Yeah, That's Right: I Ripped Up Your Frog Mask.

I'm sitting in the English office while I write this, dripping with sweat (and it's barely 11am), decompressing from a morning of Kindergarten classes. My K3 class was perfect. K2, however, turned into little monsters. My Thai co-teacher for K2 left the classroom as soon as I arrived. I got through a couple rounds of the alphabet song, then passed back the animal masks they've been coloring this week, and then all hell broke lose. First of all, I'm finding that most Kindergartners don't actually know their nicknames. I think they have a hard time with my accent. So, when I called Poom up to get his mask this morning, Peem stood up instead, while Poom faced the other way and started poking Chompoo with his feet. When I called forPakbond to hand her her mask, Ormsin, Boss and Mint stood up. More confusion ensued. Within seconds, a group of boys in back who already had their masks got distracted and started wrestling on the ground. (Kindergarteners don't have desks, so instead they sit and roll and squirm in rows on the tile floor). Then another group got distracted. Then another. On top of all that confusion, a lot of them were still wearing their teeth brushing aprons (more on that later), so their names tags were covered. Imagine trying to call the attention of 37 small children scattered across a room, without knowing their names, and without knowing any command words in their language. YEAH. Welcome to my morning.

In an effort to bring about order, I slapped my hand on the desk and yelled QUIET as loud as I could. My QUIET was not loud enough. So I tried standing perfectly still with my arms crossed in silence, giving evil death stares around the room. Worked for a few kids, but stares only work when the student sees you staring. Finally, using a technique favored by my fellow ajaans, I walked over to the group of kids misbehaving and dramatically ripped up a paper frog mask in front of them. Then I snatched a kid's mask away from his hands. The act earned a few seconds of shocked expressions, and then he went right on playing and punching and rolling around. At that point, with only a few minutes left in the period, I gave up on the game I'd planned. I snatched up every single mask I'd handed out. Watched as they sat down again. Waited for them to say goodbye. Then left without accepting my usual flock of hugs. Mangpor looked at me through the screen door as I walked away, with the saddest expression I have ever seen. Sigh.

(Speaking of expressions, I got the nastiest one I've seen in Thailand from a little girl I accidently flat-tired at the market last night. Seriously, she shot darts at me with her eyes).

Now I'm at my desk trying to come up with the perfect grand prize for the 6/1 singing competition. It will obviously involve stickers. It needs to be big. These kids have been practicing like crazy. At lunch period they find me in my office and drag me into the English library to practice with them. Tomorrow is the big day. (Hopefully) videos to follow!

PS: Does anyone remember this Starburst commercial? Emily brought it up yesterday. I die every time: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYX_zhlTDr8.