I Live in Thailand

Yesterday afternoon as I was sitting on the beach with a bunch of people from my program, it finally it me: I'm in Thailand. Between the months of me mentally preparing myself, the 30 hour trip to get here, and the whirlwind of staying in multiple hotels and meeting 30 people in the span of 3 days allowed me to glaze over the fact of where I am. The lush, tropical surroundings reminded me of Costa Rica and Mexico, and being surrounded by tourists and not needing to speak Thai has given these whole few days the feel of a vacation. But as classes progress and I become more familiar with my peers, it is clear that I am going to be teaching Thai children English in about a month. Reality has still not completely set in, as I still don't know where my assignment will be, and I will be confined to the most tourist-ridden areas of Thailand for the next 3 weeks, but is beginning to hit me.
After class yesterday, most of the people from my program congregated on the beach and hung out. A few of us went swimming, and all of us talked with people that we had yet to meet. Afterwards, about half of us went to a better-than-expected Thai Mexican dinner and then met the rest of the group at a bar next door called The Reggae Bar. It's a half outdoor bar that is surrounded by the tropical flora that inhabit the island we are staying on. The bartender had met some of the people from my program earlier and loved to have 30 people (there were only about 34 people in the entire bar) populating his establishment. We all had a great time and it was good to get to know just about everyone on the program. Group participation was encouraged by Bobby, the bartender, and I found myself playing the maracas and tambourine alongside the other people in my group while listening to Bob Marley and Nirvana.

Classes are kind of boring but will be extremely helpful in a real-class setting. It's a lot of repetition and our teachers teach us how to teach by demonstrating lessons for ESL students. This involves us repeating vocabulary words such as "monster" and "spider." It gets old fast, but helps us visualize what a class will be like. Tomorrow we do a peer teach, which means that we made up our own lesson plans for a certain age group and will lead a class to our peers. I am teaching vocabulary words involving the weather for young learners, which is 5-8 year olds. We follow a formula that was taught to us in class, but we have to make up our own games and worksheets that will help the students learn the vocabulary and use the words in different sentences.
Though being in class is not all too exciting, it is not too much of a bummer to be inside since it is still the rainy season here. The past few days it has rained off and on, and yesterday it did not rain at all even though it was overcast all day. Today there was a torrential downpour almost all day . At one point it was raining so hard you could barely see 100 ft in front of you and the wind was blowing extremely hard. It was a true monsoon.
The area we are staying in is extremely beautiful, but is expensive for Thailand. We have quickly acclimated to the low prices here and complain when we go to a restaurant that charges 200 baht ($6) for a main course. Tonight, my delicious dinner of chicken curry with potatoes and a beer cost about $4. I am not complaining about the prices, and am optimistic as to how inexpensive the rest of my stay in Thailand will be if this is the most expensive area (even Bangkok is supposed to be less expensive).

These past few days have been exciting for me, but not too exciting to write about. This weekend we are planning on going to Kho Phi Phi, which is an island fairly nearby to us. Unfortunately, we don't get our weekend until Sunday and then have Monday off as well. After our day of practice teaching tomorrow we have two days of Thai culture class. So far, all I have learned to say in Thai is hello (sawadee) and thank you (cop cu). If you are a woman you say "kaa" at the end of a sentence to make it polite and "krap" (though you only pronounce it kap) for men.

Okay, that's my Thai lesson and my life the past few days! Sorry for the lack of pictures, I'll start to take more.