mep$camp$2015:$$huahin$andchaum$ - virb ›...
TRANSCRIPT
MEP Camp 2015: Hua Hin and Cha Um
It literally only seems I was piling on the bus to go to last year’s English camp in Phuket with the MEP program yesterday. When I was walking half asleep to the bus again this year, I had to stop myself and wonder, “Where has all the time gone?” On August 21-‐23, roughly 100 MEP students, ranging from P3-‐P6, woke themselves (teachers, too!) and piled onto busses at 5 AM at Thida. After last year, I was shuttering at the prospect of an early morning karaoke session—a man needs his sleep! Luckily, we had some early morning peace and quiet. Our first stop was at the Nai Dum Garden. I was envisioning a typical garden-‐type of environment, a place to have a nice morning walk to wake myself up and stretch my legs. In fact, the Garden is also an orchard, which produces fruits such as tangerine, dragon fruit, and papaya. All I saw were lots and lots of toilets like in the picture on the right. Apparently students and various organizations regularly visit the Garden as a de facto ‘Thai public toilet learning center.’ Mr. Dum, the orchard owner, had the intention to develop his Garden as a place for visitors passing through the area. Naturally, the kids thought it was hilarious to have their pictures taken in a toilet bowl. Our second stop was at the What Gor Aquarium. This was of particular interest to me, as my class has been studying vertebrates and invertebrates. It
was great to take the kids to the huge tank to observe all kinds of fish and baby sharks. Telling them about how fish use gills to breathe unlike humans do is one thing—to really bring it alive was awesome for them and really exciting! In addition to sharks and fish, we saw stingrays and turtles in the observation areas. The rest of Friday’s excursion was filled with
a trip to the Sam Pun Nam Floating Market and the Wat Huy Mongkol temple. Fashioned in the style of the middle Rattanakosin Period (King Rama VI), the market grounds have over 200 shops for visitors as well as a small train track for people to take the scenic route. The children wasted little time running around getting their candy and sugar fix here! It was very quiet, peaceful area—very relaxing. I was tempted to take a paddleboat ride, but we ran out of time!
The temple itself was very impressive—located roughly 15 km west of Hua Hin, it boats a massive statue of one of Thailand’s most famous monks, Luang Phor Thod. The temple is quite popular among Thai people, who come from all ends of the country to pay respect and ask for things like favors, good health, happiness, and good fortune! One each side of the statue is a huge wooden elephant, where locals will come and walk in circles under the elephants, wishing for good luck. Of course, we were there for another reason, and we got down to business on Saturday morning with our ‘Around the World’ English camp. Five of the MEP teachers—Brady, Joel, William, Brittney, and myself had stations with various games and ideas of improving the children’s’ knowledge of the world. My station was called the ‘Population of Prathoms,’ where students worked in two large groups trying to identify the outline of a country with its correct name. Afterwards, the two teams played a relay race game where they took a bit of
Vaseline and attached a cotton ball to their nose. For example, Thailand has roughly 67 million people in it. I made each cotton ball successfully attached to the paper (at left) 3 million people. The first team to get closest or surpass the population won candy! Teacher Emma worked on making sure the assembly times went smoothly. We had three 15-‐minute assemblies, where we learned songs with motions, played games,
and enjoyed ourselves. Probably the most favorite among the students was the ‘Landmarks’ game. We had eight famous landmarks from around the world, and we created a simple motion for each one. Some of them required only the individual students to make (like the Statue of Liberty), while others required two or three students to work cooperatively (Great Pyramid). It was really cute to see them having so much fun! The rest of Saturday was spent at a local water park called Satorini. I don’t think I saw much of the kids after we got off the bus—they managed to sniff out each and every ride. One favorite they enjoyed was in a pool where they were inside large bubbles, attempting to walk around like a version of American Gladiators. Some of the smaller ones got quite a workout! Of course, no trip to the water park would be complete without ice cream, snacks, and every other unhealthy food around. I was surprised the kids kept going with all their energy (sugar rush?) as they’d been going non-‐stop since early Friday morning.
We arrived at our hotel in Cha Um just in time for dinner on Saturday evening. After a wonderful dinner at the hotel restaurant, the children and teachers enjoyed some time on the beach just after sunset to capture the last minutes of a fun, activity-‐filled weekend. Throughout the weekend, it was nice to see the children outside a classroom setting and see how they interacted with their friends and students from different grade levels. Just as the English camp was valuable for them to learn more about our world, it was valuable to see different students’ personalities, as it’s something I know I can take with me inside the classroom to be a better educator. We finally arrived back at Thida about 8:30PM Sunday evening. I can personally say I was ready to be off a bus for long time after that journey! I don’t think the majority of the kids felt the impact it had on them until the next Monday. I’d never seen my class as quiet in over a year! Seeing how 25 of 29 students were in attendance, I enjoyed having quieter than usual class for a day!