new 773 digits and class update

Jay Steubich is awesome. Being the techno savvy guy that he is, he spent the past week messing around with voice over IP, and in his words, he “decided to put it to good use” by setting up a VOIP line to me here in Bangkok. Leslee called me yesterday morning to verify my number, then Jay called about an hour later to say that he’d successfully given me a 773 phone line. This means that any time you feel like hearing the lilt of my voice, you can just dial 773.915.2358 and have it ring right to my cell phone here, while you’re only charged for a regular call to any other Chicago phone number. Sweet. So now start dialing. =) Thank you, Jay!!!

In other news, I’m still in love with my senior class. Yesterday afternoon we went on a fieldtrip to a coffee shop and had class there for two hours. Then we played a modified version of Circle of Death (Kings), one of our go-to drinking games back home. I had a list assigning each card to some kind of English challenge, for example, drawing a 6 card meant that all the guys had to repeat a tongue twister chosen by the girls; drawing an Ace meant that the each student in turn would say a sentence beginning with the last letter of the previous sentence (EFL-style waterfall); a Jack meant they had to describe the personality of the person to their right. They had fun and so did I, so it was a very nice class. Afterward a few of my students (plus two of my former students who were transferred to Rob’s class during my brief absence to go to the US) happened to walk by Dream while I was there with Jenn having dinner and a beer, so they sat and joined us for awhile. One tried teaching me how to order my fav green curry soup in Thai, but those new language skills already escape me. They’re all really good kids and I’m happy to be working with them.

Today we’re in for a more serious class, though. I’m going to try to recreate the serious interview environment that my boss will put them through in about 2 weeks. That’s the test they must pass to graduate, so I need to stop babying them with practice questions in class, where I’ve typically been correcting and prompting them mid-sentence. Now it’s time to just let them speak solo for a few minutes at a time without any direction or indication from me of how well they’re doing.

My freshman OPE (Oral Proficiency in English) classes are nowhere near as cool as the senior-level Conversation Course, but I’m trying to work through them successfully. In talking to some of the other teachers about this yesterday, we decided that OPE students are moody. They choose whether to participate or to sit there with their arms folded and refuse to speak English, depending on how they feel that day (and how many students show up). So no matter how prepared I am with activities, it’s always a gamble to see what will work. But this just means lots of thinking on my feet and winging it… I usually manage to get them going somehow, so I guess that’s all I can do. We only have about 4 weeks left of classes before semester finals, and we have tons of info to cover before then, so it’s my job to keep it interesting.

This weekend I'm staying in BKK, hoping to go to Chatuchak one day and maybe rock climbing on the other. Hopefully that will work out.