My alarm goes off at 6:15 am. I push snooze for as long as possible to avoid the cold shower I am about to endure. After the unbearable yet necessary shower I make instant coffee using our only kitchen appliance, an electric hot water boiler. I make a sandwich if we have food. I throw clothes on depending on the dress code for the day at work. Mondays we wear red, white and black. Tuesdays we wear Thai style attire. Wednesdays and Thursday are business casual. Fridays we wear sports clothes aka track pants and a “styling” polo shirt.
I run out the door, hop on either my borrowed bicycle or the motorbike, depending on whether Andrew is home or not and head to school. School is a 10 min walk to school, a 4 min bicycle ride and a 2 min motorbike drive. On the way I grab rice and curry or chicken from a street restaurant for breakfast if we have no food at home. I sign-in at work and begin my day as a teacher.
The day starts with some preparation for the teaching day and greeting each student individually. The morning is a good time for one on one conversation although sometimes the kids are shy in front of their parents or sleepy. On Wednesday mornings, I stand at the school gate to greet students coming to school. I say “good morning” and wai them. A wai is a Thai greeting where you bow with palms are together in front of your face. Saying “good morning” confuses the kids who aren’t in the English program. They say “good morning teacher” to me at all hours of they day because the Thai teacher standing next to me says “saw wat dee kah” which is a standard phrase for hello and goodbye similar to “ahola”. “Good morning” is what I was asked to say and it is what I would say in America, one day the kids will understand.
At 8:00 am the entire school gathers around the flagpole for the national anthem and school greetings. If anyone is late to walk out to the flagpole it’s respectful to pause where you are standing until the anthem is finished. After the anthem, a teacher leads the kids in a prayer. The school is Christian although most students who attend are Buddhist or Muslim. After the prayer all the kids wai and say “saw wat dee kah/krap” then some students head to the stage to sing the school song. After that the amazing art teacher, seriously he’s awesome, he always makes the kids laugh, talks for what feels like 20 min about current events and things completely irrelevant to the students. At least that is what my bilingual sources tell me he is talking about.
The morning flagpole gathering explanation isn't finished yet. On Mondays and Tuesdays the Chinese teacher sings a song with the kids. Wednesdays through Fridays the English teachers sing songs with the kids. I have sung a few times since there are only eight English teachers at our campus. After singing “Old McDonald had a Farm” in my beautiful voice in front of the whole school, all the teachers and some parents, I felt embarrassed until my students made me feel like a rock star. They thought it was so cool to see me on stage. A few times a week the assembly is ended with the kids meditating to a beautiful song, I want to record it one day. Other times they do aerobics, which means a few kids and the P.E. teacher lead aerobics. The P.E. teacher is always in an odd costume while wearing odd masks, one of the masks is Sadam Hussen’s face.
The morning flagpole gathering explanation isn't finished yet. On Mondays and Tuesdays the Chinese teacher sings a song with the kids. Wednesdays through Fridays the English teachers sing songs with the kids. I have sung a few times since there are only eight English teachers at our campus. After singing “Old McDonald had a Farm” in my beautiful voice in front of the whole school, all the teachers and some parents, I felt embarrassed until my students made me feel like a rock star. They thought it was so cool to see me on stage. A few times a week the assembly is ended with the kids meditating to a beautiful song, I want to record it one day. Other times they do aerobics, which means a few kids and the P.E. teacher lead aerobics. The P.E. teacher is always in an odd costume while wearing odd masks, one of the masks is Sadam Hussen’s face.
After the assembly, I lead my students to the classroom. They turn in their homework and settle down for their Thai lesson. In the mornings I have time to work at my desk, usually I grade homework and prepare it for the next day or prepare displays for teaching. I cannot tell you how much I love this prep time, its a luxury American teachers have lost!
After their Thai lesson, the kids have snack. The snack is always milk and some sort of pastry. Now that the floods in Bangkok are cleared we have real white milk or chocolate milk. The first half of my time teaching, they were getting strawberry milk or sugary drinkable yogurts everyday. Typical snacks are; cakes, donuts, hotdog filled buns, banana muffins, gelatin snack of a sort, or cookies. The point of my long conversation about snack is that it is not healthy! Other than lunch the kids eat crap all day. Oh yeah they do get fruit for snack once a month.
After snack it’s my turn to teach until lunch. My morning lessons vary based on the difficultly of my planned lessons. I like to have the hardest lessons first while the kids are at their sharpest and leave the fun, easier lessons for the afternoon. Usually I teach English and Math in the morning then Experience in the afternoon. Experience is a different topic each week. With these lessons I teach the students the English words they know. We have had amazing topics such as food, Christmas, weather, animals, good children of Thailand and the world. People have asked me how I talk with my students when they don’t speak English. Well in experience lessons I introduce words and use them to talk to them. The weather lessons are how I explain that we can’t play on the playground on a rainy day. The good children lessons are how I get them to work together, share and clean up. And in teaching I use simple sentences, interactive games, songs and a lot of pictures!
After I teach I walk the students across a street (ok it’s a small road for cars at the school but still) out to the dangerous metal playground for the only ten minutes of outside play they get all day. Then it’s off to the lunchroom, everyday the kids have rice and some sort of soup for lunch. Sometimes the rice is flavored with meat mixed in. Sometimes the rice is plain and the soup has a lot of goodies in it. Sometimes they have fried chicken, cucumber or a hard-boiled egg on the side. The kids eat fairly quickly and head back to the classroom.
The students were learning about hygiene so they brush their teeth everyday after lunch. After lunch is the best part of the day, I wish I could join. The kids get to take naps. I guess this is how the young students can handle being at school from 7:30-5:00 (some of them). On most days the students change into pajamas. I help get them settled then hop into the mini-van with the other English teachers to drive to the big school for lunch. The lunch there is better so it’s worth the drive. We talk with the other twenty foreign teachers while we eat from the usually yummy Thai food buffet then head back for more work.
The afternoons are different everyday. Depending on the day the kids have swimming, P.E., art, music, Chinese language, or library. And some days I teach most of the afternoon. This is a really good program as the students have a lot of extra curricular classes. I love this job because of the prep time I have. I use every minute of it too. I am always grading worksheets, preparing art projects, planning fun active lessons. I wish I could transfer this job to California where the prep time for teachers is basically gone. I think eventually I would become more efficient and maybe bored but probably not because I feel that good teachers always have something to do.
School officially ends at 3:00 but only three out of my 25 students leave at 3:00. The rest play in the classroom. Sometimes they are finishing up an art project. Sometimes I read them stories but usually its snack/playtime. I think these kids need more playtime. Half of the students leave periodically until 3:45. At 3:45 the other half of the students head outside so Peeh Maeu can clean the room. At this point these kids go to an after school classes either art, swimming, or English. At 5:00 the kids finally go home. Their parents request homework so we, myself and Kreuu Nate, give them homework that probably takes the kids thirty to sixty minutes each night to complete. These four year olds are so busy!
I am allowed to go home at 4:00 pm but I usually stay until 5:00pm. I’m not really sure why. I just like this job and I like to do it well. Even with all my prep time I still have more to do after the kids leave. I usually check in at home for a few minutes, change into workout clothes and leave. I either go walk/run around the track at the stadium. Or I participate in 5 baht (16 cents) Thai aerobics class. Or I head to yoga. I like yoga the best. We found a great yoga instructor, Ling. She is so helpful and if we all go together to a later class she will teach the class in English instead of Thai. I like the English because I can perfect my poses. But when the instruction is in Thai it sounds like a song. It’s very peaceful to do yoga in Thai.
After yoga we head over to Food Barn for dinner. If I didn’t go to yoga Andrew and I head to the Essan restaurant at the stadium or meet friends somewhere else for dinner. We don’t have a kitchen so we eat out everyday! At first I missed cooking but it’s actually quite nice to eat out. It’s also cheaper to eat out unless you have a big family. The food is nicer too. I can’t cook Thai food like the chefs at the street restaurants. My favorite meals are Kao Mung Gai (yellow curry rice with chicken), gai yuung (BBQ chicken) with kao neow (sticky rice) and som tom (papaya salad) or one of the many amazing Thai soups or curries. I’ll miss the cheap Thai food when I go home.
By time I’ve exercised and eaten it’s pretty much bedtime. Household chores such as dishes and laundry are done for me so my life is pretty easy. Laundry is dropped off at a laundry lady down the street and picked up a couple days later. Well usually, sometimes I feel like being cheap and doing it myself and hanging it outside to dry. Big cleaning is left for the weekends I am in town.
The weekends are either spent on a beautiful nearby beach or in town. If we stay in town we hang out with the fellow farang at night. We sleep-in in the morning, skype with family since it’s the only time that works and run errands during the day.
Life in Thailand is pretty easy. I like the pace of things here. I really have time to enjoy life and appreciate what I have. My prep time at work gives me time to make awesome lessons and really enjoy the time I spend teaching my amazing, adorable students. I hope the way I appreciate life here will be transferred to home. It’s always easy to get in a routine but doing it in another country really opens your eyes to the little things in life. I urge people to live abroad. I have learned so much! Daily life is just a little more interesting in a foreign country, especially a country as foreign as Thailand!
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