(to catch up on the last week and a half!)
Wow! It’s been a
while since I blogged! I have been going
pretty much nonstop for the past two weeks.
Last week was orientation so we were busy from 8 in the morning till about
8 at night. The first two days of
orientation were with just the new teachers learning about different policies,
paperwork, and everything we needed to know about the school. The rest of orientation was with all the
teachers (new and returning) and was more meetings about school and teaching,
etc. Friday we went into Bangkok to a
teacher store and were able to buy supplies for our classroom. All the school staff also went to a nice
Japanese restaurant on Friday night, which was delicious and fun.
Saturday was a rough day.
I was really homesick which made it hard for me to do anything but I
ended up having dinner with Megan and Michael (two returning teachers who are
married) and then watched a movie with Megan.
Sunday I went to church (which I still really like), went to a grocery
store and then went to Que Pasa again and ordered Hawaiian Pizza (which I’ve
been eating for leftovers all this week!).
I also went to Big C for some more school supplies, went to a Thai-style
cookout and ended the day in reading group.
One of the teachers was having a birthday so he planned a Thai-style
cookout which is when you put meat on a rounded metal covering which goes over
coals. It was pretty good. After that was reading group where about 8-10
teachers get together and listen to someone read (and there are milk and
cookies!). In the past they’ve read C.S.
Lewis and similar authors. It’s kind of
nice to end a Sunday listening to someone read Christian literature and to have
that community.
Monday to Wednesday I worked 14 hour days setting up my
classroom. The past part-time art
teacher left the room a mess so I had a lot of work to do to clean everything
out, organize everything, and get ready to teach on Thursday. I’ve also had a lot of beginning of the year
paper work such as year plans, weekly lesson plans, substitute packets,
newsletters, bulletin boards, etc. in order to be ready for the first day of
school. But it all got done and I had my
first day of teaching on Thursday. Most
of my classes are in the afternoon so most days I don’t even start teaching
until 10:25. The first two days of
school were also early dismissal so the kids got out at 2:00. All that to say, I only had two classes on
Thursday and two on Friday.
Thursday I had second graders and high schoolers. The second graders were good but everything I
had planned got done really quickly so I was left with half an hour of class
time and nothing planned. I came up with
a fun game on the spot and then let them draw self portraits until the end of
class so it worked out okay. The high
schoolers were good too although I feel really young and unqualified to be
teaching them. There are some fun kids
in that class though so I think it will be good.
Friday I had 6th grade and my other 2nd
grade class. The sixth graders were
really good (that is my biggest class of 25 kids) and they were really
attentive as I went over rules. I also
had them draw self portraits. It was
interesting to see their idea of a self portrait. One girl drew Mickey mouse and a robot with claws.
Most of the other kids drew themselves but in an anime style, so they
were pretty unrealistic. There were only
two or three kids that actually drew a somewhat realistic picture of
themselves. One kid drew a real anime
character with spiky hair, square eyes, and armor. It was definitely interesting and gave me
some insight into what they view as art.
The second grade on Friday went much better because I read them a book
called The Art Lesson by Tomie dePaola which they enjoyed.
I have been in the midst of painting by bedroom. When I came the walls were white except for
one wall which had a very bold mural on it painted by the last person who lived
here. I decided I needed to paint over
that so I painted my whole room yellow.
I did the first coat last Saturday (my roommate helped me which was
great!). Friday I finished it up so I
could put my furniture back in place (all week all my furniture had been in the
middle of my room and I was ready to get things back in order and have a space to
relax in). I realized that I didn’t have
enough paint to do a second coat so I just did the one wall that had the mural
on it (it was a dark blue so it took a lot of coats for the yellow to cover
it). Overall it looks pretty good and
the yellow cheers up the room a lot. I
wiped down the floors which were filthy, put my furniture back in place, and
now all I have to do is decorate the walls (I will put pictures up when it’s
all done)! It’s nice to finally have a
place that is comfortable, warm, and somewhere I can let down and call my
own. Friday night a bunch of teachers
got together and had a game night. I
learned two new games – Nuns on the Run and Jungle Speed. Both were really fun and it was fun to hang
out with other teachers and get to know them better.
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