Good Times at Lertlah

So I've realized that I haven't written a lot about the school - which is where a lot of time has been spent.  If you're interested in seeing some of the things that go on here, keep reading.  Otherwise, save yourself some time and stop now:P

I know I've mentioned that I am teaching music... well, I have been for the last three weeks.  It has been a lot of fun, and has made me miss music a lot.  Especially when I'm conducting in band class.  Today I was going through one of the CDs in the room to put together a song list for the sub next week (the permanent music teacher is back the following week), and was having flashbacks to my childhood.  It's funny how those songs you sang religiously seep through the cracks of your memory, but they come back just as easily - as if you had never really forgotten them.

Other things that have happened here... hmm...

June 16 - Wai Kroo is a great day for teachers in Thailand.  For those of you who don't know, the Thai word for teacher is kroo.  As you may now have guessed, this means that the 16th was a sort of teacher appreciation day.  It doesn't necessarily mean that the kids are particularly good this day, but they have an assembly to pay respects to their teachers and you feel special.  Something that doesn't always happen in this line of work.

July 1 - Because so many of the foreign teachers are Canadian, we celebrated here.  At our campus they actually had RCMP from Vancouver flown in to talk to the kids!!  The Grade 1,2, and 3 classes performed Baby by Justin Beiber - so funny.  Then the Grade 4,5 and 6 band played O Canada while the Grade 3's sang.  It was crazy.  The rest of the day was a bit of a write off to tell the truth.

July 8 - In preparation for Buddhist lent, a candle making ceremony takes place in the morning a week prior.  This is done so that the school may donate a candle to the monks.  This is done so that they do not run out of light during their 3 months inside the Temple 'compound' (for lack of a better word at the moment).  All of the kids get to go up and put 1 ladle of melted wax from various small candles that have been donated into the metal tube that shapes the candle.  The nursery and K's were the cutest because they actually had to be lifted up to ladle the wax in!  Haha.

July 12 - FIRE!  Actually, it was a fire drill.  Unlike the Manitoba School System where we have to have 10 fire drills each school year, Lertlah only has one.  This may seem crazy, but the truth is that fire drill takes on a whole different meaning here.  Sure, the alarm goes off, but unlike in our schools, here everyone goes down the one main stair case and then exits the main floor through the three exits but we don't get very far away from the actual building so it's really safe - ya?  What really made me laugh (sarcasticly) was the fact that the students on the higher floor got to go down the stairs first because they pay more money to the school than the kids on the floor below them.  Pretty ridiculous.  The K's also get priority, but they go so slowly down the stairs that the older kids quickly catch up.

Following the emptying of the building, we all gather in the courtyard on the ground level so that the men from the fire department can do a fire demonstration for the kids.  Most of what they were saying was in Thai so I had no idea what was being construed but I really hope that the first and last thing out of the head guy's mouth was "DO NOT TRY ANY OF THIS AT HOME".  They lit a fireman on fire, lit the gas coming out of a compressed gas tank on fire, and started a grease fire!  Everything was loud and hot so the K's and Nursery kids spent an entire period crying and hiding.

One word to describe all of this:" insanity.

July 14 - Just as with the ethics camp, a group of monks came to the school.  This time, it was to receive the candle made on the 8th.  We weren't able to attend because we would run the risk of offending the monks, as we don't know what to do, but it gave us two periods off... I guess that was good but we lost some precious review time.

So ya... that's what we've been up to here.  Today is the last day and it's bittersweet.  I'm excited to do the last bit of my traveling and get home but I'm definitely going to miss these kids.  It's going to be weird to go back to older kids now that I've been dealing with early years and earlier but I'm excited to teach math and science again.

Well, that's it for now!  Talk to you soon!