Tuesday, 11 March 2014
25th February

Today's the first day of lessons. To be honest, I was really afraid. As the van pulled up to the school and went further into the compound, all of the students turned their attention to us. They were having an assembly and in one segment they had a ‘educational performance’ for the school (not sure of the correct word to use here) of greetings in the different languages that they have learnt as well such as Malay, Chinese and English. Unloaded the stuff from the van and we proceeded to some sort of a hall where we got introduced.

Found out that the class size for the primary school students got changed from about 40 to 76. However, the secondary class stayed the same so thank God for that heh. Also found out that classes ended at 3:30pm instead of 5:00pm as we had planned. So we had to modify our timetables to adhere to their timetables. Turns out in the end that we didn’t had to since we found ourselves having too much time at times.

Had introductions. We got them to say their English name and to say what they like. Went around the whole class when we got to a group of girls. They pointed at me and said something in Thai. The homeroom teacher translated it as they like me cause they find me good looking or something like that. I was like whutttt.

After lunch, we had a helper came in to help us. His name is JoJo and he was a great help as he can engage well with the kids. The homeroom teacher is not always around to help us and this was really appreciated. He helped to facilitate funny forfeits, something we couldn't do because of the language barrier….and our lack of forfeits. The Thai forfeits seem more interesting than the ones we have in Singapore! Though his grasp of English is not as good, he was a tremendous help. At times he will help to teach in Thai in his own way and I could somehow catch what he is doing and work from there. Like how we created a competition out from a lesson when he formed two groups and let me facilitate the competition.

Ended off with a game of dog and bone which we took quite awhile to explain as we had to act them out. Was really fun but I was quite worried as most of the students were barefoot (seems like a norm) and the ground was really sandy. But all in all everyone had fun trying to take the bottle heh. 

Went back to church and the helper in the church went to buy for us amazing drinks! It’s only 25 baht (one singapore dollar) and the drink is HUGGGGGE. Not only is it huge but it’s super delicious. The drink lasted all the way to the night as there was a lot of ice as well heh. Went out again to the supermarket as we realized that the snacks that we bought were not enough. Or we were too generous in giving out the snacks as rewards heh.





#8: For Jojo being a timely and immense help
#9: For God bringing me through the first day and enabling me to teach the lessons
#10: For the wonderful drinks that the church helper bought us!
#11: How God just held everything together despite the change of plans