English Camp

For the first time in my life I was a teacher this past weekend at English Camp.

The funny thing is, this sort of happened by accident.

There is a Language School that is literally on my way home and one morning I was (literally) grabbed off the street by this (surprisingly strong) elderly woman and asked if I would be interesting in helping to teach.

The next thing I know, I have an invitation to a weekend at the Wanathra Resort in Wang Tong at an English Camp. Even though I didn't know what to expect, the Rotary tells us to say yes, so I did.

Shoshana, the (only) other exchange student from school, went as well. She is hilarious and we laugh quite a bit when we are together. She's German but is fluent in English with only a slight accent. In fact, between speaking slowly with kon Thai, (Thai people) and Sho(shana), I've developed some bizarre accent myself.


Anyway, we were going to be the assistants to three other teachers that taught at the language school: David, the cynical Australian with a laugh like a 4th grade girl; Chow, the cute, funny, Filipino; and Li, also Filipino with the demeanor and patience of a kindergarten teacher.


So the 5 of us (plus Ajahn Lumpoon, the big cheese) piled into the van headed towards Wang Tong.

As I said before, I wasn't certain how this would play out. I didn't know if the students had been studying for years, if it was going to be very formal, etc.

My worst fear was having a grammatical error pointed out by one of them. As you have probably noticed, my grammar (or spelling!) isn't that fantastic and I'm always concerned about making a stupid mistake in situations like this because I'm a native speaker. And native speakers don't make mistakes.


There were about 40 or so students at the camp. They had come from all over the country and all were enrolled in the Public Health programs in their universities. All were at least 3 years older than me, which I didn't mind, so are some of my friends at home. The weird part was the way they treated me. I was an Ajahn (teacher) now. This meant calling me Ajahn Nikki, bending their heads down every time they passed me, wai-ing me every time they saw me (outside of the classroom.


This is even more remarkable because the first night was a disaster. We had plans for Saturday and Sunday, but Friday night was open to...interpretation.

We ended up asking everyone their names and playing a little game with that. Then they asked us where we were from and random questions (one boy had the guts to ask: "What's your ideal boyfriend?") But this is where all dignity and grace left the building, to be replaced by shameless silliness.

We did the shake your booty game (with college students!!) and taught them a song that started with "All the bananas in the world unite!!".....
We were kind of short of ideas after a while though. I mean you can only shake your booty so many times before it gets old. (Hard to believe isn't it?)
Somehow we managed to entertain them for another 1/2 hour and then it was time for some rice soup and then bed.

It took Sho and I a while to figure out our rooming situation. We were rooming with Li in a room made for two. No biggie, they just rolled in a bed on wheels and voila! problem solved. Well, until we sat on it. After that it had a name (WARNING: Profanity Ahead!!) ... the shitty bed.

We decided to take a look around, after all we were staying at a resort.We ended up taking a very scary walk in the dark (and the rain)on some abandoned path.
This took us to where all the students were staying. We did what we always do; we spoke in broken Thai, they spoke in broken English.

Saturday went smoother. Mainly because we actually had a plan. We made them write news stories, played word games, tongue twisters and other interesting English stuff.
Mixed with just a bit of banana dancing.
It was interesting playing the teacher role, but it was a lot of fun. Especially when they had to write their own news program.
You see, in Thai articles, plurals, verb conjugations, and all the other little grammatical tidbits don't exist. This combined with the fact that a subject is not always necessary made some interesting English sentences.

Saturday night Sho and I went over to visit the kids again, though we didn't talk as much. Instead we translated..or dubbed over... a Thai soap opera... its amazing how much plot you can understand without the script.
That night we also watched Moulin Rouge... in Thai of course. It was bizarre, I found out they censor out a lot more things here than they do in the states, cigarettes, any alcohol, cleavage, and underwear. There is one sex scene in the movie, (well truth be told it's more like a sex frame, it last for about 3 seconds) but it was hilarious because the entire screen was blurred out.

Sunday was a little more serious, but we only had until lunch to get in all the practice we could. We split them into two teams and had them debate each other. The debate topics were silly and scary at the same time: Who is smarter? Men vs. Women, Who would win in a fight? Batman vs. Spiderman, and Which is better? An ugly rich man? or A poor handsome one.
The last topic was especially eye-opening.

OK I have to run.
Next weeks entry: Escape to Chiang Mai!!!