Primary School

At ten, Melanie and I go to the primary school to teach English. Most of the students are from HOB. Today we took Melanie's motorcycle. You might not be able to picture me going within 10 feet of a motorcycle, but yes, it happened. Actually its kinda fun. Anyway, Today I taught second and third graders, with Melanie translating where necessary. We played a game with the alphabet as a warm up, then went on to parts of the body. We sang "head, shoulders, knees and toes" (faster! faster!) then played "Simon Says..." for a bit. The have a version in Thai that is slightly different called "Moses says.." :). Then I taught them how to do a relay race, and we made it so that they had to spell some of the words we had learned. The first team to get all the words spelled right wins. All in all, it was a very fun lesson. Tomorrow I teach fourth graders.

Melanie!

You might notice that everyone has the same haircut and clothes. This is kind of interesting. The government runs public schools in Thailand and requires uniforms and a short haircut with bangs. Siriporn tells me this is because its a very cheap and simple haircut that anyone can afford. Also it makes their hair easy to clean and manage, and keeps them from spending hours doing their hair in the morning. In high school, girls are not allowed to wear makeup in addition to the uniform and haircut rules. If they are in their last three years of high school, they can grow their hair out, but only if they wear it up some how (like a ponytail or a braid). I'm pretty sure these rules don't apply to private school students, but I'm not sure.