PD session on Thai Phonology given by Piboon Sukvijit at GELI

Friday 18-Saturday 19, 2008

Today I woke up quite early to make sure that the house was spic and spin before I returned the key to Rick, the landlord. It’s my last day here in the house and at GELI. Time has flown by very quickly and I just could not believe that I will be leaving Australia for New Zealand very soon. Anyway, as soon as I arrived the office, I went right to my desk and reviewed my PowerPoint presentation for a PD session on Thai Phonology. Then, they had a little farewell for morning tea for me. Annette brought a lemon pie with lots of strawberries on it…It was very touching for me to see them telling how they felt about me fitting in the place real quickly and that I became part of them. I was very proud of myself to represent the University and country to be there and did my very best on getting to know people, the program system, the teaching, and other things that they offered over there. I thought that I did a tremendous job there.

Then, I went to Nathan to meet up with Hilda for a coffee and the graduation for DEPs. The celebration reminded me of my graduation in America and I was very happy for them to see them became successful in the program. Then, I took off to another event, which was the Aboriginal performance. I even danced with them and I got some white dots on my face as part of their culture and the show. I thought it was very cool. There I met with some Thai students who were in the ETP (English for EIALS Test Preparation). The performance was very interesting and we all enjoyed it so much. Other students there had a chance to pain a boomerang in accordance with their year of birth. I was not there, unfortunately, since I had to prepare for the presentation and help with the lunch.

The presentation went great and everyone really admired my delivery so much that some of them came up to me and said very nice thing about my speech and the topic. I started off the project with some background of the Thai Language and I had a VDO clip on from YouTube to show them. After that, I started talking about the difficulties Thai learners, as well as others second learners from Asian countries have. The presentation was very relaxing since I intended to make it that way yet they learned some new thing. By adding a bit of the problems that Vietnamese students have in terms of pronunciation came handy since there are more Vietnamese students than Thai students and many teachers have problems understanding them. Many teachers brought some food to share with others. Joy brought very nice sandwiches with some Kangaroo meat, others brought fruits and rice, and I brought American Pie that I baked the night before. We enjoyed both the PD and the food.

Since I was the one who did all the talking, so I did not have a chance to eat lunch. However, it was a good idea that I did not eat a lot since Judy and her family invited me to a show in Gold Coast called “Outback Spectacular.” Judy and I left early this afternoon, so we could go pick up my belongings from the house. We got to the place half an hour earlier, so we decided to just have something to drink. We ended up at McCafe and had a Latte. We got to the Outback and I did some gift shopping for my brother. The place was packed that night and the atmosphere was just blew me away. We got a cowboy hat each, which was part of the price including a meal. Inside, people sat down in a horseshoe layout. The show was great and really was spectacular just like its name. I enjoyed it big time. During the show, dinner was served to the audience. We had a salad, a Stake with some steam veggies and some bread; we finished off with Pavlova! The food was great and we just loved it. The show was about an hour and a half and by the end of the show, I had to say that I got some goose bumps since there were cowboys and cowgirls riding the horses and were holding Australian flags. It was right there that I felt like I was in Australia. I thought they must be very proud to be Australian which is true that they are very lucky ones!

Tonight I stayed over at Judy’s house since we decided to do things together on Saturday together. We went shopping for things and ingredients for a Thai dinner. I made Massaman Kai (Sweet red curry with drumsticks). It came out quite well. We ended having fried rice and the curry for my course and had ice-cream for dessert. Judy and her family enjoyed the food a lot.