My first few weeks at Joseph (my new school in Thailand) have been amazing. It is night and day from Prabhassorn in Chonburi where I taught for the first 5 months in Thailand. Joseph is a very prominent and well-known school in Thailand, and, best of all, it is Catholic. This Catholic connection does nothing for me as far as religious affiliation, however, it DOES do a lot for me in terms of holidays!! I get a full week off for Christmas whereas teachers teaching in regular Thai schools obviously don't get any time off at all. SWEETTTT more time to travel!!
Other than the travel perks, Joseph does have a number of other great things to offer. The classrooms are air conditioned, the class sizes are 20-25 kids max, it is super clean and I get supplies/copies/paper and the kids even have books!! Honestly, its a whole new world. I could not be happier. Also, one of the hardest issues to deal with at PBS was having no one to talk to. It was really hard being the only foreigner at my old school and not being able to speak enough Thai to have real conversations with people. I basically just came, did my classes, and watched a lot of TV shows on my laptop during the day. Super boring and most of all a waste of time.
Now I am in an office with 9 other people who all teach either English or Chinese. The Chinese teachers are super nice and can speak decent to really good English depending on the person. CeeCee is a Chinese teacher who is 24 and is totally awesome. She is teaching Chinese at the school and studying English at Burapa University in Bang Saen so that she can get her degree in English and go back to China to teach English there. Dakota is from Texas and at 40something is the next closest person to my age. Chris is from Ghana and is great but keeps to himself a lot. Weigand is a German who is in his 60s and just started his second family in Thailand. He has a Thai wife and 2-year old daughter who he does not shut up about... at first it was cute and I tried to listen intently but honestly, will NOT shut up, ever, so sometimes I have to just ignore him. Paul is my co-teacher and is from Cambridge, England. He has terminal cancer and has already picked out a graveplot at the school. Yikes. He has been teaching at Joseph since the school opened 5 years ago. He is mostly pretty nice but makes a bunch of comments that I have to ignore... such as when he refers to Thai women as "little brown things." He is harmless though and is by far the smartest of them all so that much at least I respect him for. Even though it is good to finally be able to understand conversations during the day, most of what comes out of these ex-pats mouths are ignorable, or noteworthy for all of the wrong reasons. For example, Weigand asked on first day of school "What's a thesaurus?" It was my first day so I kept my mouth shut, but had I felt a little more comfortable to speak I probably would have responded with a nice "Well, it's a dinosaur, duh." Yeah... and he teaches English... obviously qualifications are a little loose in Thailand, which should be obvious anyway since I am here, but whatever. They may not be the brightest bunch, but nice, yes, entertaining, at times, and overall good people, yes.
Now, more importantly, my kids. I don't feel as close with them yet as I did with the kids in Chonburi but I am sure that will come with time. On the whole they are SOOO smart. Or at least have been prepared with English skills far exceeding those of the kids at PBS. I actually feel like a real teacher, like they can actually learn things from me, versus at the other school when I gave up teaching after the first few weeks and decided just to hang out with the kids every class. I also have younger students (4th, 5th, and 6th graders) so they are easier to control than the 7th, 8th, and 9th graders that I had before. On the whole they are awesome and I am really excited to see how they will grow and improve this semester.
I will keep updating this entry as new developments happen with the kids, or more likely, when the ex-pats make really stupid comments. hahahaha.
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