Two short updates:

Motorbikin’ in Thailand

            So, I did it. I got a motorbike. I have been warned many times before about the dangers of a motorbike, but I have realized that if you go really slowly on the side of the road (as if you are riding a bicycle) you will be fine. To be honest the drivers in Thailand are scary, they weave in and out of traffic, and do some crazy things. Yesterday in the taxi the light had clearly turned red but the taxi flashed his lights on high beams and continued through the light…huh?

            I have thought about the pros and cons of getting a motorbike and, if I am very cautious (including watching those around me) then the pros far outweigh the cons. Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely love living at a boarding school. Getting to know your students after school and at dinner is a treat. But, sometimes it feels like we live in a bubble. The only way to get out of the bubble is to make a phone call to the taxi company. We have had many, many communication problems with the taxi company and the drivers sometimes resulting in the drivers simply giving up and not coming to get us. I cannot do my laundry, pick up anything from the store, or go shopping without a painful miscommunication with the taxi company (and 6 dollars round trip).

            Last night Kyle and I met an English teacher from a school downtown to rent a bike. The title “English teacher” is a little deceiving here, Rob is from England. He is extremely nice and he has rented to the foreign teachers at our school before. I brought Kyle along because he has driven dirt bikes so I knew he would get the hang of driving much faster than me.

            The ride home was extremely enjoyable. Feeling the wind on our skin, seeing the sights all around and tasting the sweetness of freedom, the language barrier between the taxi company and me has been demolished and it feels great.

In the Classroom

            This week has been fantastic in the classroom. Although I realized that BINGO is not as great of a past time as hangman for my Thai students, my co teacher sat in the back of one of my classes and told me that the kids are having a great time with me and that he is very pleased with how our classes complement each other.

            My lesson this week included DNA Trascription, Translation and Gene Expression. Often times in my class I will see the students staring at me and I get a sense that they are lost. I quickly think of examples and analogies I can throw at them but they still don’t get it. Then, finally it will turn into a game of charades trying to get the students to understand what I am talking about.

            For the lesson I showed a couple videos, drew on the board to help them understand, and spoke very slowly in English. For the most part I think the students were getting it.

            For the second part of the lesson we played BINGO! I had the students make a 4x4 board in their notes and gave them a list of words to use in the blocks. The list included RNA Primer, Helicase, Promoter Region and so on. I wanted them to practice reading and writing the words. When they were done I would read the definition of the word and they would have to decide if they had it or not.

            After that was done, if there were a couple minutes left in the period we would play “Hot Seat.” In hot seat a student will sit in a seat at the front of the room facing the class, another student would write a vocabulary word on the board behind them and the class would describe the word catch phrase style to the student facing them.

            Today was interesting, and hilarious. One of the strongest students in the class (who they all pointed to and cheered on to volunteer for hot seat) was sitting in the seat. Another student wrote “RNA Polymerase” on the board. The students start to describe it to her and she smiles, wiggles around in her chair and says “mRNA Polymerase!!” I am not sure what the students were saying at this point but I gathered they were telling her to “not say the m!” So, the girl thinks really hard and she starts “m—R---N---A….po---lllllllll----er--ase?” hahaha! She took the m out of Polymerase. It was the cutest thing ever. I am so proud of the students and what they are able to understand from my class. Every now and then I have to tell them to only speak English, but for the most part they are good at listening and speaking.