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Published: September 30th 2007
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Ao nang school
Every morning all of the students gather in front of the flag pole, say the National Anthem and raise the flag. We had a great second full week of teaching! Filled with good times and some challenging times. Getting ready for exams, scheduled for next week. Rob and I have primarily been teaching English and computer class to the lower grades, 1-3, while the other 2 volunteers have been teaching the upper grades, 4-6. All of us have been helping each other out, which has been nice and appreciated, especially for the first grade. The first graders are very challenging with many difficulties respecting us and listening to us. Yes, they are very cute but trouble! Absolutely chaotic-yelling, jumping on us, climbing all over the place, but we have tried to put more lessons to music and movement and say a little prayer each time! There are 25 first graders, and they were scheduled for computer class, with only 8 working computers, wow, that presents quite the task! The head master has also noticed this challenge and told us no computer for them, just 1 hour of English class, so we complied much to the kids' liking. The second graders are doing very well, and you can already tell the progress they have made with their English writing, reading, and speaking skills!
They are such a great class, very sweet and friendly, and coming along better each day, which has been very rewarding. We wondered what happens between grade 1 and grade 2 because there is such a huge difference, in which we are very grateful for the change. There are a few second grade students who always want class to continue when they are done, and there was even a little second grader who came to class, although her mother told us she was sick in the morning, but didn't want to miss her English class. Bless her heart! The third graders are very cooperative, such a great group, always helping each other out and helping us too! They have made nice gains with learning the days of the week and months of the year, put to music, with Rob playing the guitar and both of us singing, which is quite a hoot! They have remembered this song from previous days and periodicially you will find one of them humming it or singing it in the middle of class! Learning is so powerful when music is incorporated and it's great to see the effects! We have been preparing the exams, including
written and oral tests for each grade and will continue to review and prepare them the best we can. On Wednesday afternoons we have teaching sports to grades 4 and 5, in which this past week was volleyball. Rob was in his glory! We continue to enjoy our daily afternoon treat of banana milkshakes, weekly massages, dinners with our friends-Mandy, a volunteer from Australia, Timo, a volunteer from Germany, Tanya, a Thai teacher and fellow roommate, and her fiance Kwan. We have been eating delicious Thai meals out, and cooking here at the school with our Thai friends, after going to the market for fresh veggies, seafood, spices, and meat. We feel very blessed and thankful for everyone we have met and they all seem to have happened for a reason, in one way or another, and all at the right time. Here's Rob-On Monday night we went out for a massage after school which was nice as always. Jordonne went to hut number 12 with our friend Mandy as I enjoyed the luxuries from number 2 (my friend Oy). After being stuffed with pineapples we went out for drinks at a beach bar. We then continued with dinner at
Third grade
Some of the third grade is here, some not because they were not happy that they didn't win a bingo game. The winners of Bingo received a prize, such as the ones seen here. We are learning that everyone receives a prize, and that the kids love stickers. a local place and hanging out at our friend Mandy's bungalow in a beautiful garden in town. Tuesday and Wednesday night we went to the markets with our Thai roomates and ate some fanciful Thai dishes from Kwan who is a great cook. It was a full moon this week as most of you already know (or maybe not) but we think it played some effect into the children and their behaviors but that's another story. On Thursday night we went for a long ride to a beach known as Klong Muang and Tup Kaek. We found a nature trail which we will have to explore at another time but the beaches were nice. A bit rocky but nice backdrops. We then went out to dinner back in Ao nang at a restaurant that hangs over the beach which helped big time along with the sunset we caught especially after a pretty stressful day (yes, teaching english as a foreign language to a bunch of challenging 1st graders can be stressful). Friday, we went to Krabi town to stay at the openmind house so that we could go to the orphan home on Saturday. We went out to dinner on
Friday night with our hostess Mui and some of her friends including Nong (our Ko Lanta friend) to a local Thai restaurant outside of town. As always we let our hostess Mui order the food. I can't recall the names but we had about 5 or 6 dishes in the center in which we all share. A coconut cream green leaf vegetable (the best description I can provide), fried pork with crisped citrus leaves, vegetable soup, spicy seafood curry, fried fish, and rice as always. RICE RICE RICE!!!! Rice for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. hey want a snack? have some rice! sticky rice, steamed rice, fried rice, rice with vegetables, rice with fish, rice with chicken, rice with rice. Maybe I should open the Bubba Gump Rice company......! Hope all is well! Take good care everyone! Love to all!
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