First Day of School

Today was the first day we saw our school.  JJ picked us up which is how it has been for the past couple of days.  The buildings are very open.  The hallways and staircases are all open to the outdoors but the classrooms are walled and have nice windows.  And luckily our classrooms are all air conditioned! The cafeteria is basically just a giant open complex with a roof.

The day started with all of the English Programme teachers and our Thai teacher partners meeting in the big conference room.  There, we heard some “speeches” from some of the Thai heads of office. We all just nodded along and pretended to understand their broken English.  Some of them actually spoke very well.  The M.C. of the event was hilarious because she forgot almost every single persons name she was supposed to introduce to the stage. You would think she’d write them down or something. After they had all said their piece, one of the Thai principals had the great idea of having every single foreign teacher come up with their Thai teacher and introduce themselves (Name, Country, Hobby) one by one.  We have 51 foreign teachers and at least 51 Thai teachers… This was incredibly awkward because JJ tried to reason with the principal explaining that it would take too long but she just said “who cares about the time”.  This is Thailand.

After introductions, us foreign teachers had an important meeting regarding our visas and 90 day entry forms.  Then we got lunch.

By now we have met a lot of new people and a bunch of teachers who have been here for a while.  There are a few teachers in my division (1-6) that have been teaching at the school for 3, 4 and 9 years!  We have teachers from England, Ireland, New Zealand, Canada, United States, South Africa and Australia on staff.  Rob, from Ireland, offered to give Kay and I a lift on his moped to a restaurant just down the road where a lot of other foreign teachers were going for lunch.  So we hopped on (3 to a bike) and drove down the wrong side of the road (because Thais don’t care about road rules and we wanted to go right but the highway system is a lot like some places in the states where you do u-turns instead of lights).  Because people normally ride on the left side instead of the right, I’ve been calling all of the turning lanes on the highway “Michigan Rights”.

We got to the restaurant without dying so that was cool.  Rob has been here in Nakhon for 2 and a half years so he's pretty good with the language.  He ordered two cashew chickens for Kay and myself and he got a pad thai dish.  The cashew chicken was amazing and I ate it all way too fast.

After lunch, I went back to school to have another meeting with my head teacher (basically a faculty leader) that went until the end of the day.  Kay went with Rob to the Kindergarten campus for their own faculty meetings.  The teachers we met were all incredibly nice in making sure that all of us new teachers had a way of getting around all day (since we were changing campuses and going out to eat), even if it was 3 people crushed onto one bike and multiple drop offs and pick ups all over town.

Today was basically an information overload about the school, the dresscode, the students, the parents, the lesson plans, the duty schedule, the class sizes, the visa paperwork, the work permits, the holidays, the lunch options and I could go on and on. Luckily tomorrow is yet another day filled with meetings which will totally prepare us to start teaching Thai students on Monday, right?