The Home Stretch

With the end of Term 2 rapidly approaching (only 14 more teaching days, INCLUDING “review week”), there are so many things that need to be accomplished. I spent much of this past weekend writing the comments in my students’ permanent record books (which have to be full of praise, even for the most underachieving children) and writing final exams. I also need to finish the photo slideshow DVD’s I plan to present to my main class of P3/Yellow.

This was a busy weekend capping off a oddly hectic school week, despite a serious reduction in actual teaching time. A number of classes were canceled for various reasons including nationwide Thai testing on Tuesday, an elimination round for a talent show on Wednesday, and the school’s academic fair on Friday. Actually, the preparation for this fair had stretched back several weeks but because of a delay in obtaining materials, we had to take valuable classroom time on Wednesday and Thursday afternoons to create our displays for the booths. In the midst of this, our layouts for yearbook pages needed to be relatively finished as they are due tomorrow (luckily, I only had to create one of the three pages that I’m involved with — the special P4 ESL class, the reading “department”, and P3/Yellow).

The fair itself was a lot of fun, although it was a very tiring day. I was in charge of the English section for the P3 booth, ably assisted by Melanie and Alex, which meant that I was free to roam around in the morning as my “shift” ran from 11:30 until one (I stuck around another two hours after the official time had expired). I watched the opening ceremonies consisting of a few speeches and a really nice dance routine in honor of HRH Galyani Vadhana (which included one of my special ESL students, Nana). I also was able to attend the lower Primary talent show where I cheered on several of my P3 Yellow students — Phudit who played a traditional Thai musical instrument and Praw who sang wonderfully in English.

The highlight of the day, for me, came in the afternoon when the homeroom teacher for P3/Blue taught the children how to make pancakes. Most of the children made extras to give to Teacher Mark! I was already fairly full because all day, various students came by with food gifts for me (I’d filled up on lôok chín bplaa — fish balls — as well as Oreo cookies, shakes, etc.). This was just a continuation of Valentine’s the previous day when I was given a variety of treats such as Belgian chocolate and some wonderful sweet loaves baked by Melanie’s dad in addition to the usual cards and roses. Anyway, I think I ate around ten pancakes which has made me decide that I must teach my wife how to make them as well…

Speaking of my wife, Tim today has resurrected the restaurant in the front of our shophouse. This comes mostly as a result of her exhaustion traveling from one market or temple fair to another with her portable food stands. Plus, a man was fatally stabbed in her booth on the last night of the Chalong temple fair which also had a bit to do with her decision. This time, she is concentrating on noodle soup particularly the variety which uses those fat Chinese egg noodles. It will be nice to have her home at nights (she’d often be out at the temple fairs until two or later) and I wish her the greatest of success. Profits will definitely be helped now that a real estate company has moved in next door with a large (and hungry) staff…

I hope to have some time later this week to get better caught up on this blog (there’s an ever-increasing backlog of photos to upload and share). But I know I probably won’t be posting here as often until the school year wraps up next month (when I’ll have an entire WEEK off before I begin teaching the first of two special “summer” courses). Just keep checking back as there will come a time when there will, once again, be a flood of posts.