Month: April 2015

April 20, 2015

TEFL class trip to Lipsmackers, a Thai massage using boobs to massage my feet and arts and crafts ready for the first teaching practical

So, a lot has happened since the last blog. The first week of the course has been immensely intense with a lot to take in and put into practice ahead of our first teaching practicals this week. Just one week of the course and we’re  already teaching English to Thai children with topics such as ‘Places to spend free time’ and ‘different modes of transport’. The second day of the course consisted of Kathryn (our teacher) doing a whole lesson in Italian teaching us feelings such as felice (meaning happy), triste (sad) and spaventata (frightened). At first we were thoroughly confused with everything being in Italian but the purpose of this was to display methods to teach a language of which your students do not know. Methods such as using the target language to warm up the class, teaching words by ‘drilling’ (repeating the word three times, then the class repeating it three times, then separate groups and then finally randomly selected students to repeat it). This was a very beneficial way of teaching us the methods to use as it meant we were put into the shoes of our students who may know some simple English but require you to repeat and keep them on their toes by selecting them at random. As a class we felt a lot better after the intense first day and then learnt the method of teaching to adopt when it comes to our first classes. 

  

Wednesday night in Choeng Mon is the weekly floating night market. A few of us decided to head down but met first at a bar called Lucky Shakers along the way. We grabbed a few Changs and waited for the remaining few to arrive. Then it poured it down. A lot. We were sat in Lucky Shakers bar on the main strip of Choeng Mon and thought the best way to pass the time and wait for the rain to stop would be to drink a few more beers. However, the weather was not on our side and the rain failed to cease. This ended up with us having a few more beers than anticipated, but we got to know each other a bit better and then made a run for it when the rain stopped. We’re still yet to experience the Choeng Mon night market but with three more weeks here we will definitely head there… and try not to get sidetracked by Lucky Shakers!

    

Thursday saw us in class once again going over the method of teaching and starting to plan for the first teaching practicals on Monday. As a class, we brainstormed the topic of ‘places’ and came up with the lexis (vocabulary) to teach. We decided to stick to popular things to do which are found on Koh Samui because our students for the teaching practicals will be inhabitants of the island. For the first few weeks we will be planning and teaching in pairs and so were each given the age group we’d be teaching (3 – 6 year olds, 7 – 11 years olds and 11 – 15 year olds) and then to help plan for the first lessons we were each assigned a section of the teaching model. It is extremely overwhelming at the moment because there are so many different methods we can apply and trying to find the best one can sometimes be a struggle in itself. A lot of time, effort and planning goes into each and every lesson (making the flash cards to teach the lexis, making boards games to reinforce this and get the students asking and answering questions and making sure you have worksheets for them to complete listening tasks). A two hour lesson at the moment has taken three days to prepare for!

  

Friday saw us working on our lesson plans again and then as a class preparing for our adult lessons we’d also be teaching next week (a few of us teach English to hotel staff and others teach adults at a International language school). This again takes a lot of planning and because we’ll each be teaching different groups of adults we can plan this one as a class and use the same resources. It was late Friday afternoon and the production levels had started to drop, after all this week has been a lot to take in. So we decided to head to Chaweng (where I had stayed when I first arrived on Samui) and went to Lipsmackers bar on the beach. We managed to get near enough the whole class out and took advantage of the happy hour offer they run between 4-8pm. We got there around 6pm and between all of us we had probably tried each cocktail on the menu (and it is a fairly extensive list). It was a great way to get to know one another and by 8pm we were all suitably hydrated and ready to watch the fire show at Ark bar. The night was a little hazy (there was a toad on the table at one point courtesy of Emma, no idea where she found it!) but all in all it was a great night.

   

   

The next morning I get awoken by tapping on my door, windows and walls. I had had about 4hours of sleep and initially I thought the different rhythms of tapping were in my dream. Nope, I opened my eyes to find Emma at my window laughing her head off. I immediately thought it must have been past midday and I’d slept in but no, I looked at the time and it was only 7am. Emma had brought cornflakes, bowls, milk and spoons into my room and thought it’d be a great idea to eat breakfast and watch TV. I could barely open my eyes let alone dig into a bowl of cereal. It was on of the oddest wake up calls I’ve had and I soon enough fell asleep again with Emma happily eating corn flakes in my room whilst watching some odd sci-fi movie. I woke up again around 10am to an empty room and a few messages from the others. Me, Emma, Devin and Jody decided to head to the beach to sweat out our alcohol and run into the sea. It was an extremely hot day and after some lunch on the beach we thought what better way to relax than to get a Thai massage?! We each got our own masseuse and had our feet washed before laying on our fronts. Within seconds this Thai woman was climbing all over me, pressing hard into my back which made me feel like I was about to throw up all over the pillow. I managed to refrain and started to enjoy the massage. The press hard on your back and are not content until they’ve heard a few clicks. My masseuse then worked her way to massaging my legs and feet. She would do one leg and then repeat the procedure on the other leg. She then lifted up my legs and leaned forward to massage my back again. However, this is where she adopted her special technique of using her boobs to massage the soles of my feet. I didn’t know what to do. I wasn’t sure if she knew she was using them but she properly forced herself upon my feet. It was quite an experience but in amongst all of this (and Devin’s masseuse sneezing every few minutes) it ended up being an incredibly relaxing hour. I especially enjoyed when she massaged my head because it immediately alleviated any headache I once had from the night before. We decided to go for a walk along the beach front towards the spit on the southern end of the beach. It was absolutely beautiful walking towards the island with clear and warm waters shallow enough to walk through. 

  

   

 

We then headed back into Chaweng to get a few bits and bobs for school (it still sounds weird saying this!). Chaweng has a big mall called Central Festival which includes everything from an expensive Starbucks to clothing shops to an extremely strict and official phone shop (where I got my Thai SIM card but had to give my passport in as well) to a supermarket and also a department store. None of this was here when I last visited Samui in October 2013! We then headed to a restaurant on called Hot Tuna where some relaxing, meal time music was playing. It then suddenly changed to Backstreet Boys’ Greatest Hits which altered the mood slightly. It was then accompanied by some Britney Spears and an interesting Thai version of Celine Dion’s ‘My Heart Will Go On’. We were absolutely shattered by this point and headed back to our bungalows via a Songthaew (the pick up trucks where you sit on the back). The following day saw another trip into Chaweng where we opted for a nice looking restaurant but definitely paid the price when the bill included a service charge and tax on top (they also tried to overcharge for the number of waters we had) but at least the food was delicious! 

After the craziness of Friday night, the rest of the weekend was a lot tamer with a lot of eating involved and some journal entry homework completed on Sunday night. Today (Monday) consisted of the first half of the class going over their final preparation for their lessons and then teaching this to their respective classes in the afternoon. Me, Devin, Josh, Adami, Anoeshca and Isabel all stayed in class for our lesson planning. Josh and I teach our first class on Wednesday and we are teaching the 11-15year olds. Our topic is transport and we are also teaching them comparatives such as fast and slow and cheap and expensive and then superlatives such as faster, fastest and more expensive and most expensive. We spent the afternoon planning our two hours (of which we have a lot to teach within that time!) and making board games, flash cards and any other forms of resources using scissors and glue. It’s actually crazy how much preparation comes with these lessons and making sure you have all of your different games, worksheets, audio clips and recordings ready! We have to make extensive lesson plans as well which I should probably be doing instead of finishing off this blog. Wish us luck for our first teaching practical on Wednesday (especially because the room we are teaching in has no air con, I’m go into be a sweaty mess yay!).

 

April 14, 2015

28 hours of travelling, bungalow life and celebrating at the World’s biggest waterfight

Hello one and all. I’ve decided to keep the same blog that I used when I was on my last adventure around the world. This one is set to be a bit different though. I left my home in Poole, England early on Thursday morning with my parents driving me to Gatwick to catch my first of three flights. I was to be travelling for over 28 hours door-to-door to get me to my first destination of Chaweng beach in Koh Samui. I had a tearful farewell with my parents (I blame my mum for setting me off, I mean she was already welling up when we were getting in the car at home!) and walked through security whilst they waved me off. I pretty much undressed; taking off my belt, watch, valuables but yet still managed to set the alarm off as I went through the security gate. I gathered my belongings and decided to grab a coffee whilst in departures. A nice cup of Starbucks coffee to start the day. Well, it would have been a nice Americano had I not knocked it all over the floor straight after getting it and spilling some on a blissfully unaware holidaymaker’s bag who didn’t speak much English but instead glared at me whilst I tried to say sorry and got him some napkins. Good start. Luckily they replaced it for me so I decided to get as far away from the couple I’d just shocked and sat downstairs.

You have to be at the airport three hours before a long haul flight and after a lot of waiting around, it was finally time to board. I drew the lucky straw and got an aisle seat on the exit row with copious amounts of leg room and a stones throw away from the toilets. My first flight to Dubai consisted of (and this is for future Matt’s benefit) me watching Fury, the latest Hobbit film and four episodes of Brooklyn Nine-Nine whilst eating a lot of food (they provided smoked trout on a Waldorf salad, chicken in mushroom sauce with sautéed vegetables and a berry compote with yoghurt followed my scones, jam and clotted cream for afternoon tea) as well as a lot of beer, screwdrivers and water. Six and a half hours later and I was in Dubai for my stopover where I then got on my next flight to Bangkok. This flight saw me sat next to two fairly inebriated British guys headed to Pattaya for two weeks of sun, sea, Chang and ladyboys (I can only assume…). On this flight I watched Horrible Bosses 2, The Maze Runner and some more episodes of Brooklyn Nine-Nine whilst eating some more chicken (this time in a herb sauce) and some other food I can’t quite remember now (it must’ve been good…). I managed to get a whole 45minutes sleep (considering it’s a long haul flight and with Emirates, the leg room isn’t that generous and so you’re pretty cramped when trying to sleep). I arrived in Bangkok bright and early and headed through their fairly strenuous arrivals procedure where you frantically fill out a visa form whilst in a cattle pen queue with some serious officials staring at you trying to get through. Oh and for those who have watched Bangkok airport on BBC Three I even got to see a couple of the tourist police who frequent that show (bet they felt like mini celebrities!). I then had to wait a good four hours until my flight to Koh Samui because I’d given myself way too much time to account for any possible delays. Still this meant that I got to relax in the departures area whilst parades of Thai woman, bands and floats went up and down the aisles kicking off the celebrations of their Songkran festival which is for their Thai new year. 

  

I finally arrived at Koh Samui airport which was a lot smaller than expected. You got off the plane, were ushered onto a small tram which took you on a five minute journey to the arrivals ‘building’ (it’s basically just a few wooden huts with a baggage carousel in the middle, still it’s beautiful with a backdrop of the mountains gracing Central Samui). Whilst waiting for my huge backpack to show on the carousel, I witnessed the cutest pug pass through like something off the of The Generation Game, cue a chorus of ‘aawwww’. He was inside a cage and wearing a little white jumper eagerly looking out for his owner. I then found my bag (you don’t know how tempted I was to just grab the pug, run and replace the contents of my bag at a later date) and headed to the taxi rank where my name ‘Mr Matthew’ was carefully written on a board held by a driver from the hotel I was to stay at, Ark bar. I arrived at the hotel and was immediately asked ‘where’s the other person?’ which at first I thought was her mocking me, ‘err it’s only me’, ‘well you book double room’, ‘err well I put one person, two nights and it gave me this room’, ‘okay I put two bed together’… Sure. I was so tired by this point after having only 1hour and 15 minutes sleep that I was happy to rest my head on her reception desk if this ‘double’ booking were to be a problem. Luckily it was not and I was talked through the rules and my bag carried to my door. I walked in and immediately saw the collection of snacks and alcohol; lays crisps, peanuts, Chang beer, barcadi breezers. Brilliant, they provide you with some complimentary food. Then I looked in the fridge and saw it chock-a-block with more refreshments. This wasn’t complimentary food Matt, it was a mini bar. It’s lucky I didn’t crack open a beer before realising. I did however get two bottles of water free a day and some tea and coffee. Perfect. I then FaceTime’d my parents and napped for the rest of the afternoon only to wake up at 6:30pm dazed and confused as to where I was. It was definitely time to find some dinner and check out the local surroundings (I had a Banana Nutella roti for dinner which is like a pancake made on a street cart and smothered in condensed milk.. They’re delicious!).

   

 

Later that night I decided to head to the local beach bar Lipsmackers where we used to frequent when we last came to Samui back in October 2013. It is still one of my favourite bars because you go there for one quiet drink and next minute you’re on your fifth Chang discussing the cultural differences between you, a German guy and four Norwegian people all whilst on the beach with the sea getting increasingly closer.

   

 

The following day saw me relaxing by one of the three pools in the hotel resort. I chose the see through pool which had one end of the pool with a glass window for you to swim up to (three Spanish girls absolutely loved it and took about 3000 pictures between the three of them). I took a break for lunch on the beach (chicken egg friend rice) and then headed back out into the 35 degree heat where, even though I kept lathering on the sun lotion, I still managed to burn my shoulders. After some dinner, I found myself back at lipsmackers beach bar for a drink. Again this turned into more than one drink and this time I met a guy from Chelsea in London, a Hungarian man and the same two girls from Norway from the previous night. I was getting picked up early in the morning by Kathryn (my TEFL course teacher) and so decided to have an early-ish night.

   

 

I just mentioned Kathryn was picking me up 8am sharp on Sunday. This is the reason I’m in Thailand this time around. I’m here to do a TEFL course with 12 other students (from South Africa, America, Canada and Zimbabwe) and spend the first four weeks learning everything there is to know about teaching English to non-native speakers. I got dropped off at my accommodation for the month (Leelawadee bungalows) and met Michelle, the landlady. She showed me to my bungalow and let me settle in (the early morning had taken it out on me and so I needed another nap). My accommodation is directly opposite the course centre which is ideal and there are six or seven bungalows altogether with four of us from the course staying here. I then went and met up with Devin and his aunt Jody, they are both from Canada and will be doing the course as well. I had been speaking to Devin for a little while before the course so it was beneficial to coming here as I already knew a couple of people. We spent the day on Choeng Mon beach drinking Chang and eating chicken in ginger sauce.

  

   

 

The following day was a public holiday in Thailand. It was Songkran day, the traditional Thai New Year’s Day where the year is now 2558 (I… I don’t understand either but I bought a loaf of bread earlier and that had a use by date of ’18/4/58’…). The celebrations start as soon as you walk down the road. Devin, Emma (from Zimbabwe), Jody and I decided to head to Chaweng as it is the main area to celebrate in Koh Samui. We found a songthaew (a small pick up truck where you sit in the back under a small roof) and hopped on. As soon as we started moving, we were hit by buckets of water ranging from being ice cold to warm. It was like being on a river Rapids ride at a theme park as you’d see people standing on the side of the roads with waterguns and buckets and not know whether it was about to get you. Emma was mid sentence and got a hose pipe of water straight to the face. This water fight has a historical meaning behind it though, it is believed to symbolise the washing away of all of the sins and the bad whilst the chalk and soap they slap on your face whilst you’re walking past originated from monks which they use to mark blessings. As we entered Chaweng, the heaven’s opened (they probably saw this as a gift) and we were drenched head to toe. We decided to walk to Ark bar to drink away the rain. 

   

       

Two hours later and we had a somewhat dry walk along the beach, but then the winds picked up and the skies opened once again. We decided to just submerge ourselves in the celebrations; grabbing bottles of water and chucking it over those spraying you in the face with a water pistol and slapping what smelled like tea tree oil on your arms. After a good half hour walk through the madness, we stopped off at another bar where a Thai local was passed out on the table with Chang in hand. After a few pictures and him vomiting on Devin’s leg, we decided to move on and headed to the main part of town where hoards of people lined either side of the road, the music was blaring out and nobody was at all dry. The best thing about this festival is how happy everyone is. I didn’t see one person without a smile on their face and the Thai locals absolutely loved soaking everyone with water. Pick up trucks would drive by with ten people on the back chucking ice water and firing from all angles and no one was phased by it! I am extremely glad I got to experience the World’s biggest water fight and would definitely recommend it to anyone!

 

    

   

We headed back to Choeng Mon to our bungalows and dried off. Me and Emma then met up with Josh from America and Adami from Italy who are also on the course and our bungalows and went for dinner. I opted for a pork noodle dish whilst the others got curried dishes and explicitly told the waitress (who doubled up as the chef) for their food to not be spicy. What did they get? Some of the spiciest food since being in Thailand. We can only guess that the chef had had quite a busy day celebrating and may not have been at her best when cooking for us. We had an early night as we had to be up in the morning for our first class!

It’s now night time here and I’m writing this after just completing some homework (reading, writing articles in my journal and practicing a warm up to demonstrate to the class tomorrow). The first day at the TEFL course consisted of using warm up exercises to get to know one another, doing some group work to learn all about the Thai culture in terms of what to do and not do and then having a phonology, phonetics and grammar lesson. It was pretty intense for our first day and I was lucky to have had a background in studying English language (at university I did two years of phonology and grammar) and so understood what Kathryn (the teacher) was talking about, it’s something that at first seems so confusing (you learn about the sounds of words as opposed to spelling and how this can be considered confusing for Thai people learning English, for example though, thought, tough, plough all contain ‘ough’ but it is pronounced differently for each). I remember being thoroughly confused at the first phonology lecture at university so I can understand how the rest of the class were feeling but it’s something that will make more sense as we continue. The course is lasting for four weeks and consists of a lot of teaching practicals (of which the first is on Monday) and so I am definitely feeling apprehensive about it all. It is an exciting new chapter though and I am looking forward to the challenge! I am not sure how much I will blog whilst teaching out here but will try to do as many as I possibly can!