Semester Dos Starts

“The revolution will not be televised” – Gil Scott-Heron

School’s back! Like last term, I’m teaching all of Mathayom 4 (Sophomores) with a handful of classes I see twice a week. As far as I can tell, their English is stronger than the group I had last year. Noice.

I’m also teaching two Mathayom 6 classes (Seniors) twice a week that are some of the best English students at the school. I’m actually really excited about these groups because I’ve got the opportunity to do some more advanced lessons. A lot of the material I have to teach involves critical thinking in English, which is a big step up from the rote conversational skills I taught last term.

And half of my classes have air conditioning in them. This is huge because most days are about 90-100 degrees. We lost power for about an hour today and the classroom quite literally became a sauna.

Even at my apartment I can’t get away from it. Drying myself when I get out of the shower is almost pointless because I’m covered in sweat by the time I finish brushing my teeth. Bottom line- it’s hot out here yo.

Superstardom

There was a lot of catching up with the teachers coming back from the break. How was your break, where did you go, things like that. Although one teacher threw me a curveball and said she saw me on TV.

About two months ago when I was flying back to Bangkok from Hat Yai, there was a bomb threat at a nearby airport. Unbeknownst to us at the time, the Hat Yai airport was on high alert. Apparently the news aired security footage of the airport. On one of these reels, there was a Nigerian teacher and me walking amongst a sea of Thais. The teacher said this reel was played a couple times. If anyway has access to archival Thai news footage, let me know. I want to see my big screen debut.

Coup Day

You’ve probably seen on the news that the military lead a coup last week. So far there hasn’t been any violence and hopefully it stays that way. It hasn’t affected my daily life except for a nationwide curfew at 10 PM and blocking TV channels I don’t watch.

CNN, BBC, and Bangkok Post are fairly reliable sources for news. Although some of it is overblown -one headline I read said that there was “nationwide chaos.” That’s not really true. Everything is primarily happening in isolated parts of Bangkok. I’m calling a fact check on that one.

Happy Memorial Day America!

Mark