baan kok yang daycare: a rundown

Last week: taught "head, shoulders, knees and toes," which the five year olds are now obsessed with. Played a hilariously labourious game of "put the alphabet in order" with the four year olds and expanded my Thai vocabulary to include "stand! please"

Yesterday: hee hee, I call role in the five year old class and there's a "Beem" who comes right after "Jim." I'm amazed by how much the teachers have to do here: they're not only teachers, they're nurses, lunch ladies, and janitors. Luckily, the kids have responsibilites too and are pretty good about them (i.e. putting away their chairs and cups after lunch, getting snack ready, etc.)

Today: I made the mistake of wearing a skirt today: too much temptation for five year old boys, several of whom try and try again to flip it right up. I'm learning kids' names, which is exciting, especially since it took me soooo long in Bangkok. I still miss the tiny class size there, though. 25 five year olds are sometimes more than I can handle, especially when they don't understand 90% of what I say.

My teachers took me out for dinner tonight, which was so so sweet of them. We can't realy understand each other, although I did learn the word for "frog" tonight, but we had fun anyway :)

Trang

So I realized I haven't written in over a week and my last entry featured me in the hospital, but don't worry, I'm still alive. I spent a very rainy weekend in very toursity Koh Phi Phi--not a complete waste of time but definitely not one of my better weekends here. We did brave the $6 a night guesthouse, so at least it wasn't a waste of money (and the guesthouse was...tolerable, although I sure missed hot water showers after be soaked in the rain).

It's funny having to adjust to a new place in Thailan; I guess I thought was I was getting all of Thailand when I was in Bangkok, but of course things are different here, from my placement to the other kids in the house. The placemen's great. I work at a daycare and so far have been hanging out in the class of four year olds. Next week I'm switching to the olest class, I think, so I can help teach them English. The little ones aren't quite ready--the teacher has been trying to get them to say "thank you" to me when I give them food, toothpaste, handouts, etc. but sometimes they et confused and say "you're welcome" or, even better, "good morning" instead. I miss the tiny class at APSW and the sort sweet general chaos. Thirteen little kids are a lot quieter and easier to handle than 75 little kids, but I'm having a good time all the same.

visit to the hospital: a tmi post

Things that are gross: colon infections, ants on your admitting wheel chair, peeing in cup, getting up in the middle of the night and accidently partially pulling out your iv causing your arms to spurt blood all over the floor and bed, not having a proper shower for two days

Things that are really nice: cheapness and generally quality of Thai hospitals, someone from the staff staying with me 24/7 for two days

Lesson learned: really, avoid that street food

uunngh

I kicked off my four weeks in Trang by being sick as hell all. I really felt the worst I've felt in a long, long time. Running a fever, my whole body was achey, terrible headache, etc. So I slept and drank water and durged myself up and hoped it wasn't dengue fever. Im feelin better now, althug stil with a massive headache and achey bones. An inauspicious beginng, but I cried the whole way the airport on the way to Bangkok and loved it, so I think it might actually be a good sign.

Last day

It was my last day at APSW today, and it was surprisingly sad. To celebrate, the kids did this sweet thing where they came up to me in turn and stuck a little heart sticker on my shirt and bowed. When the teacher Noi came up, she said, "This is my heart," and I started crying. It wasn't what I expected at all, but it was a lot of fun, and it made me so sad to think that I will never, ever see those kids again.

This weekend

I was very sad to see everyone but Tom and Sarah go home. :( It's an entirely different thing to be with new people, especially right now because they're still doing all their orientation stuff which, obviously, I've already done, and since Tom and Sarah both went out of town this weekend, I've had a lot of time to myself.

Which turned out to be awesome, actually. Stuff I did this weekend:
-Chinatown dim sum lunch with everyone who was still around on Friday, wchihc was doubley fun because we accidently ordered about twice as much as we intended to but still finished it all and had to order more
-night out at swanky and ridiculous Q bar in Sukumvit with sketchy and ridiculous American expat Bangkok Bill
-sad goodbyes with friends andmeeting of newbies
-National Museum and (particularly cool!) accidently wandering into a packed market in which I was the only farang. Made friends with an older man who warned me to watch my bag and talked to me about the 35W collapse
-visit to Jim Thompson's house (very pretty, but kind of a grown-up attraction, like the kind of thing I did with my parents and grandma in England)
-trip to fun food court at MBK
-retrn to Siam Paragon for gfit buying and trip to Ocean World, Southeast Asia's largest aquarium (cool, but not the collest I've ever been to)
-and then last night one of the most fun nights of my trip so far: two of my co-workers at APSW who just graduated from university invited me to go out with them. We went to Chinatown and ate (and ate, and ate) food from street carts that I never would have been able to order by myself, practiced our Thai and English, respectively, I got to feed a baby elephant that was walking around, then we went to another Thai market (as opposed to all teh fun but pretty toursity ones I've been to so far). The city is SO alive at night, probabably more so at midnight last night than I've ever seen it.

And now I'm starting my last week at APSW. It's hard to believe I've been there four weeks already, and I'llbe sad to say goodbye to all my cuties in the daycare and nursery. But I'm goiing to make no-bakes as a goodbye treat, which I think will be fun, and buy flowers for the teacher and the nursery staff.

Phew. What an entry.

4 weeks already?

Sorry for double post last time. I was posting in Cambodia and the internet, although easy to find, was not a hundred percent reliable. It was an amazing weekend and I wish I had the tech savvy and free internet time to upload pictures. But you'll all just have to wait until I get on facebook.

On a less exciting note, it's been kind of sad feeling week:
-homesickness
-one of my kids at the daycare saying she wanted to see me everyday, but I only have one week left
-someone telling me they saw a pregnant woman performing in a pingpong show in Patpong