You're a teacher, Maggie!

My last two weeks of training had me practice teaching at an elementary school.  I team-taught with Cody Monday, Tuesday and Friday and with Lizzy the other two days of the week.  My classes ranged from P1 to P6 our equivalent of grades 1-4, which means my students were between the ages of 6-11.  For those of you out there who know me a bit, you would know that I’m not the biggest fan of kids.  As for why I would pay to travel halfway around the world to teach them, I’m still not sure, but it wasn’t all that bad.  Granted, had I not had a Thai teacher in the room with me to keep the students under some semblance of control and to deliver instructions when the English was too far over their head, it would have been a complete disaster.

   

Cody drawing for the kids during lunch

The school I taught at was in a town about 40 minutes south of Pattaya so not only did I teach the most out of everyone in my program, I also had one of the longest commutes.  For example, one of the other trainees taught at a church under two blocks from where we lived and had class.  Because of the commute, I typically had less than half an hour after I got back to eat, change, and prep for class.  For the next two hours, we had Thai language and culture class.  While we barely made a dent in our Thai handbook (which was already pretty short to begin with), I did learn enough to get by.  The most important things that I learned were the numbers, how to order a few dishes at a restaurant and very basic directions/instructions.

The final two hours of class were dedicated to lesson planning.  While these classes are supposed to be mandatory, after just a couple days our instructors realized it was useless trying to get us to stay the whole two hours and after a few more days for us to come altogether.  Thankfully, this left us with some actual time to get out, eat a real meal and a chance to see more of the city unlike while we were in Phnom Pehn.

Cool cats

Most of my evenings were spent with Blake, Gordan and Lizzy at our favorite hookah bar just off of Walking St. hanging out and watching Gordan haggle with all the hawkers who passed by.  To get an idea of Pattaya you should know that it is described as a mix of Vegas, Atlantic City, Miami and other glitzy cities….only trashier, in my opinion and Walking St. is the epicenter of it all.  As you walk down this street, not only are you blinded by all the bright neon lights, you are affronted with one person after another pushing their bars’ ping-pong and sex shows at you.  If that’s not your thing, you can instead spend your time people watching.  We liked to play a little game involving a point system – you got one point every time you saw a lady boy, two if they were with a client.  As you might guess, we racked up quite a few points each stroll down the street.

Lemurs!

One good thing about the street is that we found some ladies holding little lemurs/slow lorises that we got to hold!  They were so cute and cuddly and wearing tiny little knit dresses.

Anyway, after two weeks of teaching in the morning and just hanging out at night, we were finally ready to “graduate” our program.  I had not fully completed one of the activities and I’m sure our instructor could tell, but I’m pretty sure they were both itching to be done with us, so the let it fly and gave me my certificate. 

While some of the group took off for Bangkok and job interviews, a few of us hung back for the rest of the weekend to gather our bearings before taking off to find a job.  This small break allowed us to witness our first flood.  I woke up Sunday morning and was about to gather the others to hunt for some lunch when I looked out the window and saw the street had turned to a river!  We were pretty hungry so we did the logical thing…threw on shorts, sandals and rain ponchos and headed out into the water.  We splashed around in knee-deep water and walked all the way down to the now washed-away beach.  It was all fun until we saw people catching catfish in the street and we decided to get the heck out of there and head back to dry land.  Monday, we decided that getting a real job could wait and headed off for a couple days of R&R in Phuket!

Just going for a swim in the street,  NBD

Catching catfish on the boardwalk? No thanks.