Leow Sai (turn left)

Yesterday I started teaching my adult class. I have 5 students that are all staff here at the Mercy Centre. They have strong foundation in English and are looking to practice and learn more converstational skills. In the afternoon I worked with the university prep girls. After our classes were finished we went to our haven also known as Tesco. We had a list of 5 things to pick up but left stocked up for days. We purchased milk, bread, coke, apples, pinapple, popcorn, blank, huge gallons of water, cups, a spoon and a fork and a little treat for ourselves. For Jodie, it was peanuts, for me it was chocolate of course. The total of these luxury goods was 26 dollars Canadian. We grabbed a taxi on our way home, and enjoyed a humerous loud ride home in a cab blarring Techno music through the slums of Klong Toi. At one point we just looked at each other and broke out our best dance moves. Speaking of dance moves, on our walk out of Tesco, we again walked out to see aerobics in the parking lot. It seems to be a daily event there and Jodie and I hopefully will one day gain the courage to show up and show off our own dance moves. I can picture it now, 2 huge, tall white girls wearing hot pink spandex, maybe a matching head band in a sea of short, tiny Thai women. It would be funny, that's for sure.

Today I had my usual morning class with the adults and then Jodie and I led 32 Thai childen in recreation. Now that was a challange. Not only were we not expecting that many children, but we were not prepared enough at all!!! Oh yeah, and there is the challenge of explaining a game in English, when everyone around you speaks Thai. I think Jodie summed it all up when she said "that was the longest hour of my life" haha. We held rec in the cafeteria which is quite large, but its no soccer field or baseball field. So it will be interesting to see how creative we can be with the little to now equipment. Thankfully, we only have rec once a week and some of the kids will be off to camp next week.

Later today, I will be teaching the university prep girls in research skills and technology. The plan is to teach them powerpoint here in the computer lab. So although I complained earlier that we have no equipment for rec, I am grateful for the bounty of other resources that I have access to, like this computer lab that has approximately 25 Mac Computers.

So off to lesson planning I go. I am really starting to settle in here now, it is truly beginning to feel like home. Jodie and I are hoping to leave the city this weekend to travel to a nearby beach which should be fun. I don't really have any pics from the last couple of days, so I will just post a some older ones.