Dong Dok

I have finished my first week of teaching, and it was great! Monday I started class at 8:00. When I walked into my classroom, there were only three students sitting in their desks. Which was probably actually less frightening and intimidating than walking into a room of 40 students. Over the next hour, students kept trickling in, and I ended class at 9:30 with about 20 students present. 

This is our office. There are only three of us in here, so it's pretty spacious. We also like to spend time in the Lao's office; we eat lunch with them many days. We're hoping some Lao teachers will add their desks to the room... but we'll see. The table in the middle is a nice place to sit and chat over coffee and tea. 

These are four of my students. (I do not know their names yet.) We were advised to take pictures of each student and put on a note card with their name, age, phone number, province.... so we can study their names and have some info about them.

This is our beautiful campus! The building in the background has many classrooms in it. Campus has so many trees and so much green - it's awesome!  My classroom is about a 10-15 minute walk from my office, depending if I walk at Lao or American speed. Unfortunately, I usually enter my classroom with sweat pouring off my face and body. :( I'll need to keep reminding myself to walk slower, so I'm not passing people left and right, and so that I'm slightly less sweaty when I start teaching. But we're coming up to cool season thankfully! :)

I have mostly been figuring out little things for my class. (I have one class that meets for 1 1/2 hours 4 days a week.) It's a little difficult because of the varied levels of my students. Some of my students could have a discussion about politics in America and Laos, and others mmm.... couldn't. Some of my students haven't been coming to every class either, which also makes it difficult to learn something when they weren't there the day before so they have no clue what I'm talking about. But I really like my students so far! I'll need to look at my little cards to learn their names quickly! Some examples: Latthikone, Phonesavanh, and Sorxayaphoum. 

I have also been taking a sawng tao to school, which is sorta like a bus that is in the back of a pickup. It is a little more than an hour commute each way. First, I ride my bike to Talat Sao (Morning Market) which is a little tricky in a silk sinh. Then I park my bike and walk a bit to the sawng tao place. Then ride in the sawng tao for 30-40 minutes depending how many people we stop to pick up. But people often talk to me in the back of the sawng tao. If they speak in Lao, the conversation usually ends pretty quickly :( , but if they speak in English, sometimes we can talk for the whole half hour and it's so fun! 

But I passed my motorbike test on Thursday!! :) :) :) So, hopefully on Monday or Tuesday I can buy my motorbike and then it will only take 30 minutes to get to Dong Dok. Dong Dok is the village/area of the city where the National University of Laos is located, so it is just called Dong Dok.

Teaching is going great! I still have lots of improvement to make on my lesson planing, but hopefully the students haven't noticed too much yet! And I'm excited to teach them more and get to know them more!