Friday, February 26, 2010

Three weeks!

I thought after two weeks, things would be normal, easy, fun, but I’m finding that while some things get easier, a lot of the time it’s still really hard. Sigh.

I started Thai lessons this past week. Pi Khwan, my teacher, says I have good pronunciation, even though I think I have a hard time memorizing vocabulary. I guess living overseas for the first 12 years and listening to a language I was never brave enough to speak well at least gave me an ear for non-English sounds. It’s really fun to practice the tones and start to recognize words and phrases in conversation.

I’ve been struggling a lot with not knowing what exactly my talents are. It seems like since graduating from college, I’ve only been doing things outside of my comfort zone (or talent zone), and the things I vaguely have an idea that I’m good at—writing, organizing, planning—haven’t been utilized in a solid way. However, I’m surprised and grateful that teaching is starting to satisfy those gifts and passions. Though planning the creative writing class has been a huge challenge, I get pretty excited about it at times because it lets me do a lot of things I love—researching, brainstorming, and putting together ideas; fitting lessons and activities into a daily structure; and thinking about both writing and cross-cultural communication.

Class has been genuinely fun a lot of the time, and I understand what the volunteers mean when they say they fall in love with their students. One day we were doing the sound of the day, where I have to read a bunch of words with difficult sounds—like final l and r—and they repeat them. Everyone is so cute, leaning forward and starting intently at me with perplexed expressions. One woman, Rungtiwa, is SO intent. She always strains way forward and repeats everything I say a million times. Another girl, Puky, started cracking up watching her, and soon the whole class (including me, and Rungtiwa too) was laughing so hard it was hard to keep going. I don’t want to make them think I’m making fun of them or disrespecting them (especially since most of them are older than me), but sometimes it is sooooo funny and adorable to hear them try these foreign sounds that to me are so simple. (Btw, they enjoy when I try to speak Thai—I think the role reversal is refreshing.) They are such hard workers, it’s awesome. It seems like everyone in Bangkok works incredibly hard. After all, most of them are here for the purpose of going to school or working to make money for their families. The Thai people are such a good mix of busy and relational. Anyway, my students have been bonding with each other and have been inviting me to a lot of stuff (though coordinating schedules is proving to be difficult). At the least, I'll have meals with both of my classes on the last day. I really enjoy eating out with big groups of people, especially because they order everything and put it on my plate for me.

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