WOOHOOO!!! We did it!! We graduated!! :)

YEAY! We're done! We're official! :) Today was the last day of our course. We got our certificates and hand shakes and now we're official!! :)







































This last week was extremely busy but also a lot of fun. We had 3 lessons to prepare and teach. 1 lesson was a one-on-one lesson with the student we interviewed the first week. We had to transcribe the first interview, correct it and then build a 50 minute lesson according to the difficulties they had with the language. It was very fun but also a little awkward to have someone watch you have a conversation.


The other two lessons were for an Elementary school. I (Kat) had 1st graders for both of my lessons. Jeff had 1st grade and then 2nd - 3rd grade. There were about 20 kids in each class. In my class, the kids were about 5-6 years old and were very lively. The first day, I was not strict enough at the beginning of the class (they're so cute. It was really hard to be strict :) ) so by the end of the class, tons of kids were just running around, playing, drawing and not paying attention at all. It was very exhausting and frustrating. The second day, I was a lot stricter and more consistent with class room rules and the class went a lot better. The kids participated much much better and that made it a lot more fun! :)


Haha... so in my second class, we were just getting ready to do an activity and I had the kids stand up and come to the front. Two boys were running around and all of the sudden one boy pulled down the other boy's pants in front of everybody. Luckily, the naked boy was very close to me so I hurried and pulled his pants back up. Then at the end of the class, I noticed a pair of underpants sitting on the boy's desk. I don't know when he took them off. Very very weird. :)


So yeah, it was an interesting experience teaching such a wide variety of students. We really enjoyed it and learned a ton.


This weekend, we'll be moving apartments. We found a place we like. It's a small studio. It doesn't have a kitchen but it has a big fridge and we'll probably get an electric pan. It has a little balcony, air conditioning (which is great because it's getting really hot) and a seperate shower (this is great because going to the bathroom is not very fun when the floor is constantly wet). The other awesome thing is, the complex has a huge outdoor pool. YEAY!!! (Karen and Teancum - make sure to bring your swimming suits). The place is also in a really nice part of town, close to two language schools. Rent is about $170, so fairly inexpensive.


Also, we got our camera today!! Yeay! So here are all those pictures you've been waiting for. :)


The resort in Rayong:

The one with the islands in the background is the view from our room. The one with the beach is the view from the restaurant.














































The teaching experience:


















Count how many girls there are in the picture:










Scroll down for the answer! No peeking! :)







Answer: 2!! A teacher on the very left in the purple shirt and the girl in the green shirt. The 3 pretty ones on the right are Kathoeys (Ladyboys). They were born boys but from a young age identified themselves as girls. So they dress like girls, behave like girls and some of them take hormones and/or have surgery. Kathoeys are very common in Thailand (in our group 3 in 30 students) and are very accepted. If you want to read more about it, click here.


All right, well that's it for now. Until soon. :)


By the way: it's 90 degrees in our room right now!

An excellente time in Rayong was had by all.

Yay, we're back! We had a really fun time while we we're there. Before I get started on this post I have to tell you why it looks so boring...we have no pictures. We were in such a rush to leave early Friday morning that we somehow left our camera in the room. We've contacted the hotel though, and they said they would send it on Monday or Tuesday next week. Sooooo hopefully we'll be able to post some pictures soon.

Anyway, we had an amazing time in Rayong. We stayed in a beautiful beach resort. From our hotel room we overlooked a bunch of islands just off the coast. And the hotel restaurant was right above the ocean. It was really, really pretty. The resort also had the biggest pool I've ever seen, and we only had to walk down a few flights of stairs to get to the beach. And just so you know, if you wanted to stay there as a tourist, it's about 45 dollars a night, and that includes 3 amazing meals a day.

The teaching went pretty well. There were 30 students total that went along on the trip. They were all between the ages of 15-21. For them, it was a reward to go on the trip, as it was all paid for by the school, so only the students with the best grades were allowed to come. That means that all of the students were very well behaved, and very eager to learn.

There were four teachers teaching at a time which meant that we had about 7-8 students in our classes. Our teaching was observed, and we got feedback after we taught each lesson. On my first lesson I got marked down because I acted so much like I was nervous. Ha ha. But by the third day I felt very comfortable in front of the students and got pretty positive feedback. Katharina did well every day and she was very popular among the students for her teaching style.

On one of the days we went snorkeling with the students around one of the smaller islands. It was hands down the best snorkeling I've ever done as far as coral goes. The fish weren't as big as they were in Kaua'i, but there was so much coral that there wasn't an inch of ocean floor that could be seen. There were so many different colors and shapes, it was simply beautiful.

So anyway, after a fifteen hour bus ride, we're back in Chiang Mai. We just got back from climbing today at Crazy Horse Buttress, which is the rock climbing area here in Chiang Mai. We had a super duper time doing a bunch of routes we hadn't done yet. Unfortunately, there was a fire out there recently, and a lot of the trees and brush have been burned, so it's not as pretty as it was.

Well, this is starting to get a little long. I'm sure I've forgotten a few things to write about, but we'll post some more about it next time. And hopefully we'll have some pictures to go along with it...

Thanks for the emails everyone. We miss you.

Rayong ho!

Hi everyone, just wanted to leave a quick post. We're leaving very early tomorrow morning for Rayong, and we won't be back until late Friday night. We've been a lot busier than we thought we would be with preparing our three lessons, but I think we've finally finished. Katharina had a lot of good ideas for games we could play with the class, so that part should be really fun. I personally am pretty nervous, however, Katharina did this all day long for her job in Utah, so she'll be fine :) Anyway, we'll post again when we get back and let you know how it all went. We love and miss you all.

The Curse of the Chiang Mai Flu

Well, unfortunately we didn't make it on a weekend trip...
Jeff, as well as basically almost every single person in our class, got the flu.
It all started out with one girl (she happened to sit right next to Jeff) coughing really hard all day on our first and second day of class. Then, on the third day, Jeff and the person sitting on the other side of the sick girl both started feeling symptoms... and so it spread... by the weekend 9 out of 11 people plus the teacher were sick... some (including Jeff) had all the symptoms of a flu... fever, aches, cough,.. others (this would include me) were just really tired and had a cough. Crazy... I don't know what kind of crazy bug that was but our teacher referred to it as the Chiang Mai Flu. Hopefully we can all recover quickly since now we're actually moving into the busy part of the course.... LESSON PREPARATION!!! Wahhhh!! :)

Next week our class is going on a week long excursion. Since all schools here in Thailand are closed for a summer break, our TEFL teachers had to be creative to find us students we can teach. So they organized an English Summer Camp. 30 students from a local college were able to sign up for it to be able to improve their English.
We're all taking a bus down south to a city called Rayong. There, we'll be staying in a beach resort. In the mornings we're teaching English classes to the students and then in the afternoon there are variety of activities planned for us. Sounds like a lot of fun!! However, before we go, we have to have all of our lessons and our lesson materials completly prepared. That means this weekend leading up to it, we will be VERY, VERY busy. Each teacher has to prepare three 50-minute lessons with activities and handouts and so on. We won't find out what were teaching on until Thursday.
The whole idea of the English Camp at a beach resort sounds fantastic though! I'm super excited.

Well... that's all... tonight we might go see a movie. All U.S. movies are in English with Thai subtitles and all Thai movies have English subtitles so it shouldn't be a problem. We hope all of you are doing great! We love receiving emails from you so please keep us posted! :)

1 week down - 3 to go

WOW! I can't believe we just finished the first week of our course! Time has gone by way too fast. Even though we learned a lot, it's hard to believe that in only 3 more weeks we're supposed to have learned enough to really be out there teaching. We spent almost all of yesterday learning about grammar and it's surpising to see how little we actually know. Even though I studied English grammar in school, I couldn't remember anything. :)

Today was really fun! It was Thai Cultural Awareness Day. We went over a bunch of dos and don'ts in Thai culture. There are SOOOOO many! Thailand has so many cultural rules that are so different from the western culture. Fortunately, the Thais are also very forgiving and they even find it amusing when "farangs" (transl: guava/ foreigner) make mistakes (as long as it doesn't involve Buddha). There are three different positions for your hands when greeting someone and in order to use the right one, you need to determine the relationship or level of respect between you and the other person. So you have to put the palms of your hands together in front of your chest and then bow your head down so your nose (or your forehead or the very top of your forehead, depending on status of respect) touches your fingertips. It's quite complicated to us but the Thais have it all figured out... :)

We then went to a local temple and learned about some different Buddhist rituals. One of them was the releasing of animals. Right next to the temple (this particular temple was right by a river), they sell buckets with live fish, eels, snails and even different sizes of turtles... yep cute little (and big) turtles. People are supposed to buy them and then release them into the river to do something good and bring good karma to them and their ancestors.

We also went to some Museums and learned about the history of Chiang Mai and about the Hilltribe villages, which are different tribes that have their very own culture. For example, one of the hilltribes, the women wear all their belongings in form of head decorations on their head when they go working in the fields... another Tribe kills cats and little puppies because they think they have evil spirits... SAD!!! :(

So today was a great day! This whole week has been awesome. We're hoping to round it up with a fun little trip this weekend. There is a city about 3 hours away from here called Chiang Rai. I think it's the most Nothern city. It sounds very fun so I think we're going to go up for the weekend and check it out. FUN TIMES!!! :)

We have a TV in our room that only speaks Thai.

Welp, we made it to Thailand! We got here early Sunday morning after 33 hours of travel time. Surprisingly we've been doing pretty well with jetlag.

We started our TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) course yesterday and it's a lot of fun. There are about ten students in our class, about half of which are from the U.S., including us (which our teacher says is very unusual because normally there's only one or two), and the rest of the class is from the U.K. Everyone is very cool and we're having a lot of fun getting to know everybody.

Our apartment is nothing to write home about. Or blog about. Haha. But we have wireless internet in our room which is very convenient. The bathroom doorway is made for people who are under 5'7", which means that both Kat and I have to duck every time we walk in. Unfortuately I learned this the hard way. My first time into the bathroom I banged my head on the sharp edge of the doorway. Then I cried a little bit. Then it felt better.

Today we have our first assignment as far as teaching goes. We're interviewing Thai students in English, and recording our conversations. Then we have to transcribe it and go over the mistakes with the student that he or she made.

One of the things that Katharina and I really like about the class is that we have a 1 hour Thai lesson everyday from our teacher's wife, Ying. Oh yeah, our teacher is John and he's from England, and his wife is from Thailand. They're both really fun and really nice. Anyway, the Thai lessons are a lot of fun.

Yesterday we got a cell phone. You can't get a monthly contract unless you are Thai, but the pre-paid phone cards are pretty cheap. So I don't know exactly how to call Thailand from the U.S., but our phone number here is 080-673-0769 if anyone needs to get a hold of us. But if you call you have to remember that we're 14 hours ahead. That leaves a window of opportunity of like 3 hours.

The first thing I ate when I got here was a bunch of fresh rolls. They were so good I wanted to cry. Katharina's been loving the mangoes and sticky rice. And all the yummylicious fruit.

That's about all I can think of right now. I'm a little murfed 'cause we just woke up. But we'll post again soon. Bye!

Sleepless in Taiwan

So here we are... in the Taipei, Taiwan airport... a 6 hour layover. It's about 7pm here... that means about 4 am Utah time... we're TIRED!!! Unfortunately the Taipei airport is not the most updated one and it's hard to find a good place to sit... or sleep... So then we have a 4 hour fight to Bangkok and another 5 hour layover and then a 1 hr flight to Chiang Mai, our final destination. We should get there around 9 am on Sunday.

Kauai was awesome. We spent the last couple days with family (Jeff's parents, brother Dave and aunt Sue and uncle Jack). We had so much fun!! We snorkled, played in the waves, had awesome dinners, sat in the hot tub, watched whales, saw another turtle and mucho more. Yeah... Kauai rocks!... but not as much as Thailand, according to Jeff. :)

So China Air is the way to go.. I mean..fly! They gave us two meals and ice cream! YUM! :)

Ok that's all... We'll write more from Thailand.