Thanksgiving in Trang

Friday, November 28th

Happy Thanksgiving!

Even though the lessons covering Thanksgiving and the festivities of Turkey Day continue in the classroom, our Thanksgiving is officially over with no surprises. Classes went as usual, it rained like every other day this week, and we met Daniel, the only other American teacher at our school, at a hotel to eat our Thanksgiving feast and give thanks together. Daniel and Pat shared a cheeseburger and fillet mignon while I enjoyed a cheeseburger to myself followed by an ice cream sundae. We could not have found a more American meal in Trang and it was probably our most expensive meal costing around $7 per person. The fillet and burger were not too bad, but the meat had a different consistency and the cheese was a bit funky. (For the most part cheese is a very rare occurance in Thailand.) Sadly our Thanksgiving felt like any other rainy, school day in Trang with the exception of being able to talk to our extended families on video chat and use the holiday as an excuse for a lesson plan.

Lesson plans always seem like a great idea at first, but after teaching the lesson 10 times you are over the initial excitement of your creativity. In honor of Thanksgiving, I chose to play several rounds of Hangman covering the appropriate vocabulary: Thanksgiving, Holiday, Thursday, Feast, Turkey and Pumpkin Pie. As each word was discovered, I explained its importance and relationship to Thanksgiving. We quickly reviewed the basics of Thanksgiving avoiding the Pilgrims and Indians and the mass slaughter that that involves, and then I passed out a wordsearch with Thanksgiving words. Wordsearches work miracles!!!!! My worst classes were nearly silent hovering over their papers. Even after the bell sounded (i.e. the air raid drill), they continued to sit in their seats trying to finish the wordsearch!!! Thai students can be very maticulous about their work. Most of the students carry around rulers and whiteout. A handful of students actually used their rulers to make straight lines on their wordsearches!! And any paper turned in is usually covered with whiteout and freshly written answers over the whiteout.

So I thought the Thanksgiving lesson plan was excellent. Lots of games but they are still learning some vocabulary and about a cultural holiday. The students ate it up, but teaching it 10 times is a bit much. That is like 60 rounds of Hangman!! The first and second period you teach a lesson it is like practice, you figure out what works and what doesn't. By the third period, you have ironed out any problems that there may have been. By the fifth period, you are bored with the lesson and over your initial creativity. By the eighth and ninth period who are just wishing that your classes do not show up because you are so over the lesson and then you still have the tenth period. This all spans a three-day period of teaching. Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday are lesson 1 of the week and Wednesday, Thursday, Friday are lesson 2. So you are probably asking, "Well Keats, why don't you just change up the lesson for each class?" Well that would be fun to come up with 10 different lessons and also the kids are all taking the same mid-term and final exams so I have to teach them all the same things. Hmmm...interesting.

As for the weather here in Trang...it is rainy and has been rainy for maybe two weeks. It is not a constant downpour, but when it stops raining it is still overcast and dark. It is always a pleasure to wake up to the sound of rain and remember that Popeye the motorbike is taking us to school. It is not really that hot. Fairly comfortable especially with a breeze, but no sun. The last time I remember seeing the sun was when we were at the beach in Krabi. I may have seen it since then but the rain has drowned that out. We picked up our laundry yesterday which we had dropped off Tuesday only to find that all of it was all still damp. So now our one room house looks like a shanty town with laundry hanging all over the place and smells like mildewy clothes. Until the rain stops, there is not much hope for dry clothes. Pat told me this morning that the weather forecast says that it is going to rain for the next 3 weeks!! Hmmm...interesting.

There is not too much planned for the weekend as we are working an English camp all day Saturday. If we are lucky, maybe Sunday will be a nice day and a bit relaxing. Next weekend is a three-day weekend and we are heading to Phuket!!