First day at Banpatanasamakee school

If someone is reading this who I didn’t get a chance to tell about my trip to Thailand before I left, I am here for about 5 weeks, the first 3 weeks or so I am volunteering teaching English through an organization called Volunthai, and the last 2 weeks I will do some traveling.

Today I woke up around 5 because there were a lot of roosters crowing outside! I snoozed in bed for awhile but it seemed like most other people were getting up early so I got up too. We ate breakfast at tables by the side of the road again, which was a green curry with rice. Then we drove to the school in Bu’s truck, which was about 1 km away. First they fed me some rambuchans and a tasty coconut water drink (they are feeding me way too much here!) There was an assembly at the beginning of school where the students were doing a Buddhist prayer, and I introduced myself. Then we went to the classroom. All of the building here are open to the outdoors so there is no air conditioning but there are breezes blowing through and fans that keep it reasonably comfortable. I had thought that we would talk about plans for the class, but it turned out I was starting to teach right away, so I had to improvise. Fortunately Bu was helping teach the class, so that was good. We did some introductions “Hello, my name is…”, “goodbye”, etc and some colors and animals. The students seemed pretty scared to talk in English so spoke very quietly which made it hard for me to hear them with the wind and cars going by outside. There were three classes in the morning, one class of grade 1 and two classes of grade 3. I had originally thought that I would be teaching high schoolers, but this school only goes to 6^th grade. The motto of Volunthai is “Expect the unexpected,” and that was certainly the case for the morning.

In the afternoon I didn’t have any classes today so I spent a long time trying to connect to the internet. I was not able to connect to the wifi at the school, and it also didn’t work with the ethernet cable. I started being stressed that I wouldn’t be able to communicate with anyone outside for three weeks! Fortunately I was able to connect at the end of the day, and send a couple emails. I guess I have gotten used to be able to connect to the internet all the time, so it was frustrating when I couldn’t, although I really shouldn’t be frustrated about it so easily!

Then we went back to the house for dinner, and over to Bu’s uncles’ house (next door) for dinner #2, because he was having a small party. I learned that the uncle’s daughter lives in Sweden and Bu had visited her there for three months working as a nanny and studying Swedish! She had several notebooks of Swedish lessons that she had done. That was certainly and unexpected connection!

I would say that things here are a mix between modern and more rustic. For example, most people seem to have smart phones and many teachers have laptops at the school, but there are also chickens and dogs passing through the school yard during the day (and wandering around the yard at the house).

While the beginning of the day was challenging, I was enjoying myself by the end and felt like I was starting to settle in.