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sawadee kaa!
well were do we start?! Teaching I think has to be the most rewarding experience we have had so far, the little smiler thai children are so lovely and we made some lifelong friends.. we have already promised to go back when we come back to Thailand! Teaching was new for me and I was quite apprehensive, especially when we had to make an introduction speech in front of 1200 students! We had pretty much full days the second week, with a few free periods which werent really free as we taught older kids in our kitchen or signed autographs which were snatched away by little hands immediately! We taught family, shapes, favourites, hobbies, transport and grettings; flew paper aeroplanes, sang head shoulders knees and toes a billion times and for some reason i ended up dancing every lesson! Mae Moh is a beautiful place, only marred by the giant EGAT, a power station and lignite mine, however this was to be the scene of many a sliding down the hills of Mae Moh on bits of cardboard with our thai friends so we didnt mind!!
Our days consisted of eating at ours friends restaurant on soi gow (road 9),well i say eating., we were actually forcefed until we felt sick every day! Not being allowed to pay for anything through the kindness and'jai dee' (good heart) of our thai friends meant we tried to repay their lovelyness by having as much fun as possible with them! We werent allowed to walk anywhere (i kept trying to explained that i needed to walk off the cookies that they kept buying me or i would be taking a trip to fat camp), or do anything, everyone was so lovely and chauffered us around on their motorbikes!!
I (Chris) was amazed and surprised to find my old buddies, I showed a photo to a random guy at a restaurant who made a phone call, and the next thing i knew another random guy in a fire rescue van picked me and lauren up and took us to Tum and Taes house - They were both dangerously close to having a heart attack at the sight of me, it may have just been my wolflike apearance! That first evening was an emotional reunion with many people of the village, who just about recognised me through the hair!! We all decided to go to Modyim, a crazy cabaret style nightclub with gogo dancers (mainly of the shemale variety) and covers of avril lavigne amnongst others, as you can imagine lauren was in her element and refused to lerave the dance floor, even I had a dance!! (or a drunken shuffle with some flailing hand movements). Nord our friend had a birthday party, the highlight being 'soft porn' karaoke, which involved suggestive pictures of thai girls in bikinis on his computer alongside cheesy English pop songs!!
Fun was had by all and another highlight was our lovely friends Mam and Pong taking us to the Elephant conservation Centre and two temples, including the 'miracle image' at Wat Phra Trat Lampang Luang. The elephants were beautiful, and so so big! I loved seeing the baby who was fostered by another elephant as her mother didnt want her aww. The hospital was good and the staff were really friendly and knowledgable. The 'show', about which i was a little concerned, was fine and i could see it was important for the hospital to gain funds, the elephants werent made to do anything taxing and it was only short, and it was really cool when they kneeled down to say sawadee to everyone! The temples were beautiful and the 'miracle' we tried to describe on the photo pages were amazing, i couldnt get my head round it! The multiple layer chedis (big gold pyramids) contained fragments (hairs or bone) of the Buddha himself.
There are so many other memories we hold of Mae Moh and our friends, but we will save those stories for another day, it was a really special two weeks but i think i should stop babbling on now!
Lots of love to you all, miss everyone will fill you in on our next adventure soon! XX
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