School and Flower Festival

The SEA-Teacher project will be conducted in 4 weeks or 1 month. In the first week we observe the class, in the second week we assist our own mentor, in the third week we will practice to teach and in the last week is evaluation and conclusion. This week was my time for do observation. Before starting the observation, Arifah and I was being introduced in the flag ceremony. I gave few speech in front of the students. The school has flag ceremony everyday, sometimes we gathered in the school yard or sometimes we just stand in the corridor in front of the class. 

In Wednesday and Thursday, I followed teacher Herbert to teach in the class. I was not teaching but I help him to teach.Teacher Herbert has 18 classes in a week, so it has 2-4 classes each day. He teach grade 1 and 3. Grade in Thai called as Mathayomsuksa and they usually shorten it to Mathayom or Mo.  This is teacher Herbert schedule.

The topic for Mathayom 1 this week are preposition of time and season . While the topic for Mathayom 3 is second conditional sentence and health vocabulary. I was so nervous to enter the class, but it was okay because teacher Herbert introduced me in front of the class. I observe the class and found that the students have difficulties in English, especially listening and speaking. They hardly understand with what teacher Herbert said, even just with simple thing like “Where do you come from?.” They would understand if the teacher wrote it. They often lost about what the teacher said, so they decide to not pay attention. It is not all of them, there are also students who pay attention and give feedback. When they did not pay attention, they do something else like talking each other, doing other subject's assignment or even sleeping. They also did not open the book although they have it. This condition gives impact to their test score. Some of them did not pass the test and must take retest. Teacher Herbert prepare 2 retest as if they did not pass the first retest. The level of difficulties of the retest is decreased than the real test.  

Despite the problem, they are actually good students and eager to learn English. When they were motivated,  they will speak and give positive feedback. I think that they are just too shy to speak in English. They have different accent in English, so sometimes foreigner cannot understand by what they said. I always try to understand what they are trying to say, sometimes they don't want to repeat the words because I cannot catch their words even though they repeat it again. Therefore, they need to be pushed in speaking English.

In Friday, Mathayom 1 didn't have class because they were scouting, so I just came to the Mathayom 3 with the same topic. They did a lot of scout activities such as smelling something with covered eyes, crawling on the ground and handcrafting using dry leaves.

Smelling something with covered eyes

 Crawling on the ground

Handcrafting

In the weekend, Arifah and I have plan to sleep over in Ghea and Widyas' dormitory. Ghea and Widya do internship in CRPAO school. Their dormitory is really nice,  it's more like a house than dormitory. 

Ghea and Widyas' dormitory

We went to their house because we all the teacher exchange participants are invited by Ghea and Widyas' tutor to see the flower festival, street market and Golden Clock tower in the downtown near Damrong School. I went in Saturday morning by using taxi. I had booked the taxi the night before, but it was not coming. We had been waiting for one hour.I decided to ask people around there to book a taxi, but there was no taxi passed in that road. Finally, they offered us to go with them because the place was not too far. We were very thankful once again for their kindness.

After twelve of us gathered in Ghea and Widyas' dormitory, we go for lunch in the halal restaurant and then picked by their tutor at 4 p.m. to go to the downtown. We go to the tutor's house first and then walk to the destination.

Ghea and Widyas' tutor house

Our first destination is the flower festival. Because it is surrounded by the street market, we should passed the crowded street market first. They sell a lot of food, but I cannot choose randomly because I can't eat pork (Moslem). I bought the popular food when we visit Thailand, mango sticky rice.

 Street Market

Colorful Sushi

Mango Sticky Rice

Then we entered the flower festival. It was breathtaking, really beautiful. There were so many colorful flowers and it was decorated with attractive lamp. We also watched dance performance there. 

We left the flower festival at 7.30 p.m. and went shopping in the night market. Our next destination was Golden Clock tower. Our plan was go there at 8 p.m. to see the light performance but I was lost in shopping with Ghea so the plan was broken. There were a lot of interesting things to buy. Altof, as the only male, waited us for shopping to avoid unwanted things because we are girls. Actually Ghea and I still want to shop but we also did not want to lose the light performance. We ran to the Golden Clock Tower. The Golden Clock Tower has light performance every 7 p.m, 8 p.m and 9 p.m. Luckily, we still had time to watch the beautiful light performance at 9 p.m.

 Shopping in the street market

Golden Clock Tower

Golden clock tower was our last destination. Arifah, Ghea, Widya and I were back to Ghea and Widyas' dormitory by their tutor's car. While the others were back to their own dormitory by Grab taxi. Arifah and I slept over at Ghea and Widyas' dormitory and went back on Sunday afternoon by taxi. When we went back using taxi, we experienced miss communication with the driver. I said that my dormitory was near Tesaban six (Thai people called Chiang Rai Municipality school as Tesaban), but he heard Tesaban 'si' ('si' in Thailand is four), so we went to the wrong direction. I realized it and said to the driver to turn back. He was a bit upset because he cannot understand what we were talking about. Finally, he caught our words and we arrived at our dormitory safely.

The first week in Thailand gives me such a precious experience. I learn a lot of thing in my first week. Whether academical lesson or life lesson. It's interesting to stay abroad.

"Good decisions come from experience, and experience comes from bad decisionds"