Friend/Brother/Student/Teacher - Genie

What a wild, crazy week...

Monday is my hell day. I teach more on Mondays than one of our coworkers teaches in an entire week.

Am I bitter about that?

Absolutely.

Monday passed in a whirlwind of my feet throbbing and my voice rasping. Two of my classrooms had broken microphones so I had to project over 30 loud students for four hours straight.

Tuesday was no better. While I have one less class, as of Tuesday I teach more classes than said other coworker teaches in two weeks.

On Tuesday, I also did some recon on materials I needed for a lab I was going to do on Friday. I realized I still hadn't received the two most important parts of the lab. I messaged our consultant about it and he said he would contact the school and have it delivered before Friday.

Wednesday was a half day. It didn't change my life at all because on Wednesday, most of my classes are in the morning anyway. But several people were excited that they missed classes and got an afternoon to prep. We were also informed by MediaKids on Wednesday that we need to have all of our lesson plans for the ENTIRE SEMESTER submitted by June 30th.

For some math on this, I teach 18 classes per week. There are 21 weeks in our semester, but one week is midterms and another is finals. We'll call it 19 weeks. 18*19=342. I already have about 90 of them done, so I have to write 342-90=252 lesson plans in the next 15 days. While that is a bit under 17 lesson plans per day (so about one week of lesson plans per day), that also means I have to figure out what lessons and vocabulary I'll be teaching for all of my classes for the rest of the semester in the next 15 days.

Needless to say, before I start doing that, I'm reading my contract with a magnifying glass because I'm almost positive there is a clause in there about lesson plan submission dates. I'm determined to go back to MediaKids and very sassily say: ABSOLUTELY NOT.

So if you're wondering what Amanda and I are doing for fun in the next 15 days, it'll be complaining about our apartment's internet and writing lesson plans. If you need us, we live at Lofter now.

Thursday was Teacher Appreciation Day. I'll let you read Amanda's post on how that went. Summary: weird. Didn't have to teach. Like a normal day in the life for the coworker I'm salty about.

Friday was another long day.

My lab materials did not arrive.

Two hours of my day was supposed to be a lab on photosynthesis. I was very much looking forward to the lab. However, since my materials didn't arrive, I had to scramble in order to fill TWO HOURS of time.

Needless to say, MediaKids will be receiving a scathing email on Monday (ok probably Tuesday because my Mondays are hell) about how disappointed my students and I were about this.

After my classes, I flopped in my desk, plugged in my headphones, and watched 2 hours of Glee.

Ok. I also planned 6 weeks of lessons for M1 Science. But the fun part was Glee.

After work, we met up with Roxi at the Naga Fountain. (For reference, the background of our blog is the Naga Statues.) She was there on her bike with a student of hers, PP.

It turns out that PP's family owns a restaurant by the river and that's where our dinner plans were.

When I say that I fell in love with this child, I mean it in a way where I want to shove him into my suitcase and bring him with me wherever I go. However, his parents seem to be doing an absolutely wonderful job... so I guess he can stay here in Nong Khai.

As we walked to the restaurant, I got this beautiful shot:

PP (pronounced exactly as you would assume 'peepee') is the English translator for his parent's restaurant. He is a P6 (11 years old) and wants to grow up to be an air traffic controller.

He introduced himself to use as "Teacher Roxi's Friend (puts a finger up), Brother (another finger), Student (another finger), Teacher (another finger)." As he sees her often enough out of school to call her a friend, they jokingly call each other siblings, she teaches him English, and he teaches her Thai, the long title makes sense.

He started by very excitedly showing us to a 4-top table (it seated 4 so that he could sit and have dinner with us). There was a large hole in the middle because they are known for their BBQ grills on tables. Needless to say, Amanda and I will be going back there soon to try the BBQ.

As Roxi had been there "about a million times before", we let her do the ordering. We got deep-fried, egg-dipped rice patties, morning glory shoots (they're a vegetable here, not a flower), and a fish salad.

I cannot begin to tell you how good it all was! The fish salad is on my top 10 foods of Thailand list. I would sit and eat that all day and be a happy camper. The rice had the perfect combo of crunch and chew and PP showed us how to eat it like real ESAN people (the people of northern Thailand). The morning glories were nothing special, but that brown sauce you see was delish! We dipped the rice patties in it and it was simply spectacular.

We finished dinner with a traditional Thai dessert. The closest I can describe it to you would be shaved ice.

But it isn't shaved ice. So hold on for this long description:

Take a small bowl. Fill it 1/2 way with crushed ice (not shaved - just crushed). Then add a number of toppings. PP's restaurant offered taro root, black jellies, corn (a dessert item in Thailand), pink jellies, white jellies, and a melon that resembled cantaloupe with a softer texture. He had us sample them all first and with a lot of enthusiasm, asked how much we liked them from 1-10.

These are my results:
Taro: 0
Black Jellies: 7
Corn: 8 (CORN IS A DESSERT NOW YOU CANNOT CONVINCE ME OTHERWISE)
Pink Jellies: 10
White Jellies: 4
Melon: 5

So then you put whatever toppings you want on top of your ice. I chose black jellies, pink jellies, and corn.

Then you top the whole thing with about 1/4 cup of coconut milk (unsweetened) and a dribble of a sugar syrup.

The result looks like this:

You eat it with a large soup spoon and it's refreshing and wonderfully cool.

While we were enjoying our dessert, PP was identifying aircraft flying by. By identifying, I mean this kid listens to the sound of the engine and then spews: "Lao Airlines, Class 'something something', Model 'something something'." THEN HE OPENS HIS EYES AND GOES: "Yes. That was correct."

This 11 year old child was identifying airplanes by model, country of origin, and class by the noise they made thousands of meters above us.

I was shook. Shooken. Shookith.

According to Roxi, he also does this with the local trains. We mentioned seeing a train on Sunday evening and he went: "Yes. That is the 7:15 train going to Laos. It is the last train you can get going from Thailand to Laos on a Sunday. It is the 'something something' class 'something something' model that has been used since 'this year'.

Please note that when I say 'something something' or 'this year', he had this information, I just can't remember it.

And then this kid decided it was music time. He started picking songs and was our choir director for 20 minutes. He would count off a beat, ask us to pick a rhythm to tap along, and start singing a song he hoped we knew and could sing along with.

THIS CHILD CAN DO THE ENTIRE FIRST VERSE OF DESPACITO.

Even Justin Bieber can't do that live and it's his song.

His Spanish pronunciation was impeccable. He's one of the first people I've met in Thailand who can almost drop his native accent when he speaks English and it definitely showed in his singing.

We went around the circle doing songs and handshakes and fist bumps of various types (he was a big fan of Linnea's "pound it -- SNAIL") until my headache got to a blinding rage and I had to excuse myself and Amanda to go home.

We did manage to capture this cute selfie before the mad dash back home for Excedrin.