Bussarakam Hotel Khon Kaen

We had a special treat today. Teacher Sue (Sunantha's sister) has a daughter that teaches at the Fine Arts Department at Khon Kaen University. She set up a meeting between us and the college students (19 & 20 years old) who sing, dance and act. All Thai students are taught English from an early age, yet in Khon Kean, do not get the necessary exposure practice. So this meeting was beneficial to both of us as we were rewarded ...

... I went upstairs to my office and cleaned out my desk, then the van took me back to the dorm so I could get ready for dinner.

O and Nan came to the dorm around 7pm to meet Fei-Li and I. For this ride, they all wore helmets because the ride to the restaurant was a long one through downtown traffic and helmet laws are more enforced outside the campus walls. I hopped on the back of O's bike, Fei-Li hopped on the back of Nan's bike, and off we went. During the ride, I ...

... we ran into the W.H.O. Sex Ed training fellows from India. Dr. Ashok requested that I send him a photo of the dorm's tookay since he hasn't had any luck getting a picture of the elusive critter. I assured him that I would send him the photo, then Pak and I continued on to the ceremony. The ceremony was a very formal, elaborately orchestrated event, with O presiding over the event as M.C. She did a fantastic job, pronouncing each word perfectly throughout the ceremony ...

... a crisis, since the songthaew drives in a huge circle around the city. I would have eventually ended up back at the dorm....it's not as though I can get lost riding the songthaew).

When I arrived at Fairy Plaza, I hopped off and paid the songthaew driver (around 50 cents), then headed into the mall. Wow - the most modern mall I've see since coming to Thailand! My first stop was in a drug store to pick up a few necessities. A few observations:

1) You can buy colored ...

... mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. I'm an animal lover but performing mouth-to-mouth on a pigeon is just plain fowl. Sorry - couldn't resist the pun. Get it? Fowl? OK, maybe not all that funny. But I haven't heard one of Grey's jokes for 5 weeks so I've been jonesing for some childish humor).

When I stopped by the Faculty of Nursing minimart to get my morning Pepsi's, the jewelry vendor was waiting for me with an orchid bouquet and his name and phone number on a pink ...

... had decided that Pak and the participant she was paired with would be the designated role-players while everyone watched. A second professor (whose name I can't spell) was in the room and she suggested that practicing with a dyad might be interesting since it's so difficult. In a blink of an eye, Pak and her fellow professor had been assigned to play the role of a lesbian couple.Fortunately, the two of them are skilled educators and they took to their roles quite naturally. The ...

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What to say? What do you do? Does Emily Post offer a proper response in such circumstances? Does Hallmark make a card for these occasions? Do you say, "Sorry I accosted your manhood?" Or a more flip "Oops, terribly sorry, thought that was the pole." Or do you do like I do, and pretend you are totally unaware of what has transpired?

I effuse apologies and pardon mes but the ...

... Y axis labeled Y1, Y2, Y3, Y4, and so on. The student read aloud, "As you can see, there is significant correlation between X3 and Y1." When I asked her what variables were represented by X3 and Y1, she said she didn't know. When the question was translated for her in Thai, she conveyed in Thai that she had no idea. She said in English, "findings," and kept pointing to the screen. I smiled and tried not to have a heart attack on the spot. I gently tried to throw her a softball ...

... spoke minimal English; and (3) the two people attending the class were primarily interested in learning about writing for publication, not grant writing. Hmmm....this would be very interesting. I scrapped my prepared notes and ended up giving an intensive workshop on academic writing for people who speak English as a second language. I worked with the two students (a PhD student and a professor) to teach them how to structure a research paper in a way ...

... Thai university system - and the fact that universities like KKU are government entities, with faculty serving as government officials - U.S. faculty members seeking to collaborate on grant proposals can structure the collaboration in such a way that it is an accurate reflection of effort and budget allocation.

After my workshop ended, I went back to my office and edited more research papers. This process is very slow going, because some of the papers ...