Tuesday, February 13, 2007

How do you say "whoops" in Thai?

Hello folks,
Well, if you're in need of a laugh, then please continue to read about Ajaan Ryan's most recent adventure here at Bunyawat Witthayalai School in Lampang. I made a small little blunder today which caused me a little embarrassment and I thought that I would share that with the world and make it public knowledge - that'll be my public service for the day. At school, we are gearing up for the end of the semester. In less than three weeks we will be finished with the second semester and finals are looming on the horizon. For the M6 students (12th grade), this is also a time for exit tests and other tests which impact their future. Those tests began this week. So in a effort to keep the noise levels down and since the M1 students share many of the same buildings, the school cancelled all of the M1 classes on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. As a M1 teacher, I was impacted by that decision and when I first heard the news I was disappointed because that meant I wasn't able to do several neat things to wrap up the end of the year, but having now taught here for a while, I knew to expect these sorts of things and moved on. I came to school today with the knowledge that out of my normal four hours of teaching, I would only teach for one hour. I sat in the office and worked diligently (well, I sort of worked, but also chatted online and read the news) and did other productive tasks until my hour of class. Because of the altered schedule, my Tuesday took the shape of my Thursday where I don't have class until 1:30 in the afternoon. As I wasn't teaching and being a creature of habit, I ideally sat by in the office as the hours ticked by until 1:30 and off I would go to teach. I even mentioned my 1:30 start-time to several colleagues in the office. At 12:40 or so I walked downstairs to head to lunch and was greeted at the bottom of the stairs by several of my M2 students (those student I was to have in class later that day). The first thing out of their mouth "You forgot to come to class!". And I was shocked. I didn't forget to come to class, I told them. I have class with you at 1:30 - I have my lesson all prepared and ready to go. As I told them, they continued to insist that I had in fact missed class. As I began to put the pieces together, it suddenly clicked - I had forgotten to go to class. On Tuesdays, I teach at 11:50 not 1:30 as I had thought and had thus missed class. It was not Thursday, but Tuesday, and Ajaan Ryan was a delinquent teacher. I struggled to save face (something one does when in Thailand) but to no avail and the students (and rightfully so) gave me a hard time. I don't expect to hear the end of it for a long time. And with that, they headed off to their next class (which hopefully has a teacher who doesn't forget about class) and I continued on to lunch as per usual, only with my cheeks a bit more red than normal. And so it was on February 13, 2007 that Ajaan Ryan did not show up for class and asked himself, "How do you say 'whoops' in Thai?"
RM

1 comment:

  1. Anonymous11:08 PM

    My students always hope that I will miss class some day and I have had nightmares about missing classes but you have beaten me to this! It must be difficult to not have continuous classes and have a different schedule every day. Do you have a different classroom for each class or group of students?

    Is it whoops or oops??

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