Success

First week of living in Bangkok=success! I am getting used to the idea of seeing such crazy and bizarre things that I am pretty sure nothing will phase me at the end of these two years of living here! I have not had the chance to take too many pictures yet, but eventually I will and will post them on here.



Dinner

I can already tell school is going to be very challenging, but I can honestly say I am very much looking forward to it. I am considered the “home room” teacher for grade 7, so this grade will be my focus. I will be teaching the grade 7s science, math, language arts and social studies. I will also be teaching math and language arts to the grade 8s. Physical Education will be a split class with both grade 7 and 8. I am definitely not thrilled about teaching Phys.Ed because it is an hour long outdoor class in the crazy heat! I am sure I will get used to the heat pretty fast though (that’s what they all say anyways). In the afternoons I will be teaching some “options” courses where students will be given many options as to which classes they want to take. For these classes I will be teaching Readers Theatre (which is where students will act out plays while reading from a script), and Digital Photography. Since the options classes have never been taught in the past, I was able to pick what I wanted to teach. The classes do follow a curriculum like all the other classes, but they are meant to be a lot more fun and less academic based.

Tomorrow morning is Student Orientation, where the parents and students are introduced to the entire staff. Apparently us teachers just have to sit there and smile while everyone stares at us during the dragged out introductions. Once orientation is done, we get a week off and start the first day of school on September 5^th. During this week off I will be spending many hours in my classroom planning the year.

Today a group of us (Andy and I, the grade 2 teacher with her husband and daughter, and another teacher), all went to a huge weekend market. We decided to be brave and take the public transit for the first time. We took a taxi and 2 sky trains to get to the place. We were all surprised at how easy the sky train was to take. All of the signs are in English, so there were no language barriers to deal with. The sky trains themselves looked quite new, and were equipped with air conditioners and TVs. They were also very clean. It cost us 40 Baht to get there on the sky train, which is just about $1.30 Canadian.

Getting change to buy tickets

The gang catching the sky train

The market takes up 35 acres of land. It has everything you could possibly imagine. For the 3 hours we were there we only saw a small portion of it. There is stall after stall of Thai goods. You could buy everything from silver cutlery to live animals. My goal for the day was to buy some dress clothes to wear to school (where the dress code for teachers is very formal…and highly enforced). I ended up finding some great skirts for about $3.90 each. Not too bad for work clothes. I also bought some other small things. It was a great place, definitely on our list of places to take guests who come visit!



Mom, Dad & Sibblings: this is the Thai version of your beloved taco-in-a-bag.
Chicken satay in peanut sauce with cucumbers, onions, and hot peppers. So delicious.

It is about 7:00 in the evening right now, and I am looking outside our office window. It has been dark for probably about an hour or more already. There are lots of bats that fly between the apartment buildings. Very cool to watch…from the inside. The weather has been beautiful during the days, reaching in the 30s for sure. Extremely humid though. For the past 4 nights it has been thundering, lightning and raining like crazy. Andy and I both love rainstorms, so we find it very nice and cozy in our apartment. I am going to make a cup of tea and read a book. What a great day.