in the land of smiles.: teecha jenna.

Ok so I’ve just had my first two classes as “teecha” (that’s how they pronounce it)…and I can already tell that this is going to be difficult. The kids don’t know any English and right now all they do is cry. I made a lesson plan and I thought I had plenty of things to do, but after 10 minutes I had run out of things to do! The students just stared at me and I had no idea what in the world I was going to do. Thankfully, Jameson, another teacher here at the kindergarten, was watching me for my first class and was there to help me out. He’s been teaching here for 2 years and had some games that the kids could play. I was done teaching by 11:00am…so for the rest of the afternoon I spent the morning looking for tips online for teaching ESL to pre-schoolers. There was some good stuff out there, but I think what it’s really going to come down to is just trial and error. I have another class that I teach in the afternoon. I teach k-1 from 2:30-3:30…this class is a little bit tougher because I have to hold their attention span for an hour! That might not seem like a lot, but it is! Trying to keep these little kids entertained is exhausting! So day 1 was difficult, but it can only get better.

**this first part was actually written yesterday, but I didn’t have time to post it, so I’m just including it in this post!

Let’s rewind and fill you in on all the excitement that was Bangkok this weekend. On Friday afternoon, the 3 other girls and myself went out to the store/bar that is right outside the gates of the school. We met some of the other English teachers there and we just sat around for a few hours having beers and talking about Thailand/America/Canada/life in general. All of the other teachers that I’ve met here so far are so nice and i’ve really enjoyed getting to know all of them. Well I guess we didn’t realize how long we had been there/how many beers we had drank, but it was pretty late by the time we left the store. The girls and I were starving so we thought we’d splurge and have pizza delivered! We spent waaaaaaaay too much money on the pizza, but it was so good! We were so tired that we were all passed out by 10:30 pm which is a little pathetic, but oh well.

Saturday we woke up early and the girls and I took a taxi into Bangkok. We took the taxi from right outside our school to right in front of our hostel for only 180bant (about $6!) such a good deal. I met up with my roommate from orientation, Chelsea, and we went off to the weekend market to meet up with some of our other friends.

Now this is no ordinary market….this is the chatuchak weekend market. This place is huge. Theres toooons of people there and anything you could imagine is for sale there. From shirts, to plants, bowls, plates, rugs, silk, hedgehogs, puppies, birds, food, EVERYTHING. We met up with some of the other girls and just oogled at all the things we could buy. A few of us ended up buying chang tank tops (chang is the natty light/keystore light of beer here) which I think only us farangs (foreigners) would ever imagine buying.

**side note** farang—this is the term thais use for foreigners…mainly white foreigners. Everywhere I go I can hear thais yelling “faaarang faaarang”. It happens all over. We stick out like sore thumbs—especially me with my blonde hair.**side not over

I could spend hours upon hours at that market (I probably will since I found out that I take hire a van to take me there from outside of our school for only 60 baht ($2!!!!), but the other girls were tired and wanted to explore Bangkok some more. So we piled into taxis and headed over to wat pho aka the reclining buddha. I had heard a lot about this, but wasn’t really sure what to expect besides another statue of a Buddha. But let me tell you….this place is impressive. I’ll let the pictures do the talking. Also I’ve reinstated a theme that I took up with my friend sarah when we were in Sweden….posing like the statues. I always feel so awkward just standing in front of things and smiling…this makes for more entertaining pictures! So I’ve brought this tradition with me to Thailand and I like it.

After the temple we wandered around a bit trying to find a water taxi to take us back to our hostel, but the river is suuuuper flooded right now and we couldn’t find a water taxi to take us, so we settled for a regular taxi. We got back to the hostel and we all showered and got dressed up and ready to go to…..the moon bar! We went to this super fancy bar that is located on the roof of a 60 story hotel in Bangkok. We had heard about this place in our lonely planet guidebooks (which all of us pretty much carry with us at all times) and decided to check it out.

The views of Bangkok from this place did not disappoint. The skyline was amazing and well worth the 400baht ($12) drinks. Of course me being a klutz, as soon as the waiter handed me a dish filled with wasabi pea things and other snacky items, I dropped it all over the floor. Schwoooooops.

After some amazing drinks, we headed out in search of food, but not before stopping by 7/11 to pick up some leos (a pretty decent cheap beer) for the road/dinner. (Thailand is kinda like vegas…you can walk down the street drinking alcohol). We went to a little street vendor on the side of the road and had some noodles and chicken and curry. We went from living the high life at a rooftop bar drinking pricy drinks, to drinking beers and eating on the side of the road.

After dinner we went to this place called coyotes. It was this Mexican food/bar place that just so happened to serve free margaritas for ladies on Saturday nights! DOWN! So we headed over to this place and it was all decorated out for Halloween! I had almost forgot all about Halloween, which is odd since I went to a college where our Halloween celebration is pretty much infamous. So we ordered a round of free margaritas, and a round of some extremely expensive chips and guacamole! YUM!

But the margaritas weren’t that good, so we decided to go to another 7/11 to get some more leos and to do some more wandering. To make a long story short, we spent the rest of the night wandering, getting lost, cramming 9 people on to 1 tuk-tuk, riding on the very back of a tuk-tuk (a close second favorite mode of transportation, right behind motorcycle taxis) and got taken to some very random places by strange tuk-tuk drivers. All in all, a very successful Saturday night.

The next morning we said our goodbyes and we all headed back to our respective towns. I’m always sad to say goodbye to everyone; i’ve gotten to be pretty good friends with some of the other girls and I wish we could all be in the same town, but oh well, I like where I am and it just makes it even more exciting when we get to meet up in new/fun locations!

Fast forward to today, my second day of teaching at the kindergarten school. Today went a lot better than yesterday and I’m beginning to feel a little more comfortable in front of the class.

Bradley, my roommate, and I are trying to find things to do to entertain us at night. We don’t have TV and the internet doesn’t always work in the evening so we’ve been trying to find things to entertain us, besides counting mosquito bites and the number of geckos on the wall. Thank goodness I packed a deck of cards with me! We’ve taken up playing cards at night and that has been our form of entertainment! So exciting.

Well I have to go teach my last class for the day! Love you all!