Teaching in thailand

This was originaly a letter to Amanda who asked me what teaching was like. I figured I would share it here for anyone interested.

Actually, Im glad to hear that people are actually listening to what I say.
I had set up a blog, but I havent updated it ages. I seem to use Google Buzz more.

I am currently teaching 14-18 year olds. I am the only "farang" (thai word for forigner - specifically white ones) teacher at my school. though there are 3 other Thai english teachers and 2 chinese teachers. My classes have about 30 students and my class rooms are pretty bare. Seats, white board, (and because I am lucky, most of my rooms have air conditioning) thats about it. I teach 4-6 classes a day, which equals about 25 hours of teaching time a week. I am supposed to stay at the school from 7:30 AM - 4:30 PM though, even if I am not teaching. 2 of my classes are Intro (meets 3 times a week), 3 classes are Level 1 (meets 4 times a week), and 7 classes are "lab" - which is kind of english study hall - though according to farang teachers at other schools, mine seems to be the only school that does that.

All of my students wear uniforms. Classes are often cancled due to school events, which I am usually not told about ahead of time. Kids are usually silent and its hard to get them to speak in english because they are afraid of "losing face".

As for teaching. If you have an option to take a TESOL course and/or culture course for your country, i hightly suggest it. To teach you will use a lot of gestures. It takes a long time for students to realize they can understand you without knowing every word you say.
for my students I have found they know a ton of nouns and very little else (they knew these before I started teaching). They do not know how to make sentences and there pronunciation is very hard to understand. But they are pretty good at reading and writing.
There is a surprising amount of english on advertisments, but its usually suplamented by Thai, and often they have words that dont make sense together. for example there are some popular shops out here called "Panda soup" (the a's are written backwards) and "Beauty Cake".