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The other day I went to Ayutthaya
with two visitors to Sriwittayapaknam School. Andrew came from England
and Darren came from Singapore. Th ey
came to visit my old school because they were interested in Thai schools
and wanted to know how we taught our students. They visited most of
the classes helping the students with conversational English.
On the way to Ayutthaya we
stopped at a petrol station. Andrew said that he was amazed when he
saw lots of people run up to our car to clean the windows, empty the
rubbish and fill up the petrol. He said in England he had to do all
that himself. It's different for him when he see things like this but
for me I think it's not special. Filling up the car yourself is special
for me! We then talked about other differences.
Our first stop was the Bang
Sai Arts and Crafts Center. We first went to take pictures of the craftsmen
and then we went to a Thai style village. In the village, they had different
kinds of Thai houses from all over Thailand. It was very beautiful and
interesting. I got lots of good pictures out of that place. I think
I might use them for my wallpaper page. While I was taking photos, Andrew
asked me what are the Thai words for "Can I take a picture?"
I told him "tai roob dai mai?" He then started to ask me some
more. I thought I should have these phrases in my Learn Thai web site
so I wrote them down in my little black book.
Next we stopped at Bang Pa
I n
Summer Palace. While we walked around, I saw lots of students pointing
at us. I wondered why but a second later they started to run over to
us. At first I thought they wanted to chat with me. I wasn’t with my
girlfriend so I didn’t mind. Some of them were very pretty. But then
they walked straight past me and went up to Darren and Andrew and started
to ask them questions. I was very sad. I knew now that their teacher
must have given them homework to interview some foreigners because I
have done that before.
I listened to the students
when they talked to Darren and Andrew. They sounded very shy and I could
see that they hadn’t prepared the questions properly. They kept asking
each other in Thai how to say the questions. I could also see that they
were discussing about the grammar too. Richard, my teacher, had told
me many times that if I was shy I would never be able to speak English
properly. Now I am sure that he's right. I told the students not to
worry about mistakes. Just try and don’t be shy.
By the time we had finished
we were really hungry. Andrew and Darren didn’t know how to order food
properly so I did it for them. They wanted to order something each but
I said that it was better to order about five or six dishes and then
share. When the food arrived, Andrew started to put a lot of food onto
his plate from every dish. I told him that's not the Thai way. You should
take a spoonfull of what you want then eat it first with the rice. He
said that table manners would be a good page for my web site. I didn't
think about that before because I live with it every day and didn’t
think it would be interesting. I wrote it down in my little black book.
When we finished, Richard ordered some fruit for us then Darren asked
me about names of fruit in Thai. I thought that's a good idea so I wrote
it down too! Today was really fun even though I was really tired. I
got lots of ideas and beautiful pictures for my web site.
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