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!!
Tuesday, 30 November 2010
Friday, 26 November 2010
This month's missings
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 ;)
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 ;)
Wednesday, 24 November 2010
Ban Pippa!
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 :)
Tuesday, 23 November 2010
Teaching
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!
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...
Thursday, 11 November 2010
Dancing and Making Merit!
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...
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!
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...
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...
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!
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...
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