I wrote and administered my first (two) exams this week which was definitely a different experience. I have never made an exam before so it kind of made me realize that I'm not sure exactly how qualified I am for this position :) It all went pretty smoothly with only a few questions from the students during exam time. My 5th grade math class ranged from 11-15.5/17 which I was happily surprised about. Unlike the US, Thai students only need a 50% in order to 'pass' so all my kids passed with plenty of wiggle room! This could bode well for me as those students who don't pass their finals have to stay after extra days and retake the test until they pass (aka I have to stay at school for longer than I have to). My 6th graders got between 12-15/16 on their math test so I feel like I'm actually doing alright.
I tried not to make the tests too easy, but included a balance of what we learned in class and tried to include the points that I had really stressed in the units. I still don't understand how some teachers teach a unit and then give an exam that has hardly anything to do with what they taught and/or have it focus on the nit-picky things from the readings. I guess it's nice to have the ability to create something that I feel actually tests what the kids know.
Friday was another night spent at home playing cards (Josie and I taught the other teachers how to play Golf and we also played Rummy with Gift (one of the teachers' girlfriends) They also taught us a game called Sluff which is pretty much a ghetto version of P&A, but we went with it. The Thai teachers are really great and we're learning a good amount from them. It's pretty hard to have conversations flat out, but they are trying and so are we.
Saturday we were going to go into BKK but decided against it cuz we had to get
up for an outing with Dr. Absorn early on Sunday. So, Ryan, Josie and I went on a mini-trip around Bang Phli (where we live) and saw some of the wats (temples). We looked online and realized one of the wats houses the Longest Reclining Buddha statue in the world (even bigger than the one in BKK which most people think is the longest). It's pretty crazy that a 5 min cab ride from our dorm took us to such a remarkable site, called Wat Bang Phli Yai Klang. It has a HUGE golden buddha that stretches for over 150 meters. The reclining position he's in doesn't represent sleeping, but represents Buddha entering Nirvana, or the highest form of enlightened life in the Buddhist religion.You are also able to climb inside the statue, as it's 4 stories tall, and see a ton of different muraled art which varies depending on which part of the body you were in (Hell-feet, Earth-torso, Heaven-head) and there was a shrine on the 4th story that surrounds Buddha's heart. It was a huge golden heart, complete with veins and arteries, that people were praying to. It's really cool to come into these places that represent something so different from what I'm used to and observe people going about their own rituals.
We walked the short distance from Yai Klang to Wat Bang Phli Yai Nai which is a site we've passed many times during taxi rides and always wondered what it was. Unbeknownst to us it houses one of 3 Buddha images in the Sukothai style (a former Thai Empire) that survived Burmese ransacking/fighting during many battles between the two countries. Outside the temple we indulged in some great street pat thai and made our way back to the dorms where we enjoyed our day off.Sunday the wan came and got us at 8am for an excursion to the Ancient City and Pattaya. The ancient city or Muang Boran is a really bizarre concept, but a very cool place. It's set up on 240 acres of land and is basically a giant outdoor historical museum. Sprawled out around the grounds are scaled down versions of historical sites that are very important to Thai history as a way to preserve the nation's culture and provide a place for Thai people and foreigners to go and observe architectural sites they may otherwise never see. The city has about 60% replicated structures, 25% original building designs/memorials and 15% actual sites that were bought and transported to the Ancient City for preservation purposes.
It's hard to imagine how big some of these sites actually are considering
the scaled down models are still big enough for a person to walk around in. One cool site was the grand palace from Ayutthaya (the capitol before BKK) which was completely destroyed by the Burmese but was reconstructed at this site based on old paintings and architectural representations from the past. It served as a reception hall for Queen Elizabeth II when she visited Thailand back in the day. We saw some Thai dancers, climbed a man made mountain and ate lunch in a network of huts that were all built on the water and connected by wooden walkways. My food was extreeeeemely spicy and I was reprimanded for blowing my nose in my napkin in my chair with my head away from the table. I don't get it--they have rules about nose blowing when snot is literally descending from one's nostrils at warp speed, but they use a super soaker instead of toilet paper...After the Ancient City all 11 of us piled into the wan and made our way to Pattaya (to be honest we didn't know we were going to Pattaya until Friday afternoon and still had absolutely NO clue why we were being taken there). After almost 2 hours crammed in the little wehicle we arrived in Pattaya--still clueless. Oil and Dr. A got out of the wan and hopped in some random pick up truck and left us. She then called and told Ryan that we were going to get dropped off at the mall we were in front of and to just take a walk on the beach. We had no direction as to what time we would be going back, if we should eat dinner, how far we should walk, etc, but we just took it with the inevitable grain of salt that seems to occur in these situations and made our way to the ocean for the first time since we've been here!
Ryan, Josie
and I walked along the beach for a while which was amazing. The beach itself isn't that nice (really crowed with umbrellas and chairs) but it was great to be by the water. Pattaya itself actually isn't very nice. It was once that utter sex/sin capitol of Asia in its heyday and still has a large reputation as being such a place. Everywhere you look there are dirty old ex-pats walking around with Thai women half their age (or more); some of them are even seen at ATMS withdrawing some serious bahtage. It's really kind of a seedy place, but I'm glad we ended up going and were able to see something else.We still have no idea why we went to Pattaya other than we think it
was so Dr. A could meet some people from the City Hall to work out the details of the Beach Cleaning Project we are doing with our school on Dec. 3. Why they can't just tell us is beyond me :) We ate at Burger King because we could and even witnessed a male beauty pageant in the mall. Before our 2+ hour trip home, I went to get dessert from Mr. Donut and asked the lady for one called the Flocky Chou-Josie and I couldn't figure out why she was laughing so hard. What? Flah-kee-chow! 'No no eet's Frrrooww-kee-cheeew' OHHHH sorry I missed that one ;)
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