Blogs from Chonburi, Central Thailand, Thailand, Asia - page 4

I can read! Well, a few words, anyway. It was a very exciting day for me (Sunday), when I realized I could read the words Sri Racha, Chonburi, elephant, and some others. Now I need to work on my vocabulary because it isn’t that helpful to be able to sound out all these words if I don’t know what they mean! I have been working on learning the Thai alphabet, a little bit each day for a few weeks now, well really since I arrived in Thailand, but more studiously since I got to Chonburi. I have the consonants pretty much memorized (names and sounds), and most of the vowels, and Spice and Porsche tested me today using my tiny flashcards. The next step, though, is production, which I need to work on. The letters are ... read more

Despite being out of the country (again) for Thanksgiving, it was delightful! I celebrated with 4 other TEFL-ers on Saturday, my first visitors (not including my stalker/secret admirer, who was, incidentally, never heard from again), 3 days after the actual American festivities, at my aparment in Chonburi. I went to the open market by my apartment, Ban Suan Market, on Friday after school. The market here is bigger than I realized and has almost everything I need, including tofu and dry pasta. It does not, however, have peanut butter, so I will have to go elsewhere for that, but in terms of fresh goods, it is well-stocked—peanuts, beans, broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, carrots, cucumbers, squash, potatoes, all kinds of fruits, rice rice rice, etc. I had never arrived early enough to see it in full swing until ... read more

I had my doubts about the wisdom of combining ice cream and corn, but after trying it for the first time the other night, I am convinced. The “corn sundae” is superb! There is a thin layer of vanilla soft serve ice cream, followed by a layer of cream-corn-like sweet corn, then another more generous layer of ice cream that comes to a peak at the top, and on that layer of ice cream there is a thick moat of gooey corn that protects the ice cream peak. I’m not sure it will sell in the States, but I’m willing to give it a try . . . if Banana Hammocks® never comes to fruition, of course. ... read more

I am still working on learning the students’ names. Fortunately most of the children have a short nickname and they are often interesting words in English. Here is a sample of some of my favorites at school: Sherlock, Focus, Phone, Big, Bike, Popeye (girl), Captain, Premier, Boat, Porsche, Spice, Grape, Copter, Donut, and Pooh. Donut is an absolutely adorable name for the little girl in kindergarten, but will it be as cute if she turns into a chubby pre-teen? Will the nickname Donut stay with her forever, even when she is an 80-year-old grandmother? Earth is quite a popular nickname. There are at least 3 students (all boys) at my school with that name. In the first week I barely knew any of the students’ names, which became glaringly and somewhat embarrassingly apparent during third grade ... read more

My current life is made up of everyday activities that, because of being in a new city with an immense language barrier, become “events.” Each day has a new “event,” which is how I am choosing to look at things. If I successfully complete one such event (which is often an adventure, sometimes into absurdity) in a day, then I can be pleased. My Sunday night event, after arriving back from Ban Phe on the bus, was to get a membership to the local video store, so I can rent movies. The first part of the event was locating the store, but I had cased that out last week, and so that was the easy part to check off. The next part was to make sure that at least some of the DVDs at the store ... read more