Thursday, September 3, 2009

Teaching is Easy When You Have The Mind of a Child.



I always said if I couldn't find a job that I would fall back on teaching. Not to say that teaching is not difficult, I just always felt I could be a good teacher. I am good with kids and I think like a kid sometimes.

We started our actual class time tuesday. Maris and I each taught an hour lesson on "I have/have not been to______" and countries and landmarks. My first class was filled with about 44 eleven to twelve year old Thai children.

I have never been nervous talking in front of people, I had a trivia show every Sunday and talking to people never made me nervous. But speaking a new language to foreign children is a whole different animal. I sweat profusely, because its hot and I am nervous, I fumble through papers, I speak too fast. I felt every minute tick by. When it ended I felt ok about the lesson, but I realized my first time was a little rough.

I did my second lesson today. It went great. I was not a bit nervous and the kids were very attentive. I taught the same lesson. We started by playing a game of HangMan, they love it. Then I did some verbal lessons, then moved to a wordsearch we created. Then we finished and they all stood up and in unison say, "Thank you teacher".

I love it, my next class is Tuesday and it is a new lesson. I am looking forward to it! Here are some photos!











_Brock
Posted by BrockTalkinThai at 12:07 PM

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The Beginning

The Beginning

I am a 25 year old, southern Gent. I've been bothered by the fact that I've not traveled the world or even left the country, sans a trip to Cancun when I was in High School, but that was so muddled with tequila and strip clubs (sorry mom), that It doesn't REALLY count- that I have decided to take a adventure across the globe with the love of my life.

All I needed was a motivator, I needed someone to push me to travel and tell me, "Now's the time to do this, and we should totally do it". She came, she said those magic words and now we've got our bags packed, watching the calendar.
 
I had intentions on moving to New York City with my girlfriend. We are both really big into music and both have a spot in our hearts for the city. The opportunity escaped us after having our hopes deflated by the freaky rent prices there. We kind of ditched the New York idea immediately following a trip there and the mention of Thailand. 

We had always tossed around the idea of traveling together. I knew I wanted to travel with her. The first place she mentioned was Thailand, and after 20 minutes on Craigslist, checking out places and prices, we were sold (prob not the best way to chose where you want to spend your life, but that's just how it happened, and this is my story). Thailand it was.

So here we are 6 months later, a ticket for Bangkok dated August 4th in our hands. When people ask us how long we will be in Thailand, we say "Indefinitely". We are ready for a life change, something that might coax us into never coming back.

I have been dreaming of the sand and the crystal beaches since we mentioned the move, I have also had nightmares of being locked up and having to deal with a girlfriend who has been kidnapped by some crazy python handler, but those are just dreams.

The truth is, I have never been so excited and nervous at the same time for anything in my life. Right, now as I sit on my couch in South Knoxville looking out the window at the homemade bird feeders we made, on a hot Sunday afternoon, it blows my mind to think that in a little under two months, I might be laying in the sand with the tide riding up my mini bathing suit, with some concoction of a random Thai's design to sip in one hand, watching long-tailed boats float over the horizon, holding the love of my life in the other.

I expect to be shocked, excited, impressed, disappointed, lost, scared, found, happy, comfortable, uncomfortable, drunk, frightened, enlightened, ready to come home, ready to stay forever- all at different times on this journey.  

But one thing that will never change will be when I am an old man, maybe back in South Knoxville, sitting on my porch in a rocking chair with my old wife, widdling some crazy little thing old men on porches widdle, I will be able to look over to my wife and ask, "Remember that time we went into that local bar in Thailand and we saw that Thai Prostitute perform that "Ping-Pong show?" I am glad we shared that moment together."  

And she will say, "Brock that's disgusting" and then smile a little bit.


_Brock