Backpain, "TH" Tongue Twisters, and Coconut Ice Cream

And with tomorrow comes a much needed day of rest. My body is in exceeding amounts of pain, specifically my back and my neck. This, as far as I can tell, is the result of sleeping in a new place, on a bed that might be slightly less comfortable than the bench I slept on in Bangkok airport... Honestly, I think the bench was softer. And also from carrying my backpack around constantly with water and, often, my laptop in it. So, yeah, enough complaining for now, would appreciate some prayer, though. (Also, please pray for Laurin (from the Evangel team) who is not feeling well as was unable to teach her class today or come to the end of week party, and please keep my parents in prayer. Lots of craziness going on there in good 'ol SoCal. Thanks)

So, today I learned, for the first time, that there are, in fact, two different "TH" sounds in English. As a native speaker I was completely unaware of this until I began preparing my lesson (last night) for today and over half of the lesson plan was on the "Unvoiced TH" sound and the "Voiced TH" sound. Even when I woke up this morning, it still didn't make an ounce of sense to me, but maybe it was God, but as soon as I stood up in front of my class and began teaching it I was able to make sense of it and finally figured it out. The "Unvoiced TH" sound is the "th" in birthday, thin, tooth, and thumb. This is all opposed to the "Voiced TH" in this, these, the, and worthy. Not that many of you reading this actually care about voiced ad unvoiced "th" sounds, but still. I was excited to learn something new today. (There were three "tongue twisters", in which every single word had a "TH" in it, only two of them were not at the beginning of the words, and the students had to identify the voiced and unvoiced "th" sounds.) It was seriously a lot more fun then any pronunciation lesson should ever be. ;)

After the classes we had a Friday night party (which we will have every Friday night of the course) for all of the students to come and enjoy themselves and get to know one another as well as to build relationships with the team and the Thai Christians involved in the Center. We had an ice cream party tonight and, since we have an Evangel team member from Alaska, we kinda made it all about Alaska and ice cream. Don't worry, it wasn't as cheesy as it sounds, these are university students after all. (Before classes started we made snowflakes out of paper, like I used to do when I was little. It was so much fun teaching my students who came early how to do it and getting them to help us put them up all around the room.) Everyone was broken into teams for the games we played at the beginning of the night. We played a game in which the students had to make as many English words out of the letters in "ice cream" as they could, then we had each team chose one person to be a "snowman" and everyone else on the team had to "decorate" their "snowman" with toilet paper. Then we had a game with True/False facts about Alaska, a race involving a bunch of winter clothes, and an igloo building contest with marshmallows. Then we just had time to hang out and chat. A few of us played Sequence, which my students love and two of them are very, very good. Teamed up I think I have only seen them lose once.

So, yeah. Fun times. Tomorrow will be a day to sleep in, if all goes according to plan. But, then again, when has it ever done that?



My student "A" as a snowperson. Her glasses were my favorite!