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. 

Dave's visit

The 16th - 17th January was the weekend was when our Desk Officer from Project Trust came to visit us.

On Saturday we collected him from his hotel and took him to Walking Street which was, as always, a lot of fun.
We then met with PeAe and Ian to go and eat some dinner at a local restaurant. This was a great meal, even if the outdoor speakers kept drowning our speech.

On Sunday we woke up really early to take Dave to the morning market. We'd only been there once ourselves as it's like 6AM early. However, there were barely any stalls there! Apparently there was another morning market on elsewhere so everyone had gone there! Just our luck.

After managing to find some food to eat we walked along to a coffee shop were we all got a drink before carrying on to a boat ride which PeAe had managed to get cheap for us.

The boat ride was amazing, we were the only 3 on the boat and the people served us loads of fruit to eat! We also got to see loads of the floating houses that we've never been able to see before - it was so interesting.

After this we went to another cafe to get a drink. The cafe owners was really lovely and spoke great English. Turns out her mum works at our school! We then went to the Pad Thai shop for some lunch before Dave had to rush back to his hotel to get packed ready for his 12pm check out time. 

Alex and I then cycled home where we both had our individual talks with him. He also gave us our letters that we wrote to ourselves when we were on our training course all the way back in July.It was really weird reading a letter from myself and reflecting on what I'd done so far. 

Finally, as a parting gift Dave gave each of us a bar of Cadbury's chocolate. OMG. It was like heaven in a wrapper. They do have Cadbury's over here but its really expensive and tastes weird. So I've only ever bought it once.

Oh yeah, whilst I remember. I once stayed out late chatting to a friend on the phone. 

This happened:

Ow.

New Years!

The 30th of December was the last day of school before Christmas break - unfortunately I was sick so I had to spend the day at home. This made me very upset as today was the day of the UTW Music Battle 2015! This meant that all of the school bands (there were a lot) would be competing. The music sounded great - I could hear it from the house!

Alex left to go to Bangkok today, from there she would travel with the other volunteers to Ko Chang where everyone is spending New Year. I was meant to be going with them but I couldn't. Ahhhhhh.

By the 31st I was feeling a bit better and going out of my mind with boredom. There's not a lot to do at our house. Thankfully, PeAe invited me to go with her family to Nune's restaurant. When Nune heard I was coming she invited me to spend the night.

Dinner was great - although I couldn't eat too much of it. PeAe's family were all so lovely! After dinner Ong, Nune, Dream (another student) and I went on a walk together, and of course took lots of photos!

Dream and I

Ong's mum then drove Ong and I to the clock tower where we met with some of his other friends and sat outide one of their shops waiting for midnight.

At about 11:45 a few uni students including Pear (who, until last year, was part of the volunteer's host family) walked over and talked to us. We all walked to the clock tower and at midnight everyone cheered and hugged each other - it was pretty cute!

Eventually Nune, Dream, Seven, another girl and I sat in the back of Pa's truck and got driven back to the restaurant!

On New Year's Day I went to PeAe's house.

First, Ong and his mum took me to buy a present as everyone had to bring a present. I bought a blanket - an odd gift but it seems to be quite a common one in Thailand. PeAe and Ian's house was out in the country so I dropped my bags off at Ong's house before we all drove there. 

Straight away I was offered food - too which I obliged. Here, I tried oysters and crab for the first time!

At some point during the evening Ong, Ian, two women and I went on a walk.Photos happened.

Back at the house it was present time. My present went to a girl in university who had come on the walk with us. Meanwhile, I received an awesome table tennis clock from a little girl (which is now hung up at home.)

On the 3rd I went out with Nune and her family to buy some presents as I had been invited to their New Year party. After this we blew up balloons and tied them with an elastic band (which I wasn't very good at) whilst Noi finished painting a banners. This was all very fun especially with a 3 year old and a 1 year old involved.

At 10pm the party kicked off with lots of food and talking. I sat opposite a member of the band who spoke very good English and wanted to practice with me. We discussed the evolution of our music tastes - he had a lot more to talk about than I did. There was more present giving here, I gave my present to Nune (can't remember what it was but it involved a light up duck). I got given 3 massive cakes - which I later had to give away as there's only me to eat them all. 

I also somehow got persuaded to sing 'Blank Space' with Noi on the karaoke machine in front of everyone. 

This was one of the most harrowing experiences of my life. It was so awful!

Eventually I plucked up the courage to start dancing and it turned into a a super fun party! 

On the 5th I went to Bangkok and met up with Pear and her friends. I spent the rest of the week with them, hanging out in their uni flat which was a lot of fun! We even visited Chinatown, where I ate snails!

Cookie and I

Snails

So overall, I'd say a pretty good New Year!