Today was my last day of teaching. And I was paid for August which means that I'm in the black for this trip (except for my plane ticket). That is a good feeling.

In Thai the word "kwi" means buffalo. And buffalo is a really insulting thing to call someone because buffaloes are fat, lazy, ugly and smelly (just go with me on this...). It's a swearish-type word. So when I yelled "Quiet" in class, this sounds like "Buffalo noise" in Thai. So all the kids would burst out into hysterical laughing.

Since Thai is a tonal language (words are one syllable and there are 5 different tones - high, middle, low, rising and falling) and tone of your voice really matters. So using ones voice to be the enthusiastic-camp-counsellor does not translate. More often, this happens: kid: "I'm eln year old" me: "eleven?" kid: "I'm eleven? year old". This week, with Maeve, I tried to do some sort of act-out-the-verb circle game and used this to reinforce third person singular (adding the 's' to the end of the verb). So in my camp counsler voice to get everyones attention I would say "Sheeeeeeeeee... swims" "Heeeeeeee... dances" in an oscillating tone. The kids were imitating the oscillating tone and laughing. Last night at dinner I told this story to Brad and he burst out laughing and assured me that "He" in a rising tone is a very rude word for vagina. So I was possibly getting a room of preteens to say "Cunt dances", "Cunt sings" etc. Ha ha ha...