First Days

It’s the end of my first weekend here in Phrae, and as far as first impressions go, this place couldn’t get much better. My housing accommodations are fantastic, the town is like a Thai version of Monmouth, and the people I encounter are some of the kindest I’ve met. General living here is wonderful. 

Teaching, on the other hand, could do with some improvement. I’ve been teaching the fourth grade for three days so far and it has been the definition of chaos. Allow me to indulge in a ranty list for further explanation: 

• There’s an assembly every morning at my school, during which on our first day us teachers were required to make an impromptu introduction speech to the student body of 5,555 students
• The 10 English teachers (eight from America) were given schedules, all of which were slightly wrong in one way or another
• I skipped my very first class to go on a tour of the school (and by tour of the school I mean one of the English teachers from last term was told very casually asked to explain all of the building to us newbies) 
• Once I made it to my first class, there was no Thai teacher there and I was greeted by a class of screaming kids who only spoke English when they were attempting to get me to play a game with them
• On day two, the foreign language director (a 50-something shorter slender Thai woman with short black hair, glasses, and a stern face) came up to my desk, showed me a piece of paper with another new English teacher’s picture on it and said very matter of factly, “She will make 28,000 baht each month, you will make 25,000 baht.” I came to find out this was because she’s teacher certified, whereas I am not. Although another new teacher from America is going to be teaching science and since he has a degree in science they will give him 28,000, but my degree in English and my teaching of English does not result in such a salary. Confusing. 
• On day two I also was given the task of teaching music in English. So now I’m an English and music teacher. No one told me what this is supposed to mean, so, when left to my own devices, I taught the kids The Itsy Bitsy Spider. 

This post is random and probably doesn’t make sense because I’ve given about zero background and lacked much detail, but I’m not going to fix it since the randomness of it serves as a perfect metaphor for my teaching in Thailand experience thus far. More stories--and hopefully more clarity--to come soon.