The plot thickens. I had a delightful day. Gai, she's a combination cook, language teacher, guide and administrator of volunteer activities took me under her wing. She spent her morning trying to teach me Thai...good thing I brought my hearing aids! Then it was off to the temples; Ayutthaya was the ancient capital of Thailand until it was destroyed by the Burmese in the 1700's. The capital was then relocated to Bkk. There is a huge historical park filled with ruins. Once again I found the buildings less interesting than the people. She took me to the local version of the Mall of America where I invested in a sleeping pad...the mattress on my bed had padding equivalent to a couple of towels.
I have the downstairs of a house, bedroom and bath, and share a kitchen/dinning room upstairs with two other volunteers, Elizabeth, 47, a real teacher from Australia who leaves Friday,and Chelsea, age 22?, from Canada who's 3 months pregnant and not feeling very good. We make our own breakfast and Gai brings in dinner.
Liz and Chelsea have been filling me in on the teaching. None of the school's teachers speak English so we show up, someone will give a schedule, and teach. Liz has taught everything from 1st to 6th grade and I expect I will too. I will observe Liz on Thursday, as best we can tell there is no school on Friday and on Monday I'll take over Liz's classes. They report that the students do know some English, are very well behaved and motivated. I think it will be a blast. There were about 5 weeks without any volunteers because of the airport shut down. It seems the English the students do know is because of the volunteers. Any ESL teachers out there feel free to send lesson plans to ajnegstad@gmail.com
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