One Month Down...
Trip Start
Aug 28, 2006
1
8
32
Trip End
Aug 17, 2007
Tharua, Thailand
Friday, September 29, 2006
Previously, having realised that both me and Caz had listened to "Joseph and his Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat" obsessively when we were little - we had a nostalgic craving to hear it, I asked my parents to send me out my old cd which arrived, much to our excitement, that day. We spent a very enjoyable afternoon listening to it (and singing along) loudly while we prepared our meal. I made a pasta dish with a vegetable sauce (we have v limited cooking facilities...) which i was quite proud of
01. Flooding round our house
! It went down well - our guests were intrigues by the strange concoction; "what is this?" "pasta" "oh..is this pasta too?" "no, it's cheese" "ah...is it a Scottish delicacy?" "well..." "what do you call it?" "um..." - you get the idea! ©¿¼§Ë ¸¾Ã´ÊÓË ä¿Ë Â¾Ó (whoops! lol, put the keyboard into Thai by accident!) as I was saying... Caz's trifle was pretty damn good also, everyone loved it - Ajahn Kwan especially. (we made way too much so are bringing along the rest to a party/lunch thing we're going to later). We had seven guests; our favourite teachers, plus our neighbour... who can be a bit irritating but gets an invite by default! They all seemed impressed by the evening :-)It's been an eventful week - I'll try to get most of it down here...
Friday evening brought a dramatic storm resulting in at least 8 inches of water swimming round the legs of our house in the morning. The stilts aren't just for aesthetic purposes!
On Sunday we went on our first trip by ourselves out of Tharua. We took the train to Lop Buri, a nearby city which we had been told by everyone would be plagued by monkeys and we had to be very careful... we spent 4 hours there and left not having seen one
02. Cooking in our kitchen!
! Caz was relieved but, I have to admit, after all the hype, i was a bit disappointed!With Ajahn Somchai, we held an "English Activities Day" on tues at Wat Nang Kum Primary - it was good fun though very tiring! Ajahn Somchai is so great with the kids. It's a difficult school, for labourers' children, but he really knows how to get them enthused and understands that getting them excited about learning a language is important even if most of them will, most likely, end up working in the nearby factory or rice-fields. It's funny to think that i'll never actually know where these kids end up. There's one girl. Darenee, who I really hope will do well. Her English is way beyond her years (at 11); she seemed genuinely fascinated by the language and while other children just wanted to hold our hands and touch our white skin, she was more excited about us being native English speakers.
Tuesday evening was our trip to TESCO. We visited Aj Somchai's mother's house on the way, where I was bitten by a dog... (don't panic, Mum!)... It was a house-guarding dog, not a street dog which I've been assured has injections every year plus, Aj Ben bought me some anti-viral stuff ("Betadine") to dab on it so it's fine - just left me with a sore leg, a bit shaky and with a greater fear of Thai dogs. To top it off, Caz was bitten last night in the school grounds while we were cycling back from the Thursday Market - again, it was a guard-dog and fortunately, she was wearing wellies (which now have teeth-punctures; making them more effective anti-dog boots than anti-water boots...) which we will definitely wear all the time now! She's ok, her foot's just a bit bruised... the teachers were very concerned and will talk to the owner of the dog.
03. Enjoying the pasta at our housewarming
(I won't make such flippant comments about rabies jabs in future!)Teaching at Wat Waheen (the primary we didn't like much last time) this week was much better. The teachers were still frustrating - One told Caz "teach" "what shall I teach?" she asked to a blank stare, "teach what?" she tried again to the response "yes, 'what'" "no, teach what?" "yes, teach 'what'." :-S
I was able to spend the lesson showing photos of my family and Scotland which the kids were very excited about - they particularly liked the ones of halloween. I even got to play the sax a little which was v exciting and gave me itchy fingers! When they found out I played they send their class sax player off to get his. With an unfamiliar sax I did a pretty poor rendition of 'Scooby Doo' - they seemed to enjoy it though!
Aj Prapart took us to Ayutthaya to sign for our work permits yesterday (finally! he'd left it to the last possible day!). He asked us to tell him truthfully what we felt about our host family... it was quite refreshing to feel able to be honest! His response was "that's funny... other volunteers didn't seem to like him much either... nor do the teachers actually..." lol, he said we were supposed to be with a different family but they were busy and he'll try to find someone else for next years vols
04. Guests tucking into the trifle
.Well, we're off to Chaing Mai later today (getting the 4:30 night train). A 12 hour journey... same length as the flight here and will be far less comfortable, I'm sure! We'll miss Tharua, our house, our new teacher friends, our wee routines now we've settled in but it'll be nice to come back to it all in 3 weeks time. I'm really looking forward to learning more thai and it'll be good to see all the other Thailand vols again - hear everyone's stories!
PS. I wont be able to receive letters till i get back... but that shouldn't deter you from sending them! :-P
Comments
Letters
I was just thinking in the bath that I did not need to write my Sunday letter ah well i clearly do. Truth be told I am quite enjoying my weekly reflections and getting back to the habit of letter writing Mum
letters
I WILL get around to writing a letter once things are marginally less crazy here. Just need to find that envelope eheh :S A whole month already! eeeeee ^^ much fun, much fun! x