ICU : American culture and customs class and English camp

On the 12th Ashley, Misa and I went to be guests in the Cultures and Customs in English speaking Countries class. We introduced ourselves and eventually spit the class unit three groups so that they could ask us questions about American student culture. Because it was around valentines day, we mostly got asked about what we did in that regards. turns out its all very similar. What I found more interesting was the Thai students view on plagiarism. Apparently to plagiarize is common and one guy named Buff said "Of course I do that. I have many papers it is a part of writing them" We spent the second half of class making valentines by writing out names on a piece of paper that would get passed around, and every student would have to write a love phrase on it. Some phrases were written on the board that were taken from candy hearts and some students just wrote phrases that came to their head so I had a valentine at the end of class that had things written on it such as "text me" to "May you have a good love. God loves you." I'm still adjusting to the fact that this is a christian college and frankly I dont think it's something I sill adjust to. Religion has never been a consistent presence in my life. My mother was raised  Buddhist, my father is an atheist , I went to a Quaker elementary school and my grandmother took me to a Unitarian church for a few years just so I could see what a church was like. Actually at the sunday school there they took us to places of other religions just incase one of those really seemed relevant to us, and we wanted to convert, although most of us said we didn't consider ourselves a part of any religion. Really I was told by all of those religions it doesn't matter what you believe as long as you are good to the people around you. But I digress...

English camp was fun.  It took place on the 19th at a wat/school. Ashley, Ginny, Kelly, Misa, Ray and I were all assigned a base to teach and play an English game. I was at a base where I would show the kids a piece of cardboard that had a color written on it like pink, but it was written in green. The children split into two teams and had to say the color that the word was written in rather then the one that it said. Whoever got it first got the point.  I explained the game in English and the students of Dr. Pearl translated what I had said. Then we played another game where I would show them a card with a verb written in Englsih and Thai to one student, he or she  would have to act it out, and the other children would have to say what the verb was in English. Some of them were quite simple like "jump" but some were hard to act out like "send". The kids ranged in ages but they were all primary school students. The Thai students of Dr Pearl's class  did all of the planning and most of the work, I felt like there was something more we could have done, but they took care of everything.  I look forward to speaking to some of them again at the language lunch exchange when I get back from Bangkok.