Starting School and a Dog Bite

On August 21, while I virtuously did my morning aerobic walk on a lovely leafy street at 5:30 am, a pack of dogs came at me, and one of them aggressively lunged at me and bit me on my left leg. It drew blood, which dripped down my calf as I walked to the nearest emergency room— luckily a scant two kilometers away. My attack was obviously a ho-hum medical event, as the bite was quickly cleaned and dressed, and the first of five staggered anti-rabies vaccines was injected in my arm. Easily treated, and the whole package of antibiotics, wound dressings and injections was paid for upfront, $196. But the trauma has been longer-lasting. It takes a bad bite months to heal instead of weeks. I wasn’t even able to walk without a painful limp until two weeks had passed. And now I’m fearful of vagrant dogs on the street—which is actually a necessary fear. Needless to say, I am avoiding that street and the early hour. If I have to be on back streets in the dark (which I never am) I shall have my trekking pole with me.

I decided to enter “Thai as a Second Language School” in August. In one month my two classmates and I whipped through the first level of “pre-advanced” Thai, Level 7, and are now in week two of the Level 8. In October, I will officially be “advanced!” Well, who knows what that really means. It is quite a shock to be in a school after eleven months without a classroom, classmates, textbooks and assigned homework. My independent learning has been very interesting, but spotty, as I dictated to the teacher what I wanted to talk about, and what vocabulary I needed. Although this was seemingly a good approach, it threw out all the vocabulary, grammar, expressions, sentence structure, and nuances presented in an organized fashion by the expert author(s) of the textbook. Oh—and also a teacher proficient in English to explain it all. If I ever start a new language again, the independent approach will definitely be the sidekick.

I have just finished my third Add1Challenge (see www.add1challenge.com if you’re curious). Every week I made a video about a topic in Thai, so I decided the best way to let all of you see part of my language-learning life is to send links to the videos that might be interesting. There are subtitles on all of them, by the way.

*Buddhism for Thai Children—how do they start learning? https://youtu.be/SS_jXc2wX2Y

*Thai Friends, Meet Oaxaca—a bit of Mexico here! https://youtu.be/-6KIvlTIMOg

*Thai Reading and Pronunciation—you’ll never believe this! https://youtu.be/SdKvSi8RB_M

*All about the dog bite. Trigger warning: there’s a picture of my leg: https://youtu.be/HFpO-rsdGi8

*Day 90 Video, comparing learning Thai independently and in school: https://youtu.be/HtLbJBZ8Ho8

In some of the videos I seem to be talking quickly and articulately. It’s because I memorized sentences corrected by my teacher. In the last two, I’m speaking more or less extemporaneously, so they represent my “true” voice.

Please enjoy the photos, and if you leave a comment, please sign your first name.Read more