dinsdag 1 mei 2012

Lamduan, we're back!


On Saturday, we packed our bags for the last time. The next time our clothes go in our rucksack, we say goodbye to Thailand. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves, shall we? First we need to focus on our second English camps. This time we will be doing them in the school where Nele and I have taught the first three weeks of our stay here.

On Sunday, P’Nee, our host, picked us up at the university and drove us to our familiar house in Lamduan. We thought we would be saying goodbye to Sally (she will be staying with another English teacher for two weeks) but her host wasn’t home yet, so she spend the day in ‘our’ home. We killed time by playing childish games like Oxo, reading (I admit, I secretly slept for half an hour until Nele busted me…) and so on. We had a nice lunch and dinner and about half an hour after the meal, Sally was gone.

We unpacked our bags and got settled quite easily. That’s the nice thing of spending our last 5 weeks in our first host family; we already know everything there is to know so we can adapt really easily.

On Monday, we had a day off, well; we were supposed to meet P’Mook in the afternoon so we set our alarm clocks at half past 9. Only to rediscover the thrills of speaker boxes in the middle of the street, sprouting Thai nonsense at half past 6 in the morning… Eventually we got up at 10 o’clock, had breakfast and slept some more. At about half past 12 in the afternoon we leave for school. We told our host we would be walking to school and so we did. Never again! It was way too hot and we stopped 2 times to buy a refreshing drink. When we almost made it to the front gates of the school, some teachers picked us up and drove us inside. Much obliged!

We met P’Mook and discussed some formalities about the English camp. One thing we immediately noticed, it wasn’t organized as good as it was in Sally’s school. We didn’t know in what room we would be teaching, didn’t have an exact number of participants, and so on. We told ourselves it would work out just fine and left for home. On the way back I drank a Thai Ice Tea with Milk (looks really orange, almost chemical), it’s so delicious! In the evening we had dinner and watched a movie, nothing special to report.

Today (Tuesday, the first of May) we had our first day of our second English camp. We were assigned a room with a beamer and a whiteboard so at least we had that. Then again, no speakers (luckily we brought our own), the classroom covered with a layer of dust (which we quickly took care thanks to some nice pupils), benches and chairs all over the place, and so on. A fine mess it was. But being the neurotic types that we are, it ended up being quite ‘cozy’.

12 pupils showed up and 2 left after half an hour (not sure why though). We also had the pleasant company of Mr. Chatchai (the radio host) who wanted to see us in action. He told us the activities we did were very stimulating and he was going to use some of them in his courses as well. Yes, we were quite proud to have a man from the English Consulate tell us that he wanted to ‘borrow’ our material. Or is that just naïve, ah well, he’s a nice guy so were happy to oblige him.

Our first day was quite okay, the children being still very shy and all, but we were surprised about their reading skills. They ended up being quite good and we are happy to say that they all did a wonderful job today. Onwards to day 2!

2 opmerkingen:

  1. hey sam wij vandaag (1 mei ) dagje vrij ! just 3 auto's afgewassen ! eindelijk eens gene regen ! jullie dromen zeker van wa nattigheid allee terug op jullie eerste stekje ! beginnen nu wel af te tellen zen ! geniet nog maar goe ! dikke kus van ons

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  2. Dag Sam ,en alles goe hoor ik van your mom that's fine.Hear to Belgium ,rain rain rain ,I ver crazy.Jullie terug in het gastgezin daar ben je het gewoon hè. Wij leven met je blog heel hard mee hoor leuk om lezen altijd weer.Geniet nog Sam en breng de kinderen maar veel Engelse woorden bij ze zullen jullie daar niet vergeten .Doe nele de groeten en voor jullie bij dikke kussen van ons xxxxx...........to be continued

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