Low Attendance
Responding to comments:
Erin: Yes, I am always hanging around with “the girls” over here. The reason for that is simple. Ter, the woman who cooks for me, has a group of friends who speak English. It is difficult to spend time with guys when you don’t know any around your age, and the ones you have met can barely speak English. I will make sure to say “Hi” to Bethany from you.
Bekah: Looking forward to seeing you. Take care.
Official blog entry:
The wedding party was like an American wedding reception with a few differences. Some of these differences may be due to the fact that this was not a typical wedding party. This wedding party had about 1000 people, and the bride was 47 and the groom was 51. This was the bride’s first marriage and the groom’s second. Because the wedding was so large, half of the crowd was seated at tables outside the hotel and the other half were inside. (We were outside.)
They made sure those outside could see what was going on by having a video screen showing the couple and the live band, and to make sure that not a single guest would miss a single detail of the evening, they placed several large speakers outside and turned the volume up just loud enough to
1) Distort all sound coming out of the speakers
2) Make it necessary to shout across the table to be heard
3) Cause permanent hearing damage to all present.
(Actually it wasn’t THAT loud, but it WAS just about as loud as a live rock concert—except the sound was distorted from having the sound turned up too loud for the speakers—not because the guitars had special effect peddles to distort the sound.)
The food was good, and displayed in a way that looked fancy and appealing. It was more food than I have ever seen at a wedding reception, and all of it was quite good. We had noodles, a chicken soup (Chinese I think, because it reminded me of soups available at Chinese restaurants), a whole fish, duck, a couple different dishes that were meat mixed with herbs and a sauces (one dish was chicken the other beef) a plate of king prawn, a plate of vegetables (which included some slices of raw tomato) and a tray of fruit.
After the meal some people danced (all of the guests were invited to join the dancing, but only a small fraction of the 1000 did). Americans would probably think the dancing was pretty hokey. The first type of dance was walking slowly to the music with your partner (not touching) while your elbows were next to your body and your hands extended in front of you. AS you walked, you slowly turned your hands like a Thai dancer (or lack of a better comparison). The other dance I saw was like a slow line dance with people standing in a square (again, no touching).
I learned that night that the wedding ceremony is held at home with relatives in the morning. This wedding party was the time for all the friends to see and congratulate the newly wed couple.
It was a little interesting this morning, at the school; I had only two students and no classroom. (This was because of a mushroom growing training that was happening at the same time) some of the teachers went to that (including the one with the key). So the three of us had class outside, and halfway through another student came and five minutes before class ended a fourth came.
At the office we had a similar situation because of the mushroom training. I had two students, and so we started 15 min. late, and then another couple students were there when we started at 10:15, and then a fifth student showed up at 11:00 for the second hour of class.
Not knowing when and if students will come to class has been a common thing that has happened during my teaching experience in Laos. It has happened because each of my students has different jobs and responsibilities that need to be fulfilled. Sometimes they have to go out to the villages for five days and work with the farmers, other times there is something like this mushroom training. The teachers at the school have classes that they have to attend in other towns, and a couple people have been sick. It has been very understandable why this has happened, but now having dealt with it for 21 days of teaching and having only one day of teaching left, I have decided that it bothers me.
When my students are late or absent, I feel like they do not think the class is important. Of course this is not true, but that is how I feel. It has disrupts my teaching. It is difficult to decide what to teach or how to teach it when you do not know if you will have eight or two students. Sometimes I came to class and had to improvise class because my plans didn’t exactly work with the number of students. It has required flexibility on my part. Also when students are not in class for a week, the miss a whole lot, and everyone knows what is going on except that one person. The same problem exists when someone is late. Do you sum of everything that you taught in the last 15 min. or do you ignore that they were gone and just keep teaching. (I have tried to give the basic information about what we are doing when it has happened to me). It is difficult to build from one day to the next when you don’t know how many people will be in class today, or who they will be, or if they will be there tomorrow. I am not angry (if this section sounds angry to you) I am just observing what has happened and learning that I dislike it. My students all have very good reasons for being late or absent, but that doesn’t make it any less disruptive or frustrating. I now have a new appreciation for TBC’s attendance policy. I can guess how frustrating it is for a professor whose students have inconsistent attendance.
-Luke
Postscript: If you want to learn a little more about Star Wars and its director, George Lucas, here is a really intereting article. http://www.adherents.com/people/pl/George_Lucas.html It is kind of long, and gets more into conflicts Lucas had with other people concerning copyright laws after about the eighth page, but the rest is really good. I would recommend reading though the the quote "That corner of the world falls quiet. An ancient mystery is about to be re-enacted. The audience is listening. " and maybe stop after that. If you want to read about the selfishness of film-makers read the whole ariticle. (about 15 pages) It's a look into human nature.
Erin: Yes, I am always hanging around with “the girls” over here. The reason for that is simple. Ter, the woman who cooks for me, has a group of friends who speak English. It is difficult to spend time with guys when you don’t know any around your age, and the ones you have met can barely speak English. I will make sure to say “Hi” to Bethany from you.
Bekah: Looking forward to seeing you. Take care.
Official blog entry:
The wedding party was like an American wedding reception with a few differences. Some of these differences may be due to the fact that this was not a typical wedding party. This wedding party had about 1000 people, and the bride was 47 and the groom was 51. This was the bride’s first marriage and the groom’s second. Because the wedding was so large, half of the crowd was seated at tables outside the hotel and the other half were inside. (We were outside.)
They made sure those outside could see what was going on by having a video screen showing the couple and the live band, and to make sure that not a single guest would miss a single detail of the evening, they placed several large speakers outside and turned the volume up just loud enough to
1) Distort all sound coming out of the speakers
2) Make it necessary to shout across the table to be heard
3) Cause permanent hearing damage to all present.
(Actually it wasn’t THAT loud, but it WAS just about as loud as a live rock concert—except the sound was distorted from having the sound turned up too loud for the speakers—not because the guitars had special effect peddles to distort the sound.)
The food was good, and displayed in a way that looked fancy and appealing. It was more food than I have ever seen at a wedding reception, and all of it was quite good. We had noodles, a chicken soup (Chinese I think, because it reminded me of soups available at Chinese restaurants), a whole fish, duck, a couple different dishes that were meat mixed with herbs and a sauces (one dish was chicken the other beef) a plate of king prawn, a plate of vegetables (which included some slices of raw tomato) and a tray of fruit.
After the meal some people danced (all of the guests were invited to join the dancing, but only a small fraction of the 1000 did). Americans would probably think the dancing was pretty hokey. The first type of dance was walking slowly to the music with your partner (not touching) while your elbows were next to your body and your hands extended in front of you. AS you walked, you slowly turned your hands like a Thai dancer (or lack of a better comparison). The other dance I saw was like a slow line dance with people standing in a square (again, no touching).
I learned that night that the wedding ceremony is held at home with relatives in the morning. This wedding party was the time for all the friends to see and congratulate the newly wed couple.
It was a little interesting this morning, at the school; I had only two students and no classroom. (This was because of a mushroom growing training that was happening at the same time) some of the teachers went to that (including the one with the key). So the three of us had class outside, and halfway through another student came and five minutes before class ended a fourth came.
At the office we had a similar situation because of the mushroom training. I had two students, and so we started 15 min. late, and then another couple students were there when we started at 10:15, and then a fifth student showed up at 11:00 for the second hour of class.
Not knowing when and if students will come to class has been a common thing that has happened during my teaching experience in Laos. It has happened because each of my students has different jobs and responsibilities that need to be fulfilled. Sometimes they have to go out to the villages for five days and work with the farmers, other times there is something like this mushroom training. The teachers at the school have classes that they have to attend in other towns, and a couple people have been sick. It has been very understandable why this has happened, but now having dealt with it for 21 days of teaching and having only one day of teaching left, I have decided that it bothers me.
When my students are late or absent, I feel like they do not think the class is important. Of course this is not true, but that is how I feel. It has disrupts my teaching. It is difficult to decide what to teach or how to teach it when you do not know if you will have eight or two students. Sometimes I came to class and had to improvise class because my plans didn’t exactly work with the number of students. It has required flexibility on my part. Also when students are not in class for a week, the miss a whole lot, and everyone knows what is going on except that one person. The same problem exists when someone is late. Do you sum of everything that you taught in the last 15 min. or do you ignore that they were gone and just keep teaching. (I have tried to give the basic information about what we are doing when it has happened to me). It is difficult to build from one day to the next when you don’t know how many people will be in class today, or who they will be, or if they will be there tomorrow. I am not angry (if this section sounds angry to you) I am just observing what has happened and learning that I dislike it. My students all have very good reasons for being late or absent, but that doesn’t make it any less disruptive or frustrating. I now have a new appreciation for TBC’s attendance policy. I can guess how frustrating it is for a professor whose students have inconsistent attendance.
-Luke
Postscript: If you want to learn a little more about Star Wars and its director, George Lucas, here is a really intereting article. http://www.adherents.com/people/pl/George_Lucas.html It is kind of long, and gets more into conflicts Lucas had with other people concerning copyright laws after about the eighth page, but the rest is really good. I would recommend reading though the the quote "That corner of the world falls quiet. An ancient mystery is about to be re-enacted. The audience is listening. " and maybe stop after that. If you want to read about the selfishness of film-makers read the whole ariticle. (about 15 pages) It's a look into human nature.
1 Comments:
I'm glad you've been able to do things that get you into the culture, like go to a wedding and drive on scary roads on the left side and eat all kinds of interesting foods. I think before you come home, you should get Ter to show you a few basic recipes that we would be likely to have ingredients for or be able to get ingredients for, and you should make them for us. That would be really grand. There are a lot of Asian markets around here, so we might be able to get a few unusual things.
I read the conversation you had with your dad on Messenger and find it very interesting that the Lao don't contemplate very often the ethical issues that Americans make a big deal of. Are there ethical issues that they deal with? They may be entirely different than the ones that we do. Or is it not an area of thought for them at all?
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