The final 2 weeks

wow so i have alot to catch up on! starting with... ah yes my last week at the school. for this week we were teaching all ages at the school from 6 up to 15. needless to say the p1's (aged 6 and 7) didnt really grasp alot, and as they had just moved up from pre school which is just fun and games they didnt understand the concept of sitting at a desk and learning so they just ran about all lesson climbing on eachother and jumping on tables and screaming, it was complete chaos. then there was p2 who i adore because there were quite a few kids from my summer camp class in there and despite only being 7 and 8 years old they were all so enthusiasitc especially the ones i'd already taught for 3 weeks. and it was lovely because at the end of every lesson i would say 'bye bye!' and they would all run at me and hug me, almost taking me out in the process. to be fair the older ones startes copying them and doing that aswell. but i do love my littluns. in terms of teaching, the older ones were great because you really saw progress in their learning. we had a day off on thursday and the teachers took us out to these other schools which both had presentations bring held on e-learning, which, between you and me, is a pile of poo. making the kids sit and watch a lesson being conducted on tv does not count as a lesson. but because this is thailand and they are so desperate to develop as a country they see any kind of technological progress as beneficial and neccessary. i stuck to the blackboard and pens and paper in my lessons as a little protest against it. anyway at one of the schools we met a thai english teacher who could actually speak english! (a rareity). and at the other school there was a tree that was covered in huge hairy bats which was cool. oh and we went to this temple and there was a dead monk in a coffin who had apparently been dead for 4 years. i did not enjoy this.
so at the end of that week i was so sad to be leaving the school and the village. we went into the village to say goodbye and the grandma of some of my students put on a massive spread for us all, the food was sooooo good and i got to spend a few last moments with some of the kids, including my little chubby bun who i love and miss so much. anyway after dinner i gave them presents to say thankyou and the grandma started crying which completely threw me as i didnt expect it at all, and she was just holding onto me and sobbing and it was all too much so i just started bawling! which then set jenna off aswell (women eh!) and i found it very hard to leave after that. the next morning the grandma was waiting outside the gate for me as i left with all my bags and she walked to the bus stop with me and waited until the bus came. she literally didnt speak a word of english but somehow we managed to communicate and i think she told me i am welcome back to the village anytime. then the bus eventually turned up and after a few more tears i waved goodbye to the school and travelled into bangkok where caoimhe was waiting for me!
i found caoimhe curled up on a bench in a shopping mall fast asleep. to be honest at first i thought she was a homeless person. i joke i kid! i knew it was withers and it was so good and so weird to see eachother again. its been 4 months. we spent the next day and a half basically catching up on everything and then on sunday afternoon we went to watch a muay thai match which was extremely brutal. we enjoyed it for the first few matches and then we got bored so we left. on the monday morning bright and early we got on a 6hour bus to surin. i can even describe how excited i was as we started getting closer to the elephant village. being back there was SO GOOD. it felt like home. we had a yummy dinner cooked for us by out homestay hosts and then went to bed ready for a 6am start to go on a 6km elephant ride! at the time we didnt fully understand where we were going and why we were riding for such a ridiculously long journey but then we later found out there was a parade happening in the neighbouring village that afternoon. so thai, caoimhes mahout picked us up on his motorbike and took us to the parade. as we were waiting for the elephants, a load of thai teeneagers ran up to us yelping and giggling and daring eachother to talk to us (standard thai teen behaviour) after a few minutes we worked out they were trying to ask us to go and speak to their teacher which we did, and i told them i had taught english and they asked for my email so that was exciting. then the we heard the music approaching as the parade came down the road and i start dancing and the kids all screamed, it was so funny. then i saw the elephants coming through and i saw my elephant chokchai with my mahout hong riding him, and hong had painted chokchais face and he looked so beautiful! chokchai is a full grown elephant but hes only 7 so hes still a baby really. hes so cute, hong has taught him loads of little tricks like when you give him a treat he bows down and says thankyou (in elephant language) and hong has taught him to pick up objects off the ground and pass them up to him with his trunk when hes sitting on him. its brilliant. anyway so i ran up to chokchai and made a big fuss of him and then hong ushered for me to get up on the elephant and ride him through the parade which i obviously accepted! it was so much fun. i felt like a thai princess apart from maybe slightly less elegant, especially when a thai women gave me some fruit to eat and it was all dirty but i didnt want to be rude so i ate it and it was really quite disgusting, and hong saw my face and started cracking up, but i had already committed to the fruit so i had to at least have a few more bites before casually tossing it into a hedge.
for the next few days we carried on having a wonderful time, and i was obviously the happiest person in the entire world because i was with the elephants again and nothing makes me happier than that. we swam with them in the river and we did field work for the conservation project and we rode them for hours and it was just perfect! so glad i went back. so as you can imagine, i found it very hard saying goodbye but i held it together! i know i will be back there someday so its not goodbye forever. so we came back to bangkok for one night and then went down to the beach in pattaya which really is not a very nice place but we wanted to go to a beach and this was the closest and most convenient one, plus my thai friend nang reccomended a good tattoo artist there where i could get my tattoo done. but i wont go in to detail, pattaya is basically full of old fat sleazy white men with thai brides. everytime i look at one of them i try to convey the message of 'shaaame on you' on my face and i hope it bloody comes across because the way they live their lives is sickening. but me and caoimhe still enjoyed ourselves, especially loved our guesthouse owner who was so nice to us and the room itself which greeted us with a beautiful blast of air con every time we went in.
SO! now i am in back in bangkok. i have tomorrow to do a final shopping trip and sort out my flight ticket and then first thing wednesday morning i fly home. woah. i am scared and excited and sad and happy all at the same time. i cant believe its all over. i have honestly had the time of my life and i dont reeeally want to come home, as much as i love you all! and yes, i have got the travelling bug, and am already planning future trips including a stop off in thailand to see some of the amazing people (and elephants) i have met out here again. for those of you who have followed this entire blog, well done! i hope you have enjoyed reading it. i can guarantee i have enjoyed the experiences i have blogged ten times more. so i guess all thats left to say is goodbye southeast asia, thankyou to everyone who has supported me back in england, and i will be home soon! lots of love x

Summer Camp

I spent 4 days last week in Erawun, teaching at a summer camp in a school near the waterfall. It was so much fun! we didnt actually get a chance to teach them that much english, it was more of a fun sort of camp with loads of singing and dancing and shouting. there were 15 volunteers who came from all the different teaching placements all over thailand. we split the kids up into 4 groups and i was one of the leaders of team 1 which basically meant acting like a big kid and making a fool out of myself all the time. Suvanna who is our project coordinator ran the camp but to be honest i think alot of it was made up on the spot so she would call up the group leaders to entertain the kids quite alot. we ended up doing loads and loads of dancing, also forming a band in 5 minutes (i was on piano) and performing man in the mirror which was interesting! we did a talent show aswell and i taught the kids a dance and then stood at the back of the room and did the dance so they could follow me...probably looked like a bit of a weirdo but it meant the kids could perform it on their own on stage without me standing in front of them. i was so proud of them! had some really good dancers in my group and any of you who know me know that choreography is right up my street. on the thursday we took all the kids to the waterfall which is just up the road, and seeing as there were around 100 kids that was pretty interesting! as the loudest leader of team 1 i spent the whole afternoon shouting trying to get my kids to gather together and not wander off, but they were actually surprisingly well behaved and it was a really good trip, apart from when the yougest boy in the group (he's only 6) decided to strip down completely starkers to go swimming. in thailand modesty is a big deal so literally everyone was staring at him and giggling and i had to wade into the water to fish him out and put some clothes on him. bless him, he was completely oblivious. on the last day we played the board of directors at football and tug of war and won both! all round a really good few days. and we were lucky enough to stay on these really cool floating houses on the river kwai. we could go swimming in the river whenever we wanted and most nights we would lay out on the floating bamboo raft under the stars and just chill out. it was lovely. oh and we did looooads of karaoke as there was a karaoke machine in the restaurant which was such a laugh. at the weekend we went up the waterfall again but all the way to the top this time (my 2nd time up to the top now) and bumped into some of the kids from the camp and had ice cream with them. then ryan, one of the other volunteers, dared me to dip my feet in the pool where all the big fish were, and they all started nibbling at my feet.
So after i really great weekend we made our way back to Suphaburi for a free week. By this point it was just the four of us- me, Jenna and Ryan who are brother and sister, and Jacob who has been volunteering at the school for the same amount of time i have. We all get on really well so we decieed to make the most of free accommodation at the school and keep ourselves occupied in the village and local town. Then this weekend the 4 of us went to Ayutthaya, the old capital of thailand. It was a really nice place, lots of old temples and ruins scattered about and we visited a non profit elephant camp which i obviously loved. we turned up right in time to watch the newborns getting bathed which was absolutely adorable. After that we went to the floating market where they have lots of muslim thai food such as roti which is my favourite and extremely fattening. On the second day there, 2 of our other friends from the summer camp came to meet us and we all went out that night, got roped into watching the FA cup final in this dingey thai bar and then the owner of the bar ended up taking us in the back of her truck to a nightclub in the midle of nowhere where, again, we were the only white people and everyone stared at us and touched our skin. But it was a really good and spontaneous night and we all enjoyed it, apart from the ride home where the lady had about 10 shots of whisky right in front of us and then got behind the wheel. Never been so scared in my life!
Anyway now i am back in Suphaburi for one more week of teaching, Jacob has moved on so its just the 3 of us now and we're teaching at proper school as opposed to summer camp, and on the side we are working on a year long lesson plan structure for future volunteers to follow. Next week, as long as i can get back into bangkok (protests are in full swing again) then i will be meeting with my dear friend Miss Caoimhe Withers and taking her to elephant village for 4 days, so that i can say goodbye to my elephants before i go home in just over 2 weeks. SEE YOU ALL SOON! lots of lovex

Dirty Farang

its been ages since i've written one of these! apologies. i have now settled into my teaching placement in Suphanburi and have done 2 weeks there. I am taking the youngest class, 7-9 year olds, at an english summer camp as it is thai summer holidays at the moment, so i teach from 9-11.30 and have the rest of the day off! next week i am doing 2 more days at this school and then moving on to another school in Kanchanaburi which i actually went on a 2 day trip to last weekend, and we climbed a waterfall and went to the bridge over the river kwai, which i really enjoyed.
The teaching itself is easier than you would think, when i started i had no idea how i would communicate to a load of kids who spoke absolutely no english, when i speak absolutely no thai. but it works! there are alot of hand gestures involved and we play alot of games and activities instead of just loads of written work because theyre too young for that really, they dont have the attention span. but they are really receptive and in the last 2 weeks we have covered 'i like/ i dont like' and learnt vocab on animals, fruit and vegetables, and hobbies. next week its their last 2 days of camp so i think i will do something fun with them and teach them a dance or something. They are generally quite well behaved, they mess about as much as you would expect a group of 7-9 year olds would but there is one really naughty boy who i completely despair with! he hits all the other kids and is really rude to them and is just out of control. when we do a written exercise he will sometimes get his head down and concentrate but other times he is just a livewire and cant stop fidgeting and shouting and getting violent. its hard to discipline a little boy when you dont speak the same language... but i give it a go anyway! we are actually allowed to use the cane out here but i havent used it.. yet.
in the evenings sometimes we play basketball with the kids from the village, some of whom are really young and some who are about 15/16, and then 2 grown men. its usually us teachers and lthe little kids versus the older kids and the thai men... and boy do they play dirty in thailand! the phrase 'non-contact' doesnt exist out here, which is ok because we're only playing for fun but i do draw the line when one of the adults runs up to one of my kids and grabs him round the middle and tears the ball out of his hands. for this reason i have had to resort to some mild violence to protect my kids... including kneeing one of them in the abdomen... so i have decided to be a spectator from now on to keep out of any trouble by harming one of the locals!
we have lunch included every day so i am living for quite cheap at the moment. we get fried rice or pad thai or noodle soup (except i cant eat pad thai because it makes me ill and its way too hot for noodle soup so i always have fried rice) and we can get home made coconut ice cream and sticky rice for 5baht (10p). in the afternoons sometimes we go into the town centre called suphanburi. There isnt a huge amount to do there but the main advantage of it is there is a mall which has air con, something which is unheard of in the village where we live. air con is a godsend in this heat! But Suphanburi is a nice little town with lots of foodstalls which keeps me happy. there are absolutely no foreigners (farangs) in Suphanburi so the fact that i have white skin and blonde hair causes a bit of a stir. Its hard to believe but i have actually been signing autographs, no joke. i also have people stop me on the street quite alot to take a photo of me, and everytime i walk past a group of teenagers they all start pointing and giggling uncontrollably. the other day on the bus the lady sitting next to me starting touching my skin and saying 'suwai' which means beautiful. its a little weird, very flattering and makes me feel exteremely self concious all at the same time! anyway a few days ago we stumbled across a water park in suphaburi and decided to try it out and it was brilliant! granted we were the oldest there by about 15 years but still. its been far too long since ive been on a waterslide, had forgotten how fun it was. needless to say we all got injured a few times especally when we went down the slides in a train (there were 4 of us) and ended up falling on top of each other and sliding into eachother and completely taking eachother out. but it was such a good day and definitley want to go back there next week seeing as it was only 50baht entry (1 pound).
I'm back in bangkok this weekend to see a friend i made at the couchsurfing house for her birthday, she is thai and lives in bangkok and she cooks meals for all the poeple staying in the house and we used to cook together a lot so i thought on my weekend off i would come back to celebrate her birthday with her. but dont worry i am out of the way of the riots. i hear there are some protests in aylesbury at the moment so seems like back home isnt much safer anyway!
so theres only 4 weeks to go and for 3 of those i plan to be teaching, and then for the last week i want to go back to see my elephants in Ban Tha Klang because i miss them so much. Not definite yet but i will keep you posted as to how that plans out. 4 weeks and counting! i cant wait to see you all, but then i'm not really ready to go home yet... but either way i'll be home soon. lots of love xx