First Days at Surin Rajhabat University

Well, it's day three on the job and all is well. I was a little nervous the first day, but got over that really quick as things have picked up to a skippy pace. It's actually started to feel something like cold. Haven't felt that in a while, in fact, we had to go out and get some jackets. It's cold in the morning when I ride the motorcycle to work. Anyway, the classes themselves are going very well.

Monday was the big start. My first class was "Creative Writing in English", a class taken by 4th year English students. It went very well, at the beginning of each class this week, we will go through introductions, which always bring laughs as the students cook up their best English to tell me their name, hometown and hobbies. Most hobbies consist of radio, TV, comic books, music, Thai dance, or sleeping. It's been a little interesting trying to take the roll as their names on the roll itself are in Thai. I am trying hard to learn the alphabet, but have a ways to go yet. So I had them write their English nicknames, which helped immensely. During the lunch break, I asked one of the Thai teachers a question about my schedule. When she went to check with the master schedule, she discovered that I had an extra class. Apparently, it was written on the master copy in pencil, and so when it was photocopied for me, the pencil was invisible. In other words, I had no idea about "Features of Extended Writing" until an hour before the class started. So after a quick lunch, I scrambled to put together a syllabus. We didn't have class this week, just went over assignments and such. That was amazing.

Tuesday came and found me starting the day out with the second class in "Features of Extended Writing". Thailand is interesting in its collegiate educational system. When somebody starts in college, they decide a major and stick with it (I suppose anyway). So the English majors come in together, and graduate together. The class takes all the same courses together for their entire college career. So they are usually a pretty intimate group. When they are too big for a class, they will split them up. So while I am teaching 4 subjects, I am actually teaching 6 classes (two classes are split). The second class on Tuesday was "English for Tourism 1", in which we began talking about how to relate to a foreigner. It was really something because I was able to relate the things I have learned coming to Thailand.

On Wednesday I only had one class, "Background of English Speaking Countries". This was a promising and fun subject to teach, and I was very excited about it. Unfortunately, the class was a second year English major class, and so some of what I was trying to communicate was going right over their heads. So I ended up drawing lots of pictures and trying to make things as simple and clear as possible. Whew, I was exhausted after that class!

It's been a very interesting experience already, and it's only day 3! Most of the students in my classes are female, though there are a few male students here and there. One sad thing I find is the amount of transvestite students here. It makes me sad, not out of some spiteful hate (sin is in fact sin), but rather the thought that people really do reject God's natural creation for their own choices. Think about it, somebody who makes these kind of choices, even to the point of undergoing operations (not uncommon here, it's in the hospital brochures), is in essence saying that God did not make them correctly, and so it must change. It is a natural, sinful human tendency to tell God our ideas are better than His. I guess it's just heart-breaking to see people say that in such an outright way. But then again, that is why we are here, to bring God on the scene and let people know how far He came to take away all that sin.

So thank you all for praying, we have surely needed it, and continue to. We are thinking of you and praying for you. Oh... by the way, just as an FYI... we found out we can actually track where people are viewing our site from. It's been encouraging to read all the comments you leave and see where everybody is praying for us from! Thank you, thank you, thank you!

Till next time,

Drew