Teaching Abroad - Café Con Monica

Pattaya for the weekend!

July 12, 2012

Helloooo! I hope you all had a fantastic weekend! Mine was interesting to say the least but still a good one! After a very difficult first 2 weeks and things going oh so wrong I have decided to genuinely embrace everything as an experience. I will be moving to China sometime in mid-August as things did not work out at the school I am teaching at now. There was a lot wrong with the school and some with me as well. Most of it was out of my control but I have definitely learned a lot. I know now that if you do not have some of the requirements for something you should be ABSOLUTELY positive the job is secure and they are offering exactly what they say they are before you spend so much money on a flight. So here I find myself in Thailand, thousands of miles away from home and dealing with some not so good and some great!

I taught all week with some of the similar problems discussed in my first post about being here. But some of the other teachers and my roomie Caligirl all decided we should go to Pattaya on Saturday. It is supposed to be about 2 hours away by train or bus. So we decided to hang out on Friday night and then get up early Saturday and take a train down. Unfortunately when we got to the train station we learned that they do not run to Pattaya on the weekends. So we took a bus instead. We arrived in Pattaya and went straight to the pier to take a ferry to the Island Kohlan so we could spend as much time on the beach as possible. It was amazing and beautiful! I know I love summers in Chicago but seriously…so freaking beautiful and its not even one of the prettiest islands there are here. We all managed to get sunburn just on the ferry ride to the island and not realize this until much later. I faced up to my fear of small boats and rode my first Longtail ever! I also got in the water which if you have been reading my blog for awhile you realize is NOT something I tend to do very often.

After coming back from the island we got some Italian food that was SOOOOO good! Then everyone fell into a food coma and went back to the hotel to sleep. I stood up and had to check out the town. Pattaya is well known for its nightlife and I was not going to miss it! BUT, of course, by the time I ventured out (Alone) I found out that because of an election that day all of the bars/clubs were closing early and no alcohol was being sold after 5pm. What kind of luck do I have??? I went back to my hotel and sat down to people watch and ended up meeting some of the Pattaya United soccer players who asked me to walk around with them and we all ended up at a hookah place a bit away. It ended up being a great night and now I have 4 new friends in Thailand! So glad I didn’t go to bed early that night!

Sunday’s attempt to get home quickly resulted in a almost 4 hour trip home. As with most things in Thailand doing anything takes forever and when Thai people do not know what you are saying or the answer to something instead of telling you they do not know they will tell you something else or say yes to save face.(I might have to write a whole post on this another time) So it took us ages to get home. Then it was relaxing and back to school on Monday!

and now the fun part! Pictures!!!

Some of us on the way

On the Pier

on the ferry

Longtail boat

Our beach for the day

my view

Smiles

heading into the fun part of town

Bangkok for the weekend!

July 6, 2012

Now that I have shared some of the bad let me share some of the good fun! I have mentioned before that my friend Bellydancer from Chicago is also in Thailand. She has been there since May ooh and you can find her travels here. She is the one that convinced me to take the job in Thailand instead of China…I should thank and strangle her all at the same time! haha no really though we decided to meet in Bangkok for my 2nd weekend.

I got there before she & her chinese teacher friend so I hung out in a internet cafe looking at jobs in China and generally hanging out enjoying the AC. We met up at our hostel HQ in the Silom neighborhood and checked in…then we headed out for some food and wandering! We ate, we walked around and then stayed up until 3am catching up and talking about what adventures we have planned for ourselves over the next year or so.

Saturday we got up and checked out and into our next hostel/economy hotel Rika Inn on Khao San Road. There is some amazing people watching to be had on that road. We got checked in and then decided to head to the big malls to look around, shop and get some food. It was a good day, we also went to see Spiderman in 3D. Great time, love that the subtitles were in Thai and you have to stand up right before the movie for the Kings song. We then headed back to our room and got changed and headed out for the night. It was a great time! She and I always had fun together in Chicago so it was no different in Bangkok! We checked out like 3-4 places and had lots of drinks and had McDonalds at 4am…closest I have felt to home since I got here

Sunday we checked out the Chatuchek Market. HUGE HUGE HUGE and so much stuff and if you think in terms of USD it was Soooooooooo cheap! haha I hope to check that place out a lot more since we barely saw half of it! On our way back to the last stop at the mall my friend fell and basically tore apart her foot muscles and it was bad!

Trying to get her around safely I missed the last bus & train back to Chachoengsao and had to stay another night in Bangkok. Checked into another hostel Lub D this time and cried to my boyfriend about all the stuff going on and how flustered I was. Then went to bed for 3 hours so I could catch the 5am train and make it to work on time.

Ook enough gabbing…here are the pics!!!

in a tuk-tuk headed to the train station

Chachoengsao train station

No AC & old ladies selling food/drinks on the train

On the train into Bangkok

My first squat toilet…why you must always carry toilet paper

favorite dish so far…no clue the name its pork, basil, fried egg & rice and spicy!!!

Bam Bam’s first hostel

Ready for the weekend!

Swensons Oreo cookies & cream sundae!

My first fun purchase

HQ hostel

Major & I

Ahhhhhh

Oooh no!

Main road in Silom

Weirdest feeling EVER

15 minutes in the fishy tank

Giant roaches

not what I thought it was going to be

Grand Palace

4am McDonalds..(she just realized I don’t eat the ends of my fries)

riding in a tuk-tuk

bruised when my friend grabbed on too tight

All in all a great weekend!!

Hope everyone has a wonderful Friday & weekend! I am headed to Pattaya with some of the teachers

And so it begins…

July 5, 2012

My first full week in Thailand was less than ideal to say it kindly. I am still super thrilled to have the opportunity to be here in another country doing something that I have wanted to do for years but I am pretty disappointed about some things.

When I was brought to the school the day after I arrived I was introduced to both the programs in need of teachers. One was a 2nd grade class, aka Pratom 2 and the other the Math & Science English program for levels Pratom 2, 3, 4, & 6. I met the 2nd grade class I was told would be mine, and I met all the other classes for the Math & Science program. There was a lot of pressure from the English program director to choose 2nd grade, which I didn’t understand. After a whole weekend of continuous pressure and not-so-subtle comments I accepted the class. On Monday when I arrived at school I learned I would actually be teaching a different class then the one I met and that my Thai co-teacher(who teaches 3-4 classes in Thai and I teach 3-4 classes in English) was out for the day w/out having told anyone(she also did this the Friday before). So my first day I would be teaching almost a full day w/kids I had not met and that speak minimal English. FANTASTIC.

Caligirl and I were assured it was a one time thing until Tuesday when it happened again because there was a seminar being taught by other Foreign teachers and our Thai teachers decided to attend but didn’t get their classes covered either. This happened Tuesday-Friday. OF our FIRST week at school. Not good at all.

Needless to say it was an awful first impression…and were into the 2nd week and it has not gotten better. Don’t let me fail to mention that it looks like they might not be able to keep me here because of some reasons I don’t want to discuss on here just that I was told one thing before I got here and the laws here say different.

But I don’t want this post to be all bad so I must include some photos!!!