Teaching classes of 40 kids aged 7-10 isn't easy in their language let alone when the only language you have to communicate with is one that they have an extremely light grasp on. Luckily I don't have any qualms over looking silly so I used the tactic of big actions and facial expressions to get their attention and to help them understand what I meant. Solo demonstrations of group games are always found hilarious as well. I'm sure the children think I'm a bit of a foreign clown especially because the Thai teachers are very serious with them but oh well it is the only way I can get my message across.
I am supposed to have a Thai teacher in each lesson with me to support me with a little translation here and there and to control the class when instructing them in English doesn't work. However apart from in my 6 Prathom 1 lessons every week, I never definitley have a Thai teacher with me. The Prathom 2 teacher often comes in at some point during the lesson but often makes an exit not long after. The Prathom 3 teacher doesn't always make it known to me that she's floating around past the classroom. Most of my Prathom 3 classes are completely alone from start to finish. It's normally fine but I've had a fight break out in a class and some of the children, mostly boys saying things to me in Thai which I can tell aren't very nice things from the sniggers I hear after they've been said. There's not a lot I can do about this apart from give them a little glare or ignore it which is very irritating!
However one of the good children at school, Lin, wrote out my name for me in Thai which I can now write myself!
On the Monday of returning back to Bansong, we were greeted by the news that our house was ready! Lan took us after school to get our stuff and move in to our new pad.
Myself and Joy know we are extremely lucky with how nice the house is. It's in such a good location with it being only a 4ish minute walk to school, we just have to cross over the canal and train track to get there.
Our house is lovely and spacious too, we have a big living space where we cook. The only thing is we don't really have a kitchen but Lan soon invested in a kettle, camping hob and rice cooker for us so we could cook ourselves. There is a weekday market about 5/10 minutes down the road that sell food but with not a lot to do in the evening we find cooking quite good for an activity to keep us entertained. There's also a 7 eleven, Family Mart and Tesco just past the market when we can buy essentials and food which is all very handy. The town itself is full of shops with pretty much anything you'd want to buy including shops selling buckets and baskets of gifts to take to the monks at the temple.
In our house there are 2 bedrooms, one through the door on the right and one through the door straight ahead in this photo. However, only the one straight ahead had aircon and a bed, they only gave us one bed! Which is fine that we have to share but I could sleep anywhere. I think Joy is having troubles as she wakes up at any little noise such as me moving about! It does mean though that the spare bedroom is quite handy as being used as the dressing room/clothes drying room for everything that we hand wash.
Our only problem with the house is that we don't have wifi. The solution is that Joy has a SIM card from AIS. She has to top up 100 baht a week (£2) and she gets unlimited internet. She then makes her phone a portable hotspot so my phone connects onto the same internet, using her 3G as wifi. This is great as a solution although it's not a great connection, but oh well, we have wifi at school that we can use so we will definitley live!
In our second week of teaching, there wasn't actually a whole lot of teaching that occurred. On Monday I taught a couple of lessons and then Lan remembered that we needed to write a speech in English about ASEAN. The children were to compete on Wednesday. Talk about cutting it fine! I taught a couple of lessons on Monday and then after lunch I was instructed to keep working on te speech and to skip the lesson. We stayed at school until about 6pm trying to get the speeches finished so it was a rather long day! On Tuesday we were told to stay in the English Room all day to help Jeff, Mean and Lin memorise and correctly pronounce their speeches. It was after lunch that Lan re-read the criteria and realised the speech about ASEAN was actually a debate. In Thai. Not English!!!!!! They were to practise in English anyway so they could perform their speeches anyway to show off and so they could perform them at the school's celebration later in the week.
On Wednesday it was competition day. Myself, Joy, Lan, Jeff, Mean and Lin met early at school and drove to the local school, about 15 minutes away that the completion would be held at. We were stared at a lot and a couple of teachers from other schools asked for photos with me and Joy.
The children did well with their speeches, despite them not entering the competition with them! Silly Lan. They also entered into the actual competition which was the debate about ASEAN in Thai. They struggled as they were unprepared and couldn't really explain what ASEAN was. They still did very well though considering!
After the competition, instead of dropping the children and us back at school, she took us shopping for the house!
We went shopping in the big Tesco's and bought food, water and cooking appliances. We also made a stop at the pharmacy to get me some antibiotics for my toe that had got cut and started to look a bit infected. The flip flop life is difficult when you're as clumsy as I am!
This is what my foot ended up looking like for the week. Cool.
We then went to a 'plastic shop' as Lan called it to get, shock, plastic. Bowls, a bin but also some normal bowls and cutlery along with mugs and a bathroom mat.
When we got back to the house, our little helpers gave a hand in taking the new purchases into the house as well as taking some selfies.
I was very proud of myself the next evening (Wednesday) that I managed to get the gas canister into the hob without any problems all by myself wahoo! Just as we were nearly finished cooking, Lan pulled up outside and told us that the principal and other teachers wanted us to go into school for a few drinks. I thought this was very strange that teachers were drinking at school, definitley wouldn't be allowed in England! We decided to quickly eat our dinner and then head up to school. Lan told us she wasn't going to be there so we were a bit apprehensive as we would be without our momma duck (Lan named herself this on a couple of occasions) and Thai translator!
After our first home cooked meal (Pad Thai a la Chloe and Joy) we walked down to school where some of the teachers were decorating the school for the next days opening celebration of the new library building. The male teachers were sitting around a table with at least one empty bottle of whiskey under the table already. After establishing that we like beer Chang, the drunkest looking teacher hopped on his moped and off to the shops. One of the teaching assistants attempted to translate for a while but then we were suprised by the arrival of Lan! Earlier that day I had told her about a drinking game we play at home. When you want someone to finish their drink you chant:
'We like to drink with (name) cause (name) is our mate and when we drink with (name) she downs her drink in 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.'
The rules are meant to be that if they haven't downed it by the end of the countdown, they are meant to tip the rest over their heads but no one normally does this.
The point of me saying all this is that Lan decided we would play this game. First with the principal who is very close to retirement, and then with the rest of the teachers. I was so entertained and they loved it. Many of them were requesting their number of seconds to down it, one of them downing a glass of whiskey and soda in 4. Trooper.
We had lots of fun and Lan introduced a game that we played originally during our welcome seafood dinner. We went around the table saying English words that start with the same letter. If you repeated one someone already used or couldn't think you had to drink. Myself and Joy got through about 3 large Changs each and some wine, the teachers told Lan they were impressed with how well we could drink. Little did they know I was trying really hard to suppress how tipsy I actually was!
Lan with the night's damage.
We then taught Miss Anne, our Thai Gok Wan the slogan of a famous makeup brand. 'Easy, breezy, beautiful *wink* Cover Girl.' He had loads of fun performing this! Here's the three of us being cover girls.
Soon after, the principal drove us home and wouldn't let us walk which was nice of him.
The next day we felt fresh. One of us may have seen the Chang from the night before again in the morning. That one of us may have been me.
Look how we don't even look hungover! (Errrrrm).
We dragged our hungover selves to school and sat through a lengthy celebration where we couldn't understand a word. We majorly didn't know what was going on when the monks came in and were singing/praying for an hour and a half while we sat there not knowing when it was going to end. It was an experience to say the least.
A group picture of us, teachers, the principal and other important people. I'm not really sure why but the colour to wear was orange for that celebration. Each day at school all of the teachers wear a specific colour. On Monday it is yellow because the King's colour is yellow and he was born on a Monday. On Tuesday it's pink, Wednesday blue and it often varies between green and orange on Thursdays and Fridays.
People had brought in dishes of food for the monks to eat after they had blessed the library. After they had eaten and left the table we spoke to one who had very good English! I wasn't really sure how to 'wai' at him so that was a bit of a disaster but I'm sure he understands. It was then for the teachers to sample some of the food.
This is the meal that we tried durian 'king of fruit' for the first time. A lot of Thai people talk about it a lot as if it's delicious. It's not. Aparantly it's the only fruit to be banned on airplanes due to it's strong smell. However fried durian is a very good time!
Myself and Joy walked home before the afternoon celebrations and I got a couple of snaps of the local area.
Back at school we were shuffled to the best seats at the front to watch the show that the children were putting on for the celebration. Lan told us it was all a way to get the parents in so they would donate money to fund the new library. Before the celebrations started myself and Joy were taken on stage and Lan asked us to talk a bit in Thai and English and then answer some questions about ourselves and experiences in Thailand which she translated to the audience.
One thing to point out here is that it's the year 2557 here. Yes I am a time traveller. It's because they go by the Buddist Callander but they also use and recognise the Western 2014.
The costumes and performances were all very good and the children were given roses by their parents and friends after. These roses were all for a donation. The roses were quickly taken off each child and put back in the bucket for more donations however which was quite sad when some of the little ones didn't get what was going on!
At around 5, Miss Cham collected us, took us to our house to grab our backpacks and drove us to Surat Thani to the pier at Ban Don. We bought our tickets for the night ferry to the island of Koh Tao where we would stay until Monday.
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