A Summer in Asia

This is long overdue...  I decided I'd better write about the summer before moving on to my most recent trip.

This summer I spent 4 weeks in southern Thailand teaching English.  What an experience!  I taught in the elementary school in grades 4 - 6.

After school I helped with the "Extra English Class" in the secondary school.

There were no other Americans in town so we had to find our way around on our own.  This turned out to be quite an adventure at times!

At the restaurant below, the menu was in Thai and the waitress could only speak Thai.   We finally thought we ordered cashew chicken.  When the plate came, the waitress was laughing because she knew we did not really want what we ordered.  It was a plate of cashews.  Finally with the help of Google Translate, we managed to order a real meal.

A border run that took all day.

Buying food on the street.  We spent much time finding food to eat.

After quite a search we did finally find a batik shop.  The owner showed us how to make the painted cloth.

We found ourselves at market during rush hour.  We got all kinds of food and brought it home to sample it.

Then I flew to Chiang Mai to visit Carolyn, my former housemate.

And I got to see the school that Nueng started.  How special to see the school she dreamed of years before when I dormed with her at FB.

Carolyn and I were both delighted to find rice paddies that were being planted.  I was happy to have a translator this time so I could find out what was happening.

 Yummy food and fruit smoothies.  I think I had a fruit smoothie everyday except one day.  Not to worry, I made up for that by having two on another day.

I was in Chiang Mai 12 years earlier.  So much had changed and I was not there long either time.  This market was one of the very few places that I actually recognized.

Then it was time to leave, but the adventures were not over.  In the middle of our travels home, Leona and I had 24 hours in Doha, Qatar.  For me this was the most unique part of the trip.

I never experienced heat like this before.  We were in Doha on about the hottest day of the year.  The temperature was around 120 degrees.  It put the Middle Eastern custom of resting at midday in a totally new light for me.

Clotted Cream, Science Fair, and Other Fifth Grade Tales

As my students discovered much earlier this year, I love giving them literal tastes of the countries we study.  I didn't do so well with Africa.  I guess I need to visit Africa and brush up on that.  But now we're studying Europe.  Tasty tidbits, here we come.  We just finished studying the British Isles, which I have been looking forward to all year.  After traveling in England and Scotland last summer, I had more ideas than time for this chapter.  I decided that they must experience a British tea.  Of course, tea in Britian is not complete without scones and clotted cream. I could call it Devonshire cream, but it's not technically correct if it isn't made in Devon, and I rather enjoy that initial look of distaste when I use the word "clotted".  I set out to make clotted cream with my students.  The last time I made it in the oven and it worked, I thought.  This time I set out to make it in the crock pot, until I forgot my crock pot at home on the day I needed to start it.  I found the best substitute in the school kitchen, an electric roaster, and hoped that no mom would show up needing it that day.  I put a inch or two of water in the bottom before putting in a glass baking pan and filled that with cream.  Then I turned on the roaster.  At the end of the day, I wasn't sure anything had happened, but it was time to go home so I put the pan of cream in the fridge.  Upon arrival the next day, I headed directly for the fridge.  Amazing!  There really was a perfect thick layer of clotted cream floating along the top.  It worked so much better than the oven.

Today was our tea party.  The menu: scones with clotted cream and jam, scones with Nutella, scones with lemon curd, cheese and pickle sandwiches, current jam and butter sandwiches, shortbread biscuits, digestives, and tea.  Real tea with milk and sugar.  The students were pretty brave.



The cheese and pickle sandwiches needed advertising, but the students who ate them were pleasantly surprised. Well, some of the students like them anyway.

We all enjoyed a break from normal class and about half of the students took the opportunity to wear dress clothes instead of uniforms.  I really hope that someday some of them will travel to the British Isles and also enjoy the lovely scenery that floats through my mind when I have British tea.

After weeks of work on forms and board and experiments and the scientific method, the time had arrived for our science fair.  My main goals were to lead the students through the scientific method and have them do an enjoyable project.  I heard very few groans about this project.

The entire project and fair was my experiment and I learned a few things as well: some students will try the experiment without the directions in front of them, results may vary for reasons beyond my scientific knowledge, and students love a chance to get out of class.  The other classes came to our fair as well as many of the parents.  I had all intentions of getting pictures of a few lovely boards, but I was far too busy to think of it then.

We planted lettuce in our window well. I'm not sure if the students noticed, but it's not faring so well.  The light is too far above and it is quite leggy.  We'll wait to see it it survives.

The students started their autobiographies.  This is the one project I really want them to get right.   They will do several drafts and make illustrations and covers.  So far I'm enjoying their stories.  One of my favorite parts of this project is allowing students to help each other with editing and improvements on their basic story.  I'm requiring them to include dialogue.  The students that do well with dialogue are helping those who don't really get it.  Very nice.  I'd love to help each one, but I simply can't get around to all of them and they think working with friends is great fun.

Then end of third quarter was today.   About 42 more days of school.  I bought plane tickets for Thailand a few weeks ago.  I'm spending 5 weeks there after school teaching English and visiting a friend.  I'm getting excited and trying to stay focused on school.

Life since August

In case you wondered where I've been since August, I'm here now to tell you.  Fifth Grade.  I really have spent most of my waking hours since August in my fifth grade classroom or planning for fifth grade classes or at least thinking about planning fifth grade related things.  It's been delightful, really, but I'm looking forward to Thanksgiving, immensely. (If you are one of my students, please note the adverb I used instead of "very much".)  I'm starting to dream about my lessons and conversations with other teachers, so I think a break is in order.

One of the most enjoyable projects we tackled so far was the mammal posters.  This size poster was a first for them and I was proud of their efforts and results.  They did the research and picture printing at home.  Then they had class time to assemble them.  I did breathe a sigh of relief when we were all done.  I can't post pictures of the students, so I'll show a few of their projects instead. 

Good Bye, Old, Plaid Sofa

My parents bought this sofa soon after they got married.

It was moved to the basement many years ago.  In a few hours there will be a few new pieces of furniture arriving upstairs and this relic is not needed (or wanted) in the basement.

Can you still buy sleeper sofas like this one?  I can't say anyone will miss them.  Even as a child I could hardly sleep on such a sloping, lumpy bed.

The Last Set of Places

We returned to London the following noon, just missing the taxi strike in Paris.  The White Cliffs of Dover was our next destination, only the traffic in London slowed our progress a great deal. At last we arrived and it was worth the wait.

Of course by now we were hungry and thus, headed into Dover to find food before exploring any further.

Fish and chips with mushy peas and a view of the White Cliffs and plenty of sea gulls ready to snatch the fish from unprotected plates.  Then we were back to the cliffs.

We also stopped at Beachy Head, but it was so dark and the pictures didn't turn out so great.

The next day started late and ended earlier than others.  The hours in the middle were spent driving the scenic route to our glamping site.  O.K. we really did stop at a number of places in between.

Narrow roads

Ate lunch at this lovely little place.

Our glamping site had a few surprises for us.  The biggest surprise was finding out that there weren't lights.  Well, there was one light if we used the only outlet for a light which meant we couldn't charge other things while the light was on.  Mostly the surprises were pleasant or perhaps amusing.

Padstow

 St. Ives

Pasties for lunch.

Across the moor...

over the stile, 

 to Wistman's wood.

Then up to the top of the moor to explore the Littaford Tor.

On our final day of exploring we went to Stourhead Garden where parts of Pride and Prejudice was filmed.

 One more of these

After finding kebabs we made one last stop in Exmoor where we could look across the bay and see Wales.

Now I'm home dreaming of the places I've been and places I'd like to go and trying to motivate myself to start thinking of school.