The quest for a DSL line in our apartment nears its end, but is not over yet.  Monday morning a technician from TOT (Telephone of Thailand) came to the apartment complex and switched on our home phone line.  Then on Tuesday afternoon a maintenance man from the complex came to our unit and actually activated the telephone jack itself.  Then this afternoon I attached the DSL modem/router, used the enclosed CD-ROM to format the modem and get ready to actually use the DSL line.

Everything appears to be properly installed and ready to go.  The DSL and LAN lights are on full-strength.  The connection appears live.  And yet, when I open Internet Explorer, the request to go to a particular address times out.  I think the settings (“Obtain IP Address Automatically”) are not correct.  So I’ll ask Tawn to help me sort this out, which may involve a phone call to TOT – a daunting task in and of itself.

Halfway Quiz at ULS

Today was my tenth day of Thai language instruction at Union Language School, the halfway point in Module 1.  So today each of the thirteen students had an oral examination with the khruu, or teacher. 

I selected number ten in a random draw, which may have been somewhat beneficial as khruu Lakkanah realized that she was taking too long for each student and the exams became increasingly brief.  I was in the exam for about five minutes, maybe less.  As each question was asked, if I didn’t have the answer right now then she moved on to the next question.  Kind of like being on the speed round of the $64,000 Pyramid game show.

The general areas of knowledge that we were quizzed on:

• Being able to name yourself, ask names, and ask for clarification about names
• Being able to describe how you are doing and ask others the same
• Being able to ask what things are called, and to respond to the same questions
• Being able to identify common colors, classroom objects, eating objects (bowls, plates, utensils), fruits, vegetables, and meat products.
• Being able to request basic food and beverage items, and to say how many of something you want, using the right classifiers (“glass of water”, “cup of coffee”, “bottle of orange juice”.)

The biggest challenge for me was to remember the fruits and vegetables.  The first challenge is that the fruits and vegetables common here in Thailand are not regularly available in the United States.  Mangosteen, rambutan, and wax apples (those are just the English names – I have to remember “mangkut”, “nhoc”, and “chompuu”) are all terribly commonplace here but I rarely see them at the local Safeway in the US!

Tawn spent quite a bit of time reviewing the foods with me last night.  I drew pictures in a notebook and he quizzed me on them until I had most of them down.  Tomato (“makhuatheet”), papaya (“malahkha”) and fruits in general (“pohlaymaay”) were three of the stumbling blocks.

All in all, I think I did fine with the quiz.  The purpose of the quiz was really to make sure that students are getting the basic concepts, constructions, and pronunciations before we get too far through the class.  The last day we do have a final – oral and written – and passing is mandatory to proceed to the next module.