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