Learning Thai

While Tom is out of the house today, I'm going to sneak some pictures of him teaching onto the blog. :) He is teaching at a temple school recently on behalf of the foundation. He teaches 9th graders (this is the highest grade in this school and most students will not continue on to the last three years of high school). This is a poor school and these children have not had a native English speaker as a teacher, so this is a good chance for the students to really improve their pronunciation and comfort level with English speaking. Tom is teaching the motivated learners from three classes. Here are a few pictures from the classroom...

-Candice

While I'm at it, here's one of him teaching his foundation class too. :)

Posted by Tom & Candice Mast at 08:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Posted by Tom & Candice Mast at 08:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

We finally got a camera charger...just in time for beach pictures! This past Friday was the beginning of Buddhist lent in Thailand and so Friday and Mondays were a national holiday. Our family has been busy lately with school, homework and evening teaching and we were feeling like we weren't having as much time together as we like, so the holiday was a perfect time for a family getaway to the beach. Although we had our moments (squabbles and earaches)...we had a really wonderful, relaxed time- playing in the sand and water (Hua Hin has a very rocky beach), swimming in the hotel pool, eating good seafood....

Two mermaids really liked hanging out on "their" rock.

Happy to be at the beach

Her too!

Riding a horse on the beach- so exciting!

Silas made a friend to play in his mudhole with him. I wish you could hear how he says bathing suit: "babing soup."

We visited a recreation of an old-style market in the city-50's era Thailand. I loved all the vintage decorations.

Waiting for the train

We took a walk on the pier at sunset one night to see the fisherman unloading boats. This is a load of squid.

Boats at the pier.

Silas watching the fishermen at work. (photo credit: Tom)

Dinner at the pier- amazing softshell crab (not in the picture), clams, and shrimp. Tom and I both love clams, but the kids discovered they all love them too and couldn't get enough!

Besides hours at the ocean every day, we also loved swimming in the hotel pool- especially Claire who swims until she's exhausted. Eliza learned to float and was swimming a lot better too. Go E!

Thankful for getaway time!

-C

Posted by Tom & Candice Mast at 10:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

How did all that time slide by since our last blog?? Life has been full- mostly full of being students and teachers....and many small happenings. Here are some truly random things from our life...

1) Silas loves cooked oatmeal and is afraid of giants. He has been screaming with night terrors recently. He still loves school and has a new nickname from his teacher- Sai Sa-aat (clean and pure- a take off of his Thai name Sai which sounds like a short version of Silas).

2)Claire and Eliza both got new guinea pigs- Heidi and Scuttle. Heidi already died and we are pretty sure we have the worst pet death record ever.

3) Tom likes to do a ken ken puzzle before bed. He's started teaching small groups of motivated English learners at a local temple school.

4) Current read alouds: Daddy is reading Swiss Family Robinson and Mommy is reading The Moffats. Silas's favorite bedtime story is Pokey Little Puppy.

5) Candice drinks tea from her specially shaped Japanese tea cup every morning and likes to bake things with lemons (now that we finally have them in our area!).

6) Claire is struggling with math at school (division- ugh) and homework can be a long, arduous process for kid and parents. She is the proud first-time owner of a library card (from school) and loves to read as much as ever.

7) Candice loves her high school girl's English class that meets at the foundation.

8) After coming down with the plague a few weekends ago, we're all healthy again- except for coughs and plan to take a few days to go to the beach during a Thai holiday this week.

9) Our lotus plant is growing madly and blooming too. It makes our house look so much more Thai.

10) We got to go to Geat's house for supper. She made a special rice soup, the kids raced tricycles in the apartment's hallway and we smeared icing from the birthday cake on each other's faces.

11) The Reach team is in their finale weeks here. We are planning parties and debriefing and good-byes. They will be very missed.

12) Eliza is always collecting things she finds on the ground and won't let me throw away any interesting boxes. She bought a styrofoam airplane kite at the beach yesterday and was pretty good at flying it. She had fun copying modern art in homeschool this week.

More updates and pictures very soon! We have been without our camera since we left our charger in Morocco- hence the lack of photos.

Posted by Tom & Candice Mast at 09:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)