Turns out blogspot.com uses Picasa to upload pictures and I only get 1 GB free before I have to upgrade to a plan. I have plenty more photos to upload, so I'm debating about buying this plan ($2.50/month for 25 GB). We'll see.
Jules and I took our scooter to our first big weekend trip, Chiang Dao (up north). It was quite relaxing and fun (and cold!), so that will be a fun post coming up.
One of my favorite things about not just traveling, but also living in various parts of the world is that I get to learn so much more about the country I'm living in as well as its neighbors. I'm more likely to hear about politics or news from the area, so I'm more likely to Wikipedia it to learn more, and I feel slightly more informed about the world.
For example, I recently taught a lesson about Conditional Statements ("If, then") and I started it by asking them what countries they'd like to visit (which, if you're curious, I went on to construct the sentence, "If I visit _____, then I will _____"). Not surprisingly, they usually can only think of countries in Southeast Asia, and almost every class I taught would shout, "Myanmar!" So I was curious as to why they were so interested in visiting this country and went home to google "Tourism in Myanmar." And upon reading up about Burma, I have to say, I am thoroughly confused. Yes we already knew about its human rights issues (rape, slavery, human trafficking, genocide, child labor, and lack of freedom of speech to name the main ones), but did you know they've only just come out with a constitution in 2008 that implements any kind of "fair" government? My favorite part is that they currently rank 172nd out of 176 on the Corruptions Perceptions Index (CPI) with a current score of 15 out of 100 (100 being the least corrupt and 0 being the most corrupt). It's an interesting scale I'm only just learning about, but whether it's accurate or not, it's safe to say that I don't quite understand why all of my students want to travel to Burma at the moment. From what I've researched, it seems like most people don't actually want tourists to visit and the few that do, want them to visit only if they are looking to better the country while "on vacation in Burma." Jules claims that my students don't actually want to go there, and that they are instead just acknowledging their neighboring countries, but I disagree. Over Lao, China (which they hardly even mention), India (which they never mention), or even Vietnam, they got really excited about Myanmar every time. Anyway, thought I'd share some of my thoughts and discoveries with you.
Also, if you were curious about my schedule, or couldn't quite understand what it is I teach exactly, I've included the two pictures I use to remind myself what class I have next. The first one is my morning school. The first number is the grade, and the second number is whether they are a 1 or 2 class (as I explained earlier about being on the "A" track or the "B" track). Julia's schedule looks similar, except it's between Kindergarten 1-3.
The second one, my afternoon school, is basically high school, so the grade 1 kids are about 13 years old. The top schedule is Julia's, and the bottom schedule is mine (except 3/3 is taught on Thursdays, not Wednesdays).
To put it into more human and less robot terms, my Mondays are hell in the morning, since it is all my lower grades who don't really pay attention, but they're great in the afternoon because it's my /1 grades. My favorite classes to teach in the morning are 5/2, 6/1, and Secondary 3. The students in these classes respect me, care about learning, try, and I feel like I can really make progress with them. My least favorite class, by FAR, is 1/2. They are young enough to be wild and disrespectful, but old enough not to care about pleasing the teacher (as kindergarten is so eager to do). That class, no matter how I approach it, gives me hell every Monday morning. I've resorted to making sure the 4 kids that pay attention (out of 37) can learn something, while trying to make sure the other 33 kids aren't doing too much damage while they hit each other, scream, cry, throw things, steal my stuff, and do their best to get on my nerves (a la hitting my butt and running away, or trying to lift up my skirt). I'm surprised I never talked about the one time I tried taking them outside to play a game (which utterly failed) and a couple of the boys kept picking up a stray cat and throwing it at the girls and I was trying to get them to stop, eventually saying, "Don't throw the cat. Stop throwing the cat! Don't. throw. the cat!" (which of course they don't understand, since I'm saying it in English). Julia laughed at the story and helped me to see the humor in never thinking I'd have to say that sentence.
One of my favorite things about not just traveling, but also living in various parts of the world is that I get to learn so much more about the country I'm living in as well as its neighbors. I'm more likely to hear about politics or news from the area, so I'm more likely to Wikipedia it to learn more, and I feel slightly more informed about the world.
Also, if you were curious about my schedule, or couldn't quite understand what it is I teach exactly, I've included the two pictures I use to remind myself what class I have next. The first one is my morning school. The first number is the grade, and the second number is whether they are a 1 or 2 class (as I explained earlier about being on the "A" track or the "B" track). Julia's schedule looks similar, except it's between Kindergarten 1-3.
The second one, my afternoon school, is basically high school, so the grade 1 kids are about 13 years old. The top schedule is Julia's, and the bottom schedule is mine (except 3/3 is taught on Thursdays, not Wednesdays).
To put it into more human and less robot terms, my Mondays are hell in the morning, since it is all my lower grades who don't really pay attention, but they're great in the afternoon because it's my /1 grades. My favorite classes to teach in the morning are 5/2, 6/1, and Secondary 3. The students in these classes respect me, care about learning, try, and I feel like I can really make progress with them. My least favorite class, by FAR, is 1/2. They are young enough to be wild and disrespectful, but old enough not to care about pleasing the teacher (as kindergarten is so eager to do). That class, no matter how I approach it, gives me hell every Monday morning. I've resorted to making sure the 4 kids that pay attention (out of 37) can learn something, while trying to make sure the other 33 kids aren't doing too much damage while they hit each other, scream, cry, throw things, steal my stuff, and do their best to get on my nerves (a la hitting my butt and running away, or trying to lift up my skirt). I'm surprised I never talked about the one time I tried taking them outside to play a game (which utterly failed) and a couple of the boys kept picking up a stray cat and throwing it at the girls and I was trying to get them to stop, eventually saying, "Don't throw the cat. Stop throwing the cat! Don't. throw. the cat!" (which of course they don't understand, since I'm saying it in English). Julia laughed at the story and helped me to see the humor in never thinking I'd have to say that sentence.
OMG! Don't! Throw! The! CAT!!!!! i was drinking coffee when I read that, bad idea :0 You will never regret what you are doing now, everyone at work asks where you are now and when I tell them, they all say AWESOME and WONDERFUL and Don't you MISS her?! LOVE YOU!
ReplyDeletepoor kitty
ReplyDelete-sammers
So your an over paid baby-sitter at 1 class a wk.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure why you're reading this blog if you don't support us. You don't know what we're being paid (and we are by no means overpaid) and you also clearly misunderstand our schedule and what we try to do in the classroom. We'd appreciate it if you'd stop cyber bullying us - we want to keep this blog public, but continuous posts like this make it difficult for us to do so.
DeleteAhahaha I love the cat-throwing story. Also despite having it explained like eight times, your schedules still confuse me. Oops.
ReplyDelete