Day 10: Friday 3rd July
Every day at school, the first thing that the students must
do is stand in front of the flag and sing the national anthem. After this, they
have about 40 minutes of ‘activity’, which changes depending on the day. Today
the students had their assembly, in which they all sat in neat rows and prayed
and sang for almost the whole time. Us teachers sat at the back under the cool
breeze of tens of industrial- strength fans and watched, or played on our
phones, in most cases!
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| Prayer time |
Rowena and I dipped out early to go to the ‘canteen' which is
an outdoor space with loads of benches and a roof over the top. We bought some
snacks to get us through the morning, consisting of turnip batons (with a
sugar/salt/chilli dip) and slices of sweet fried potato, which I can only
describe as a sweet version of our everyday walkers crisps that taste like an
original glazed ring donut……. Dribble……. As you can tell, I liked it.
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| Turnip with sweet, salty chilli dip |
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| Turnip in one hand, sweet potato crisp in another. Greed. |
I was informed in the morning that another ETA in the area
wanted to change schools because things weren’t up to scratch in his current
placement, and could possibly join me at Sawatee school! I was quite exited at
the prospect of not being the only farang
(foreigner) at the school anymore! After a swift ok from the school director, I was told the new
ETA would be joining us in just a few
hours!!
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| Prawn Pad Thai! |
We went to A different place for lunch today which I LOVED
because it had Pad Thai!! This is one
of my favourite dishes, as I have already mentioned! And it cost 40TB, which is
about 80p! How amazing is that? Big smiles all round… Well, apart from Kanang
and Rowena who’s fried rice turned out to be boiled rice with an omelette on
top! I got a call from Mao, my welfare officer from the British Council, saying
that he is at my school with the new ETA, Rob and that he will wait for me to
return.
We arrived at the school and I was able to meet Rob and also
see my nice friend Mao who I had the pleasure of eating dinner with at
orientation in Bangkok. He really is a lovely guy! We all sat barefoot on the cool floor in the office
and had a little chat. Rob told me about his other school, which he only taught
at for two or three days before having to leave because it wasn’t a good
situation! It made me sad to hear his story, especially as I have been having
such a good time. Mao was happy to see that I was getting on well at my school-
probably because I was making his job easy- which is how it should be!
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| "What's this?" "A selfie!" |
I had a lesson after this, so we said goodbye to my friend
Mao and Rob came with me to my lesson. We had a good lesson, despite being in a
baking hot classroom! After a long lot of introductions, we based the lesson
around learning the names of objects. We asked them, “What’s this?” and taught
them to reply “It’s a…….” rather than just saying the single word of the
object. This was more of a task for the students than you may think! So we
ended up leaping around the room, pointing at everything and anything, including
my sweaty shoes! “What’s this?” “It’s a sweaty shoe!!” Fun times.
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| Flexible old lady sits on the table! |
After school we stopped off at a market, where we were
almost engulfed in raw meat and fish. It was a smelly affair, I’ll tell you
that for free! To make things better, Rowena bought me an ice cream which we
devoured in the car on the way home. Deee-lish J
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| Rowena, Me and our tasty treats |
Enjoying this babes xx
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