Thailand. Correcting Exams and Cheating Students.

Well at the moment I am in the middle of correcting exam papers. This isn’t a lot of fun and is very tiring as its mundane work and repetitive. It mentally drains you just sitting at your desk correcting papers more than actually standing and teaching to a classroom full of students.

I spent 8hrs at school today and 7 hours of them was solid correction. Towards the end of the day I was a little disappointed as I had only corrected one class’s exams and about ¾ of another class’s tests. I was hoping to be a little more productive but it wasn’t to be.

All up I graded 272 pages of exam papers and this was much more productive than a fellow teacher who managed 4 test papers or 12 pages. He didn’t seem overly enthusiastic today and went out a few times and came back again. We don’t have to have all of the official scores and paperwork finished until the 3rd of October.

I did have one disappointment with my year 11 exam papers. I have some students in the class who understand nearly no English. They can hardly read the most basic of writing and I know that they would fail their tests, I expected it. It isn’t their faults at all it is the schools fault. They let these kids join an EBP (English Bilingual Programme) knowing this. This has been a long standing problem with teaching the older classes as you have students who have a reasonable knowledge of the curriculum they are studying and then you have these kids who cannot even understand and answer the most basic question such as “How are you today?” Yes, true. There a few kids in year 11 and 12 who cannot understand and answer these sort of questions.

So I was correcting the papers and then I came across a paper of one of the students who knows absolutely nothing. There was a hard reading and comprehension part of the exam that involved multiple choice answers to 10 questions. She had somehow read and understood a fairly hard text and then answered the questions very well. Now it was multiple choices and she could have guessed some of the answers but the thing that gave it away was the crossed out answers of 4 questions and then the circling of the correct answers.

She and 5 other students came to the office today seeking their marks and when I confronted her she at first denied the claim. I informed her I wasn’t stupid and could tell she had cheated. A Thai teacher translated this and she couldn’t look me in the eye. I then played a mind game saying that it was really bad to lie and that for a Thai person to do this would be bad on the soul or make bad luck for them. I also said I was going to deduct 20% off every student in the classroom on the exams and this pricked the ears of a few students. It meant losing two grade points. All of a sudden a discussion in Thai and some body expressions and she came clean.

She admitted to cheating and asking answers from other students who were seated around her. I asked her who told her answers and after some more coaxing she gave me some names. Now this is the same for about 5 more students and I know they have cheated, it just isn’t possible for them to achieve what was asked of them in the exam and I wasn’t expecting them to be able to do the exercise. What made me angry were the people around them telling them the answers? They are as bad as or worse than the people cheating.

So I was really pissed off at the two teachers in the classroom who were meant to be proctoring/invigilating the students and stop them from teaching. There was one of the EBP teachers in the classroom and also a Thai teacher. The EBP teacher is a very nice Filipino guy and he is a great to work with but truthfully he cannot control the kids well. They have it over him and can pretty well do as they like. As for the Thai guy he was apparently correcting some of his exam papers in the room which really pissed me off. I told the head of EBP I wanted to speak to him and know what the hell he was doing.

SO he came into the EBP office protesting his innocence and obviously taking offence to the accusation, so I was happy by this. He was talking in Thai at a million miles an hour to the EBP head and I couldn’t follow what was going on. It was explained to me that no one cheated; none of the students had books or talking dictionaries in the classroom. I had to say about 10 times I knew that people had cheated and a girl had admitted to this fact and also other students had said that others had done the same.

When this was explained to the Thai guy he agreed that this could have been the case, that students could have been talking amongst each other and this was confirmed that students were asking each other questions in Thai and speaking amongst each other. So I was pissed. The two teachers didn’t do the job they were meant to do. It’s that simple.

I spent 2 days with my year 7 class, who I am homeroom teacher for and they hardly said a word when the test papers were on their desks, they knew that they would be punished if they tried to cheat. They would sit in their seats and if they wanted to ask something or borrow something they put their hand up and the Thai teacher in the room or I would go to them and try and help them with their query.


I had to ask the Thai teacher to stop correcting papers on the second day that she had brought into the room with her after the lunch break and she did this happily or seemed so anyway.


I hate kids that cheat, the main reason being that some of the students work their asses off to achieve a grade that is fair and then you have bums or mugs who think that cheating is their right as everyone else is doing it. Here in Thailand it is a big problem and last year before year 12 went into sit there end of year finals there were boys and girls sitting around writing small cheat sheets on paper and also I found girls who were writing on their thighs up very high and were embarrassed when I stumbled upon them.





If they are caught I don’t even know what the penalty is here. If you were caught back home you wouldn’t be sitting the tests and dragged before the school discipline committee for a hearing and the direction of action that would be taken. Some year 12 boys in Australia last tear were caught cheating using electronic devices and these were intelligent kids who had applied for some of the best Universities in the country. They were punished by being given a passing grade that was well below anything they had ever received before and also meant that their aspirations of attending the universities of their choices were gone. Their parents actually tried to challenge the decision in court but thankfully for once the courts didn’t make one of their idiotic rulings they are known for and the students had to wear the grade for the cheating ways.

So now I have a seating plan of where all the students were seated and can start to eliminate who might have helped the students cheat. Some will be easy to identify and others not so. I am not going to give grades for any of year 11 until I am happy with the investigation that I am going to carry out as I know that if I left it in the hands of the Thai discipline committee I might never hear another thing about it.

Well anyway. That’s the most exciting thing that has been happening around here and really it isn’t exciting at all but just headaches and sore back and eyes. My fingers are actually showing signs of wear and tear on my right hand from marking and there is a small dot where a blister is forming from the red pen working overtime in my hand.

I don’t know how much I will post over the weekend; it will all come down to how productive I am through the day tomorrow. Tomorrow night I am off the local to watch Newcastle United and Manchester City and the way my team Newcastle is playing I am not overly confident.

So to all I hope you have a great weekend.

P.S. If you are a person who prays, make sure you add the people in Burma or Myanmar in them. I am not religious but I am praying for these guys as tonight I seen footage that was taken of some soldiers shooting into a crowd and a large person falling like a stone to the ground dead. It is dangerous times for these people and country and I hope that the people of the world get behind them and help them become a democratic society that they so long to become. This is one place where troops or soldiers from all over the world should unite and move into and remove the current junta government from the stranglehold over its people.

Brunty

Thailand. Final exams term 1. Teaching English is fun.

Sorry I haven’t blogged as much lately. Things have been very hectic as we are in the middle of final exams for semester 1. It has meant lots of revision sheets for the classes and then correcting and going over important grammar and vocabulary the students really need to brush up on.

Also I have been in the middle of making tests for my classes. This involves a lot of work as I don’t tend to recycle old tests other teachers made before my time at the school unless they are ones I created and I have used before.

Teaching non natives a language that to them is complex and it is even to a native when you get down to the nuts and bolts of it all. Thai doesn’t have tense changes. There isn’t present simple, present continuous, past simple and so on. There aren’t the 3 verb forms like, go – went – gone and so forth.

So to these students at times it must be really hard for them when their English books are going on about, Is it present simple or present continuous? Passive and active voices and so forth are all so confusing for them and this is where the fun of teaching comes into it for us. We have to be able to communicate and present this entire English syllabus to them in an easy and also try and make it fun at the same time.

I do enjoy this challenge immensely and especially with the older students in years 11 and 12. When you make something that they just don’t understand finally click in their heads and you see that they do understand what they have been studying and start using it in everyday classroom activities is an uplifting experience.

I remember some students came to me a while back asking me about “reported or indirect speech”. They just couldn’t get their heads around it. The other teacher had presented it to them one way and they were butting heads against a brick wall.

It wasn’t part of the curriculum that I was teaching them but was going to come up later on in the course. I simply brought it forward a bit to help them out. The first class we spent the entire lesson of students just saying sentences to me and I would write them on the board and then I reported what they said.

Student: I went to my friend’s house last night.
Me: He said he went to his friend’s house last night.
Student: I like to watch movies.
Me: She said she likes to watch movies.

And so forth. We went over the different tenses and the pronoun and possessive changes. It took 3 lessons of 50 minutes and most of the kids had it down pat. I could get someone to say something and write it on the board and then pick another student to report what they had said.

When the other teacher found out this he was rapt and used this approach for his other class and it worked a treat as well he said. I am the same and have had lessons that I was not too sure on how to approach on a level that the kids were going to understand. You ask another teacher and bounce ideas off of each other and then all of a sudden you have something that you can work with.

Sometimes you walk into the class full of confidence thinking that they are going to understand the lesson easily and walk out of the class with egg on your face as the students couldn’t get their heads around what you were teaching.

You have to think on your feet often and if something isn’t working you need to change the way you are presenting it so you don’t lose the kids. This challenge I enjoy as it keeps me on my toes and also makes me research what I am teaching pretty thoroughly so that I can with confidence change the way I am presenting something and I know what I am teaching is correct.

Being a teacher of a language to non native speakers is a great challenge and also very rewarding. Of course there are days when everything goes wrong and you cannot wait to get home but these are pretty rarely for me. I have a very good strong hold on my classes that I teach. They are well behaved for me and know when it’s time to stop fooling around and study. I have read about uncontrollable classes and students that just do whatever they like in classrooms.

I lay the rules down the first week of class and stick to them like shit sticks to fur. If students know they will be punished for bad behaviour and rewarded for good behaviour they usually won’t step over that imaginary line on the floor. When someone does, you have to punish the student. It doesn’t matter if it is the best student in the class or the worst student in the class. You cannot play favourtism for a second.

So after tomorrow I have 4 weeks holiday that I am really looking forward to and spending sometime on the golf course with my friends. I haven’t played for a while and really miss the fresh air and fun and frustration that chasing a small white ball around can do for the human mind and soul.

So sorry to the people who have commented on my posts and I will catch up with all of you and reply in the coming days as soon as the marking and then paperwork is finished and submitted.

Brunty

Thailand. How can depositing money be so hard?

The other day I blogged on Noot opening our money box and that after counting all the coins it came to 14,000 baht. This is when the fun started.

On Sunday we went to a little boutique branch of a large Thai bank called Krung Thai. Noot is a customer of this bank and when we asked the lady about depositing 14,000 baht worth of coins she said that they would only take 500 baht worth. She informed Noot that she would have to go to the main branch on Monday to deposit that amount of coins.

So on Monday she set off to the main branch of Krung Thai here in Ubon Ratchathani and went up the stairs and into the bank to only be told the same thing as their boutique branch. They wouldn’t deposit more than 500 baht worth. Are these people freaking serious? Isn’t this place a bank? What about business people who end up with a shit load of coins after weekend trading? Talk about a bunch of bloody galahs.


So Noot then went in search of a bank that could do this transaction and cash 14,000 baht worth of coins. Couldn’t be that hard, could it?

Well, Noot visited all the big banks, Siam Commercial, Bangkok Bank, UOB and so on and guess what? Not one of them would take 14,000 baht worth of coins. Thankfully a helpful bank teller suggested that Noot try a small bank here in Ubon that has hardly any ATM’s throughout the city. The Bank was The Government Savings Bank. So Noot headed there and you wouldn’t believe it, they would accept 10,000 baht worth of coins. Noot was in business and she had to open an account and get an ATM card and passbook which didn’t take long and she said they were very helpful and really nice there.


Apparently the savings plans they have are also very good but I haven’t really looked into them just yet but will in the next few days. The only strange thing that came from the bank was, they wouldn’t accept some of the money as they said it was really dirty. Of course it was dirty, some coins were old but they could all be read fine but some had wear and tear on them but what coins don’t at ages of 20 years plus.

So after everything Noot had 4,000 plus baht left over and about 400 baht worth that was considered too dirty to be taken by the bank. She is going to go back in the next few days to deposit the remaining coins.

I am a little miffed about all the trouble one has at depositing legal tender into ones bank account. I can understand a little boutique branch only accepting a certain amount of coinage but the main branches is really idiotic. What century is Thailand living in? It easy to see why foreigners say TIT (This is Thailand). Only in Thailand.

We are going to Noot’s bank Krung Thai on Monday. We are going to shut her account and take the money to deposit into the new Government Savings Bank. I am sure that Krung Thai will not be upset at all but she does have a good amount saved up in there. At the moment she would be able to cash her Thai baht into about $12,000 Australian dollars.

We are going to do this for 2 reasons. One reason is for the pathetic and stupid rules. I asked Noot if she told them she was a customer of the bank, which she did, and if she told them she had a good amount in her bank account but of course she said nothing. So for customer service they can get stuffed.

The second reason is Noot’s new bank seem to offer better saving options but this I will have to check into more next week before we do take the big plunge.

So to the big banks you really need to look at your banking rules and regulations and try and step into the 21st century and stopping living in Hicksville.

Brunty

Thailand. Drunken Driving a Way of Thai Life.

Here are 2 stories that involve Thailand’s favourite past time. That is drinking and driving. Drink driving is a way of life here in Thailand, you get as drunk as possible and then get in your car or on your motorbike and head home. Sadly the drunk people often don’t injure or kill themselves but poor innocent victims of the idiocy.

The first story was a humorous. A man who was well and truly drunk and drove his pick-up truck at speed on a road he didn’t know very well.

He approached a roundabout with a fountain in the middle of it going way too fast and ended up going straight ahead and smack bang into the middle of the fountain. The truck somehow become wedged on the second level of the circular fountain and looking at the pictures it as if someone would have had to put the truck there using a crane.

He admitted being intoxicated and will be charged with drunk driving that carries a very pitiful small fine and a slap on the wrist so he will be on his way and back doing it again in the near future. Truck in fountain .

The second incident isn’t funny but tragic as an innocent person has died at the hands of a selfish and pathetic young Thai lady.

The young lady who is actually married to a foreigner but was out with her Thai boyfriend on the night getting plastered was driving home in her husbands car more than likely going to go and have a bit of bedroom action with her Thai man while her foreign man is probably back home working hard and sending money to her. Poor fool.

This young tramp first had a minor collision with a motorbike taxi and no-one was injured but she panicked as she was pissed and left the scene of the accident. Now being drunk and female is a really bad duo and of course then went on a rampage of crashing into parked and unoccupied cars.

The motorbike taxi rider gave chase of the fleeing felon and sadly the young lady eventually ran out of her 9 lives and hit an innocent tourist police volunteer. He was heading home from his days or nights work on his motorbike with a sidecar attached. He was knocked off the motorbike and died from what must have been massive head injuries from the blood on the road in the picture.

Thankfully she just had the smallest amount of common sense in that extremely small head of hers and stopped at the scene but wouldn’t get out of the car as she was worried about reprisals from the victims family who were on the way to the accident scene.

The police arrived and took the young 26 year old into custody for drunken driving causing death. I don’t know what the penalty is for this type of crime but I hope she is locked away for many years of her young life and she only if luckily gets released when she is old and frail and her best is well past her.

I am sure she will try and get her farang ATM to come up with money for the victim’s family as in compensation but I hope that he just turns his back and walks away on her. She was out cheating on him and god knows what else. This is a sad case that happens too often in Thailand.

I will not if I can help it go anywhere near a main road after 10pm here as most the people driving are pissed. I am not over exaggerating this at all but the truth is sometimes hard to believe. Throw in the young teenagers who think that all the roads are drag raceways and it becomes a deadly mix.

Well that’s my rant anyway.

Brunty
Drunk cheating Thai girl kills an Innocent.

A headless Giraffe and Counting Money.

I have reported before about a money box that we have. It’s a papier-mâché mold in the shape of a giraffe. We have been putting spare change into the giraffe for over 14 months now.

Noot has been driving me mad the last few weeks asking if she could open it but I kept saying “No”. I kept telling her she could open it when it was full. I thought that would be around Christmas time.

Now, tonight on TV was a preliminary final in Australian Rules Football (AFL) and my team Collingwood was playing for a chance to play in the grand final next weekend. I was holed up in the bedroom with the TV on and hoping for peace and quiet.




I think Noot must have known that I was weak as after interrupting me for the tenth time asking about opening the giraffe, I didn’t scream or swear I simply got up and grabbed the giraffe and went out into the lounge room. Noot was happy as a pig in mud and pretended to be a jockey on the poor giraffe.

Her younger sister Ben was on hand to help count the money and of course wanted to pose for a picture.


I took our good bread knife and went about removing his head. I made a cut towards the base of the giraffe’s neck. The girls just couldn’t wait to get at the money.

I emptied the money onto and old towel and the girls were ready to start counting and even the giraffe was interested in lending a head with the counting (sorry bad pun).


The girls were off and counting in a jiffy. There was money clinking and clanging as they started sorting out the different denominations.


All that lose change could really make you headless. Have to keep a good head on your shoulders and think.


After 10 minutes I checked on the girls and they were making stacks of coins in hundred baht lots. I started to count the stacks but was quickly ran off and told to leave them be.

At the end of it all the girls come to the conclusion that there was 14,400 baht and that converts to $524.70. This wasn’t a bad effort in the time of saving and tomorrow we will take the coins to the bank to be counted and get an official total.

After that we are off to a gold shop to look at adding another piece of jewelry to Noot’s collection. I am sure this will also be a fun trip as always. The last time we went it took 1 hour or looking at this and that and trying this on and that on and the countless looks in the mirror.

I might act sick for this trip as I always say “yes, it looks beautiful” and really aren’t a lot of help. I was very hungry and whizzed over to the local takeaway to get some fried rice and also some Thai desserts for dinner. I read a few blogs and answered some comments and now I have to get to bed as I am teaching at home tomorrow. The first lesson is at 8 o’clock and now the time is 12.35 am.

I am also sorry to report that my team was beaten although it was a close margin it was still a loss and the end of our season. Now I have to follow the black and white team in the English Premier League the mighty Newcastle who was embarrassed by the bottom placed team last week Derby. Never mind though tomorrow’s a new day.

Brunty

Thailand. The not so pretty side. Rape and death of a young girl.

I don’t really like reporting on this sort of news story but it needs to be told and people need to hear the horrible side of Thailand. Thailand is an amazing place as the tourism department is promoting but it is also a third world country and this story really brings that home.

The story starts like this.

A young 14 year old girl (Chonthicha) was waiting at a bus stop in Ayutthaya one of Thailand’s former capital cities. It’s around 70 kilometres from Bangkok. It was early morning and the girl was going to catch the bus to her school.

These boys have told 2 different stories so far. They both end tragically the same though. This is story 1 and this is the boys false names. Big, 16, Kai, 16, Bos, 15, Chong, 15, Boy, 15, and Oart, 14.

The suspects told police they rode motorcycles to look for Chonthicha until they spotted her at a bus stop with three other people.

When the three people boarded a company bus the accused forced Chonthicha onto one of the bikes and took her to Oart's house, where they gang raped her. They then took her to a well in a rice field and allegedly raped the girl again.

The boys feared Chonthicha would tell the police what they had done, so they beat her unconscious and dumped her body into the well and covered it with leaves.

This is story number 2.

After the arrest, Oart, however, gave a slightly different account. He said they were riding their motorbikes back home when they spotted Chonthicha waiting alone for a bus at about 6am on September 10.

The group offered the girl a ride to school but Chonthicha refused and tried to shout for help - so they took her to Oart's home. The group then gagged and gang-raped her. Oart told police they told her to keep quiet before taking her home, but the girl kept crying and said she would tell her mother.

Oart told police they then took the girl to the rice field before Big, Chong and Bos raped her again. Fearing she would tell the police, Big and Chong beat the girl to death and dumped her body in a well before the group split up.

Lovely teenage boys, aren’t they?

The story goes on to say;

The suspects were unemployed and had a habit of riding motorbikes to visit entertainment places at night in Muang Phra Nakhon Si Ayutthaya and Uthai districts.

They were unemployed; well they were only 14-16 years old. They should have been in school. This is a common thing I am seeing more now the longer I live in Thailand. So many boys of this age group just don’t give two hoots about anything. They have to be getting it from the pathetic TV and violence that is constantly shown and also plastered on the front page of Thai newspapers.

They reportedly confessed to police they had raped and killed Chonthicha. They were later taken to Oart's home, where police found a hair clip, some hair and pieces of a schoolgirl's uniform on a pile of rubbish near the house. They also allegedly found pubic hair and semen stains in the house.

Police discovered they had also abducted a factory worker and gang raped her, but the victim was so afraid she did not file a police compliant.

Police will summon the suspects to Provincial Police Region 1 Office before determining whether to hold a crime re-enactment or not - because of fears the suspects might be attacked by angry onlookers, he said.

Oh, please. Who cares about protecting them? Let them be fed to the hungry and angry crowd.

Okay, hang on because here is my rant!

If this happened in a first world country the newspapers would have it plastered over front pages on nearly every major newspaper in the country. Here in third world Thailand it just makes a story in a main English paper and no where near the main headlines and you are lucky to stumble upon it.

I am sadly seeing more and younger teenage boys heading down this track. I teach in a very nice school that most of the parents are well to do but there are kids here, too that are going to head down this same track as these boys.

The TV presents these characters as being cool and strong and macho. I have seen these ridiculous Thai TV dramas where a man rapes a girl and kidnaps her and then she ends up falling in love with him. Does this really happen?

Thailand’s youth are heading in a direction that is not good for the country and also its people. These kids are becoming like teenagers of Australia and don’t respect anyone or anything.

I don’t see the Thai government trying to stop it either, they don’t seem to care or maybe they think the problem is too big to tackle or in the too hard basket and here in Thailand that basket is placed on the floor in a very dark corner and is forgotten and they hope that no-one finds it.

The first big thing that needs to happen is parents here have to start taking responsibility for their teenage kids. Many 12-16 year olds virtually have a license to roam and do whatever they want on a school night or not.

The government needs to enforce a minimum age that teenagers must attend school until. Say that is year 9 or matayom 3 as it’s called here in Thailand. So that would be around the age of 15. Even this is too young to leave school really.
I love Thailand but its appeal sours a lot when you are constantly reading stories like this in the papers. They are in the Thai papers virtually every day.

What do I think should happen to the teenagers? I think they should be tried as adults. They should be punished to the full extent of the law, whatever that maybe.

I personally don’t think whatever they receive will justify their acts. If they received a death sentence I would be happy but I doubt it. I would happily volunteer to pull a trigger or push a button to end these miserable lives. I wouldn’t lose moments sleep or have a millimetre of guilt. I think they don’t deserve to share the air we breathe.

Bangkok's Independent Newspaper
Brunty

Thailand. Enjoying A BBQ with Friends. In Isaan Country.

On Sunday I went to my friend’s house (Keith) to have a BBQ for a Thai friend’s upcoming birthday and also Keith’s daughter’s belated birthday from last week.



My mate owns a room for rent business; he has 14 rooms in his complex and keeps them immaculately clean. There is hardly ever a spare room and when someone vacates there is someone ready to move in ASAP. He has lived in Thailand for around 5 years and is well set-up here in Ubon Ratchathani now.



We enjoy having a BBQ at his place as he actually has a real BBQ like back home. He brought it over from England when he moved. He recently gave it a touch up and now looks like brand new again. Here in Thailand especially Ubon it is hard to find a BBQ but could get one made cheaply I would say.

Every time we have a BBQ we always seem to over indulge with the food. We normally agree on who will bring what and our Thai friend always buys so much food and at times you could feed a small army.

On the BBQ to kick things off were some pieces of chicken and 2 large fish wrapped in foil and had been prepared Thai style and had their stomachs filled with herbs.



Also waiting to be cooked were 2 more large fish that had been salted and prepared. There was only 10 of us and 2 fish would have been sufficient but hey Thai people can eat.

Noot and I (okay Noot) was in charge of making a salad and bringing the soft drinks. Noot went to the local market and bought all the fresh vegetables early afternoon. She cut and shredded up a storm and then went over to Big C shopping centre to buy some salad dressing and some really nice cob style bread.




After about half an hour the chicken was browning nicely and it smelt good and I am sure the fish was well on the way to being cooked. I was hungry as I still wasn’t feeling 100% and hadn’t eaten a lot the last few days.


Out the back of most Thai places is the kitchen and this is where the ladies were preparing a few dishes to go along with the BBQ. The ladies were happy as they were talking and also around food which is the two most favourite things for Thai women.

One of the dishes the ladies prepared was an Isaan favourite or really a Thai favourite called Tom Yum. This is a spicy soup and can come with many different ingredients and tonight we were being spoilt with a seafood style. It was very nice and not spicy at all.

Noot was sitting and there was the yummy looking Tom Yum and also a plate of freshly cooked prawns. There was some rice in a bowl and in the bottom left hand corner in the bad wrapped in banana leaf is a thin noodle and in the ceramic pot is a fish sauce and this is known as “Kanom Gin” and Thai girls eat this dish all the time. It could be for breakfast, lunch, dinner or any snack throughout the day. Noot looks very anxious to tuck in.

Most of the time you sit on the floor on straw mats and eat and the Thai girls were seated and hoeing into the food.


Now Keith and I were seated foreign style, at a table and sitting on chairs. At home we have a table and chairs but we very rarely use it to eat from and 95% of the time lay the straw mat o the floor to eat.


The girls were happy as there was plenty of food. If there is food in front of them then they are happy and if they are happy that means that we are happy.


On the BBQ grilling away was some really nice marinated pork and also some calamari or squid and some pork liver. The marinated pork melted in your mouth. The squid was also very nice and I like squid cooked this way the most.


Somehow the first 2 fish were polished off and the other 2 were on the BBQ cooking away. I was well and truly full and couldn’t fit another bit of food into my stomach. The Thai ladies were still picking away at the food before them and everything was slowly disappearing.



Now, the man who the party was half for hadn’t shown up yet as he was working until 9pm. His wife was in attendance as she had prepared a lot of the food. Our Thai mate is a great guy and enjoys himself. He likes a drink as most Thai men do and has a pretty successful small business. Keith went and picked him up at 9pm and he left a couple of his young staff to finish closing everything up.

One of his presents from us was a bottle of Regency VSOP (I think that’s what it’s called). He hopped off the motorbike and Keith retrieved the bottle of alcohol and it was very quickly opened. He looked very serious opening the bottle of soda water that was going to act as the mixer.





After he had popped the top off the soda water he broke into a huge smile and could have been on the verge of crying. He was just so happy.









Now the big surprise was the cake. I had stopped off on the way and bought a cake for him and Keith’s daughter (I didn’t know it was her birthday last week). I had two numbered candles that said 50 years old. He had locked his eyes onto this and was trying to workout who was 50 years old.


After working out that we were referring to him (he’s 39) he started to protest his case. I pleaded ignorant and blamed Noot and she was going to belt me trying to lay the blame on her.

All was in good humour and he seen this and laughed along. It was a good night and a lot of fun. I wished I was feeling better so I could have eaten some more of the good food on offer and if stayed a little longer if my stomach wasn’t playing up so much.

I enjoy spending quiet nights like this amongst mates and we go and watch the football together every Saturday and Sunday evening at our local.

Life is hard here in Ubon Ratchathani, Isaan Country Thailand.

Brunty.

Thailand. Teaching English and Creating Illusions.

Sorry, I haven’t posted the last few days but I haven’t been feeling fantastic and not really up to blogging. I am back to around 90% now and on the mend I think.

Last week at school we had the King’s Committee come to our school to do inspections on the school itself and also individual students hoping to win the prestigious awards.

We already hold the King’s prize for the Secondary level or years 7-12 and also the kindergarten holds the award as well. The primary or years 1-6 don’t have this very important title and it looks incredibly important when it’s plastered outside the school, on a sign, informing all the people driving past that we are the winners of this award.

Now truthfully our school is very nice as it is a private school and collects nice fees from the parents for their children to study here. We have pretty good facilities and the exterior of the school looks a million dollars.

Now underneath all this, but please don’t tell anyone this. Our school is really the same as any other school in Thailand. It’s the same as a small Thai school in a village or a big school in the concrete city of Bangkok. It has teachers and students. It has good students and it has bad students but it also has a lot more spoilt students as a lot of their parents have money and they haven’t been told too often that they cannot have something. The teachers aren’t superhero teachers; they are just the same as any other Joe or Sam. They don’t have special or super methodologies and they cannot fly or leap buildings in a single bound.

What our school is very good at is; it makes things seem fantastic and that we are some sort of super school. How does it achieve this you ask? Well that’s easy to answer, it’s just like a very good magician, and that is by creating illusions. If people see something, they believe it. As seeing it with their own eyes is believing.

Last year when we had inspections from the committee the students were locked in classrooms virtually and not allowed to go anywhere around the school when the committee was on the grounds. The school didn’t want to have kids being kids and playing and having fun in their own break times.

Teachers were made to teach for two hours straight as they didn’t want teachers walking between classes as well. Now the Thai teachers didn’t complain last year about all this ridiculous stuff going on but the foreign teachers did and we voiced our opinions loudly but politely.

Now this year I was told that this wasn’t going to happen as the school just wanted to be “normal” and I found this hard to believe but it came from a high source. Well, sadly it wasn’t the truth and when the committee came, things started to go a little crazy on the first day.

The second day was a ripper and the day before their was a comical situation where they wanted a foreign teacher in every primary class from years 1-6 as the committee was going to do an inspection. This was arranged for period two which is from 9.10-10.00am. After a lot of switching and changing of classes this was achieved and the promise of other periods covered later in the day for everyone.

We found out early on that the committee wasn’t going to arrive until 10.00am and that was when we would be finished the class. So the first mistake was already exposed and then later in the morning and day the classes promised to be covered weren’t covered and students were left to fend for themselves or some foreign teachers doubled up and taught of babysat again.

Even later that day we found out that the school wanted us to teach for two hours straight like last year but no-one informed us as they knew that we would have said a flat “No”.

Anyway, the committee turned up 30 minutes late, as this is normal in Thailand and people are very rarely on time. Thai people are just not privy to the idea and manners of being on time.

I went over to the hall at 10am on the dot and there was a young Ballroom dancing couple waiting outside and they were obviously there to show the skills for the committee. They did look the part and I have seen them perform before and they are very good


The hall was set up immaculately and cleaned to the point where it gleamed. Teachers from different departments were forced to make boards showing off the specialty of there area to impress the committee.

The teachers were in yellow king’s shirts and of course their best blue school blazers waiting for the committee to arrive. The boards have write ups on what is taught and lots of pictures to impress and of course computer presentations.

The tables had been set up in a horse shoe shape.They had the very best table covers out. The committee had wine glasses to drink their bottled water from. We also get glasses at lunch time but are only plastic and the water is from a 20 litre filtered bottle that is fine and I drink at my house and costs 8 baht a bottle.



Students had been removed from the classes to serve the committee water. I found this out as 5 students from one of my classes the 8.20-9.10 am were there palying near the king’s picture. They had been sitting around for 2 hours doing nothing and enjoying themselves I am sure as they weren’t studying but attending to this which I think is absurd.

There was a display of trophies that the school ahs won for many different reasons be it sport or academically. This of course is really important and shows the committee that we are winners.

There is a large painting on the wall that ahs all the past and present directors of the school and when one director moves on the new director is added to the painting. Our current Director Brother Sakda is the only one smiling.

It wouldn’t be a presentation if there wasn’t Thai dancing. The school has a very good dancing programme and is obviously very keen to impress the committee. The girls did look very lovely in their Thai outfits. There were a few students that I teach but I had trouble recognizing them as they wear so much make up.


I stayed around for 20 minutes and then left. The committee arrived at around 10.30 and thankfully didn’t come to inspect EBP as at times kids were running riot as no teachers had been appointed to cover lessons for teachers who were doing presentations in the hall. It would have been funny though for the committee to see this and actually see things as they really are and not the illusion they saw.

There are more inspections coming soon and I am actually looking forward to the funny and whacky ideas that come along with it. It makes for interesting viewing and makes the days a lot more fun.

Amazing Thailand.

Flickr: Photos in 5 different sizes. Click here.
Brunty

Thailand. Teaching English. Anything can Happen.

Today I haven’t been a lot better than yesterday. I still have a upset stomach but I am 100% sure that it wasn’t the food now and more than likely a virus.

I came to this conclusion as today when I woke up I felt like I had been 12 rounds with Muhammad Ali. I was sore from head to toe. I slept pretty well and only had to dash to the bathroom a few times. I didn’t eat dinner last night and just stuck to water to keep up hydration.

So I went to work today and thankfully my first class is free from 8.20-9.10am. I use this to mark student’s work or catch up on paperwork. My first contact period is my year 12 class at 9.10-10.00am. I gathered the text books and headed over to the building where their classroom is. I walked the 3 flights of stairs and it felt like I was carrying someone on my back. I arrived at the classroom and to my surprise it was empty. No one was there.

I asked a few student’s from the regular Thai class if they knew where they were and I was told that all year 12 students were in the hall for some reason that I couldn’t understand. So I trudged back down the stairs and back across to the staffroom and the comfort of my soft chair.

My next contact period was at 10.15-11.05am a year 7 class. This time I only had to walk one flight of stairs and in the same building as our office. I arrived at the room, and inside were two people from the school’s bank. I could see that they were handing out forms for the students to fill in and what not so I just waited outside. After 5 minutes the male of the two popped his head out and said “Bpet Neung” or another words just a minute. I told him no problem and it was okay.

Twenty five minutes later I left and returned to the staffroom. Was I angry for these things happening? No. I am so used to this now that it things in Thai schools change at anytime without warning. You are very rarely told that something is going to take place at a certain time and it actually happens.

I used to get pissed off at the disorganization but again this is something that comes up every day in a Thai school and if you let it worry you, you will go insane. You just have to try and go with the flow as they say and take the bumps and knocks along the way.

This is the only way that you will survive teaching English in Thailand.

This afternoon I went to the park for 40 or so minutes and walked 5 laps with my friends but I felt so tired and lethargic. I ate a small amount of steamed rice and some small fish cakes for lunch and had a glass of frozen chocolate milk. That has been it for the last 24 hours. I arrived home at 5.40pm and got changed and went to bed.

I slept for an hour and a half and then got up to watch the AFL finals on cable TV as my team Collinwood was playing West Coast in a do or die battle. It was a very close game that required extra time at the end of the game as the scores were tied. Thankfully, the mighty Pies got up in the end and now face the Geelong Cats the ladder leaders next week and the loser is finished and the winner is off to the Grand Final the week after. This is going to be a huge test for my team as the Cats have been playing fantastic football and last week annihilated another team in the first round of finals by 100 plus points. I have faith in my young team and just hope they can pull together again and stand up like the gladiators they have over the last two weeks.

There was no dinner last night and the same again tonight. It has just been plenty of fluids and some medicine to try and get over the virus a little faster. I don’t feel really ill just more off colour. My stomach is rumbling and grumbling a fair bit. I have a fair bit of gas as well but I am way too scared to try and pass wind as I am sure it could be a messy situation if I attempt this. The follow through would be faster than Tiger Woods down swing.

I am now again just sitting and reading some blogs in the land of the internet and some papers and will be off to bed shortly as I have 7 hours of teaching tomorrow. The private students start arriving at my house form 9am.

It’s a hard life here in the Far North East of Thailand in Isaan Country.

Goodnight to all and good health :)

Brunty.

Thailand. Being Sick in Thailand. All part of the Journey.

Well today has been a slow day as I have not been in the best of health. Last night I ate nothing out of the ordinary or even from a different shop that I have never bought from before.

I ate “Suki Moo” or another words a pork soup and vegetables. I have eaten this many times and a few times ended up with slight diarrhea but maybe because of the amount of chili sauce I have added to it.

You see here in Thailand you can always blame the street vendor food as the culprit and not just a stomach bug or god forsaken something you did that was unhygienic and made you sick.

So I am blaming the soup from last night as this morning I had diarrhea really bad and it continued through the morning at school and has also kept up until now. I ate some plain steamed rice at lunch and an ice-cream for lunch and apart from that it’s been water.

After school I went to the park to exercise as usual and I only managed 4 laps with my friends before I had to give in and head home with my tail between my legs. I arrived home and took some medicine and then headed for bed at 5:45pm. I got out of bed to go to the toilet and that was it.

I got up at 9pm and have done a little bit of reading of friend’s blogs on the internet and then a quick update on my blog.

I am going to head back to bed now and take a few more tablets and hopefully sleep well and not have to make too many trips to the bathroom.

This is part of the fun living in a far away placein a third world country eating foods that are prepared at totally different health standards to back in our home countries.

I have had “Bali Belly” as they call it and it was a horrible experience during one of my trips to Indonesia, I was scared to be more than 5 metres away from a toilet and couldn’t bring myself to even have a beer. That’s how crook I was!

One place I didn’t get ill was traveling in Japan as the food was of very high quality but so much more expensive than here in Thailand. Japan was insanely expensive but probably the best country I have visited.

So this is what happens with 20 baht food at times ($0.80 cents Australian). As the saying goes you get what you pay for and if I wasn’t so lazy I could cook at home but for the prices of buying I cannot be bothered with the preparation and cleaning up. I have to change this lazy attitude. I can cook, well a little bit. Noot can cook really well. This is something we need to discuss and see if we can fit into our busy lifestyles.

Well, to all a goodnight and hope that you are all well.

Brunty

Teaching English in Thailand. Being Mr. Mean.

Today at school I had one of those days that could have been better, but again these are the days that test your character. Some of my classes are really trying my patience, but again what 10-18 year olds don’t I suppose.

I am very strict with my classes; I don’t take any crap from the kids. They know where they stand and it’s as simple as that. I remember when I was a student and I know that I wasn’t an angel by a long shot and I wish I could go back and do a few things different. If I had had the chance to stand in a teacher’s shoes all those years ago I am sure I was have been a much nicer student.

My main rooms for the classroom are very simple top follow, well I think so anyway.

My biggest rules are these.

1. Do not talk when I am talking. This is the one thing that really irks me.

I am not standing in front of the class talking for the fun of it. I am not there just moving my mouth for no reason. I want the kids to listen and write anything I tell them to from off the whiteboard into their notebooks. I am not a please forgive me for using this term (a Nazi) but there are times to talk and times to be quiet.

2. Homework is to be handed in on the due date. No exceptions!

This rule I am a stickler for and I have had some fantastic excuses but I don’t budge. The due date and time it should be handed in is always communicated very carefully even for the most specially minded students. I hate kids not giving me homework as they are just taking the piss out of me and wasting my time. Even if they don’t really understand they still have to try. I hate the excuse “I didn’t understand”.

3. Speaking Thai or their native tongue 50 minutes of the English class.

I am a culprit of this myself and I used to speak and expect too much Thai from my students. Now I try and use it very sparingly. I don’t mind when the students speak Thai very quietly during exercises to help each other with understanding but when they are talking Thai in a really loud voice or shouting over the top of each other it makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up. I fine offenders 5 baht per offence for this. We have a very nice party fund building up for an end of year party.

4. Listening to their classmates when they are reading or doing an exercise.

I turn red in the face when you have a group of students doing an exercise and next minute someone starts a full-on Thai conversation as if no-one else is there. This is just so rude. It takes a lot of courage to stand in front of your classmates at times to read or answer questions and when you have extremely rude people who just start chatting away while their classmate is doing this they get an earful from me.

5. Sit at their desks properly.

I student sitting at there desk with there heads on their arms which are acting like a pillow is rude. A student sitting sideways on their chair talking to someone 3 rows away. A student with their back turned to me is a big no-no.

So these are my main rules that I try and make the students live by in the classroom. It was a bit of a shock for a lot of them as they used to get it pretty easy before. Even though I am strict and I punish the kids for breaches of the rules at times you are still pushed to the edge.

90% of the students know how far they can go and when to stop and most do the right thing. I am strict like this as if you aren’t then 30+ kids will soon turn into absolute mayhem that will make you tear your hair out and also go to your classes in the wrong mood before you even step foot in the room.

The penalties for breaking rules are loss of discipline points and also monetary fines of 5 baht per offence, and also at time writing good old fashion lines just to piss the students off as writing 100 long lines is nothing but a pain in the ass.

Today I had to give an 18 year old aspiring lawyer or doctor to be, a really good dressing down. She is a bright young lady and probably the most gifted in her class but she knows this at times and her attitude is borderline contempt. She thinks that a lot of the textbook work is too easy and at times it is for her and a few other classmates but the majority of her classmates are not near her standard and so she becomes bored at times.

The thing is; her answers and her written work aren’t perfect and her pronunciation needs a lot of work. At times she is brilliant and at others her work is so lazy and disgraceful. She knows when she gives you work well below her standard and will often admit that she didn’t really try.

Now today in class year 12 were in one of those moods (like this a lot of the time). I walked into the class and 3 students were sleeping with their heads on their arms on their desk. Some others were doing each others hair and the rest were watching cable TV.

They know what period they have English with me every week. It’s not a surprise for them. So I told them they had one minute to have the room neat and tidy and all the desks in their rows. This is how you have to treat year 1 students not year 12 or 18 year olds. Two girls just sat in their seats chatting away and were doing nothing.

The minute ticked over and the students had made the room look more like a classroom. The 3 students who hadn’t given me their homework in the morning at 8am were called to the teacher’s desk and I deducted 5 points from their discipline points and also issued lines to them. Two of the girls tried to pass the work into me then at 2pm and I took it but they were still deducted the points.

The lesson started off okay and I was doing a lead into the exercise and eliciting some answers from the students that were going to relate to the topic we were going to study. One girl was in the middle of saying something when the 2 lazy girls who just sat in their seats at the start of the class started to chat away in Thai in a tone that overrode the other girl speaking. I could see the other people in the class looking at them and one of the girls shushed them. They stopped and seen me staring at them and they gave a little laugh. I returned the laugh in a girlish tone and then brought out the discipline sheet again wrote their names on the sheet and they signed their names. They lost their happy carefree smiles as they knew if they were to go on the sheet again the points are doubled the second offence.

Not long after this I called the future lawyer to be and I knew she was goofing around doing something and not listening. She gave me a stupid and insulting “What?” This made me a little peeved. Next I repeated the question and then she opened her text book and looked in it. The answer wasn’t going to come from her book but from a life experience, something she had experienced. Her friend next to her informed her of this and she laughed again and then gave me a piss poor answer. So she was put on notice there and then to smarten up for the rest of the lesson.

Not long after this she started to speak Thai in a loud voice that she had to know was louder than her classmate reading from the text book. I asked to come to the front of the class and she signed the book and went back to her seat and then made a smart ass comment about me being stupid. I called her back and again deducted more points and I removed her from the room.

At the end of the class she followed me and we went to an area where we could talk or more to the point where I could talk to her and tell her exactly what I thought without others hearing as I didn’t want to embarrass her in front of her classmates.

I simply told her that her attitude was disgusting, it was rude and she was at time obnoxious. I also informed her that I was going to the head of discipline to ask for a meeting with her parents (her father is a lawyer 200 kms away) and I know that another foreign teacher despises her so much as she irritates him with her behaviour and attitude. When I mentioned parents and meeting she started pleading with me. “Please, just this time. Don’t call my parents.” I was like “Are you kidding me?” All of a sudden she was worried and wanted to make a plea bargain.

I went over all the stuff that I said she did in the class that made the other teacher and me so angry with her. I told her to become a leader in the class and help others when she could and all that sort of stuff. After a good ten minutes of hitting her with negatives and a few positives I told her she had 3 weeks until end of term exams and that there needed to be a change in her attitude and work level.

Tomorrow she will sign a letter to acknowledge that this conversation took place and what we discussed so that if in 3 or 4 weeks or even sometime next term she falls back into her bad ways I have proof of the conversation to show her parents.

I hate having to do this but I have read about so many teachers saying that they cannot control their classes or the students don’t listen or sleep and so on. I am not going to have this in my classes. I want to keep my sanity and also be able to teach the students what they are intended to learn and not spend my classes telling them to be quiet, sit down and so forth. This is what some teachers have to do for 20 minutes or more out of a 50 minute class. If you don’t have rules and strictly enforce them without hesitation you will have no respect from the students. You have to be cruel to be kind.

See this is a small fun part of being a teacher in Thailand and some of the daily challengers you can face.

Brunty.

Thailand. Crazy and Insane things could be around the corner.

Well at the school where I teach it is starting to go into crazy mode again. And by this I mean people are starting to do things that are what most foreigners would deem as insane.

There is a fabulous prize that is on offer for all schools in Thailand. The prize is being prestigiously known as the winners of the King’s Prize. Now Thai people hold their King of Thailand in very high esteem and so they should as he has done a lot for them and been a fantastic role model to follow.

Winning the King’s Prize means the school has to meet certain criteria set out by the King’s Committee. We won this prize last year but apparently this was for the secondary level or years 7-12.

Now the school is looking at adding the title for the primary level as well or years 1-6. I think that it is good to have competitions and other things like them to better schools but this competition seems more about meeting criteria than anything else.

Last year there was at times pandemonium when the King’s Committee was visiting for one of the many inspections. There were around 6 or more visits last year and some of the ideas that eventuated were borderline or actually insane.

Last year students were not allowed out of the classrooms for their afternoon break of 15 minutes. I think the school was worried about the committee seeing kids being kids and just goofing around and playing like normal school kids. Students were drilled on etiquette and so many other petty things that too many foreigners seemed crazy. There were classes cancelled for students to practice standing around to greet the committee.
This went on and on for weeks.

When I found out again that the school was going for the King’s prize again, I actually shuddered at the thought of it and all the memories of last year came flooding back.

The good thing is that everything had been going fairly normal to the lead up to the first visit today with not too many problems but then today a few signs of what might come started to creep into some of the behaviour of people running around the school.

Now, this thing does happen in schools all over the world when important people or events are taking place at a school. They are scrubbed and cleaned and students are warned about being on their best behaviour but that’s about it. Here in Thailand they just take it a few steps further, okay well maybe 5-10 metres further.

So the next few weeks and months could be very interesting at school but again it makes it a lot more fun when you don’t really know what is going to happen around the corner and down the street.

As the saying goes “This is Thailand” “Amazing Thailand”.

Brunty.

Thailand. School kids and Footsal.

The last few weeks at the school where I teach they have been holding a footsal competition. There have been schools from all over the Ubon Ratchathani area coming and playing footsal.

Footsal is a mini version of soccer and played using similar rules but there isn’t any offside rule. The court is also a lot smaller but the players still need all the skills that it takes to play soccer. The boys are very exciting to watch as the games are fast and furious and some of the boys have fantastic skills. The older boys year 11 and 12 are very physical and they get very rough during the game but there never seems to be the aggression that leads to chin to chins.

This week we had the younger kids attending in primary grades from year 4 to 6. These kids would be 9-12 years old and there were plenty of girls in attendance to show off there skills. I haven’t seen many girls playing footsal and it has only been the last few weeks that I have actually seen them mixing it on the court.

My school is a private school and has a decent amount of money and also this is easy to see when you enter through the large steel gates with gold painted top spikes. There are large 3 story building jutting up into the sky and it is kept pretty well spotless by an army of workers sweeping all day.

Some of the students attending from other schools are from little village schools that have 200-400 students and they might have a few small buildings but nothing like this. My school has its own school buses and vans to transport the kids around whereas these kids arrived in the back of pick-up trucks with 10 or more kids jammed into the back.

It is a funny but happy sight to see these young kids walking into the school and down the tree lined road ready to take on their opposition. They are looking here and there and pointing to this and that and then they see a funny looking white guy with a camera and all of a sudden I feel like I am at a zoo, but I am the animal being pointed at. The kids start speaking in Thai saying “Farang, Farang” and then you will get the odd “Hello, What’s your name?” “Where do you come from?” The funniest is when you reply to them and ask them a question and they giggle with glee or excitement and then usually run away laughing.

So a group of young students in blue uniforms were wandering towards the footsal court and spotted the foreigner lurking and taking unsuspecting pictures. Some large smiles were flashed and some pointing and laughing started. They were from a small village school of 150-200 kids.

Some of the students were warming up by playing a game of “keepings off”. They form a small circle and put one or two people in the centre and then they have to pass the ball around without the people in the centre touching it. If the person in the centre touches the ball, the person who passed it goes into the centre.

Another very popular game is Sepak Takraw . (You can click on this link and watch a video I filmed a little while back Thai Sport Takraw Thailand Isaan Country ). I have reported on this sport before and you can read all about it here Isaan Style!:Watch Sepak Takraw Thai Sport. This also involves skills that leave you speechless at times when you see the men and boys throwing their bodies around like they do. It is a very skillful sport.

The young kids took to the court and there was an early penalty chance. It’s the same as in soccer with the kids making a wall to make it harder to score a goal but the person taking the shot isn’t very far away. All the girls had their backs turned towards the kicker protecting their faces and other parts. The girl charges in and booted the ball very hard and it went sailing over the wall but was a little wide of the goal.

The girls aren’t overly skilled but they do try really hard and when the ball was free they would charge at it fearlessly and god help anyone in the way. They seemed to have tunnel vision and couldn’t see anything but that small ball they had locked their eyes onto.


There were a lot of missed kicks and kicks that didn’t go anywhere near intended but it was enjoyable to watch and the crowd also enjoyed with large cheers going up every time a shot at goal was kicked or when 2 people collided together.



There was a simple theory for the defence and that was kicking the ball as hard and as long as they could. It wasn’t aim or try and pass it to a team mate but just kick it hard and away from the goal.

The goalkeeper was kept busy and she wasn’t afraid to dive around on the concrete court. The older guys who are goalkeepers wear knee and elbow pads to stop skin being torn off I would say. This young girl however was very tough and had no such protection.


There were funny parts that had the crowd laughing especially when the girls would kick and miss the ball or run right over the top of it. The game was being played a t a furious pace and many of the players seemed to lose concentration and make small funny mistakes.


At times there was serious competition for the ball with 4 or more girls kicking and pushing to get possession of the ball. In this picture one small brave girl on the yellow team took on three girls from the pink team and she mixed it well with them.



At the end of the game the girls in yellow got up to win with the score at 1-0. There were happy faces and pats on the backs from teammates and coaches.

I am not sure if this will continue over the coming week. I know that there were some games taking place on the weekend as some of the Assumption College boys said they were playing Saturday. It’s a little like David V’s Goliath with Assumption players training everyday and playing all the time and then small village school that don’t have the facilities that we have. I know our boys won their 2 games on Friday 6-0 and 7-0. I have watched them practice and they are pretty professional and very skilled and they were only beaten a few times last year and once in a big final by a Bangkok school at a tournament in the concrete capital.

You can watch some of the boys playing footsal here that I shot the other day and you will see 2 goals scored in less than a minute of play.Thailand School Boys playing Footsal.

Brunty
Flickr: Photos in 5 different sizes. Click here.