Welcome to "Sunday Summary" in which I try to summarize the week that came before. This is the 79th installment, covering the week ending today, 26 February 2024.
Each week, we link up with The Sunday Salon, hosted at ReaderBuzz, and Sunday Post at Caffeinated Reviewer. Check out their posts and the links to see what other book bloggers have been up to in the last week.
This week's featured image includes Kru May and yours truly along with (left to right) Sheram, Mayzin, Nada, Pakin, Nalin, Pakin, and Peng-An. This was shot prior to Thursday's "Swimming Kids and Little Market" event, one of the rare activities to which parents were invited. Thus, there are many photos that show combinations of our students prior to the show but only a tiny handful that include their teachers! As you can probably tell, once again the focus of the week was papayas.
The week was an odd one starting with a last-minute field trip on Monday and a half-day activity in a nearby park on Thursday. Amidst these fun events (and anything outside of the classroom is fun, to me at least), our agency bombarded us midweek with numerous messages listing all of the upcoming deadlines for various stacks of paperwork. There goes another forest. . .
The foreign teachers had not been told in advance that various classes would be going on field trips Monday. From what I gather, not many of the parents knew either. Each of the classes involved had a different destination. The local bus known as a porthong that I boarded included my 20 students from K1/9 and another 20 or so students from one of the K3 classes. We dropped them off at a shop that packaged different varieties of rice while we continued travelling for nearly 90 minutes more to a remote location somewhere north of the airport. Our class spent their field trip on a farm growing the Maradol variety of papaya. The kids picked a few off of trees, washed some in a tub with a mixture of additives and were given bags full of the large and heavy fruit to bring back to school.
Most of the children fell asleep on the bus ride back towards school, stopping only to pick up the other class from their rice experience. That class's foreign teacher told me they had been waiting on the (very hot) side of the road for nearly two hours for us to return. They had large bags of rice as their parting gift. We arrived at school just in time to give the kids an hour-long nap before the kids got their afternoon milk and waited for their parents to take them home.
Tuesday saw rehearsals of our end-of-year-show dance, the watching of a very long video (in Thai) about planting and growing Maradol papaya, and a craft project involving papayas. One of our tables is covered with ripening papayas. Personally, I am getting tired of the focus on this fruit (and of the smell of them in the classroom everyday). Several other classes chose corn as their project topic and popcorn was being made throughout the week (one of the Thai teachers brought me some caramel popcorn to munch on Friday afternoon). I think if Kru May feels better, we may see her making papaya salad for the kids once again (she makes a special, very spicy, batch for herself and me after the children's version).
Wednesday was the day of many messages after weeks of silence from our agency rep. Not only did we learn of the extended school year but were given details about upcoming events and when certain things were due. For example, Thursday was the Swimming Kids & Mini-Market event a couple of kilometers south of the school and the deadline for our monthly student assessments was moved up to this Friday rather than the end of the month. Next Tuesday will be an all-day event a two-hour bus ride away (Monday is a Buddhist holiday) that teachers will need to prepare games for.
Gift and Lisa modeling our recycled milk packet purses. Unfortunately, we didn't make enough to sell at Thursday's Little Market.
We were also given deadlines for submitting drafts of the exams and of student reports (both of which will need to be approved prior to printing) but were not given the guidelines for either (breakdown of points, for example). I had an informal meeting with my level teachers during naptime Friday in which we approved a rough draft for the final exam. I did some work on it at the start of the long holiday weekend and should have it finished by the deadline. Hopefully, it will be approved by the higher-up without any problems.
Wednesday also saw our first Computer class in quite some time. Due to the number of times the teacher cancels, it was probably our last Computer lesson as well.
The best news was getting a definitive answer on the question we all wanted to know: the end of the school year has been extended from March 8th until the 14th. This gives us four extra days of salary on our April payroll, meaning a bit more buffer during the two months that we will not receive any income at all. I have kept a tight budget since the beginning of January as I aim to do something other than just sitting in the apartment wondering if the money will run out before work begins again. As a matter of fact, I am finally starting to replenish my retirement fund that took a severe hit during the pandemic years.
I celebrated all of Wednesday's news by having a Whopper meal at Burger King that evening.
There was no mention of the end-of-year School Open House but that is looming somewhere just over the horizon. In the midst of all of these activities, the Thai teachers need to finish their projects and the kids need to review for their exams. It is a hectic time and easy to fall behind on paperwork and miss deadlines unless one is highly organized. Luckily, I feel up to the task and I look at the special events as a bit of a fun break from the routine. Unfortunately, a few of the other teachers are feeling quite overwhelmed.
Thursday morning saw yet another special event, this time we met at the municipal swimming pool a kilometer or two south of the school. Our class did a dance routine viewed by local VIP's and each class had a table in the market to sell various products. Kru May sold papaya, of course. It was a very hot morning sitting on the poolside concrete waiting for our performance and again afterwards waiting for a massive group photo. Thankfully, our kids are real troupers and were passing around some parent-provided bottles of orange juice and water as we continued the sweaty wait. I played a few games with them to take their minds off the heat.
Most of the parents collected their children by around 10 or 10:30 and all of the foreign teachers left the park soon afterwards. I stayed to take care of Pakin while we waited for his mother. Eventually, Kru May and I returned to the school and I went home at noon -- the scheduled ending time of the event (and our school day).
Unfortunately, the work week ended on a sad note as Kru May was admitted to the hospital for some tests. The stress of the past couple of months had worn her down to the point that she needed to get her heart checked out. Thankfully, she sent me a copy of her test results this weekend and it appears she will return in time for our "Outdoor Speaking Activity and English Camp" on Tuesday.
As I was essentially alone with the children on Friday, I believe our stress-inducing problem has been removed. I made it as fun of a day as I could for my students -- some dance rehearsals in the morning (yes, at least one more performance coming up), a visit to the playground before lunch and an early naptime to accommodate both my test-planning meeting and the afternoon Chinese lesson. The Chinese teacher did more dancing with the kids than usual and I ended the day with a bit of letter-tracing review while awaiting the parents to pick their kids up. Luckily, all were gone by 4pm.
Saturday was the Buddhist holiday of Makha Buja (Monday will be the government substitution holiday, so yet another day off). I took an early morning bus up to the party town of Patong (much muted due to the alcohol ban) and gave alms to the monks. I was surprised at how many people were lining the streets waiting to do the same at 6:30 in the morning.
I had a nice lunch at a place I spotted on the walk up from the beach. Alien Tacos has nothing but foreign food and specializes in American-style tacos (several different meats but no shredded cheese). I had beef tacos (three for 200 baht; one is 100 baht) and ordered nachos. They were out of the latter so I had onion rings instead. It was tasty and good value so I will definitely return. The place is open 24 hours. I later met up with a teacher friend and had mango ice cream at Swenson's in Jungceylon. dinner was at a hole-in-the-wall Thai place. I missed the last bus southward (stopped running early due to the holiday) so stayed the night and returned to Kata after lunch today.
I finished my 14th and 15th books of the year Saturday night and Sunday morning, respectively. This was made possible by being stuck in Patong overnight without anything but my mobile phone. I'd been pushing through the second half of The Poisonwood Bible for most of the week anyway so there were only 150 or so pages left by last night. It was good but not really what I had been expecting. I then blitzed through a book called How to Journal which had some good points and ideas but there wasn't anything particularly revolutionary about it. I have a number of other such "personal growth" books on my phone which are good for some quick reads in the coming weeks.
My Books Read covers page in my Bullet Journal. As of 25 February 2024, I have finished 15 books. At this time last year, I had only read five.
I am also making good progress in When the Devil Doesn't Show and I will start reading Emily James' On Earth As It Is On Television sometime this week. I have been trying to decide which books I want to read in March; the TBR is shaping up to be more non-fiction than fiction which is a bit unusual for me. One that I am especially excited about is The Courage to Teach: Exploring the Inner Landscape of a Teacher's Life by Parker J. Palmer.
Yes, just the usual three memes. The 5 On My TBR entry is tied to my participation in the Crossing Continents Reading Challenge as February calls for a book set in Africa. I haven't written anything for Philatelic Pursuits since the start of the month. I hope to remedy the silence on that, and my other blogs, during the upcoming summer break from school.
I had a sudden burst of creativity this week. While most of February has seen nice layouts, I usually do them a day at a time. Friday evening, I did the header lettering for daily pages up to the end of the month. I had sketched an idea for March's cover page during my lunch one day and put that in the appropriate place in the journal. The main color for the month will be light blue but I plan to add some shamrocks here and there. I have yet to decide which quote from To Kill A Mockingbird that I will use; I think the one where the reason is given for the title. I also put in the squares and colors for the calendar and made a list of the collection pages that the new month will include. In addition to my usual trackers I plan to add a Meal Log to record what I ate each day.
See you next week!
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