expelliarmus!

There's a kid in my second period class named Petan who's fluent in English. A few weeks ago, he was reading the Harry Potter series before class. I watched his wee heart sink as he read the ending of book six.

Petan was absent for the speaking quiz last week over "there was/were" and "could/couldn't." I almost gave him a 10 anyway, because the quizzes are mindnumbingly easy for him.

I reconsidered, deciding to have some fun instead.

Today I called him to my desk to make up the quiz.

Number one: Name three magical creatures Hagrid takes care of.
He put his hand on his head and started pacing.
"Buckbeak... Wait, really?"
Yes! Three creatures. Go.
"Buckbeak... Fluffy... and... I can't remember."
That's OK. Question two: make a sentence using "there was" or "there were" and quaffles.
"There were waffles at breakfast this morning."
Quaffles?! At breakfast?
"OH! There were two quaffles in the Quidditch match."
That's better. Four dragons.
"There were four dragons at the Triwizard Cup last month."
OK. Now, could and couldn't. Could you be a seeker if you played Quidditch?
"Yes, I could."
Could you do magic when you were three years old?
"No, I couldn't."


I think he got a kick out of it. I sure did.

harry potter

Harry Potter = awesome.

Harry Potter in Thai when you paid for an English ticket = not so awesome.

We had been psyching ourselves up all day for Harry Potter. One of the Thai teachers named Ekapol was going with a group of eight of us, and he had called to reserve tickets.

We got to the box office, paid, and hung out in the mall until the movie started. At 7:00, we went inside to find our seats. The ridiculous Thai commercials started. I love them.

We stood up for the slide show of photos from the king's life and the stirring instrumental theme that goes along with it. Thais love their king, and this slide show makes farangs love and respect him, too.

The Harry Potter music started, and the title screen came up. Funnily enough, it was spelled in Thai. We didn't think anything of it.

When the first spoken lines came up, our hearts sank. It was all dubbed in Thai, no English, no subtitles. We looked at each other, got up, and walked out. Ekapol, poor Ekapol, was all stressed out because he felt like it was his fault.

But some other Thai people had also walked out. We looked at our tickets. We definitely bought the ones for the English showing. We stood back and let Ekapol and the other Thai people talk to movie theater staff.

It turned out to be a simple mistake; they just put the wrong soundtrack on. We went back inside and watched about 10 minutes of Thai Harry Potter before the situation was rectified.

Whew.