Hello everyone... it's that time of the week again. Thanks to Sulin for her comment, and thanks to Dan for his comment from the prior week. I always enjoy reading your responses to my blog entries- it assures me that people do read them after all!!
Before I fill you guys in, I wanna share with you about two funny articles I read in the Bangkok post last night. One article was about a New Zealand couple who tried, unsuccessfully, to name their newborn child "4Real". The New Zealand government claimed that human names were not allowed to begin with numerals. The second article was about a Dutch woman who tried to file a lawsuit, claiming she was "traumatised" by NOT winning a lottery contest she didn't even enter! Oh, I had a good laugh over that.
Meanwhile, I've been doing a lot of thinking about my life back in Montreal. This time away, as I had expected, has given me a great chance to analyse my life back in Montreal - and I decided that starting in September, I will start anew, leaving behind two horrible things that nearly ruined my last semester - depression and MCF. Both of these unfortunate things will be gone from my life forever!
Now that thats over.... let me fill you in on this weeks events. So, last Saturday, just a few hours after writing my last entry, I became violently ill. Turns out I got some horrible case of food poisoning. I was largely bed confined for over 24 hours. Throughout the entire weekend I was out of commission. However, it wasn't as bad as it could've been. FOr one thing, my weekends are usually quite boring anyway, and at least this way I was in some way "occupied" (i know thats kinda a weird way to look at it). Also, it didn't affect the week at all, so I didn't have to miss any classes.
So I was fully recovered by Monday, and it was a normal start to what i thought would be a normal week. On Tuesday, most classes were cancelled on acount of Aung Sung Suu Kyi's birthday (if you don't know who that is... i suggest you wiki her). That same day, I was surprised to find out that we have a NEW western volunteer at the school- a 20 yr old guy named Karl from Sherbrooke, QC, who's staying for 6 months. Fortunately for me, this hasn't seemed to affect my schedule. And, as he's living in Mae Sot, I will occasionally have some company during the evenings. He's here with 3 girls from the area (they are here with a programme of sorts), each volunteering at a different school.
Despite these unpredicted changes, including another class cancellation on Friday for reasons that still elude me, I have started to ease into a routine for all my classes.
For my grade 5+6 classes, I'm teaching them grammar and vocab. Each week I will give them a few vocab words, which I make them write sentences for hw. Then I'll teach them some sort of grammer.... this last week, I taught them parts of speech, subject object verb, etc etc etc. I want to make sure they have all the basics down pat, because a lot of them don't always write complete sentences. I test them every week.
For my grade 9 class, I assign one essay every week (which will be read aloud after I grade and make corrections), I have them make stories based on pictures, I have them read newspaper articles and answer questions, I try to get them involved in casual discussion (ie, what did you do this weekend? etc)., and if they've earned it, we can play games on Friday.
For my grades 3 + 4 classes, I've been teaching them vocab. Last week I did fruits and this week I did vegetables. While these classes are rather boring (I don't do games or songs, rather I just repeat the words over and over again), the kids have actually learned the words!!!! I gave my 4th graders a test yesterday,. where I wrote the burmese name for a certain fruit and they had to write the english name, and everyone did extremely well- and there were even some perfect papers!! (I made sure their notebooks were underneath the benches, so I know no one cheated). So far, what I'm doing with the little kids seems to be working, as I can clearly see that they are learning these words.
As you can probably gather, it is going rather well. A large part of me really wishes that I could stay here for the entire school year, just to see the progress the kids make. Yet a large part of me misses North America- with its familiarity and temperate climate. I am indeed looking forward to my return to Canada.
Just a side note: pictures from Burma (Myanmar) are finally online!!! Check my facebook profile. Until next week, I wish you all the best.
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