End of week 2 - Khon Kaen

This has been a crazy great week. It started off on the bank holiday Monday when I was asked to attend the towns parade, where each school has a float. By attend, they meant that I would dress up as a queen, ride around on a float in a parade procession and be entered into a 'Miss Candle' beauty pageant (there is a lot of miscommunication) ...casual Monday. Despite the 40c heat in 4 layers of material, it was a fun day. It actually realised that I had won 'Miss Candle' when my director was shouting "number one! number one!" at me and the school were very pleased! Not sure how I'm going to get that trophy home though...

Teaching wise, this week has been a huge improvement. I think that the children are starting to see my as a teacher figure rather than an exciting 'farang' visitor to their school! This week I have taught the weather. I have started introducing games into the lessons, playing them at the end to reinforce the vocabulary that I have taught, and it seems as if they really help with the spelling/speaking aspect of their English learning. Hangman seems to be the winner here. I've had classes of 40 children racing up to the board to fill in the missing letters and it is so satisfying to watch, knowing that you have educated them on something new and that they remember it (most importantly!) Stickers seem to be a great motivation to get them enthusiastic about games.

I spent the weekend in Khon Kaen with a couple of other ETA's which was great, mostly because we got to escape the ghost town of Na Kae for a couple of days. The bus ride was a bit of a mare; we were told it would be around 2 hours but it ended up taking 5 hours in total - classic laid back Thai attitude with no sense of time keeping whatsoever! The bus ride was spent fantasising about English food so naturally the first stop when we got to the city was at a McDonalds! (By the time I got to school on Monday morning - our McDonald's trip was the talk of the school). We spent Saturday evening at Ton Tann Night Market which was the cleanest, most pretty night market I'd ever been to. There was live music and a lot of Chang...

In a gorgeous (very hot) Thai dress

With my 'Miss Candle' trophy!

With some pupils who took part in the parade

With my lovely mentor

Casually on a float

Monsoon season doesn't mix well with parades

With the Director and teachers from my school

 

It had to be done

Tuk-tuk fun

Ton Tann market

Ton Tann market

Ton Tann market - so beautiful

Tourists at Ton Tann

Ton Tann - For couples to attach a lock to the heart

Chang tower

 

 



End of Week 1 - Nakhon Phanom

The end of my first week ended a hell of a lot better than it started! I got moved to new accommodation on the Friday evening which was amazing; it even has hot water and doesn't have any 8 legged friends living there, raise the roof!! Also, I'm living next to another ETA (Steven) which is great.

We spent the weekend relaxing in the area of Na Kae in Nakhon Phanom and visiting lots of temples as it was a long four day holiday (ta Buddha). We went to That Phanom which was lovely and we saw the Buddhist routine of praying and showing respect; they light incense and lay lotus flowers. After that we went to the Mekong river which marks the Thailand/Laos border, followed by a trip to watch a candle parade. I got to see a baby elephant too!

My new little house next to another ETA

 

Korean BBQ

A temple in Na Kae

Paddy fields

Paddy fields

That Phanom

Tourist at That Phanom

Mekong River - Thailand/Laos border

 

 

 

Parade at That Phanom

 

Buddhist rituals

 

A decorated dragon

The biggest candle ever

 

Cute fountains

 

Huge Thai butterflies

A Bug's Life

Arriving at Placement

Having waited 4 hours in a bus station (no idea why we had to get there so early) and travelling for 12 hours on a bus, we finally arrived in Na Kae in the province of Nakhon Phanom. The sub-director took me straight to my accommodation and I immediately had second thoughts about the trip. On the surface it looked okay but the whole place was crawling with thousands of red ants, mosquitos, tiny ants that eat your food, lizards, big spiders and beetles. You couldn't go to the sink without the fear that the spiders hanging above you were going to drop on your head! (If anyone knows me, spiders are like my arch rival, so we didn't get on well at all in the apartment). The sub-director gave me an hour to relax and then I was to head straight to school and meet everyone, introduce myself in an assembly of 1000 students and to start teaching a class of 50 16 year olds right away.

Overall, the whole day was very hot, extremely overwhelming and I hadn't slept properly for days. I got back to my apartment, after being taken around the town by my mentor and after being taken out for dinner by my Director and his friends, and having looked on facebook, I realised that I felt how everyone else did that evening too.

 

Living alone in a little house full of bugs, isolated in an overgrown forest area of the school grounds didn't really float my boat, to say the least. The next day I found out that 3 previous foreign teachers who worked at the same school were given residency in the 'government house' and all left after a couple of days due to it being dirty and uncomfortable - this made me feel less bad for asking to move!

 

 My roommate

 

 

 

 

A crazy few days in Bangkok

So I set off on my journey on Thursday 10.20am from Heathrow and arrived on Friday 8th at Suvarnabhumi Bangkok airport. Evelyn (a friend from university) and I then got a taxi to our hostel which was actually really lovely seeing as it was only £12 a night, bargain! The rest of the day was pretty much a write off; we had a quick look around the area and of course fitted in some green curry but we were far too jetlagged to function properly!

The hostel in Bangkok Silom District - 'Take A Nap'

 

Saturday 13th July

We visited Lumphini Park which was right down the road from our hostel; it is said to be the Central Park of Bangkok. It was surreal that this lush area was in the middle of crazy, polluted Bangkok and it almost made you forget where you were. The park was full of lakes, terrapins, fountains, cat fish and elephant shaped trees!

 

 

 

 

 

After Lumphini Park, we made our way over to the Grand Palace. The three words I would use to describe the experience would be: hot, unbearable and amazing. It was such a hot day, reaching 40c, and walking to the palace was stressful to say the least. The amount of people who were trying to con us on the way saying 'palace is closed', 'come with me', 'feed the pigeons' (don't ask) was ridiculous. But we finally got inside and it was better than I remembered it from a few years ago.

 

 

In the evening we decided to go for a big night out on Khao San Road. It was brilliantly crazy. I can't count the number of  times that someone tried to sell me a fried scorpion on a stick; i'm all up for immersing myself in Thai culture, but the Thai's don't even eat those, only the drunk tourists! We had an awesome time drinking vodka out of buckets and Chang.

 

 

Sunday 14th July

 



Hungover with major sunstroke, we moved to the Ambassador Hotel for the orientation which was fun as all the ETA's were staying there. We just chilled out, had naps and went to the rooftop pool - its a hard life in Thailand...

 

Monday 15th/ Tuesday16th July

This was the start of orientation. We had a big conference where we got to meet up with all of our mentors from our schools around Thailand, watch some Thai dance and have countless free buffets. We started our teacher training which was a serious crash course (learn how to be a teacher in a day and a half) but it wasn't too bad and we got to meet people who would be living in our area.

 

Tuesday was manic. We had another few sessions with our teacher trainer and then we were shipped off to our province at 2pm. I had a lovely 4 hour wait at Bangkok bus station, waiting for my 12 hour night bus to Nakhon Phanom. Actually leaving my friends to travel with a stranger to north east Thailand was scary and very overwhelming but the journey was fine and the rep from my school bought me food approximately every half an hour I was with him. I ended up with 6 drinks, a fish curry, two bags of pineapple, a bag of melon, two boxes of Thai cakes and some sticky rice... I wasn't even hungry.

 

There were many stressful times in Bangkok, to name a few...

1. Being taken out of Bangkok by a taxi driver when we asked to go to Khao San Road
2. Being on a road with no people only wild dogs looking at you like you are a steak
3. Being harassed to go to a ping pong show (ew)
4. Our hotel room door being wide open when we came back to our room in the evening

...but it was definitely an incredible experience, and I got to meet so many great people.