Tutoring Boram

It's been a few weeks since I started tutoring Boram. She's originally from South Korea but studies in China. She arrived here in December, right when our busiest weeks were about to begin. So things were pretty haphazard- a class today, canceled tomorrow, classroom interruptions, etc. Like a lot of non-native English speakers, she too has a pretty good grammar grounding. In a written test, she'd probably score high. But putting that knowledge into speech is where the problem is. She's here for just two months, so is really looking for a crash course. Owing to that, we haven't been able to work through a "normal" text- normal meaning one that's designed to be studied over a course of 4 months or more. So we just rip things off from a text here, a text there and ESL stuff on the internet.

The other day we practiced sentences she might say if she goes shopping to a big mall. Stuff from "Excuse me, where is the ladies clothing department?" to "Do you do alterations?" These few weeks being my precious weeks of break time before another term begins, teaching isn't high on my to-do list. However, of late, I've been beginning to enjoy my daily two hours with her. There are little things that happen in these two hours that I have begun to look forward to. For example, her Korean candies. Boram has a sweet tooth. Oh yea, I told her what "sweet tooth" means. Anyway, everyday she brings two candies. Sometimes more. Sometimes yummy ones like pumpkin candy. Or some hard-to-distinguish flavoured candy which had "Good for Women" written in Korean on the wrapper. Sweet moments, really. Pun definitely intended.

We learned some prepositions yesterday. She said they will be useful. So I thought I'd give her some more. Secretly weaseling my way out from lesson-planning. Our time of meeting being post-lunch, she was drowsy and the prepositions weren't really helping. So we just sat and talked. Of course, as we chewed on the yummy pumpkin candy. I then asked her about her favourite childhood memory. This was after an explanation (with a diagram, stick figures et al) of "childhood." Once she understood, she immediately said her favourite childhood memory is from when she was 5 years old. She hadn't begun school yet because back then kids in Korea weren't sent to school until they were 6 or 7. So for a year, her family lived in the countryside. She began to draw a diagram as well as she tried to articulate her memory. She drew two houses and some fields. Rice fields, as she later specified. With her limited English vocabulary, she told me that living there by the rice fields where after the rains she would see rainbows, which she said were really big. Predictably I was drawn in to her telling of her memory. And for a few seconds, we sat there with silly grins, staring at her scribbly drawing of what was supposed to be the rice field and their house. Silly moments I seem to thrive on. Silly moments I seem to live for.

Uncountable Nouns

It doesn't take much for me to cry. It runs in the blood, we say. My mum's side . A family joke. It's almost inevitable for my mum or her sister to start sniff-ing (and later, let out a sob or two) during family gatherings; it's so inevitable that we're sure to spot an uncle or two yawning in a corner and not paying the slightest attention nor trying to summon a sympathetic look in the least. I take after my mum, and oh, what a thing to take after. Sometimes I detest it so much. I cry so easily. I'm a "jepsu" as Aos would call it. Little things like some childhood memory of Christmas, a kind unexpected gesture, a scene from a movie that reminds me of some place I've been to or seeing a person that looks like someone dear to me can make my eyes well up with tears.

So it's really no big surprise that I felt a little emotional as I was typing the last lesson plan for this term. It's just the thought of doing something for the last time (for this year at least) I said to myself. Today being the last day of class before the students take their test tomorrow, I thought it'd be a nice treat for them to have some food and drinks. So over some pizza and some iced tea, we did a review of the things we had learned over the term. But more than the review, I enjoyed the fact that the students are already so fluent in the language to be able to converse about topics like education, corruption, what they've become better at over the course of the term, the dreams they have, the changes they want to see in their country. the " little" contributions they'd make to make life better. The students are really bright and it's such a remarkable feat that they have reached the Upper Intermediate level and have learned a second language with such proficiency.

So after a class like that, and given my history of jepsu-ness, I guess I shouldn't have been surprised at myself as my eyes welled up with tears after I left the class. I felt it strong and I felt it deep. I'm an emotional person- the feeling-feeling type, if you please. But I had a moment there and small though it may be, it was a moment of triumph for me. A milestone of sorts and a reflection of how blessed I am. And I in all my inherited emotional glory received it as an addition to the unending list of blessings.

We did Countable and Uncountable nouns this term. Makes one wonder if blessings are really uncountable or countable.

in-the-making

There By The Sea

Paper Parasols

But For Now, This Is How We'll Talk

Communicating through speech comes to a stop after some time. With basic vocabulary learned over a span of just two months, there's only so much you can say. There's only so much to talk about. There's only so much miming and gesturing you can come up with. So I sit back and feel a little frustrated as my brain tries hard to make sense of what they're saying. I try and slow them down saying "Khoy bo khao jai" (I don't understand). Being honest and trying to find a way to give myself a break at the same time. Yet they persist. So I smile and try to get myself interested. They want to teach me how to dance. They try to remember the steps and begin to sway their hands and move their bodies. Their fingers make delicate movements as their hands sway from left to right, right to left. I've seen the actual dance with the accompanying music. Suffice it to say that the girls' version sans the music is so much better. They beckon me to join them. I get up and try to get my pace right, my fingers begin to move slowly to their delicate rhythm. So we dance for a little while as the girls try to sing a song, the words to which they try to remember. But we dance.

I then sat back and watched them dance; thinking, "Communicating through speech comes to a stop after some time..." But when it does, we find other means through which we still try to communicate... even though it's just our bodies swaying to the humming of a half-remembered song.

Hnff!

No, I didn't go snorkeling. But I went Lao river-fishing. Of course I didn't wear that. This was just for a photo. We hardly caught any fish. But it was quite fun. We had to go on boats down the river to the other side. I screamed like mad when two of the girls took me on a test ride. The boat bobbed around like crazy. I don't know how to swim and I don't know how deep the water was but if I've had a near-drowning experience in the shallow end of a pool, you know what I can be capable of.

One of the girls was a fisherman's daughter. So she knew her stuff. She knew the pretty waterfalls and the way around them. She knew how to steer the boat. She knew what to do. She led me by my hand and took me into the foliage, up to the falls, cautioning me to place my foot on this rock not that. She knew the place. I almost felt like calling her "Pocahontas". She even had her long hair tied up in a side pony tail. Not that Pocahontas ever did, or could have. You never know.

Since there was nothing much happening at the fish-catching front, I ended up collecting some shells on the river bank and chewing burnt buffalo hide tossed in coal over an old woman's fire which we kinda took over.