Yeah, I'm Hanging in There

Hey faithful readers (all 4 of you), sorry for leaving you all hanging for so long. I really was planning on posting a lot more than I have. You know, teaching takes a lot more work than you think. I think it would be a lot different had I known exactly I was going to teach and had a few weeks to get some preparation done. As it is now, I'm pretty much planning the next days lesson the night before -- hence the lack of posts. Hopefully, I'll be able to get ahead a bit but who knows. Overall, I' but grade four is pretty bad. I've already handed out about 10 detentions in two weeks. I'm really loving it here though. It's hot and I'm sweaty all the time but I LOVE being in Thailand. I just miss Kristen and Trea. I've only been gone for almost three weeks but it seems like Trea is learning m enjoying it. I'm teaching Math and English to 3rd and 4th graders. Grade three is pretty goodso many new words in just that short time. I got a cell phone and I talk to Kristen just about every night. She found some company that specializes in calling cards to Asia and she can call me for like three cents a minute so it's pretty nice that we can talk and hardly spend any more than we would be if I lived across the country.

Seemed like I had a million things to say but I never wrote them down so I'll just ramble. The school that I teach at is just an elementary school (with kindergarten) and nursery. I would guess that they have maybe 350 kids total. It's a private school and most of the kids come from families with money and are therefore pretty spoiled. My house is behind the school. It takes me like 20 secs to get to the school grounds and maybe a minute and a half to get to the teachers' room.
Here's a picture of the students(only the elementary students) lined up for our morning flag ceremony. You can see the far end of my townhouse building on the right hand side of the picture. The kindergarten director lives in the older style house behind the basketball standard. She's one of the owner's daughters and will be Kristen's boss. She's pretty cool.

Okay, I think I mentioned posting some pictures of our townhouse. I don't know if you've seen but Kristen beat me to the punch and posted some on her blog but I'm going to post some here anyway.

Here's what the place looks like from the front. Here's a shot from just inside the front door.



















And here's what our bedroom looks like.
















Yeah, the formatting of these pictures isn't the best but whatever. I've got a lot more pictures (not just of the place) but uploading them is kind of slow and I want to finish this post so maybe I'll just do another post after this one.

Last Saturday I went to an activity with the branch here. We met at the branch house at 8:00 and didn't get home until 5:00. I knew it was going to be an all day thing so it wasn't any surprise. We went up to a park near a dam and tried to find clues and do things along the way there (we were split into five teams in five vehicles). We couldn't find most of the things on the way there but we had a good time. The park was really pretty. It's differernt going to these kind of things and only being able to catch a few things here and there. I've been to church twice and I learn a TON of Thai but by the time it's over my head just hurts.

So, on Thursday of this week (two days ago) I was scheduled to see the kids off after school. (I do this every Thursday). Anyway, the Thai teachers had the front end taken care of (get the kids into the right car when their folks show up) so I was just supposed to walk around and make sure nobody is doing anything that will get them hurt. So, I play soccer with some of the kids for a while and then a bit later some of the kids ask me if I want to play basketball. I say okay and we start playing. About two minutes into the game I'm driving toward the hoop and roll my ankle. It didn't seem too bad but by the next morning I couldn't put any pressure on it at all. Fortunately, I had noticed upon moving into our new place a pair of crutches in the storage space under the stairs and I took those to school yesterday. Haven't even been at the school two weeks and I'm showing up injured. I'm feeling a bit better now. I can walk on it at least. Kind of a funny walk but whatever.

I love how you find different products made by American companies in different countries. I'm sure most of you have seen this to some extent. They have Lays potato chips here but they have flavors like Nori Seaweed, Grilled Lobster, and Salmon Teriyaki. I've tried them all and they're actually all pretty good. Why don't they have fun flavors like that in the States? I guess probably because there's not a great demand for them there.

Well, I'd better be going. Kristen should be calling soon.