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