Second Day of Teaching

Responding to Comments:

Christy: Yes, the bugs were like sunflower seeds both in taste and in the crunch, and somewhat in the texture. Thank you for your suggests with pronunciation. And Lao is a tonal language, and theoretically musicians should have an easier time learning the language, but not necessarily easy. I think it is because a musician can hear the difference between two words, while others might not.

Heather: Great idea to have them read. That way they can concentrate on pronunciation more than on what they have to say. I am sure Manja gave that idea in my ESL class, but I had forgotten it. (I sure wish I had those notes with me right now… I bet they would help.)

Erin: Yes, the bug was dead, (and it was fried in oil and soy sauce I think) but it was not covered in chocolate… that would have been much easier. If you want to write me a letter, the best way is to email it to me. (I don’t know my address here either… in fact, I have no idea where Jay and Milka get their mail… or where the post office is for that matter.

Official Blog:

I am currently doing quite well. I am in a very good mood. I just finished my class on writing, and it went quite well. Thus far, this has been my favorite part—helping the people in the office improve their writing. I know exactly what I am doing. I give them a topic to write on at the end of the day (just a little bit a ago I told them to write about goals that they have) they go home and write, and then they bring their paper to class at 10 AM. Sometime between noon and 3 PM I go through the papers making corrections and getting an idea of what they had the most trouble with. Then from three to four I go through different mistakes, writing them on the board, and then asking them what they would fix. It is very enjoyable, and I feel more like I am teaching.

The other parts of teaching still need some perfecting. I am learning how to do it as I go, and I am not quite satisfied with it all. For example, my class at the school is very shy. Most of them are afraid to talk in front of everyone else. There are moments when they do very well, speaking in full sentences very clearly, but most of the time I ask a question, and no one wants to answer. I am not yet certain how to deal with that. I am also worried that I am going to run out of things to discuss in class very quickly. Today, the things I planned did not take enough time (maybe because people were not talking) and I had to improvise to come up with something else to do for the last twenty minutes of class. I am going to look online for some ideas, and see if that helps me out. Today at the school we talked about movies. I asked them to tell me about their favorite movies, and then I talked to them about violence, swearing, drugs and alcohol and sex. I asked them if children should watch movies with these things, and why not. I also asked them if they would choose not to watch a movie because of these things. (There were not too many who felt that they needed to worry about watching these things much, but when I surveyed the class all of them said they wouldn’t watch a movie if it had too much sex—of course how do you define too much?)

At the LKA office, I had each of them tell me about what they do. Then I asked questions about how they do those things. It was quite educational for me, and it gave each of them an opportunity to explain something in English. (I learned that they mostly work with agriculture, health, and education [though there are other areas too] and they work to help the people learn how to improve agriculture using fertilizer, how to improve health and prevent disease, and they provide the schools with supplies. Laos is a very poor country, and they are working to help the people improve the standard of living here.

So with these morning sessions, I get them to discuss, and then use what they say as an opportunity to correct mistakes and improve pronunciation, but it doesn’t feel like teaching as much. In the afternoon working with writing, that feels like teaching.

I never expected teaching to be so exhausting. I have to concentrate to hard and pour so much energy into it. I only teach for four hours ever day, but it wears me out so much. The fact that it wears me out does not help my mood swings. Oh, I haven’t told you about my mood swings yet? Well let me explain. Ever since I arrived in Laos this second time, I have been dealing with loneliness. I mentioned that the other day, saying that I feel like an island out in the middle of the ocean, separated from communication. Well, there are many times when I do not feel like that any more. I have been able to get to know the people here at the office, and I have spent time with the group of Ter’s friends, so I am getting opportunities to socialize. I have also found things to do with my free time alone (which I often treasure since teaching and spending time with people trying to understand what they are saying is so exhausting) But, at the same time there are moments where I am overcome with a feeling of being alone. These emotions come in waves. (that is why I say I have mood swings) I will be doing fine, and then all of a sudden I realize I am alone in Laos, and I can’t get on the phone and talk to my parents or a friend, I can’t walk down the street and see familiar faces, I am thousands of miles away from home, and not only that, but I will be alone until the fourteenth of July! And I can’t talk to anyone about it either. I feel a little like the kid at camp who is homesick and wants to go home. Then before too long, (sometimes after listening to music or writing in my journal, or reading) it will the feelings will fade and I will be fine…. until the next time they pop up. Like I said… I have mood swings. This usually happens a couple times a day, and it is very intense while it happens… I have this panicky feeling for a while, and then it goes away. Maybe this is the culture shock thing we talked about at college. (though I think it is mostly dealing with loneliness, and not culture). Anyhow, I am doing great now. (That is another thing. When I do my blog and email, I feel connected to you all once again, and so I usually feel pretty good.) So I guess I wrote all of this to tell you how I am doing, and to let you know that if you wake up in the middle of the night, you can think of me before you fall back asleep. (because it is the middle of the day here.)

Last night was a very fun experience. Ter’s friends took me out to eat at a restaurant where they have Korean Barbeque. It was a buffet where you pick out the raw vegetables and meat you would like to eat, and then at you cook it at your table. (Each table has a hole in the center where they put a bucket full of hot coals, and then they put a dome shaped thing with a little moat around it over the bucket.) You fried the meat on the top, and then you cooked the vegetables in the moat. It was a very fun social thing, because you are all grilling over the same bucket, and then as the meat cooks, you flip the meat over using your chopsticks, and you talk to the people around you. The only problem was that we used the same chopsticks to handle the meat that we used to eat. I don’t know how dangerous it was, but I tried to protect myself by putting my chopsticks in the hot water in “the moat.” before I ate off of them. But who knows? I might have forgotten a couple times, or accidentally eaten some meat that was not quite cooked. I don’t know. I am feeling okay now (about 20 hours later) so maybe I am okay. During our conversation a couple of the girls asked me to play badmiton (spelling?) with them sometime. (we will see).

I am reading The Count of Monte Cristo again, (I don’t know if I mentioned it before, but I ended up taking a break from reading it so that I could read Why not Women? while Jay was around) and enjoying it thoroughly. It is nothing like the movie, and that is okay. I can accept that. I enjoy both separately and in a different way from the other. I have begun reading the book with a dictionary by my side, because there are so many words that I really don’t know. Some of them, like plebian, I have heard before, but I want to make sure that I am understanding it correctly, and others, like lorgnette, are completely new. I don’t know if these words are used because it is an old story (and therefore a different vocabulary) or because it is a French story (and some of the words are French words adopted by English) or a combination of the two.

-Luke