I woke up feeling crummy again, but no fever, at least. The lymph node on the right side of my through is, so it looks like I have an infection, now.

I have to wear a dress shirt and tie when teaching, so today was my first day wearing a long-sleeved shirt in Bangkok. It’s getting hotter by the day now. I thought I was prepared by wearing a sacrificial undershirt. But by the time I had finished tying my tie, my sleeves and collar were all sweaty. You never see a sweaty Thai person. In fact, they look down on our poor hygiene. Unfortunately, much of this opinion is based on dirty, tattooed Khao San Road hippies. If you’re dressing professionally, you have no excuse to be sweaty, since the Thais manage to keep clean. So I blow dried my sleeves. Tomorrow I’ll try using talcum powder, and will run the AC when I get dressed.

The CELTA is much more formal and professional than the TESOL, with lots of handouts and paperwork. The mornings are spent in “input sessions,” where our two instructors talk about theory with us. After lunch, our group of 12 splits in two, with half teaching beginners, and my half teaching intermediates. We talk about lesson plans for an hour first. At this stage, they are telling us exactly what to teach, and how to teach it. That’s fine for now, since there is a lot of other stuff to worry about. For me, my concerns are timing, and the unpredictability of the students.

Then comes the heart of the course: the hands-on teaching practice. I had to do a 15 minute chunk. I went second, after a guy who only did “getting to know you” games. The students are nice, a mixed group of young adults, ranging in ability from a Burmese refugee, up to a petroleum engineering student. Many of them come back month after month, since they only have to pay about $10 for a month of lessons. It’s sort of like getting your hair cut at the barber college for free, I guess.

My lesson went OK, considering it was my first time, and I wasn’t feeling that well. I had to teach a rather tedious review of questions words. I would have to say “I live in London. Question word ‘Where,’” and get them to say “Where do you live.” Most of them were above this level, so it went really fast. The thing I learned here was that when you ask a question, and the whole class shouts out the answer, you should call on a student to say it. Things like that only seem apparent after you experience them.

Next, I had to have them ask questions to a partner. They seemed to enjoy doing this. But I sort of lost control of the last part, where I had to get some of them to tell us about their partner. Nobody volunteered, so I called on someone. He didn’t speak very loudly, and the other students didn’t listen and kept on working on their questions.

I was very critical on my self-evaluation, but the instructor wasn’t too critical, and pointed out a lot of things I did correctly. I’ll have to teach tomorrow for 35 minutes.

I started feeling bad after the class, so I staggered home, buying some meat on a stick for dinner en route. When I got home I had a fever again. So I called up the hospital, and made an appointment with a doctor for tomorrow night.