Back To School

Sawaidee krup...

Unfortunately, I have had a few Gluten Attacks in spite of my attempts to steer clear of gluten in restaurants. I have little index cards that are translated into Thai explaining my dietary restrictions, which I have been showing to waiters/servers when I go out to eat, but I have still gotten really sick a few times. I'm not sure whether it is just from cross-contamination or not, but one of my classmates, Joy, is originally from Thailand and told me that many dishes do in fact use some form of soy sauce (gluten) and that many Thai people may read my dietary restrictions and still neglect to alter their cooking. So I've made the decision to prepare most of my meals for myself so as to ensure that I can keep from getting sick. But amazingly, another one of my classmates, Alison, just so happens to be a gourmet chef who, though she doesn't have Celiac disease, is also on a gluten-free diet. She has been cooking meals with me and beginning to show me the art of cooking gourmet, gluten-free meals even when traveling in a foreign country and with very few resources at hand. This can't be a coincidence, or luck, or anything. Some things are just meant to happen, or so it seems anyway. But in any case, with a little help, I am confident I can now eat well and stay healthy.

I'm now a day away from being done with my first week of school. The ESA teaching method that we are learning is really interesting. It involves a 43 minute lesson with three phases: Engage, a 5-minute "ice-breaker" that tries to get every student in the class speaking a little bit of English as a warm-up, Study, a 20-25 minute lesson that involves board-work and handouts, and finally Activate, which is usually a game played for the remainder of class where students interact with one another to use the grammar and vocabulary that has just been introduced. Also, the TEFL school offers free classes to Thai students who want to learn English, and allows the trainee English teachers instruct them as practice, in a mutually beneficial exchange. Today, I taught a class of adult beginner students a lesson about the correct usage of the indefinite articles a/an/any/some, along with some common food vocabulary. This was the first of 6 lessons I will teach over the next 4 weeks, and I think it went pretty well. We had to make a lesson plan and prepare all of the worksheets and make copies - basically do everything that a real teacher would have to do. I think the hands-on approach will give us much more confidence as teachers, and as public speakers in general, which definitely can't hurt.

Today we had also had our first "Unknown Language" lecture, where one of the TEFL instructors comes in to conduct a 43 minute lesson completely in Thai, basically to simulate the experience of our prospective students by forcing us to sit in class and be instructed entirely in a foreign language. It was pretty overwhelming, but by the end of the 43 minutes I had actually figured out a little bit of what was going on, and was able to work out that we were learning how to say hello (Sawaidee Krup/Ka depending on if you're male/female), ask how you are, ask what's your name, answer these questions, etc. Language is such a crazy thing. I think having taken classes instructed entirely in Mandarin in the past definitely made it a little less daunting, but still, I didn't know a single word of Thai before today, and I will say that my head was spinning by the end of the class.

So it's been pretty demanding so far, but it's also been a lot of fun at the same time, mostly because my classmates are all so amazing. I've already had so many great conversations with people I have known for less than a week. Everyone has such a compelling story to tell and have had such profound life experiences. I am one of the youngest in the class, and I definitely have very much to learn from each of them. And we don't spend ALL of our time in the classroom...we do get the afternoon off two or three times each week depending on our teaching schedule. Yesterday some of us took advantage of this time to go to Katama Beach. From left to right are my classmates Lily, E, Nizy, me, Chris, and Jason. We have quite an eclectic mix of nationalities in the class...people hail from the UK, Australia, South Africa, Ecuador, the Maldives, Thailand, Canada, and of course the good old US and A.

Bob's Bar at Katama Beach...probably the best reggae music I've ever heard at a bar. They were playing Damian Marley and the Gladiators and Jimmy Cliff and all sorts of great stuff. And it was literally on the beach. Amazing.






A cruise ship just off Phuket











And you gotta love that sunset. Just another day in paradise.