Time for another update! I've decided to switch to writing my blogs in English since a lot of the other volunteers and people I met during my journey so far are interested in reading it as well.

This blog covers the 2 weeks of teaching I have done. During the first week I shared a room with Ben from the States. Unfortunately he was staying for one week and in the other week I was alone. The accomodation, called the Twin House, however houses like 25 volunteers a week, excluding the volunteers that do the Siam Culture week (whom stay in the Brown House) or participate in programs that are hosted at a different location.

During the week, there are several things do. On Tuesday evening it is possible to go to a nearby nightmarket (not that exciting to be honest). Wednesday afternoon is free time in Singburi which is awesome since there is normal food (KFC, supermarket), a thai massage place which costs 120 Baht (3 euro) for an hour and a swimming pool. On Thursday evening it is Tesco time. Tesco is a big mall centre with several stores, restaurants and a big supermarket. There is the possibility to go out whenever you feel like, usually we have some small drinks during the week and we go into Singburi to a place called the Gipsy bar if there is a nice group that wants to go there.

After the Siam Culture week I started with the teaching program. Alina, a German girl, was also doing the teaching and luckily it wasn't her first week so I could follow her lead for the first few hours/days. We weren't informed about the school where we were going to teach nor about the time we would get picked up Monday morning.

We decided to be sure that we were ready to leave straight after breakfast, 8 o'clock. An, a Thai girl who studied to become an English teacher, joined us and was going to help the kids to understand what we were saying since their level of English was obviously not at the level to understand everything we would be explaining to them. The pickup arrived at 8:45 and at arrival, somewhere around 9:00, we were informed that our class started at 8:30. this continued throughout the week since we always started at 8:30 but picked up at around 9ish. I was used to it at the end of the week though, but it was kind of frustrating at the start.

Luckily the school had lesson plans on what we needed to teach to the children. The topic of the lesson, vocabulary and sentences were provided and the children had worksheets in where the study material was explained and excersises were to be found. We had four classes to teach differing in age from 8 to 13. The kids were all dressed up in the same uniforms and each day they wore a different one with other colors and patterns on it. It is normal that kids run around the class and therefore it was way more chaotic than the primary school I went to.

Obviously it was quite hard to learn all the names of the students by heart, especially since some of the Thai kids looked very similar. We made drawings of the class with the position where each kid was seated. This made it a lot easier and after a few lessons I almost knew every name of the kids.

In the first lesson of each grade we introduced ourselves with 'My name is Huib' and 'I am 24 years old'. The kids did the same thing and it was noticable that they learned this already. Luckily the kids already learned the alphabet and some basic vocabulary. At the beginning of each lesson, the entire class stood up and greeted us with 'Goodmorning / Goodafternoon teacher'.

We had 20 lessons a week, each grade for 5 hours. We got lunch at the school which was quite funny to experience. They served mostly rice with some side dishes and we sometimes got a desert as well. The food is not that great to be honest since there is a specific vegetable that has a very distinct flavour I don't like. Unfortunately, the vegetable is chopped in very small pieces and added to like every dish they serve (as well at school as at the house I stay during the voluntary work). It was very funny to see all the kids together at the 'lunchroom'. The kids got a big plate with several small sections in it for the rice, some soup and other dishes.

The topics were mostly about the human body since the main theme was body & health. We learned them the different parts of the body, differing in quantity and difficulity for each grade and how to ask each other what his/her favorite body part is. Other topics were sickness, sports, healthy living and similar subjects. It was always new vocabulary, a sentence to use it in and the question to which the sentence was the answer. An example:

New vocabulary: headache, cough, cold, soar throat and backache.
Sentence: He/she has a ... (one of the above)
Question: What's the matter with him/her?

We taught them the vocabulary by writing it on the board, pronouncing it several times and have the kids repeat it, translation in Thai, more pronounciation, the kids doing the exercises and doing the conversation with each kid afterwards. While the kids did the exercices, Alina and I went passed them to help them out, explain it again and check up their answers. When there were no more mistakes in the worksheet, we wrote 'Well done :)' at the bottom of the page.

The kids were very happy to see us and wanted to shake our hands all the time. When the lesson was over, the kids all stood up again and said 'Thank you teacher. See you tomorrow, goodbye' and wanted to shake hands again. Some of the kindergarden children were running away with a big smile when they saw us walking in their direction.

In the second week we were accompanied by another German girl, Dana. It was basically the same as the week before with the way of teaching and it all went very well. It was very satisfieing to see the progress the kids made in their level of English. This was especially noticeable in the pronouncation of the words as well in the ability to respond to and ask the questions we have taught them in the week before.

The most fun moment of the lesson was doing Hangman (galgje) with the kids. The new material was never enough to fill an entire lesson, more like 25 minutes if it was difficult. We repeated the things we taught them already by ways of Hangman. We usually did the question of a topic and when they guessed the sentence they needed to ask each other the question and respond to it. It was quite difficult for the kids and sometimes they weren't even able of guessing the sentence when they only needed to fill in one more letter. At the end of the two weeks, we asked some of the kids to do the Hangman for the others and some did a very good job at spelling the words on their own.

The last few days were fun and sad at the same time because I realised that I wasn't going to be teaching them anymore after the week. We ended with a small test in each grade on what we have taught them and a lot of Hangman/repitition.

After the teaching adventure I have an awesome festival called the Yi Peng Festival in Chiang Mai planned for next weekend. You can get an impression from the following link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=37cfai0-dhE

I will leave on Saturday at 22:00 and arrive around 8:00 on Sunday morning. The festival is at night and I will try to get some new clothes in the afternoon. We stay in a hotel with a pool so that will keep me nice and relaxed on Monday morning before we leave around 13:00 for the accomodation again for the 10 hour drive back.

Next week I will help in building a clay house in the construction program.