Naomi's Gap Year

Goodbye Na Kae - Hello Scotland!!

2011-08-22T09:45:00.000-07:00

I am currently sitting in my bedroom in Scotland, and honestly cannot believe that a year has passed this quickly. It's strange - in some ways it seems like I haven't been away, but when I think of myself actually being in Na Kae it seems like ages ago. Then again, sometimes it seems like just yesterday that I was in Na Kae! It's a very confusing feeling coming home after so long away!
My last week in Ban Phon Sanuk was amazing - I loved being able to stay there for so long without having to go to school, and as I mentioned before it was lovely to spend so much time with all my friends in the village.

On the day I left Ban Phon Sanuk, the bus to Bangkok wasn't until the evening so in the morning and afternoon I had a leaving ceremony. I wasn't expecting to be getting anything like this, but I think that as I spent so long in the village during my last few weeks in Na Kae they wanted to give me a send off, which was really lovely of them. During the morning I witnessed a pig and two ducks being killed for a meal in the afternoon with everyone from the village - I couldn't believe that they were making such a huge deal of my leaving day, and I felt very honoured that they were doing so much for me. A blessing ceremony took place where everyone from the village blessed me by tieing thin strands of white rope around my wrists while they said a blessing, wishing me good luck, happiness, safe travel and wishing that I would return to Thailand (which of course I plan to do as soon as I can!). The meal was, as always, delicious - one thing I'm really going to miss about Thailand is the food! I will be attempting to recreate soe of my favourite Thai dishes in Scotland, but I can't help thinking that they probably won't be as delicious as the real thing. One dish that I can definitely say I won't miss is "lap" when it is mixed with uncooked blood...

I went outside to wait for the bus about an hour before it was due and sat in the mooching hut with Mei, Paw, P.Joe's Dad (Whiskey Man...) and the three kids who I wanted to take with me (Big Boss, Big Boom and Donut). Mei went to speak to Pippa on skype, then quickly came and told me that Pippa wanted to wish me good luck so I went back into the house for a few minutes to speak to her before having to go back out to get the bus. The journey to Bangkok was quite good and I was in Bangkok by about 6am.

The day before I left I had packed my rucksack and was quite happy with it - it wasn't too heavy and I could lift it, and it seemed to be a nice even shape. However, this changed when I was given seven Isaan pillows as leaving presents from people from the village (three of them are for Caitlin)! I absolutely love the pillows and genuinely appreciate them, but those (plus Caitlin's tea set which I forgot to pack until the last minute) turned my previously well-packed rucksack into a rushed, lumpy, heavy one...! Eventually, after finding a taxi and getting to Khao San Road then helping someone else to find their hotel, I managed to book myself in to a small room, but my rucksack was so heavy that even after getting someone to help me carry it my back was aching so much that I knew I had to find a way to take the weight down. The remainder of the day was spend un-packing and re-packing my rucksack and donating a huge bag of unwanted clothes and books to the reception of the guesthouse. Admittedly, the reason I found it so difficult to carry my rucksack through Bangkok may have been because even when it was packed "well", I hadn't really tried walking with it for any length of time so I suppose I can't really blame the pillows...

The last few days in Bangkok were great fun. The day after I arrived I met up with the other volunteers who were already in Bangkok in the evening and we went out on Khao San Road. Some of the vols. decided to go to a club called Lava, but for some reason men had to pay 100 Baht (about £2) to get in while girls got in free, plus it was a dancing club and wasn't really my idea of fun, so a group of us ended up just bumping from bar to bar without actually buying any drinks because no one could decide where to go. Before I met up with the volunteers I decided to visit Pippa's brother and sister who both live in Bangkok, so arranged to meet P.Non (Pippa's younger brother) so that he could take me to his sister's house. Soon after I entered his car he started talking about a dog, but I couldn't make sense of what he was saying as his English isn't very good. However, when he pointed to the backseat it became clear that he was saying he has bought a puppy. Further questioning informed me that he had in fact bought the puppy for me, as a leaving present... it took a while for me to explain that it was very cute, but that I couldn't take it on the aeroplane. Eventually he decided that he would keep it until I next came to Thailand, and I can take it back then... I'll cross that bridge when I get to it.

After leaving P.Non's house (and the puppy) we drove to P.Neung's house. P. Neung is Pippa's younger sister, and she has a 1 year old son called Dono who is very cute. Caitlin and I visited them once before while we were in Bangkok months ago visiting Pippa, but we didn't get to meet P.Neung because she was at work, so it was great to get to meet her. She is lovely, though I must admit not quite as crazy as her older sister...

On my final day in Bangkok I went to Cha Tu Chak Market, which is an enormous market selling everything you could possibly imagine, with Rosie. I managed to get the remainder of my present buying done here which was good, then we headed to Billie and Rosie's guesthouse to find out what was happening about meeting the other volunteers for a meal. After meeting everyone else at "the big white castle" (which is a large white building resembling a castle which none of us know the real name of) we found a nice restaurant and had our last Thai meal! I had Tom Yum with chicken which was delicious. I didn't used to like Ton Yum particularly, but now it's one of my favourite dishes.

The next day was time to fly! Our flight wasn't until 8.45pm, but as we had to be at the airport for check in three hours earlier and didn't want to get stuck in rush hour traffic, we all arrived at the airport at about 4pm and met Hannah Jelley and Francis, the last volunteers to arrive in Bangkok. They came with a huge leaving party as their project was only two hours from Bangkok, so we all got photos taken as a group which was nice. The return flight was fairly uneventful - I spent most of the time watching films and listening to music. It wasn't as long as I thought it was going to be, and it came into Heathrow early. It still took us over an hour to get everyone through and find our bags, as we wanted to go to meet our parents as a group. Seeing my mum and dad after so long was a very strange feeling - I knew that I hadn't seen them in almost a year, but it still felt like I hadn't ever left. It was brilliant to see them, and after another 6 hours of travelling by train to Edinburgh I met my sister which was also brilliant. Although I stopped feeling homesick after a few months I still missed them all throughout the year.

All in all it took over 31 hours for me to travel from Thailand to my house in Scotland, and although it is great to be back I'd be lying if I said I didn't miss Thailand! I'll be going back to Thailand as soon as I can, and will be keeping in contact with all the friends I made over there. Hopefully I'll be able to find someone who speaks Thai nearby who I can practise with as I really don't want to forgot the Thai I've learned over the past year.

I'd like to say a huge thank you to everyone who has supported me over the past year and during the months leading up to my leaving for Thailand. If it wasn't for all of you then I wouldn't have been able to do it, and I'm so happy that I did it!

Getting Ready For Goodbye

2011-08-07T04:04:00.001-07:00

So, I have now finished teaching in Thailand. My last week of lessons was brilliant fun, I played games like "Bang" and "Hand Slap" (where students sit down and cross arms with each other, and have to slap the ground with their hands in the right order without getting mixed up) and got all of my classes to sign my friendship book. Having such a fun last week made me realise that I should have played more fun games with my classes before now, as even though they're not English based the kids can still chat to you in English. I found that it was actually a lot easier to control the class when they were all up playing games like that, because the trouble-makers are pre-occupied with the games! I know that I shouldn't have favourites, but I do have two favourite classes, both on a Wednesday. One of them is class 2/4 and the other is class 3/1. Class 3/1 is just... crazy. Absolutely crazy. It's like someone took all the most outgoing, talkative, cheeky, loud girls, put them on a caffeine drip, then put them in a classroom. Their English is very good and teaching them has always been brilliant, although it's sometimes been hard to come up with lessons for them because their English really is better than any of my other classes. During my last lesson with them, we decided that it would be a great idea to, instead of giving sweets to the WINNER, punish the loser by covering them in talcum powder. And I mean, COVER them in talcum powder! By the end of the lesson everyone was white with their clothes layered with white dust! Class 2/4 is, in general, quite a quiet class, but there is a girl in it who is the sweetest student I teach. She has always been quite shy and sits at the back of her class with her friend, but recently she's been coming up to me before and after class to chat and has spoken to me a few times around the school. When my last lesson with her was over she came back into the classroom on her own and asked for a hug, and looked like she was crying. Very rarely in Thailand will a Thai person initiate a hug, and if they do then it is usually only when you know each other very well. In almost a year, she is only the third Thai person to initiate a hug that I've met (the other two being a maths teacher from NaKaePit. when Caitlin and I left for the holidays, and Pippa).My classes at St. Joseph were equally as fun, playing alphabet races and taking lots of photos. On the Friday there were no classes because it was the anniversary of the last Princess' death (the current King's cousin) and this coincided with a "Thai Day" the school was having with lots of activities, so classes were cancelled to make way for lots of group activities! I stayed for half the day, and saw puppet shows, colouring in , karaoke and a race involving a balloon, chopsticks, a riddle, a ping-pong ball and a bottle... after this I went to Joe's house (where all my things were being kept after the mice drove me out of my own house) to pack. Thankfully I was done in just a few hours.

I had planned to go to Ban Phon Sanuk the day day (Saturday), but the person who was meant to be giving me a lift there decided to disappear and get drunk in stead, so I went on Sunday with Kru Nid, planning to leave for Bangkok on Tuesday and do a couple of weeks of travelling. However, Pippa's mother and father wanted me to stay with them until I had to leave to get my flight, so I am staying in Ban Phon Sanuk until the 11th August. It was actually Pippa, who is still in Germany, who made it clear to me that it was okay for me to stay at her house and that her parents loved me being here, because although her parents have told me this several times, Kru Nid has always been insistent that if I stay too long I will be a burden for her parents and trouble them. After a really nice conversation with Pippa it was made very clear that this wasn't true and that I shouldn't listen to Kru Nid, so I am staying! I figured that I can go travelling anytime, and I wouldn't have been going anywhere that I hadn't been before anyway because of time restraints, but staying with Pippa's family in the village that's been my home for the last year is something very special, and it lets me spend time with everyone and properly say goodbye to everyone.

I have been in Ban Phon Sanuk now for a week, and I will be here for another 4 days before heading to Bangkok. I wish I could stay longer, I absolutely love being here with everyone. A few days ago my host mother invited me to spend the day with her at her workplace, and I ended up writing out some sort of database from a folder onto the computer. Doesn't seem like too hard a task, but one of the columns was people's names. In Thai. Now, my Thai is good enough so be able to copy out names, IF (a very big if, a very very big if) they are written very clearly. Unfortunately, these names were not, resulting in me having to ask, several times per name, "What letter is this?". Oh, and also, my host mother failed to tell me that when I was typing them out, I had to swap columns 15 and 19, and in column 20 I was to use the figures at the side... eventually, after much confusion, I understood and managed to change them, but apparently the fact that I don't understand things about the fiscal year in Thai means that I don't speak Thai at all, and so for the rest of the day people were talking to me like someone who doesn't speak a word of it! I wouldn't even have understood fiscal year jargon in English, let alone in Thai :P

I also got taken to Dong Luong, a village higher up in the mountains, with P.Dom who lives in Ban Phon Sanuk. She works in a restaurant in Dong Luong, so took me up on her motorbike (a really beautiful journey) to spend the day with her there. I was very proud of my self as I managed to shred 8 huge papayas for making som tham, and none of them collapsed (which can sometimes happen if you get too excited while hitting it with your knife), and my strips were nice and thin like they're supposed to be. My wrist, however, is still slightly sore! I also met a little boy, called Boat, who lives next to the restaurant and "helped" him with his homework (really what I did was watch him as he tormented his dad by repeatedly, and deliberately, drawing the number "6" upside down).

On the days that I spend in Ban Phon Sanuk I help Mei with the cooking and washing up, play with Big Boom and Big Boss next door (both of whom I want to take home with me), visit the rice fields and chat to people. It's so nice and relaxed, and I really am loving spending time with everyone. I think the locals are having a good time with me being here, mainly because of all the laughs I give them! For instance, Mei has been having great fun telling everyone we meet that I dropped a huge lizard in the washing machine... ACTUALLY what happened was, I was doing my washing, and was putting Mei and Paw's washing in with it for them, and as I picked up one of Mei's tops I thought I felt it wriggling. Thinking that I must just have felt the fabric move underneath it or something I dropped it into the machine with some other clothes. A second later I saw something move, and quickly (but carefully) took out all the clothes until all that was left in it was a rather large, very fast black lizard who couldn't get out. I tried to catch it in a big bowl but it was too fast, and I didn't want to try to grab it incase it bit me, so I went to get Mei to help me. Being unable to explain in Thai that I had trapped a lizard in the washing machine, I just asked her to come and see, then watched as s he grabbed it with her hand, got it out and dropped it on the floor where it scuttled off. Of course she was laughing the whole time, and this story has now spread across the village.

Over the past week or so there has been a huge amount of rain. It is the wet season so there is always a lot, but there has been much more than usual as it's been falling for several days almost non-stop. Usually there will be heavy rain for an hour or so which will then dry up quickly, but when it's this constant there is no time for it to dry up. Several of the rice fields have been flooded which means that the rice will have difficulty growing. When we went to check a few days ago it was like a lake with only a few tufts of rice poking up, and today, although there was less water on the actual fields, it was impossible to go and see Mei's rice fields because of the torrent of water flowing between them and the road.

Tomorrow I am going into Na Kae again to see some of the kids at St. Joseph - one of them has been waiting to give me a present for over a week, then I'm back in Ban Phon Sanuk until until Thursday evening when I travel to Bangkok. I'm not sure what I'll be doing in Bangkok until I leave, or if I'll go somewhere else close-by for a couple of days. I can't stay in Ban Phon Sanuk any longer than Thursday because Mei and Paw are travelling down near Bangkok for the wedding of the son of one of their friends on the 12th, and they want me to leave the day before so they can send me off on the bus :)

Byebye Caitlin!!

2011-07-24T03:52:00.000-07:00

So, after almost 11 months, it's time for me to say bye bye to my project partner, Caitlin, who left to spend a week in Mae Sai before her flight home on Tuesday!

As we are not leaving at the same time it proved quite difficult to organise a leaving party, but we managed to have two parties (one for teachers from NaKae Pitt. and one for friends) and a meal with teachers from St. Jo. The first happened on Wednesday 13th July and was organised by us with the help of our friend, Thitima, for our friends in Na Kae who aren't involved with NaKae Pitt. We thought that teachers from St. Jo would be coming, but instead they decided to have a meal with us instead. About 15 people turned up at a BBQ restaurant called Pilein, and we had a great time! Some of our friends brought us presents which was really sweet of them. It's amazing how many people know each other in Na Kae - we invited friends that we had met from all over the place, but almost everyone knew almost everyone else although we hadn't known that they were friends! This was brilliant because we were slightly concerned that if some people came not knowing anyone they may feel awkward, but of course in Thailand this never happens! After the BBQ Caitlin and I went to a bar in Na Kae called the Albian along with Tony (a teacher from the other secondary school) and his friends Yai and Yui, and Ruth and Laura who volunteered in Na Kae last year with Project Trust and were visiting. Again this was lots of fun - Yai brought his guitar and despite the fact that it was missing two strings we still managed to have a really fun sing-a-long with him playing, Caitlin and I singing and Tony rapping.

The next day Caitlin and I didn't teach and Caitlin was busy packing and we both wanted to spend time with each other before she disappeared. Somehow she managed to get all her packing done in one day - I now realise that this was possible because she left me with all her junk!! That afternoon we went to St. Jo to have lunch with the father and sisters of the school, and some of the teachers in the English department. As always the food was delicious, but there was so much of it! For some reason whenever Caitlin and I eat there they seem to think we need enough to feed an army! In the evening we had a party at NaKae Pitt., to saw goodbye to Caitlin and I as well as another teacher who was leaving, and to welcome two new staff to the school. We had a huge blessing ceremony and got blessing ribbons tied round our wrists by all the other teachers - my mission to to keep them on until I get home, but I don't know how possible this will be! We had lots of lovely food and got some of the teachers to sign our friendship books which was nice. After this, Yai invited us to his house to continue the singing session with a guitar which had all it's strings, so we went there. His house is huge, and his sister can speak very good English. She went to NaKae Pitt. but managed to take part in an exchange programme to Florida while at university in Sakhon Nakhon. The next day we headed to Ban Phon Sanuk in Yai's car, stayed the night there so that Caitlin could say goodbye to everyone, and headed to Ubon on Saturday to see the Candle Festival. Luckily Caitlin could leave her bag in the bus station.

The Candle Festival was brilliant and I really wish we'd been able to stay longer as it was much larger than we realised. There was, of course, a huge market, but in the evening a huge art show was set up with installation art, puppet shows and stalls along with a parade of giant candles sculpted to look like amazing dragons and Buddhas. Several people were doing questionnaires and surveys and as we are white we got asked to do them all. We found out pretty quickly that the art exhibition was huge and had been going on all month, so it would have been nice to be able to see more of it. Later on in the evening people started to set off lanterns which were beautiful - I managed to get some photos of them and they don't look too blurry which is good, and there were also AMAZING fireworks! Really huge ones that exploded several times in different colours, I wish we had ones like that in the UK!

When I arrived back in Na Kae after saying goodbye to Caitlin, the mice in our house decided to rebel and show their protest at Caitlin leaving, along with their obvious dislike for me, by dying. In my rucksack. In my rucksack, which was packed with all the things I'd bought from markets and wasn't going to use in Na Kae. He didn't even die at the top, he died in the middle of all my things! The only reason I found him was because I went to put on a DVD after getting back from Ubon and was near the rucksack which stank so checked through everything. While I was checking everything I was also smelling things to see if I really could smell dead mouse, and all that was going through my head was: "No... it's not dead mouse I can smell. It's not. Nope. No, no, no. Wow that's getting stronger, but I am still reasonably convinced that I can't smell dead mouse. Stay positive. Reasonably convinced. Reasonably convinced. Reasonab- oh. Hi mouse." This lovely discovery was made at about 1am, so, while on the phone to my mum and sister VERY annoyed, I upturned the rucksack releasing the dead mouse so I could dispose of it (also releasing a lovely aroma of death into the house...), left my things on the floor in a heap and went to bed. The next morning I got to work bagging up everything that could be washed into bin bags to take to the laundrette, and called Tony who can with Yai to help me take these items to be washed. For some reason I wasn't feeling well, and felt dizzy and sick so got taken to Yai's house to sleep. I managed to sleep for most of the day, then went to Tony's house to spend the night. I could have stayed at Yai's, but I thought it would be better to be with a native English speaker as I still wasn't feeling great. Later on that evening my muscles started to ache so I went to the hospital in Na Kae. After running the most technologically advanced tests of "weight", "blood pressure" and "heart rate", they announced that I was fine, gave me three packs of free drugs ("This one good for sleep. This one stop you dizzy. This... same same paracetamol?") and sent me on my way. Thankfully the next day I felt much better and, with encouragement from both the in-country rep and my Desk Officer on Coll, began the process of moving everything I owned out of my house as it was decided that it was probably best I don't like there anymore. I may have forgotten to mention that the rucksack mouse was the 5th dead rodent we'd found in a few days due to the school janitor putting down piles of rat poison, despite the fact that Caitlin and I had both said to our host that we really didn't want the poison anywhere near us. This moving process took 2 days, but now, finally, all of my things except my jewellery which I have just remembered is hanging on the window, the fish and the turtles are safely at Joe's house. Next years volunteers are getting a new house, so the school janitor/handyman is taking everything that doesn't belong to me out of my house to move it to the new house. So far his contribution to the moving efforts has been to move the mosquito a grand total of 8 steps, leaving them halfway down the stairs. Hopefully he will speed things up...

Now that I have no house I am having to stay with my friends in Na Kae and of course in Ban Phon Sanuk, meaning that things like where to keep washing, where to keep clean clothes for each day and where to keep toiletries is proving slightly difficult. And I have just remembered that I have left my bag of clothes for wearing in Na Kae in the smaller rucksack (with the lit and all possible entrances firmly closed), so I'll have to retrieve that and find somewhere accessible to leave it! Only 1 week left of teaching before I leave Na Kae, I really am going to miss so many people so much.

Wow time goes fast!

2011-07-08T06:59:00.000-07:00

I know I say this a lot, but I honestly can't believe that this year has gone so fast. I didn't realise that I had so little time left in Na Kae until it hit me that today was Caitlin's last ever day teaching at St. Joseph primary school!

However, before thoughts of how close our leaving date was actually started to hit home, Caitlin and I took part in an English camp in Loeng Nokta, organised by two of the other Project Trust volunteers, Anna and Fleur. Loeng Nokta is about 3 hours away on a bus, so it was nice and easy to get to and we had a great time. Caitlin spent the weekend before it in Ubon which is a city a couple of hours away from Loeng Nokta, butI decided to stay in Na Kae and meet Caitlin in Loeng Nokta on Sunday afternoon/evening. When we arrived we met Anna and Fleur and were taken to their house - it is lovely! Smaller than ours, but with more rooms and lots of storage space. Plus it has no mice or rats which is nice! We spent Sunday evening watching Glee and chatting to the other volunteers who arrived - Clara and Chess from Kutchum, Clem and Rachel from Si Sakhet and Billie and Rosie from Phanaa - before being taken out to a buffet BBQ by one of Anna and Fleur's Thai friends. Actually Billie and Rosie arrived while we were at the BBQ, but unfortunately had got off at the wrong stop on the bus. Apparently there are two places called Loeng Nokta - old and new - and they had got off the bus at the wrong one which is a few km away from where the project is. Thankfully the guy we were with was able to phone someone and get them to pick them up, so they weren't lost for long. The BBQ was nice, I really love them. It's not like a traditional UK BBQ, instead you sit at a table with a hole in it and a bucket fire is placed in this whole with a funny shaped pot put on top of that. The pot is shaped like a wok but with a large hump in the middle. Soup and veg is cooked round the outside of the bump, and meat, which you collect from an all-you-can-eat-buffet, is cooked on the hump itself. Surprisingly I haven't given myself food poisoning yet, but I don't know if I should thank my cooking skills or the fact that I'm used to meat being slightly more than overdone thanks to my father :P

The next day, the camp started. There were 8 categories to teach (shapes, body, clothes, personal info, animals, numbers, fruit and directions) so everyone chose one, except Anna and Fleur who teamed up with Chess and Clara. I decided to do shapes which went quite well, although I sometimes found it difficult to fill up 30 minutes teaching only shapes, especially as the kids all came from different primary schools so some were very good at English. It's amazing how meaningless the word "triangle" can become once you've said it for the 200th time! It was fun though - I got the kids to draw robots made of different shapes and then label each body part with what shape it was, as well as getting them to create different shapes as a group (getting them to stand in a circle, in a square, in a triangle etc.). There were 8 groups of kids and the groups rotated round the lessons throughout the day - 3 on the first day and 5 on the second. In between the lessons we playes games like Musical Statues and a group version of Rock, Paper, Scissors which I'd never seen played before. It was great fun and a really nice break from organised classroom teaching. On the evening of the second day we were taken to Anna and Fleur's host's house for food and karaoke which was great - I hadn't done karaoke for a while and I actually missed it, so it was nice to have it again! Wow, I never thought I'd say that! Throughout both days all of us volunteers were constantly stopped by large groups of primary kids (all the students were about aged about 10 or 11) wanting us to sign their books, asking for our facebook names and email addresses and taking photos of us. It's lovely and they are all really sweet, but after signing books for 20 minutes I found that my name became shorter and shorter...

Last weekend Caitlin and I decided to head to Nong Khai. I went there during the holidays only meaning to spend a couple of days and ended up staying for almost a week because I loved it so much, and I wish I could have stayed longer this time too. We only stayed one night and went to see the Sculpture Park, which is amazing. The sculptures are all very abstract and quite weird looking, but really beautiful too. Unfortunately the artist died in Laos while creating a second sculpture park by falling off the top of one of his statues. We stayed in the same guest house that I stayed in - Mut Mee - and again had a brilliant experience. The people who own it are really friendly and the whole place is just like a giant group of friends. It's busier in the hot season when the schools in Thailand are on holiday as it's a place that a lot of foreign teachers go to get a nice break, but it was still buzzing with people. When I come back to Thailand I am definitely going to try to spend a long time in Nong Khai because there are so many things to see around the city/town and just outside it.

Yesterday and today were Caitlin's last days teaching at St. Joseph primary school, and I only have two and a half weeks left teaching in Na Kae! The pupils at St. Jo are extremely bright and very talkative and friendly, and poor Caitlin had to spend at least 20 minutes at the end of every lesson signing books! Actually, not just signing books - both of us got asked to sign bags, pencil cases, books, textbooks, Scout hats, bamboo poles, ping pong balls... I'm sure that most of these things don't actually belong to the kids, but hopefully the teachers won't mind! Friendship Books are big in Thailand. They are lovely hard-back notebooks and on each page there is a small "about me" section, and then lots of space to write in. The pages all have things like "I Miss You" and "I Love You" written on them, the idea being that you get your friends to sign each page. Caitlin and I have both bought these, and the kids love signing them! I haven't got any of the pupils to sign mine, I'm waiting until my last days teaching there, but it's been great to watch them sign Caitlin's books and has given me a few ideas on how not to get crushed by children trying to sign it - always put a table between yourseld and the army of 50 10 year olds! We got given several drawings and notes saying that the kids loved us which was really nice. Next week I'm not teaching there as it's Caitlin's last days in Na Kae and I plan to "help her pack" as well as try to get started on some of my packing, so the week after that will be my last week teaching at St. Jo. The week after that I'll be teaching at NaKaePit. secondary school but not at St. Jo as I plan to stop teaching on the Wednesday and spend until Monday in Ban Phon Sanuk staying with Pippa's family.

At the moment we have two main parties lined up - one organised by us and one of our Thai friends, Thitima, at a BBQ Buffet place in Na Kae for all our friends, and one organised by the teachers at NaKaePitt. for all the teachers there to say goodbye to us. Thitima was one of Pippa's best friends at the New Year party we had, and is absolutely lovely. She speaks very good English as she has an American husband and two Thai-Farang children who are also adorable.

Oh, another piece of news - we now have pets. Yes, with only a few weeks to go, we have aquired three turtles fromthe market (Morris, Constance and Mowgli) and two Siamese Fighting Fish (Morvin and Marvin). We had been planning to buy turtles for weeks but for some reason they were never at the market although we'd seen them there before, until last week when we finally found some! At the moment they are living in our wok because the other bowlhas floor cleaner in it, but they seem to like their new home and as long as we don't need to use the wok they canb stay there. We may have to find somewhere else for them to live before giving them to the new volunteers though, as I doubt that Kru Nid would be too happy at us turning our cooking facilities into reptile houses... The Siamese Fighting Fish were taken by me and Caitlin from a group of Thai men who were betting on them. It's horrible - animal fighting is a "sport" here and it's something that I loathe. We did have three fish, but unfortunately one of them didn't survive long after we brought it home as it had been fought the most. He was called Borris. We've asked our friend, Joe, if he'll take the turtles after we leave until the next volunteers come and he said yes, but we haven't told him that he's also agreed to take the fish :P

Trips around Na Kae and Dancing!

2011-06-25T20:07:00.000-07:00

As Caitlin and I only have a few weeks left in Na Kae (she has about three, I have between four and five) we've been trying to use the weekends to visit places around Na Kae that we haven't had a chance to properly see yet. So far over the past few weeks we've managed to visit Mukdahan, Nakhon Phanom and Kalasin.

My favourite of these is Mukdahan, mainly because of the huge Vietnamese market! For some reason everything at the market was extremely cheap, even though Caitlin has told me that in Vietnam the same items are more expensive. I don't understand how this works, because surely transporting the good to Thailand would cost money, and so everything should be more expensive, but I'm not complainaing! It wouldn't surprise me if the reason that it's so cheap is because it is illegal in some way - some of the stalls (which I kept away from and didn't buy anything from) were selling elephant tusks. The result of me going to a large, cheap market is that I now have a 3 foot long fan, a small chest of drawers, a large mug with a painting of a lighthouse on it and a jewellery box to take home. It appears that my brain has decided to ignore the advice given to me of "buy things that are easy to pack". My plan of senidng some things home surface mail isn't going to work becasuse it is far too expensive. I sent hom two shoeboxes recently - one went airmail because it had birthday presents in it, and the other went surface mail. The surface mail parcel was more expensive! Both Caitlin and I have noticed that the price of sening things from Na Kae seems to change randomly, and as the weight limit of our luggage on the way back home is 30kg instead of 20kg, I've decided to just try and pack the remainder of my things. Hopefully I won't have to carry my rucksack too far! Aside from the market, I loved Mukdahan because it is right on the Lao border next to the Mekong, and is beautiful. I'd really like to visit Laos at some point. I doubt I'll get over there while I'm in Thailand this time, but it's definitely a place I'd like to see in the future.

Nakhon Phanom was also a lovely place. We've been there before, but only briefly to renew our visas, so it was nice to go there to have a good look around. Caitlin wanted to visit Prathat Nakhon, which is one of the seven Pagodas in Kakhon Phanom province and is meant to bring good luck to those born on a Saturday. We weren't sure where it was, but while on the song taw (bus) Caitlin saw a large gate with something written in Thai on it. She read the first part and it said "wat" which means temple, so, thinking we were right in front of where we wanted to be, we got off the bus. It was then that we read the rest of the sign. It did not, in fact, say "wat"; it said "jangwat" which means province. It was some sort of government complex. You'd think that we'd have realised it wasn't a temple by the fact that there wasn't actually a temple, but apparently not! We wandered around for a while before going to get some food, then took a tuktuk to the actual pagoda. It was nice, but not as big at the pagoda in That Phanom, and obviously not as famous becuase when we asked where it was at the restaurant we were in, it took them a while to remember! When we decided to go back we went to fing a song taw and got told that we had missed the last bus home. This presented two options: 1) phone Kru Nid and ask her if she could come and pick us up, which we know she wouldn't be particularly happy about as Nakhon Phanom is about 70km from where she lives, or 2) find somewhere to stay and get a bus back in the early hours of the morning to be back in time for school. This option also did not have us jumping for joy. Thankfully we didn't have to do either, because a kindly tuktuk driver managed to phone the driver of the last bus and gt them to wait where they were while he took us to it, which was lovely of him!

We had both been to Kalasin before during the Kalasin Festival, but we wanted to go again because there is a Jurassic Park and some dinosaur fossils and footprints. We had planned to see these things the first time we went, but got distracted by the festival and involved in helping out at a giant Toyota exhibit, so didn't manage to see them. Unfortunately, we didn't manage to see them this time either! We arrived in Kalasin in the afternoon on Saturday and decided that we'd spend the evening exploring and then find the dinosaurs the next day before heading back to Na Kae. Our hotel was right next to a really nice park with a large lake, so we had a walk around that. As we were walking it became apparent that there was a mutual agreement between the walkers/runners that you walk around the lake anti-clockwise. We were the only people walking clockwise round it, but by this point were already half way round and didn't want to have to backtrack all the way round again, so pretended to be oblivious to this rule! We found a nice place to eat, reccommended by a Welsh man that we met at the bus station, and then continued wandering around. As we'd been there before there wasn't a huge amount of new things to see, but there are some sculptures around the town that are really pretty. The next day we found out that the jurassic park which we thought was in the town was actually 26km away. We managed to find a song taw, but this was the end of our dinosaur journey because the driver was the most awkward, annoying and useless bus driver we've experienced! We needed to know if there were buses that could take us back to the town from th park, and he said that he could take us at 2pm. We told him that we needed to get a bus back to Sakhon Nakhon at 12.30pm and would there be anyway for us to get there, and he said yes, that he would take us at 2pm. We then explained again our need to get back for a bus at 12.30, and this time he seemed to understand. Another two woman came onto the bus and the driver said something to then in Thai. We asked him, to confirm, of we would definitely be able to get back for 12.30, and he told us that yes, he would take us. At 2pm. The next 20 minutes or so was filled with us desperately trying to explain that we don't care if it's him who takes us back to Kalasin, another bus driver or an elephant - we needed to know if there was ANY way to get back for 12.30pm. It didn't help that one of the other women on the bus was also extremely annoying and kept laughing at speaking Thai. Most of the time people will be surprised when you speak Thai because you're white, but usually it's just a sort of "Oh! They can speak Thai, that's cool" reaction. It's really infuriating when, occasionally, you get the "Haha, look at them! They're WHITE, and they're speaking THAI! Isn't that hilarious?!' people. Eventually it ecame obvious that if we went to the dinosaur park we probably wouldn't be getting back in time to get Sakhon before the last bus back to Na Kae, so we abandoned the plan and got something to eat instead. Just as well that we did because when we got to the bus station we found out that the bus was actually at 11.40am, not 12.30pm, so we'd have missed it anyway xD

Teaching has been quite good this week, but it's been overshadowed by the fact that our house seems to have a vendetta against us. Not only have the mice eaten one of our electric fans (breaking the fan but somehow surviving), stolen several photos from our Thailand wall (Pippa and Tomtom's sections are noticeably smaller than they were a few weeks ago...), nibbled holed in our mosquito nets, eaten the wiring of some of the lights and stolen countless slices of bread (one of which was found half-way up the stairs - how thet got it there we have no idea), but our water supply is now very temperamental. For most of last week we could use either the shower, the hose or the tap for about 30 seconds, or flush the toilet, before all the water in the house was reduced to a trickle. Luckily we stay at other people's houses a lot anyway so could use their showers, but it made washing up difficult, and meant that you could only use the toilet once every two hours or so. After Kru Nid phoning the water suppliers in That Phanom it seems better, but experience tells me that it may break again at any second. Also our drain is still blocked even after the handyman pouring fizzy, thick black stuff down it. And we have a family of huge spiders (biggest is abound hand-sized) living in our bathroom, and three or four large, blue tokay geckos living in our poorch. Thankfully I can see the funny side of all this, and we're only here for a few more weeks so I think I can live with it!

Teaching at St. Joseph Na Kae primary school this week has been brilliant. Kru Fon, the head of English there, asked us to sing a song for the kids at morning ceremony that they could dance to, so we chose Hannah Montana: Hoedown Throwdown and taught them all the dance. We then got asked to teach the dance of some of the classes, so had a great (and tiring!) time teaching them all the dance moves! I never thought I'd have the confidence to dance in front of anyone, let alone an entire school (and looking at the videos perhaps there's a reason for this...!) but it was so much fun! On Friday some of the kids were involved in a drama performance and singing contest in the morning so we got to watch that which was good. The students at NaKaePitt. Secondary School have also ben doing singing competitions for something called "Rock Isaan" so we've been watching that at lunchtime. Some of the kids are really good singers - even though the songs are in Thai and I don't understand most of what they are saying it's obvious that some of them are really talented. One of the boys in 6th year came 3rd in a singing contect in one of the nearby cities.

Later on today I am heading t oLoeng Nokta to take part in an English Camp for two ays with some of the other volunteers, so that should be fun. No idea what to expect as I've never done one before!

Happy Birthday to me!

2011-06-07T22:43:00.001-07:00

Yes, the month of June has come around which means that it's birthday month, with mine, my mum's, my dad's and my cousin's birthdays all in the space of a few days.

I've never been one for huge birthday parties, I like to keep it quiet and enjoy it with friends and family, so instead of organising anything in particular I just had a quiet drink with Caitlin, Joe (another foreign teacher we're good friends with) and his girlfriend, Lamai. Caitlin was lovely and bought me a cake, which was actually very nice! Birthday cakes in Thailand aren't the same as the ones in the UK - they are usually very, very soft with lots of very "creamy" icing (although it's not real cream). Mine had huge flowers, a dog, swans and two angels all made of icing on the top and looked very pretty. Usually, although they are nice, they aren't brilliant to eat, but this one was one of the best ones we've had!

When Kru Nid found out that it was my birthday she went out to rally up P.Noi and P.Jim (two other English teachers) and came back with cards and presents which was lovely! I got quite a large, fluffy Hello Kitty toy, a t-shirt and a skirt from them. I'm not entirely sire how I'm going to get the Hello Kitty home, I'm hoping she'll fit into my hand luggage so I can use her as a pillow. The teachers sang Happy Birthday to me too which was suitably embarassing, as all renditions of Happy Birthday should be! :P

The evening was spent watching films and eating party rings (thank you mum!) until Joe and his girlfriend came round, when we had some food from the market and a couple of drinks. The market in Na Kae is brilliant - every day different stalls are set up selling all sorts of food and is very cheap. One of my favourites is Lap, which is a spicy meat dish made of minced meat (best with duck), lime juice, several herbs, several chillis (or several hundred chillis...), garlic and I'm sure there's lots more in it! We keep meaning to ask Pippa's parents to teach us how to make it, and I definitely want to be confident in making it by the time I get home, so fingers crossed!

While I remember, there are a couple of interesting (well I think they're interesting) stories that I forgot to put in my last blog.

While we were cleaning our house, one of the nieghbors saw us outside rinsing out feet. Because it was hot we were wearing the bare minimum, and probably should have put on something a bit more respectable. However, we thought that as we were only outside for a second and we were still within the boundaries of our house, it would be okay. Unfortunately , the neighbour who saw us phoned Kru Nid, and the rumour is now that we both shower outside at the garage. We're unsire how us rinsing our feet mutated into us showering in public, but gossip is huge in Na Kae so any opportunity to create an interesting story to spread around will be taken, and unfortunetly us foreigners are often at the centre of such stories!

When we found out that Pippa was leaving for Germany, Caitlin and I both made her good luck cards. I spent a great deal of time over mine, trying to make it as pretty as I could, and spending hours making sure that all the Thai I had written made sense. One time while we were up at school, I decided to take our microwave back home (it was at the school for a while). I put my good luck to Pippa on top of it along with a packet of sparkly gel pens and a few sheets of paper, and started to lift it. I wasn't ready for how heavy it was, and it started to tip backwards. Terrified that I was going to drop the microwave out the window behind it I took my hand off the top and quickly supported the back, letting go of everything on top of it. Fortunately, the microwave didn't go out the window. Unfortunately, I steadied it just in time to watch everything on top of it float swiftly out the window and onto the roof of the building below. I needed to get my card, pens and paper back, so I did the only thing I could think of - climb out the window onto the roof, and with Caitlin's help, all was retrieved! Thankfully I don't think anyone saw this!

While we were staying at Pippa's before she went to Germany, we decided to watch a horror film we'd brought called "Orphan". Pippa loves horror films. It was bought in Bangkok so had both Thai and English audio and subtitle, so we watched it in Thai with English subtitles so that Pippa could understand it. We were a bit concerned at how she would react to some parts of the movie. However, the sex scene came about and she didn't bat an eyelid. The little girl swore and again, no reaction. A woman was beaten several times with a hammer, and not even a flinch. Then, the mother closed the dishwasher with her foot. Pippa jumped, gasped and squeaked all at the same time! In Thailand feet are considered the lowest and dirtiest part of the body, so to use your feet for something is a no-no here. Still, I found it quite funny that this would get a bigger reaction that other parts of the film!

End of the holidays and back to Na Kae!

2011-06-03T08:18:00.000-07:00

Sorry it's been such a long time, I've been back in Na Kae for a couple of weeks now and it's been a little bit hectic! But for now, the rest of the holidays.

After my amazing trip to Sarnelli Orphanage and Nong Khai I headed to Chiang Mai to meet my project partner, Caitlin. She had been doing a temple meditation course there as her secondary project. I spent a few days in Chiang Mai going through all the markets - there are so many of them! Every evening from about 7pm there is amn enormous night bazaar that seems to go on forever, and on Saturdays there is a walking market on one side of the city, then on Sunday there is another one on the other side. If you're not careful you can end up buying lots... not that I'm talking from experience or anything! While we were there we decided to do a cookery course, something which I've been wanting to do for a while, so we booked ourselves onto the full day one. It was brilliant! The day started at about 9am when we were taken with four other tourists to the market by the man running the course. He was hilarious and spoke really good English so was able to keep craching jokes. For instance, while he was showing us various different types of the same vegetable he described them as 'same same, but different" which is a joke for ladyboys. A ladyboy is a boy who wants to be a girl, so the joke in Thailand is that they are the same as a girl, but different - hence "same same, but different". Unfortunately we didn't know that this phrase refers to the ladyboy culture of Thailand so when Jake, Caitlin's friend, came over he bought a t-shirt with this slogan printed in huge letters across the front and back! Possibly there was more than one reason why he kept getting whistled at in the street while he was here! At the market we got told how to pick out good vegetables and what each different vegetable was used for which was good. We were also shown how to pick out good eggs, but when Caitlin and I tried this back in Na Kae we ended up buying a bag of eggs that literally broke when you picked them up... possibly more practice is needed!
We were then taken to the man's house (I have unfortunately forgotten his name, so will refer to him was Ben) to begin the course! We got to make 3 dishes individually, 3 dishes together and were shown how to make several small things like sauces and curry pastes and helped make them together as a group. I chose to make Tom Yum (spicy and sour soup, usually with shrimp), Paneng Curry and a stir fried noodle dish on my own, and as a group we made Som Tham (which, being in Isaan I've already made countless times so this was definitely the easiest!), Sticky Rice with Mango and Spring Rolls. We also got shown how to make red and green curry paste - it takes a lot of mashing with a morter and pestel, but you can cheat and use a blender if you want to :P
The Tom Yum wen't really well, usually it's not my favourite dish - it's nice but can sometimes be a bit overpowering, but I really liked the taste of the one that Ben cooked with me. Hopefully I'll be able to re-create it without the help of a Thai cook! I chose to make Paneng curry because Caitlin wanted to do red curry and I know that my mum has recipes for red curry at home already, so thought it wouldbe good to try something different. It was nice, but I prefer the traditional red and green Thai curries. The paneng curry we made was with tofu but it can be made with meat too which I think would be nicer. Noodles aren't as big a food in Thailand as rice is, but noodle dishes are still around. They aren't in Na Kae much because so much rice is grown, so the only noodle dishes you'll find regularly around here are Pad Thai (fried noodles, Thailand's national dish) and noodle soup which has been brought over from Vietnam. You do get the occasional noodle dish though, often at shopping centres like the Big C in Sakhon Nakhon, and they are really nice. The dish I made went quite well, it was nice and simple which is good so I'm thinking it will possible be a good uni food to make!
As I've already mentioned, the Som Tham wasn't anything new to us because we've made it so many times with Pippa and her family, but we were disappointed that Ben decided to use a grater to shred the papaya instead of the traditional "attack with a knife until strips fall off" method that we use here. Admittedly it was a lot faster though!
Sticky Rice and Mango is one of my favourite Thai desserts. A lot of That Desserts are... strange. A lot of them are jelly lumps in condendes milk, and after trying them I must say that I'm not a huge fan. However sweet sticky rice is delicious, and the mangos in Thailand are also delicious, so putting the two together is genius!
Spring Rolls were fun to make, you fry soaked glass noodles and pretty much any sort of shredded vegetable that you like with whatever meat you feel like eating, and then roll it up in a spring roll case. Ben said that usually to seal them egg white is used, but he made a really cool gluestick out of a banana! Much more fun!
All in all I think I did quite well - everything turned out quite well, and unlike Caitlin I didn't manage to mash the chillis in the morter so hard that they bounced back out and went everywhere. I was also able to flip my noodles in the pan without them going everywhere which I was quite proud of. At one point Ben showed us that by adding water to hot oil you make the wok catch fire for a few seconds. After this we prepared out woks for the next dish which I think it was the noodle dish. I obviously wasn't paying attention because I failed to notice that what he was making us do was exactly what he had just done to make the wok catch fire. Everyone else was ready and expecting their wok to erupt in flames. I, however, was not, so I screamed and nearly dropped it, much to everyone else's amusement! Note to self: Pay more attention!
When the course was over we got to eat everything we'd made, and we got a recipe book which had the recipes to every dish in it and lots of information about the ingredients. We got a certificate, too. It was a really enjoyable day and I'm so glad I did it - the whole thing only cost us 900B each which is about 18 pounds! It was meant to a bit more but we had the old leaflet in which the price hadn't been changed, so Ben said that we only needed to pay 900B instead of the new amount, which I think was about 1,300B.

After our few days in Chiang Mai it was time to head back to Na Kae for the start of term. Now, we'd previously been told that the kids started school again on the 6th, but that we didn't need to start until the 15th. We then saw that the 15th is a Sunday, so actually we start on the 16th. We were then told that in fact the 17th is a Buddhist holiday anyway, so we don't need to start teaching until the 18th. After arriving in Na Kae we were then told that actually, we weren't needed until the following week because all the kids were doing questionairs at Na Kae Pitt., and the primary school kids were too busy with start of term activities and classes. So we decided to clean the house, which proved to be rather an epic task.

When we arrived at the house we were faced with a note on the door telling us that at 9pm every night until 6am the following morning a dog, names Pui, would be "released" because of burglars. The note said that she can be aggressive to people she doesn't know, so the best course of action if we meet her just back away slowly saying her name in a calming voice. It then said that an even better course of action is to avoid facing her. Brilliant, another dog to avoid! Once we entered the house we soon discovered that much bigger problems were lurking. Piles on plaster on the floor below freshly nibbled holes in the ceiling told us that the mice who we had lived quite happilly with before this had either multiplied or decided that the house belonged to them. Our nibbled mosquito nests enforced this. We then found a dead mouse on the living room floor and quickly removed him. In the kitchen however, Caitlin had the delight of discovering a huge, dead rat. Again this was quickly removed. We phoned our host to ask for her advice, and got none, so phoned Lucie, our rep, who said that the rodents would probably move out once we moved in, and siggested that in the meantime we "borrow a cat". It took us the best part of three or four days to completely clean the house - this included mopping every floor at least three times, washing everything we owned because the mice/rats had decided that the best place to use as a toiler would be our wardrobe, sweeping everywhere, washing our bedclothes, and finally trying to unblock the shower plug. We couldn't unblock it on our own, and we couldn't clean the bathroom until it was unblocked (in Thailand showers don't have cubicles, the water just goes onto the floor then into a hole), and we didn't want to to buy the scarilly strong looking drain cleaner from Tescos because it had several "toxic" and "danger" labels on it, and the instrustions were entirely in Thai. We asked the woman who has taken on the job of being our main host several times, and she said that she would phone the owner of the house. This went on for a few days until we got tired of having to shower at our neighbors house, so eventually found someone else to help. After having black drain cleaner which fizzed poured down it by the handyman, it seems to be better, and much cleaner which is good. So, the house was finally finished!

Now, back to Pui. After reading the note about this dog which would be on patrol every night, Caitlin and I were expecting some sort of "Hound of the Baskervilles"-esk creature. A doberman or such like. What we were not expecting, and what we got, was a rather small, orange and white collie/spaniel cross. She is quite flightly, and if you make any sudden movements instead of charging at you like the note would suggest, she flees. One time I thought I was in trouble because she came right up to me and started nudging against my leg with her mouth part open. Scared that I was going to get bitten I started to back away, only to have her roll onto her back and grin a doggy grin at me. She does have an annoying habbit of circling your legs making it difficult to walk though. I am very glad that she isn't a giant doberman who wants to eat me, but I must admit the note on the door was slightly over the top!

We are both teaching again now, and I'm actually really enjoying it. I was concerned that after the holidays, and because this term we are teaching more lessons, I would find it much harder but in fact I think the opposite has happened. I've really enjoyed seeing my classes again, and the new year ones are lovely. Some of them have come from the rural primary schools so know very little English, if any, so it's a challenge to teach them as I also have some who have come from the private primary school and so know a fair amount of English.

I can't believe that this year is passing so quickly - I only have about 6 more weeks left in Na Kae before I go travelling for another month, and I've had and am having so many amazing experiences.

Massive good luck wishes to Pippa who landed in Germany yesterday to spend 3 months there. I don't know if Germany know's what's hit it... Unfortunately she'll not be back by the time that we leave, but hopefully we'll get to see her again sometime, either in Thailand or in Germany. Good Luck!

Sarnelli House Orphanage

2011-05-11T04:42:00.000-07:00

Due to the summer holidays in Thailand being so long (over two months in my case), we are meant to do a secondary project of some kind for a week or so during this time. There are lots of different things to choose from in Thailand such as doing a temple meditation course, volunteering at an Elephant or Orangutan sanctuary or volunteering at an Orphanage. As I had the opportunity to learn a lot about HIV and AIDS at school by doing a peer education course with Christian Aid, I decided to volunteer for a week at Sarnelli House Orphanage in Nong Khai - a home for children who have HIV or have been abandoned. I arrived on Tuesday 26th April, and left on Tuesday 3rd May and the time flew by!
The orphanage is run by Father Mike who I met on my second or third day there, and he is brilliant - he is the perfect mix of 'loving' and 'slightly scary' which means that the kids respect him and know that he is always looking out for them. He is extremely realistic too and knows exactly what the orphanage and the kids need all the time. As well as him there is one other full time foreigner, Kate, who helps with looking after the children and day to day running of the orphanage. Then there are the House Mums who are all stars - most of them are from the same family, and are all Thais, who spend their lives looking after the children and making them feel as safe and at home as possible. There are several Houses that make up the orphanage, each for children of different ages as well as two Houses for children without HIV. Each House has several house mothers who cook for the children, look after them when they are sick, play with them and generally love them and give them someone to look up to as their mother. My role was to help the House Mothers in looking after and amusing the children. As soon as I arrived I was greeted and shown around by Marloes, a Dutch volunteer on her fourth visit to the Orphanage, and it wasn't long before I literally had one child on each arm talking so fast I'm surprised a Thai speaker could understand them! I also met Jim who is a frequent volunteer to the Orphanage
The bulk of each day was filled with bringing games or activities to the children, taking them swimming, and generally keeping them occupied and out of trouble! On the Friday some of the kids went to Udon Thani, about an hour away, for a check up with the Doctor and then to the Big C for lunch. They each got some money to spend in Big C (a shopping centre) as a treat after visiting the doctor which they all loved. Some of the girls were also treated to new swimming costumes as they had grown out of their old ones.
The next day there was a trip for some of the kids to the zoo near Kon Kaen. Most of what I've heard about zoos in Thailand hasn't been great, and my experience of the Crocodile Farm in Pattaya was awful so I was a bit wary about what it was going to be like. Thankfully however, it wasn't nearly as bad as I thought. There were no lions or tigers in tiny cages, mainly just deer and a large enclosure which had a few zebras and giraffes in it. There was a sign pointing to "elephants", but no one could find them... I helped lead around an 18 year old blind girl called TaDum who is absolutely brilliant - we had so much fun wandering around, and the other Thai kids were able to tell her what animal it was that they were looking at. Unfortunately, on the way back to the orphanage we had to stop in Nong Khai to take a boy to hospital as he was having a bad reaction to some medication he had been given a few days earlier. Kate stayed with him for a while and talked to the doctors, and thankfully the next day he was getting better.
One thing that I found the kids loved to do was colouring in, and so I now have a handful of Tom and Jerry and Disney Princess colouring in sheets that the kids gave to me. They are very sweet, some of them have even written "love chompoo" at the top! (Chompoo is my Thai name). They also all LOVE to go swimming, and one time when Jim, Marloes, Kate and I took a group of kids swimming, we took Nut, who is blind, and Soi who had difficulty walking. Both of them were extremely shy at first, I think it was their first time trying to swim. After trying to talk to Soi, who was too shy to say anything, I went away for a while and played with some of the other kids. When I returned to Soi, I managed to get her to take my hand and walk to the end of the shallow end using the edge of the pool as support. She loved it, and after walking up and down the shallow end a few times she got onto my back and I took her the whole length of the pool. By this point she was coming more and more out of her shell, and was making me chase Jim around so she could splash him with water! When she was back in the shallow end she was brave enough to walk across the pool without using the side to support her, then even tried swimming on her front. It was brilliant to see her go from being too shy to speak to actually trying to swim on her own and chatting to me. The same pattern was mirrored with Nut, the blind girl, who went around the pool on Kate's back.
As well as me amusing the children they definitely managed to keep me busy. I have learned how to make paper cranes, how to play "Zombie" on the guitar, and how to get a stubborn 4 year old out of a tree. One boy decided it would be a brilliant idea to swap shoes, so I had to find him and convince him that my shoes were rubbish and he really, REALLY wanted his own ones back. Eventually he decided that an even better idea would be for us each to have one of my shoes and one of his shoes. Halfway there. Finally I managed to get my shoe back and safe, but it took a while!
The orphanage is a few km out of Nong Khai town itself, and is in a very rural area. There is Sarnelli House and Nazareth House which are close to the house that volunteers stay in, then there is House of Hope, Jan and Oscar House and St.Patrick's Boys House about two km away. This is where the swimming pool is. Our Lady Of Refuge House for Girls is in Viengkhuk which is about 10km away so I only got to go there once, but all the houses are equally as cared for and looked after. It was brilliant spending time with all the kids and seeing them enjoying themselves - as soon as they see a volunteer approaching it's like they set off some sort of signal and the whole troop comes running to see what game you've brought or just to spend time with you.
Charlene House is where the volunteers stay, and P.Daa works there cooking and cleaning and generally keeping the place in order. She is lovely, and believes that Charlene House is haunted. After a few nights there, I must admit that I believe it is too!
I definitely plan on coming back to Sarnelli for a couple of weeks or so when I come back to Thailand.

Song Kran!!

2011-04-15T23:30:00.000-07:00

Have you ever felt like you love something so much you couldn't possibly love it any more? That's what I felt about the phenominal place of Ban Phon Sanuk until Song Kran happened, and I realised that my love has no limits!! I stayed with Pippa and her family over the festival, and had an immense amount of fun. Song Kran in Nakhon Phanom is celebrated from the 12th to the 15th of April. Before the celebrations began on the 12th I spent the day helping Pippa's parents on the farm by taking black seeds out of fluffy stuff. I did get told the name of it, but it escapes me I'm afraid. The fliffy stuff is white and comes out of quite large, green pods and Pippa's mother uses it to stuff pillows with. Not quite sure what she does with the pillows, there is a huge cupboard full of them in their living room. When we were done and Pippa was out of bed, we headed to another small village a few kilometers away called Ban Phiman. The journey here is absolutely stunning - through all the rice fields and farms and it looks so naturally beautiful. In Ban Phiman there was a festival procession with floats covered in flowers and people dancing going through all the little roads, and ending in a large field where much dancing, soaking and fun was going on. As soon as I arrived I was surrounded by dancing people and had talcum powder smeared all over my face - it seems to be a Thai way of saying "welcome to the party!"! We went to a large tent and watched part of a beauty pageant that was going on, and there I found Nong Print, who is the most adorable little girl in the world. We have met her a few times and she seems to get cuter every time! Of course I got soaked by her. We headed back to Ban Phon Sanuk in the evening, and I got told that the next day the Song Kran party would move to Ban Phon Sanuk, and believe me, it did! The next day we all got up at the lovely time of 5.30am and headed to the temple next to the lake in Ban Phon Sanuk to pray and make merit. Before coming to Thailand the thought of this would have scared me to say the least, but I have to admit I actually really enjoy the merit making ceremonies. The whole village came together and prayed, then gave food to the monks. Outside the temple after this the waterfights began. It was at this point that I realied how happy I was to not be in Chiang Mai - it was the most amazing thing to see everyone in the village having fun together. I can't help thinking that if this sort of festival happened in the UK there would be groups of people who were friends ganging up on th un-popular kids, and it would end up being very clique-y. Here, there wasn't a sniff of that. All the kids in the village were soaking each other and even older people who are very respected, like Pippa's father who is one of the most respected men in the village, were getting attacked by kids and water guns. One of the highlights of this part of the day has got to be one of my students pouring a HUGE bucket of water all over Pippa :P. Because we are in a more rural part of the country where Buddhism plays a larger part of everyday lives, there was as aspect of paying respect to the Buddha in the waterfights, in that people were blessing each other with (very cold) holy water. There was a small ceremony where people poured holy water over a wooden Buddha's head and then into the hands of respected and older people in the village, and from that people were blessing each other. I'd like to pay a special mention to the "coyotes" - three older woman dressed in crazy outfits dancing crazilly pretty much all day! After following a truck with a band in the back through the back roads of the village, we arrived back in Ban Phon Sanuk to begin the car soaking. Two large buckets of water were set up at the side of the road, as was a decking to stand/dance on. Music was blaring loudly, and the rule was if a pickup goes past and the back is full of people, soak them. It was brilliant - pickups were going past constantly, so full of people that the sides were down and people were literally hanging off the edge, and when they saw that we were ready for a waterfight they would jump down fromthe pickup and soak us all or cover us in talcum powder. Again it showed here how considerate people are in this part of Thailand. I've heard a lot about the festival in Chiang Mai and apparently people are knocked off motorbikes and if you go outside, you will get wet. Here if someone went past on a motorbike and didn't want to be soaked for whatever reason, they weren't. By the end of the night Pippa and I were both completely drenched and covered in talcum powder. The next day I got to experience actually being in the back of one of the pickups! Lots of the people from the village were going on a Song Kran Soaking Spree to That Phanom and then to Renu Nakhon, with the pickup so full that 4 people were sitting on the edge hanging their legs off. Despite it being so hot, with the water and the breeze from travelling it was actually quite cold! It was brilliant fun, we were stopping every few minutes to be doused in water and talcum powdered up! When we got back to the village it was the same deal as the night before, but this time with more dancing because Pee Ying came who is absolutely crazy! Every now and then I went to sit and have a drink, but was soon back to throwing waterand dancing! Big thank you to Pippa who took on the job of taking lots of photos as she was deliberately not getting wet - camera wwas definitely much safer with her! Day three of Song Kran saw another early morning as Pippa and I were heading to Bangkok inthe evening and I had to go to Na Kae to get some stuff from the house and she had to pack up everything for another two months of learning German. By 8am I had been to Na Kae, packed up all my stuff and got back! I spent the morning helping (watching) Pippa pack before the watering began. I tried to not get too wet as I had to take my clothes to Bangkok, but despite trying to stay at the side, drink and chat, I still got soaking wet, mainly because I couldn't resist the waterfights once they started! After a few hours of soaking and being soaked I got changed and packed up my wet clothes into a plastic bag to head to Bangkok. Back to Na Kae full time in a month - I can't believe that it's only 4 months until I go home!!

Trapped on Koh Tao!

2011-04-01T06:17:00.000-07:00

When Caitlin's friend, Jake, arrived to visit on Thursday we thought that it would be brilliant to head south and see some of the islands. This plan would have been flawless if Thailand hadn't decided that it would bring freak monsoons! We arrived on Koh Tao on Saturday I think, and planned to spend a few days here snorkelling. It started to rain as soon as we arrived, and literally has not stopped since. After about 48 hours of constant rain, all boats to and from the island were cancelled, and floods were causing havoc all over the south. Soon, almost every road on the island was a river and every building we passed had some sort of damage - knee deep water on the floor, roofs caved in, tables and chairs broken and floating... it really was crazy. It was so bad in the south of the island that an entire resort literally floated away - building and all! Some parts look like a tsunami has hit with trees uprooted and roads and rivers blocked with sand washed in from the sea level rising. It continued to rain until yesterday when it held off for just enough time for people to start getting things back in order, but then today more rain came and the forecast is for even more. When it became clear that boats would be cancelled for a good few days, a navy ship was sent to take tourists off the island. However, due to Thai disorganisation, this didn't go to plan and most tourists were left here, including two friends of ours who have now missed flights! So Caitlin, Jake and I are still stuck here. We are booked on a boat that leaves tomorrow morning, and hopefully that should leave, but if it continues raining I wouldn't be surprised if it doesn't. I must give credit to the Thai people on the island and everywhere in the south - this sort of situation should that Thais are survivors. Everyone is just getting on with it - their house is flooded, so they do whatever they need to do to sort it and deal with it as fast as possible to get back to normal. When floods happened in the UK the chaos was incredible and it went on for weeks, but people here who have literally had enire streets washed away in places like Surathani, are just getting on with doing whatever they have to do. I can't explain how crazy the weather is - I can understand that from the UK it might just seem like a lot of rain, but even in the wet season it never, ever rains like this. In the wet season there is maybe an hour or so a day of torrential rain, then it disappears. This is constant torrential rain, in the hot season! We spoke to a teacher in Na Kae earlier today who said that the temperature there has been between 7 and 11 celcius - it should be nearing 40 by now! Hopefully things will get back to normal soon, but for now the south of Thailand has to just keep surviving.

Still in the South!

2011-03-19T01:34:00.000-07:00

Well our plan was to be further North than this at this point, but we sort of got stuck in Krabi! Intentionally because it was such a lovely place. We ended up visiting both Railay Beach and Ao Nang (Nang Beach), which were both lovely. I preferred Railay because there was much more to do though, such as embarking on a seemingly innocent climb to "The Lagoon". It was not innocent. After climbing/scrambling up quite a steep cliff/gully, with the aid of ropes, to a nice little forest walk. This walk stayed "nice' for about 3 minutes, until we found the next part of the journey. Again with the aid of ropes, we had to go down a cliff. Then another cliff. Then another. I found it extremely difficult as I am not a climber, and at first decided to wait at the Top while Caitiln went down. I sat at the top with another girl who didn't want to go down, but eventually we managed to persuade each other to give it another go and we both made it down! When we got to the Lagoon it was quite pretty, but very muddy with quite spiky rocks to swimming wasn't really an option. There was, however, a very nice shelf with lots of sculptures that people had made out of the mud on it!

We intended to go home the next day, but met up with some Americans called Joe, Tony and Sarah and decided to stay a couple of extra days to do some more exploring. We went to Ao Nang, which was really just a long beach, and Caitlin ventured up the 1237 steps to the "Tiger Temple". No tigers, just a lot of steps!

When we finally decided to leave, we had the dilemma of where to go. We decided to try and get to a small village called Ban DanSingkhon where there is a Burmese Orchid Market every Saturday. We thought that this would be a quite an easy journey - we would go to a town called Surat Thani, from there get another bus to Prachoet Khirikhan and then get a song tao to the village. Unfortunetly, it was not this simple. From Krabi we got a bus to a small place called Ban Na Saan (simple because at this point we weren't 100% sure where we wanted to go, and it was one of the few places that we could find both on the map in Lonely Planet and on the ticket...). Not much here but a train station, so the next morning we decided 100% to make our way to Surat Thani. Note to self: Never go there. Never, ever go there. We arrived and tried to get a bus to Prachoet Khirikhan, but the ticket seller was so obviously trying to scam us it was ridiculus. We managed to get the price down from 450B each to 350B each, but that took a very long time and a lot of bantering backwards and forwards. Usually the banter-haggling is quite fun and can be a laugh, but the man selling the tickets was convinced that because we were "farang" we were rich. He got quite heated and shouted at me that "Thai people pay less because they don't have money, white people are all rich so must pay more". I tried to explain to him that I actually live in Thailand and am a volunteer, but he was having none of it. After finally paying for the ticket I had to make quite a fuss to get my 300B change! The bus was supposedly at 6.10pm, so we wandered around the town for a while. At 6.10pm we headed back to where we'd been todl the bus was, only to be taken in a small song tao to another place. Here we waited until 8pm before out bus finally came!! We tried to find out from the driver what time we would be in Prachoet because the bus went all the way to Bangkok, and he glared at us then waves his hand at us to shoo us away! For the first few hours of the journey the bus kept stopping randomly, and finally we pulled over at the side of the road while one of the drivers fiddled with the engine in the back. I went down and politely asked what was wrong, and again the man glared at me then went out and slammed the door! Thankfully when the other driver came back in he was much nicer and said that it was fixed, and off we went. At about 2am we arrived in Prachoet. Or, actually, we didn't... we were dropped off 2km outside the town, despite the driver asking us where we wanted to be dropped off and agreeing to take us to where ther ewere hotels! Finally after about a 1km walk lined with stray dogs we found a hotel and managed to geta few hours sleep before being up at 7.30am to find a way to the Orchid Market.

The Market was actually lovely, and Caitlin and I both bought Pitcher Plants to see if we can keep them alive. If we start to fail we're going to try and give them to Pippa - she likes plants! After the market and a nap at the hotel, I decided to make my way up to a temple on a hill, with 336 steps leading up to it! I managed it and am very proud that I did, and I saw lots of monkeys on the way! On the way back down, I got a bit trapped by the monkeys though... someone had left a bag of food for them and they were swarming onf of the little shelters on the way up the steps, fighting over the food. I decided to wait it out until they had calmed down instead of risking rabies!

One thing I've noticed pretty much immediately is that there is a huge contrast between the South of Thailand and the Northeast, where I am in Na Kae. The feeling that I got in Surathani was that the locals were almost resentful towards farang. I think that this is probably because being near such a tourist filled area they have quite likely had bad experiences with typical farang party goers, but there seems to be a lack of the community spirit which is obvious in Isaan. I haven't yet seen anyone eating outside and having the whole street join them as can often happn in the villaged around Na Kae. As I have now travelled around Isaan a bit, I can say that it's not just in Na Kae that there is a strong sense of community - it really is all over, and the locals wherever we've been in Isaan have been extremely welcoming and impressed that we both speak Thai, even if they haven't met us previously. It's a shame that this has been lost in more southern parts of the country.

In the South!

2011-03-12T20:34:00.000-08:00

On Monday Caitlin and I set off on a school trip with some of the teachers from NaKaePitthayakhom. We went to possibly the furthest away place that we could without leaving Thailand - Phuket! After being told that the bus would leave the school at 4.30am, Caitlin and I decisded to deliberately not get much sleep beforehand so that we would get on the bus and instantly fall asleep. Unfortunately, this plan failed because a) the bus didn't leave until about 6am and b) as soon as we were on the bus the teachers decided that Thai Karaoke would be a fantastic idea! As I'm sure I have mentioned, Thai Karaoke has two volume settings - off and max. It was at max. Caitlin and I had brought a DVD of "Mamma Mia: The Movie" in the hope that at some point during the 35 hour bus journey we would be able to watch it. After eventually convincing the driver that if he stopped pressing buttons the DVD would load, we got to watch it. Well, we got to watch about half of it before the school's Director came up and said that they were turning it off because they wanted more karaoke, and they couldn't understand it because it was English! I found it a but annoying that in a 35 hour journey they couldn't deal with 2 hours of an English film, but hey ho!

We eventually arrived at Koh Pang Nga and went straight into the days activities! We visited markets galore of course, and went to the "James Bond Island" which is very beautiful. I decided to sit on a big rock and get my photo taken with the island in the background, and ended up dropping my shoe down the side of the rock... got it back though, managed to rope some kids into climbing down to retrieve it for me :) The rest of the day was filled with visiting a lovely temple and another lovely market, then heading on to Phuket to check into the hotel. After eating, we all went to bed. Well, actually, most people went to bed, but Caitlin managed to find Harry Potter and the Order of the Pheonix in English on the TV, so we stayed up to watch that. Then we slept.

The next day started at 6am with a wake-up call from the hotel. Since breakfast wasn't untl 7am, we decided to continue sleeping until 6.40am. This resulted in about 4 missed calls from the head of English, Kru Nid (who is strangely punctual for a Thai...) and another hotel wake up call. We were still down to breakfast at about 7am though! After breakfast, it was time to take a boat to Maya Bay, past Koh Phi Phi for snorkeling! The fish were beautiful, but unfortunetly most of the coral had been killed - I suppose that is typical of a tourist snorkelling spot. We then went back to Koh Phi Phi for lunch, and got to wander round the island a bit.

That evening we had a party in the hotel and of course ots of Thai Karaoke, but the disk was realy old so they didn't have many English songs that we knew. We spent most of the evening playing with the kids (once they got used to the fact that we were "farang' and stopped being scared of us :P) wth balloons and generally acting like a 9 year old! Much fun!

The school eft the following morning, but Caitlin and I stayed on Phuket for a couple of days to explore and ended up staying at Patong Beach. It was really nice, and I loved swimming in the sea!

At the moment we are in Krabi, trying to find a way to either Railay Beach or a temple with monkeys... aah, decisions decisions!

I will try to keep updating when I can, but I doubt I'll be able to upload photos because of the time it takes to upload them. More often than not the only internet I can use will be in an internet cafe.

A crazy few days!!

2011-03-05T04:06:00.000-08:00

How many crazy, spontaneous things can happen in 4 days? Turns out a lot!!

On Monday Caitlin and I headed to That Phanom, about 26km away, to try and find the Laos market which is there once a week. Once we got there we wandered around and found a few small markets selling nice silk tops (beautiful but very expensive!) and food, but no Laos market. That Phanom isn't huge, so we decided to continue wandering around and see where we got to. Eventually we managed to find what we think was the market, but we're still not entirely sure! It was a large covered market selling everything from clothes and toys to food. Being me, I went straight to the brightly coloured, sparkly clothes and quickly saw a really nice black top with a butterfly on it but didn't buy and and I didn't actually want it as it was made of material that would get very warm in the hot season, plus it was black which would make it hotter. While we were looking at it Caitlin heard the market stall owner saying "farang" and "peng" - "farang" means foreign person (i.e. us) and "peng" means expensive - she was telling her co-partner to make the price expensive because we are farang! It is very commonly thought that white people are rich, no matter what, which means that buying things in markets can be extremely frustrating, especially as Caitlin and I have both been in situations where a Thai person in fron t of us has been told that something is one price, then we've been told it's much higher! As most people assume that white people don't speak Thai, it can be quite funny to watch their face when they realise that we understood exactly what they said :P
The next stall we saw had lots of lovely bright Tie Dye t-shirts, and somehow 50B magically transformed into a lovely pink one... not sure how that happened! I did manage to haggle the price down from 60B though!

Tuesday showed us just how unorganised and spontaneous Thai people are! Our plan was to go to Sakhon Nakhon to see a girl called Print - we met her in Ban Phon Sanuk as her family is friends with Pippa. However, we couldn't get hold of her so we decided to go and see other friends, Tae and Tee, in Sakhon. In the morning, at about 10am, Tae phoned and told us that he was extremely sorry but he was busy as he had to do something for university. So we started on a plan B. This was to go to Sakhon Nakhon and from there get a bus down to a city called Kalasin where there is a dinosaur museum and lots of fossils. We phoned Kru Nid about this and she said that she didn't want us to do this because it is very difficult to get a bus to the dinosaur museum from the city. Plan C was then born, and was to go from Sakhon Nakhon to a small village called Ban Panom where there is a National Park and some waterfalls nearby. Kru Nid said that this would be fine and we could get a bus straight from Sakhon to Ban Panom. Brilliant! All that was left to do was to go up to school and see if we could borrow a tent to stay in. At school, we bumped into Kru Nid who asked us where we were going. After saying Ban Panom in several different accents with several different tones, we decided to get the map out and point instead. Her reaction? "Oooh no no no, there will not be any buses" despite telling us earlier it wouldn't be a problem! Caitlin talked to her while I found a tent, and I couldn't keep a straight face when I heard Kru Nid tell Caitlin that instead of going to Ban Panom we should go to Kalasin - the very place she told us earlier that we shouldn't go to!! As Caitlin tried to tell Kru Nid that we wanted to go to Ban Panom I went back to the house to get some water, and when I came back there was a completely different plan! Is this plan D now? Anyway, instead of going to Ban Panom OR Kalasin, Kru Nid said that it would be brilliant to go to Udon Thani because a very famous Monk called Luangta Bua who lived there had died and there was a huge pilgrimage to pay respect to him at Wat Ban That. We decided that this was something we would definitely like to see, so quickly went outside to try and catch the 1pm bus, missed it, so sat around and caught the 1.45 bus instead!

Udon was really great - we arrived at about 6pm and after wandering around for a while decided to splurge and get a Thai massage. I was a little nervous because I had one in Bangkok and it was incredibly painful, but I hoped this one would be better. Unfortunately it was now. I vow to never, ever get one again! I thought my muscles were going to explode! After this we got some food, then tried to see if the temple would still be open this late. A tuk tuk offered to take us for the "cheap" price of 500B, so we declined and found a Backpackers to stay in and get the free bus in the morning. Morning came and after asking the owner of the backpackers we went to the bus station and caught a free minibus up to Wat Ban That. Although the Monk's funeral wasn't until Friday people came from all over to pay respect and we met a lovely woman who had come from Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia. There was a large campsite and a covered tent that seemed like it was reserved for Buddhist Nuns. There were also lots of tents serving food and drinks, so we went to get noodles and also got given some odd, but really nice, crunchy boiled potato things. After wandering around for a while we made our way back to find a ride to Sakhon. We managed to find a tuk tuk, and this time we haggled in Thai and bantered with the driver a bit and got there for about 57B! When he realised that we spoke Thai he stopped trying to charge us ridiculous amounts.

From Udon we headed back to Sakhon to see if we could get hold of Print again, but couldn't, so decided to be spontaneous and jumped on a bus to Kalasin! We arrived at about 10pm and while in the bus station we made a list of some monuments that we wanted to see, and ended up seeing two of them as we walked down the road towards the market! We quickly found out that we couldn't have chosen a better time to go - there was a massive festival! It cost 10B to enter the main part of it, which was a giant market spread over several very long streets selling everything with minigame stalls and fair ground rides.

As we walked around we found a large Toyota tent, some very excited Thai girls and a very gay guy. They came running up to us, surrounded us, and asked us to say their slogan which was "TOYOTA!! LOVE YOU!! CHIP CHIP!!". After saying it they gave us pens that were also torches! We wandered around the market for a while, then at about 11pm headed back to find somewhere to stay.

On the way out of the market we bumped into one of the Toyota girls (the craziest one) called Pedzi who asked us where we were going, then said to come with her to meet her friend. We went to a large monument not far from the market and found the very gay guy, who is called Ton (as is the gay guy in Bangkok who is friends with Pippa), who said that we could stay with him! We decided to go for it, and got taken to a song tao full of the other Toyota girls. They were all going to Ton's house to stay over, and were mega excited that we were coming too! I don't think I've ever met crazier people! The song tao journey was free because I think one of Ton's friends was driving, and took about half an hour. We got to his house and made up lots of beds on the living room floor, then had some food and chatted to everyone in broken Thai. They are all absolutely lovely - Ton, Pedzi, Nitzy, Chip, Nampun, Nong, Eve, Art and Boo Noi are their names. We had planned to go to see the dinosaur museum the following day, then head back to Sakhon and back to Na Kae in the evening, but when we were asked to help them with the Toyota craziness there was no way we were saying no!

The following day was brilliant. We got up at about 10am and headed to a nearby lake in the middle of the ricefields to have a small picnic and a swim which was lovely. Not everyone swam - Caitlin and I did, as did Ton, Pedzi, Boo Noi, Nong and Chip. We then headed back to Ton's house to start hair and make-up! Caitlin and I asked Nampun to do our makeup, and Pedzi did out hair. I got a lovely french braid done across my fringe, which somehow stayed in all night!! No idea how, but Thais are brilliant with hair! Our job at the Toyota tent was to dance crazily and advertise Toyota with big banners. There were dressed up clowns and people in large alien and robot costumes, and a show on in the tent with lots of dancing and magic tricks etc. Every now and then everyone got called into the big tent to do a dance, which we picked up quite well! Also, two young boys were doing break dancing and I must say they are the coolest little guys I've ever met (except Big Boom who lives in Ban Phon Sanuk). We gave out leaflets and balloons and got people to come in and see the show under the tent. There was also a lucky draw to win a motorbike, and to enter you had to complete a list of activities including singing karaoke and having a go on a driving computer game! It was brilliant fun, I loved it when the time came to try and make people say the Toyota slogan ("TOYOTA!! LOVE YOU!! CHIP CHIP!!" which when translated into Thai becomes "TOYOTA!! RAK NA!! CHIP CHIP!!") and give out free pens to people who did it! It was Ton's birthday, so at about 10.30pm we headed out to a discoteque (like a large bar with a stage and people singing and dancing on stage) and got to drink whiskey for the first time in what seems like ages! I ended up being lifted onto the stage to dance with a band at one point, which was mega embarrassing but lots of fun! We headed back to Ton's house at about 2am. Obviously we stayed at Ton's house that night as we didn't think there'd be buses at that time, and we'd been told that the next day a Thai Superstar called Duki was going to be coming to the Toyota tent and we didn't want to miss that. "Morning" the next day was at about 12pm, and the whole afternoon was taken up with hair, false-eyelashes and make-up for Duki. Our bus was at 8pm and Duki was meant to arrive at 7pm, but unfortunately she didn't come in time, so we didn't get to see her. Instead we did the usual dancing and talking to clowns, then headed to the bus station.

We hoped to get to Na Kae from Sakhon that same evening, but we didn't arrive in Sakhon until about 11pm and there were no song taos. On our search for places to stay we met a Thai woman who spoke fluent English who was extremely helpful - she was with her daughter and husband and offered to take us to a hotel! We ended up saying 175B each, which was a little more than we wanted but the hotel was lovely. After getting ready for bed we turned on the TV and found an English kids TV channel! It had a progamme called "Real Kids, Real Adventures" on which was about kids who had been in dangerous situations and saved peoples lives or nearly died etc. - I loved it! We watched it until about 2am, then decided to go to sleep.

We'd been told by the woman who drove us there that in the morning the receptionist would help up get back to the bus station and tell us where to go, but I think we slept a little later than he was expecting because when we went to reception at about 11am he wasn't there. Instead there was a woman who told us to go outside and get a song tao to Na Kae from the side of the road closest to the hotel. No luck. We then went to the other side and tried to get to Na Kae. No luck. After asking her again she came out with us and asked a song tao driver about Na Kae. No luck. Back to the other side of the road again, this time asking about the bus station, and eventually found a song tao heading there! At the bus station, as we headed to find the Na Kae song tao, we bumped into one of our friends from Na Kae called Mama Fine. She is absolutely lovely - she lived and worked in America for years so speaks fluent English and said that she would take us to lunch and then drive us back home!! So we had a lovely lunch in the Big C in Sakhon, then got a lift home with her and her step-daughter.

The rest of today had been filled with sorting out our packing for the holidays - we leave for Phukhet with the school very early on Monday morning (the sort of time that I would still call Sunday night...) and after that we have two months of holiday! I will try to blog when I can about what I am doing, but I doubt I'll be able to post as regularly as I don't know when I'll have access to the internet.

February's Missings!

2011-02-25T07:55:00.000-08:00

Time for this month's missings! I apologise for not writing down what I missed in January, but with the excitement of Christmas and New Year, plus with Butschi arriving and being pre-occupied with parties and socialising I couldn't think of much that I missed! But here is what I've noticed myself missing this month:

Avocados
Tuna
Avocado and Tuna salad
Mayonaise that isn't mega sweet
Noddy
Domino
Butch
Polly
Bitsa
Jasper (I want to meet you properly!!! :3)
Mum
Dad
Ailsa
Alan
Caroline
Kids TV that I can understand
UK chocolate
Public transport that always comes and leaves from the same place!!!

Uhrm.. That's really all I can think of!! What I thought and hoped would happen is definitely happening - every month I miss less and I love more. The way of life here is becoming normal, but somehow it's still so new and exciting.

Bangkok Trip Number Two!

2011-02-21T04:46:00.000-08:00

As Friday 18th February was a holiday and hence we had no teaching to do, Caitlin and I decided to take the opportunity to head down to Bangkok for the weekend and stay with Pippa who is there studying German. We left at about 6pm from Ban Phon Sanuk. The journey down was good, although usually the seats are made of kind of furry material but this time it was leathery which meant that I kept sliding around when I tried to get comfy! The seats did recline a lot though so it was actually quite comfy. Plus, we were given a full packed of Cream-Os (cheap Oreos) each as a snack which was nice! We arrived in Bangkok at about 6am, got ourselves a taxi and phoned Pippa so that she could tell the driver where to go. Caitlin spoke to her on the phone and said that she sounded really sleepy. When we met her, she told us that she'd only been asleep for half an hour before we phoned and was indeed very sleepy! Where we met her happened to be outside the Hotel Malaysia - the same hotel that we all stayed in when we first arrived in August! Bangkok is HUGE, so how is that for coincedence?? I got to go back into the first ever 7/11 I went into, but I couldn't find the pizza flavoured banana chips that they had last time. When we got back to Pippa's we all went back to bed, and despite Pippa saying that she'd be getting up at 9am, we all slept until about 1pm...

When we were awake and felt human again we made our way out to a small coffee shop that Pippa likes and met one of her friends from her German course. His name is Ton, and he is one of the gayest people you will ever meet! He has a boyfriend in Germany, and is your typical gay guy. I had a cheese toastie and a Watermelon Fruit Shake for breakfast. Although, really I suppose it was lunch... After this we went to a lovely park and had a wander round before sitting down on a bench in the shade and helping Pippa and Ton with their German work. Actually, Caitlin helped them as I have never studied German in my life, but I smiled and nodded a lot :) Caitlin says that this is what she did too, but at least she was able to take educated guesses! We then headed back and went to Hotel Malaysia to get some drinks. Here we met Nat. Now, we thought that Ton was the gayest you could get. We were soon proved wrong when Nat came swaying in in tiny blue short shorts and a tank top. He also had a boyfriend in Germany. Both him and Ton are absolutely lovely! They are good friends of Pippa's, but for some reason in Thailand in a lot of places being gay is frowned upon, but being a lesbian is not. When Pippa told us on the phone that her friends were gay she didn't know how to explain it, so said "same same lesbian... but man!". This strange mentality shows at schools, especially in more rural areas, because in younger years there are a lot of ladyboys (a boy who wants to be a girl), but the older years don't. This is because ladyboys are steriotypically seen as "gay", even though they aren't necessarily. When they get older they realise that they can't continue being a ladyboy without people thinking that they are gay, so they become "normal" again. There are some gay couples in older years, but very few.
We then headed back to Pippa's apartment so I could get my camera, meeting up with more of Pippa'ss friends on the way, before heading to a Thai barbecue buffet. I love these things - it is a bucket fire in the middle of the table, and on top there is a pan/pot that looks a bit like a wok, but with a raised middle. Meat goes on the middle bit and soup goes round the outside with vegetables in it. Everyone goes to the buffet and gets plates of raw meat that are piled on the middle of the pan and shared by everyone. There is fruit and Thai desserts too, and for the whole thing it was only 150 baht each which is brilliant!

When we were done eating we headed back to Pee Dee's room, which is near Pippa's but not in the same apartment block. Pippa quickly went to get her laptop and Caitlin and I chatted to Pee Dee and watched Thai TV. When Pippa came back we played on the computer, helped her with German homework and watched a Thai dubbed horror film. Wasn't entirely sure what was happening, but it was entertaining! Nat came in and out a few times, wearing just the short shorts by now... We headed back to Pippa's and went to sleep at about 2am.

On Saturday morning we got up at about 11am and again went to the coffee shop and met Ton. After this we made our way to the bus station to get our tickets back to Na Kae for the next day, stopping off at a huge market on the way! It genuinely was massive, everywhere you went there was somewhere else to go! There was a pets section of the market which I wasn't a huge fan of. They lovely puppies that were actually in really good condition and seemed well looked after, but other places had kittens and rabbits that again looked far too young to be taken from their mums. They also had squirrels and other rodents on leads on the top of their cages for people to look at, but they all looked miserable. The puppies were absolutely adorable though, but don't worry mum, I haven't bought one. Yet... :P We then got in a taxi to the bus station, and got there after having to take a diversion due to a redshirt march. It was a very peaceful march though, and everything was controlled, so don't worry. After getting our bus tickets Pippa took us to her sister's shop, then to her sister's house. Her sister is either called Ngun or Nung, I can never remember how to pronounce it, and has a 6 month old son called Dono. He is so cute, and huge for such a young boy! Unfortunately Ngun/Nung was at work so we didn't get to see her, but hopefully next time we're passing through Bangkok we'll go and visit her.

We spent about an hour or so at Ngun/Nung's house (two of her friends were there) before heading back out. This time, onto a bus for about an hour to the food market. The bus was brilliant, really rickety but great to see so much of Bangkok! We had to change buses half way because the headlights stopped working. The buses in Thailand are so much better value! It cost us 10 Baht each, which is about 20p, and we were on the bus for over an hour. It costs me almost 4 pounds to get from Kirriemuir to Dundee! At the food market we had Som Tham, sticky rice, Chinese noodles and fish before heading back to Pippa's apartment. Pippa talked to Butschi (her German boyfriend) on skype for a while before we went to bed.

On Sunday morning we got up at... well, actually we didn't... we got up at about midday. Caitlin and I went to the coffee shop without Pippa this time because she wanted to be alone for a bit to study, so we left her to it. She joined us after a while. Caitlin and I shared a pancake with butter, syrup and lime. It was amazing! After this we went for a walk, again without Pippa as she still had work to do and wanted to be alone. We went round a couple of food markets and wandered along some small market roads before wiggling our way back to Hotel Malaysia and back to Pippa's apartment at about 3.30pm. We thought that our bus was at 6.30pm so we got the taxi at 4pm to give us time to find the bus, and sometimes it can take a while to get to the station depending on what the traffic is like. We got to the bus station at about 5pm, checked our tickets and realised that the bus didn't go until 7.15pm. Not much to do except wait, so Caitlin and I played 20 questions which was actually quite fun. The bus journey was much like the journey there but the seats were furry this time. Unfortunately I couldn't out my seat back as much because there was a woman with a baby behind me and they had lots of bags which I didn't want to crush them with. We got back to Na Kae bright and early this morning, had about an hour and a half in bed at the house, then went to teach at St. Joseph Na Kae all bright eyed and bushy tailed...!

End of term tests and holiday plans (in an unplanned sense...)

2011-02-15T03:17:00.000-08:00

Last week I was asked to prepare a test for my students to do as it is nearly the end of term. So far I have taught Occupations, Family, Prepositions, Descriptions, Directions and Body Parts (plus Christmas lessons), so I decided to do my test on body parts, prepositions, family and descriptions.

It's probably not the best put together test, but it does it's job and is nice and simple. I thought that it might be too simple for some of my classes (the 3rd years in particular), but so far no one has full marks. The highest has been 19/20, and the lowest has been 0. For the first couple of lessons I found it quite difficult getting the kids to understand what I wanted them to do, so asked one of the Thai English teachers to come in and explain it to them. I find it quite funny that some of the students think that after me and a Thai teacher explaining what to do they can still claim that they don't understand, despite the fact that the rest of the students seem to be able to figure it out! I have had some pupils who sit and do nothing even after several of their classmates have explained to them what to do. This happens quite a lot in some of my lower classes, and unfortunately there is very little that can be done about it. I have been told by the head of English (Kru Nid) that if students are like that then I should just "let them go" which is an example of the "mai pen rai" attitude a lot of people have here. "Mai Pen Rai" translates as "it doesn't matter" and is heard everywhere you go around Thailand. In some ways it is lovely to be in such a laid back community, but it does mean that sometimes things don't get done until last minute and things that should be an issue just aren't. Despite the simplicity of the test, every now and then I get some hilarious answers. One that springs to mind is "she is one arm" and "she has face hair" which I thought were very amusing!

On Sunday Caitlin and I went to That Phanom for the Thai Phanom festival. The biggest festival day is meant to be this Friday, but we are going to be in Bangkok by then (we're going to visit Pippa) plus we've been told by many people that it is so crowded that it's impossible to get anywhere on the Friday, so we decided to go earlier. It was brilliant - basically just an enormous market with Prathat Phanom (the temple) in the middle. I spent far too much money but bought some very pretty things! I got a t-shirt that has a map of Thailand made up of all the province names written in Thai which I love, a pair of shorts, a lovely kaftan, a new watch and a butterfly necklace. To be fair, everything I bought is something that I will wear and that will be useful, so really they're all investements... :P

This week is our last teaching at NaKaePitt. until after the two month holiday. For the next two weeks we are teaching full time at St. Joseph Primary School because due to holidays usually being on a Friday (the day we're meant to teach the primary kids) we have missed a lot of days there. It should be brilliant to be teaching there constantly, the kids are absolutely lovely and because they are younger the lessons often revolve around songs and games! Fun fun fun! After that we are lucky enough to be going to Phukhet on a teacher-trp with some of the teachers at NaKaePitt. I can't wait for it, it'll be so brilliant to spend so much time with the other teachers and get to bond with them. We are then back in Na Kae for two days (14th and 15th) to help out at an English camp at St Joseph, then the holidays begin! As of yet our holiday plan is rather sketchy... I am hoping to be doing a week of volunteering at an orphanage in Nong Khai, but am waiting to hear back from them to find out if they have any week placements. I have a list of places that I want to see, and I think that our plan at the moment is to head south at the start of the holidays towards Bangkok as one of Caitlin's friends is coming over a week into the holidays. I doubt it will be a direct trip to Bangkok, that would be far too boring, so we'll probably wiggle our way southwards, pick up Jake and then continue southwards towards some more islands. After that I suppose the only way to go is north! Seven Steps Waterfall is definitely on the list, as are some caves that a family friend (Ian) recommended. We are hoping to be able to get over to Cambodia at some point to visit Ankhor Wat, but at the moment we don't know if that'll be possible due to the situation on the Thai-Cambodia border in Si Sa Khet. Hopefully it'll have cleared up by then, but all border-crossings have to be okay'ed by Project Trust so it depends on whether or not they think it's safe.

Lucie and Unorganised Temple Visits!

2011-02-05T05:54:00.000-08:00

On Friday of this week Lucie, our Rep, came to visit us in Na Kae. Lucie was a volunteer in Thailand in 1992 and loved it so much that she has now lived here for over 15 years. She is employed by Project Trust to be our in-country Rep so that if any of us have any problems there is someone close at hand to help. Her visit was simply to see how the project was going and to make sure that us and our hosts were happy, which we are!

She arrived at about 12pm at St. Joseph Primary School, where Caitlin and I were working (we work there every Friday). Well, actually, we weren't working because we had arrived bright and early to be told that we didn't actually have any pupils to teach because they were all sitting mid-term tests. This is a regular occurrence here - quite often we won't be told that something has changed or that something special is happening until the day, and there are a lot of things happening! I genuinely cannot remember the last time I taught a full week of normal classes - there is always something exciting going on! Anyway, Lucie arrived with her 3 year old daughter, May, just in time to have lunch at St. Joseph before having a wander round. She had never been to that primary school because we are only the second set of volunteers that this project has had, and the last volunteers worked at a different primary school.

After this we made our way to NaKae Pitt. with Caitlin and I on bicycles and Lucie following us in the car. Lucie had a quick chat with Kru Nid and then came to see our house. As Na Kae Pitt. is our main place of work and Kru Nid has become our main host, at about 2pm we went back there so that Lucie and Kru Nid could talk some more. While they were talking we used the time to play with May. Actually... in all honesty, we used this as an excuse to play with her toys. It was fun!

We then went on to NaKae Sa., the private school that we work at on Saturdays, to give Lucie a look at all the places where we work. As no one was expecting us and we arrived after the school had finished there weren't many people about, but we managed to speak to teacher Gai who is heading the Saturday project that we're involved in which was nice.

At about 4.10pm we headed on to Ban Phon Sanuk so that Lucie could meet Pippa's mum and dad and see where we had made most of our friends. It was great for her to meet them - she speaks fluent Thai so was able to explain who she was and chat to them. At about 5pm Kru Nid phoned us to tell us that there was a party at the house next to the bridge on the way to the school and that we were invited to eat there, so off we went to eat! It was a lovely house, we thought it belonged to one of the teachers, then got told that it belonged to another teacher (Kru Keh), but it turns out it doesn't belong to Kru Keh but we're still not 100% sure who it does belong too...! The food was good as always though.

Lucie and May stayed at the same resort that Nick and Rachel stayed at when they visited, which is about 2km away from our house. Before they went there though they came back to our house to have tea and chat about how the project is going. We found out that Kru Nid wants us to talk to more people and try not to get lost in our own little world as much, so we know what to work on.

On Saturday Caitlin and I were going on a field trip with the NaKaeSa. pupils, so as Lucie had no plans for the day other than make her way back to Ubon her and May came with us. The plan was to visit Prathat Srikhun (one of the 7 pagodas of Nakhon Phanom) and then go to a temple on one of the mountains just outside Na Kae called Wat Dan Sao Khoi where they have miniature versions of all 7 pagodas. Lucie, Caitlin and I arrived at Wat Srikhun along with Gordon, Dave and Martin who are other 'farang' teachers who have been helping with the project. We waited there for about 20 minutes for the minibus (which left before any of us) to arrive. We then got a phonecall from Joe (another 'farang') who told us that the Srikhun trip had been replaced by a trip to 7/11... I'm being serious. They took so long at 7/11 that there was no time left to see the temple. Luckily the temple is about 8 minutes down the road so we can see it anytime, but it would have been good to be able to talk to the kids about it in English while we were there!

We then jumped back in our vehicles (Lucie, Caitlin, May and I in Lucie's car following Martin and Gordon's car) and went on up to Wat Dan Sao Khoi. We arrived about an hour before the kids because they had to walk up to the temple as the road was too steep for the bus. Lucie went home just as the kids were arriving as she had to get back to Ubon in time to get ready to go to a wedding in the evening. The aim was to get the kids to do a mini tour-guide presentation in English as we saw each mini-pagoda, but all of them were too shy. Instead we ended up asking them questions about each pagoda and letting them use their leaflets to answer them in English. Admittedly it probably didn't teach them a huge deal, but it was good to get to see the temple and talk to the kids.Today had been fun, we got up at about 7.30am because we were meant to meet a student called Natacha (nickname Nom-Briou - it means yoghurt!) at 8am at the school to be taken up to Wat Dan Sao Khoi again, this time to watch a mountain biking competition. When we arrived at the school, no one was there, and after 30 minutes when there was still no one there we decided to make our own way up (we remembered the way from yesterday, or rather, Caitlin did). When we got there Natacha apologised profusely, as she had forgotten about us. She is really lovely, she is in 6th year and sings the prayer at morning ceremony. Her English is quite good too.
We spent the day wandering around talking to students and watching people on very fast mountain bikes cycling round the course and up the mountain. Cudos to them, there is no way I could have cycled up there! For lunch however we did have to walk, and it was very steep and very hot. Not exactly my idea of fun, but looking back on it I'm glad I made it to the top. It wasn't very far, but it was actually really hard work! We ate rice, som tham and vegetables, and got free ice cream!! I love the ice cream here - a lot of the stuff you get at the market is made from coconut milk and is amazing.

We got a lift down the mountain with a teacher, and then cycled back to our house to shower. At about 5pm the same teacher who drove us down the mountain drove us to Ban Phon Sauk to see Pippa's parents who we now stay with a couple of times a week. My main job there is watering the plants and looking after Pippa's garden... lets hope it survives!

Oh, on a side note, if I thought that getting the hang of one new language was difficult, it has just got a lot harder! As Pippa is now studying German, and I have never studied German in my life, I am now getting taught how to say lots of things in German, and I get asked questions in German! It is really fun, and I hope asking me questions is helping Pippa to learn, but it is really hard to remember!

Happy Birthday and see you soon, Pippa!!

2011-01-30T04:42:00.000-08:00

January 27th was the birthday of out best friend, Pippa. It was also the last night before she went to Bangkok to study German. In other words, an excuse for yet another party! We arrived at her house at about 4pm after cycling the 8km and found Pippa, Butschi, Pippa's parents and a few guys from the village outside her house preparing food. We jumped right in and started chopping up garlic, nice and long like we were asked, only to have it shredded by Butschi who decided we were doing them for him. We then chopped up more garlic for the man who originally asked for it. After this, it was time to pluck a duck. Actually, two ducks. The wings were tricky, but I think we did okay! We got called "geng" which means skillful or clever which is good!

The guests started arriving at about 6.30pm, and Butschi started his barbeque. It was really quite funny how the party progressed - about 10 women from the village brought food and sat down on mats outside drinking, slowly getting more and more drunk. 4 village children (Pee An and Pee Biew's two sons, Donut and another girl) were on the edge of the mat playing with toy giraffes and cars. The men sat at the decking getting very drunk, and us crazy farang wandered around speaking very broken Thai, singing karaoke and taking photos! The main food was barbequed pork and beef which was really nice - Butschi was trying to do as western a barbeque as he could, and it worked out well! There was also sticky rice and something we think is made from duck which we think is called "rappit", but we're not entirely sure... it is delicious though!

As I've said before, karaoke is huge in Thailand which is actually a really good thing because I am getting much more confident singing in front of people! I don't know if this will last in the UK because the brilliant thing about Thailand is that people really don't care if you're bad, it's all just for fun, whereas in the UK people are slightly more critical... but I've done karaoke so many times now that people know that "my songs" are Because Of You by Kelly Clarkson and When You Say Nothing At All by Ronan Keating. Pippa absolutely loves the film "Notting Hill" so always requests that I sing "When You Say Nothing At All" which is the main song from it. Caitlin and I also sung "I Will Survive" together, pretending to fight with each other as we did so which went down well!
Caitlin and I managed to get some holy rope from a teacher at NaKaePitt. This is thin white rope which people tie aroudn other people's wrists to bless them. You tie a knot in the rope first, and this is meant to hold the blessing. We took this rope to Pippa's and blessed her, Butschi and Pippa's parents. Other people had brought holy rope too, so there was a small blessing ceremony which was really nice. When you get blessed you are meant to wai with the hand that isn't getting the rope, and people around you touch you to get some luck from your blessing. They also wai with the hand which isn't touching you.

It was a really nice evening and everyone really enjoyed themselves. I really love parties like this because they are so laid back and fun without being over the top. Nothing makes me feel like part of the community more than sitting outside with a group of people from the village simply eating, talking, laughing and having fun. It's really nice that although I don't speak a huge amount of Thai, and most people in the village don't speak much English, when we all sit together I can be completely part of what's going on and understand what people are talking about because the village makes an effort to include us, and we make an effort to be included. In the UK a lot of parties are about how sexily you can dress, how drunk you can get and how many times you can pull. Parties here are about being with friends and family and having a great time with each other.
On Friday we arrived at Pippa's house at about 4pm after travelling to her house not in the back of someone's pickup... Her bus left to Bangkok at about 5.45pm, so we spent the time sitting outside with her, Butschi, her parents and a couple of people who were getting the same bus. It was really sad to see her go, but under her orders we weren't allowed to cry :P Her and her parents have said that we are welcome to stay at her house in Ban Phon Sanuk whenever we like, and we have to look after her flowers.

To Pattaya!!

2011-01-24T05:34:00.000-08:00

This Thursday at about 6pm saw Caitlin and I setting off on a 14 hour bus journey. Now, all of the long-distance buses I have been on so far have been quiet, peaceful... almost relaxing! I now realise that this is because they have not been filled with 50 senior kids and a karaoke machine. Thai karaoke machines have two volume settings - off and max. It was loud. Very, very loud... but actually quite fun, and thankfully we had Kru Nid and Kru Keh on our bus, so the karaoke was turned off at about 11pm so we could sleep.

We arrived at our first stop in Pattaya at about 8am - a huge mansion house which I think is the Thai equivelant to a Stately Home. It was very pretty, and really nice to get to look inside but obviously the tour guide spoke in Thai so we understood very little. After a while Caitlin and I managed to sneak outside and found a fountain, which we quickly discovered had steps into it. We then decided that as it had steps, it must be acceptable to swim in, or at least paddle! So we did :) And we got very wet, and got a lot of strange looks from students, but it was worth it!

Unfortunately our next stop was not so fun. We went to a Crocodile Zoo, and if you think that zoos in the UK are bad, then do not ever come to one in Thailand. The first thing we saw was what was called a "Crocodile Show" and consisted of a man putting his head into a supposedly tame crocodile's mouth to show the control he had over it. He also did things like shove his entire arm down the mouth of the croc and put on music which he then forced a baby crocodile to "dance" to. This dancing consisted of him waving the baby croc's arms around.

After wandering away from the show after a few minutes we came to a series of cages, genuinely no bigger than four double beds. Inside each bare cage was a fully grown tiger with nothing more than a water bowl (which was empty). The cats were pacing round in tiny circles looking petrified and emaciated. Nearby were two podiums, each with a large, obviously tranquilised, tiger chained to them to that tourists could have a photo of them with a tiger. Next to the tigers was a bear in a similar situation, only this beast had been trained to do high-fives, shake hands and collect money. He was so terrified of simply the noise of the metal stick his "trainer" was holding that I hate to think how he was actually trained. There were also bears in cages similar to the tigers. I genuinely do not understand how any human could think that this was entertainment in any way. After leaving this area of the zoo we walked past some more enclosures, this time with crocodiles inside. I have never seen so many crocodiles in a cage, you literally could not see the ground. Plus there was not a drop of water in sight for them. I think that what I find the most shocking is the number of tourists I saw smiling and laughing as they walked past these enclosures. The tigers and bears constantly had people paying to take photos with them. I do not understand how any human could find a zoo like this entertaining in any way, and to be honest if you do I hope I do not know you. I apologise for the photos below but I feel I need to show you what I saw.

After this experience we were going to go to the floating market, but one of the buses broke down so we went straight to the accommodation so that our bus could pick up the people from the broken bus. Our accommodation was inside a temple which was really nice - I think it is probably quite common for people to stay there because there are large rooms for sleeping in and a corridor of toilets. It would have been nice to be able to have a wander around and explore around the temple, but there was no time as as soon as we arrived all the students and teachers made their way to the beach. The beach was really lovely - not too crowded and very pretty. Caitlin and I went on a banana boat with four students which was amazing fun, and yes of course we fell off! :D At one point I stupidly flipped the entire boat upside down by trying to get on when no one was at the other side... turns out boats un-balance when you do that! After about 5 minutes of us all trying to recover the boat, the man controlling the speedboat managed to do it by speeding up so the rope tightened and forced it to flip. After this a group of students buried Caitlin and I in sand, making sure to give us large breasts, gentlemen equipment and a stegosaurus spine. Much fun! We got to bed at about 11pm, which was good because Kru Nid decided it would be a good idea to wake us up at 4.30am to tell us that the queue for the showers was going to be long. We got up at 6am, and the queue was not long. We are still unsure why the 4.30am wake up call was necessary...

Sunday morning saw us waiting in the bus for about an hour while one of the boys went to the doctor (he had a stomach upset), then going to the floating market which we were meant to go to on Saturday. It was a really nice market and I am glad that I decided not to take much money or I would have spent far too much! It was quite hard to find your way around though... Thailand is making me realise how awful my sense of direction really is! Caitlin said that she went to a floating market near Mae Sai where they actually went around the market on boats, but this market was walkways and a really cool swing bridge!

After this we went to the open zoo. After my experience at the Crocodile Zoo previously, and not being a fan of zoos in general, I was not at all looking forward to going, but thankfully it turned out to not be as bad as I thought. The animals were still kept in enclosures, so the name "open zoo" was slightly misleading, but the enclosures were much bigger and well equipped than the Crocodile Zoo ones. The tigers here, for instance, had both a large indoor and outdoor section with a waterfall and pool for swimming in. Not exactly what they would have in the wild but at least they are being treated with some care.

The next trip was to the Ancient City, which is a large park filled with miniature statues of famous landmarks and buildings from all over the world. I saw Ankhor Wat, the Leaning Tower of Pizza, the Statue of Liberty, the Pyramids, Easter Island Heads, the Taj Mahal... all without leaving Thailand! After this we went to a bee farm and saw lots of bees. We only stayed for a short time at the bee farm... although I love bees, once you've seen one hive you have really seen them all...
We then went to the aquarium, which I think was my favourite trip of the weekend (aside from the beach). Although it is still animals kept in cages, it was brilliant to see all the different fish and they were all in good condition. It is so long since I have been to an aquarium, and it made me realise that I actually love fish. I am actually thinking that this might lead me to go back to thinking about Biology as a uni degree and then going into Marine Biology... what do you think mum? :P I loved the stingrays, and took about 6 photos trying to get a good picture of one. The bus driver had to come to collect Caitlin and me because we got distracted in the gift shop looking at a "First English Words for Children" book. It had Thai words and sentences in it too, we weren't just looking at the pictures, honest!

We then started to make our way back to Na Kae, stopping about an hour in to look at a food market next to a really beautiful temple. The drive back was much the same as the drive there, except that instead of Karaoke we got to watch a couple of films. One of them was Narnia: The Dawn Treader (in Thai) and the other was a film called "Accidental Death" (also in Thai) which seemed to be a series of people seeing their own, or other peoples ,accidental deaths. It did not make much sense to us, but was nice to watch a film.

Thailand, Parties and Goodbye Non! :(

2011-01-17T21:34:00.000-08:00

The last few days have been brilliant, crazy and fun! Actually, they were really just typical days in Thailand!!

The week started with the entire village of Ban Phon Sanuk laughing at us at I tried to take Caitlin a couple of kilometers up the road to Loung Ang's on the back of my bike (because hers was broken) and promptly lost control leading to Caitlin rolling around on the floor like a turtle. We thought that not many people knew because it happened just outside the actual village, but the next time to saw Pippa we quickly discovered that word had spread...

On Thursday (13th January) Caitlin went to Scout Camp. I was planning on going, but Caitlin kindly gave me her cold (which thankfully is better now) so I decided to give it a miss. Instead, I spent the day planning lessons for NaKaeSa. and St. Joseph, thinking about my Community Report which we have to do for Project Trust and relaxing! I must admit I did feel like a but of a skiver, but I really don't think that spending a day and a night on a hill in a tent then having to get up at 5am to get back in time to teach at St. Joseph was a good idea! I went on a walk up past the school towards one of the temples too - it is really pretty out there, you can get right into the rice fields and there are lots of little tracks into small foresty areas etc. The perfect place for a picnic I think!

Friday was a really good day. We taught at St. Joseph as normal, and met a couple from Canada who are going to be teaching there. They are called Lorna and Eddy, and Eddy is originally from Scotland!! He has a really strong Scottish accent, so I don't feel quite so strange anymore! Actually on the subject of accents, I've lost count of the number of times I've had people not understand me simply because of my accent! The other day I was trying to tell Pippa that there was a scout camp, and I said "camp" about 4 times and started to look it up in the dictionary when she said "OH! You mean "camp"?" with a slight American accent, then told me (jokingly) that Scottish was "mai dee!" (not good!). Maybe I should try putting on a fake English accent, practice my RP for doing drama? :P
Anyway, back to Friday! After St. Joseph Pippa said that she would come and pick us up. We thought she's be coming in her brother's car, but instead her and Butschi turned up on bikes. There was only one bike at our house because we'd only managed to take my un-broken bike back from Ban Phon Sanuk (wheeling it the 2 kilometers), so between the four of us we had three bikes. Pippa assured us that this wouldn't be a problem because she would take me on the back of her bike. We then discovered that we weren't actually going back to Ban Phon Sanuk right away - we were going about 6 km in the other direction to collect rocks. So off we went with me on the back of Pippa's bike which, after a while, gets quite painful. Luckily after about 10 minutes or so we met one of Pippa's "sisters" who we managed to mooch a lift off! After getting to the place Pippa wanted to get rocks from, Caitlin and I watched as Butschi and her tried to explain to each other what kind of rocks they thought they needed, which was extremely funny. Butschi is very "everything has to be organised and we need to have exactly the right things from the right places and I need to know exactly what is happeneing". Pippa is more... laid back about things - basically, he is German and she is Thai, so they make an interesting couple! In the end we didn't get rocks (goodness knows how she thought we'd take them back if we were still on our bikes and we did take some).

We got back to Pippa's, ate som tham and sticky rice (which I love!) and then made our way to Pippa's friend's house (past a cow slaughtering) for a goodbye party for Non, Pippa's brother. He's been staying with her since New Year but has to go back to Bangkok to work. It was great fun - dancing, singing, eating and drinking as usual! It was really sad to have to say goodbye to Non though, he is lovely. We'll no doubt see him again at some point though.

Caitlin and I taught at Na Kae Sa. as usual on Saturday, but it was a really pointless lesson. Throughout the last few weeks the kids have been learning about four topics in English - The Seven Pagodas in Nakhon Phanom, Nakhon Phanom in Brief, That Phanom and the Illuminated Boat Procession. Saturday was meant to be their opportunity to put everything they'd learnt together to create brochures and billboards, in English. Instead, we as teachers wrote out information on the topics and the kids cut then out and stuck them on paper. That was it. Some of the kids didn't even know what they were meant to be creating the brochures on, even after 5 weeks of learning about the topics! In Thailand, unfortunetely, the mentality seems to be"what the box looks like is more important than what's in the box". After teaching Caitlin and I cycled to Pippa's and got taken to what we think was a wedding reception for someone in Kru Nid's family. It was outside in the evening, and although we are in Thailand and you people in the UK reading this won't believe me, it was FREEZING! The party was fun - lots of dancing and singing (not karaoke, actually good people singing! At one point a man got up on stage and Pippa started cheering then said to us "This man is crazy, but sings very good!"). We got back to Pippa's quite early, about 10pm. Since Butschi has come she's been sleeping at much more normal times!

Lots of happenings!

2011-01-12T04:58:00.000-08:00

Okay I'll blame the fact that I haven't blogged in a while on the fact that a) the school computer is mega slow and b) I've been too busy enjoying myself in Thailand! Haha, seriously I should blog more often. This will be my (late) New Years Resolution!

The last week and a bit have been a brilliant start tothe New Year! I can't believe I've in been in Thailand for over 1/3 of the year though, I'm sure time didn't go this fast at school?!

Last Thursday we taught at the after school group that a teacher called Kru Pen has for about an hour and a half, and we decided to do Animals. Our aim was to teach them lots of animals, and then teach them the words to "Animal Fayre" (We went to the animal fayre, the birds and the bees were there...). This plan was going brilliantly - all of our drawings were recognisable as what they were meant to be, and the kids were able to remember them all (although we did realise that we had taught them the word "zoo" when in fact the song was clearly about an animal FAYRE). This continued until we realised that we had to draw a baboon. Unsurprisingly, not one of the kids recognised what we were drawing (we did have suggestions of "human" and "seal" though!), so for a moment we were a little panicked as one of the lines of the song is "the big baboon by the light of the moon". However, we managd to get by and teac them the song without needing to draw a baboon! Instead, we improvised the lyrics to "the big flamingo by the light of the disco" - I'd call it a success! Our next plan was to teach them Old MacDonald had a Zoo. Again, this was going successfully until it was my turn to sing it with them, and I merrily sung out "Old MacDonald had a farm... NO! No, he had a zoo!" thouroughly confusing the children. Thankfully we managed to get them to sing both songs with the correct lyrics by the end!

The next interesting happening has got to the the arrival of Butschi! Butschi is Pippa's German boyfriend (or husband as she calls him). Pippa went down to Bangkok to meet him on Tuesday, and we thougt that she was staying in Bangkok for at least a week, but an excited phone call from her on Friday afternoon informed us that she was at her house with him and wanted us there NOW NOW NOW NOW NOW!! Gotta love her! He is actually very sweet and it's lovely to see them together, they obviously love each other a lot!

Caitlin and I had our first trip to Sakhon Nakhon at the weekend to see Tae who was a pupil at Nakaepitt last year. He was best friends with Ruth and Laura, the volunteers in Na Kae last year, and he is really nice. We met with some of his friends - his roommate Tee and two girls who I think live in the same apartment block. They weer all lovely, and Sakhon is a really nice place. I probably spent too much money - bought shoes (which I actually genuinely needed!), a hat (which I claim I need because Thailand is colder than Scotland :P), a bracelet which I definitely needed, and nail varnish which I needed more than anything... Hm, maybe I should start budgetting. I also found a 7/11 that sold proper slushies! The ones in Na Kae don't do them because they are quite small 7/11s.

Most of my classes so far this week have been fine, but one class was awful. I don't know what got into them, but the boys decided that they don't like Farang so I got told numerous times to "go home", and at the end of the lesson they left a drawing of a burning Scottish flag on the board and a sign saying "look at the picture". The head of English at Nakaepitt knows and has said that they will "talk to them". Hopefully they'll be better next week, or they'll just stop coming to class. It's only a few boys in the class that played up, but unfortunately it means that the rest of the class suffer which is a shame as there are lots of pupils who behave really well and seem to enjoy being there.

Happy New Year!!

2011-01-03T07:45:00.000-08:00

Wow, New Year in Thailand is crazy!! Caitlin and I had planned to spend the weekend on Koh Chang with the rest of the volunteers, but we decided that instead we would stay in Na Kae. Pippa invited all of her family and friends round for a party at her house, and we though that we can have New Year on Koh Chang anytime and it will be pretty much the same, but this is probably the only opportunity to spend it in somewhere like Na Kae.

The Party started on 29th December when Pippa's brother, Non, arrived from Bangkok. It takes us about 12 hours on a bus to reach Bangkok - he made it in his car driving in less than 5. Thai driving is pretty crazy! Anyway, he arrived at about 3pm and we welcomed him with whiskey. It was really nice to sit outside Pippa's house with her family and some of her friends from the village talking (or rather trying to understand what was being said) and enjoying ourselves. After a while, at about 9pm, we moved from Pippa's house to a house down the road where there was a karaoke machine set up and more people from around the village. Caitlin and I had planned to sing a couple of songs, but just before we were meant to sing one of our friends got very upset so I went to make sure she was okay, meaning that Caitlin did it solo!! Very well done, too! After this we went back to Pippa's house for the night.

The party continued until around 2nd January, and involved a lot of meeting fantastic people and having fun. On 30th December we spent the afternoon at Pippa's family's farm. They have a rice field and a large pond for fish farming - it's really beautiful. The evening was spent again with lots of people from around the village, and some more of Pippa's family who arrived from Bangkok.

Of course, the big party day, and night, was 31st December. In the afternoon Pippa took us to her friend's house, quite close to Ban Phon Sanuk. Her friend is married to a Russian man who lives in America, and she speaks really good English. She is also absolutely crazy and lovely! It was great to meet her and her family - She has the most adorable children too - her daughter has just been a model in a Thai parenting magazine, there are a good four or five pages of photos of her in it. We were only meant to stay there for a couple of hours but we ended up staying a lot longer. Both Caitlin and I definitely want to see her again.

We made our way back to Pippa's house a little later than planned,and got there at about 6pm to see Non setting up the karaoke machine. Karaoke is huge in Thailand, a party is not complete without it! It's actually a lot of fun - I don't think I would ever get up and do karaoke in the UK but here no one cares what you sound like, it's all about having fun! There was lots of delicious food and, of course, whiskey. We stayed outside for hours talking, laughing, singing, dancing, eating, drinking and generally having a fantastic time. After a while, Pippa's friend who we had met earlier in the day came with some other people which was fantastic, and we went along the road to another of Pippa's friend's houses! She really is one of these people that just knows everyone! Again there was karaoke, and we sung a few songs. One of our favourites to do now is "I Will Survive" because it is so much fun. Back to Pippa's house, and the party continued until about 5am when we finally all made our way to our beds. It was an absolutely brilliant day/night spent with the most amazing people, and although it was a shame to miss seeing the other volunteers, I am definitely happy that I spent New Year in Na Kae.

The next couple of days were filled again with music, dancing and karaoke. All day and night there was music coming from outside Pippa's house and people sitting on her deck eating and drinking. It was really nice to be able to spend so much time with people. :)

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!

This Month's (slightly late...) Missings!

2011-01-02T02:22:00.000-08:00

Wow! Another month and another list of things I've missed from home.

Mum
Dad
Ailsa
Alan
The Felines
Firehawk!
The Irn Bru Christmas Advert
The Coca Cola Christmas Advert
Baked Potatoes
Macaroni Cheese
Cauliflower in Cheese Sauce
Boiled Eggs in Cheese Sauce
Cheese
Cereal with milk
Making rum truffles with Ailsa
Eating rum truffles
SNOW
Having less hairy arms (the sun does strange things...)
Having no tan lines (tanning is good, but it stops halfway down my arm because of the school dress code)

Christmas In Na Kae!!

2010-12-23T23:38:00.000-08:00

The run up to Christmas here in Na Kae has been... strange, but great! For the past week or so we've had Christmas songs being played in the mornings at school, and lessons this past week have consisted of teaching the kids to sings "We Wish You A Merry Christmas" and making origami Christmas trees (which I must add quickly evolve into origami swords...). The kids at NaKae Pitt. have also been preparing for their Christmas Celebration which was held on 23rd December. As well as performances from groups of students (mainly consisting of funny dances and comedy sketches) there were Christmas Card Making Competitions and Signboard competitions (big Merry Christmas signs) and a quiz which Caitlin and I did. We were meant to do two other activities as well, but they didn't go so well... we planned to do a sort of game where we hold up pictures and words to do with Christmas and get the kids to do an action or sound to go with it (Santa Claus - Ho Ho Ho! etc...), but the kids either didn't understand or didn't want to do it because they just refused to do anything! Eventually Kru Nid told us to just leave it and they went on to do their show, and we didn't do the other activity either (which was going to be the 12 Days Of Christmas). It was still lots of fun and the kids really seemed to enjoy themselves though!

On Christmas Day, after opening some presents from home, we cycled to Pippa's house. She was in That Phanom buying shiny things to decorate with, so we lazed about in her house until she came back. When she did, she came with a huge bag of tinsel (which we promptly attacked her with) and lots of Christmas lights - then we decorated. Except that really Caitlin and I didn't do a huge amount of decorating... this wasn't because we didn't want to or try, but because most of what we did was re-done by Pippa in a much fancier and prettier way! Turns out she is quite the perfectionist! I am proud to say that I wrapped tinsel round a pole, and it stayed the way I had done it :)

In the evening Caitlin and I both spoke to our families which was really nice. I was a bit worried that it would make me feel homesick, but thankfully it didn't at all. It was great to see them all, and really great to see that they haven't changed a bit - still crazy! Best lines of the evening have got to be:

Me: We gave Pippa a present to do with penguins
(holds up penguin slippers to camera)
Mum: Oh! Is that Shaun The Sheep?

and

Dad (coming quickly into the room, classically calm voice): Naomi love, I would stay and talk but things have gone very wrong in the kitchen. The turkey is cooking too fast and nothing else is, and now I have to find a way to mop oil off the floor without it going slippery...

Gotta love crazy families! While we were talking to our families we opened the rest of the presents with Pippa. I got a beautiful butterfly necklace and an awesomely colourful bracelet from Ailsa (my sister) and her boyfriend, along with a crochetted reindeer (made my Ailsa!), a book of duologues from Caitlin's mum, a book from my mum (one of two books, but the first was opened at the house in the morning) and a packet of mini-marshmallows from my mum too!!

After this we went outside and sat underneath the decorations drinking whiskey with people from the village. It was a really nice, quiet Christmas :) It was really nice and relaxing and totally different to what I'm used to at home. I'll definitely remember it forever!

The Unluckyness of Me

2010-12-19T02:03:00.000-08:00

Well the last few days have been interesting to say the least!

Yesterday, after teaching at Na Kae Sa, me and Caitlin got a lift to Pippa's house (which is pretty much our house too now :P). She told us that in the morning before she had been to a temple 4 km away and been told by the Buddha that her future was going to be amazing - she would have happiness and wealth and love, and apparently he knew all about her German boyfriend. She went with three of her friends, and she was the only one who got a good prophecy. After telling us all about it, she asked if we wanted to go and with a little apprehension we agreed. We were both quite nervous because apparently there have been people who have been told that their family will have an accident or something really bad, and it has happened. However, we both tried to push these thoughts to the back of our mind and went for it.

When we got there we had to pay 29 baht, and got given leaves which a Thai woman rubbed on our hands. These were each put on a plate (one plate for me, one for Caitlin) along with a candle and the 29baht, and put in front of the Buddha monk. Caitlin was first, and the monk waved the candle over the leaf and spoke in Thai. Pippa and Mei were there as translators, and Caitlin got a really good prophecy - she got told that her famiy were all well, would do very well in love and that whatever work she did would be good. She was told that she would have a lot of happiness, marry a Thai, which quickly proceeded into "will marry Pippa's brother" and stay in Thailand forever. Pippa and Mei were both really excited because it was such a good prophecy.

Then it was my turn. Now, after the monk had started telling Caitlin's prophecy Pippa and Mei had started squealing saying it was really good. This did not happen with mine - instead they both said "...uuuuh...". I turned round and got told by Pippa that it wasn't good. My prophecy was as follows: I worry all the time, all my friends (Thai people and farang in Thailand and Scotland) hate me and are jealous of me, if I do anything bad everyone will gossip about me, my parents do not understand each other, many Thai men love me but only because they think I'm pretty and white, they don't actually care about me and it's not good (Pippa said basically they want me for sex, not to care for). However, I am to stay in Thailand forever, marry a Thai and will have a very good future.

To "give myself lucky" and have this good future there are things I must do. Today we went back to the temple, and I was given a bucket of holy water to shower in. I also had to drink from it three times - it tasted a bit like flowers. Afterwards I got given another blessing bracelet from the monk, and got given a Buddha. I also got all my old silk ribbons torn off :( But I got to keep them :)

Home with us came a second bucket of holy water and the instructions to shower in it at 4pm, so I did that at Pippa's. I have to do it again tomorrow, so Pippa's going to go to the temple and get me some more holy water. After that I should have all my unlucky removed!

Bangkok Road Trip!!!!

2010-12-08T20:39:00.000-08:00

Lets go on a ROAD TRIP!!

^ This was what went through me and Caitlin's head simultaneously when we found out that a) this Monday was a school holiday and b) my mum's friend Ian was happy to let us stay with him whenever we were in Bangkok. All 18 of us Thailanders have been thinking about going to see Harry Potter as a group, but as me and Caitlin teach on Saturdays we cant go on a normal weekend because we can't miss our Saturday classes. Made sense to "plan" a road trip! Although it wasn't really planned because we decided last Thursday (2nd December) to leave on Saturday (4th December).

Coincidentally Pippa was going to Bangkok to so we all went together. The journey down was brilliant - Pippa is one of those people that knows everyone, so Caitlin, her and I sat in the drivers cabin at the front. It was so much fun, but a bit scary because Thai driving really is quite crazy! None of us got much sleep - Caitlin went to sleep in the main part of the bus at about midnight and I went at about 2am. Pippa didn't sleep at all.

When we arrived in Bangkok we were greeted by Ian who took Pippa to her brother's house and us to his house, where we slept until about 10am. We then headed to the cinema to see about going to see Harry Potter, and booked seats for the 3pm showing at Paragon. With about 3 hours to spare we went to the food court and ate some amazing Japanese food - everything was so good!! The film was brilliant - and the cinema was amazing!! We got huge armchairs and blankets and pillows and a drink before the film! Afterwards we met up with Pippa and her brother Non for a few drinks, and didn't actually get home until about 2am...

The next day we woke up at the early hour of about 2pm... and went to Marks and Spencers to buy Christmas biscuits!! Money well spend I say, we bought loads of lovely things including Ginger Snaps which I am probably too excited about! We then went to Tawang Deng German Farang bar/brewery where there were loads of performances like a cabaret - it was brilliant and the acts were all really good! Definitely like to go there again sometime!

The next day we went across the river on a boat to an Italian restaurant which was really nice, was nice to eat some Indian food! We then went to the bus station and met with Pippa around 5.30pm to get the bus back to Na Kae.

It was a brilliant trip!

I'd like to add that I have never seen so many fish on a bus before. Actually I've never seen any I don't think! You know how on long distance buses there are compartments for big luggage? Well, on our bus there were compartments for luggage, and a compartment dedicated solely to Pippa's fish. She buys and sells beautiful fish, and had loads of huge bags of them!

The coming week at school we have sports day on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday which should be fun, and on Thursday there is a ceremony for sports day at the school and we've been told that we'll have to get up at about 4am to get all dressed up for it!

Nick, Rachel and the Cruelness of Pippa!

2010-11-30T19:07:00.000-08:00

I'm getting better at updating this more regularly, hopefully it will continue!

On Monday 29th November me and Caitlin had our desk officers from Coll visit our project. Nick (main Thailand DO) and Rachel (new Assistant DO). It was great to see Nick again after training, and also great to meet Rachel - she is new at Project Trust and is starting as the assistant desk officer for Thailand.

They arrived at about 11am and came to observe part of our lessons - they watched the first part of Caitlin's lesson and last part of mine, which meant that they got to see some very excitable kids going crazy in my class! I'm doing body parts with them, and for the last bit of the lesson I have them all come outside in groups, pick one person from each group to stand against a wall, and the rest of the group have to stick arrows with body parts written on them pointing at the right place on the person. First team to finish and sit down gets stickers! Unfortunately I don't think the other teachers in the corridor are too pleased to have 30 noisy kids outside, but it's only for a week and my kids seem to enjoy it!

After school we took them both to see our house which they loved (we really do have one of, if not the, best house in Thailand) and then to meet Pippa (more about her later...). We then went to That Phanom. We visited Prathat Phanom, one of the seven pagodas which is beautiful, and then went to the market. This proved to be a mistake as I spend 150 baat on a top, but it is gorgeous and I love love love it and will wear it loads, so really it's an investment...

After this we headed back to our house, dropping Nick and Rachel off at their accommodation on the way. They were staying in a really nice little resort in tiny houses - they were really cute!

Yesterday we took Nick and Rachel to visit St. Josephs Primary School because they wanted to see what the school was like (I don't think Ruth and Laura taught there last year), then at about 10.30am they disappeared off to the next project. It was really good to see them, and they brought chocolate and blu-tack which was a huge bonus!!

Now, onto the cruelness of Pippa. The other night, me and Caitlin went to Lou Ang and Pee Baby's house to help them cook (Lou Ang is the PE teacher and Pee Baby is his wife). We were cooking quite a big meal because a few people were coming over, including Pippa. We phoned her to ask what time she'd be there, and she said she'd be there soon. About half an hour later I got a phone call from her - she said that she wasn't coming because she was going to Bangkok!!! She said that she was on the bus, and that she'd be staying there for 3 months because she missed Non (her brother) so much. At first I thought I misunderstood what she was saying, but when she spoke to Caitlin she said exactly the same. She said that she wanted us to go outside and wave as the bus went past (it goes past Lou Ang's house, it's all one massive, long, straight road). Eventually she convinced us that she was leaving without properly saying goodbye, and that we wouldn't see her for at least 3 months. She is our best friend and sister in Thailand, we both love her to bits, and were both absolutely gutted - I was in tears and Caitlin nearly was, but we pulled ourselves together and went out to wave. As we made our way down the drive, a Pippa was making her way towards us, killing herself laughing.

Turns out that yes, she had been on the Bangkok bus... but she was on it to get a lift to Lou Ang's house!!!!!! She saw an opportunity to have some "lawlen" (banter) and grabbed it with both hands! It was actually hilarious and we were all in stitches about it, but at the time me and Caitlin genuinely thought she was leaving!! She really has a wicked sense of humour :P

After we had eaten we went out to a karaoke bar which was fun, Thai's are obsessed with karaoke!

She is actually going to Bangkok today, but only for 1 day to visit the German Embassy. Hopefully she's feeling okay - we stayed with her last night and she really wasn't feeling well, she had a really bad migraine and sore back. She must have felt pretty bad because when Butschi skyped her she admitted that she was ill and went to bed which is very unlike Pippa!!

This month's missings

2010-11-26T00:07:00.000-08:00

Wow, the time has come for another post of things I've missed! Seriously doesn't feel like a month has passed since the last one.

Here goes!

Family
Friends
Cats
Firehawk
Iced Gems
Ben and Jerry's baked Alaska
Being able to sit without making my legs die
Cheesecake (made by my mother!)
Dogs that don't hunt you down for your meat
MY JEANS FITTING ME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
60kg not being fat
My mum doing things for me :P
Chatting with Ailsa
Moaning at dad for going out in clothes with holes
Moaning at dad for going out in clothes with workshop stains
Moaning at dad for losing things
Moaning at dad for being grumpy
Moaning at dad for trying to disguise some piece of weird food
Moaning at dad for being messy
Moaning at dad for forgetting how to do something on the computer

Wow dad, you've got a lot of getting moaned at to catch up on next year ;)

Ban Pippa!

2010-11-24T08:03:00.000-08:00

Ban Pippa!!!

I think that Caitlin and I should move all our things to Ban Pippa! We are spending another night there - this will be the 5th night in a row, and only 2 days last week (I think) were spent at our own house! Love it!

We were going to just be here for the weekend for Loy Kratong, but we had an emergency trip here on Friday night - there was some drama with the German and chocolate was necessary, but all is good now! After staying for the weekend we just sort of... didn't leave. Either Pippa or her brother (who has been here for the past couple of days) gives us a lift to Nakae in the morning, or we cycle early which is actually quite fun!

Loy Kratong was great fun - while some of the other volunteers had to get up at 3am to get hair and makeup done to be part of a parade, me, Caitlin and Pippa had a lovely lazy day and got up at about 10am. After lazily getting dressed we went to Wat That Phanom at about 12pm for an hour or so, and then back to Ban Pippa. Wat That Phanom is really pretty, it's one of the seven pagodas that represent the seven days of the week.

The winner of the Kratong-making-contest - just for show, it doesn't actually float :(

For the afternoon we went to the lake in the village (the village is called Ban Phon Sanuk - translates as Enjoy/Fun Hill!!) and met with Tomtom and his mum, Khwan and some other people from the village and relaxed. It was really pretty there, and it was great to just chill with everyone with the help of Whisky and Pepsi! We didn't have much though, don't worry!

Khwan next to the lake

Me and Caitlin with Non (Pippa's brother)

In the evening we went back to That Phanom to float our kratong in the Mekong. Me and Caitlin had made stunning kratongs at St. Joseph primary school, but they didn't survive the bike ride to Pippa's too well, and sort of went a bit crispy in the night so we floated the one that Pippa and her brother bought instead. When we got to That Phanom there were huge fireworks going off - they were really beautiful! The firework setting on my camera looks like it could have been quite good, if only I had aimed properly! Instead of lovely big fireworks, I have the wiggly remains of dying ones... We also floated a lantern which was really fun, took a couple of times to get it to keep floating, but we got it going and it disappeared up into the sky nicely! Then it was time to float our (Pippa and Non's) kratong!! We all put a tissue with a small bit of hair and nail clippings wrapped up in it into it before we made our way down to the river. It was quite difficult to get down to the river because it was really steep. I thought I was getting down the slope alright, until Pippa called from behind me becauise she wanted a hand and I realised that although I was getting down quite well, stopping was going to prove difficult. I managed it though and we all got down safely. Getting up was much easier thankfully!

Our Kratong!

We got back to Pippa's at about 11pm-ish and takled to Butschi (Pippa's German) over skype before going to bed.

The last few days have been spent relaxing at Pippa's after school! We should really be planning lessons, but that's much less fun :)

Teaching

2010-11-23T04:05:00.000-08:00

Pippa learning English!
Wow last week seems to have gone in a blur!
Me and Caitlin have been properly teaching for a couple of weeks now and although my classes are not saints by anyone's standards, it hasn't gone badly! Last week I started off with the topic of Occupations, and one of the first things I noticed is how the ability of the kids vary. Each year has 5 or 6 classes which are grouped by ability, but it is general ability, not ability in each class. So my class 3/1 has some kids who are fantastic at English, but others who are awful at it and are fantastic at maths or music instead. It does make teaching the classes more difficult because while some kids are really enthusiastic, others sit at the back and obviously don't care about what you're trying to teach them - it's a challenge to get all the kids to take part in the lesson, but it's not a bad challenge and I'm looking forward to trying different things to try and get them involved and enjoying class.

I've been finding that my Matthayom 3s (age 14 - 15) are often worse behaved than my Matthayom 1s and 2s, and today found out why! Apparently kids can leave school after M3, so a lot of the time the kids who have decided they're going to leave after M3 don't care about school so don't try. M1 and M2 are only just past the cute primary school stage so are more pliable!

I missed quite a lot of my lessons over the last couple of weeks - last week we went into Nakhon Phanom to sort out work permits and visas etc., and missed a while day of lessons (we just had to go to Tescos to get cake mix too of course!), and the week before that on Monday morning we met with some of the teachers from St. Josephs Catholic Primary School where we are going to teach every Friday, on Tuesday morning we went with Pee Fah to the hospital to get a note saying we were healthy enough to get our visa extended (took blood pressure, weight and height - a very thorough check I thought!). On Wednesday we spend the day in Nakhon Phanom getting something with our visa done, then went to the temple (3rd time for me, first for Caitlin!). It was really nice, we spend the day with one of the English teachers from NaKae Pitt. and he bought us a huge lunch and ice cream - it was really sweet of him! However, missing this many lessons last week meant that so far this week it's been a bit of a rush to try and all of my classes at roughly the same point (continuing with occupations this week), but so far I think it's been successful!

We are only teaching the older kids at the primary school - Lucie (our Thailand Rep) phoned us to ask how it was going and when we told her that we were teaching the younger primary kids she said that we should ask to teach only the older ones, because it will be more beneficial to both the children and us. We also felt that we don't know enough Thai to teach the younger kids - we observed some lessons, and the teachers had to use a lot of Thai to explain what they had to do, and it would be extremely difficult to try to control the class while explaining something they don't understand, especially the nursery kids who we were originally going to be teaching! The older kids are absolutely lovely, their English is fantastic though!

We got a rice cooker from someone at school and a huge bag of rice to go with it which is fantastic! Means we don't have to spend as much money on rice, so we can buy more shiny things instead! :) Caitlin was quick to begin the process of destroying it though... We also borrowed an electric pan from the school, and she used the rice cooker's PLASTIC spatula in it... This was what happened:

I'm still unsure how she managed to not notice such a huge amount of spatula melting into her pan, but she's special :)

We were at our friend Pippa's house a couple of nights ago, and decided to have a night where none of us was allowed to use the translator!! The idea was that she would learn more English and we would learn more Thai. It was actually loads of fun, but I have a feeling that Pippa was one of those pupils that played up a lot...!

We asked her to write in English... Her response was "Thai, English SAME SAME!"

We asked her some questions...

It was hilarious!! Not sure how much she learned though...

Dancing and Making Merit!

2010-11-11T21:51:00.000-08:00

Wow Thai people can make anything and everything into a party! Literally!!

Last Saturday Caitlin and I (better grammer mother dearest??? :P) went to stay with Pippa (who actually has many names, Pbaa, Panfah, Panjai, Panun, and Chartirut... hard to keep up!) who lives in the village about 8km away from Na Kae, and found out that there was a celebration at the village that weekend to give merit to the Monks. We thought it was going to be pretty boring and formal, but then we remembered that we're in Thailand! Pippa took us to a party opposite her house where there was karaoke and dancing for hours! It is brilliant fun, and yes, I did sing. But I sang with Caitlin so it wasn't just on my own. We sang Zombie by The Cranberries because it is one of the only English songs that has made its way to Thailand, and it was loads of fun! Hopefully the listeners enjoyed it too...!

We met a lovely little girl called Print who kept dancing with us and was absolutely adorable - despite the fact that she took great pleasure in calling me and Caitlin "Ouan! Ouan! Ouan!" which means "fat" in Thai!

We all had loads of fun, and many many photos were taken (mainly on Caitlin's camera) because someone got hold of her camera and it got passed round all night with people taking photos which was brilliant! Some of the photos are not as flattering as they could be though...

Pippa, me and Caitlin

We got back to Pippa's house at about 11pm, and after chatting and laughing for a while finally went to bed at about midnight, trying to forget about the fact that we had to get up at 6am! We would have had to get up at 4am but we politely declined the offer to get up and cook - we'll cook another time when we're awake enough not to accidentally poison someone...

The next morning at about 6.30am we made our way back to where the party was to give merit to the Monks and then start walking up to the temple (it's just a small one at the back of the lae behind our host mother's house). Well, we thought we'd be walking, but again, we then remembered that we're in Thailand. We danced to the temple instead! And with us came a van with a band playing in the back of it, a huge model horse and a huge model elephant!!

After praying at the temple (and getting 1B coins and sweets thrown at us - it hurts if you're not paying attention!) we went back, and me, Caitlin and Pippa got to ride in the van with the band! Tomtom was playing the tambourine :) It was loads of fun but a bit bumpy, and mega loud because I was right infront of the speaker!

Caitlin, Pippa, Print, me and Pee Ann

It was a really fun weekend, if a little tiring! I want to know what they did with the giant elephant because I want to take it home! Might be a tad difficult to get it on the plane though...

Finally back in Na Kae!

2010-10-31T06:41:00.001-07:00

Wheew! Finally after much fuss I am back in Na Kae with Caitlin!

Everything was sorted and ready for me and Caitlin to come, then there was a big fuss created by Mae Sai and me and Caitlin were going to have to stay there, then there was more fussing and now finally we're back in Na Kae! Hannah and Katie are moving to Lampang instead of Mae Sai, but they both seem happy about it so all is good!

We both start teaching again tomorrow, a bit nervous because now we're into proper lessons - I can't just get them to make name cards, I have to actually teach!! I'm not actually too nervous though, I have my trusty lesson plan and flashcards all made up and ready so hopefully my lessons will follow it!

Me and Caitlin got taken to a canoe race yesterday which was fun, there was a big market there too but neither of us brought money - probably a good thing because if we'd had money we would have bought stuff!

Me met a guy called Tay who was friends with the last two volunteers, and on Saturday we're going off to Sakhon Nakhon to see him and his friends and staying there for the weekend which should be fun, beither of us have been to Sakhon Nakhon (except to wait at the bus station for 2 hours at 4.30am...) so it'll be good to have a look around.

This month's missings

2010-10-26T01:08:00.000-07:00

Wow, 3 posts in 1 day isn't bad!! It's after the 25th of October and even though it seems like only a few days ago that I posted the last one of these, it's time for me to note down everything I've missed this month.

Mum
Dad
Ailsa
Alan
Caroline
Cheese!!!!
Cheesecake
Cake in general (Thai cake is still a bit odd)
Marmite
Bovril
Ice Cream that doesn't cost a fortune
My Wicked stuff (call it a shrine if you will...)
Tormenting Alan with Defying Gravity (still whistling it in the shower are we?)
Fruit Juice
Sandwiches!!!!
Free internet (although that's actually a good thing because it means I don't spend forever online!)
The Polish Healthy Foods Shop I pass on the bus on the way into Dundee (it's a weird thing to miss I know, don't ask me why!)
The smell of new clothes (the clothes at the market don't have the same smell)

Partner Swap!!

2010-10-26T01:05:00.000-07:00

Just a quick update to say that I am swapping partners! I'll be staying in Na Kae, but Hannah is swapping with a girl called Caitlin, and we'll be travelling down in Na Kae in the next couple of days.

Me, Hannah, Caitlin and her partner Katie all felt that we would get on better in our projects with te other person's partner, and after contacting project trust and our reps in Thailand, eventually they agreed and let us swap.

I can't wait to get to Na Kae and show Caitlin around everywhere, and it'll be great introducing her to the crazy people of Na Kae!

Me and Caitlin!

Chiang Mai and trekking!

2010-10-26T00:41:00.000-07:00

Wow, the last three weeks have flown by!!

I can't believe it's already been two months since I left Scotland.

The language course in Chiang Mai was really good, and I feel much more confident speaking to people in Thai now. I still haven't mastered the tones, so I have to be careful that I'm saying the right thing, but I think I'm getting there! On the last day of the course we had a small exam, and everyone passed with really high marks which is good - and we all got a pretty certificate!

As I mentioned in the last blog post, we went on a 2 day trek in the jungle over the second weekend in Chiang Mai, and it was absolutely phenominal!!

On the first day we got picked up at 9am and driven to a small clearing to have lunch (veggie fried rice!), and then we started the trek. After walking for about an hour we came to a huge waterfall which was beautiful. We all got changed into our swimming costumes and started exploring! It was actually quite cold at first, but after you'd been in for a few minuted it didn't feel cold at all. We got to go behind the waterfall, and a few of us - me included - decided to go underneath the waterfall to get out instead of going the easy way. It was so fun, but felt really weird! It was a bit like those waterfalls you get in some swimming pools, but much, much heavier!

Afterwards we walked for another 2 hours to what Rambo (our guide) called the village swimming pool - a big lake-type thing with a rapid slide!! It was so much fun. The slide was literally a lot of rapids, and at first Rambo said it was too dangerous for us to go down but we convinced him otherwise. This was definitely my favourite part of the trek, I've always wanted to swim in a pool like it and the rapid slide was like the one you'd see in a film and think "wow, I wish I could go somewhere like that!".

We then went on to the village that we stayed the night in and had dinner - curried potato, chicken and rice - it was delicious! I hadn't realised how long it was since I'd eaten potato! Donna, you would not survive here! :P Rambo built a campfire and we all sat round it and chatted for a bit, and played some of those "remove 2 matchsticks to create a..." games. Ther were really hard! I think we all went to bed pretty early, but the people in our cabin were kept awake by dogs coming in and out and fighting and howling and sleeping next to us all night! We had mosquito nets so they didn't sleep right next to us, but I woke up with a pretty large dog sleeping slumped against my leg. But there was also a cute little black kitten that made up for it :)

The next day, we went elephant riding, which I think was one of the scariest things I've ever done! About 5 minutes into the trek, a stray dog approached the baby elephant that was tagging along with us, and it's mother (with Hannah Jelley and Clara on it's back) went crazy and tryed to charge at it, shrieking. It's trainer tried to calm it down, but it started to back into the other elephants, and then Clem and Rosie's elephant started to join in by also going crazy. Luckily the elephant me and Caitlin were on was a bit further behind and didn't really seem to understand what was going on. The elephants eventually calmed down but it left everyone a bit shaken. Near the end of the elephant ride, we went down quite a steep hill and realised that our elephant (who we named Tusky) plods very hard. I thought I was going to fall off a number of times! All in all it was fun, but I don't think I'd do it again for a while! We then went to another waterfall pool, which was really fun. Although, me, Chess and Cameron did lose our grip on the wall trying to swim against the current and had to be rescued by a bamboo stick... Rambo is quick as lightening though!

After this, we went canoing which was insane! I was in a boat with Billie and Caitlin, and we hit nearly every tree that was hanging over the water. We found out quite quickly that large spiders like to live in trees, and when you smash in to them you get covered in very confused jumpy spiders...

Finally, we went bamboo ranfting which was loads of fun. It was good to have a guide doing all the work while you sat on a raft and watched the world go by!

It was a fantastic weekend and I have loads of photos to put up, which I will add to this post and to facebook in the next few days, I forgot to bring my card reader to Chiang Mai!

The last week of the language course has been a bit of a blur it's gone so fast, but we did go to a museum on the last day which was nice. Our tour guide was a ladyboy, and her English was flawless! It's unnerves me a but when a Thai person's English is better than mine... :P

Chiang Mai

2010-10-10T01:44:00.001-07:00

So, we're all in Chiang Mai for the Thai language course (minus two of the original 20 who have already gone home :(), and so far it's been great! We've been here for a week (arrived on the 2nd), and we're here until the 23rd.

So far the course is going well, although I think it's fair to say that I'm not the most natural linguist among us! Ah well, any Thai is good Thai, and I'm getting through the lessons alright, it's just remembering what we've learned the days before that's hard!

The markets here are AMAZING, so many times I've had to say to myself "Naomi, do you really NEED a lantern?" to stop myself from buying everything I see... and there are so many, there is a huge Night Bazaar on every night, plus a Saturday Walking Market and a Sunday Walking Market which are both enormous.

It's so great to see everyone again - we all went out on Friday night for Cameron's birthday which was brilliant fun, and we went to Doi Suthep temple today which is absolutely stunning. Unfortunately my camera ran out of battery, so I had to hi-jack Caitlin's. I forgot to take my battery charger with me to Chiang Mai, so I'll have to buy some more somewhere. I've been so organised up until now!

Next weekend we are all going on a 2 day trek which should be brilliant - we get driven about an hour away, and have lunch at a waterfall pool where we get to swim, we do a 3 hour trek, ride elephants, build rafts and do canoeing, plus we spend the night in a hill tribe village. Can't wait!

This Months Missings

2010-09-26T04:55:00.000-07:00

Okay, so I've decided that around the 25th of each month I'm going to blog a list of things I've missed during the month, so I can see how they change throughout the year. Just for fun really!

So in September I have missed:

Mum

Dad

Ailsa

Alan

Noddy, Domino, Polly, Bitsa, Butch, Jasper.

Caroline

Tom and Jerry

Red Dward

Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream (Baked Alaska to be specific!)

Being cold

Cereal

Tea

Playing games/watching TV with Ailsa/Alan

Project Happenings!

2010-09-14T21:22:00.001-07:00

Aah it's been a while since I posted, oops! The internet connection here isn't great so I have to use an internet cafe nearby.

I am now in my project up in Na Kae, and it is beautiful! Everyone is unbelievably nice and friendly, and they have all been really welcoming. My host family are lovely, I stayed with them for the first 2 weeks and now I'm living in a house with just my partner. It's great to be in out own house, but it's a few miles from our host families house so we don't get to see the friends we made there as often as we did. We can still cycle there though! Cycling for 40 minutes uphill in a monsoon is actually quite fun!

The school we're at is really nice, quite small so it's easy to find our way around which is good. It's a secondar school, but I think we'll be teaching at the primary school after the language course in Chiang Mai. The pupils are really cute, but I must say they are a lot cuter when they're outside the classroom. When you have a room of 30 15 year olds, they ain't so cute...!

We've been paraded everywhere, and been to a couple of temples which are beautiful. We also made merit by giving food to the monks in the morning a couple of times, which although it was all in Thai was a really good experience. I'll try to upload some photos to go with posts soon!!

I think on Friday we are judging a spelling bee competition in one of the nearby towns, so that should be interesting.

Off to the language course in a couple of weeks and I'm really looking forward to that, it'll be brilliant to be with all the volunteers again, and of course to learn Thai will be exciting!

Nakaepitthayakhom School!

It Starts!

2010-08-28T03:08:00.001-07:00

So, finally I'm in Thailand!

Been in Bangkok for the past couple of days which has been brilliant, went to the big shopping centre MBK and also to a night market - it took so much strength not to buy everything I saw! Wait for Chiang Mai markets... wait for Chiang Mai markets...

We all leave for our projects today, me and my partner Hannah will be going on a night bus this evening and arriving tomorrow morning. I'm kind of nervous about meeting my hosts, but I've been told that they are lovely and that everyone in the villiage is really friendly and helpful, so it should be alright.

Missing home, but that's normal. When I get to the project and start getting involved in things it'll be fine.

The dates of the language course aren't the same as what we were told on Coll, we actually have about a week with our host family, then we move into our own accomodation and start teaching, then at the start of October we have our language course. Can't wait for it!

GOODBYE SCOTLAND!!

2010-08-24T10:07:00.000-07:00

AAAAAH! My leaving date is finally here!! Tomorrow evening I'll be getting on an aeroplane and saying goodbye to the UK for a year!

I'm all packed, everything is in the right place (everything I've remembered anyway...) and I think I'm all set!

I can't believe it's come to fast, feels like only last week I was on my selection course, but it's really happening and I'm really going!

I'll be updating this when I can with news about how I'm getting on, and hopefully some photos too :)

Thailand here I come!!

Training

2010-08-14T09:31:00.000-07:00

A little late with this one but better late than never I guess!

Had my week of training with Project Trust at the end of July, and enjoyed it immensely! It was a really intense week, and teaching a 20 minute English lesson in front of people who you know already know English is more daunting that I thought it would be, but it actually went really well.

We learned all about Thailand and certain aspects of the culture, what not to do, what to do if you get ill etc. but it was a really fun week as well. I met my partner, who was actually on the same selection course as me, and I'm really looking forward to going now.

Despite it being an incredibly intense week, it was really reassuring to have everyone there and to know that we're all worrying about the same things.

11 DAYS!

New Leaving Date!

2010-07-11T10:57:00.000-07:00

Hmm, turns out I'm leaving on the 25th August not the 22nd! Which actually makes a lot more sense because I arrive on the 26th, and I doubt the flight takes 4 days!

Leaving Date

2010-07-06T15:08:00.000-07:00

Got my leaving date through - I should be going on the 22nd August if all goes to plan! Earlier than expected, but can't wait!

Training course in a couple of weeks.

Placement

2010-05-19T04:23:00.000-07:00

Finally got my placement through from Project Trust!

If all goes well I should be going to a small rural village called "Na Kae" in the North of Thailand (almost in Laos actually!). It's between Nahkon Phanom and Sakon Nakhon, in a region called Isan.

I'll be employed by the local council to work in 2 or 3 schools instead of just 1, and I'll also be able to teach extracurricular activities and to become involved with English camps. I'll be helping fellow teachers with their English too, and to teach in extra conversational classes for adults.

My accommodation will be a wooden house which was once a Thai family home which I'll share with my partner.

All of this sounds fantastic, but there is a chance I won't be going to Thailand at all if the situation there doesn't improve (which it doesn't seem to be doing), and so my placement could be changed to Malaysia, China or Indonesia.

Fantastic News!!

2010-04-26T10:59:00.001-07:00

The Charity Shop ended on Saturday, and it was brilliant! People were so supportive and the shop was kept busy over the whole week, which was great. We raised a total of £765, including the money raised from a raffle that week, and that means that I have now raised all the money I need!!

I'm so happy that I've actually made it to the £4,850 - I remember right at the start thinking that I wouldn't be able to manage even £1,000!

I'll be getting my placement letter within the next couple of weeks hopefully, which will tell me exactly where I'll be staying and what my project is, and I can't wait for that. I'll also be attending my Training Course on the Isle of Coll at the end of July which should be brilliant. I loved being on Coll last October, so now that it's summer it should be even better!! I'll keep this updated with information about my placement and training.

Chariy Shop!

2010-04-19T09:51:00.000-07:00

Well the Charity Shop is open, and so far it's been great!! The site I have at 3 Little Roods is fantastic as loads of people pass it and have a look, and it's been pretty busy. Still got the rest of the week to go, so lets hope it stays like this!

On Friday I was also selling raffle tickets at the co-op, and they are on sale in the charity shop too, which was also successful!

A huge thank you to everyone who has donated items for the charity shop!

Also had a small article in the Courier today with a photo of me covered in soft toys from the shop which was actually quite fun!

Good and Bad News

2010-03-24T09:37:00.001-07:00

Well the bad news is that the Can't Cook, Won't Cook fundraiser had to be cancelled because not enough people bought tickets, which is a shame because I think it could have been a really fun event.

The good news is that after putting leaflets in literally hundreds of newspapers at 5.45am about the charity shop I'm running at the end of April I've already had some donations of jewellery, clothes and books, and a few people have said that they are clearing out cupboards at the moment and will get back to me so that's great! I've also had another donation of £100 from a trust and a phone call from another trust saying that they would like to donate and are discussing it, so everything is looking up!

More good news!!

2010-02-25T12:26:00.000-08:00

I've had an amazing donation of £1,200 from another charitable trust, so a HUGE thank you to them!! It's a fantastic boost and has made a huge difference.

I think that most things are sorted for my Can't Cook, Won't Cook - I've got the teams down, booking confirmed for Northmuir Hall, so just to sell tickets now! I'll be really advertising next week, going to try and get in some publications at the school to get people interested. Time goes by so fast when there's things to do...

Thank you!!

2010-02-11T09:40:00.000-08:00

The interview in the Herald was really good, I was happy with it and the photo wasn't too bad!

I'd like to say a huge thanks to everyone who has donated after reading the article - it really means so much to me to have people's support!

I'm right this minute creating (or trying to) the posters for my Can't Cook, Won't Cook fundraiser, so should have those done pretty soon if the computer will play nicely!

Donation and Interview!

2010-02-01T09:59:00.000-08:00

Got another £100 from a Charitable Trust, thank you! Very grateful. Also, the article for the Kirrie Herald will be in Inspire (the Herald supplement) on Wednesday! It won't just be in the Kirrie Herald, but it'll be in the Forfar Dispatch too along with other newspapers all over the place, so that's great! I'll get a lot of coverage from it. Unfortunately, I haven't seen the photo that they're using, so if it's awful then it's everywhere and there's no hiding from it!! Lets hope it's good!

Still all going well!!

2010-01-20T12:40:00.000-08:00

I had another interview, this time with the Kirrie Herald. They also said that they wanted to do an article in a magazine called Inspire which should be good.

I am in the process of getting teams sorted out for the Can't Cook, Won't Cook - I'm thinking of doing it in a Teachers VS Pupils style, and already a couple of teachers have said that they'd be willing to do it, so that'll be fun!

All going well!

2010-01-15T10:09:00.000-08:00

I am 99% sure that the Can't Cook Won't Cook fundraiser will be on 19th March, I just need to confirm booking Northmuir Hall next week and then it's all good!! I need to think of some clever ways to advertise it, if anyone has any ideas then let me know! naomiweir2010@gmail.com

I have also confirmed that I'll be renting out a shop for a week to try and sell any unwanted items that we have and that we get donated to us, but it won't be in Coupar Angus as there would be no way for us to stay there, and it's too far to travel to and from every day (especially with no car!). The dates for this are April 17th to April 24th, and I'll be advertising it and asking for donations nearer the time!!

My interview with the Courier went well, but unfortunately there was a bit of a mix up. The photographer came but the reporter couldn't, so I did the photos and then had an over-the-phone interview with the reporters co-worker. However, the co-worker didn't know that there were any photos, so it got put in without any photos, meaning that it's pretty hard to notice in the paper! I'll be contacting the Kirrie Herald though and trying to get an article with them. I've also been asked by the reporter for the Courier to let them know if I'm doing any events and they can advertise them in the paper to keep people's interest up.

Courier Interview and Trusts!

2010-01-11T09:44:00.000-08:00

I've got an interview with the Courier tomorrow which should be a great way to get some more publicity! Not really looking forward to the photo though - lets hope they get me on a good day!

I've also had two more positive responses from Charitable Trusts which is fantastic - a huge thanks to them both!

I'm in the process of organising two more events - a "Can't Cook, Won't Cook" fundraiser and a Charity Shop in Coupar Angus (hopefully!), so let's hope they go well!

Got a job!

2009-12-22T10:55:00.000-08:00

Finally got a job to help with fundraising!

Huge thanks!!

2009-12-20T09:42:00.000-08:00

A HUGE thanks to everyone in the family who donated Christmas money to my gap year fund! I really appreciate it, it's such a great help!

Trusts etc!

2009-12-18T13:51:00.000-08:00

After my interview with the charitable trust, they gave a donation of £450!!! I was amazed at how much they gave, and very grateful! That was followedby a further £200 today from another trust!

Also, finished my week and a bit of Guess How Many Sweets In The Jar - made about £70 in total, not as much as I'd hoped for but still good! Combined with the money I already had, I've made my first £1000!! Doesn't seem that long ago that I was worried I might not make my frst £100, so things are definitely looking uuup!

School Craft Fayre

2009-12-06T04:28:00.000-08:00

Sold some jewellery etc. at a school craft fayre yesterday and made £90! Way more than I thought I'd make! Still a long way to go but I'll get there!

Also got an interview with a charitable trust for fundraising in a week, and got a jar of sweets for cost price to do "Guess How Many Sweets In The Jar" at school! Things are looking uuuup!

Woo!

Charities

2009-12-02T10:06:00.000-08:00

First lot of charity letters went out the other day, will be doing more tonight!

Putting the FUN into Fundraising...

2009-11-22T11:03:00.000-08:00

...Or not. So the panic and stress of fundraising really begins! So far the Library is trying to get in the Directory of Grant Making Trusts (and has been trying to get it for about 2 weeks now...). Hopefully it'll come in time for me to actually use it! I have managed to find a good list of Scottish charities, trusts and funds etc. online though, so I've been ploughing through that.

I've also been making Christmas decorations and button bracelets to try and sell at Christmas fairs (or fayres?), and apparently I'm the messyest person ever at doing crafts. Considering my glitter-glue covered jeans, I think my mum has a point.

I'm also making up some quizzes and things to try and sell, and will be looking into getting som prizes donated.

For more information or to donate please visit my justgiving page or drop me an email!

http://www.justgiving.com/NaomiWeir

Thailand, wheeeeeeeee!!

2009-11-11T11:40:00.000-08:00

Unfortunately whatever I had on Coll either mutated, or I got another infection, but I ended up with viral gastroentiritus and have been off school for the past 2 weeks. longest I've ever been off school, but the good news is it means I have a lot of time to think about fundraising because I heard from Project Trust, and I'm going to Thailand!! Well, 95% sure I'm going to Thailand! They give you 3 placements, and it's 95% sure you'll be going to the first but, my second and third were Uganda and Malaysia - all amazing! I'm probably going to be teaching English to schoolchildren in Thailand for the year, and I can't wait. I'll also get the opportunity (and take it) to work at a local orphanage, elephant project or other project during the school holidays. Got lots of fundraising ideas, hopefully going to be arranging a bag-pack at Tesco to raise some money, along with arranging some events at school along with much more, so I'll keep updating this. Even if no on reads it it helps me to keep organised, and I need all the help I can get with that!

For more information or to donate please visit my justgiving page or drop me an email!

http://www.justgiving.com/NaomiWeir

Selections!!

2009-11-11T10:43:00.000-08:00

After sitting staring at a blank screen for 15 minutes unable to think of what to write, I figured I'd best just write something. So I did!

So, got back from a selection course with Project Trust last week, and it was amazing. For those of you who don't know, Project Trust is an educational charity (No. SCO25668), that sends 17 - 19 year olds overseas to work on voluntary placements for their gap year. They're based in the Isle Of Coll, and that's where the selection course was. The course was from Tuesday 27th - Saturday 31st, and the ferry to Coll left Oban at 6.45am on the Tuesday so I spent Monday night at Oban Backpackers. There were loads of other volunteers there, and it was great to meet them all before the course began, and took the opportunity to play many games of Japanese Snap and Twister!

The ferry was awesome, didn't get sea sick so was happy about that. We arrived in Coll at about 10am, and went straight to the Projeect Trust centre. Over the course of the day we were told about the countries that they send people to, and played a building game in our groups involving straws, pins and a huge (larger, and heavier, than you'd think) dictionary. We also had 30 minutes of dance practice for the end-of-week ceilidh - interesting how when you're one of only two Scottish volunteers in the whole selection course, everyone expects you to know the danced. Interesting also how little I know about ceilidh-dancing... At the end of the day we were taken to our hosts house, where we'd be staying for the week. I'll say now a HUGE thank you to Maria-Luce and Yan for your hospitality throughout the week, and to Chess for being an awesome roomie!

Wednesday was much more physical, climbing Ben Hough and then digging lazy beds (and sprinkling them with dreams!), but I realised I'm stronger that I thought. Also got a talk on how to give a lesson, and then got the opportunity to give a lesson to the rest of our group on a topic of our choice. I chose HIV/AIDS, and it went okay. Could have gone better, but I was quite happy with it.

Thursday was an inside day, and we got a lot of talks about fundraising and finance, and we also played a trading game which was a lot of fun. Cutting out shapes and selling them for money against other groups who are trying to buy your equipment really brings out the evil child in you...

Friday was again a physical day, as everyone was split up and went around the villiage to do tasks. I was helping move rocks from a ruin so it could be rebuilt. I should mention that by this point I was starting to feel a bit rubbish - managed to get flu while I was on Coll and it started to get bad on the Friday, but a huge thanks to everyone at PT for being so nice! After the rock lifting we had to give a 10 minute presentation on the Isle of Coll, and I was really happy with how mine went. Everyone in my group gave really good presentations actually, and I really enjoyed them. The rest of the day was filled up with finding out more about the countries and filling out our final placement application, before going back to our hosts.
That evening was the ceilidh, and as I drugged myself up on paracetamol before going. Managed to do most of the dances, but admitedly got a bit lost in some of them...

I felt awful when I got up on Saturday, so the day began with me being taken to see the nurse on the island and was given some antibiotics and stronger paracetamol before going down to the ferry terminal. The trip back was a lot of fun as the medication kicked in, and a group of us went to sit by the sea and then went to a pub while we were in Oban. The train back was interesting - turns out it's hard to ceilidh-dance in a very narrow moving vehicle. Possible though! Got back to my sister's at around 11'ish.

The course was so much fun, and I met so many awesome people!!