30 Jun, 2006 - READ THIS ONE AFTER "25 JUN" ENTRY

As we teach Kindergarten, I have been gagging to use "Kinder surprise" as a message title! (Not that there has been one, particularly.)

Anyway...........this week has been rather calmer than the visa fiasco of last week, and Rob is now getting ready to go back to BKK on monday to see if they will grant him a visa.

This week has been about tests, really - either preparing for them or doing them. The horror class are so much better now, and they relish a challenge and love tests! (Strange children.) So I've just given them the English test I made up, and it was in fact enough of a challenge for them! That's good. A highlight was Umay, a littel girl who is so quiet and shy and comes across as not understanding a thing. i knew she would need help, so I spent some time with her, and she did "get it" in the end - tht was a real breakthrough. I don't think I've ever heard her speak, and she was quite vocal when she realised she had the right idea. Namwa and Fluck also needed help, and did "get it" too, and it was a real sense of achievement for all of us!

I'm uploading more photos onto snapfish as I type this, so I'll send you the usual invitation to look at them.

Something I must clear up......you know the chillis-in-porridge thing? Well, I got an email from Honor saying that she couldn't handle eating that.........and then i realised that I didn't tell you - it's a savoury porridge! Just in case you don't fancy chillis with your drizzled honey. No, khao dtom is like a broth. It's made from rice which is cooked and cooked in stock until all the gluten comes out of the rice and it's all gloopy and thick. A bit like a very over-cooked risotto! In fact, a lot like that. It's really tasty. It has a bit of minced pork on top, and plenty fresh coriander and some garlic. You mix it all up in your bowl, and then on the table there's a holder with 4 glass pots - one of white vinegar with chopped mild chillis, 1 of white sugar, 1 of soya beam paste (miso) and the 4th is crushed dried chillis. also a bottle of fish sauce. So you add whatever condiments you want, to make it to your own taste, as is the way with noodle soups and lots of otherwise bland food here. It's very Thai - you get to make it taste just how you like it. Things like Khao dtom and noodle soups are, I always think, the kind of food it's cheap to make, with few ingredients and lots of watering-down to make it go further, as is so necessary when you have a huge number of people to feed. In developing countries, that's essential. So you can make watery soups and so on, and if there are the extra seasonings to make it how your customers want it, then it's not bland and watery.

This afternoon there's been a rock band playing in the school, so that echoed all around the school and made Kinder impossible to deal with! They were so excited and the classroom assisatnt went to watch the band, I think, so I had to try and do it myself - not easy when they don't understand me! Ho hum.

Glad to see that we have next Saturday off work. It's a real wrench having to get up and come to school 6 days a week, and it's really hard to do it on a Saturday morning. We HAVE to be here by 8 a.m., then teach from 8.30-10.10 and 10.30-12.00. So the lessons are 1 hour 40 mins long, rather than the usual 50 minutes, and the students aren't our usual ones. No one wants to be there! Last week us 3 foreign teachers took all of our 3 classes to the "mini-theatre" in school and showed "The Incredibles" on DVD, which went down quite well. They rather liked my "Yellow Bird" song the first week, too. I'm lucky, too, cos all the kids (2 classes) I'm scheduled to teach on Saturdays are in 1 group - not so many of the Year 5&6 must be up for Saturdays. So I teach the first session and then i'm free, which is brilliant! I have time for lesson-planning and suchlike.

Next weekend is a national holiday and we actually get the time off!!!!!!!!!!! That's not that common at our school. They were really stingy when it was the 4-day national holiday for the King's 60th jubilee. We only got 1 day off, the Friday, and were still meant to come in on the Saturday, just for the sake of 3 hours - how often is it that the King celebrates 60 years on the throne? That will probably never happen again in Thailand, and it's a huge deal here because the King is revered like a god - really, he is. So I was surprised that our school didn't close for the 4 days (Friday-Saturday-(Sunday)-Monday). But yes! Next weekend is the Buddhist holiday of Asama Bucha, which I think commemorates the Buddha's first sermon to the people. There's a 2-day holiday, and curiously I think we will be staying in Prachinburi for it! Maybe try out some recipes and potter about a bit.

Any musicians or people who want to record themselves - download a program called AUDACITY. once it's installed on your computer, you can record by plugging a microphone into your computer. It turns your computer into a multi-track recorder, and you can then put what you've recorded onto a CD. It's a free download: http://audacity.sourceforge.net/ is the web address. It's a really fantastic program!

Might be getting a visit tomorrow from a couple who are friends of friends - we've never met them before! they're in Thailand on holiday and our friend Marick put me in touch with them, so I invited them up for the night and they may be coming tomorrow. That's quite exciting!

A few other friends are planning to come to Thailand, too, and some others are thinking about it. You know who you are!

. We went out for dinner last Friday night with Cassie (the Aussie girl we work with), her brother Jared , who’s visiting, and Erica , a girl from Connecticut who spent a year at St. Andrew ’s University in Scotland and played football for Kilmarnock in the Women’s Premier League!!

We had a fine feast: 2 whole fish (red snapper), one deep-fried whole, served with lots of garlic on top, and the other steamed and then steeped in lime juice, raw garlic and chopped chillis……..along with fish cakes with dipping sauce, stir-fried vegetables, chicken with cashews (for non-spicy-eating Erica), steamed rice, and some kind of hot & tangy salad, I should imagine, as Rob and I can’t have dinner without one, not that I can remember what we had. Oh, and a kilo of big barbecued shrimps! So we dined in style, and then the owner turned up. He had spent 4 years in Australia , setting up a restaurant, and spoke great English. He was really welcoming, a lovely host, and when we’d finished our meal he plied us with coffee and an array of fresh fruit. And those mangosteens were one of the things he fed us – from his own fruit garden (orchard?). I’ve always seen them on stalls and never tried them………but now that I have, I’m mortified that I didn’t have any earlier!! They are theeee most delicious thing. They taste to me like rhubarb and custard, heavy on the custard, and they’re all squishy and sensual to eat. The outer shell is about 5mm thick, and quite sturdy, which protects the soft fruit inside. The shell itself is quite bitter, but the fruit….!!! I’m a bit hooked! We also had star fruit, watermelon, pineapple, and chompu (rose apple). Chompu also means “pink” in Thai, fact-finders. It’s shaped like a pear, but has the same kind of skin as a pepper/capsicum/bell pepper, except softer. You cut it into segments – it’s very delicious and light, with the texture of a really crisp apple and the flavour of a Golden Delicious that IS actually delicious (one of the more misleading names – I’ve always found them to be watery and boring!!). Just lovely to bite into, and you can’t help taking another piece!

20 Aug, 2006

I bought some little badges the other day. They have the usual dubious English writing on them, that you see on t-shirts and the like.
one badge says "OVER THE RAINBOWFL", but the winner must surely be "YPOW IN THE TLARK". That means "glow in the dark", as far as i can imagine.

Hmm.

18 Aug, 2006

Hello from Prachinburi.

The last couple of weeks have been quite uneventful. Last weekend was a national holiday, so we had Saturday and Monday off (usually have to work on Sat mornings). We didn't go anywhere for the weekend - just stayed at home and didn't do much. It was nice to relax.

Guess what? we have more tests in about 3 weeks' time. it feels like no time at all since the mid-terms - it's not like primary school was in my day, when you just spent the year learning..........now it's all monitored and recorded and tested. Last week I was given the lovely task of rewriting the reports that Rob had written! We were given report sheets to write for all our students, so we took half each. I was quite long-winded on mine (you may have noticed this tendency in my emails!!!), and rob was really brief.........so I think the parents were given the reports to read and they decided they didn't like the ones Rob had written, so i had to do them all, on top of all the ones I had done myself. Not fun! Oh, and do you know, as regards marking: we're NOT ALLOWED to give marks under 50%!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Not allowed!! How ridiculous! It makes the whole exercise of testing them into a farce. I imagine there are a lot of things tied up in this, but the most significant aspects surely have to be: a) money - the parents are paying a LOT of money for this tuition, and b) saving face. Farsai's mum does not want to let on to Fifa's dad that her daughter might only have scored 37% - it has to look as if their little darlings are doing "well". So why are we bothering marking the tests at all? We may as well give evryone 100%. It was the same at Rob's posh school last year. The marks are meant to reflect the kids' performance, but we are told they are not allowed to. Grr!

Other than school......Rob was hacking away at the encrusted snow inside the freezer compartment in the fridge that we' ve had just over a year, and he busted it - all the refigeration gas spurted out and now we have sent it to be mended. We started Thai lessons properly yesterday! We are losing weight by going to the gym, tho we are eating loads! And it's our holidays soon - my friend Cath is coming over for a couple of weeks so we're planning a girls' holiday in some gorgeous places around Thailand. I can't wait.

28 Jul, 2006

Hello again, everybody.

This week has been a week of tests - following the "pre-tests" of about 4 weeks ago (which were surely tests in themselves??), we have now done the mid-term tests. Too much testing for these little 'uns! It's quite bizarre to me, having never had any significant exams before the age of 15/16.
These mid-terms had to be worth 30 marks, the pre-tests were 20, and there are more pre-tests in 5 weeks: "pre" the END-OF-SEMESTER tests (50 marks). Then the semester 1 final tests will be in September. Then the same next term: pre-test/mid-term/pre-test/final test. They are held in the same regard as real exams would be - and the parents are SO serious about it, it's not so good for the kids at all. they are under all this pressure - especially 1 boy in Year 1, whose name is JJ. He is 6 years old. He is being groomed to be a top swimmer, so that's one area he's pushed to perform in. His dad takes him swimming almost every night. Then on Mondays and Wednesdays from 5 till 6 he has an hour's extra class with either me or Rob......and often goes swimming after that. On Monday I gave his class their tests, and that evening, his dad was asking me how JJ had done in his exam. i had actually marked them, but JJ hadn't finished his, so I was planning to give the ones who hadn't finished an extra hour to complete them. Unbeknownst to JJ's dad, though. I was NOT telling him that JJ hadn't finished it! i bluffed and said that I hadn't marked them. i didn't want MORE pressure on the little lad! And I didn't tell you that the night before the exam, his dad actually rang up to ask what was going to be on the test! (He has Rob's phone number.) This boy is six years old, but he doesn't get much time to be a 6-year-old boy. Plus he gets rather ostracised at school and is always getting complained at. Poor JJ.

So, yes, the week has been rather taken up with tests. Monday and Tuesday we gave our English Program ones, and Wednesday, yesterday and today have been the Thai-language ones. So we've had no lessons for the past 3 days - quite nice and relaxing!

2 friends are coming over tonight, so i'm cooking up a storm for the 4 of us.

12 Jul, 2006

Hi,

Just had a much-needed weekend of 3 days' fun in Bangkok. We got there on Friday around 5.30, then got in a taxi to go to Banglamphu (the backpackers' area). BUT that didn't quite work. The road we were on, after Rob had told the driver which route to take, was absolutely chock-a-block with traffic. We sat in the car for about 20 minutes and moved about 3 feet. We were going nowhere! So we got out and walked for about 15 more minutes, and still the cars had not moved at all on that road. We made our own way to the road where our guest house was, and got in a tuk-tuk - 5 mins later we were there.

The guest house is in the vegetarian restaurant whose cooking class i did. http://www.maykaidee.com We are good friends with the owner and the people who run it, and it's like staying at your auntie's house! the rooms are lovely and clean, the beds are super-comfy, and when you go out of your room you get the great cooking smells wafting up the stairs. (I am such a huge fan of their food!) So it's really a home from home, and i would recommend anyone to stay there.

After a good veggie dinner, we headed out and met up with a good friend, Sian, who we met in the national park last October. She teaches in Bangkok, and is always out of a weekend. She was in "Hippie de Bar", which is retro heaven - full of gaudy decor and 1950s furniture and fittings. So we had a couple of cocktails with her and 2 of her fellow teachers, and when they had gone we set off home. However, we bumped into Mick, a lean, mean harmonica-playing friend of ours, who was going to a party at the next bar along and invited us along.

There were a few people there that we knew and hadn't seen for a while, so the rest of the night vanished and we got out of there at about 5.30 a.m. - the place was still busy! Spent Saturday taking it easy, I had a facial in the forecourt of a disused petrol station!!!!!!!!!!!!!!, and then in the evening we went to Adhere The 13th, the little blues bar that was such a favourite of ours when we lived in the city. Early in the evening, Rob was chatting to some bloke from England who never shut up and I couldn't get a word in, so I went off to Adhere first and got chatting to 2 social workers, one from Brighton and one from Germany, who were in BKK for a conference. Rob turned up, they went off, and we stayed in the bar until about 12, talking to a glamorousThai woman, and then went across the road for some late-night dinner. I had got up at2 p.m. that day, had breakfast about 2.30, then a snack at 5, and didn't want any food until the end of the night, so we went to Soi 2, a legendary lane off the main road, where there are lots of late-night food places where you can sit down and eat and drink some more when the bars have closed. So we did, and got to bed about 2 a.m.

On Sunday, we went downtown to go bowling, which we did, to no great effect - our scores were pretty naff. Did a bit of browsing, too, and in the evening we met up with Sian again and went to Brick Bar, where a ska reggae band plays every Sunday night. That was fab fun, and I was dancing on the seats! (Not quite on the table.) They finished about 1 a.m., and then the football was on, so Rob went off to find somewhere to watch it, and we ladies soon joined him. There were a lot of Italians and French people watching, and they were a bit more subdued than the English hooligans, so we satand watched the whole thing. I was falling asleep by the time 90 minutes were up, but I had to stay for extra time and penalties........got home around 04:30.

On Monday Rob managed to get his passport sorted, so that will be ready on the 25th, thankfully. the plan had been to come back to Prachin when that was done, but no way was i getting in a minibus for 2 or 3 hours, so we ended up staying another night, and came home yesterday. Lesson-planning prevailed, then a DVD, and now we're back at school.

The river is now really high - it flooded last October, and looks fit to do it again, except it's only July this time. The rain last night...........i thought we would never get to sleep! I have never seen or heard rain like it rains here. It started about 10 last night, the thunder began, and it was still pouring like you wouldn't believe at 2 a.m. - same at half past 3, too. Just the weather for hot rice porridge of a morning.........!

Do you know, i teach in bare feet! Everyone does. You have to take off your shoes outside the classroom.

3 Jul, 2006

Hello.

You may remember that we were about to have some visitors - friends of a friend. Well, this weekend has turned out to be rather bizarre! Let me tell you.....

Marick, a friend of ours in Bath, wrote to me on myspace.com and said that his friends, Julia and Mike, were about to come to Thailand on holiday, and said he would put them in touch with me if that was ok. I said yes, and soon after that I got a message from a Julia, saying she was coming to thailand on holiday. So I told her that Marick had told me that she was coming, and said that if she and her boyfriend (Joe, not Mike) wanted to come and visit one weekend and see the real side of Thailand, they were welcome. So that set the cogs in motion, and it was all arrranged that they would come last weekend.

They had changed their plans by the time the weekend came, so they said they couldn't make it, but then last week I got another message saying they'd love to come this weekend instead. So as we were just planning to stay at home this weekend, I told them to come and stay.

It was all set for Saturday - they were going to come to Prachinburi after going to the market in Bangkok. They rang me at 6 p.m., though, and had just got back from the market, and Julia was feeling off-colour, so they asked if they could come the next day (yesterday) instead. I was still really keen to meet them, so said that was fine - Maerick said he'd known them for years, so I was sure they were lovely people. Bought lots of veg and sorted out the spare room for them to stay.

So. yesterday rolled around, and they rang me at 11a.m. to say they were just getting on the bus. The journey usually takes a couple of hours, so around 1p.m. I went to the bus station to meet them. 2 p.m. came and went, no sign of them. Then they called and said they had been sitting on the bus on the middle of nowhere, going nowhere, for an hour, and had then had to get off the bus and change to another one which was leaving in 20 minutes. They were quite bashful, and said that if I'd been messed around too much they would go back to BKK. By this time, though, they were almost here, we'd bought food and were all ready for them, so they got on this last bus and rang 20 mins later to say they were in Prachinburi.........by a 7-11 shop. There are 2 7-11s in town, so Rob went to one and I went to the other........no sign of them. It was pouring with rain, so they must be sheltering somewhere, but we could not find them. They had no phone either, so the only contact was when they rang my mobile every so often with an update. But every call seemed to leave out some piece of information that I only thought to ask them once the call was over! So we had to just wait for them to ring back each time.

It had now been about half an hour of trying to figure out where they could be, and we even thought they'd maybe gone to Petchaburi, Pranburi.........but Joe checked and they were assured they were in Prachinburi. So I was trying to think what to do, and then it dawned on me! I was right outside a little shop that's owned by the parents of Minny, one of our students, and they speak excellent English. Joe was calling me from a Thai bus driver's phone, so I put Minny's dad on the phone, he spoke to the Thai guy and it was established where our visitors, Marick's friends, were. They were a little way out of town, and so they were put in a tuk-tuk and brought to Minny's shop. Phew.

So, we met Julia and Joe, commiserated about the nightmare journey, and took them to our place.

This is the strange part (well, the strangEST.....) - sitting chatting, Rob asked them "So, how do you know Marick?"

And back came the answer........yes, you've guessed it......"WHO'S MARICK?"

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Do you know what had happened? This Julia, who was sitting in our house, was coming to Thailand, and thought she would search for some people in Thailand on myspace.com to ask for any recommendations. I had replied, and invited her to stay, thinking she was Marick's friend Julia, as he had just alerted me that someone of that name was coming to Thailand. So I assumed that the 2 Julias were the same person (geddit?), AND THEY'RE NOT AT ALL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It was just the weirdest moment! (There was the Mike/Joe issue, I admit, but I just thought that maybe Julia was with Mike when Marick last saw them but that she now had a new boyfriend.)

So we all sat there in shock and realised what had happened! We laughed!

And the evening turned out really nicely. We cooked, Joe watched with enthusiasm, and it was a great dinner, with bottles of red wine and lots of guitar-playing and singing from all 4 of us. The night wore on and it got to half past 1.........best go to bed. So Joe and Julia had the spare room, and we said - what a funny, lovely thing to have happened!

So..........thankyou, Marick...........I think?????!!! That ranks among the oddest things ever to have happened to me!

25 Jun, 2006

Hello, all. We had a bit of a week last week. here is an email I sent to a friend on Thursday:

"It's been an annoying couple of days, we've had to go to immigration two days in a row. My work permit is now sorted, but Rob has a different issue with his because he had one at the last school. They cancelled it when he left, as they should, and when we came here he asked our new school if he should go out of Thailand and come back in with a tourist visa instead of the year-long one. (the thing is, if you finish employment and you have a work permit for that job, when it's finished you then have 7 days to get out of the country and then come back in on a tourist visa if you are getting a new job or travelling again.) That would mean that a work permit could be applied for, along with a new 1-year visa, and all would be fine. BUT the nun who runs the school told him: oh no, don't worry, give us your passport and we'll do everything. So we waited, and it turned out it was wrong. So he went to immigration last week and was told he had overstayed his visa since the end of April!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! So he had a fine of 20,000 Baht, which is about 270 quid. He made the school pay it cos it was their fault, and then yesterday we went to a different immig. office with the 4 CHinese teachers, and we were told that 1) they couldn't do Rob's there, it had to be Bangkok, and 2) none of ours could be done either cos they had had a power cut and their computer was out of order. So............we had left town at 7 a.m. and got back at 5 p.m. - a total trip of 10 hours (3 hours travelling there, hours and hours waiting around, and 2.5 hours back) for NOTHING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! And we were going to have to do it all again today.

Then Rob told me it had been decided that we would all of us go to Bangkok today and we had to meet at school at *6* in the morning!!!!!!!!!!!! To avoid the morning traffic into Bangkok. But of course that didn't work, which added an hour and a half onto our outward journey this morning. Got to the counter about 10 a.m., and the woman said she couldn't do the papers there and we had to go to another office, and couldn't do rob's at all till the 3rd of july when the result of his visa applic will be known. She did change her mind, and did our papers after all. We were all done and dusted by about 12, then the others set off back home. I wanted to stay in Bangkok for a bit and relax with a foot massage - didn't want to get straight back in the minibus and go all the way back. So while rob was in the loo I told them we were staying and they should go. Then when he came out of the loo he said he'd been planning to go back in the minibus as well. So that was that - he set off back on the public minibus and I had a massage - and then he rang to say he was on the wrong bus to the wrong town in the wrong direction because the driver had told him it was the right bus.

I just hate sitting around in offices and on minibuses for hours and hours, just for the sake of filling in 2 forms! - that's all i have done in the past 2 days and in 22 hours of trips to immigration - fill in 2 forms."

Rob now has to wait another week until the outcome of his applic is known.

Other than that......school has been pretty uneventful (who am I kidding?), and today I joined the gym. You may remember we were members of one in Bangkok - really expensive to keep our membership and not very motivating. But here - it's a low-tech affair, no pumping music, no showy people, no fanciness. it's much nicer, and they have big French doors that open out onto a spectacular view of green fields and distant mountains. So when i'm doing my torso twists, my incentive for each twist is getting to see that view. There's also a little sauna, which I had all to myself today, and I did a good workout and found before I started that I had lost a bit of weight. I'm sure it's because we're eating so much better than in Bangkok, lots of home cooking, no rice in the evening, and we're also having a good breakfast every day - rice porridge (khao dtom), piping hot like oat porridge, with dried chillis, fish sauce and a bit of sugar added by me to spice it up a bit. We have it at a stall outside school, and it's 10 Baht for a big bowl and sets us up for the next 3 or 4 hours. (10 Baht is about 15p!!!!) So our metabolism is kicked into action first thing in the morning, with the comfort food of khao dtom. I honestly don't know what I will do without it when i leave Thailand! Maybe I'll go on a porridge odyssey of the world.

So I'm now full of adrenalin and endorphins after a good workout and a couple of bowls of noodle soup with plenty dried chillis. Very happy!

NOW READ THE ENTRY MARKED "25 JUNE", A LITTLE WAY UP THE LIST OF ENTRIES.

7 June, 2006

Hi again.

Much better news to report now that the wicked witch of the east is no longer our classroom assistant. I don't think I told you that one day she screwed up a sheet of paper and stuffed it into Namo's mouth. He is 7. She was called Jarn, but I decided she should be called Jarn-tanamo.

No.........we now have a lovely lady who has been working at school for a while as a kindergartne teacher. She's older than Jarn, and has that wonderful motherly presence in the room, which has a great effect on the kids. So guess what? My job is 100% easier! That makes me happy. I can now plan to actually DO stuff, rather than spend all that time trying to control the class. This week's topic for Year 2 has been Birthdays, which has been fun, and I'll be continuing that next week. Year 1 are doing Families. Very interested to see my photo of Granny!

Last Friday rocked! I took my guitar to school and taught all my students my rewritten version of "Yellow Bird". The usual Jamaican accent and dialect of the song are not much use here, so i changed it into a cleverly-disguised prepositions song! And just a really nice song!
YELLOW BIRD, UP HIGH IN A BANANA TREE.......
WHY ARE YOU SO HIGH, HIGH UP IN THE SKY, FAR AWAY FROM ME, IN THE BANANA TREE? PLEASE COME DOWN TO ME, COME DOWN FROM YOUR TREE; WE WILL BE VERY HAPPY

They bloody loved it! i had them all eating out of my hand, and they actually SANG, they didn't make a horrible noise. It was beautiful, and so moving! I'll record them one of these days. Now I suppose i'll have to keep coming up with lots of songs to keep face!

27 May, 2006

Hello, and welcome to the wonderful world of teaching at Marywitthaya School in Prachinburi.

Well......we have just finished week 2. And what a week! I can proudly say that it was much, much better than week 1, so that is great. By Thursday things were pretty bad with the year-2s - but are only 2 weeks into the year, and things are still new. The year 1 students are really warming up now, but I think they're also feeling the burn of "real" school life! They absolutely LOVED the topic this week, though - I've been teaching them about classroom commands (sit down, make a line), and I found an ideas in a book: robots. So we sang a robot song that they loved, and I gave them all a paper plate, with a slot to see out of, to make into a robot mask. They really enjoyed that, and there were some beautiful ones! It was a great topic that lasted me 3 or 4 lessons, and they were desperate for Friday to come so they could wear their masks.

Hope you enjoyed the photos! Those teddy bears were Winnie The Pooh! -as drawn by my year 1 students.

We got bikes the other day - yet more equipment supplied by the school! They have kitted us out good and proper, with our house and its contents, our cooking stuff, my uniform (I wish the 80's fashion revival hadn't reached Prachinburi........) - it's brilliant. And Rob has been given the confidential information that his bonus from his last school is waiting for him. A month's wages! Sam, who he used to work with, rang last night and told him. No WAY would the school have told him. So that's fantastic! And yeah - a bike ride is in order tomorrow, along with a massage at tha hospital, where it's meant to be really good and half the price of one in Bangkok.

As well as the week's school time, Rob and I are both doing extra classes after school - 1:1 with some of the kids from year 1. So that's extra cash, and not very demanding. We have some CD-Roms at school and last week I used one for one of my after-school boys. He got right into it and it worked really well. So they're a good tool.

So are the campfire songs that I learnt over the years at diabetic camp. I'm finding Auntie Dot's amazing performances to be an endless inspiration, and the kids adore the songs! "Boom Chick-a-boom" and "Tongo" currently top the charts. I'm going to start nominating some of the kids to lead the songs!

In a couple of weeks' time we have a lovely 4-day weekend! It's the King's jubilee - 60 (count 'em!!) years on the throne! So we shall be heading somewhere nice for that. And then the floodgates will be open for all the many national holidays of the school year. I think it's Wai Kroo (Teacher Worship Day) next, as it is titled on our school calendar. Teacher Worship!

Still mayhem with the year 2 kids, but I have to say that it was better this week. I did read them the riot act on Thursday morning, as it was unbearable in that classroom, and they seemed to take notice..........but when I taught them again that afternoon it had not really made any difference. It's a hard slog trying to find out what will work. And the classroom assistant has got to go. She appears to actually hate children (though she's about 28 and looks all dainty and nice) and has been doing some things that I really won't have in my classroom. they make no bones about hitting the children in Thailand, and it's really shocking! So hopefully they will get rid of her and hire someone good.

I had a contest to see who could guess how old my granny is (97 this August!), which was funny.........don't tell Granny........

It's not all bad with those year 2s. They are actually ok sometimes. Krystal, who taught them last year, could apparently never control them. I want to direct their energy into something, because they have buckets of it! Don't want to dismiss them as a complete nightmare. Well, not yet. I do have a Superstars system going now, with a book to stick stickers in for good behaviour, etc., and many of them do actually take notice of that, so maybe it will eventually filter through into their collective consciousness! If they were like that last year, though, then 1) at least it's not ME! and 2) it will take more to try and reverse it. The 1st years aren't like that, so they won't be going into the next year as wild animals!

La di da.........such is life. It's all exciting and good, despite the setbacks. I'm finding I'm very tired but really content here, what with the good food I'm cooking, the fresh air, the lack of traffic, the local shops, the fact we can walk or bike to school in no time at all, the community feeling.........just my cup of tea!

19 May, 2006

Hello, vicarious travellers,

Well........we did it - we've completed our first week at our new school. It's a challenge! We came in at 07:22 on Monday, and at 10 past 9 our first lessons began. We're only teaching 1 class of year 1 and 1 class of year 2 per day, and 1 of Kinder 3, but we have to be here at school from half seven till half four every day! So that has been quite something - 9 hours in school, of which only 3 or 4 are lessons. We have plenty time to do planning, but thast seems to just go, so we're in the general habit at the moment of getting up at 6.30, getting to school for 7.30, start lessons at 9.10, lunch at 11, finish lessons at 3.30 at the latest, then we have to stay for another hour. After that we do a bit of internet or something, then have dinner, then start planning again, which goes on until after 11 most nights. Then to bed and up again! Don't tell me the whole year will be like this! please!!
I'm sure it won't be, once we get into the swing of it all and can better gauge what is required.
And also.........once we can work out how to control those bloody year 2 kids. They are absolutely horrendous!!! I mean that seriously. Today I FINALLY got them to play the game I was trying to do with them..........but they WILL NOT shut up and listen to anything, they have no respect, they are pretty unconcerned whether or not I want them to do anything. They are, what, 6 years old???????? Yet it seems that they have this class identity of being uncontrollable. They seem to believe they rule the roost - the Thai teachers have no lasting control over them, which is not much use to me - I generally have Jarn, a Thai teaching assistant, in the room too, when she's actually there, but she holds little sway, and anyway, none of any of it makes the least diffrerence. there has hardly been a lesson this week when they have paid any attention at all, and I've used all my usual strategies for classroom control. But they literally do not care, on the whole, so anything I do just seems pointless and I feel unable to do anything about it. It's very frustrating indeed.
As i said, I did manage to get them to play the game today........but that was this afternoon. The full story is, I had them this morning as well, and tried to get the game going, and it WAS a good game, but they would not stop talking and fooling around, so I spent the whole lesson trying to get them to be quiet and listen to how you played the game. To no avail. Same yesterday - I spent 55 minutes just telling them to be quiet and listen. Otherwise I cannot teach them a damn thing, and it's only 4 days into the year.
So this afternoon I did get them to do the game, and it worked, although it took 45 minutes to get to the point where we could start!
the year 1 kids are better, and don't seem to have the same defiant, we-as-a-class-do-not-care attitude. So it's a bit easier with them, and they're a bit easier to deal with. In those classes I have another assistant, Sook, and she has a good relationship with the students. Although this morning those kids were giving Rob merry hell, and when he spoke to Sook about it she said that if they're being naughty, they would like to sing a song, which wasn't really the kind of proactive solution for controlling those stuadents that we had in mind! Something has to be done - we're tearing our hair out most of the time. They're actually great kids, but they will not pay attention or stop being noisy. Hmmmmmmmmm. Any teachers out there - ideas, please!

I must say, though, on the whole I'm feeling ok about this year to come. Teaching this age group is so different to last year, and it's making me use my brain in a different way - this job requires different things to teaching teenagers. We shall see. It's Friday now, so that feels good to know that we don't have to get up at dawn tomorrow - some beers are in order! It's good to be working with Rob and having that support - we're teaching the same kids, but I'm doing social Studies and English - 19 lessons a week, while Rob is teaching Science and Maths and Health, 20 lessons.

1 May, 2006

Hi!
Well, at long last, here we are in Prachinburi, all moved in for another year's teaching. We thought we were going to be living in the house we stayed at when we first ever visited the school. I came up to Prachin last weekend and was told we could move in there, so off I went back to BKK with glad tidings for Rob that that would be our house. We were really happy about that!
Anyway, events took an interesting turn when, on Wednesday, I rang Sister Lamyong, who runs the school, and she told me that she'd found us a different house, as the first one needed work doing on the roof and it would be a while before that could happen. The one she now had in mind was a brand new build, owned by the brother of one of the teachers, near the school - it sounded exciting and intriguing. So on Saturday, with hangovers, in about 35 degrees of hot sun, we met Sister and a couple of people from the school, and they came to our condo with the school minivan. it was a bit of a last-minute rush towards the end, getting the last bits and pieces, but pretty much all of our stuff was already packed up and ready to go. So we loaded it all in the van, including the fridge, which we were thinking we'd have to go back for..........and off we set, with many well-wishes from the chef woman in our yard and the cleaners and security guards.

When we arrived outside our house, I was over the moon! It's down a side-street, off a road, in a little neighbourhood, and it's painted sky blue, with a cute little front door and a balcony. Inside it's all painted custard yellow, quite small, very cute and homey, tiled floors, and a brilliant little yard out the back. Perfect for our cooking and eating escapades! That's a definite highlight! We have a nice bedroom, a spare room with 2 wardrobes in it (that's where we'll keep the computer), and a proper Thai toilet (tho' not a squatter!!) - quite a departure from "modern" condo living in Bangkok! And all the better for it. We got there about 6.30 p.m., and loads of locals materialised and helped us to carry everything into the house - so it literally took about 10 minutes to get it all in there! A really nice welcome to the place.

We have now been here 2 days, and are finding our feet. Prachinburi is a small town, nothing is geared towards foreigners at all, it's just a normal Thai community with all the usual things. A huge bonus!! And Saturday and Wednesday nights are market time - our house is 2 mins' walk from the market and we can hear all the hustle and bustle. That will be a great social thing - everybody goes out to the market and strolls around and bumps into their mates. So that will be fun! We've found a couple of good places to eat (of course), and have been shopping for some bits and pieces for our kitchen adventures. Time to put our vegetarian and fish-cooking classes into practice! Now we're just waiting for our gas hob to be delivered. Sister has done us proud, though - we have pretty much everything we need in the house, and we haven't had to fork out loads of cash on furniture that we'll only be using for a year.

So now we've got a couple of weeks before school starts, so we can go in and do preparation work and settle in before work begins. We're living 5 minutes' walk from the school, and we'll be getting push-bikes this week so it will be more like 3 minutes.

the cupboard under our stairs is now well-sealed all round the edges, as Rob opened it when we moved in to find about 6 big horrible cockroaches. Not nice! there have been a few that scuttled across the floor in an escape bid, but they didn't get far. We have some good spray to blast them with. So much for the non-harming philosophy of Buddhism! We've put poison down and fastened the hatch up with some very wide tape, so hopefully that will hold out fine. I bet they find some other way of getting out, though! But we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.

My next t-shirt purchase will be one that says "I'M IN THE MOOD FOR YOGHURT". :0)

Out the back of the house is a swamp! If you jump up to peer over the wall of the yard (it's about 6 feet high), you get a lovely view of green waterlilies and lilypads. You can get a really good view of it from the spare room. It's really beautiful, and so noisy with cicadas and frogs! I'll be making some recordings of the cacophony at night. We've also rigged up some fairy lights out there, so we can sit in the evenings and have dinner and chill out outdoors.

So, on that note...........I'l take some photos and invite you to look at them on snapfish, as usual. Hope you are well and sharing some of this sunny weather we're having in Thailand.

26 Mar, 2006

Hi again, from hot, sticky Thailand! It's getting very hot and humid here now. We're definitely ready to move out of this biiiiiiiig city to the peace and quiet of Prachinburi. Just spent the weekend in Trat, where our friends Joy and Alex live. Their first baby is on its way and so that was lovely to see them. I had a visa run to do, so I hopped over into Cambodia yesterday for about 10 minutes and then back into Thailand! 1,500 Baht (about 23 pounds Sterling)to do that for 10 minutes. You get charged 300 Baht for the simple fact that you're just crossing into their country and straight back out again, without contributing to their economy by staying there.
So, I did that, and the rest of the time we just had a nice relaxing time.

Other than that.......I've been teaching some boys from Rob's school for the past couple of weeks. Very different to the kids I was teaching at my school. They're ok, but don't really want to be there - it's more a case of their parents paying to have them taken off their hands! (And I can see why, in a couple of cases!!!) So we've been doing some activities and I've been trying to make it fun for them. Not that I can make them have fun! 12-year-old rich Thai boys are not what I'm used to! Anyway, that finishes tomorrow, which is fine by me, to be honest.

My friend Cath and her friend Helen have been in Thailand for a couple of weeks, and they've spent some of that time with us, which was lovely, and brilliant fun!

Not much else to report. Awaiting the arrival of my Mum and Dad and a family friend, Sue, on Tues 4th. We've a few very nice plans for their 2 weeks here.

3 Mar, 2006

I had the greatest compliment yesterday. Tik, who recruited us for our jobs in Bangkok, told me that she's been instructed by my school here to find a teacher for next year who is just like me! Apparently they really, really appreciated the work I did and how I did it, and Tik says that in all the 5 years she's been supplying them with foreign English teachers, they've never said anything like that about anyone before me!

I'm really happy about that! It's nice to hear that they really appreciated what I did. I knew they did at the time I was working there, but I'm pretty bowled over by those remarks!