Pictures from Phrae (including the parade!)

Hello!
I have decided to post some pictures so here they are. First, here are some of the pictures from my trip to Phrae. These two pictures are pictures from the parade. The one below is the beginning of the parade and the one to the left it the end of the parade. People walked by for more than 45 minutes all dressed in their yellow or blue shirts. It was quite the spectacle.



The next set of pictures are also from Phrae but these are of the town, specifically several of the Buddhist temples that I came across in my wanders around the city. As you can tell, this is an absolutly beautiful city.


























The next set of pictures are from a side trip from Phrae to Prae Mueang Pi (Ghost Village in the Forest). It is a park of sorts that consists of these formations made from the wind and water eroding the soil and leaving behing these shapes.

Change in Perspective

I recently wrote an email to several friends and family and mentioned to them that I have recently updated by Office software. In doing do so I stumbled upon a realization that I thought I would share. So here is the snippet from that email: "First things first, I just updated to Office 2003 and am realizing that everything is blue and am getting used to that. It looks so fancy and modern compared to my Office XP and it is this type of change that is scary and daunting. Moving to a foreign country and all that goes with that is good change and easily conquered. Having to change how your word processing and email programs looks -– insurmountable. I almost removed them this afternoon when I thought I couldn'’t bear it any more. It'’s just so BLUE! But slowly and surly I am getting used to it and will soon grow to love them as much as the other. I have to let go and embrace the changes. Sure as hell puts things into perspective."

The has been a lot going on recently and I haven't updated the blog in a while so I thought that I would add a few comments about the recent happenings. One big thing that happened was I reached the 1 year anniversary of my first arrival in Thailand. It is hard to think that one year ago I was arriving in Thailand for the first time. It is hard to think that a whole year has gone by since then; it doesn'’t seem that long ago. But then again, so much has happened since then that I canno’t believe that all has happened in just one year. It has been neat because it has stirred up memories of my first few days in Thailand arriving from China, getting picked up, meeting my host family, learning a new language and a new city etc. I did head to Chiang Mai this weekend and was able to meet a few of the new students. I had met the students from DU in the spring (and haven't seen them yet), but was able to meet a few students from Kalamazoo. It was really interesting to watch the and see them trying to learn Thai, getting over jet lag and getting to know their host families. It is an interesting position to be in - to be able to see someone else going through what you went through.

As for school, teaching has become easier. I'm not sure if that is a good thing or not, but I'’m creating my lessons in less time and am not as stressed out. I've become more comfortable in class and more comfortable understanding the mood of the class and determining if they are paying attention and on task or are uninterested and bored. I'’m still trying to increase their engagement during class and not lecture as much. But it'’s difficult given the subject material and resource constraints. I find that the later is much more difficult to overcome than any other obstacle. I simply do not have access to materials that would make learning much more interactive. I have noticed a bit of technological dependence on my part; I need things that are available in the US and are technological.

I'm starting to bridge the cultural divide and am very happy to be doing so. I do have thoughts about how I'm changing their culture to suit my needs and expectations and am not sure if that is true or how much credence I should put into those thoughts, but nonetheless they are there. In a sense, I'’m changing the perception of educators.

I gave a test in my M2 class recently and as of late I'’m really enjoying this class (they are the students I have struggled with). We seem to have reached an understanding of sorts and we can read each other better now. I know when they are getting tired and need a break and they can sense when I have stuff to cover or when I have a more relaxed lesson. They are also starting to ask questions in class which is good and I'’m sure that is helping them understand better. I held a review on Sunday at the school in the afternoon if students had questions and about 15 showed up. It was neat to see them outside the class when we could be more friendly. But we did review and go over material and I really enjoyed that. It was very relaxed - they did their own thing and asked questions if they had them. I then went home and was running some errands and ran into a group of them going to study and said they were struggling and asked me to come and help them study a bit more, so I did and enjoyed that. We just went to a little coffee shop and reviewed and what not.

As my relationship with my M2 students gets better, my M3 students are now becoming more challenging. We have been working on a circuit lab and they have been very unfocused. Maybe it's the weather (it has been rainy and damp) or maybe it's me or them, either way they are now becoming my challenging class.

I have a little over a month before the end of the semester before I need to start reviewing so time is flying.

Bunyawat's Website

Hey all,
Well, they finally updated the website for the English Program here and I thought you might want to check it out. It's got some great pictures of the students and the school and tells a bit more about the program.

So if you have a second, check it out http://www.bwc.ac.th/ep/intro.html

RM

It's the Rainy Season!!!

It's been the rainy season ever since I arrived and there has been quite a bit of rain (especially compared to what I'm used to in Colorado) but it really hasn't interfered much with my life. Meaning, when it rains, I'm at school or it's later at night. I've been caught in the rain once, but I was coming home and just enjoyed walking in the rain. Well, this morning my luck ran out. I woke up and it was dreary and raining. It wasn't raining really hard; I would be wet when I got to school, but would dry quickly. I jumped into the shower and while I was showing the sound of rain pounding the roof got louder and louder. After my shower, I looked out the window and sure enough it was pouring. It was coming down in sheets. And I had to get to school and be presentable in my shirt and tie. People have told me about non-event feedback, where until something bad happens you continue to act as you have. Well, my luck with rain had not yet compelled me to buy a rain poncho, so here I was, ready to go to school and I had no protection from the rain. So what did I do you ask? I hopped on my motorcycle with my jacket on and road as fast as I could to school. One problem though - on the way to school there is a stop light and it was red. As I slowed down to a stop I put my foot on the ground to stabilize the bike and my foot went ankle deep into the water flowing down the street. By the time I got to school (only a 2-3 minute bike ride from my apartment) I was drenched. Luckily, I didn't have class until the afternoon and dried off by then but spent to morning soaking wet and soggy sitting at my desk. What fun!

Farang On Parade!!!

The title of this post is quite accurate as I do believe I was on parade this weekend. It's not what you might think and there is quite a story behind this little adventure. It all started on Thursday of last week. Thursday was a hellish day and for whatever reason, the day seemed to last forever. My head was in a fog and I was beat. I made it home (finally) and watched a movie, preparing for the weekend. But sure enough Friday came and with a rude awakening, I, while mentally prepared for a weekend had to go to school. Friday was long and tiresome as well. Fortunately Friday afternoon came and I left. After a run and a bite of dinner I was feeling refreshed and settled in for a very slow night of reading, writing and movies. Waking up in the morning, I was ready for the day and excited for my second guitar lesson. A quick phone call home and an even quicker shower and I headed off to the post office to drop off some letters. This is another story, which, of course I'll tell now. I've been trying to mail letters home for about 2 weeks now, but have gone to the post office five minutes after closing twice! I managed to do that again on Saturday, but it wasn't my fault. The post office had different hours since it was the Queen's Birthday weekend. Anyway, I made it to my guitar lesson and started playing. I'm learning classical guitar so we are starting with the basics and will work our way up to chords. I'm enjoying that and it's all in Thai, so it's helping with my language skills as well. Finally, more to the point, I go to the bus station (it'll all make sense soon) and I buy a bus ticket to Phrae. Phrae is about 2 hours from Lampang and is an absolutely beautiful city. I really had no idea what I was going to do there, but I had a long weekend (we had Monday off in honor of the Queen's Birthday) and had no plans. So, I quickly ran home, threw a few things in a bag and headed to catch my bus. With only moments to spare I climbed aboard and my tardiness was rewarded with a stellar position standing in the aisle. The ride was uneventful. Arriving in Phrae, I meander through town trying to find a place to stay. And do, at the Paradorn Hotel - their main advertisement was "absolutely clean" so I thought I'd check them out. Settled in, I headed out. Deciding to ditch the guide book for a good old fashioned wandering I headed towards the old city. Phrae, like many cities, is divided into an old and new city. The older city in this case is about 700 years old and was once surrounded by earthen walls. Those wall, or their remnants, still stand circling the city. Also seeing as Phrae was once the teak capital of Thailand (before the national logging ban on teak in 1989), there are many old and beautiful teak houses scattered through the old city. A walk around the inside of the wall is full of surprises as old houses, forests, beautiful temples and stupas are found scattered around mixed with the more modern houses, shops and, of course, motorcycle repair shops. I was rewarded with numerous views of temples standing out above the houses with their golden-topped stupas shining in the late afternoon sun. It was amazing. I love this town. I made my way back toward the center of the town and encountered a mass of humanity all dressed in yellow and blue (yellow being the color of the King and blue the color of the Queen). They were assembling to march to the stadium for the Mother's Day Parade (the Queen's Birthday is also Mother's Day). So, I found myself a nice spot along side the road and prepared to watch the Parade. The parade started and I found myself wondering why it seemed, I was the only one watching the parade. An hour later, after the whole town walked by, I realized that the whole town was the parade. There were really three parts to the parade; the school marching bands, the pictures of the King and Queen and people. The parade started slowly and as people walked by they would look my direction, but since the parade was just beginning there were still stragglers showing up and walking by. As the parade went on, more and more eyes would shift my way as the people walked on by. Most would simply curiously stare at me, occasionally the girls would wave or say "hello". In my desire to be friendly, I waved and said "hello" back. And that elicited squeals and giggles like you wouldn't imagine. From that point on, all the girls would look my way and any response on my part would send a giggle through the parade complete with squeals. At first it was entertaining and flattering, but as the parade went on (and it went on for about 45 minutes) it got old and I was about ready to leave. I do believe everyone in Phrae walked past me and every girl between the age of 12 and 32 looked and giggled. It was an experience needless to say. I was going to go to the stadium to see what happened there, but had about enough of the giggling and went to dinner. As I was walking around afterwards, the town was empty. There were very few people on the street and it was difficult to find a restaurant to eat dinner at. But I found one, ate and called it a night after a very interesting day. There is more to tell, but I will say farewell for now. Until next time...

The beauty of Science!

I've been doing a few experiments/demonstrations with my classes and finally remembered to take the camera in and take a few pictures. Here we have been learning about separating mixtures and this is the experiment we did about magnetic separation. Ask any of my students and they will tell you that magnetic separation is useful when one of the substances is magnetic and the other is not. Oh yeah, we've got some learning going on.

Weekend Adventures

Okay, I've definitely slowed down the number of blog post, but fear not, they are going to continue. I mentioned that a few weeks ago I met a women at the gym and she said she was going to take a friend and I to her fruit orchard outside of Lampang. Well, she did indeed do that. I met them both at 1:30 last Sunday and we began the 20 minute drive to Mae Tha. As promised, we spent about an hour picking lamyai (a small brown fruit with a white fleshy center; you peel away the brown outside skin and eat). If you look closely you can see the fruit on the trees. I came home with so many that I was taking them to school and giving them to my students to get rid of them. Here are a few pictures from that adventure. The older woman, Teal, is the one who took us and we are accompanied by her son, JoJo. My friend's name is Laura and she teaches English at Bunyawat in the English department. Do note the incredible height differences between me , Teal and her son. I've never felt like a giant...until then.

Pictures with people

Hello!

After posting several pictures, I was asked to include pictures with people in them as opposed to just buildings. I'm here to give you what you want and so, with out further adue, pictures with people. The first picture is a picture of my M1 class (the 7th grade students). I was a mean guy and gave them a test bright and early on a Monday morning, but they were able to handle it. I have started grading, but am hopeful. The second picture was taken right after the test was finished. I'm assuming by the smiles they had forgiven me for all the cruelty I put them through during the test. And as you can see, they are about the cutest students ever. Thai's (and other Asian's) love giving the peace sign, so most of us are sporting it in the picture. In the third you can see what I was teaching today on the board behind me. They are learning the ins and outs of how to separate mixtures. Thrilling, I know. Yeah, so school is going well. Enjoy the pictures. More updates to come.