silly students and big city adventures
I can't believe so much time has passed since my last blog update - I feel like so much has happened and the days are just slipping away from me, which is exactly why the antics I am about to show you were able to happen in my otherwise efficient classroom.
Recently at Phon Tan I have been doing alphabet centers with my classes since I see them twice as often as my students at Nong Hee and I am a big supporter of hands on learning. I also have mixed classes at Phon Tan so figuring out ways to keep everyone interested and involved can be challenging. And the latter is exactly why this occurred in the first place. I have only 4 students in my P. 6 level and all of which are pretty quick witted and can learn what I teach a lot faster than their peers, so when they are assigned to the centers that are fairly easy, they finish quickly and are left with time, pipe cleaners, and big imaginations. I walked over to their corner of the room to find Bee-ah Yai and Moate making glasses, mustaches, microphones, and ties. I could not physically stop myself from laughing and saw no harm in the situation since their assignment was completed and then made the executive decision to not let this pass me by and grabbed my camera.
I also recently had students at Nong Hee make me some lovely flowers out of pumpkin, eggplant, and carrot . . . classic.
Now onto big city adventures - Last Friday was a Buddhist holiday so that meant no school on Friday or Monday (yay, long weekend!) Because we already had these days off Kaitlin and I decided this would be a perfect time to go to Bangkok to get our visas for India, and luckily Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows Part 2 was premiering the same weekend! We also needed to do some serious JJ market souvenir shopping. This all sounds well and good until we realized that the visas could take up to 5 business days as opposed to the 2 we originally thought, so Kaitlin and I ask our school for some extra days off and headed to Bangkok on Tuesday night - We get to Khao San road (the backpacker haven), get ourselves a cheap room, and freshen up to head over to the office that is designated for Embassy of India visas. We get ourselves before 10am and soon realize it is exactly like a DMV - awesome. After an friendly chat with the employee and the organizing, stamping and payment portion of the trip he informs us that the first day we can call to see if our visas are ready is Tuesday and 4pm. Wonderful. I always wanted to be indefinitely trapped in Bangkok. I realize this does not sound exactly terrible and it really wasn't - just unnecessarily expensive. hahaha Luckily Gen arrived on Thursday and Amanda on Friday so we had plenty of distractions including Harry Potter himself! 4 American girls in their early twenties, spending a year in Thailand cannot be expected to act at all calm during the epic finale to a series we grew up with - no matter how crazy we looked, even to the kid in Harry Potter glasses who took this group shot of us.
Also, this is the nicest sign I think I've ever seen at a movie theatre.
SOOO SAD!!!
Just battling with the best.
I am able to end this post on a happy note - The visas for India were obtained on Tuesday and we did make it back to Nakhon Phanom on a 12 hour 2nd class overnight bus ... and when I had just finished my obnoxious amount of laundry it started down pouring. BUT my roommate brought me chah yen, gluay tawt and rotis chicken with sticky rice from the market before the storm so needless to say I LOVE THAILAND.
Recently at Phon Tan I have been doing alphabet centers with my classes since I see them twice as often as my students at Nong Hee and I am a big supporter of hands on learning. I also have mixed classes at Phon Tan so figuring out ways to keep everyone interested and involved can be challenging. And the latter is exactly why this occurred in the first place. I have only 4 students in my P. 6 level and all of which are pretty quick witted and can learn what I teach a lot faster than their peers, so when they are assigned to the centers that are fairly easy, they finish quickly and are left with time, pipe cleaners, and big imaginations. I walked over to their corner of the room to find Bee-ah Yai and Moate making glasses, mustaches, microphones, and ties. I could not physically stop myself from laughing and saw no harm in the situation since their assignment was completed and then made the executive decision to not let this pass me by and grabbed my camera.
I also recently had students at Nong Hee make me some lovely flowers out of pumpkin, eggplant, and carrot . . . classic.
Now onto big city adventures - Last Friday was a Buddhist holiday so that meant no school on Friday or Monday (yay, long weekend!) Because we already had these days off Kaitlin and I decided this would be a perfect time to go to Bangkok to get our visas for India, and luckily Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows Part 2 was premiering the same weekend! We also needed to do some serious JJ market souvenir shopping. This all sounds well and good until we realized that the visas could take up to 5 business days as opposed to the 2 we originally thought, so Kaitlin and I ask our school for some extra days off and headed to Bangkok on Tuesday night - We get to Khao San road (the backpacker haven), get ourselves a cheap room, and freshen up to head over to the office that is designated for Embassy of India visas. We get ourselves before 10am and soon realize it is exactly like a DMV - awesome. After an friendly chat with the employee and the organizing, stamping and payment portion of the trip he informs us that the first day we can call to see if our visas are ready is Tuesday and 4pm. Wonderful. I always wanted to be indefinitely trapped in Bangkok. I realize this does not sound exactly terrible and it really wasn't - just unnecessarily expensive. hahaha Luckily Gen arrived on Thursday and Amanda on Friday so we had plenty of distractions including Harry Potter himself! 4 American girls in their early twenties, spending a year in Thailand cannot be expected to act at all calm during the epic finale to a series we grew up with - no matter how crazy we looked, even to the kid in Harry Potter glasses who took this group shot of us.
Also, this is the nicest sign I think I've ever seen at a movie theatre.
SOOO SAD!!!
Just battling with the best.
I am able to end this post on a happy note - The visas for India were obtained on Tuesday and we did make it back to Nakhon Phanom on a 12 hour 2nd class overnight bus ... and when I had just finished my obnoxious amount of laundry it started down pouring. BUT my roommate brought me chah yen, gluay tawt and rotis chicken with sticky rice from the market before the storm so needless to say I LOVE THAILAND.
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