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!).