Grade 11 Students!
Over the past two weeks of not blogging, so much has happened at my small school in Thailand. Some things include the school’s annual winter festival, a 5 day break for the King’s birthday, I got a haircut, we renovated the “entertainment” room in a local orphanage, I barely taught any classes due to my students being home, and we spent the weekend teaching at “English Camp” at a local “resort.”
To start this Tour de Kyle’s Past Two Weeks, we will make our first stop at the Winter Festival. On Saturday night the students put on an awesome festival fully equipped with food, dancing, sugary snacks, ladyboys, and more food. At the beginning of the night, our wallets were full and stomachs empty, but the end of the night was quite the opposite. We were overly full and quite broke because of the students constantly hustling us to purchase their food because it
Staring contest with my new best friend
was “better than the other students.” To the right, one of my 6 wonderful grade 11 classes hustled me to purchase some sort of delicious food that I cannot remember the name of.
The second stop on this tour is the local orphanage. Due to the King’s birthday, we were given 5 days off from teaching, so we decided to spend that time volunteering at a local orphanage to help out in any way possible. Through the help of some awesome people back in America, we were able to raise money to help the kids and bring Christmas to Thailand. We ended up changing a small, dirty entertainment area into a comfortable, clean, and welcoming area where the kids can hang out with one another. It was a blessing to be able to get to know the kids, help out, and spend our break in a different way.
The third stop in the tour is that I got a haircut. Yep, that is it. On to the next stop...
Our last stop on this tour is English Camp. Over the course of the last 48 hours, the foreign teachers at my school have successfully helped run the annual English Camp for the students in 7th grade. The weekend was full of games, food, songs, dancing, skits, more food, rain, more songs, and losing power because of the huge storms. It was a blast to get to hang out and get to know students that I do not directly teach. The 7th grade students are so small, cute, and fun to teach. Even though I was tired from playing 6 hours of Pictionary yesterday, I loved every second.
Every second of every day has been a blessing being here thus far. I love my time here, and I am continuing to look forward to the new people I meet, places I see, and things that I learn. -Kyle