have helped more, but I don't even know how to say "Are you okay?" in Thai. They both seemed to be alright.

Basically Bangkok is a vehicle free-for-all. The lines delineating lanes are essentially irrelevant and vehicles drive as fast as they please and merge whenever they feel like it, assuming the other vehicles will slow or swerve to get out of their way. At red lights, all of the motorbikes weave around the cars to get to the front. I will never drive anything here, but it is most interesting to watch unfold.

The other interesting vehicle maneuver we saw was a car going in reverse for about 100 meters down the road. Fabulous! Why turn into the correct lane of traffic to drive forward the direction you please when you can just shift into reverse and truck backwards in the lane you are in? The man then proceeded to unnecessarily double park (there was a space available. In fact, he double parked next to the empty space.) outside of McDonald's. He was clearly boss.

This week I finally met my second co-teacher, Mr. Pongpol, aka Bence. He is fabulous! He loves to chat about all of his life dramas and has one of the most expressive faces. He is also a great teacher. He well balances joking with the students and keeping them in order.

For period 8 twice a week, I teach about ten 3rd graders all by myself. They are great! One of their names is Gold, hence the title of this post. I have them Tuesdays and Thursdays and Miss Emily has them Mondays and Wednesdays. On Thursday, we did weather words. When I wrote "Blizzard" on the board and said, "Blizzard. Do you know what this is?" The whole class yelled "Blizzard!! Ice Cream!!" and one of the more adept English speakers among them said "It's Ice Cream from Dairy Queen!" It was awesome!

In M 6 we're writing cover letters, so I have been grading about 350 of them. It's not horrible and is sometimes amusing. These kids can be quite clever when they want to be, and they also make some pretty funny English mistakes.

On Friday, having taken a 3 hour nap in the afternoon after work I was able to stay up late enough to go out with everyone. We went over to ABAC to see those folks which was fun and we all went out to a bar near the university.

Today, we went to Chatuchak market. I didn't get anything other than food, but I enjoyed walking around and looking at all of the stalls. I'll be back another time for purchasing I'm sure.

Other things of note this week: People figured out that I'm Tina's little sister. Basically, from what I gather, everyone loves Tina and she may just be the best thing that ever happened to St. Gabe's.

That's all for now I think. I will try to update more frequently with more brief entries so that I don't forget things and the posts are less overwhelming.

Cheers!