New students

I have a kid called Nutter. And her nickname's Toon. Love it.

Today

So I turn up at school, all excited about seeing my favourite class again... only to be told I'm covering someone else's lessons again! I've got all M2s - again. I can't make them understand me, and I can't keep their attention, so why I keep getting given lower school classes is entirely beyond me. When I asked what I ought to do with the little blighters I was told helpfully "play a game". Now tell me, what game can I make last an hour, has instructions simple enough that I can mime them, and doesn't involve anything too complicated for second-year language students to handle? I ask you! I just about made it through the first class, but the next class, 2/10, I had for two periods in a row! How was I meant to stretch out my material to that at zero notice? I'm just not equipped to teach lower school! Unsurprisingly, I lost them. Well sod it, they're not even my students.

Anyway, I was so cross with the school that I went to Chula for a meeting with one of the project co-ordinators, who immediately offered to change me to a different school. I told her I didn't want to change school, just my timetable, but she spoke to Wanna and it seems nothing can be done. So I insisted on being given more support and advice, if I'm stuck with teaching lower school (I could cope when it was only a quarter of my timetable; it's now three-quarters!). She seems very worried about losing yet another teacher from the project (there was a mass exodus after the holidays), so she seems to actually be trying to help, which is a start. Although she did say that someone had told her I was planning to leave the project at the end of the month. I assured her that it wasn't the case (although maybe I should have played it up a little more and she might have made more effort with the timetable).

In other news, fave student is taking part in some sort of English competition next month, so I'm going to help him with conversation and grammar.

Happy again

Who needs a boyfriend when I have the most fantastic, beautiful students in the world?! And 5/1 first thing tomorrow morning!

The Blue Moon boys

Back: Leung, Chong, Law, A, Tamtam
Front: Jackie, Tee

The Blue Moon "Frie Shoe"

Well it made us laugh...

A tropical storm

There's another storm been brewing all afternoon (it's been raining a lot lately - the rainy season seems to have come early this year), but that's not going to stop us from partying! We start the night off in Blue Moon bar, as we usually do. The rain duly arrives at around midnight. Jackie valiantly continues to DJ while we shelter in a cupboard behind the bar (it's very useful being friends with the bar staff) until they close the bar.

Me, Sophia and Sara in a cupboard.

We head to Silver Sands, where after a while the storm grows so fierce that they actually close early. The rain is torrential and shows no sign of letting up. So while everyone else shelters under the small roofed area at Silver Sands, Sara and I decide it would be a good idea to go to the 7-11. So we steal Tee's motorbike (actually we did ask first. Well, Sara asked first and he said no, so I asked and he said yes because he loves me), and we're driving up the road, I'm holding the umbrella we stole at Blue Moon bar earlier, trying to protect Sara from the rain whilst actually allowing her to see in front of her (and not doing a very good job of it, unfortunately), and we pass Jackie and a couple of other guys coming down the road. Jackie calls out something about a tree, so we round the corner and there it is – massive great big tree fallen right across the road, right in the middle of a puddle so large and deep that with a couple of gnomes and an ornamental stone hedgehog it could easily qualify for a garden pond (I'm quite sure I felt a fish swim past my foot as we waded through). So we stop the bike and puzzle over how we're going to get over, around or through the tree when some random people come along and help us out. So, safely on the other side of the tree, we clamber back on board, shout a few kop-khuns in the direction of the random people, who are already speeding off on their bike, and we're on our way again. Okay, picture the worst stony dirt track you've ever seen, add some potholes, miscellaneous rubble and a random dilapidated speed bump or two (!), and that's the road through Ko Samet until you get to the village. I know everyone's going to be furious with me for being so reckless as to pillion bikes along this road (especially with Sara "I've lost my motorbike" Thynne driving, and particularly in these conditions), but it's really much safer than it sounds (mostly because you can't go at any speed – the road simply won't allow it, so even if we were to come off we wouldn't have been able to do much damage. Honestly). So anyway, we eventually arrive at the 7-11, park the bike in a rubbish tip, praying that no-one will steal it (Tee didn't give us the key, it's just got a magic switch so you only need the key once), go inside (where it's perishing cold in our soaking wet state, because the 7-11 always has the aircon set to sub-arctic, regardless of the weather) and get our 35 baht chicken steak burgers. Run into O (7-11, between about 2:30 and 4am, is the place to be – we always run into someone we know).