We visited roughly 4 schools per day and spent an hour in each. Adjaan Chaweewan would do the introduction in thai, extolling the virtues of learning through English and then the rest of us would take turns playing games and activities in English. Between the four of us we played a variety of games ranging from word games to activities that got the kids up and about. I used some activities that I had used in science class to teach about the senses so the kids “learned” about sight, hearing and touch. The touch game involved me jabbing a blindfolded kid with paperclips. This isn’t as bad as it sounds. The idea is that there are one or two clips each time and they have to tell me how many they can feel when they touch their hand. For hearing we put one person in the middle of a circle, got them to close their eyes and then asked one of the others to clap. Then the one in the middle would have to find the clapper. This usually involved the guesser opening their eyes really quickly and turning in the direction of the clap where the clapper still had their hands together or had a really guilty look on their face! Finally the sight game involved a person blindfolded and sitting at a table. On the table are 3 coins and one cup and they try to get the coin in the cup. To do this one other person must tell them when to stop waving their hand over the table so they can drop the coin (hopefully) in the cup. These all got a good response from the students and all the participants got goodies. So I spent the week playing these games and helping the others out with theirs. It was a good laugh for most of the time though some schools were harder than others when everything I said had to be translated to thai to get the message across. I’d usually demonstrate the game first to show the kids and that usually cleared up any confusion. In the schools where the English was a bit stronger I would try explaining the science behind the games but didn’t attempt it too often!
At most schools while we were there the school kind of stopped as word spread there was a farang at the school. Most of these places are pretty rural and would rarely see a westerner if ever so it was a big deal for the kids to see someone like me about the place. The youngest kids approached with a mixture of curiosity and fear with the latter taking over as soon as I tried saying ‘Hello’! I may as well have roared and breathed fire at them, probably would have had a similar effect. But at one school I had a class of kindergarteners come up to me individually (pushed by their teachers) and tell me their name in English and then say thank you when I rewarded them with candy. They were all about 4/5 years old and everyone thought this was really cute.
Over the course of the week the team changed. Some days we would have 5 or 6 teachers and other days we had only 3. We were joined by Goy and another teacher called Teerata for a couple of days. Only myself and Reya were constant for the week so come Friday we were pretty knackered. This was more from the travelling than the than the games but the two combined started to take their toll. Anyway the last school on the last day rolls around and its only Teerata, Reya and me left. On the way back to Li I suggest going for some beers later to celebrate the end of a long week. This translates to “Lets get a bottle of whiskey and get wasted right now”. It was 3 in the afternoon at this stage…… So we get a bottle sneak away from the school, head for Teerata’s gaff and settle down for an afternoon’s drinking. This lasted about an hour until Teerata got a call from her ‘gig’. Now I’ve had this concept explained once or twice and as far as I can tell its like ‘friends with benefits’ (any thai based readers who can add to this description feel free to comment). Anyway he is heading to CM for the night and invites her along. She passes the message on to us and for some reason Reya (the most tired person of the 3 of us and usually the quietest) pipes up and says “Ok lets go”. I’m a tad more reluctant (this is a 6 hour round trip for a few drinks after all) but agree nonetheless. Now Teerata is caught as she had been expecting us to provide her with a ‘get out of jail free card’ here. 10 minutes later this guy pulls up in his pickup we hop in and off we go. Oh and he’s a policeman, just thought I should mention that. An hour into the journey we decide to aim for Lamphun instead as it’s a good bit closer to home and still a big enough place to have a good night.
So we hit a bar, grab some food and start drinking our bottle of whiskey. For some reason they let us bring our own alcohol into the bar and drink away, something I don’t really understand. After polishing off said bottle of whiskey and some spicy food we head to the adjoining venue to drink some more and maybe dance. This place has a band on stage when we get there and are using Oxegen stage style speakers in a room far too small for this kind of set up (they love their giant sound systems over here). Now as I said there was a band there when we arrived but they were soon joined by a few different singers and some girls in lingerie dancing on stage. A good night’s entertainment im sure you’ll agree! We polish off another bottle of whiskey and hit the road. We got home in the wee hours after a long week.
Pics: 1) Adjaan Chaweewan talking at one of the schools
2) Kids playing the penny cup game
3) Some teachers at one of the schools
4) Very tired and drunk Teerata and Reya
Hey Al, great to see you're still getting along well with the teaching. I might be heading to Thailand from the 27th Feb. - 1st Mar., still not sure but if i am I'll let you know.
ReplyDeleteTake care.