WERCOME TO THE BROBISHPELE!

Salutations!

Just salutations, and nothing else,

no greetings, and especially no hello...We would not want to over do it of course.

Hello to our loveable blobs! We feel that it is our duty to inform you of a slight error in the blob. Although the text last time did not indicate who was writing the blob, be assured that you can assume it was both Thomas and Michelle. Actually, whatever the text is I think that you can assume it is a joint effort of writing. thank you so much for being so understanding, we would be lost without all of you, you are so so kind, and we so much love your comments, ohhh, this is sounding more and more sarcastic, but in reality, we love you all very much! Sorry, or in Thai, so solly, we wir stalt brobbing naw......MORE BLOBBING!!!!

Sorry, the above text is a rough idea of the Engish we are experiencing in Thailand. We by no means are being rude, because whenever we speak Thai they all burst out laughing, probably at our pronunciation. We just need to vent, we don't laugh at them for saying rets eat lice! Teaching Engrish is hard!

Now for a brief look at what we have done this past week!

With two weeks of teaching under our belts we are definitely getting a bit more comfortable. We have a rhythm of sorts now. It is different than the schedule originally laid out for us...which was:

breakfast at 7:30am
leave to school before our host mom at 8

frag raising ceremony 8:30,

school starts at 9

supper at 6pm.

That was laid out as our strict schedule, but like we mentioned before things are a bit more easy going here, so it changed. And it's all very good!

Here is a more accurate schedule:
Wake up at about 7 am because the dogs come into our hut and bark and jump and growl and lick and be dogs at us. Had we mentioned the dogs before? if not there are six very energetic puppies and one mom. They like to play when we like to sleep....lot's of fun! ahahaha. This is really just a picture to show the dogs...Michelle was already awake when it was taken.

Breakfast at around 8:10. We really wish we had some pitures of our breakfast, but instead we'll just tell you about it. We always eat rice, which is great! We also always eat cucumbers, which is OK, and we always eat dried minnows, which is not so great! Breakfast sure is an adventure!

We get to school by about 8:45 and suprivise the last half of the flag raising ceremony (a photo can be seen in our last blog entry), and the above photo is of our transportation. Thomas really enjoys driving to work on a scooter, despite the chance of death!

At 9 we begin our first class of grades three and four. They greet us altogether every morning, of course very monotone like most memorised things that you don't really understand are, "Goodmorning Khon kru Toe-Mass and Khon kru Mich-ch-elle." we say "Goodmorning!" they say "How awe you today?" we, "I'm good...I'm great! And you?" they, "am fine tankyou. and y--oh no hehehehe" we, "okay, you can sit down."

Actually, each class that we teach begins the lesson with the same memorized greeting, that has no meaning. So what we have been trying to o now at the beginning of every lesson is ask each of them how they are doing, and get them to use other words other than "am fine, tankyou." It's working out quite well with our grades five and six, but the younger ones either aren't quite understading, or are just a bit more shy. But we all have fun with it when we make the emotions faces to show the different feelings.

10 am is grades five six. This class has many very bright students that are loving the english that they are learning. It is a lot of fun to teach them.

Some days we teach preschool which is really just numbers, ABC's, colours, basic things....and they are very sweet. They have a lot of energy and like to play and repeat back at the top of their lungs.

Then 1pm is the evil grade one and two's. this is a very challenging class. We think of things that we think they will enjoy for lessons, and they do for part of the class and then they just get bored and decide to be crazy devil children.

In between and after all of the classes that we do, we do alot of playing and just fun with the children. After class there is as much learning as in class, and we learn thai from the students then as well. Many of the girls like to play volleyball so Thomas has a lot of fun playing with them.

Lastly, we always eat supper after eight pm. This is no problem for us, but we do really appreciate our Thai mom's seventeen year old son, who does ALL the cooking, cleaning and household chores...He is a really great guy...and Michelle is in love with him.

Anyways, we must go now, sorry for the lack of photos...It is very hard to put photos on, it takes approximately ten minutes for each one, and it does not always work! We will try for more next time! We hope to hear from all of you...Comments mean you love us! We were thinking of creating a communal blog account so that more of you can comment, and then post the username and password on the blog itself, would anyone care to do this? If so, go right ahead, and post it in the blog comments! We love and miss you all!

Thomamas and Michelley