Adult Education Class in the Gulf of Thailand

This is our second day in Hua Hin, a city located on the western seaboard of the Gulf of Thailand. Our hosts at Chulalongkorn University, the department chair and 6 faculty members of the Department of Lifelong Education, have brought Sharan Merriam here and I was invited to come along, to spend the weekend with adult education doctoral students in a two part intensive workshop on qualitative research. Sharan has been with the department and it's doctoral and master's students since the middle of January. This weekend and the next few days are the wrap up of an intense effort to help students with their research skills when conducting qualitative research. Those in the academic world know the difference between qualitative and quantitative research. The students here now have a great background on interviewing skills, writing proposals for research, refining their problem statement, conducting their interview and following specific guidelines for submitting research for dissertations and for publications. One of our colleagues from St. Louis, has been here to make sure the students all understand "andragogy" and adult learning principles.  I was able to add information about using varieties of teaching and training techniques and to talk about program planning. The photos of my session are already on the department's Facebook.

As one would expect, Sharan does a fabulous job with the students and the faculty, and the faculty are able to work with the students. The students are very much like US students in their career paths and experience. We have had a chance to have many personal discussions and sharing photos of family and pets. I was shocked to see a huge Huskie dog photo - how does he keep cool here? The professional career paths I have heard about are community activists, health careers, agricultural researcher, political handler (he is up to date on the US political race for President - I am sorry to say)! Many of the younger women and men are single and intend to stay that way. No marriage or children planned for the future!



While Sharan and the group worked all day yesterday I had a chance to stroll around a bit to see how beautiful this bay is. We are staying at a Naval facility and you can see a Naval destroyer off the coast. It seems the President of Thailand has a home nearby so there is always a ship or ships of the military posted nearby, so we are absolutely very safe here. The water is beautiful and clear and I watched families stroll down the beach and children play in the sand. When I had a Facetime yesterday with my children, I could hear Abbey scream to the rest of the grandkids that Grandma is at the beach! Abbey loves the beach and was ready to hop a plane and come on over. She is a lively 2nd grader and will probably end up living on the water someplace in her future.

Once we ate our huge meal for dinner with maybe 6 different kinds of fish and prawns as big as your hand, we had a chance to visit the artist fair down the street. It was similar to artist fairs I have gone to but with so many more international people. There were probably more internationals at the fair than locals and a lot of senior couples. This is a beautiful place to vacation but as we are told, seniors from other countries are moving here in big numbers when they retire. The costs are so much less than home countries and the amenities make up for being away from home. The King has sent many young people to the US medical schools to come back and set up an excellent health care system here. The technology needed by most people in the world is available here and you can see the effect by so many people walking around reading their phones rather than seeing what is in front of them. I was really surprised, but shouldn't have been to see my program planning class at the university already on the department's Facebook. Such is life here! Food is very inexpensive and plentiful. Eating is a national pastime and all of the fresh vegetables and fruit and fish make one envious for the great food consumed here and the not as fresh Thai food in the US.

I was showing one of the young women photos of my family at breakfast today and she asked about the Super Bowl and who played at the halftime - was it Katie Perry? I thought it was Beyoncé and Cold Play, but I could be wrong. She loves Cold Play! My world suddenly got smaller!

Happy Valentines Day and have a great President's Day in the US! Sandy