School

Well, that week went fast.

On Monday my host mom took me to school late (on purpose) so that I could go straight to class after we sorted things out in the office. The office for me is the English Program office, which is air conditioned to 23 Celsius, so nice for a few minutes and unbearably cold after that. The head teacher, Teacher Rongrath, has been in charge of at least 25 exchange students before me, so she gave me the choice of studying in the English immersion program or in the Thai program (I chose Thai). She has since set up Muay Thai (Thai boxing) lessons for me and the other exchange student, Indira from Brazil, and also lessons in two art disciplines, coffee painting and gold leaf.

The school itself is more like a small college to Americans, with several buildings, a fitness suite, picnic tables, a pond, and arboretum style gardens.


     Modelling the school uniform


The English program staff

My class, 5/7 for the 7th classroom at the 5th year.
The teachers switch rooms instead of the students.

The view from the 5th floor of building 5. Building 1, the soccer field, and athletic complexes can be seen.

Dancing (Indira is at far right)

Muay Thai

Water color (about 40% done by the teacher)

The "school bus" tsong teau (built onto the back of a 30 year old pickup truck, but picks you up at your house!)


The PE uniform (long pants in 33 degree weather?! (Celsius))

I have a few pages of a notebook filled with Thai words I learned from an upperclassman on the first day, which I spent mostly in the office. I finally broke down and started using transliteration to the Latin alphabet, which Pimsleur advised against because it does make it more difficult to get the sounds exactly right. However, I've developed my own system using mostly Finnish phonetics with notes on tone and length of vowels that has served me well as I've added to the notebook.

One of these days I'll look through and relearn a lot of words, but for now it's been just one or two a day since my host mom requires one of the neighborhood boys to take me to play football (not the American kind) or volleyball every day, and my classmates keep messaging me.

I also started my reading book, "Read Thai in 10 Days." I would highly recommend it, since I am perfectly on track on day 2 and actually feel like I learned something (about 25 letters to be exact).

School is fun again!


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