The new semester is just around the corner and new students will start moving in on Monday. The person who usually organizes orientation is out of the country at the moment and so we have been scrambling to fill her place. This has made for a lot of confusion and uncertainty, but with any luck we'll pull through.
Besides organizing events, our team is responsible for a cultural workshop for the international students. We are once again using Foreign to Familiar as a reference point and have decided go all out on the discussion-based approach. Basically, what we've encountered is that people are highly resistant to this stuff. It seems to oversimplify things and promote stereotypes and so people resent it. But the fact is that (at least in my limited experience) there is some logic to it. But it's no fun to be told things about your own culture, or to be forced to swallow something you're resistant to. However, it is fun to discover this stuff on your own and to start to be able to make sense of things. Therefore we're using activities and scenarios (Whitworth folk: think Core 350) instead of simply creating a boring powerpoint presentation. Unfortunately that means more work and anxiety, which I have been avoiding through every means possible.
On a related note, my room is the cleanest it's ever been! And my stuff is super organized. This is actually a great feeling. I've been meaning to rearrange the furniture and do some thorough cleaning for quite a while actually, but I put it off with the excuse that I ought to consult sarah first. Well, sarah's moved to another dorm and so I have this rather spacious room/suite all to myself. For the time being at least. I cannot convey how happy I am to have finally moved the furniture around. For one, my computer can finally live at my desk. The old location of my desk was out of the wireless network range and so I was using a makeshift table instead. I have finally switched the locations of these things so that I don't have to sit sideways anymore. Of course I'm so used to sitting sideways by now that I'm currently doing so anyways. I also discovered many things while cleaning, including a light switch to a light that I thought was burnt out. It's amazing what happens when you move things to clean behind them. But mainly I'm much happier because my room feels more like a place to live in and less like a storage closet. sarah and I had experimented before with furniture arrangements and never found anything that quite worked. Initially I thought I could move some extra stuff to sarah's side of the room, but I've discovered that I didn't even need to do that. I feel like I'm channeling Katrina. I can't stop looking around at all the clean, organized things and feeling extremely happy inside. so if you are feeling down, try rearranging your furniture. It may just be that your feng shui is off.
I can't believe I just wrote so much about cleaning. These are the exciting things I blog about while living in Thailand. so for some more important news, our team has gone from five to four people. As I've mentioned before, Ozzie and Rochell's contracts expire at the end of the month and they are both moving on. Esther had hired two new replacements for them, but one of them cancelled at the last minute leaving us with four people. This is part of why my roommate sarah has moved to another dorm, so we'll have a CV in every dormitory on the other campus. I'll be flying solo on this side, but I've decided I do better working alone than in a team. so sarah will be living in the international dorm, Anisha will be in the women's dormitory and our new team member, Eric, will be in the men's dormitory. Eric hails from Wisconsin but has lived in Thailand for a few years. He's currently completing his masters in tesol at Payap and therefore will be a great resource for our team.
It looks like it will be a busy semester. The general English program is undergoing a complete overhaul and we are going to be responsible for speaking "lab" classes. This sounded like a good idea before we realized it meant dividing up 1200 students between four CVs and two GVs. We'll see what happens. And with the loss of Ozzie, Esther is in need of some support for her department's classes: Truth and service, and Critical Thinking and Logic. I am quite pleased to say that it looks like I will be facilitating the Critical Thinking course, even though I have absolutely no credentials to do so. Thus "facilitating." I suppose it's more of an independent study course, but I'm still excited. I basically get to pretend to be a professor, which for me is a little bit like being a kid in a candy store. And I am super passionate about this subject because I believe it is a skill that is badly needed and that most people seem to lack. Maybe I should have been a philosophy major...
Anyhow, that's all I can think to write about and now I've used up the last of my procrastination devices and will have to actually do something job-related. Woe is me.
1 comment:
Yes! I'm glad you're discovering the importance of moving furniture. I have a strong belief that it helps you feel better to have everything in its place, and some times things just need to have new places. Good luck in the busy semester to come.
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