The Final Week

Monday, June 20

Our last Monday!!  Today I taught my final lesson that was to be evaluated.  It went very well and the kids were engaged and well behaved!  It was a relief to get the evaluations all over with.  After school we went to a massage place down the street from the school.  I attempted another massage, hoping it wouldn’t be as painful as the last one.  It did hurt, but it was much better than last time!  After our massages we went to Old Bar for supper.  I got Mama Pad Guy, of course.  It took a really long time for our food to come but once we got it, it was well worth the wait!  After supper we went back to the apartment to do all of our laundry from the weekend.  We hung out in Jill’s room for the evening, sharing all of our pictures from the past couple of weeks and reminiscing about our entire trip.  Between picture swapping and laundry, we ran to 7-11 to get ice cream!  We were all still really tired from the weekend and were planning on going to bed early, but we got talking and ended up going to bed after midnight, again!

Tuesday, June 21

This morning when I got to school I was asked to teach the K1 (3 year old) class again!  Of course I accepted the offer.  They are definitely a busy bunch, but I was so excited to have the opportunity to have my own classroom for the day!  I also ran back to my own K3 class for one period to finish up a math lesson... it was a busy day!  After school Geordie, Amanda, Jill & I went to MBK (a big mall) for supper and to go shopping.  We went to a place called BBQ Plaza for supper.  There was a small BBQ in the middle of the table and you could order an assortment of meats and vegetables to cook on the BBQ.  It was a lot of fun and the food was delicious!  After we finished supper we got right into shopping.  I only had a few souvenirs left to buy so I was on a mission.  We only shopped for a little while and then everything started closing!  We begged a few people to let us in their stores and ended up getting a few more things, but we still didn’t get everything we had planned on buying.  We were all a little upset that everything was closed so we decided to go to Swenson’s to get the ice cream fondue we tried to get on Sunday!  We asked for directions and some girls told us where to go, we couldn’t find it so we asked again and the security guard told us it was CLOSED!!  We hopped in a taxi and went back to the apartment with no ice cream (sad face sad face).      

Wednesday, June 22

Yesterday afternoon Katherine (my faculty supervisor) and Winston (my cooperating teacher) got together to write up my final report.  Today Katherine brought it to me to read and sign, and it was all good!  Thankfully all of the teaching things I was worried about all went well and are over with now!  After school we went to the State Tower.  This is the hotel with the gold dome on the roof where part of the Hangover II was filmed!  We went up to the 64^th floor on the sky bar where they have breakfast in the movie, it was SO cool.  There was an amazing view of the river and city and the atmosphere was really neat.  Drinks were $20 each so we each only got one!  I ordered a Mai Tai and it was SO strong... it tasted like pure alcohol!  Geordie, being the nice guy he is, traded drinks with me, so I had his Hangovertini!  We hung out up on the sky bar for a couple of hours just taking in the atmosphere and taking a million pictures (of course) before heading back to the apartments.  I wasn’t feeling well when we got home so I went to bed fairly early... for once! 

Thursday, June 23

I still wasn’t feeling well in the morning and my cooperating teacher could tell, so I just observed from his desk during classes in the morning.  Over our lunch break I went and slept in the nurse’s room and felt quite a bit better when I woke up.  It really sucked that I wasn’t feeling well, but I suppose I would rather it be two days before I go back to Canada instead of at the beginning of the trip.  In the afternoon we had EEE (Extended English Environment) where the kids watch videos that help them learn English.  Tan, the little boy that I have mentioned before, came and sat on my knee for the entire class and was snuggling his head against me.  It was so cute... I just might bring him home with me! 

After school the staff at Lertlah had planned a farewell party for us.  There were a few speeches to thank us for all of our hard work, and I made a speech on behalf of the five of us to thank the staff.  After speeches we had some snacks and visited for a while before heading to Old Bar for supper.  Oh and we also got a Lertlah coffee mug!  There were quite a few people at old bar.  It was nice to visit with everyone out of the school one last time before we head home.  We stayed at Old Bar until 8 and then walked around trying to find a place to get a massage.  One of the places was closed and the other place didn’t have enough staff for us all to get massages.  We were a little bummed, but when we got back to the apartment we decided to go swimming since we hadn’t been in the pool yet!  Geordie, Amanda, Jill and I got ready to head down to the pool.  We brought a candle, some matches and some marshmallows with us and had a little marshmallow roast beside the pool!  They tasted a little fragrant but for the most part it tasted a lot like home!  If you have see the Hangover II you will understand where we got the idea to roast marshmallows from!  After our roast we all hopped in the pool, but not for long.  It was SO cold!  We did a few laps and tried to warm up by doing water aerobics but it wasn’t helping.  We went back up to the apartments and started packing for Canada!  I got most of my things packed, I still have a few things left but I think everything will fit... it will just be very tight!  It took me a couple of hours to get organized and packed and then I went to bed for the last time in my little apartment! 

Friday, June 24

I woke up in my rock hard bed for the last time this morning!!  I was having trouble sleeping and woke up at 5am and laid in bed until 6:15.  Once I got up I skyped with my mom one last time too!  We had an assembly first thing this morning and the teachers didn’t have to be up in the assembly room until 9 so we just hung out in the staff room until it was time to go up.  We only had to stay in the assembly until 9:30 and then went back to the staff room.  The kids were supposed to be back in their classes for their 10:20 class but it went longer than expected so they had lunch as soon as we were done.  We didn’t see the kids all morning!  We went to Bee’s for lunch (like we do every day) to have one last meal from her restaurant, and we also got fruit one last time!  After lunch we were supposed to have our first “club” class.  Club is when the students pick different clubs they want to go to (Ex. Stories, sports, singing, acting, etc) and they spread out around the school and mix up with different classes.  We were all ready to go and then the Thai teachers told us Club was cancelled and would start next week so we had ANOTHER prep!  We are five weeks into the school year and it’s time for me to go home so I will not see one Club class! Haha.   

We finally got to see our class at 12:50.  Winston and our class had planned a farewell party for me!  The kids had all brought in all different kind of food (chips, nuts, chocolate bars, etc.), one student brought pizza and pasta and Winston bought me a Swenson’s ice cream cake!  I didn’t know it was so obvious that I LOVE ice cream!  A few of the kids brought me presents, so I opened those and then we had a little dance party and ate our big feast!  We took up a whole class and a half so decided to watch Despicable Me for the rest of the afternoon! 

After school the girls, Geordie and I went to the massage place right by our school.  I had convinced myself that the third time is the charm and that I would have a GOOD massage!  Turns out, I was right!  I had also decided that I was going to give in and try a Thai Massage.  Once the lady got started I realized that I had been getting Thai massages all along and didn’t even know it!  It still hurt a little bit at times, but for the most part it felt SO good.  When I was done I felt so relaxed and could’ve fallen asleep in an instant.  Jill, Amanda and I decided that we wanted spa pedicures as well, so the lady got us big buckets of hot (which was really not hot at all) water to start soaking our feet!  It felt so good to have my feet scrubbed and cleaned thoroughly.  Walking around the school all day with no shoes makes it impossible to have clean feet!  When she was finished my feet felt so clean and soft and looked pretty too! 

We didn’t get out of the massage/pedicure place (which is called P.P. Pretty by the way) until 7:30 or so.  By that time we were all fairly hungry so we walked over to Old Bar and had our last meal of Mama Pad Guy (Jill & I were a little sad).  I still had a few last minute things that I wanted to buy that I couldn’t get at MBK on Tuesday because the stores closed so early.  On the way home Amanda, Geordie and I walked another way that took us past a market to see if I could find anything.  But, I didn’t!  We had been planning on getting Swenson’s ice cream fondue all week but it wasn’t working out... we got back to the apartment and realized that if it closed at 9 we still at 20 minutes to make it there in time!  We ran as fast as we could to the main road where we caught a taxi and made him drive as fast as he could to the Big C (Swenson’s is on the main floor of Big C).  We booked it across the parking lot and through the store and when we got there they were still open!  We were all frantic and out of breath, so we quickly chose our ice cream flavours and ordered as we thought they were going to close and kick us out.  Turns out, they didn’t close at 9 for some reason... they were still open when we left around 9:30!  Oh well, the adventure was exciting!  As for the fondue, it was SO good.  We got all different flavours of hard ice cream scoops (peanut butter, rocky road, cheesecake, mocha, etc.) and also a little tray of fruit to dip in the chocolate fondue.  We discovered that if you didn’t shove the ice cream in your mouth immediately after dipping it the chocolate would harden... yummmmmm! 

I was a little bit sad that I wasn’t able to find the last minute things I wanted to buy so I somehow convinced everyone that we should go to Khao San Road!   We were all a little bit tired so we did this warm-up dance exercise thing that Jill introduced us to, to the song “Captain Jack.”  We got a little bit out of control and I ended up kicking Amanda and hurting both of us, so that was the end of that!  We all got changed and headed down to catch a taxi!  Since there are five of us, someone has to squish... so on the way there and back Jill & I shared the front seat!  It wasn’t so bad on the way there because I could lean forward, but on the way back the taxi driver wouldn’t let me so it was fairly uncomfortable, but we made it!  I ended up buying everything I had planned on, and maybe a couple extra things too :)