Pattaya

Our group was so excited for our first trip to the beach on Sunday...well lets just say it was a bit of a disappointment. First of all the buses were an hour late picking us up, it was raining non stop, and we spent majority of the day at a tropical garden. The garden wasn't that bad. We did see an elephant paint a picture with its trunk, saw a tiger up close, and I saw these amazing statues throughout the garden.





We finally made it to the beach at 3:30pm. It was overcast, cloudy and the water was murky and not beautiful. I had very high expectations for the beaches of Thailand. I was quite bummed. But it was Pattaya...I have heard not so good things about the place. I heard it was seedy so I guess I just set my expectations too high for my first beach experience. That is totally fine as I am here for a year and I just need to do a little traveling and visit the islands and I guarantee Thailand will redeem itself. I have the faith.

So you know how I said that last week was our first week of 'work' and that this week would be our first week of classes....well I lied...apparently this is still the registration week and next week we will finally start teaching! Here at Assumption University I will be working in the Center for English Language Development. This is a brand new start up program (our group of teachers are the guinea pigs). First year students can take our basic or level 1 conversational English classes and by-pass the required verbal exit exam at the end of their 4th year, which from what we hear is pretty intense.
Their marketing for these classes didn't go over too well. They interviewed 6,000 of the incoming freshman and they were anticipating at the very least 2,000 to sign up and as of now there are only a few hundred. What that means is there are too many teachers and not enough students. So this week we are going into all the English classes to promote our program as well as setting up several tables around campus. Should be fun, good times.