Teaching English in Thailand, Day 20, Cheeky Cows

Day 20: Monday 13th July 

So. Tired.
That’s my thought on most days, but today was really hard! Most people  make bad choices under the influence of substances; but the worst decisions I make are under the influence of sleepiness, I swear! You know that horrid feeling when your alarm smacks you in the ears whilst you’re in a beautifully deep sleep? It sometimes fools me, and makes me feel like there is absolutely no way that I can possibly get up and face the day. Of course, once I wake up a bit and get out into the fresh air, I usually say to myself “well, that would have been a silly decision to stay in bed,” and “I’m actually having a really good day, I’m so glad I didn’t call in sick!” But still, every morning I wonder if I'll make it out alive...


Running from the rain
That’s a bit like today. I had a bit of a panic in the morning because I didn’t have any lessons planned for the week, and this morning I had one lesson after another, so didn’t even have any time to prepare. And do you know what somebody does when they aren’t actually a teacher, they are unprepared and are so tired that they could fall asleep during the daily singsong of the national anthem? They wing it. So at 9:30am when 30 kids were all staring at me, I had to think of something fast. The first thing that came to my mind didn’t require much thought. ‘Body parts’ was sure to be a good topic, which didn’t involve the use of textbooks, computers, projectors, or most other things that the school doesn’t have! So I taught the kids loads of vocab; some they knew and some they didn’t, and after half an hour of pointing to my knees and eyebrows and trying to explain why “1 tooth’ doesn’t pluralise into “tooths”, they were experts. They drew their own stickmen, or in some cases, Iron Man and lady boys, and labelled the body parts. The rest of the day continued like this, as I tried to continue my enthusiasm for “TOES!” and “BELLY BUTTON!” in every lesson I had in the morning, and then I had the afternoon free.
Teacher Robert with our huge drinks
At lunch we went to the “congealed blood” place, as I now like to call it. I took my own food, which Kanang made me last night. It was like a Japanese vegetable wrap with peanut sauce, and it was lovely! I was glad, because all the food available there was very spicy and/ or weird. On the way back from lunch, we stopped off at the little tea hut and I got a huge Thai red tea, like I got the other day for just 25THB (50 pence).
 
Rowena, get off my lunch!!
In the afternoon I just chilled at school, got angry at the rubbish WiFi and wished that I could be asleep. The heavens well and truly opened at about 3pm, meaning that all the roads and school grounds were so flooded that most of the kids didn’t leave school until about an hour after! So many of them ride motorbikes or walk home, and they are more careful about getting wet than I thought they would be! However, even we waited for about 45 minutes before leaving school, because the rain was just so heavy. When we finally made it home, I made myself some simple pasta because I’m going a little bit mad without it! And also, its hard to buy the ingredients that I would ideally use in Thailand. It wasn’t brilliant but it was ok, and there was certainly nothing strange in it!
 
La mia pastaaaa
The best mango of my life so far.
In the evening, Kanang had to go to a funeral, along with all the other teachers from school. I stayed home because I didn’t feel that it was my place to go, and also I would have had nothing to wear! Aside from outfits for school, all my clothes are pretty minimal due to the extreme heat! I really needed to get the weekend’s blogs finished too, so I had a chance to do that, at least. I need to get planning this weekend’s adventures, and hope that it is a bit more fortunate than last weekend. I'll get onto that tomorrow.... Maybe. 

P.s..... heres some cows butts.
Cow beater
Naughty cows in the road: they still don't deserve to be slapped really hard by a random passer-by on a bike, in my opinion. It sounded brutal from inside the car, too. Sad times :(

Peace,

Olivia

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