Why I Love My Students

They absolutely crack me up. The last couple of days the students had to do role-plays of their own TV show. They had to choose real characters (most students were either Tom Cruise, Angelina Jolie, or Brittany Spears) and perform a six-minute skit. I loved every second of it. I was completely surprised at how outspoken they became in these performances. Thai students are known to be incredibly shy.

Granted, I could not understand most of what was being said, but I didn't care. They were totally into it and I can tell they spent a lot of time practicing and preparing. I think my students were a little nervous for me when I was laughing to the point of wheezing and tears. I was even sweating from laughing so hard. I took pictures of my class this morning and they were positively delightful even at 8am.

Most groups incorporated some sort of song or dance into their skit. They had someone in the audience call a cell phone just so the hip hop ring tone could blast and they would lip sync and dance to the cell phone ring as part of their performance. Brilliant. I also accumulated lots of gifts yesterday once they were done with the props for their performances, including a bouquet of flowers, a tuna sandwich, and a small carton of warm milk. I felt utterly special.

I also took video of a few performances, just so you can see how difficult it can be to decipher some of the things they say, and also see how entertaining they are nonetheless. I will try to get those posted soon. In the meantime, enjoy the pictures on the link to the left. You might notice in some of the pictures, the students wear signs around their neck. Now some of these signs are for the performance, noting what character they are playing, but the other signs they actually wear all year-round. The freshman wear these signs to signify what major they are, as well as their dorm and first and last name, I believe. The last time I wore a sign around my neck for school was when I was about 5 years old and it had my pre-school teacher's name and bus number on it, and that was only for the first week of school. It's amazing that all of these freshmen comply with the signage. They even wear their signs out in public at night and on the weekends...something I will never understand.