Volleyball and Nuns

I’ve been trucking away teaching over the past two months. About two weeks ago I finally hit a wall. I was constantly feeling overwhelmed and unorganized. I inherited an old desk at school that was filled to the brim with papers, tests, worksheets, school projects and just general junk from the previous teacher. I have been so busy, I never made the time to clean it out. I was slowly ignoring the problem. Several weeks went by.... I couldn’t find anything. I also felt bad about throwing away some of the student work that was in the desk.

Then one day I just snapped, I cleaned out the entire thing. I went through everything. I knew I should be grading papers and planning lessons but I just took the time to clean. After my rage of cleaning, I had acquired multiple tests, worksheets, even a flash drive and a stapler! Since then I’ve felt much more confident with everything, not to mention organized.

One of the biggest things that I have learned over the past month was how to grade papers. Thank the lawd for my co worker Natasha. Natasha taught in South Africa for over 3 years. She showed me how to use a formula in a spreadsheet (yes, I didn't know how to do this, I worked for an art company for 6 years.. sheeze). Needless to say my life is much better. My co English teachers at my school are Joe and Natasha. Joe is British and Natasha is from South Africa. So the children are going to have some really interesting accents because our classes are divided among the three of us. Joe told me the other day one of our first graders walked up to him and exclaimed “I can kick a balllll (with the long alll sound)” .. I’m so proud.

We have midterms coming up and something on Friday called “sports day”. Apparently, Sports Day is something like a mini school olympics. The entire school has spent over a month practicing for for this day. My school has a band and they have been marching and drum circling (directly outside of the teachers office). There are also miniature accordions.. which are adorable. There is a color guard, cheerleaders, synchronized dancing....My school goes all the way up to 12th grade, I think the older students that attend, will be doing the majority of the sports. My 1st-3rd graders can only compete in running.

Its so interesting being a foreign teacher. I am always the last person to know about anything. But also the school operates in a way that they decide, when they absolutely need too. In fact, about a month ago the school wasn't sure if we were going to have a Friday off, and the reason was, that they needed to look at the moon. Yes, that was real. Also, I have yet to figure out the uniform situation. Everyday the kids wear a different uniform and I thought this was associated with the day. It’s not, it seems like arbitrary selection, but I know that can’t be right. This is what my observations have concluded. They have a dressy uniform in dark green and dark blue, then a regular school uniform, then a sporty pants and T-shirt uniform. Also, each student and teacher are assigned a color (either blue, pink, green or yellow) for their sporty wear. The teachers and students are divided up... all ages, and groups. Each of my classes have some of the colors. I have no idea how these colors are selected.

The school found out that I play volleyball and invited me to play on the teachers team. Haha I played all last week and it was so much fun. The four colors mentioned above play each other. I am officially on the blue team. Nuns run my school. They will throw on some sneakers and come play volleyball and they are really good. Like really good......like they are spiking. I am really impressed. I also saw one playing basketball. Don't mess with a nun.

Other then that I have been taking some minor weekend trips to towns surrounding Hat Yai. I am hopefully going to Krabi at the end of the month to meet up with a teacher friend for a long weekend. I have not had the time to do as much traveling as I would like too. I have an extra Saturday class where I teach 6 Kindergartners, they are officially insane. I can’t imagine teaching them full time. Cute but insane. I have two twins in my class.. There names are Pin Pin and Pun Pun (=

Going to celebrate the 4th of July from a distance... Merica <3

Krabi Beach