All my free time in school to do lesson planning was taken up rewriting exams. After I was told I needed 40 questions per exam instead of 20 I turned in my exams. Then I was told I needed to re-format my directions and put a specific cover sheet on it. I can’t have multiple choice A, B, C, D and E. That’s too hard. So I have to get rid of all the E’s. Then I turn in my exams again. Now I’m told I need to have an objective for each section of the exam. But, if I have more than 3 objectives, it will make more work for me later when I have to do end of the semester reporting on my semester’s objectives. So, why wasn’t all of this conveyed to me at the beginning of the semester instead of the middle? I don’t think “Teach some English and get the hell out of Thailand” is an acceptable objective. And they wonder why I don’t want to stay another semester. I have now spent over 20 hours trying to write two 40 question exams. It’s Thursday evening and I haven’t done one lesson plan for next week. I really don’t understand how anything gets accomplished in this country.
The rest of my free time that wasn’t spent on exams was spent with students that want to come into my office and speak English with me. Even though it makes it harder for me to get lesson planning done, that’s so important that I can’t say no. Those are the students that will learn the most because they want to learn. I can’t damage that desire to learn. The students I was helping tutor to get ready for the English competition did ok in the competition. They didn’t do great, but they were excited to come back Wednesday and tell me all about it. They also questioned why I wasn’t there with them. Good question. Don’t you think the native speaker should be the one at the competition with them? I just told them that I had to teach classes. It was great to see that they wanted to come tell me about it. One of them loves talking to me and spent a whole hour asking me questions. He also asked if he could Line or Facebook me to practice English, even after I have left.
Last week, one day, everyone wore yellow again and no one told me ahead of time. No one explained why, after the fact. So, all I know is something happened and everyone wore yellow to memorialize it. But, I’m getting use to having no idea what is going on. I spend quite a bit of time every day standing around having no idea what’s happening or what I should be doing.
I’m still at a loss for what to teach. The information I think should be easy is not and stuff I think they should know, they don’t. I have some lessons where they know what I’m teaching and I feel like I wasted all this time preparing for it and teaching it. This week I taught what to say at the doctor’s and it was so difficult for them. I taught giving directions a couple weeks ago and it was almost a total fail in every class. Don’t get lost in Thailand, no one will be able to give you accurate directions. However, if you ask for directions in Thailand, they will probably take you there personally. Then I had one class that was introducing yourself and others. This was part of the curriculum given to me for one of the older classes. I thought, how do they not know this already? This is too easy and boring. They were laughing and cracking up the whole class. My most boring class was a hit. Then for the class one younger than that I’m supposed to teach Illegal Imports. So the older kids get “Hi this is my friend Bob” and the younger kids get “You can’t take products made from endangered animals into another country”. wtf Thailand?
Before one of my classes, I was standing in the hall and watched a small bird take down another bird in flight, pin it to the floor and kill it. Then after class, I checked, yes, the bird was dead. Then after the next class, I came out to find the killer bird eating the dead bird. I know that this is all just part of life – life, death, change, circle of life, etc. But, I just can’t get it out of my head – bird cannibalism. Why is ok when we eat meat or a lion kills for it’s food, but it’s disturbing when it’s bird cannibalism?
Speaking of food….. I discovered a delightful dessert. It’s called Roti Sai Mai. Tip gave me some a few weeks ago. I found it at the market this week and bought it. It’s a thin sweet crepe, so thin you can almost see through it. Then you take this sweet stuff that looks like colored hair and put it on the crepe and roll it up. The hair stuff is kind of like cotton candy with the consistency of fiberglass insulation. Fascinating. And very delicious. And not dangerous to eat because there is no actual fiberglass in it. Now longans are in season. They are a clearish whitish fruit in a hard shell, kind of like lychee. They remind me of lychee in that they kind of taste like you can’t tell if they are going bad or not. I was given a bunch as a gift. I decided I won’t buy them in the future.
I’ve been investigating further into what position I’m in when I wake up in the morning. I stretch out and see if it changes my desire to get up in the morning. I find that I’m not as curled up as I use to be in years past. Some mornings stretching out helps. Some mornings it doesn’t. I’m half asleep and half awake from 5:30 when the birds start squawking to 6:40 when my alarm goes off. I thought, maybe it would be more useful to just get up and start my day earlier than to toss and turn, not quite awake and not quite asleep. I got up around 6:00 two days and did some of my conscious movement in the morning instead of after school. The other mornings, I didn’t manage to get up early. Baby steps….
The sale of my house is actually moving forward. I received the start of contract paperwork last night and have been trying to work out moving my furniture out. Fingers crossed that this goes smoothly. It should close in August.
I’ve been investigating how I always have a long to-do-list that never seems to get any shorter. I’ve also been investigating living in the future instead of now. And, as usual, as I read AH Almass, he’s talking about seeing reality instead of the physical world we think is reality. All fabulous stuff that’s not new, but is starting to shift and change as how I see reality is shifting and changing. So, all that needs to be a blog of it’s own. Hopefully, I can put some of it to words tomorrow night. This type of spiritual work is very difficult to put into words. And as I write this, I find my brain going all fuzzy because enough words have already been used for the day.
(c) All rights reserved Kimberly Fiore
Rraine Drops 