Ban Phe, continued . . .

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We were housed at “Condochain” in the outskirts of Ban Phe, right across from the beach. It looks really nice from the outside and did indeed have a very pretty pool, but the interior was pretty shabby. We were in double rooms and had A/C, flush western toilets, warm showers (sometimes, when we could figure out how to turn it on), and a mini-fridge. All-in-all not a bad deal. Courtney and I slept little and continued to bond over a shared love of show tunes (especially Rent, Wicked and Les Mis), peanut butter, and ice cream in bed. It was truly a roommate match made in heaven (or hell for anyone who was stuck in the minivan or songthaew when we decided to sing a duet 😊

There were a few places to eat in the area, including a little restaurant that we called Sham’s, for the guy that ran it. We ended up there on the first night, since TEFL group 1, who overlapped with us for a week or two, highly recommended it. We got to know each other a little better over dinner and drinks and the first night ended with a swim in the ocean. I was pleased with the group.

Although we weren't housed at the TEFL Int'l headquarters, in the heart of Ban Phe, we were pretty lucky with our location at Condochain. We had a very decent beach right in front of the place, and could swim laps and/or take a dip in the ocean every day after class. There was also a place close-by that actually had wireless internet. I couldn’t believe it! How spoiled we were! We paid Chai (the wireless man) 20 baht and could use the wireless as long as we wanted. It was a funny scene to see a huge group of us there on our laptops, several people usually talking to someone at home on Skype.

Every morning the minivan and/or songthaew would come to pick us up at Condochain to take us to the temple school, where we did our coursework and practicum, and every afternoon it would bring us back again. We had three different trainers at TEFL. Mike, from Canada, was the lead trainer, and Nash (from England) and Kamal (from Nepal) were the other two. We learned strategies for teaching reading, writing, speaking, and listening for TEFL/ESL, did a lot of group work, and also worked on grammar and phonology (SNOOZE). TEFL Int'l uses a teaching model for speaking that they call the "Basic Model," which could be useful in some instances, but is utterly useless to me at my school since I am teaching science. Oh well, I threw it, along with the Reading and Listening Models, into my proverbial "bag o' tricks" for the future. While I was unsure about the rather robot-teacher style of the models, I realized there was a certain wisdom in teaching a set model since the majority of the group had no classroom experience at all. The models gave them a structure to fall back on if they weren't sure what to do.

(Photo credits to Courtney since I ripped off most of these pictures from her Facebook page. Kob kun ka, buddy)

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Photos

Chai's wireless "internet cafe"
I have never before gotten so many bug bites while using internet.

On the songthaew
Me, Sarah, Courtney, and Scott

Comments

[Courtney]

Oh definitely a match made in hell haha love it. Fabulous fun times at CondoChain...no problem for the pics. Glad I could be of use.