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!
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