Coffee Pot

Hello!

I'm still here. I just haven't had anything to write about lately because things have been pretty routine for the last three-ish weeks. We haven't had any holidays or anything, and I haven't really gotten much of a chance to do any new touristy things around Bangkok.

But I have big news!

After four months of instant coffee, we are finally making real coffee in the morning in my office. The other day one of the girls from Prathom brought her french press over to make us coffee. It tasted so much better than what we normally have that we got a coffee maker set up. For the last week we've been starting our mornings with real coffee. The office smells great too.

Just kidding, that's not really the important news.

Actually it is. It really did make a huge difference! The second piece of slightly less important (relative to the coffee) news is that the term is coming to a close. We've been giving final exams all week. I was in charge of giving the M3 Listening and Speaking exam as well as my M2 Main class. I also proctored M2 Thai Language, History, and Science on Wednesday, and M2 Chinese today.

The students came in on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday to take exams, and just like at midterm we had Tuesday and Thursday to grade. The others in my office haven't had the easiest time with it. The tests they have to grade are mostly upper level and very grammar and writing heavy. That takes a really long time to mark. Lucky for me though, my tests were pretty quick to grade. I was done by Thursday before lunch and just kind of hung around the office drinking good coffee and marking grade books today.

Next week we have departmental mark checks, and then it'll be time for the term holiday!

Music Day 2013

Wednesday was Music Day at my school, and it was nothing like I expected. We had known about music day for a week or two, mostly because we knew we wouldn't have any classes.

I thought it was going to be some sort of showcase of traditional Thai music or something. I was wrong! Music Day turned out to be a whole-day event. It was basically a rock concert where the students got to perform music with their bands. They had the air on in the assembly hall, and the whole place was decorated with black lights. I watched a little bit in the morning, and went back down after lunch for a while. I'm really impressed with the production quality; they had a laser light show and smoke machines. It was pretty cool! Although I couldn't understand the music (it was all in Thai), I had a good time. The students did too. They were dancing and singing along all day. I wish we had gotten random days off of class to have a rock concert when I was in school!