Two weeks into CELTA and...

well, i've handed in three assignments (two resubmits and one in the waiting), taught 6 observed classes, half of which went particularly well, survived on four hours sleep a night, woken up at 7am everyday - including weekends because it's habit now and taken every mode of transport possible to get to school in the morning... taxi, tuk tuk, motorcycle, mrt. oh.. not yet done bus, but think someone would have to pay me to do that.

i can't believe i only have three more observed classes to go, one more assignment and one more re-submit.. this course is kicking my butt. it's been really nice to be on the right side of the language for once though, with spelling colour, saying football and pronouning mum. Poor Cristen and the other two north americans are having a bit of a rough go of it..

Our trainers are really really good. It's hard to teach in front of everyone, but we get a lot of encouragement and good feedback from them. 'We' is a great group of people. Marta from Poland, who's married to a Brit-who-works-for-the-British-Council-and-has-just-started-his-post-in-Japan. Marty from Canada who's been in advertising/marketing for 20 years and wants a change of scenery (he's definitely got it!!). Blaithin (pronounced Blor-hin) from Ireland who lives and works in Burma of all places and thinks Bangkok is the west! Shaun from Denver ... well more like Kansas... who's just really unpredictable. And Fahad, who's mixed Indian Pakistani but grew up in Sri-Lanka and has lived in pretty much every muslim middle-eastern unknown territory possible..

The course is very intense but we manage to laugh at ourselves too. The other day our quite-serious-trainer Stuart asked for an example of an idiom and Shaun said "you're full of bolony" which was just too much for us to deal with. we were in tears laughing because he's just so quiet. I do wonder what goes on in his mind...

Anyway, in two weeks we'll be on a beach somewhere getting burnt and swatting mosquitos. can't wait.

Welcome to Bangkok

Well it's been 2 weeks and it's about time to blog what's been going on. Starting of course with the weather. A good ice-breaker. But i'm afraid i'll make everyone so jealous they'll not read on. It's warm, sunny, cloudy, occassional storms just to freshen the air. Lovely.

The catch is, i'm indoors in freezing a/c all day monday to friday! have been forced to bring socks to school with me to prevent my feet turning purple.

But enough of that. Here are some pictures from the first weekend when we weren't worrying about assignments and fretting over the format of a lesson plan. Cristen and I went to the Grand Palace, lost each other 15 minutes after we arrived, but i still took some photos. The details of the buildings are brilliant. It was a sunny day, and all the gold was shining and twinkling. It felt very grand indeed. Am really enjoying Bangkok.