"..that's the glory of foreign travel, as far as I am concerned.. I can't think of anything that excites a greater sense of childlike wonder than to be in a country where you are ignorant of almost everything. Suddenly you are five years old again. You can't read anything, you have only the most rudimentary sense of how things work, you can't even reliably cross a street without endangering your life. Your whole existence becomes a series of interesting guesses.”
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Open House
Last week Anuban Khon Kaen participated in an English Open House, an English competition located in the Sirin province. I was asked to come along to help out. Anuban Khon Kaen was in charge of the speech competition for the prathom level. Prathom in Thailand is the primary level of schooling (grades 1-6). Because we were in charge of the speech competition we were in charge of announcing the students who were competing. To my surprise, I was given this job along with an attractive baby blue blazer to wear for the big day.
We left at the untimely hour of 6:00 am on Thursday morning. The bus ride there took 5 hours. Once we arrived we unloaded our things in the hotel and set off to the school where the competition was to take place. This school was a mattayom school. In Thailand, mattayom is the secondary level of schooling (grades 7-12). During my time in Thailand I have only ever seen the inside of my school. My school is very small. It has one large courtyard and only three buildings surrounding it. This mattayom school was very large. It had over nine buildings, a cafeteria, and several large courtyards. It was interesting to see a different school in Thailand.
When we arrived at the school we had lunch in the cafeteria before we set off to sit in a meeting for all the foreign teachers working at the competition. Most of the other foreign teachers were judges for each competition. The competitions included speech, story telling, singing, and a science fair-esque competition. There was also a skit competition in which my school did not participate. After the meeting all the teachers from Anuban Khon Kaen met up at our booth. Each school participating in the competition was given a booth. The prathom schools were all given an Asian country to represent at their booth while the mattayom schools were given a western country. We were given Indonesia. We had several Indonesian items on display and we had four boys and seven girls from our school performing an Indonesian dance about every ten minutes. They did a wonderful job!
Our booth-Welcome to Indonesia
The girls dancing.
The boys dancing.
That night the teachers were all busy getting ready for the next day’s competition so I was given plenty of free time to relax in my hotel room. Since we had to leave the hotel at 6:00 the following morning I called it an early night.
The next day we got up early and left the hotel dressed in our baby blue blazers and headed to the school. We spent several hours around the booth. I was lucky enough to have free time to wonder around and see the other booths. I even took a quiz from the school that was representing America. I am proud to say I got 100%.
Finally it was time for me to MC the speech competition. There were two levels in the prathom level: grades 1-3 and grades 4-6. Anuban Khon Kaen had a student in each level. Our student in the first level received 2nd place out of eight and our student in the second level took 3rd out of six.
After the speech competition was over there was some time to kill before we headed back to Khon Kaen. I wondered over to watch Benny, a sixth grader from our school who was competing in the second level of the prathom singing competition. She did a wonderful job singing “Just Enjoy the Show” and took 2nd place! The second grader who competed in the first level of the singing competition took 1st place with the song “Price tag.” I did not get to see her competition performance but I did see her practice several times and she was spectacular!
After we received all of the results we headed back to the bus. It was about 5:00 by the time we left Sirin putting us back in Khon Kaen at 11 pm on Friday night. When I was told I was to be missing class and heading to Sirin for this competition I was not happy. However I had an enjoyable time and was proud to be part of the Anuban Khon Kaen team.
Announcing with T. Eve and T. Nook.
Prae Prae won second!
Me, the two students who competed in speech, and T. David
I have packed one box of books to put into storage, I have not picked out anything I am bringing to Thailand, my room is a mess with suitcases and laundry thrown everywhere, and I leave in 4 days. So of course, instead of packing or cleaning or moving, I decide to start my blog. I hope to keep up to date on the adventures I have in Thailand, although I cannot promise anything. But as of now, it is time to get my act together and get things in order for my departure on Thursday. Next time I write it will be from Thailand!
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