Back to school I go…
But it’s actually a good time! We met our instructor, a Dutch guy named Kors, on Sunday night at the bar next door. After many, many beers with him, we were expecting a pretty laid back, slow-paced education. Once Monday came around we found that it’ll be quite a bit more intensive than we may have thought, but it’s extremely imformative and after only two days in class I’m feeling much more confident about getting in front of a class. He did an entire lesson in Dutch to illustrate how our Thai students will feel when we start speaking nothing but English to them, and it was quite eye-opening.
I’ve been starting my day with a run around the only sidewalk in sight, which is about a 2K loop around a lagoon. Thais are up very early, and many of them are out running at 6am. I had a cheering squad this morning (a group of young runners that I passed) and then one of them tried to race me…I left him in the dust 🙂 It’s a great time of day, and I also saw my first monks this morning, walking barefoot down the road with their rice-collection bowls. It really is a whole different world, and I’m really enjoying it thus far.
We are training at a college in Phuket – every morning a song taew (a basically a noisy, smelly truck with a covered bed and two benches running down each side) comes to take us the 45 minutes to the school. On the first morning the entire Thai staff was there to take photo after photo, followed shortly by the cameras for the local TV station! We all dressed up as we were told, but luckily the rules (for training) are much more lax than that and today we were able to show up in pants and flip flops.
Yesterday they took us to a Tesco for lunch (a huge supermarket chain almost everywhere but the USA – it has everything from groceries to clothing to a mall to a food court…walmart-ish), which was good because I was able to find a pair of flipflops (men’s size LARGE), bad because the food choices were things like KFC, McDonalds, etc etc. We all decided against that and were able to find food near the school. None of these places have roman letters, much less english, so ordering was quite an ordeal. Using a phrasebook we thought that we ordered a few different dishes, but the woman cooking apparently took the safe route and served us all the same dish, fried rice with chicken and chilies. It was very tasty and cost less than a dollar, so no complaints from us! I think next time I’ll use the point-and-pray method…
I just got in from a post-school swim in the ocean with a few friends and am now about to head down the road in search of more cheap, delicious Thai food (surprisingly hard to find around here, as it’s a tourist area and there are many italian, mexican, french, etc places). There will be more photos soon…
Tags: Travel
allisonrae
May 6th, 2008 at 9:49 am
Allison,
You know your going to HAVE to try the KFC and McDonalds before you leave there just to see if its the same or worse than whats in Texas. I’m sure a Big Mac with fish sauce tastes great! Sounds like the learning and then teaching is going to be quite a challenge, but I know your competitive nature will help you succeed. I’m sure within a week you’ll be racing the monks and landing on the front page of the local newsapapers. Love ya,
Dad
May 7th, 2008 at 1:09 am
Allison,
The place looks beautiful – so NOT what I was imagining. I thought you’d be sleeping in huts not a gorgeous place with a swimming pool! I’m feeling much better about you being over there now.
Love your blog and I love all the details – feels like we’re there with you. Keep on posting!
Shari Cobb
May 8th, 2008 at 7:55 am
Al-
sounds like you’re having an awesome time so far! Miss ya!
Katy
May 17th, 2008 at 10:22 am
That’s a bus! 45 minutes must be a very long ride in it. You are having too much fun!