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I am Somkiat Kiatruangchai from Thailand. I was born in May 1950 in a small town called Taklee in the province of Nakornsawan ( City of Heaven ). I was educated in Thailand until I finished high school, then I went to the States for my college education. I am a graduate of Architecture from Iowa State University in Ames Iowa in 1973 and received a Master of Business Administration in Finance from University of Massachusette at Amherst in 1982. I am not trained to be an art teacher, but I was accidentally got a teaching job from Ruam Rudee International school nearly 30 yrs ago in 1974 as an art-teacher and loved what I have been doing and have stayed in the job ever since. I have experience teaching from grade 1 to 12 since I was the only art teacher in the school during that time. The school has grown tremendeously (with over 2000 students) and now we have a new, big, and very nice campus just out side of Bangkok. We also have close to 10 art teachers in this school. One of the art teacher here that is teaching with me in elementary school now used to be my student in high school not too long ago!!! I also supervise "Designer Club" which is a club mainly for students (grade 4 and grade5) who are interested in fabric painting. They learn all types of fabric painting. Toward the end of the year they will design their own clothes from the fabric that they painted and they will parade on the catwalk in the school auditorium.

I consider myself to be very lucky to teach at this school. I don't feel like I come to work when I come to school. I really enjoy my work that I feel like I come to play at school. My students are so nice. They have the perfect combination of both Eastern and Western world. They are very out going, but very very polite. They are so anxious to learn art that they make teaching art so easy and joyful.

Besides teaching, I also do watercolor painting - mostly floral, and landscape. I also am a professional clothes designer. I own two dress boutiques in Bangkok and got a lot of my design published in Thai fashion magazines. I was also lucky enough to be able to do two charity fashion shows - both are all hand painted collections - which were presided over by the princess of Thailand.