Goooood Morrrrrniiiing Claaass One. My-Name-Is-Teacher-Tom!!

Began our intricately, and rather ingeniously devised lesson plan. We would just wait for the replied chant of “Good morning Teacher Tom and Teacher Sean”, then embark upon learning how to describe objects using all of our senses. “The flower smells nice”, “This chilli is very hot”, etc etc.

The reply didn’t quite come. They seemed rather fixated on things on their desks. Comic books, or often, random unimpressive scribbles of pieces of paper that I  guessed must be drawings. Which weren’t good. It was the sort of standard of work that you might expect to find in the Tate Modern, but never to be proudly hung up on a kitchen fridge.

Our lesson plan would need an immediate revision.

Class One, Stand UP!!

I spoke boldly and signalling up with my hands at the same time. For the most part they joined in. I smiled for a moment. They looked intently.

Class One, Sit DOWN!!

I spoke again, signalling with my hands. After repeating this a couple of times, we tried to catch them out, “Stand Up” I’d say, signalling with my hand to sit down. Some were caught out, others just about caught on, but most laughed. We were having fun!

Our director came in and suggested that we take them outside to learn about some of the animals in their farm. First of all we went to the lion. We crowded around the animal, enclosing it in a circle, some kids sitting on it (it was only little, and probably worth mentioning, not real).

This is a lion! This is a LION!!! THIS IS A LION!!!! this is a lion…

We would shout and whisper, getting them to shout and whisper it back. As clearly encountering a real lion in the wild would require either shouting, or whispering this fact to any one around. And I guessed it would help with pronunciation and confidence. And survival.

This lion has FOUR LEGS!! This lion has SHARP TEETH!!

We would chant in a variety of silly voices, and they would mimic back. All essential information again to convey to the emergency services if encountered by such a beast in the wild. This would be repeated with other animals, (tigers, pandas, and, quite horrifically, bronchasauruses), and with other classes. If they seemed to be going with it well, started making it more interesting…

What colour is the panda?

The panda is white with black stripes!

The majority of the oldest class replied rather impressively.

The first day of teaching, overall, was an exhilarating and tiring day. It was spent as mentioned, mainly with animals of the jungle and late Jurassic periods, again essential survival stuff, and gave a great building block on which to base our next few lessons.

For the evening, a small party had been prepared, where we were able to get to know some of the teachers better, and the food on offer in the village. Several interesting dishes had been presented, which we would get to know very well over the coming weeks. The ones to stand out particularly vivid are ‘Bone Chicken’ and ‘Papaya Salad’. The salad, made of that strange, tasteless fruit (the one the kids had prepared for us a few days previously for us to try), had now taken on a quite a different taste. Firstly, it is much spicier than chillies, which I didn’t really think possible for a fruit. And very bizarrely, it has a seafoody taste. And after being put off seafood for life, by the jumping shrimps in noodles, the dish all in all was, uniquely disgusting. One that everyone but me and Sean seemed to be happily tucking into. And Bone Chicken is as it sounds – chicken bone on a stick - “Lots of calcium”. Apparently.

Fortunately there was plenty of very edible and enjoyable food to enjoy, and this was all back-dropped by the sounds of Thai and English sung karaoke. Never having done karaoke in front of other people before, this was ten-fold more nerve racking then any teaching I had done earlier, or really anything I’ve done in quite a while. Still, I sang with a lyrical elegance approaching that of the local chickens at 5:00 that morning, some Beatles songs I’d never heard before; but was clearly a hit amongst the teachers.

Later on, we returned to the final night of the charity festival being held in the village, taken this time by the teachers. We enjoyed more food, met with more local people in the community, played the fairground games... where I won a monkey!!! I say ‘I’, what I mean is that I told one of the teachers and another girl that I wanted the monkey, and they said no problem… which it evidently was after five attempts, but persistence and a steady trickle of money paid off. Afterwards, Sean enjoyed a match of Thai boxing, whilst I got dancing lessons from one of the teachers and one of her friends. (Though to be honest I think there’s as much hope as teaching me to sing).

Once again we returned to bed drained, but invigorated, and eager for the next day of teaching!