My hovercraft is full of eels

[peteryoung]

Day 2: About half of my FL back in Blighty are posting photos of, y'know, SNOW. Mighty impressive. So because I'm obviously an awkward snowflake, here's a shot I took this evening from On Nut Skytrain Station in Bangkok, where it's a chilly 32ºC at 6pm, and I get to go around in a soaking wet shirt – looking every bit like a farang who's not used to the climate – after just ten minutes walk back to the apartment I'm renting (Benji's place is too out-of-the-way to make the journey do-able every day, hence the temporary accommodation). In the morning I take the train from On Nut eight stops to the city centre, from where I have to walk another ten minutes to the school. I am learning fast: bring a spare shirt.

Today, I actually taught a class. OK, it was just for 15 minutes, but WTF, after decades of saying categorically that I could NEVER be a teacher, I've bleedin' well gone and done it. The class was twelve students age 18-22, a very mixed group from Somalia, Sri Lanka, DR Congo, Laos, China and Thailand, and many of them have been living in the UN Refugee Centre in Bangkok for at least a year. Their levels are somewhere between basic and elementary. My course tutor said it was a very decent start to the course, good to see. And for tomorrow I have to plan a half-hour lesson that is far more complicated, but should also be fun if it goes well.

I am also half-way through a re-read of Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, but I can see I'm gonna have to shelve it for the foreseeable future, the projected workload for this month is huge, and I don't expect to be doing much reading at all other than dreadfully exciting course work.

Comments

[holyoutlaw.livejournal.com]

Congratulations on the teaching. Yeah!

[fjm.livejournal.com]

Congrats on the teaching!

Your BA colleagues on the flight from Monteal this morning? They rock. It could have been a very unpleasant experience, instead it was was calm, relaxed and civilised.

[pennski.livejournal.com]

Well done!