English Teacher

Look at me blogging two days in a row! (I know that you are all shocked beyond measure.) Okay, let me start out by writing something that I meant to say yesterday, but forgot. I mentioned that I am officially a millionaire in Vietnam. What I neglected to mention was that I had a really hard time adjusting to the money because it has just so many zeros! It took me a full 24 hours to get a handle on it (and I still have to stop and think about it at times!) The trick is that all of the locals drop the last three zeros. The smallest bill printed here (at least that I have seen) is 1000 dong, so this is not an issue. Thus, one hundred thousand dong, becomes a much more manageable ... read more

Greetings Friends and Family! Right now I am on a visa run in Phenom Penh, Cambodia. Visa runs are necessary and required by the government. Sometimes visa runs are a mundane, day long trips on a bus to the boarder and back, but sometimes we can work it out to turn a visa run into a mini-vacation. I've been fortunate enough to be able to turn this trip in Cambodia into a budget mini-vacation. I arrived in the country in the late afternoon yesterday (February 24). I had arranged with my hostel to have a tuk tuk pick me up from the airport. The Cambodian tuk tuk is different than the Thai tuk tuk. The passenger compartment is a completely separate piece that is attached to a regular motorcycle with a sturdy bolt. The passenger compartment ... read more

Well last Sunday was the big day that I have been preparing the last two years for. I wrote the Grade 6 Thai test, which the Thai government has set as the standard of fluency. Passing this test is one of the requirements to be able to get a missionary visa. On Friday, my Thai teacher took me and the other student in my class to see where the test was going to be held. She told us that we needed to take the number 4 bus, which is part of a new line of buses called the metro bus. All of the buses in this fleet are brand new, with air conditioning and even T.V.s. But they are also the most expensive buses out there. Some of them are 20 baht, some 30 and there ... read more

Last Friday, I skipped out on Thai school and joined with some other teachers on a day trip to the floating market, followed by elephant riding. We started out for the floating market early (at 7 am). Adjan Sucharn (a Thai who is also a teacher at our school) was our tour guide. It is his hobby to take the new teachers that come around to all of the popular tourist attractions. On our way to the market we passed salt fields. They are fields filled with water instead of plants. We stopped at one road side display and some of the teachers bought some fresh sea salt. We left so early because the canals usually fill up with boats fast, and it gets very slow going later in the morning. This time the canals remained ... read more

Something very out of the ordinary happened this week. Many of us from the center went to Ramkhamhaeng University to promote our free English club and to take registration for our upcoming English camp. This week first year students are registering, so it is a strategic time to be on campus promoting. Unfortunately, all of the other clubs at the university feel the same, so there is always a crowd of recruiters vying to win the freshmen for their own groups. The university sets up barricades around the building where registration happens and all the groups cluster at the end of the barricades. The poor freshmen have to "walk the gauntlet" through the crowd of recruiters all of whom are calling after them and many of whom will physically stand in front of them to get ... read more