[A Prayer on Fire Water - Chiang Mai, North Thailand]

Chiang Mai was full of coloured lights, fire works and lanterns for this Loi Kratong Festival. On the last 2 days of the festival people came to the river and (probably over a prayer or wish) float a small lit candle (Loi Kratong) down the river, similar to what the Indians do on the Ganges River in Varanasi.

Thankfully however, this Thai Loi kratong is mostly made of organic materials such as hard baked bread, banana leaves, clay etc.

The lanterns and fireworks are ofcourse not. Many cities in Thailand ban these due to fire hazards but Chiang Mai is well known to celebrate it in full force. A night sky full of lanterns is like viewing a cosmos full of new stars...

Personally, fireworks get rather tedious after 30min of ear blasting and they surely aren't funny while sleeping at 3am during a working week.

Lanterns in Trees- a fire hazard but also considered to bring bad luck!

Loi Kratongs floating down river

>>Top.. ..Home
Give your response in my Guest Book.

[Short Trip 2 Pai - North Thailand]

Short get away for 3 nights. The ride to and from Pai, up and over the mountains, was far more interesting than actually being in Pai. Definitely loved dropping into the cafes along the way. I found being alone in Pai rather boring now that I am rather use to hanging out with friends in Chiang Mai.

Having said that I did visit a spiritual teacher, Garuda www.isaacdavidgaruda.com who I had meet on my previous trips here. I greatly appreciate his gentle reminders.

Next week semester 2 starts...

>>Top.. ..Home
Give your response in my Guest Book.

[Creativity, Role Plays and Props]

Just before the end of semester exams students had to present a role play in English in front of class. Scores are also given to props and creativity, encouraging students to have fun with the role plays. One group in particular took the props to a whole new level.

The group (3 boys) started out by talking about a new product they wanted to sell to the market; guitars. The leader said, “hello, there is something in the guitar” and pulls out a live mouse.

To understand the context better, this is a Thursday morning 8am class, most students and teacher alike are still abit sleepy.

Now the girls in the class wake up with screams, especially those in the front row..

The role play goes on about how they want to make more guitars. The leader then says “Oh, there is something in my guitar bag”.

Remember the class is very awake now.

He pulls out a live snake! Girls are literally screaming and a few run to the back of the class room :-) Then the crazy student aggravates the snake by waving his hand in front of the snake and with in a minute the snake bites him on the hand and draws blood. This is part of the role play where they have to see a doctor. A very convincing reason.

Offcourse the class is hysterical as is the teacher. Eventually the class calms down and the role play goes on. And because they could, the cheeky boys later on in the play threw a fake snake into the crowd- even I flinched back when I saw it coming my way! Maybe their English wasn’t the best but they certainly engaged and captivated the audience. Obviously they got full marks plus for props.

(Turns out the student in question with the pets studies biology and uses the mice to feed his many water snakes. Now that’s what I call self-education)
















Actually this class was really creative. Another funny role play was when a chubby girl gets dumped by a cameo appearance of another student. That is, the student wasn’t on my score list to present – he spoke for about 1 minute, told her she was too fat and that it was over. The rest of the role play was about how she suffers bulimia and has to go to a doctor to recover.

About 3 presentations later the boy who did the cameo appearance is now doing his role play. He is in Korea with his gay lover. (Thai students love to play with different sexual preferences.) At the end of this romantic role play in Korea the chubby chick that was dumped earlier, comes on all hysterical and finds her ex-boyfriend with a new lover. “Now I know why you left me, you have a gay lover!” and then promptly produces a toy gun and shoots the couple dead. Bloody brilliant it was.


Check out these Videos



Chiang Mai University
English Subject 101
(Semester 1, 2010
but not my class)

Funny & Insightful look into Education

Now its end of semester and once all this marking and admin work is over I get a few weeks rest.



Snap Shots from Class













8am starts are tough...

Thais know how to be cute

Smile..we have a listening test now

He is so natural in Drag!

>>Top.. ..Home
Give your response in my Guest Book.

[Mid Term Break]

Finished the first 8 weeks of teaching in the university. And I am a bit run down. Its still surprises me just how much extra work there is to teaching on top of the actual lessons; besides lesson preparations there is research, photocopying (and how that can take so much time), printing, creating/editing spreadsheets, discussions with teachers and students, marking papers & homework and so on. Not having worked for awhile, working in a new profession, working in a foreign country, not speaking the local language (much) and classes at 8am have added to the difficulties.

The pay is little but I love my job, mostly. Offcourse like any large organisation there are complaints about it- like- why does it take more than 3 weeks to get the CD player in my class room to work? But I truly love working with the students.

Class sizes up to 38 students have really challenged me in class room management. I have had to experiment with different ways in presenting lessons in order to engage so many students and keep them focused and interested at the task at hand. But monitoring individual student speaking abilities and progress is still a daunting task. I felt I have surely grown as a teacher in the last weeks.

One thing I realise more clearly is that I pretty much hate teaching in the standard teaching model. That is, teacher speaks, students do their work and listen; students sometimes ask questions if they don’t understand. Otherwise, teacher speaks, students listen.

I am very much a facilitator- that is- the students need to interact and teach themselves as well as the class through my guidance. And especially in English- it is after all a practical subject that requires student participation.

And this is a bug bear all Western teachers face here. Traditional Thai education is strictly the old teachers model. Ask the class a simple question like “who likes football, raise your hand” and I would be lucky to get one hand up out of 38. They are just not experienced with interactive education. Respect your teachers, don’t ask questions.

So I am getting them up out of their chairs as often as possible to either speak directly in front of the class, to brainstorm with the class on the black board, to correct student grammar mistakes or to role play etc. They are getting use to me and I must say I was duly impressed with their recent oral presentations. No one read from a script, many brought in creative costumes and props and their presentation skills, even though it was in a foreign language for them; impressed me.

Now they are on exams so I have a short holiday. :-) I tell you I need them. I was on a downward spiral. Not sleeping well and going to work tired. Then going to bed tired, not sleeping well again and going to work the next day even more tired and so forth…

I am back at Uni on the 4th August when I have to watch them sit their English exams and then; the dreaded marking. Some 160 papers, not paid mine you! And soon thereafter classes resume. Actually the time just slips away, must mean I am enjoying it :-)

A classic first day of teaching...dont you just love the chalk board and the blank looks on their faces, oh how true that is! See-


Video

A Typical First Class in English

>>Top.. ..Home
Give your response in my Guest Book.

[A Run for Laos]

Due to some obscure visa ruling I was denied a second entry on my visa. So after making that long journey to the Thai/Burmese border, instead of getting another 2 months stay in Thailand I got a mere 2 weeks. Cant imagine what kind of job satisfaction that may bring to these border guards, who after all, have the power at their discretion to be flexible, reasonable or NOT.

Its generally true that Thailand is relaxed and organised such that general living is easy- except for visas... Grrrr.

So a premature visa run to Laos as my work permit papers with the Chiang Mai University were not ready. Some luck was on my side as my Japanese friend was coming to stay with me for 2 weeks and she was to happy to make the trip with me to Vientiane. Its such a small town of a capital city that it took my friend 3 days before she realised that she was in fact in THE capital city of Laos!

And today (Monday 31st May) was my very first day of teaching in the University. Most of my classes start at 8am..! When I was a uni student I almost never went to my early morning classes or if I did I slept through most of them :-)

So infact I was the very fist University class the first year students had. So you can imagine they were not exactly throwing paper aeroplanes and chalk around the room, being all nervous and shy and all. As one of our senior English teachers said " I love the smell of fear in the morning... "

Got such a good feeling working here. Once I get that one year work permit in my passport...




Snap Shots from Vientiane, Laos













National monument- Buddhist Stupa

From the French Era.

Mizue & Co.

Sun Set over Mekong River

>>Top.. ..Home
Give your response in my Guest Book.

[A Day in May]

One nice thing about staying in one place a little longer than a few weeks is that I actually I get to celebrate events, like my birthday yesterday, with people I know.

NaPaa runs a very local restaurant on my street and over time we have become good friends. She practically speaks no English so it is a fantastic way for me to improve my Thai, and slowly our conversations are evolving from "I like beer, you like beer too?" :-)

On the morning of my birthday we rode together up the mountain to a famous temple of Chiang Mai (as luck would have it I had no teaching on this day). Despite the heat on the plains we enjoyed the coolness of the mountain air over a cup of coffee. Whilst I was there I paid my respects to the Buddhas with flowers, incense and candles, a very Thai thing to do on your birthday. Can only be good for my karma right...

In the evening her restaurant was closed except for a small group of people I invited, it was almost like mum was taking care of us. Later we all went to a bar to continue drinking and we ended up in 'The seedy night club' of Chiang Mai, and even though I am sure I came home alone I did wake up with a keen headache.

It was such a wonderful way to spend my birthday, something I havent done in some years.














Temple on Mountain "Doi Suket"
















Dancers in the Temple

Offerings given to the Buddhas

From my Thai student learning Dutch.

>>Top.. ..Home
Give your response in my Guest Book.

[An Early Present]

Since the 22nd I am a happy owner of a Honda scooter, thanks largely to a financial contribution from my parents; for my upcoming birthday you see. :-)

Rode it yesterday for the first time to the mountains and it was a total pleasure, and for a 125cc it has more speed than my last 350cc bike in India (Enfield). And unlike the Enfield, the Honda is notoriously reliable, I tell ya, I got sick of visiting a mechanic every 2 weeks in India!

And on to more good news, I landed another job with in the Chiang Mai University, this time with the English Language Department. I will teach part time for them starting in June, for 2 full University semesters, so I will atleast have one academic year of regular work. Currently I am also working for a private language institute and the Chiang Mai University Language Institute, but the work is based only on short courses, so when there are no courses there is no work.

>>Top.. ..Home
Give your response in my Guest Book.