Thai Class

So many things to blog about!  But foremost on my brain right now is Thai class, since it's eating up most of my free time (M-F from 4-6pm!).  The good news is I really enjoy it so far (after 2 days at least) and I feel like I am learning a lot.  As I am sure you've noticed, I've been a bit frustrated with my Thai the past few months, so this is me doing something about it.  And though it's fun, it's also tiring- it's not yet 8pm and I'm ready to crawl into bed. Mostly, it's about priorities.  The dishes are piled high in my sink.  I just finished unpacking after arriving home 3 nights ago.  Cooking (and grocery shopping) have gone out the window.  I'm using the guest duvet since it had a cover on it when I got home- my helper can put the cover on mine tomorrow and then I can switch back.  I haven't even started blogging about my vacation.  But that's okay.  For the these 4 weeks, language learning is the priority.  And it's challenge enough on its own, without worrying about all those little things. 

Language learning is a humbling experience.  It's humbling to feel so dumb when you don't understand.  It's humbling to feel slow when others understand faster than you do (especially as this is something I never really experienced in school).  It's humbling when you try out a few words on your Thai friends and the corrections are numerous.  It's humbling when you know you've learned a word before, but you just can't remember it. Or you butcher the tone.

But language learning is also a fun way to combine two of my favorite loves: words and mathematics.  The words part is obvious. The math part comes in when I begin to see the patterns emerge in the new vocab and grammar, when word order become a puzzle I can rearrange and put together, when a rule or formula makes sense.

One thing I am learning in this class is how to concentrate like I've never had to concentrate before.  In school, I could day dream (or read a book or work on homework) easily and still understand what was going on.  But when I'm being taught Thai in Thai for 120 solid minutes, by the time I think oh, I'm getting a little hungry, I am lost and it takes a minute to catch back up again.  Or the minute my mind wanders to the only decoration in the small classroom- a map of Thailand- she's lost me again (this is why I believe less is more in classrooms).

I hope I emerge from these 4 weeks a more competent and confident Thai speaker.  I hope I emerge alive as well.  But getting 40 hours of Thai lessons in a 4 week period can't be anything but a good thing.  Right?