As my year comes to a close - Alex's birthday

The 19th of July was Alex's birthday - luckily this corresponded with a Buddhist holiday, meaning no school!

On the 16th Alex and I traveled to Bangkok and hang out at MBK before meeting Grace and Tori and going to the hostel. The hostel we stayed in was brand new and not too far from MBK. I was drew the short straw and was in a separate dorm to the others. At the hostel check in we met with Katie and Mariah.

Then, something very strange happened. It turns out the hostel owner (who checked us in) used to work at the same school that Tori and Grace work at now! He knew some Project Trust volunteers who were there a few years ago. At first we didn't believe him, but he soon started describing the school and showing us pictures. It was undeniable! He had been at the same school!

Anyway that night I decided to stay in and make the most of the comfy bedding, wifi and air-con that I had in the dormitory.
The next day I visited Bam's university and got to see his friends. I don't know if they expected to see me or not but they seemed surprised when I walked in - and of course I had photos taken. The class was really cool. It was just a catch up class so the teacher was talking to students one by one. So, the rest were singing into the microphone, taking pictures, talking and dancing. It was awesome.

When Bam was done with class we went to go get lunch. He ordered a dish called Kao Soi for me and it was freakin amazing! It's a dish that is from northern Thailand and is basically just noodled and meat but with a kind of creamy sauce. It was so delicious! Afterwards, we went downstairs and watched a singing competition, some of the kids singing were only about 5 years old and singing English songs such as 'Can you feel the love tonight?' in amazing voices!

After Bam collected his bag from his house we parted ways - he went to Nakhon Sawan whilst I went back to the hostel.

After waiting at home for a couple of hours I met everyone else and we went out and ate dinner at a pretty nice restaurant. We all decided to order in Thai and practice our Thai skills. The waiter was pretty impressed and asked us all to come back tomorrow :)


Afterwards we went back to the hostel and got ready to go out. Of course, we went to Kao Sahn Road again. We ended up in a bar where we played connect 4 and stoked the little dogs that were running around :) So cute!


On the 18th we visited MBK for lunch and then walked to Siam Paragon to go to the cinema to watch The BFG. It was okay, but I have to admit - I did fall asleep!

After this, we picked up our bags from MBK and got the BTS to Victory Monument before walking along to the van station. I think the ticket sellers were pretty surprised when 6 farang girls turned up wanting to go to Nakhon Sawan.
We had to wait over an hour for the bus and the 6pm one was full up. Thankfully, we were given a place to sit and wait.

We arrived in NS around 11pm I think. We walked to Sophie and Ronah's house. Ronah was already in bed but Sophie was still awake.
Whilst the other were getting ready for bed, Sophie and I cycled to 7/11 to get some food.

The next day I felt really ill for some reason. This meant I didn't get to go to slip n slide with everyone else. Needless to say, I was pretty upset. Slip n slide looked liked a water obstacle course - right up my street. Also, it was Alex's birthday, I wanted to celebrate with her!

Anyway, the others left and it was only Katie (who had just got a tattoo) and I left in the flat. Here we stayed until about 4pm when the others returned. Thankfully, by this time I was feeling a little better and I was able to come out for a meal with everyone.
We went to a restaurant called Burger Lab where they made amazing burgers! After this, we went to a cute cafe. This was a bit of a let down. We arrived close to closing time so they didn't have everything we asked for. To be honest our experience there was quite stressful as we were rushed to finish quickly. It seemed to be that we were the only table to be rushed, none of the Thai people were.

Anways, we walked back home and talked before going to bed.

On the 20th we returned home to Uthai Thani, of course the bus didn't stop at school like we had asked. Instead we drove past our school and got off at the bus station, where we had to pay for a tuk tukk to drive us back to school.
When we arrived at school we barely recognised it, everything looked so beautiful for the princess' visit tomorrow!

As my year comes to a close - AFS interviews

On the 27th June Alex and I drove with PeJib to another secondary school along with 3 of our pupils. The students were partaking in AFS interviews, and Alex and I were judges.

AFS is a voluntary organisation that send pupils to different countries around the world to study for one year. Our 3 pupils were all hoping to pass the interviews and get placed somewhere in America.

We had spent a couple of days preparing them for the interviews - giving tips on how to answer questions.
In my opinion, Alex and I were pretty well prepared for this job. A lot of the questions that were asked as part of the interview were similar to the ones we were asked by Project Trust on selection and training. Questions such as ' How will you cope with homesickness?' and 'What will you do if you can't get on with your host family?'.

In the actual interviews our students were some of the best (we were told by the other judges > <). Their English was amazing and they answered the questions well. When faced with questions about homesickness many other students answered that they would call or facetime their families whenever they felt homesick - exactly what you're not meant to do!

There were also two ex-students helping out at the interviews - both of whom had been away with AFS. One to America and one to China. The one who had been to America spoke amazing English (all be it with an American accent).

At the end of the day, everyone got certificates. Including us!

Our students had to wait a couple of weeks to find out about their placements. All three passed the interviews. The two girls got a place in Italy whilst the boy got placed in America!

It's up to them whether they accept the placements or not, as they can be quite expensive. I'll keep my fingers crossed for them!

As my year comes to a close - The English language competition

So on the 7th of July Alex and I traveled up with PeJib to Nakhon Sawan for a meeting. The 8th was the day of an English language competition and a few of our students were competing.

I was a judge for M4-M6 storytelling along with a Thai teacher called Tom and another teacher called Dr. Ody. We had to decide how we were going to mark the storytelling and what mark boundaries there were.
Of course, no meeting is complete without pictures and lunch.

The 8th was the day of the competition. Tom, Dr. Ody and I sat in a room downstairs and after a few words to all the students competing we began the competition. 

One of the pupils was from UTW. I had been helping his pronunciation for ages and basically knew his story off by heart. He had particular trouble saying the word 'trembling' and always pronounced it as 'trambling'. Everyday I helped him we seemed to go over this particular world a million times. 

Anyway, on the day of the competition he got the word perfect! I was so happy. 

I wasn't allowed to mark my own students but I would've given him 100/100.

Other students were amazing and you wouldn't believe that English was their second language - others not so great and gave up before even finishing their story.

At the end of the day we tallied up all the scores and my pupil came in third place! I was so proud of him! 

Of course, I couldn't tell him until the results were officially announced - which was torture for both me and him!

Pupils that took part in other areas of the competition also did amazing. I think we had three pupils come in first and one come in second. Great news!!

Some of the UTW pupils

As my year comes to a close - Wai Khruu Day

So I'm writing this post on Monday the 25th of July.

This week at school is test week - meaning no lessons. Also meaning lots of time to update my blog!


Okay, so first up: Wai Khruu day!
Wai Khruu day is a day in Thai schools and universities where the students pay respect to the teachers. Our Wai Khruu day took place on June 25th.
The previous day there had been a lot of preparation for the day with afternoon lessons cancelled so that students could create their paan wai khruus. They're basically a beautiful structure of flowers and other decorations (I can't explain very well but you'll see pictures). Each class in the school made 2 paan wai khruus - one by the boys and one by the girls.



On the 25th there was a big ceremony in the morning. All the teachers (including us) sat in chairs by the stage. 2 representatives from each class came up to the teachers on their knees with their       and passed their paan wai khruus to us. Some of them were absolutely amazing!

The teachers and the student council

After the morning ceremony there were lessons for M1-M3 whilst M4-M6 seemed to just do loads of fun activities around school - usually involving blindfolds and water. Many teachers also got visits from their students who would sit on the ground and wai them. Even ex-students showed up to pay their respects.

As my year comes to a close - The princess of Thailand

Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn

On the 21st July the Princess came to visit our school in Uthai Thani.

The Princess owns a house in Uthai Thani and the people of Uthai love her a great deal. A lot of the town is painted purple in her honour. 

A couple of facts about her:

• She is second in line to the throne, after her older brother
• She is incredibly intelligent and has done a great deal of studying:
• Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok – Bachelor of Arts, History – 1976
• Silpakorn University, Bangkok – Master of Arts, Oriental Epigraphy – 1979
• Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok – Master of Arts, Oriental Languages – 1980
• Srinakharinwirot University, Bangkok – Doctor of Philosophy in Educational Development – 1986

She came to our school to learn about STEM learning which is a scheme the school has in places to do with science and maths. Students from others schools also presented there ideas. 

Preparation had been going on for weeks prior to her visit. There was even an afternoon off timetbale so that the entire school could be cleaned by the pupils.

Roads were re-tarmacked, statues re-painted, tree and plants were planted and a fountain was even built. It was not uncommon to see 13 year olds still working outside at 11pm at night.

   

The English Camp

On the 1st of July Alex, Hayden and I traveled up to Nakhon Sawan in order to get the train to Tori and Grace's school in Thae Rua.

Our day was going fine until we realised that the last train was at about 4 and our bus wouldn't get there in time. So, we had to quickly arrange out tuk tukk driver to drive us up in his car. Thankfully, we got there with plenty time to spare. The train was delayed, as usual. We met with Rhys, Dan and Sophie at the train station.

When we arrived in Thae Rua we put our bags in one of the teacher's cars and we walked through the market. Sadly, it started raining and the market started to pack up. So, we walked home. Halfway there, we got picked up in some teacher's cars.

At school we were shown to the ASEAN room where there were two pupils waiting for us amongst a pile of balloons.
Our first task of the camp was to blow up loads of balloons, each with a letter inside ready for a spelling game the next day. Thankfully, with all of us helping this didn't take very long.

The next day the camp started at 8AM. We all wore our yellow polo shirts that had been given to us as well as our nametags.
We sat with the students in the hall and eventually we introduced ourselves. Then we played the first game. We had each given Tori and Grace a fact about ourselves, we then all had to spread out and stand in a different place around the room. Tori and Grace would read the facts out one by one and the kids had to run to who they thought the fact belonged to. It was pretty fun!

Afterwards, us volunteers split off into different groups. I went with Hayden and Dan to run the treasure hunt.
In the treasure hunt activity the kids were split into four teams. Each team was given a riddle to solve about where the next clue was. They ran there, and read another riddle, and then another one. After the third riddle they had to figure out where the treasure (a tub of sweets) were.
This was so much fun to run, although a little tricky at first because we didn't know where the sweets were hidden either!
Also, a couple of times, the wrong team got to another team's sweets meaning the other team was left with no idea where their sweets were!

We usually had a few minutes to spare at the end of each rotation of kids, so we played lots of games of Duck, Duck, Goose!

After all groups had finished everyone re-convened back in the hall where we sang some songs. Obviously, the Cha Cha Slide came up as well as another song about bananas which I had been given the pleasure of singing into the microphone.
We then tried to do the challenge of sitting on each others laps in a circle. We tried to demonstrate this on stage with great difficulty and before we knew it all the kids were in one big circle trying to do it.
It was not completed, but we tried!!

At the end of the camp we had to choose out camp king and queen and then we got to do the fun job of throwing out sweets to the crowd!
Eventually, the camp finished and we all had to say goodbye to the kids who all waied us.

Of course we took lots of photos with them! We were also all given wonderful gifts by the staff at the school which was a fantastic surprise!






When everyone was leaving, a load of the kids stayed longer and took so many photos with us! They must've stayed for about 30 minutes after the camp finished!






That evening, we all went out for a meal with a couple of the teachers from the school! It was such an an amazing meal - with an omelette to die for (soooo buttery). Afterwards, I tasted the holy grail of ice cream - Thai tea flavour with little balls of jelly inside! It was amaaaaazing!!!!

Back, at the flat the others stuck on 'The Hunger Games' whilst I called my family who were all on holiday together in a 'cottage' in England. It was so great to talk to everyone, some of whom I haven't talked to since coming over here!


Overall, the camp was so amazing and fantastically planned by Tori and Grace. Apparently, this camp happens every year because last year's volunteers did the same thing!

A new year

So I've been back at school for roughly three weeks now and yet again I've fallen in love with my classes. I teach M1/1 -1/10 and M3/1 twice a week.

Last year the lowest ability class that I taught was 1/6 and so me teaching 1/7-1/10 was a game of trial and error at first as I assessed their English level. Of course, the situation was similar with my higher ability classes as well. The classes that I had taught last year had already been learning English at school for a few months whereas the kids I teach now have just come up from primary school.

So, my first few lessons with the M1's have been mainly about introducing themselves. I got the classes to design namecards for themselves and write about themselves inside. With the higher levels I got them to write whatever they wanted so I could see how much English they knew. With my other classes I gave guidelines on what they could write. My 1/10 class just wrote their name and nickname inside on the first lesson. In our second lesson I taught them numbers 1-10 and got them to write their phone number. As I learnt last year, each class has to be tailored depending on their strengths and weaknesses - even if they're only one class apart.

I've also started using different words for hello. With my classes we wrote down lots of different words instead of hello and had to shout them and come up with different actions for each word. It was so much fun and the kids found it hilarious!


With my 3/1's I've been focusing on pronunciation. I've played movie trailers in class and they had to try and understand all the words ( we went through them afterwards). I also spent a lesson teaching them common mispronunciations such as the difference between sh and ch, th, and favourite. Thai's usually pronounce 'favourite' with 3 syllables instead of 2. I them taught them some tongue twisters which totally freaked them out and was a source of great bemusement when I got individuals to stand up and say them. 3/1 are such a great class and I always have a laugh with them, whether its because they end up teaching me Thai tongue twisters of because of their funny magic tricks!


This year I've also started running English club last lesson on a Tuesday which is really cute. So far Hayden, Alex and I have read out facts about ourselves and the kids had to run to whoever they thought the fact belonged to. In the next class we wrote a funny story. I started off with the line ' A cat did something naughty'. I then asked the class what the cat did and we wrote it down. I kept asking questions and we eventually came up with a story that involved the cat stealing a fish from the mouth of a crocodile because the fish was beautiful. Eventually the cat and the fish ran away to a farm together and got married :)
In the following class the kids presented their own stories and we had to come up with actions for each sentence and



act out the entire story. There were some hilarious moments!

Alex and I also participated in an English club run at our school by an outise company for the new 1/3's and 4/3's. This was so much fun. The kids had to design monsters, talk about themselves, win stickers and play games!

'Hand to waist, hand to neck'

'Man and princess

So, yeah, this year is going fantastically well so far. Of course, I only have a couple of months left now so I'm tying to make as much of it as I can whilst I still have the chance.

Thailand and 'farang'

This entry will be out how Thai people seem to react to 'farang' - the Thai word for white foreigners.

Although there are quite a few farang in Uthai Thani (we've had 3 teachers that have arrived whilst we've been here and then left) we still seem to be objects of fascination.
At the river market, which is very small, the people recognise us as the teachers who work at UTW. However, this doesn't stop them staring at us and talking about us as we walk past. Not a day goes by without us hearing the word 'farang' being uttered between Thai people as we walk past.
Don't get it wrong. 'Farang' is not used as an insult, its just a way to describe us.

At the bus station market, which is a lot bigger, we're not as widely recognised. As we walk around this one we can just feel people staring at us in bewilderment. Although, there are a few stall holders who recognise us.

Just yesterday I walked into a cafe called Star Coffee for lunch and as I walked in everyone started. I just smiled at the people I made eye contact with on the way to my seat. As I sat down I heard the kid at the table next to me utter the word 'farang' to her parents. Halfway through my meal a couple sat down at the table behind me and - you guessed it - 'farang'.

Hearing this word makes me smile, mainly out of embarrassment for being noticed. However, sometimes its not great because I hear people saying the word but then, most of the time, I can't understand what they say after. It's like knowing that people are talking behind your back but you have no idea what they're saying.

Another word that we often hear is 'nalaak' - cute. We hear it everywhere. The teachers at school say it. The students say it. People we cycle past on our way into town say it. The old ladies in the market say it and of course the people we walk by in the market say it.
If you ever want an ego boost come to Thailand. You get so many compliments and have photos taken of you. On more that one occasion in Uthai Thani I've been asked to have a photo taken with someone. This even happened in Nakhon Sawan (where you'd think they'd be more used to foreigners, but it seems not). A mother and daughter were on the escalator behind Alex and I, when we go off they asked for a photo with me!

When other foreigners come to Thailand they probably won't receive this kind of treatment unless they go to non-touristy areas.
In Bangkok and Pai foreigners are 100000% normal as. Many live and work in Bangkok, whilst Pai is a popular tourist destination for foreigners. In Chiang Mai foreigners are a bit more abnormal, which we saw from the way people sometimes stared at us on our way to the language centre - but nothing compared to what we get in Uthai.

Foreigners may get a very bad impression of Thailand if they just go to these very touristy areas - especially Bangkok. It's fairly common to run into a taxi or tuk tukk driver who will try to exploit foreigners. I'm not saying all are like this, some are very lovely, but there are a few bad eggs.
In Chiang Mai our foreigness was definitely exploited. We realised this after just a few days (with the help from our teacher who told us how much we should be paying to get around Chiang Mai) and with the help of our Thai we were then able to get prices lowered to what they should be.

Thai people are, on the whole, very lovely. There's just a few who you have to watch out - but these people mainly exist in touristy areas. If you're a tourist in non-touristy areas the people will love you for bringing tourist trade to their are and just for being foreign. If you're a teacher in a non-touristy area people will love you for coming all the way to Thailand to help improve their English.
Thai people are great.

U.T.W Open House 2016 and our performance!

Welcome boys and girls to the U.T.W Open House 2016! Come view our foreign languages department and pay particular attention to our very own farang gang corner!

Yes, the 11th of February was the U.T.W Open House. This is the day when primary school students come and look round our school before deciding whether they want to go here or not. All the departments put on a display. In the foreign languages department we had our stall, the Japanese stall, the Chinese stall and two others - one belonging to 1/3.

Us with the Japanese peoples

Everyone put loads of effort into their stalls - including us. Although we didn't find out that were were meant to be decorating a stall until about 3pm on the 10th. When we discovered this there was a mad rush as we tried to come up with ideas and decorations.

This resulted in stealing tinsel from the Christmas tree and cutting up ribbons and hanging them up as streamers. We also found 5 empty water bottles, filled them with sand, spray painted them red and filled them with fake flowers. We even made the 'Farang Corner' sign that's show above!

On the morning of the Open House, Nick and I tried to figure out the logistics of our game which involved sticking names of body parts to actual body parts. We came to the conclusion that this was impossible. So we needed to come up with another idea fast.

Thankfully, I had played a game called 'Splat' with my M1's on Monday and so we decided that we should just play that! 

If you're unfarmilar with the game here's an explanation:

One person (the splatter) stand in the middle of the circle.

The have a 'gun'.

They point the 'gun' at someone and say 'Splat'.

The person ducks down.
The people either side of the person have to shoot each other by saying 'Splat'

Last person standing wins.

So instead of saying splat, we got the kids to say part's of the body. It worked really well, although it did take some help from the M5's helping us and the M1's taking the kids round to explain the game.

The M5's helping us

So, the day was a great success! With some kids even promising me to come to UTW!! Yay! 

R.I.P to the pair of scissors that I lost on this day.






The next day was the 12th of February - only 2 days away from valentine's day. All this week I'd seen kids walking round with roses and giant teddy bears. Cute.

It fell to us - the farang gang- to perform on stage on valentine's day. We'd spent the past two weeks preparing the two minute sketch script as well as props and costumes.

When we got to assembly on that day - dressed in our costumers we got told that they were pushed for time so we had better make it quick. Which was cool, it was very short. However, we were all worried that we'd get cancelled. Thankfully, the show went on!

The story was about a girl called Echo who never had any luck when it came to dating. She went on a date with Alex Day. It went very badly. That was until Cupid spotted them and sent an arrow flying. The two then fell in love.

Echo was Echo. Alex was Alex. Hayden was the narrator (btw, the script rhymed). Nick was cupid and I was a Cherub who dropped rose petals and helped the arrow on its way. It was really cute and the whole school cooed when 'Alex Day' went down on his knee to Echo.

School trip to Bangkok!

On the 6th we went on a school trip with 2/1 and 3/1 to Bangkok. This was great and all but it involved being at the bus stop at 6AM.

Our first stop was Chulalongkorn University. This was such a beautiful campus!!
We went to visit the bookstore here, the majority of the books were in Thai so Alex and I left pretty promptly, but not before I bought some whiteboard markers and some a needle and thread (our washing machine does a great job of putting holes in my clothes).
After the shop Nick,Alex and I were looking at the map and deciding where to go when some of Alex's favourite M2 students came up to us and invited us to a campus coffee shop. So we walked with them across campus to go and buy a drink before everyone crowded onto two university shuttle buses to take us to - a shopping centre!

Yes, the main part of this trip was a visit to the Siam Paragon which is a shopping centre. Wow.

We were invited to go around with the same M2's as before and so we went with them to go and get KFC for lunch (how Thai).

After lunch the kids decided that they wanted to visit the aquarium on the bottom floor. Alex and I weren't too keen. It was a lot of money and once you've seen one aquarium you've seen them all. This revelation led the kids to debate between themselves. It led to two coming with me and Alex and the rest going into the aquarium. This made us feel really guilty as I'm pretty sure they kids who were with us wanted to go to the aquarium as well. So we told them that we would be absolutely fine going round the shopping centre by ourselves. After about 5 minutes of convincing we won them round and they scuttled off to the aquarium.

We looked around the centre for a bit before deciding that we couldn't really afford anything. We ended up going to the cinema just to pass the time.

The cinema was huge and buying tickets was very confusing but eventually we ended up with two tickets to see Pride, Prejudice and Zombies - which was pretty good!


The bus journey back was a lot of fun. One of the kids gave the bus driver his mix tape which was just one big party in itself! The driver then turned on the party lights. These were flashing red, blue and green lights all up and down the bus so that it looked like a proper party!

I, as weak as I am when faced with good music, started dancing in my seat. PePhom spotted me and tried to make me dance with all the kids (who were all dancing in the aisle) but I couldn't bring myself to do it. The kids weren't even my students. They were Alex's.



So yeah. Thailand. You get 10/10 on the school trip front.

English camp

January 30th

Today there was an English camp at school run by Choose English. Choose English is a foreign teacher agency - its who all the other foreign teachers in school are with. 

I can't remember all the classes that were there but there was definitely 1/3, 4/3 and 5/3. These are language classes so they were pretty good at English.

As Alex and I aren't with Choose English we just sat at the back and watched - it was pretty funny. Of course the Cha Cha Slide happened, but this wasn't any old Cha Cha slide. This was the remixed version. It was pretty hard to follow - even the farang teachers got completely lost.

One joker in 5/3 was at the back sorta just doing his own thing, i.e some pretty sick dance moves. He made my day.

The rest of the camp consisted of songs on the floor, making a story involving things on the board and pretending to be tourist information and helping some tourists in Uthai Thani (which was actually really interesting). 

For the story thing and the tourist information thing we had to score each group and give them points. I think there were winners at the end but i'm not sure. For some reason they presented awards in Thai. There sure was a lot of Thai for an English camp.

At the end of the camp the kids all wrote what they thought about the camp on love hearts and gave them to a farang teacher of their choosing. Alex and I got given hearts as well so we joined in and I gave mine to Nick.

Unfortunately, this love heart ended up on their Facebook page.

They're having fun, I promise

M3 scout camp

Thursday the 21st of January was the day of the M3 scout camp.

In Thailand every kid is enrolled in the scouts up until the end of M3. It seems to be that scouting and schooling are very much intertwined. The teachers at school all seemed to be ex-scouts themselves and were running the camp without any outside help.

As it was a Thursday all teachers had to come into school anyway, but most helped/ ran the scout camp. 

After we had run out of work to do, the other farang teachers and I decided to go and check out what was happening. All day we had been hearing loud music but it seemed to have subsided for now.

In the hall (the big purple roof thing) all the kids were in different groups and were rotating around different activities. There seemed to be 3 knot tying stations, a station where they recited something, a couple of First Aid stations and some other ones that I couldn't figure out.

Alex, PeTong and I

After the stations packed up the kids sat in lines in the hall and sang songs. They also did some sort of interactive song - they stayed sat on the floor but then the woman singing would say something and they would also sway either forwards, backwards, left or right. 

By this time it was about 5pm so Alex and I decided to leave them to it as we set off to market to buy dinner. 

That evening we decided to go and see the evening activities. This was a lot more like the scouting I was used to. I even joined in some of the activities myself. Although, people's impression of farang girls seems to be that we're all very delicate. 

One of the activities was walking a long a piece of rope tied between two trees. I did this in about 2 seconds flat, but one of the guys insisted on walking besides me. At another base the kids had to climb up and over a metal ladder which was being swung my some older kids. I did this one as well. I assure you there was minimal swinging involved. The third base was a ladder hanging from a tree. The kids held the ladder and yelled at me to be careful whilst I climbed. The fourth and final base that I tried was climbing a tree - my specialty. Before I started I told everyone that I would be fine - I used to be a scout and I've climbed many trees in my life. Still they were worried.

At least they care.

One of the bases that I didn't participate in was a base where kids had to climb through a tunnel whilst being sprayed with paint and being pelted with powder. It looked like a lot of fun! 

At this base we got talking to an M6 student called Mox. His English was really good but he wanted to improve it further. We talked about travelling, shopping and university. He told us that he had a university interview next week and that he was really nervous about it! We told him he'd be fine and wished him good luck!

Friday was the second and final day of the scout camp. They did a lot of singing and dancing today. As well as 5am exercises over the loud speaker that we got woken up by.

In the evening was a sort of evening ceremony that seemed like a lot of fun. There was a fake campfire, kids is a semi-circle and a band. 

This is my artistic interpretation:

From then on, this night will go down as one of the most confusing nights of my life. 

Basically, the band would play a song. A teacher would sing. Random kids would be overcome by the power of music and decided that they can't resist the urge to dance and so would just stand up and dance madly for a couple of minutes before sitting back down. 

Every once in a while all the kids would stand up and dance and go mental. 

Towards the end each group of kids would come into the middle of the circle and perform some sort of sketch. The sketches were apparently very funny. Not that we could understand them. Just based on what we could see there were some very weird ideas. 

When we got talking to the Chinese teacher she said the reason that they did stuff like this was so that when the kids are older they're not as tempted to have fun by drugs or alcohol - they can have fun without them. Which is a cute idea, not sure how practical it is though. 

And so concluded our very first Thai scout camp. Drastically different from the ones at home but fun nevertheless.

Sorry for the lack of pics but I still feel weird taking photos of children.