Pi Sonya made my first day so easy for me, running all the errands I needed and then giving me time to get settled at my new home. Then she picked me up for dinner and took me to Sawankhalok’s night market, where we got Kao Soy (noodle soup with wheat noodles, crunchy noodles on top with chili broth and tons of cilantro, garlic, onion), where we more of her students, and then took me home. When I asked Pi Sonya if I was going to be teaching tomorrow, she said, “if you want to, or you can start Wednesday, you can start whenever you’re ready. You can come tomorrow to observe if you like. But there would be no one to observe, because it’s your class, and they’re waiting for you.” So I decided I would teach tomorrow.
My house is way too big for one person, and kind of daunting! I don’t know what to do with all this space, and I’ve never lived in a house by myself. What am I going to do?! I have a huge living room, complete with a squatter toilet, and a kitchen that is separated from the living by a screen door to keep the plethora of spiders contained. The spiders are so big. Oh, but there is also a red spotted lizard! I love those things. Upstairs, there is my bedroom (with my mosquito net! I love mosquito nets. They make me feel so regal), a bathroom with a western toilet but no tank/flusher (you just pour water on top to flush), and an empty guest room.
Pi Sonya picked me up in the morning for school, where I learned that I only have 12 classes, and my first class wasn’t until 2 that afternoon. I started the day by going to the morning assembly that is held outside with all the students. The director introduced me, and let me say in English a couple things about myself. When I gave him the microphone back, Pi Sonya said, “what about rugby? Tell them about rugby” (She had seen my rugby ball when she picked me up that morning), and the director told the school in Thai that I played rugby. To which the whole school said “ooooooh” in unison. After morning announcements, all the students have 5 minutes of meditation, before the marching band plays the national anthem, and they do their pledge of alliegance. I hung around the foreign language office all morning, got used to my desk, and ate tons of kanom (snacks) with the teachers. There are a few older English teachers, then 2 Chinese language teachers, 3 Japanese language teachers (they're all Thai though), one young English teacher. Then there are four foreign teachers: myself, Steven who was actually a Fulbright last year and is staying on an extra semester (but I get his house and his bike! Hehe, but he gets a real paycheck), Tara from Hawaii, and her boyfriend, Be, who will be coming next week to start to teach. Be is actually Thai but was raised in the states, making us the least farang set of farang teachers ever. Steven is Chinese, and Tara looks Asian, so I am as white as our department gets. But I eat like a Thai, so I’ve been able to fit in quite well. And without even knowing that my dad is Thai, they all speak to me in Thai as if I can understand, to which I usually reply that I don’t understand, and they just say, “I think you understand”. So I don’t think I have to worry about being different, and I think I will fit in quite well in Sawankhalok.
My first classes were great. Though I really started with the best class ever. When I walked in, they had wrapped with a bow a stack of “Welcome Teacher Korin” cards that they had all handmade. I could not believe the quality of their artwork. They had drawn cartoons, themselves, me, all with scenery in the background. I think Fuji mountain even made it onto one of my cards. (They’re all hanging on my wall in my living room now!!) I proceeded to play a game with them, which they got so into and were cheering and yelling for each other. It was great, and made my heart melt. When I was leaving class, I could hear a chorus of students saying “bye teacher”, I love you teacher”, “teacher so beautiful” from all the girls. And now whenever I bump into some of my students at school, at least one of them will blurt out, “I love you”, or “you so beautiful”. To which I have to reply “I love you too”. And I really do!
The Thai school system is so interesting. I teach Mattyam 3-5, which is roughly 9th through 11th grade. It's a lot older than I was anticipating, and their English is way better than I was preparing for. Most Thai schools divide their classes according to the students’ performance. It’s designed on a track system, where students pick between something like science, art, or technical, and the classes are formed from those tracks. It turns out then that the most diligent students end up in the higher classes, and the slackers are in the lowest. Each grade is in sections, which I think are ranked on best performance to worst performance, so M1 section 1 is the best of M1, and M1 section 10 is the worst…I think. I’m still trying to figure it out. But either way M3 section 6 is a handful, and the lowest class I have to teach. To make things even more complicated, my school is super smart and we have extra sections that the best students can test into, and have to pay extra for. This is section 01 and 02 for each grade. So my M5 students are from sections 01 and 02 (I haven’t met them yet), for M4 I have sections 4 through 7, and my lovely M3 students are sections 1 through 6. All in all, I have a pretty large group of fairly smart students. The thing is I only see them once a week (with the exception of my M5 smarty pants, who I will see twice a week), and most of the classes are 45-50 students big. So I will have over 500 students this semester.
Since I am not teaching that many classes, I’ve been going to a lot of Tara and Steven’s classes to get a feel for how they teach, and to meet other students. Pretty much any free period I have, I spend in their classes. They love it because their students get nervous in front a new teacher, so they don’t act up as much, and the students can practice asking questions in English. By Friday, I only had one class to teach, and that was during first period. So basically I was done with my day at 9:25 AM. Instead of sitting in the office for 7 hours, I ended up guest teaching Be’s class (and got them so riled up, it was so much fun. They were section 8 and a bunch of trouble makers), was a guest in Steven’s best class where we taught how to do a proper handshake, then went to Tara’s class where she ended up being late, so Steven and I told the class I was the new teacher, and I pretended to teach the horrified students until Tara showed up. In between all of these activities, I was in the office eating snacks with the other foreign language teachers. I don’t understand how these teachers conduct class. I feel like Steven, Tara and I are at our desks at least half of the time working on lesson plans, but all of the other teachers are constantly going out to get snacks, eating the snacks, or passing around the snacks and talking about them. I’ve never heard such long conversations over three bags of fruit. And conversation must accompany snack time. And lunch time. I am making my school sound like a circus, but after hearing about other ETA’s schools, Sawananan Wittaya school is actually a really great school. We’re supposedly the best is northern Sukothai, so many other districts send their kids here, according to Steven. And I believe it too. Even though I just played games with Be’s section 8 class, their English was better than I was expecting of any of my students. I’ve heard of some ETAs having to teach their kids the alphabet. I’m going to be teaching my kids present perfect participle. I don’t even know what that is, but that’s what my M3s are learning.
On Friday afternoon, Oom, the young Thai teacher took us to Pitsanalok, the closest big city, to go shopping! It took about an hour and a half to get there, but we made this trip to Pit Lo worth it by going to their brand new mall, Central (has the first McDonalds in Sukothai and Pitsanalok provinces!), as well as a huge department store, Big C. After a Korean BBQ dinner at the mall, we went crazy shopping (actually, the last three stores we went to closed while we were in them, because we spent so long in each store!), buying all sorts of things for school or home. I was super successful, getting a blender, electric wok and French press all for under 30$. My house is now (almost) complete! We ended up being in Pit Lo until 11, not getting back to Sawankhalok until after midnight. What a shopping trip!
My first weekend in Sawankhalok, I spent mostly cleaning up my house and exploring the outskirts of the city. On Saturday, I went with Tara to pick up Be from the airport, and we went to the Saturday market and had lunch on the river at a great noodle shop Mint had taken me to earlier in the week. It’s an open air restaurant that has a balcony over our little river, and a bowl of noodle soup with a chicken leg and pig blood (I think?) costs 25 bhat…less than a dollar. So so yummy. I had dinner with Mint that evening, and she invited me to Pitsanalok with her parents the next day to celebrate her birthday. Even though I had a ton of work I should be doing, I love hanging out with Mint, so I said I would go. Well, she called me at 8:30 on Sunday morning, because her parents were actually going to Pit Lo to go to the chicken farm to get eggs (her parents own an egg distribution company in our town), so we weren’t going shopping or getting Japanese lunch for her birthday like she thought. So I suddenly had a whole day in front of me to occupy….so I went for a bike ride! I biked for maybe 45 minutes up the river, got chased by a dog, and found a little spot along the river to sit and watch the fisherman along the bank. This was pretty far off the main road, and so all I could hear were the fish diving deep under the surface when the shadow of a bird would swoop by, and occasionally a motorbike drive by on the dirt road along the river. I’m not sure how long I hung out on the bank of the river, but eventually I made it back to Sawankhalok for lunch and to maybe get work done. I spent a majority of the afternoon cleaning and decorating my house, and experimenting with my blender and electric wok. I bought enough fruit at the Saturday market to keep me occupied all week with smoothie flavors. I’m going to try some combinations of papaya, coconut, banana and orange. Maybe this week I’ll teach some kids English too. Wait, why am I in Thailand again?
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