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HAPPY NEW YEAR, EVERYONE!
As you would expect, it's been an eventful few weeks since our last blog entry! Let's backtrack to the week leading up to Christmas, which we spent in a very rainy Singapore... In continuation of our bad dorm experiences, our tiny six bed room was on top form, and saw us dealing with a variety of undesirable incidents. We endured old men parading around in pidgeon smugglers, a stoned man repeatedly launching himself off his top bunk in order to climb into ours (and steal our pillows), a couple with THE smelliest feet EVER, and a bald Canadian man with explosive diarrhoea... lovely! We had a great day out at Universal Studios, where we discovered that standing out like sore thumbs has its ups and downs: we are all for positive discrimination if it means we're allowed to queue jump, and we have to admit it's funny when people stop to have a photo with us, but when you get singled out by winking street performers and hit on by vampires DURING a Rocky Horror show, it's more than a bit cringe-worthy.
After leaving our hostel at silly o'clock in the morning to catch our flight back to Thailand, it dawned on us that we had no idea which terminal we were meant to be at... oops! After initial panic, followed by anger at our airline who decided to charge us 15 quid EACH to take our backpacks to Thailand with us, we sat down and enjoyed a 4.30am McDonald's breakfast spesh (don't judge us!). Our Christmases were so much fun, with the Gilberts staying in a snazzy hotel in Phuket and the Billingtons staying in wooden bungalows on Ko Phi Phi. We very much thrived off being the most tanned out of the 10 of us - there's a first time for everything! We all met up on Kamala beach, Phuket, for New Year's Eve, and enjoyed a wild evening of beautiful lanterns and fireworks being launched at us across the sand.
After round 2 of emotional farewells, our families left for the UK and we set off for Bangkok (after first being 'interviewed' by the press in Phuket bus station. Here's the link, although please note we definitely don't remember saying ANYTHING about the drinking habits of Thai bus drivers... http://www.phuketgazette.net/news/detail.asp?id=11892&Search=emily%20gilbert). After a gruelling 18 hours on a, we use the term loosely, '1st class bus', we arrived at our hostel. We then slept through our 3 alarm clocks the next morning, realising we only had half an hour to catch our bus that was a 45 minute journey away - FAIL. We eventually arrived in Chanthaburi at midday and enjoyed lunch with our boss, the headteacher of our school and various other teachers.
We love it here! We have our own little house across the road from the school, and have acquired three new pets: a dog named Buster Brunes, an albino squirrel named Rufus and a gecko named Martin Clunes. However, it pains us to tell you that during our second week, we found Mister Clunes under our sofa with a severed tail, being eaten alive by ants. We can assure you that there's nothing more traumatic as sweeping your half eaten pet lizard out of the door, sob. We've made our crib as homely as possible by creating a 'proper legends' wall, a 'proper dick'eds' wall and of course a memorial for Martin Clunes (RIP). On our first day here, we ended up gatecrashing a stranger's wedding, where we were forced to dance, got paid by the groom and saw a man up a tree with a chicken. Standard!
We started teaching on the monday, and after initial first day nerves, really got in to the knackering swing of things. We've discovered that the Hokey Cokey really IS what it's all about! We teach all the way from Kindergarten to Secondary school (ages 3-15) as well as teaching special educational needs (SEN) classes. We have also started teaching the teachers after school hours, as their English is about as good as our Thai. Communicating is hard work, but we have perfected our vacant expressions and polite 'I don't know what you're talking about' laughs. Only yesterday, Billsy called someone a buffalo instead of saying 'you're welcome'! Seeing language as no barrier, the teachers are really looking after us, and take us out for meals (all very nice until Gilbert ate a shrimp head), bring breakfast to our house and take us on outings to local attractions.
The founders of the charity we're volunteering through took us to a local orphange for their 'children's day' celebrations the following weekend, where we ate sweetcorn flavoured icecream and were forced to sing Ronan Keating's 'You say it best' on stage in front of a few hundred people (we loved it, we ain't gonna lie!) Similarly, we found ourselves being bullied in to a ballroom dancing competition in front of teachers from 200 schools two nights later, in celebration of 'teachers' day' (surprisingly we didn't win, although we did receive a pencil for our efforts!)
And there was us thinking we wouldn't have much to write about during our time in Chanthaburi...! Peace out, stay reem.
- comments
Chris Gilbert Brilliant blog, as ever! Glad you are enjoying the teaching experience.
Nath Pidgeon smugglers? Thought they were meant to be smaller in Asia. Learn something new every day... Worries me that's the main point I got out of that blog. Very jealous :)