Folding flowers (July 12)

When we got to the school today, one of the teachers had brought a large bunch of flowers. Actually, they were just unopened buds. But the teachers were doing some flower arranging, where you pull back individual petals and fold them into a triangle shape. You keep on doing this until you reveal the center of the flower and then you are finished. I got to fold two flowers, which was fun!

Today I had the 4^th, 5^th, and 6^th grade classes. The 5^th grade class is definitely my favorite to teach, as several of the most enthusiastic kids are in it. A number of kids were hanging out before class, so we read some stories and they taught me some more Thai words. At the beginning of class they were asking to sing songs, so we sang both “head shoulders knees and toes” and the hokey pokey. Then we learned some verbs like “read,” “eat,” etc, and played Simon Says and Bingo. As is common in foreign language classes, I think the thing the kids need practice with the most is speaking on their own (not just repeating in a group what I say). However, it is kind of hard to have a lot of individual speaking time when there are 25-35 students in a class, and when it at times can be difficult for me to communicate what the activity is to the students.

I think that if one were to have a significant impact on helping the kids learn English better, one would need to be here for at least a few months, and ideally speak some more Thai. But I think it is hard to find volunteers who are able to stay for a few months at a time—this school has had two English teaching volunteers before me, and they both stayed for about the same amount of time that I am. But hopefully even being here a short time, the students are getting some benefit from trying out speaking English with a foreigner and meeting someone from another country (even though lots of tourists go to Thailand, I’m not seeing any of them here!). Also, I think that Bu’s English has improved in the last couple weeks, so she is probably the one I help most with English, since I don’t think she usually has anyone to practice with. However, I feel like I am learning more from this experience than I am teaching!

When I am at the house, I am able to have some basic communications with Bu’s family in Thai, so I don’t think my pronunciation/tones are too bad. However, in class I have a hard time when I try to use Thai, because I think the students are expecting me to be using English, and then when I try to use Thai (for example ask “nii arai?”—what is this?) they don’t understand, probably because they think I am saying a word in English they don’t understand.

Thai has five tones: middle, low, falling, high, and rising, and every syllable has a tone.  Like in Chinese, if you say a word with the wrong tone it can mean something totally different. Often, as an English speaker, if I am not confident about a new word, it is easy to say it with a rising tone (like a question). However, I have to make myself not do this, because then I am saying the word wrong. Bu has a Learning Thai book that a previous volunteer left, so I have also been learning about the writing system. The Thai alphabet originated from India, and Thai is written phonetically with this alphabet. Also, there are symbols for the tones, so if you know the alphabet you can in principle pronounce words correctly from reading. I have learned some letters, but there are a lot of them, in particular, vowels, because every vowel sound has a different symbol or combination of symbols (and there are a lot of vowel combinations like “ia” or “ua” with different symbols).

Also, I think I haven’t mentioned yet that as a teacher at the school, there is infinite Thai iced tea available, which I am enjoying a lot (I always order it when I go to Thai restaurants in the US). At the beginning of my time here, I was having two large glasses of it every lunch, but now I have cut back to one small glass, because it is pretty sweet. There is also a drink made from longan fruits that tastes kind of like raisins, which I also like.

After school, went to use the internet at the father’s school, and fortunately this time it was (relatively) fast so that I could respond to some emails and make plans for the rest of my trip after I leave Bam Nit Suwan town at the end of next week.

Then stopped at the Friday market with Bu and Piano to pick up a variety of veggies/meat/seafood/soymilk-desserts-in-a-bag, as well as kanom gon (fried sweet dough ball stuffed with dried peas), which is one of my favorite snacks here.