Exams and the Twilight Zone Christmas Spectacular

'Tis the season for midterms. I have a feeling that the wonderful students I teach have never taken an exam which actually assesses their learning ability. "Teach-ERRRR!!! Very hard!!!!" they all whined. And when one covers only 3 vocabulary lists and 2 grammar topics in two months, one would think that the cumulative test wouldn't be so bad. Here is the most challenging of the midterm examinations I gave yesterday (I am having trouble getting an image, so I am copying and pasting. The bonus point activity at the end was a boggle square).

[Begin]

Name __________________

Nickname __________________

Date __________________

Midterm Examination – M2 EP (65 Points)

English: Teacher Brian James

Vocabulary

Spelling: Listen and spell the words spoken aloud. (8 points)

[8 words: switch, boring, comfortable, slither, window, awful, depressing, kick]

Matching: Match the word with the correct definition or description. (8 points)

1. ______ leap

2. ______ terrific

3. ______ key

4. ______ smash

5. ______ sprint

6. ______ frightened

7. ______ puzzled

8. ______ crawl

a. Very good

b. To run very fast

c. Afraid

d. To jump very high or far

e. It is used in a lock to unlock

f. A baby does this

g. Confused

h. To crush or bash something

Drawing: Draw a picture of the following sentence. (3 points)

The hero freezes the villain (bad person).

Grammar

Emotions: Underline the correct word in the following sentences. (6 points)

1. Peem feels (irritated/irritating).

2. I was (amazed/amazing) by the (amazed/amazing) movie.

3. Peemai is (excited/exciting) that the (frustrated/frustrating) test is almost over.

4. Naja was (scared/scary) in his Halloween costume.

Questions and There is/There are: Fill in the blanks with who, what, where, when, how, is, are, or there. (14 points)

1. Q: ____ ________ a bathroom in your house? A. Yes, there is.

2. Q: ______ far ____ Lampang from here? A: Lampang is 130 km from here.

3. Q: ______ country ______ you from? A: I am from France.

4. Q: ______ _______ your best friend? A: My best friend is Jerry.

5. Q: _____ _______ any fish in the lake? A: Yes, there are.

6. Q: _______ _____ your best friend? A: She is in Chiang Mai.

7. Q: ________ _____ your classes? A: They are at 3:00pm and 4:00pm.

Sentences: Label each word in the following sentences with adverb (adv), adjective (adj), noun (n), verb (v), preposition (prep.), coordinating conjunction (coord conj), article (art), subjective personal pronoun (spp), infinitives (inf), direct object (DO), or object of preposition (OP). Underline the subject once, underline the verb twice. Circle all objects. Box prepositional phrases. (12 points)

1. I want to go to the store and buy fried bananas.

2. Jack, Jill, and I traveled in a very small car to a very small town between the mountains.

3. Euro slowly ate her food and went to the dormitory to sleep.

Comic

Instructions: Answer the following question. (2 points)

1. What two things does the setting tell about?

___________________________

Writing: Write 5 sentences about your comic using correct grammar. (12 points)

___________________________

___________________________

___________________________

Bonus Points:

Instructions: Find as many words as you can with 3 letters or more. The same rules apply as before. (# words / 3, then rounded up to nearest integer)

[End]

Scores for the exam:

Low: 40%

High: 99%

Median: 77%

Standard Deviation: 13%

--Write 5 sentences about your comic using correct grammar--

"My hero name is super one. He is lion and can speak. He like to sleep in the kitchen and eat sweet. He born with his power. I don't know where he from but he don't want to go back. He help me from the taller man with blue eyes!!!!!"

Good to know that I am held in such high regard.

Thailand is primarily Buddhist. Almost enough said. Pictures from the Christmas Celebration at the school:

The costume contest.

The singing and dancing.

Merry Christmas, all!

The Deteriorating Relationship with My Prison

You might be wondering about my last post. Let me explain:

As you may already know, my school shares many traits with a prison. Guards, walls, not being allowed to leave, fake temperature readers to make the outside world think things are great and H1N1 free--not sure what that has to do with a prison, but they have it. I, behaving as I sometimes do, have begun to openly defy some of the absurd rules the school enforces. I leave the school after work, for instance. I leave on the weekends, for example. Pretty rebellious, eh?

The reasons I can do these things are because I am a foreigner and because the Thais are A) scared of confronting me because I tell them "no, that's unfair, not right, wrong, ridiculous" (I have to use many ways to explain it in case they don't understand one of the words), B) incapable of responding to a "no" because Thais know nothing but blind obedience, and C) scared of my permanent departure as I am a cash cow (my face in their school newsletter means a bag full of tuition money from the eager parents).


The point is I deal with the imprisonment. I leave on my motorbike and look good on it. I walk away from things that might be cause for labor lawsuits elsewhere in the world. But recently the school started messing with my Chinese friends. Last week, a rather loud hangout session occurred, and a Thai teacher became a bit peeved with the excess noise. Instead of asking us to be quiet, a very reasonable response, he blasted his music (good for getting to sleep, yeah?) and hoped we would get the hint... we didn't. As a result of this little encounter, the school had individual meetings with the Chinese teachers (only) and told them they were bad people, embarrassing to the school, floozies, yada yada yada. The Chinese, as people of many Asian cultures do, took this treatment as an indication of a serious character flaw. The school told them they couldn't leave the school, couldn't drink, couldn't party, couldn't cause the school to "lose face" again. I told the Chinese, bullmerde (excuse my French).


La Révolution.
In secret candle-lit meetings (kind of serious), I told them that the school is wrong, that the Thais are handling the situation poorly and immaturely. I told them about itsara (Thai for freedom) and how the school was infringing upon theirs. And most importantly, we came up with a solution. The eight of us (3 Americans and 5 Chinese) rented a house. We moved in a few nights ago. We drank and were loud and had fun outside of the school grounds. Of course, we must move about in the cover of darkness, and of course I am learning a little Chinese so we have a code language--the Thais know English a little too well.

All is well at the moment, but it is more than likely that the iron fist of tyranny will come crashing down again.

La Révolution

Maybe I shouldn't write about it, because they are reading. They are always reading.

(Just know that the Chinese-American alliance is strong, and I may have found myself in the position of leader.)

My Motorbike and Me

(To fellow Teach in Thailand travelers -- Get a motorbike.)

Times are swell with my new Best Friend Forever. I laugh and he sputters; I tell him jokes and he tells me he has gas; I two stroke and he four strokes. I could not ask for a better travel companion--much better than that thinks-my-jokes-are-lame Rahul. My BFF and I go everywhere together. Just today we went out onto the Thai countryside, skipping along the rice paddies hand in handle, and enjoyed a pleasant sunset snack. Last week he took me to dinner where we relished the chance to drink high octane beverages outside the school grounds. Good thing he was the designated driver.


Yesterday we returned from our first weekend getaway. Danielle (from the Teach in Thailand program), he, and I traveled near to the Laos border and visited Phuchifah, a mountain on Thailand's East border. The three of us purred at the sight of it and thoroughly enjoyed our stay at a mountain chalet. We awoke early in the morning on Sunday to climb Phuchifah and joined a procession of hundreds of Thais in the pitch black. Our reason: to watch the sun rise over the mountains of Laos which sit in a bed of clouds.

Do it if you have the chance.


But as you know, three's a crowd, and I had to choke him a time or two in order to get through some of the rough starts. I found out later the reason for the rough starts. The spark of the motorbike's and my initial relationship was fading, but it was easily rekindled with a new spark plug. Trouble again surfaced, however, when a tire (the rear one) blew out in the road. It was a bit scary as the bike fishtailed under us as we careened down the road, but I somehow managed to maneuver the bike without falling/crashing until we reached zero velocity. And with the readily available Thai motorbike mechanics, we were back on the road again in 20 minutes, tired again (although Danielle and I were quite awake from the adrenaline).


Okay, okay, okay. I think I am trying a bit too hard with these puns and I am losing focus of the point of this post. So I will put on the brakes. (...Ehem.) Let me shift gears. (...Ugh.) The point is this: I am revved about my bike and the freedom I now have. In my moment of frustration with the school, when my gears were ground the most, the bike came through in the clutch and set me free of all anguish.

Calcium-fortified! Food with a Crunch!

Now I realize that animals have bones, I feel I should point out my knowledge of that fact sooner as opposed to later. I question, however, the knowledge of the Thai people with regard to this fact. Sure, they may use the bones to fashion tools or to pick teeth (...I think I may be thinking Native Americans from history class, but whatever), and that is all fine and good, but they seem to ignore this fact whenever they cook their delicious (Thai = aroi), delicious food.

Okay, when you cook a fish whole, it's understandable that their are bones. When you fry pieces of chicken, it's understandable that there are bones. And even with large pieces of meat, it's understandable that there might be bones. However, when you mince pork, I shouldn't be expected to have to fear biting into a small shard of well-disguised apatite. When I eat a seafood soup, there shouldn't be more bones in the fish than there is meat. What makes this bone situation especially annoying is how well they (the bones) are disguised. The spices and oils change the color of the vegetables and meats until they are, for all practical purposes, unrecognizable. This mealtime surprise factor overjoys my wittle heart and my wittle teef.

Strangest Thai Dish (not having to do with bones):
Fat and vegetable soup -- literally, boil vegetables and chunks (one cubic inch) of pork fat in a large bowl.

Strange Thai Eating Habits:
1. Drink milk because you feel inadequate about your height
2. Make everything out of sugar or add sugar to everything
3. Sugar sugar sugar sugar!!!!!

As you should with all of my little tirades, blog readers, take this with a grain of salt. My school seems to be a somewhat abnormal blemish on the Thai landscape, and my words may only reflect it and not Thailand as a whole. Because almost always, I am thrilled by my every moment outside my wittle prison.

Granted, that could be a by comparison thing.

THWAAT!!! "Evil Doers Beware! The Stinky Inkpen Is Here!"

With the powers to absorb liquid through his ballpoint tip and to write on things. He can fly, too, at least as far as he is thrown. The only weakness is that sometimes he doesn't write and you must scribble him on paper until he works again. But don't scribble too hard, or you'll have a mess on your hands. And he sometimes leaks into your pocket. ...Alright, you might be wondering what mushroom(s) I have been eating, but this is actually pertinent to my Thai experience. Go figure.

For weeks I was struggling with how to get through to these unbelievably uninterested, undisciplined, and apathetic children, who still manage to be quite fun and adorable so often. I knew they liked to draw, I knew they hated it when I talked English, and ... maybe that's all I knew. So I had an idea. It may not have been the best idea, but I like it. And it may be the best idea I can come up with, so if you knock it, you are knocking my entire existence. I am having them write (duh da da DAA!) a comic book.


The comic will fit the role of "Big Project" for the semester. I try to give them one day a week to work on it, always with a specific agenda attached to the lesson. The first was to design a hero. The students drew a picture of a hero, assigned him or her super powers and weaknesses, and they had to name him/her. Disappointedly, many children copied real comic heroes and characters although I encouraged them to come up with their own. And some students even copied their friend's copy of a hero (that happens every assignment--there is always one, usually 80%, plagiarized work). However, there were some unique entries into the hero world out of the 50 or so students who were assigned the project, and I am excited to see how they develop. The kids seem to be relatively happy when comic book day comes, which fulfills another major goal of the project.


For your amusement, some of the better or more peculiar entries:
1.
Hero Name: Thoy Lee (It's a square with a face)
Powers: run very fast, very good power
Weakness: top, head

2.
Hero Name: Super Sponge
Powers: soaks up water
Weakness: dry in sun

3.
Hero Name: Scoyco (picture is of Calvin peeing)
Powers: run very fast, fight very excellent
Weakness: when fight he urinating

Ideas and comments are welcome. There will be more updates with pictures as the project progresses.

(As a final side note, the underlying sexual connotation in the first paragraph of this post was completely unintentional. But now that I see it, it is quite hard to avoid. OH FREUD, YOU SCALLYWAG!)

Yay! Field Trip!

Take all the excitement associated with field trips in school and turn it inside out, and that's what I got. I discovered quickly that the Thais do not travel the same way I like to travel: long overnight bus rides with a stop for a half hour every hour to eat candy, gazing out the windows at beautiful places without an actual visit, stopping at unexciting places for hours on end, and arriving early (amazing) to places with nothing to do until the event begins. Crazy talk. Or in Thai, literally, baa baa baw baw.


I found out quickly why I was on the trip, but the reason had eluded me until we arrived at the Teacher's conference where only Thai was spoken. I was a very pretty decoration. I posed for pictures. For four days on my long weekend. My official Thailand job description: model (but one of those substandard models to show that even real people use the product).


But on an extremely positive note, I am the proud owner of a motorbike. Honda Wave. 125cc. Gray. They key to my happiness. :D

My Life as a Thai Movie Star

Filming. Photos. Screaming fans. Food buffets. Barking Orders. Sometimes life is sweet when everyone loves you. But I know how it really is… the next hot young star is waiting in the shadows, ready to take me out when the opportunity is right.

The past week classes took the backseat to my stardom in the film, “S.W.P.Y.: We Are Top of the World.” Essentially the movie was new and improved version of High School Musical 3, with a little less emphasis on schoolwork and a little more emphasis on singing and dancing. I think we hit the mark in excellence, but let the critics be the real judges… and they shouted from the hilltops!!! The acting was “top notch,” “deserving of more than the four stars this critic can give,” and “only surpassed by the attractiveness of the cast.” Of course this flattery won’t seep into the flowing locks on my radiant head. I am a beacon of modesty.

In the movie, I played a dynamic character known as The White Guy. My emotional range was extensive and impressive. I clapped and swayed with glee in a giant human formation of a star. However, I was a bit put off by the surrounding candles and lit up unicyclists, as they detracted from the REAL talent. I then donned my serious face in a scene where I convincingly taught a class of eager students (some of the best acting in the film, at least by the peons) about action verbs. Afterward, I lovingly joined hands with Thai students dressed in traditional national costumes from the around the world and marched in a circle—my favorite traditional costume was the “Cinderella going to the ball” costume; I wouldn’t have wanted that country to be left out or to deal with the wrath of the Fairy Godmother. In the final scene, tears streamed down the faces of the audience as I held my hands up to the sky in an epic showing of joy and other-worldly devotion.

Although the filming and showings are finished, I expect for years to come to hear the cries of screaming fans, feeling something near religious ecstasy at my nearness. For now, readers, you must wait, stricken with anticipation, until the video hits the DVD stands. Mwah.

(This is last weekend outside Chiang Mai)