Exotic monotony

It's weird how quickly you can go from "OMG - this is insane, everything is so strange and exciting." to "YAWN". I got up relatively early, but just dorked around on the computer for the morning. Then I went in seek of 'breakfast' - picked up some kow pad gai (chicken fried rice) and then off to school at around 11am.


I really didn't need to be there that early - I didn't have class until 2pm, and I'd planned one of my lessons already. But I hung out and planned my other two lessons. The text books are really hit or miss. Sometimes there are really good activities that get the students to use the langugae, and use their own language. But sometimes it's all just listening & writing. And I know it's *my job* to find a way to make the activities more communicative... I'm just not quite there yet. So my lessons were okay - but not great. I've had so many different classes (most of my first two weeks were covering for other teachers' classes) and so many different students, that I can't remember what I did from one class to the next. I covered a class for V. last week, and yesterday she told me that they said I was really easy to understand. But I couldn't for the life of me picture *one* of those students or remember what we had studied. There's a card for each class where I jot down what we did... but that's it. I need to start taking notes about common errors or questions that I need to elaborate on, etc. I haven't sorted out a solid organizational plan yet.


I'm picking up an average of one new Thai word a day. I'm exposed to more than that... but I forget at least half of what I learn each day. Today was "nong laap" - sleep & "nong" - tired. Or something like that. Yes... I could benefit from some dedicated study... but I can't quite afford private lessons yet. There's a lot of life hanging on "when I get paid"... and I won't actually get a full paycheck until November 12 (I'll get two half payments though, on the 12th and 25th which will cover living expenses well enough).


So if you've managed to stay awake through this post - give yourself a gold star, because today's TAG is Code Watermelon.