After our meeting, we traveled to lunch. We all ordered Bamee, a noodle dish that
reminded me of Ramen. Through confusing
of ordering and moving tables, our table was accidently served the Thai
professors dishes. Talk about extra spice! My mouth was on fire!! The spice added a very delicious flavor to
the noodles, it was just very spicy afterwards!
The Thai professors thought it was very funny!
We then traveled to Anuban school where we taught a math
division game to 5th graders.
I felt like a celebrity by the way they all stared and followed. At one point, a young boy turned to walk down
the stairs, saw us, blushed, then turned and ran as fast as he could. It was
too cute! The minute we walked into the
class, they all started to cheer. It was
very unreal to see how much respect they gave all their teachers. It was also a culture shock to see how well
behaved the students were. Each of us
took a group of students and worked through the game. My group was very well behaved and they actually
were eager to play. This is different than
the typical American class where it is like pulling teeth to get student eager
to learn math! Even though the goal was
to individually collect 5 multiples, they worked together to help each other
out. You could still tell the
competitiveness within themselves when they did not get a match and their
neighbor did. However, it faded within
seconds when the next card was pulled. The
students were very helpful and very excited to answer my questions. At the end, it was time to clean up, yet my
group was not finished. However, my
students were very well behaved, understood it was time to clean up and did so
very quickly. I really enjoyed working
with these students. And, for as young
as they are, they knew English very well to communicate.
In Thailand, schools are staffed by teachers from Thailand
as well as other countries. As a sign of
respect to the government, teachers wear uniforms, much like the US military
uniforms, every Monday. As teachers
become more experienced and “tenured” they earn more pins for their uniforms,
again much like our military.
The rest of the afternoon was spent back at KPRU. We got to interact with the Thai college
students. As we were waiting for people
to get some coffee, we noticed one of the guys had on an Angry Birds
shirt. We asked if he played and he
informed us he didn’t know what it was.
So of course we have to introduce him.
The two guys fell in love with it!
It was very neat to watch as they caught on how to play and quickly
became very competitive with it!
We spent the rest of the time learning how to play A Math
(math scrabble) with the Thai students.
As a math nerd, this quickly became my new favorite game…I will be
buying it when I return to the states! Through
this time, we were able to learn new Thai language, perfect our numbers, and
learn some math terms. Even though it
was hard to communicate by words, we were able to use pictures and hand signals
to help. Like in the morning, there were
some funny situations as we were all trying to communicate back and forth but
did not know which words to use! Among the American students, we had a good
discussion about the number system of Thailand and American. In Thailand, they say the work 34 translated
as “three tens fours.” In America, we
have a specific name for our multiples of ten.
We also alternate back and forth between cardinality and numeral (thir-,
four-, fifth-, six-). Even as an
American I feel Thai have it much easier learning their numbers as
children. The patterns are very clear
and easy to apply. American numbers…not
so much!
Overall, today was a great learning experience for how
difficult it is to communicate with a person of another language. Although it became very fun and comical as we
went. I am looking forward to spending
more time with my assigned Thai college students, Jane and Pad, and learning
more about the language. It is very fun
to talk to them as they are as excited to learn English as we are Thai!
Hopefully I sleep in later tomorrow morning!! If not, I will
probably think of more to type! P.S. I
have almost mastered how to use chopsticks!
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