Sunday Summary #93

Mark Joseph Jochim

June 2

Welcome to "Sunday Summary" in which I try to summarize the week that came before. This is the 93rd installment, covering the week ending today, the 2nd of June 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 was Week 3 on our School Year 2024-2025 calendar and the first of full-day schedules for the K1 children and teachers. This meant long, exhausting days and early nights as I could barely stay awake upon returning home long enough to have a little dinner and try to reach my daily reading goal of 100 pages. I succeeded on the last but fell increasingly behind on the bullet journal; thankfully, we are now in the middle of a three-day weekend during which I am trying to catch up. Tomorrow is a public holiday marking Queen Suthida's 46th birthday.

The weather started off boiling hot once again but cooled by mid-week with threatening skies. My bus to work Friday morning started under scattered clouds but then hit a series of squalls upon cresting the pass between the west coast and the center lowlands. My last few minutes on the back of a motorbike taxi that day was spent in a hellacious downpour. Cats and dogs? Nah, more like elephants and hippos!

While we still have a few criers and runners in the classroom (five to seven boys and one or two girls on any given day), they are starting to settle down quite a bit. I taught a lesson on the letter "A" on Monday, following that with some instruction on how to form objects with clay. The next day, I was amazed that two of my boys -- Jao-khun and Tek-lim -- created upper-case letter "A's" in clay without any prompting from me.

^{The children start out listening intently to the Chinese teacher but loose interest before she finishes doing the roll-call. I think next week, I will offer to write the attendance for her so she can get started on the actual lesson and, hopefully, prevent the students from running around (or falling asleep!).}

The children were extremely well behaved during their Music lesson this week and I made a point to compliment the teacher. My post-Tuesday classes were relatively stress-free but I hope they start to settle down for the Chinese teacher soon. I get the impression that it is her first year teaching.

^{Tiny Ton-hom certainly has no problem falling asleep. Here she is during lunch on Monday. . .}

I have been taking my required breaks during the students' naptime every day so far this year; last year, I usually spent the two hours in the classroom working on things in the semi-darkness. On Monday, I noticed no change to the activity of the majority of kids when I returned -- very few were asleep while a great many were rolling around like little tornadoes on the floor. By Friday, almost everyone was asleep when I returned from lunch.

^{. . . and during Tuesday's Chinese lesson; here, Ton-hom uses T. Mark's leg as a pillow!}

The school lunches have continued to be delicious every day with a new favorite on Wednesday (guay jub - ก๋วยจั๊บ) and an old favorite on Friday. The latter dish is simply boiled white meat chicken on rice but is served with a wonderful black sauce that I cover it with. I have never been able to find the sauce anywhere else. I finished a full serving at school and loaded up the portions into a multi-container Thai-style "lunch box" to bring home for dinner.

^{The final official schedule, at least until Term 2. I will now teach 12 regular English lessons (up from nine on the previous timetable) and one Science lesson per week. The Thai and Math lessons have been dropped but COVID remains!}

Friday morning, the final official timetables were distributed to all classes. I went from nine to 13 English lessons per week with ALL Thai and Math lessons eliminated. A total of eight of my lessons are now in the dreaded after-lunch and last-of-the-day spots. Several of the other foreign teachers received schedules with similar adjustments; they complained and largely had their timetables reduced once again.

^{Teachers serve the children their meals at Breakfast and Lunch, always a very hectic and noisy task. Not to mention, messy!}

As for me, I do not mind at all. I know that in practice, many of the periods slotted after lunch will be reduced/replaced due to other activities or by K. May wanting the children to have a longer naptime. This is also a good time to practice any dances we will have to perform for special events. I doubt I will rarely have to fill the full fifty minutes but if I do, I will review and practice material learnt during the morning lessons.

^{Kru May's first story-time of the new school year, done as the children were waiting for their parents Monday afternoon. It can be difficult to turn pages while you are holding the big books!}

^{Naptime got better day by day as more children started to fall asleep soon after the lights were turned off.}

^{The children are powdered after they wake up from their naps. I usually end up with powdery handprints on my gray or black slacks.}

The time immediately following naptime is usually extended by putting their bedrolls away, serving them milk (that has not started yet this year), and getting them ready to go home by brushing the girls' hair, even giving the children a heavy dowsing of prickly-pear powder. The small amount of time that is left is perfect for some English call-and-response chants, a game or two, and a song to repeat or dance to. I think it will be nice for the parents to see them doing things in English as they arrive to pick up their children rather than the Thai as before. It is the Intensive English Program, after all.

^{A couple versions of the Wake Up Song instruct the kids to do things like "Pull a Silly Face" and "Blow the World's Biggest Raspberry", I always hope that the children forget about those actions when their parents ask them, "What did you learn in school today?".}

This week, we again had cancellations of the Dance and Computer lessons nor could we do Scouts or visit the playground due to Friday's nasty weather. I believe we will start Swimming lessons next week and will begin our Library visits soon as well. Some of the teachers are starting to discuss Sports Day so that is something else we will start dealing with as the kids need to practice for the various performances and sporting events. It is a VERY ACTIVE school.

^{Kru May's first coloring sheet of the school year was a simple drinking cup, not unlike the ones the kids use for water each day. She told them, "orange cup, blue water". Most of them listened; it is easy to tell which were colored by boys. . .}

I mentioned above that many school nights, I struggle to reach 100 pages. Thursday night I did 708, almost finishing the final two books on my May TBR. The next evening, I only had a hundred pages or so left in each and easily completed The Trackers by Charles Frazier and Jan Jarboe Russell's detailed account of the only World War II U.S. internment camp that accommodated entire families, The Train to Crystal City.

Recently Finished

Currently Reading

I am starting out the month with a bang, starting one book on Saturday and another earlier today. My June TBR features a number of books set in the U.S. Southwest, including a history of "The West," as well as three to add to the Bookish Books Challenge. This month's Crossing Continents Challenge requires a book set in the Antarctic which will be a nice change of pace, I think.

I hope to start putting together an article soon (tomorrow, end of the week?) describing Hardcover, an excellent alternative to Goodreads. I have been using the newish (just over four years old) site for the past two weeks and I will probably stop using Goodreads completely by the end of the year.

The second day of the month and I already have three blog posts to show for it. Well, I will once I finish today's "Sunday Summary" (getting close!). Yesterday saw my monthly TBR post and the other had me spelling out "JUNE" in history books. I have another non-meme post in the works trying to summarize the Hardcover site as mentioned right above. And, of course, I started the week off with my usual Tuesday Intros and WWW Wednesdays posts.

While I managed a bit of work on my main BuJo while eating my school lunches in the canteen, the majority was done at home in the evenings. Before sitting down to read after my 60- to 90-minute commutes home, I spent a little while updating trackers and dailies. I even managed to pencil-sketch several layouts Tuesday and Wednesday evenings which I went over in ink the following days when I found time at school. My June cover page was entirely conceived during K. May's storytelling session Thursday morning with an idea and a sketch that I inked while sitting in the school's lunchroom.

While the majority of the trackers follow the same basic designs as I have been using for several months now with little tweaks here and there, I have redesigned my daily layouts. Not only is the design much easier (and faster!) to reproduce, but I can now squeeze two days onto one which seems to be the way to go if I want this notebook to last until the end of August. I completely forgot my digital clock doodles on the page for this weekend but am starting to remedy that with the upcoming week's dailies.

I also decided to add a Brain Dump page for the first time as I needed something to fill a page and did not want to make the Food Log this month or recreate my class schedule. I have been enjoying my daily "Brain Farts" where I record random thoughts (my new format gives far less room for this, unfortunately) and thought having a dedicated page to make the really important thoughts and ideas more easy to find was a step in the right direction.

Due to an error in counting, I have one blank page left before the first of the June daily logs. I may put a Quotes page there or even a Doodles page but am not sure just which one yet.

As far as the Teacher's BuJo, I have done minimal work on it since about two weeks ago. I have been jotting down various classroom events in the weeklies and on Friday I took the remaining pictures needed for my Student Profile pages but other than that, the only major layout work I have done was to white-out the errors in my timetable. I was really proud how that spread turned out only to be told the very next day that our schedules would be changed. When the final version (I hope!) was distributed at the end of the week I readied the page for a bit of editing. Luckily, most of that is in the final period.

I (finally!) shot a bit of video during the week at school. I cannot film while actually leading the class but I managed a few clips during morning assembly, the Chinese lessons, Kru May's story time, naptime, and end-of-day dancing. That is the reason behind the shakiness of the last couple of clips; I was jumping along with the children while filming!

The video above is on the class's dedicated YouTube channel which I created today. Please watch it there and give it some love in the form of views and likes, even a subscription would be great. It's also on my personal channel which probably needs a bit of love as well. . . .

^{Guay Jub Pork Noodle Soup (ก๋วยจั๊บ) at PMKS canteen, 29 May 2024}

I took a few more photos this week than last. Many of these show food. In my experience, photos of Thai food never look particularly appetizing but they are almost always extremely yummy. My photo of guay jub hardly does it justice. This is a kind of pork and noodles soup with eggs and a whole lot of herbs. The noodles are rolled into white tubes which reminds one of penne pasta although the flavor is nothing like that. A rich, brown color is produced using pig's blog curd or jelly which, had I known before trying it, I would have never gotten the spoon close to my mouth. Always try before you balk; one should only worry about the spiciness of Thai food, never the flavor.

The morning sky was particularly spectacular Monday morning while I was awaiting my songthaew's arrival. I believe this is partly because of the increased activity in solar flares (or, is it sunspots?). While northern latitudes can experience stunning displays of the aurora borealis (which recently could be seen as far south as Texas and even Mexico), we have the potential to see the similar aurora australis in the southern hemisphere. Both of these forms of aurora are caused by solar wind disturbing the Earth's magnetosphere. I have yet to see one in person so I am hopeful that we will be able to view the southern lights in the near future.

I live on the lower slopes of Kao Nekkard, the summit of which used to house the Japanese POW camp during World War II but is now occupied by Phuket's Big Buddha statue. I usually do not notice the glow from the floodlights illuminating him but it was particularly evident as I left my apartment early Tuesday morning.

I was waiting for my bus to start the trip to Phuket Town early Tuesday when a police pickup roared around the corner, lights blazing and siren blaring. The way the two officers jumped out of the vehicle, I thought somebody was robbing the currency exchange booths or ATMs across the street. Nope, they spent several minutes taking selfies and then each posed while the other snapped photos. They managed to block the water truck which couldn't get by due to my bus blocking the other lane.

^{This "creature" was seen outside of a new dive shop as I walked to the bus stop in Phuket Town Friday afternoon.}

^{Friday afternoon egg delivery at the downtown fresh market in Phuket Town.}

^{My end-of-the-school week dinner was leftovers from lunch. It is not often that I bring food home from the school but I always make an exception for this simple boiled chicken on rice combination with it's delicious black sauce. Our head chef makes it herself and it is awesome! The chicken would make a very good sandwich as well on white bread with a little sauce and mayo. . . .}