Alrighty, so now it is Thursday, the only full day of English Camp. The day starts off before 6am with students going, "Teacher, exercise!" Uhhhh no. It is way too early for that and I haven't even had breakfast. Now, they scared us right when we entered the resort by saying there were communal showers. I refuse to take a communal shower with 100 middle school Thai girls. But luckily we found some private showers which were really quite nice and refreshing. Also, I have never been bladder shy, but having 25 geckos in the bathroom stall staring at you while you are doing your business is just odd.
So yes, got a shower and then all the women look at me like I am an alien for leaving my hair to air dry (in Thailand heat it doesn't take much, especially when I already lopped part of my hair off earlier this week). I have breakfast, which was Thai style fish cakes and curry. The teachers kept asking where the other farang were (they had taken the bikes out while I was in the shower). For our entire trip, we farang were treated like we were attached at the hip. Okay, so finally we start our lessons, which were about ASEAN. My rotation was the costume one for all the ASEAN countries. Dressing up twenty students into various styles of clothes in a limited time period was a definite challenge and I did the rotation 5 times. I didn't need to exercise that morning, I was getting it by managing these kids. Zip up here, tie here, take this off and turn it around, buttons and belts. Lol.
In the afternoon it was a change of pace. We got a trolley tour of ancient Siam, which was really cool. They had gone around Thailand taking a number of artifacts and statues, restoring them and putting them all together in a park along with some replicas. The place was beautiful and huge. Very, very hot though and you can see this throughout the progression of pictures from that day because our faces just kept getting redder and our bodies sweatier. When we climbed to the top of these really cool ruins on a cliff, one of my Mat. 3 boys ended up stealing my camera and I had to chase him down half the mountain to get it back. Little devil.
We get back from our tour and promptly take a nap. Followed by more curry for dinner and then it is time for "night activities." I am at a loss for words to describe the crazy that was that night. In actuality I know how I would describe it perfectly, but I am searching for a polite, sensitive and not too revealing way to say what happened. Well, there were balloons, dress up (including 4 male teachers dressed as women), makeup, baby powder on people's faces, music, "dancing", laughter, awe, shock, surprise, and a whole bunch of cultural differences. We were barely into the night when my camera displayed "Battery exhausted." But between all of us we have some pictures to remember the night by. That is, if those images ever leave our minds to begin with.
Then, Friday morning came and I went for an early morning bike ride around the ancient city. It was cool and quite beautiful and by halfway through my ride I had mastered the Thai bicycle well enough to go over these very tiny, thin bridges. We had to turn back after thirty minutes to have time for breakfast and a shower, but it was a rather pleasant way to start the day. Then a couple more hours of teaching and it was finally time to go home. And just let me backtrack a little bit ans tell you this "resort" was an Asian version of a cross between a ropes challege course and Wipe Out. I almost went on the floaty bucket and wood bridge when I went tot he restroom but of course a Thai park worker (or Big Brother as we called them, since they liked to be our constant companion telling us what to do and what not to do and where to go and where not to go), glared at me from the other side of the bridge and sternly pointed to the cement bridge nearby. Party pooper. Oh and we also saw huge lizards. Like bigger than a Pomeranian lizards. In the roads. Crazy.
Alright, so at this point we were on the bus home. It took us 10.5 hours to get there so you could tell we were super thrilled for this trip back. As foreshadowed, there were hours of loud Thai karaoke, half naked rowdy children, the air conditioning was barely functioning, one student started smoking on the bus, another student was almost left at KFC and so on. Just another field trip in Thailand. We finally made it back and in 9.5 hours, much to my greatest joy.
Now I am at Shampoo's house after just having a giant farang sleepover (I think we finally went to bed at 2am). There is so many choices today as far as activities. I will definitely require a nap since I woke up at 6am (forever and always a morning person). More farang come later on today, and we can choose between a carnival (with rides), shopping, dancing, cooking, singing, exploring, massages and so much more. It is so great to be with friends, though I need to find some batteries so I can document the fun (I found batteries last time in Chiang Rai). Pictures will be uploaded once someone with a computer wakes up and I promise, there are some good ones. For now I am going to read, take a shower and wait for the others to wake up so I can get some coffee!! Today is a good day.
No comments:
Post a Comment