Thailand--The teaching

Teaching in Thailand was super fun! Before left we were told to plan and bring everything that we needed to teach 8 classes. They had assigned us one person that we were going to teach with for that whole week. So before we had left the house Aaron and I had made sure that we had all the flashcards, all the worksheets, all the markers, and everything else you could possibly need to teach 8 classes of English to 60 kids in one week. 

We arrived and they told us that instead of teaching 4 days with 2 classes a day we were going to teach days with 2 classes a day. Also, some people would have the same kids all week but other people were going to have multiple classes. Thankfully mine and Aaron’s teaching wasn’t too confusing. Monday, Wednesday and Friday we had 5^th graders and Tuesday and Thursday we had 7^th graders.

When we got there all of the kids didn't have English names so we got to give most of the kids English names. It was really fun because I got to name a lot of boys. I pretty much gave them all my brothers names. Now all my brothers have name sakes in Asia :)  

<This little cutie is DJ :) He loved to write his name too. He wrote it on everything!

<This kid decided to name himself

 <This kid thought this was an appropriate name

 

The 5^th graders were so fun to teach! We taught them animals which included, Old MacDonald had a farm. We taught them about fruit, emotions, family, seasons, and a couple other things. They were so fun because they thought we were so cool and the awesomest people ever.

 The 7^th graders on the other hand were kind of frustrating. They didn’t really like anything we had planned and just sat there and didn’t give feedback. Well, until we introduced them to a team game where they all had to play so their team would win. We taught the kids about opposites, I think I might have liked that class the best. It was our last class with our 7^th graders and they hadn’t liked anything that we had done so far and then we told them about this game. They all went crazy! It was hard to keep them from not cheating. But they loved it then we had to say goodbye, not knowing we would see them again.

Friday morning we found out that they also wanted us to teach on Saturday, all morning. Guess who we got to teach, the 7^th graders! 4 classes straight of 7^th grade goodness, on a Saturday morning where if they were normally kids they’d be sleeping and complaining the whole time.

 

We were kind of scared about it because they seemed to not like us very much and not like the things that we had planned. I prayed about it and Aaron and I lessoned planned. We had enough lesson plans to teach them because we had only taught them 4 times before which meant we had our other 4 lesson plans that we could teach them. OR we could do something completely different, we could watch a movie. 

So for our first class we showed them the beginning of Over the Hedge, we didn’t really see any reaction and it was really early in the morning so the next period we went a different direction. We played games, games where they would be in teams and all of them had to participate. Third period we had Lucas come in and teach. Lucas is a legit English teacher in Kinmen, he has his own classes and everything. He had his kids write letters to the kids in Thailand and he wanted the Thai kids to write back. So for third period the kids wrote letters back to the Taiwanese kids.

Fourth period. Best class ever. As a reward for the kids Lucas gave them all silly bands in the shapes of letters. They loved them so much and started to write words with them. That went in a good direction, we started talking to them and helping them spell English words, they really liked that and it helped us get them to like us. Then I stole one of the kids sunglasses, and someone else’s hat, and someone’s jacket, I put them on and Aaron beat boxed for them. The boys thought that was really really cool and they challenged Aaron to a beat boxing competition. Aaron beat boxed and one of the boys danced.

We did that for a long time then we took them into another room and taught them the Waka Waka. By the time we were done with the Waka Waka class wasn’t over yet so we took them back to the room and watched some Pixar Shorts with them. They thought they were really funny; we didn’t want to keep them from liking us so on accident we kept them 10 minutes after class was over. We had a good class and by the end the kids loved us and didn’t want us to leave.

One of the classes we taught was on family and about our families. We had them  draw pictures of their families and we showed them pictures of ours.

Aaron's family....

I drew this for one of the kids because he wouldn't do for himself.

One of the awesome kids drew this!

 We had a pretty fun time teaching! It was really cool to get to know the kids and hang out with them :)

Sights, People and more pictures coming later.

D2

Thailand--The explanation

So, I’m not exactly sure where to start so much to say and so many pictures to put up! On this 12 day adventure every single day was packed with exciting adventures, new sights, and amazing people. I really would like to tell you about every day in depth but that might take years. We’ll start with some basics.

We took the HSR (High Speed Rail) up to Taipei on Friday the 13^th. Saturday morning (extremely early) we left for the Taipei airport. There we boarded a flight to Bangkok, Thailand. From Bangkok we boarded a flight to Chiang Mei where we spent the night Saturday and Sunday. Monday morning we moved up the mountains (literally) and stayed in the mountains till the next Tuesday. Tuesday morning  we loaded all our stuff up and went down the mountain to the Chiang Rei airport. We boarded our flight to Bangkok and had a 6 hour layover in Bangkok. After problems with the plane which made our 6 hour layover now 7 or 8 hours we hopped on a plane to Taipei. We spent what was left of Tuesday night in a hostel and on Wednesday morning we left the hostel and walked to the HSR station. On the map it looked like a 6 block walk…yea, lies! It was a 1 hour walk. We got back to our house at about 5 o’clock PM on Wednesday the 25^th. 

The reason for this trip was to renew our visas. In Taiwan you can only renew your visa 3 times without leaving the country. Our company that we’re with treats us so well and sends us on a “vacation” to renew our visas. This year they decided to send us all to Thailand. Don’t worry; we just don’t go for a vacation we got to work. In the one week we were in the mountains we worked Monday-Saturday. 2 classes every day and 4 on Saturday. We taught in the late afternoon which left time for touring and seeing places during the day. 

It was a pretty amazing 12 days! 

More to come within {insert appropriate time here}.

~D2

Newest update on Andrea in Taiwan

We have had the last 2 weeks off of school :) That is a very happy feeling. Nothing to do just sit around and be lazy, sleep in every day. Yep, so it’s been a good start to the year.
Friday my team will leave to go to Taipei. On Saturday morning we will all board a flight to Thailand! I’m so excited. This is going to be such an amazing adventure. We will be there for about 12 days and for most of those days we will be teaching English at a school. We all have one person that we’re teaching the whole time with. I got Aaron so we are going to teach 8 classes. The last week has mostly consisted of planning those lessons and trying to make them fun and engaging but yet use hardly any English.
We’ve heard that this kids we’ll be teaching probably don’t know very much English at all. Aaron and I are teaching the 3^rd youngest age group which means their English will be pretty bad.
We’re going to the mountains in Thailand. We’ll be 2 hours into the mountains. I’m expecting some really beautiful sights  :)
I haven’t posted recently because nothing “exciting” has been happening. I haven’t even taken very many pictures recently. I hate writing I love posting pictures and when I don’t take pictures it doesn’t really give me any reason to update. 
These are really the only pictures I've taken recently :(
I ate this for lunch the other day :)                                          This is what we'll be teaching in Thailand :)

Well pray for us while we’re in Thailand that it’ll be a good trip, we’ll be safe and be great ministers of God’s word.
And look for Thailand updates…
D2

Wǒ yào wǒ de māmā

Dear Mother,

Well yesterday was your birthday. Hopefully this will be posted while it's still your birthday in the states. I don't know though because I'm trying to make this so clever!

The first thing that I thought of when I was thinking of what to do for your post was this song...

So....I was thinking and thinking of what to write for you for your birthday. I knew it was going to have to be really good because you have done so much for me and sacrificed so much for me.

I had so many ideas; I could write a parody to a song, I could write a poem, I could write a list of stuff. But nothing really stuck out to me as awesome! So I thought harder. I thought so hard that I needed to go to my quiet place, after punching out my rage and falling for an extremely long and painful time I came up with an idea.

Acronyms are super cool. But this couldn't be any acronym this had to be the most legit acronym. Then I thought of doing your name. Nope to unoriginal. Then I bought maybe a sentence. Sometimes I use "My mother is a good cook" for hangman. Nope to stupid. Then I thought, Mom gave me one of the things that I use most in life and that's an education. So in honor of you teaching me how to read hippopotamus here is your post:

I tried to think of some of the things that you and Dad gave up to have us kids. Sorry that some of them are lame or repetitive. Plus you ought to know it took me multiple hours so my brain was fried!

A – Alone time. Instead of having days of to just spend thinking or by herself she now always has someone around.

B – Beautifulness. Okay don’t take this the wrong way, I think my Mom is beautiful! What I mean by this though is just things that are supposed to “make you beautiful.” (i.e. facials, manicures, pedicures..etc)

C – Comfort. What I mean by comfort is she has grown through so much pain because of her kids. Whether it be giving birth to them or watching them make the wrong choice or having to “let go” of them.

D – Desires. She gives up the things that she wants for what we want.  

E – Exercising. Not saying my Mom doesn’t exercise but she did give up her time that she normally would have had to go to the gym to us.

F – Friends. I know that my Mom has friends; in fact, she has some really awesome friends. But how often does my Mom go and hang out with her friends?

G – Going out to eat. I’m positive that if my parents didn’t have us kids they wouldn’t make as many meals at home and they would eat out a lot more.

H – Husband. My Mother no longer has just a husband; she has a husband and a Father to her kids. Simply saying, she has to share him.

I – Immaturity. I’m not saying that if my parents didn’t have kids they’d be immature.  I just meant that now they have to be good examples 100% of the time and sometimes that’s not fun at all.

J – Job. Her job is now taking care of us and making sure we have what we need. She no longer gets a break or vacation she works 24/7/365.

K – Kitchen. She gave up a nice kitchen that she can make food for her and Dad and make food to give to others.

L – Longings. After Mom had us kids she could never really do all the things that she had hoped that she could do.

M – Ministry. Mom is giving to us kids instead of giving ministry to other people. If she didn’t have kids she would do so many more things with the Church and involved in a lot more.

N - Nice things. Instead of buying nice things they have to buy used junky things.

O – Obeyed. You may be like what? But I will tell you. If she didn’t obey God she wouldn’t have us awesome kids.

P – Projects. She doesn’t have a lot of time for things that she wants to do. And if she starts doing something she normally gets interrupted.

Q – Quote. “Being a full-time mother is one of the highest salaried jobs in my field, since the payment is pure love.” ~Mildred B. Vermont

R – Riches. Mom and Dad could have had a lot more money if they didn’t have us kids.

S – Status. She could be an important person to tons of people. In its place she’s super important to 9 people.

T – Time. Mom gave us all her time. She stays at home, teaches us, and works for Dad.

U – Upkeep. Mom probably would have had a job if she didn’t have any kids and she would have had more money to do a lot more things with her house.

V – Vacations. My Mom’s vacation is packing up the van and driving all us kids somewhere; instead of packing her bags hopping on a plane and going to a romantic destination.

W – Writing. My Mom is a pretty good writer if I do say so myself. But she doesn’t write very much because she has to take care of us kids.

X – Xmas. (Dad don’t get mad at me! I needed a X). Mom gave up nice quiet little cute Christmas’ for insane and crazy ones.

Y – Yard. I know that my Mom would have liked a really nice little yard that she could keep up with and it make it pretty.

Z – Zucchini. Mom gave up the foods that she likes to eat to make us what we like to eat :).

Mom, I know you’re going to be all modest and like “Oh, it was worth it” and everything but seriously, thank you so much for giving up all that stuff to raise 8 crazy kids. You’re number  1!

Mom! Thanks so much for giving me 5 bucks when I read hippopotamus, that word now will always have special meaning. Thanks for making sure there was ALWAYS ice cream in the freezer, even if it did make us fat. And thanks for driving us around when we couldn’t drive.

Love you so much Mother!

Your baby girl, Drea