In the past ten days, for the most part, not a lot has happened. Sports day was postponed for the kids so this upcoming week will be the third in which I don't see all of my classes, and in which the schedule could be variable. For the past two weeks, instead of the usual 50 minutes, we have had 40 minute classes. This means that classes are done by 230, which gives the kids time to further choreograph their "cheering," which they do by color and class. There are 5 colors, I believe: red, yellow, blue, green, and purple. Sports day is basically the Thai version of field day, so it should be another interesting experience.
This past weekend was Loi Krathong. "Loi" means float, and a krathong is a little floral arrangement on a slice of banana tree trunk decorated with folded banana leaves and topped with incense, a candle, money, and some hair and fingernail of the person sending it off. As Fang explained it to me, it's kind of an apology to the river for using it all year. I've seen some really beautiful kratongs, and I'll try to find some pictures so y'all can see. It's held every November on the full moon. Saturday I was supposed to go to the festivities in Lamphun, but I was sick. The weather keeps flip-flopping here. During the day it can be really hot, and then it cools down quite a bit at night. It usually feels great but it keeps giving me little colds and I've had a couple migraines I think the weather change has triggered. So I just stayed home and slept.
Sunday night was the night I'd looked forward to anyway. Fang played at a place called the River Market. It was a fairly exclusive party, the tickets cost 2,400 baht apiece, about 80 bucks. Thankfully, dating the guitarist has it's perks, and so I went for free. It was a pretty great night. Before Fang played, we walked around outside the River Market and to the Iron Bridge (which the River Market overlooked) and bought some lanterns. We lit one and sent it off while we were on the bridge, and saved the other 2 I bought. The drummer, Damien, is from Australia and his mother had come to the show since she was visiting, so we thought she might like to help us light the other lanterns.
The band played for about 3 hours, and the sets were interspersed with traditional Thai dancers. There were even a couple of fire dancers. It was a mostly farang crowd, which meant people I could actually talk to and understand! And dance with. The Thais aren't big dancers in the bar.
Both Owen Wilson and Pierce Brosnan were at the party, since they're filming around Chiang Mai now. Owen Wilson was with who I assume were his wife and toddler, and after a while he sent them home and came and sat at a table and mostly hung around and brooded for the night. He was gracious enough to take a picture with me and Fang (who I think was the most excited to meet a celebrity). Unfortunately, I only heard after that Pierce Brosnan was there, I didn't actually see him.
I had such an amazing time at this party. There were literally thousands of lanterns in the sky, some hung with fireworks so they sparked and glittered. Words and pictures could not do the sky justice. It's really cliche, but it was magical. There was even a professional fireworks show, which looked so cool with the backdrop of the full moon and all the lanterns floating along. It's one of the most beautiful sights I have ever seen in my life.
This week was my first with my new classes. I now teach EPDP 1s and 2s. My other classes weren't told so all week I've had kids coming up to me wondering why I wasn't in class, and I've had to explain that I got swapped. Some of them have even been sad, which I thought was really sweet since I thought I've been a shit teacher. A couple of my 4s have even begun to come to me after school for help with homework, which they didn't do when I taught them. I kind of love it, I can't lie. And now instead of seeing twenty different classes of 50 students once a week, I see ten different classes of 20 students twice a week. Technically I have half of the class, and Bill has the other half. So I have a coteacher of sorts. It really does make all the difference, and after this one week I can actually definitively say I might like this. I even have a book to teach from! So I've made a deal with all my kids (most of whom actually understand me now!) that one day a week will be workbook day, which is boring. But if they're good on workbook day, they respond to my questions and cooperate, then the other day that I see them will be game day or video day, something fun. Of course it will be educational fun, but as long as they don't really notice it then we're all good. Even an English language movie will be practice for the kids, because the Thai teachers that teach them the initial English they learn often teach it to them wrong. By the time they get to me or, god forbid, to Bill (who has a very thick English/Australian accent), they get really confused by hearing vocabulary I know they've already learned. They catch on really quickly though, and we've had a lot of fun this past week. The first day we practiced questions about Loi Krathong. "What did you do?" "Where did you go?" "How did you go?" "How long were you there?" "Who did you go with?"
Questions are actually some of the biggest strumpers for my kids. With my regular 1s last semester, we did a listening exercise about a dog the had three balls, one red, one yellow, one blue. He chewed one, played with one, and ran after the other. So I'd read this several times very slowly, and then ask my kids. "How many balls did the dog find?" "Blue!" was one of the most common answers.
The other half of the week this week was story time once we figured out that half the 2s have the wrong book somehow. It actually really helps the kids learn to think on their feet (since they're used to copying, memorization and repetition). Once they get going we all had a blast. I always get them to tell me the name of a person (they usually pick on a classmate) and a place. Then we get the person from their house to whatever place. We specify the day of the week, the weather, the transportation this person will use. We talk about what this person looks like. Then, along the way, the person meets A MONSTER! So we talk about this monster, what it looks like and what the person does with it. My kids are pretty violent. In one of my classes, a girl killed the monster with a shotgun and a knife. Then she fried it and ate it, and shared it with her friends. The monster was poisonous, though, so it killed all of her friends, but not her, she was magical. She did get so depressed after all her friends died, though, that she killed herself with the shotgun. By the end of the story, the whole class is usually involved and having a blast, where before it was hard to get them to answer even simple questions. I think that's going to be my rainy day activity from now on.
Next weekend Fang and I are going to Pai, and I'm really excited. It should be really fun. Hope I can convince him to go to the hotsprings...
I guess that was really a lot more to report than I'd originally thought. Well. Here's to all of you saying I don't blog enough.
