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
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