Bangkok, 13.01.2013
Folks, I arrived in the city of angels a little over a week ago and spent the first days at an acquaintance's place in soi 5, Petchburi road. Luckily we found myself a room at a really nice, simple, clean and (hopefully) safe place last weekend and I'll now stay here for the next four months and a bit:
https://maps.google.com/maps?q=avenue+mansion+bangkok&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-a&ie=UTF-8&ei=1YPyUKqnF4rMlAXxp4HoAw&ved=0CAsQ_AUoAA
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| view from my balcony |
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| my room |
The area is cool, just around BTS Phaya Thai and Ratchatewi - BTS is the Skytrain, a very convenient and fast transport system in Bangkok. It's basically 2-3 stops and a little walk to uni but I could also just walk from my place which would take me approx 30 minutes (still need getting used to the heat, though). We have loads of shops and food stalls here and the sois (small side roads) are basically crowded until the late hours. There's also a muslim community living here and I hear the muezzin chanting from the mosque every day ;).
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| Petchburi Road |
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| food at a restaurant in my soi |
My uni is just off the biggest shopping area with huge and quite famous malls such as MBK, Siam Paragon or Central World. A lot of touists mingle with locals, cheap to extremely expensive products, rip-offs and high fashion, sushi, burgers, Thai food...
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| food stall at Ratchatewi |
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Anyway, my start at Chula was pretty good, I got introduced to the head of TEFL department and my advisor who is researching on a similar topic. I'll do some lesson observation soonish and am in the middle of finalising my research plan. End of January I'll attend the Thai TESOL conference with Ted Rodgers giving a presentation on language teaching methodology which is awesome because I know him from the literature I read for my thesis :)! The conference will be in the northern Thai city of Khon Kaen, my advisor is going plus some people from one of her seminars I'm attending, too. We had a good discussion on English language teaching and the challenges of the ASEAN community just yesterday and I'm looking forward to the next meeting. I also took part in TEFL's New Year Party with a lot of fun activities, got to know a couple of people from the M.A. programme and won prizes in quizzes, yay ;)!
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| TEFL party |
This is the main news for now, I'll try to keep you updated.
Donations are still welcome, by the way - I'm still struggling ;).
Feel free to contact me!
Thanks and best!
Julia
