18 Aug, 2006

Hello from Prachinburi.

The last couple of weeks have been quite uneventful. Last weekend was a national holiday, so we had Saturday and Monday off (usually have to work on Sat mornings). We didn't go anywhere for the weekend - just stayed at home and didn't do much. It was nice to relax.

Guess what? we have more tests in about 3 weeks' time. it feels like no time at all since the mid-terms - it's not like primary school was in my day, when you just spent the year learning..........now it's all monitored and recorded and tested. Last week I was given the lovely task of rewriting the reports that Rob had written! We were given report sheets to write for all our students, so we took half each. I was quite long-winded on mine (you may have noticed this tendency in my emails!!!), and rob was really brief.........so I think the parents were given the reports to read and they decided they didn't like the ones Rob had written, so i had to do them all, on top of all the ones I had done myself. Not fun! Oh, and do you know, as regards marking: we're NOT ALLOWED to give marks under 50%!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Not allowed!! How ridiculous! It makes the whole exercise of testing them into a farce. I imagine there are a lot of things tied up in this, but the most significant aspects surely have to be: a) money - the parents are paying a LOT of money for this tuition, and b) saving face. Farsai's mum does not want to let on to Fifa's dad that her daughter might only have scored 37% - it has to look as if their little darlings are doing "well". So why are we bothering marking the tests at all? We may as well give evryone 100%. It was the same at Rob's posh school last year. The marks are meant to reflect the kids' performance, but we are told they are not allowed to. Grr!

Other than school......Rob was hacking away at the encrusted snow inside the freezer compartment in the fridge that we' ve had just over a year, and he busted it - all the refigeration gas spurted out and now we have sent it to be mended. We started Thai lessons properly yesterday! We are losing weight by going to the gym, tho we are eating loads! And it's our holidays soon - my friend Cath is coming over for a couple of weeks so we're planning a girls' holiday in some gorgeous places around Thailand. I can't wait.