I'm alone after all...

at school, because Ashley (the unfriendly volunteer from LA) left again after a couple of days of entirely not taking her lessons. Not sure why. I've heard rumours that she was out drinking every night, but don't know if she was only doing this to face going back to the hovel of a room she was given here at the school or for her other reasons.

Anyways she's gone, so I'm pretty busy now after all. At least I would be if any of the classes actually happened when they were supposed to...

On Valentine's day we ended up going to a free barbecue at this little bar we frequent called Umbrella Pub. It was really tasty - which is a good thing since the food at the house I'm staying at is patchy and often uninspired. It was a really great evening and my pool playing was slightly above completely shit - I even potted 2 balls (in a row) which made me ludicrously happy.

Umbrella Pub is in a row of bars in what probably counts as the red light district of Ao Nang. Being as Ao Nang is so small there are only actually 2 roads there, it's not so much a district as a sort of cul-de-sac. Going to bars round here can be a slightly distasteful experience, because it's so touristy that there are always a bunch of middle aged European men with sunburn letching over the Thai women and not-quite-women who stand around with not so many clothes on. It's a real shame that so many Thai people get only that impression of Westerners - no wonder that they're always trying to make a fast buck out of us.

Aside from free barbecue I've had some other good/interesting experiences this week. Yesterday we got yet another day off, only it was a national holiday because of a Buddhist ritual (the name of which I forget, sorry). So in the morning we went elephant trekking which was amazing. It was a little nervewracking at first because as the elephant steps from side to side, the seat leans rather making you feel you're going to fall out. We trekked through the forest and saw some monkeys in the distance (less friendly ones than at Tiger Temple) and then the guides (who were sitting on the heads/necks of the elephants) got off and encouraged us to move forward and sit where they had been. I've got lots of photos so I promise to put them up soon. I was a little nervous so Lucie (another teaching volunteer who was on my elephant with me) went first and then me. It was a wonderful experience to sit there, with the elephant's ears flapping against your legs. Lucie and I had the only male elephant of the herd, and he was a little unruly and so kept wandering off when he wasn't being told what to do by his keeper.

I recommend it - Mum and Lucy we must definitely do this again when we're on Ko Chang (which for those of you that don't know means "Elephant Island").

Then in the evening we went to a Buddhist temple and took part in the ritual. This was commemorating the day that Buddha met a huge number of followers and laid down some of his teachings. (Sorry for my rather sketchy idea - it wasn't very well explained to us). We all gave a small donation and then took some incense, flowers and a candle. We then went and sat down inside the temple and watched the head monk giving a speech, which felt a little intrusive really. I wish we'd stayed outside instead. Also, it was very difficult to sit still and pretend that we could understand a word he said because thousands upon thousands of flying ants had decided this was the perfect moment to swarm through the air and the temple and fall all over us. So there we were, already in trouble for sitting too close to the monks/on their mat, covered in bits of ant and ant wings, trying to stop our legs from falling asleep. We managed to stay reasonably unobtrusive after we'd all sat down, except that one ant managed to fall down my bra which made it a little challenging to remove while maintaining decorum. My friend Emily, also had a gecko crawling over her foot, but she handled this rather well I thought - at least she didn't scream and leap into the air.

Thankfully after about 20 minutes, we all took our bundle of candle, flowers and incense outside and lit them (apart from the flowers of course) and then followed the monks around the temple clockwise three times. This was a little challenging as the candles kept blowing out, and the red paint on the bottom of the incense dyed all of our hands so we looked like we'd been trying to steal something from a shop. After that we had icecream in Krabi (the main town in Krabi province, which is much cheaper and less touristy than Ao Nang, but which is also further away and therefore harder/more expensive for us to get to).

So that was my week - the next update should be good. We've got our monthly barbecue at the house today and probably on Sunday we're going to hire a couple of longtails (boats) and go island hopping, which should be amazing.

Can't believe I only have 3 more weeks left here.
Love to you all especially Lia, Sasha and Vikki for writing me comments.

Staying true to the complete disorganisation...

here at the school. I thought that after this week it would just be me doing all the English teaching, because Jacques is leaving to go back to Switzerland, but Open Mind have sent another girl (Ashley, from Los Angeles) here to teach for the next 6 weeks, so my teaching time is staying pretty much the same.

I'm writing this at school, because I've got a pretty long break just now. Also having read Lia's request for more blogging, I just couldn't let her down. I know it's hard to carry on without me, but do struggle on...

Anyway, I've had some really fun lessons when I've thought of some good ideas. Mum sent me a height chart (thanks that was a great idea), so this morning I measured all the kids in one class and got them all in height order to teach them tall and short/tallest and shortest. It went pretty well considering although I'm not sure how much they actually took in. I need to think of more ideas to get them up and moving and keep them entertained, since just sitting and copying from the whiteboard or listening to me natter on in a foreign language is unsurprisingly very dull for them and leads to the whole class messing around and trashing the classroom.

I had another great lesson with some of the younger kids. I made a sheet of shapes (circles, squares, stars, zigzags etc.) and they had to colour them in and make pictures out of them. The English classroom looks great now, with those up on the wall along with those posters my kind and lovely mother sent me. Also, a whole load of junk has been cleared out of there - I think there must be someone important coming, because all of a sudden the whole school is really tidy. Maybe there will be a government inspection or something. There was an English teacher here for a year who set up the Swiss Tsunami fund and built the English classroom and the computer room I'm sitting in right now. However, when he left, the Director (headmaster) of the school turned the English room into a staff room and nicked all the nice furniture etc. So when I arrived, it had been converted back, but with lots of old, falling apart furniture, and huge shelving units full of folders and trophies up one side. I'm really glad they're gone, because I think if the room looks nice the kids will want to keep it that way, whereas before it was so messy that they just treated it like the rubbish tip it was.

I had a nice time last Wednesday, when we had the day off for Chinese New Year. Ao Nang (where my school and accommodation are) is very touristy and just full of westerners. The first time I went there I had to really look hard to see a Thai person. But the bus we take home from there goes past a much quieter beach where Thai people go to have picnics. I decided to have a walk there and take some pictures and it was a lovely way to spend an afternoon. I'll definitely go back there. The tide was really far out so I went paddling in the shallow water and looked at all the tiny fish and crabs and sea snails. There were lots of crabs that seemed to live in little holes in the sand and pushed the sand out into little balls. I saw some more crabs like this at Railay beach where I went a couple of weeks ago. They are really fascinating to watch, just moving sand around until you get to close or make a noise and they disappear back into their holes.

On Saturday, we hiked up to see the sunrise at a Buddhist temple called Tiger Temple in Krabi. This involved waking up at 3.30 to get on a bus. Now, all of you guys will be aware how averse I am to strenuous exercise like climbing so I had a pretty tough time getting up there. There are over 1200 steps up the side of a really steep hill, and while some of them are quite shallow, some of them are about 30 cm deep and 7-8cm across. I'm really glad we went so early because we were all sweating buckets even at 4 in the morning when it's relatively cool. After a while, a few of us stopped every 100 or so steps and so made it up to the top. Once there we had to sit around for ages catching our breath and trying to feel human again, because we'd left kind of early, but once the sunrise came it was beautiful. It was quite misty so not wonderful for photos (I'll try and put some up soon but the internet connection at the school is too dodgy, so I'll need to go to an internet cafe). It was so peaceful up there, and when the sun came up you could hear all the animals below waking up. There were plenty of animals up there with us too. We had a mangey dog follow us all the way up, and there were lots of insects and lizards and even a couple of squirrels running around. There were several dead moths and cockroaches and things with trails of enormous ants carving them up and carrying them off which was pretty gross though, especially as once you could see where you were, you wondered what you had been walking on in the dark.

The temple itself consisted of a pretty large platform on several levels with a huge gold Buddha about maybe 20ft tall (excuse the mixing of imperial and metric in my estimations...) with lots of coloured figures around the bottom, and a large bell-shaped object with strips of coloured lights coming off it.It was so nice to see those lights when we got to about 900 steps, because we knew we were nearly there. It would have been nice to know the significance of the temple being there and how it was set up - I think I'll look up some more about Buddhism while I'm here. Although the area of Southern Thailand where I am a lot of people (including the owners of the house I live at) are Muslim.

A Buddhist monk and some Thai people came up the stairs after we'd been there for 20 mins or so, and they weren't even out of breath, so I presume they must make the trip regularly, or else they'd been hiding round the corner for ages just to make us feel even more unfit. We went down in 2 groups (there were 12 or so of us), and that was when we met the monkeys. I was in the second group and the monkeys steered a bit clear of us because we had the dog with us (and the Buddhist monk a little way behind, who I'm sure was secretly laughing at our clambering down, clinging desperately to the handrail while he sauntered along like it was a flat road). The first group however, were "attacked" by the monkeys, so when we got down they told us excitedly all about it and showed us a picture of 3 girls expressions when they saw the huge group of monkeys they had to walk through.

We're planning to do something fun this weekend too - maybe elephant trekking or visiting one of the nearby islands. I'll let you know all about it. This evening we're going for Valentine's Day icecream too, to cheer up the single girls here and the girls who've left boyfriends behind back home - all the volunteers where I live are now female apart from one guy called (appropriately) Boy.

So anyway, Happy Valentine's Day to you all. I promise to write again soon, Lia. I'll try and do something interesting so I have something to talk about.

To begin on a rather gory note...

I arrived at school on Monday to find trails of bloody pawprints everywhere and little pools of dried blood immediately outside the English classroom. There are a lot of wild dogs around and hordes of interested children chanted "dog! dog!" at me and pointed at the blood (thankfully not fresh). I assume the poor thing had been hit by a car on the nearby road. One child then led me around pointing out the poor animals last movements although someone had at least taken the corpse away. I don't think I could have dealt with that immediately after breakfast.

One little girl then said "dog" and mimed sleeping. Another, more literal girl was wandering around also saying "dog" and then miming slitting her own throat. I had to agree that she was right. Wherever the dog was it certainly wasn't alive any more. So now - since no attempt has been made to clear the blood of the concrete outside my classroom - I think I will be reminded of that dog every day before I leave. The children - being children - were fascinated by the gruesome scene for about 10 minutes and for them it has now faded into the background of their lives at school. By lunchtime, few of them barely even noticed the blood any more and they were happily playing and sitting on it.

Today is Chinese New Year, and so (ostensibly because there are Chinese students at my school, but I suspect just because they'll take any old excuse), I have the day off. So far the numbers of lessons I've actually taught has been somewhat restricted. First of all by the camping trip, and then by the frequent absence of the children for other reasons - e.g. singing to the flag followed by aerobics which slices 1/2 an hour of the morning lesson most days, or lining up to have their fingers smacked because their nails aren't clean, or being used as slave labour to carry bits of tree around, or more lining up in rows to be shouted at...

Frankly, it's a wonder the children ever make it into class at all. And when they do, due to the uncoordinated efforts of 3 separate charities, they currently have 5 volunteers (4 English teachers and 1 care volunteer working in the nursery) vying for their attention. The 5 volunteers are me (well, obviously), Grace (the nursery helper and another Projects Abroad person), Jacques (who's from a Swiss Tsunami charity) and 2 Australian girls (Lara and Saerom) who are trainee teachers and are only here for 2 weeks. They're leaving on Friday.

Still, despite all this, I've managed to teach some lessons, which have veered between the sublime and the absolutely dreadful. I've decided to give up on the notion of directly teaching most of the kids anything, and just have fun with them instead. I reckon they'll take something in this way. I made a dice (or die, whatever) out of cardboard and played snakes and ladders on the whiteboard with a couple of classes. They absolutely loved it. One team won 2 games and at the end all of them (about 7 girls) ran up to me and hugged me all at once. I nearly fell over backwards. The girls are generally quite sweet. They are forever trying to hug/kiss you. Some of the children also try and take your things to carry them to the classroom for you, or your lunch to the table, even if it's only a few feet.

Other things are good too. Some more teaching volunteers have turned up and have shifted the balance in the volunteer house I'm staying at. There are now 4 teaching/care volunteers, all of us English, whereas before there was a heavy emphasis on conservation volunteers, none of whom are English (although there are a couple of Americans/Canadians). In fact, strangely, a lot of the conservation volunteers are female and German. Not sure why this demographic should have chosen this particular project in Thailand in such numbers.

Still, everyone's very nice and I've got no complaints about the house - we've got flushing toilets and electricity etc. so not exactly slumming it. I share my room with 3 other girls (all conservation volunteers), although 2 of them are away at the moment and the other spends all her time out so it's almost like having my own room at least for the next few days.

Anyway, I'm going now to spend the rest of my day off taking a few photos on the beach. Enjoy the February snow.