Rats, Stitches & Students

Tuesday, May 17 (pm)

When we returned to our apartments from Hua Hin, the girls and I unpacked our things and caught up on emails.  Yes, we ACTUALLY had internet access at our apartment!  I don’t want to get too excited or I will jinx it!  We then headed down to Carrfour (Walmart) to pick up a few things.  On the way there we saw a RAT!  It was HUGE!!!  I had been warned about them but we thought we were safe after one week.  Yuck!  We did our shopping and got ice cream (DQ) for the way home.  Yum!  Once we got back to the apartment we all showered and did a few loads of laundry and settled in for the night.

Wednesday, May 18

This morning we had to be up bright and early again to be at the school for 8:00am.  We grabbed our usual breakfast from 7-11 on our way (yogurt & juice).  From 9:30 until 11:15 I got to play with the K-1 students, who are 3 years old.  They were SO adorable!  Some of them were crying because they didn’t want to leave their parents.  I felt so bad for them.  We, as foreign teachers, can’t console them, so that made it even more sad!  I spent the afternoon planning lessons and units for my K-3 class, who are 5 years old. 

After school we headed back to the apartment, got changed into some cooler clothes and headed down to sit by the pool for a while.  We then went to the Mall Bankae for supper and to do some shopping.  Believe it or not, I had some self control and only bought one thing, which was a gift for my mom!  After the mall we headed back to our apartment.  I got stitches the week before we left Canada and it was well overdue for them to come out.  I was waiting for the school nurse to take them out but nobody knew what day she was at the school.  So, Tori, Jill and I took it upon ourselves to take them out!  It was a little more painful than it probably had to be, but we were successful and it doesn’t look infected or anything. Thank god!  We then washed up for the night before going to bed.

Thursday, May 19

I got to meet my class today!  I’m not sure if I already mentioned this, but our class is called “K3 LIPS” which stands for Kindergarten Group 3 (ages 5/6) Lertlah International Program School.  They were adorable!  We only had an hour with them so we just played games and sang songs.  After school Tori, Jill & I decided to venture to Downtown Bangkok.  We had to take a taxi and then the BTS (sky train).  The sky train took us directly to a place called MBK, which is a 7 story mall!  When we first got there we found our way to the food court and had a delicious meal (I had a chicken Caesar wrap and fries).  We spent about an hour looking around the mall and then decided to head back to the apartments so we didn’t get back too late.  We had a crazy taxi driver on the way home.  He drove like a maniac and took ½ the amount of time it took to get there!  I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned this already, but they drive on the opposite side of the road here, so we were already a little uncomfortable driving anywhere!  We were slightly afraid of the trek to downtown but we found it fairly simple and we didn’t run into any problems.  When we got back to the apartments we packed for our weekend trip to Kanchanaburi.

Friday, May 20

This morning I got to spend two more hours with my class.  We did some drawing, colouring, singing, dancing and played some games.  I can’t believe how smart these children are.  We weren’t even talking about math and all of a sudden they started shouting out math equations and the answers that added up to at least 100!  They are only FIVE!!!  At this school they call their teachers by their first name, so I am Miss Stephanie!  It’s kind of weird since I just got used to Miss Frieze, but it’s cute!  In the afternoon I did more prep for the upcoming weeks and started decorating the bulletin boards in my classroom.  After school we had to rush back to our apartments to catch our taxi which took us to the bus station to catch the bus to Kanchanaburi!  We got to the bus station to find out we would be going on a 12 person van instead, which wasn’t a big deal.  It was 100 baht each (approximately $3) for the two hour ride.  When we got to Kanchanaburi we checked into our gorgeous guesthouse and then went to the restaurant to have supper and book our tour for the next day.  After that we went back to our room, packed our bags and went to bed early in preparation for the long day filled with adventures we had coming up!