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.