Class Session October 16, 2010

Hello students and friends! I'm finally updating the blog! lol my apologies. I've been quite busy lately. Hopefully, I can find a volunteer that can help me out in updating the blogs whenever I am not able to. If not, that's perfectly fine. I'll do my best!

Well, so far we've been doing great as a class. With the collaboration of Neak Kru Naroth and Lok Kru Kim, the Khmer session LIVES ONCE MORE! *applauds* I'm so excited each week to see the beautiful slides for the Khmer session and I thank Naroth and Kim for their hardwork and dedication to our cause. Keep up the good work guys!

Last night, we began with Khmer session because Naroth had to run somewhere. We practiced our conversational skills with a dialogue stimulating a business transaction at the market. BRILLIANT IDEA! It was so nice to hear everyone speak Khmer! For the non-native speakers like myself, I really want to give acknowledge Danni and Phil for their talent. They've come a long way and you guys sounded great last night! As far as Tev, I think he had technical difficulties and was not able to join us last night. I'm sure you would've done well too buddy! My favorite phrase of the night was, "Tlai nas!!" With that said Kim had to be at work and was not able to attend but Naroth did an excellent job leading the Khmer session. Thank you! Hmmm is there anything else missing? Not sure. If there is, please message me so I can add to this section :P

After Khmer session was completed, Lao session began. I had intended to do a review session so that we can kind of warm up to the Lao lessons again after I was out for a week. I didn't want to introduce new material and confuse everyone. However, seeing that most of the attendees were new to me, I scrapped the "review lesson" idea and moved on to new material. PLEASE PLEASE do go back to the older class slides and catch up so we can be on the same page ladies and gentlemen! We began the Lao session with instruction on two new consonants "sor" and "sor" and two new vowels "or*" and "or~". At the end of that section we read "to play the violin" in Lao ("sii sor"). For the vocabulary session we learned vocabulary terms in regards to "Nature." I met our new student, Manilay for the first time on skype last night and I am so thankful for her help in class. She is a native Lao speaker in Laos and was able to help me in saying the vocabulary terms for everyone to hear. It's nice to have some help with the class and I'm sure it benefits the class to hear two different voices (one being male and one being female) pronounce the terms in Lao. After our vocabulary lesson on "nature" we proceeded to "telling time." By this time, everyone in the class had disappeared :\ The only people left were Sonyta, Danni, Phil, Melinda who was away, Ousa joined us later, and Lucas was still in but not on mic. Thanks guys for hanging in there :D Those who joined us for the "telling time" section did phenomenal! Keep up the great work!

After Lao session we continued to chat until dawn! Well, I fell asleep a littler earlier than that :P I just want to thank you all for your continued support. Please if you have any suggestions or comments, please take the time to message us and let us know. That'd be greatly appreciated ^_^

Announcements:

Photo submissions must be sent via email <kllanguagegroup@gmail.com>. Contest will run throughout October. Top two picks will be chosen mid-November and after that, the class will chose the better of the two picks chosen by Naroth, Kim, and I.

Prizes will be donated by myself and Naroth (from Srok Khmer!). If any one of you would like to contribute to the "prize" donations will be gladly accepted.

Don't forget that somewhere in your picture you MUST include a sign in which you have handwritten a phrase in Khmer and a phrase in Lao USING Khmer and Laotian characters ^_^

As far as the judging part is concerned, "authentic" means keepin' it real! haha jk. It just means, if you're going to be Blanka (from Street Fighter) you better be one GREEN BEAST! lol If you don't dress up for halloween have no worries! Carve a pumpkin and get creative! The most important thing about this contest is HAVING FUN and writing in Khmer and Lao! ^_^

With that said if you have any further questions, please contact the group at @ kllanguagegroup@gmail.com 

Thanks!

-Alonzo S.

P.S. The latest material for the Khmer class has been posted on the right of this page. If I am missing anything, please let me know and I will post RIGHT AWAY! Thanks :D