Slaving Week 2

I survived the first week and it wasn't bad actually. I'm exhausted and I'm not too keen on giving up everything else I've got going on at the moment (Chinese, Korean, piano ,exercise), but the job itself isn't too bad. The classes are ridiculously long (4 hours), but I give (take?) plenty of breaks and somehow manage to pull through. While my morning class has made some definite progress, I was mistaken about the level of the supposedly 'more advanced' afternoon class and we have wasted a lot of time. While they are more capable of broken hotel English than the morning class (and therefore harder to fix their bad habits) in a few days I'd say a fair portion of the morning class can actually speak correctly more often than the afternoon class. I keep having to explain to them that years of studying a language in a classroom does not in any way guarantee you will be able to speak the langauge. As a prime example, I point out that I never actually 'studied' Thai and I speak it rather fluently. Sure, there are plenty of things I don't know. But there is plenty of crap I don't know in English either so I just absorb new things as they come rather than stress over the fact that I don't know everything.

Oh well. I'm tired and I'm in the middle of struggling through typing an email in Korean so I better finish that so I can try to sleep and wake up for another English marathon in the morn.

Slaving Away

I've been a bit busy lately and I haven't had much to write about. I'm going to the UK at the end of this month for my sister's wedding reception. I'll be there from the 28th of June until the 2nd of July.

Starting June 18th I will be taking on a temporary full-time job teaching English to the staff of the Holiday Inn here. Full-time as in 8-5 Mon-Fri. Aside from that I will be working M/W/F 6-8, 4 hours on Sat and 2 on Sunday. Possibly more. I suspect I will need to give up the gym, piano, Korean, Chinese and possibly even badminton during this month. I'm not really pleased about that, but I want to move, get a vehicle and a keyboard so hopefully I can survive this.

In other news, my ex-girlfriend slept over last night and we spent the day together. I was a bit surprised when she asked if she could come over, but I can't say I minded at all. While I don't expect to get back together with her it will be nice to hang out with her sometimes.

I haven't had any time to start my Thai podcasts yet so thats going to be moved to the backburner for a while.

Earthquake

I was practicing piano today a few minutes before 4pm Bangkok time and the rehersal room began to shake. At first I thought the bench was giving out and it was swaying, but then I realized the piano was swaying too and I wasn't playing that hard. I went outside the room and watched as the lights shook and it was kind of interesting. It must have lasted nearly a minute. It felt long anyways.

Podcast

I've been listening to lots of podcasts lately. Mostly Chinese - I use chinesepod.com.
I've started collecting some Japanese ones as well, but I haven't looked for a Korean one yet. I did look around for Thai podcasts out of curiousity and I found that there aren't any good ones. So I'm going to try and make some myself. I'm not exactly sure whether I will post any podcasts I do on this blog or my language blog - which I haven't posted much on yet. Twice actually, but more soon. I think it will be better to keep any podcasts seperate.

In other news - my x-girlfriend Ann messaged me yesterday. I ended up calling her in the evening (I was kinda drunk) and we talked for a long time. It was weird and I was kind of depressed at first, but I came out of it. It was right of me to let her go. I'm just too messed up part of the time to properly be in a relationship.

Update

So my dad seems to have woken up and been awake for a few days now. He can talk a bit and recognize people, but he doesn't know what year it is and he sometimes speaks nonsense. He still has pneuemonia and a fever at the moment. They want to move him to another hospital in Philly so he can get his heart checked out to see if there was a blockage or something that needs to be operated on, but they are waiting for his fever to go down first.

Also, while a bunch of people were visiting with my dad yesterday, his mother started complaining of chest pains and then began vomiting all over the floor much to everyones surprise. I think she is now also admitted at the hospital, but I'm not certain her condition.

I am still debating whether or not to go back. I am supposed to start some new part-time teaching gig next week and I'm not sure what I should do. If I went, it would really only be for a few days. Maybe 5 at most not including travel time. I'm thinking maybe I will wait until the heart check?