First Post

So finally after a little over a week, this is my first post to keep you updated on my activities while I am teaching English in Thailand. The internet here at our hotel is sketchy, and that is my excuse.

Presently I am here in Chiang Mai taking classes from 9am-5pm everyday (including weekends) with the American Tesol Institute, and I am learning how to be an English teacher. After my completion of this course I will be qualified to teach anywhere in the world. Next week we start practice teaching in Thai schools. The first week of december will be my first week of teaching alone at my school. I am not sure where I will be teaching until next week. The other trainees taking this course are from USA, England, Australia, Canada, India, Philippines, Indonesia and Sri Lanka. The other trainees are a lot of fun to work with and we hang out after class.

Right now I am eating pad thai from my new favorite pad thai restaurant from the street, and watching bbc news. I am also working on a lesson plan for tomorrow. I, and others in my group have to teach the class tomorrow following one of our teaching models we've learned. We are teaching them vocabulary, reading, writing, listening, and speaking dealing with the context of Weekend Activities.

This week has been packed with activities aside from my days being kept busy by classes and lesson planning. There was the Loy Krathong festival which was about 4 days long. It was a buddhist holiday which involved lighting big lanterns and letting them float in the sky, fireworks, parades, and lotus shaped objects that they floated in the river. It was very cool to see all of the festivities.

The day that those festivities ended the Princess' funeral processions started (note: she died about a year ago). So the town went from loud fireworks from morning to night with tons of people in the streets to everyone wearing black and shops being closed on the weekend, no alcohol, etc.

Last Sunday me and some friends rode up to Wat Doi Suthep, a temple on top of a mountain nearby and then we hiked around the national park, which was very jungle-y. On our hike we saw many waterfalls and swam in them. Then we went to the local zoo, which was very cool. Then we went to a forest temple nearby and had a philosophical discussion with a monk about attatchment, love, ego, and the soul.

Those are just a handful of things that have been keeping me busy. More later, I need to finish my lesson plan.