Holly's Thailand Adventure : End of week 6

This week, I started to teach sentence construction, word order and verbs. The language barrier has made the lessons this week really tough, as it is hard to explain English language rules without using Thai, and I have had many a blank face staring at me. Nevertheless, by the end of each lesson, I have had each student writing and reading out loud a sentence that they have put together and that is good enough progress for me.

Lunchtimes have been a lot of fun recently. I have been learning Korean with Korean friend at the school and have also been sitting with the students helping them with origami and their homework. In Thailand, students and teachers are very segregated, in our school at least. But I have really enjoyed getting to know the monkeys out of class, as they are a lot less shy out of the classroom environment.

The one thing that I have learnt about Thailand is that no one ever knows what is going on, and there is no use trying to find out. There seems to be a huge lack of order and organisation with everything, from school lessons to transport. Everybody moves at their own pace and there is no adherence to structure or time. At the start, this stressed me out - for example, how could no one know what time the bus leaves the village everyday? When we were told our bus would leave the station at 10.30am, we were told half an hour later that it would leave at 12.30pm. All communication is 'organised' by word of mouth, and when you don't speak Thai, you have a problem. However, after being here 6 weeks, you learn that you must never be in a rush. You learn to relax and to try and not let hiccups bother you, and I think that is the way forward.

At the weekend, I went to stay with another ETA in Sakon Nakhon which was great fun. We spent Saturday shopping, driving around the city, going for lunch and getting coffee - it was so good to have English company! On Sunday, we climbed up a mountain in Tambon Na Hua Bo to see Phra That Phu Phek - 500 of the steepest steps I had ever seen - it was so exhausting but the panoramic view at the top was incredible.