Teasha Caloline

Uthumphon Phisai has got to grips with having a farang in the village, and now on my way to school, walking through the market or just grabbing a chocolate bar in 7/11 I am greeted with shouts of "HELLO TEASHA HOW ARE YOU?". Some of them even have a go at saying Caroline - pretty impressive as not easy to say

in a Thai accent!

The children at school are the whole reason why I have stuck this project out. There have been ups and downs, but even if I turn up to school feeling homesick or sleepy, there is no way that I can keep a smile off my face for long. From the minute I cycle through the school gates every morning, I am greeted with excited shouts of "Teasha!" and children grinning and running over to shake my hand or show me something. The celebrity status I have in school still has not worn off after over a month - definitely makes you feel special with constant attention! It is going to be very strange going back home and not being told "teasha beautiful" every day (this is really not any reflection on me, just that white skin is the most beautiful in Thailand and I haven't had many opportunities to tan!).

Today was a really rewarding moment for me,  I am back to whole class teaching of classes of 45+ children and this week we have been learning about food, and the question "What food do you like?". After what I thought was a really rubbish lesson with the children learning nothing, I headed back to the staffroom feeling a bit down, thinking that the children were not gaining anything. However, an hour later, 3 little girls came over to me with a piece of paper. On it they had made a survey - at the top was the question "What food do you like" and underneath were all the responses we had covered in class - chicken, fish, rice, pineapple, cake etc. Bless these little girls, they had asked their friends the question and made a tick list of their answers- shows that they were engaged after all and had learnt something. Times like this which make the tough bits worthwhile!

My school dinner....everyday...

I think that the main thing is that teaching styles in Thailand and England are very different. At the beginning of the project, I was planning lessons with loads of games, I would spend hours making resources and feel really disheartened when children were reluctant to join. I tried to use some of the theory I have learnt at uni, e.g. VAK (visual, audio and kinaesthetic learning) by using flashcards, singing songs, having the children run to the board to point at things etc... However, this is not how children are taught here, at least in my school. Teachers do not seem to plan any lessons, instead they have a textbook for each subject which they work from, mainly by children chanting, reading off the board and copying into their books. There is no differentiation, no groupwork, no learning through talk, and once I embraced the fact that my strategies weren't going to work here without a lot of effort and explaining, teaching began to go a lot smoother. When my lessons are a familiar style to those of the teacher, I find the children are a lot more focussed and behaviour is improved. This means I can be a lot more relaxed and have a more positive relationship with the students.

Monday was a bit of a random evening in the flat, it was one of the Chinese teacher's birthdays so we were getting ready to go out for dinner. I quickly ran down to use the bathroom, and being typical clumsy Caroline leant on the old sink hanging on the wall....SMASH!! The sink came tumbling down, making me jump out of my skin and a shard of it got stuck in my toe.. cue my first visit to Thai hospital to get bandaged up and supplied with half a pharmacy of antibiotics, pain relief etc... Never one to miss out on food, I jumped straight back on the bike from A&E and pedalled over (with toes hanging off the pedal) to the restaurant to meet the others.

We had a BBQ as they knew I was missing western food (sunday dinner pleeeeeeease), though this was like no BBQ I had ever seen. It was Korean style, and had a hot plate in the middle to cook the raw meat swimming in bowls of blood on the table, and round the edge was a section to pour in chicken stock (and egg...) to make a soup and cook vegetables in.  Tasted good but the hygiene levels not worth thinking about - same chopsticks to put raw meat on and then eat the cooked from were the least of our worries... Anyway we had a good night! Happy Birthday Moon!!

Performing Elephants, Temples and Chopsticks

I have enjoyed this week at school so much more than the first few weeks as I have been working as a teaching assistant not a teacher (we are employed as teaching assistants). Whole class teaching was incredibly difficult when I am unable to communicate very well with the class and the children weren't learning as much as I expected. I was beginning to doubt myself as a teacher back in England because I couldn't control the class and they weren't progressing, so after support from the British Council, I now have a Thai translator in most lessons. Yay! This means I can be a lot more chilled out as I am not panicking to think of ways to be understood and can put more effort into making sure the children are learning and enjoying themselves.

Dressed in traditional Thai outfit with Grade 1

This weekend, I went with Sian and Dan to help at English camp in the next province, Surin, for Saturday morning. I was working on "listening station" where the students listened to me read a passage and then had to answer questions. Highlight of English camp was definitely watching Dan introduce himself to the students. He arrived late so missed what he was meant to be saying (which was " Hello my name's Dan and I am an English teacher" sit down...) Instead Dan spoke for a good 10 minutes, telling his life story to these students who didn't have a clue what was going on! He told them what his parents do for a living, what he studies at university etc. with me uncontrollably laughing in the background not really helping. Sorry Dan, was priceless!!

After English camp, Sian's mentor took us to Surin elephant village for the afternoon. Surin is famous in Thailand for its elephant festival in November, and for the rest of the year the elephant village is open for shows, elephant rides etc. We saw the elephant show, I wasn't a great fan of all the tricks the elephants were doing though. It was cool how they knew exactly what to do, we saw an elephant painting, a football match and I even got its trunk around my neck, but definitely don't know if it is that fair on the elephants. Especially with the massive hooks they use to pull them around and control them with, not to mention chained feet...

Despite this, here are a few piccies:

Saturday night, we had a girlie sleepover with Sian and Meg, watching movies and eating 7/11 toasties, looking forward to our lie in Sunday morning.

7am Sunday Morning and Sian is awake - Thanks Sian!!

We went for a bike ride around my village and visited two temples, we had a few local kids (not from my school) showing us round the first one which also had some very odd statues depicting what will happen in the Buddhist version of hell. For example, if you hit your parents you will get really big hands, if you commit adultery this happens...

It was a cool place though, with lots of Khmer ruins as well as horoscopes. My horoscope wasn't very good, so I followed a local girl's advice of tying the piece of paper to a tree.. run away from the problems!!

On the way back to mine, we visited this pretty Chinese temple which can be seen from my flat.

Cream, my housemate, had offered to cook us traditional Chinese food for lunch, which was really good. Got some ideas to try back home - everything was a lot fresher and tastier than from a takeaway!! He also cooked us chicken drumsticks in coca cola - sounds grim but actually really good! Turns into a sticky BBQish sauce! Will try and recreate that one in Winch - watch out girls!! Sian, Meg and myself made a banoffee pie for dessert - definitely didnt turn out as well as we hoped, but the Chinese teachers saw the novelty of banoffee soup...blame int on the dodge ingredients!!

CHIANG MAI!

This weekend in Thailand was the Queen's birthday and Mother's day. It was also my mum and dad's birthday on the 10th, and all my family were getting together in England. To top it off, one of my closest friends is jetting off to Chicago for a year and had her leaving party on the 10th as well, so all in all was feeling very homesick this weekend!

HOWEVER, the Royal Family are a massive deal in Thailand (there are posters of the King and Queen everywhere and I even have a clock with them on in my bedroom!), meaning that the Queen's birthday is also a bank holiday. Yippee! We decided to embrace this extra day off school by making the loooong (18 hour) journey to Thailand's 2nd biggest city, Chiang Mai.

We finally reached our destination after taking the night bus, which I luckily slept the majority of the way on, and being the classy Brits we are, headed straight to Maccy Ds for a coffee and brownie stop..then made our way to our hostel. We found out we were staying a 5 minute walk from Chiang Mai's oldest temple, Wat Chiang Man, which we explored before grabbing some lunch.

After lunch, we met up with Charlotte and Sally and hired bikes to explore the city. We had a few hairy moments getting stuck in traffic around the market area, but we all arrived in one piece (apart from the chain coming off my bike at one point, and finding out that I couldn't use my debit card as someone was using my bank account).

Before coming to Chiang Mai, I had found out that one of my fellow Winchy students Issy was here for the weekend so it was great to meet up with her for a drink and share some funny stories about our adventures so far,

 turns out Issy has been doing a lot of meditating and 4 am starts! 

Sunday was definitely the highlight of the weekend for me, we had booked a day trip which picked us up from the hostel at 8.30 am, took us to the countryside where we did elephant trekking to the jungle, zip wired in a cage across the river and then white water rafted back to the beginning. Best £20 I have ever spent. 

The elephant riding was fun - quite scary getting on them as you just climbed from a platform over their neck , but once we were on it was very relaxing plodding through the jungle. Felt a bit sorry for Sian who was riding it Mowgli style, clinging on to its neck which looked a bit risky!

White water rafting was definitely the highlight of the weekend, it was so much fun and we all got absolutely soaked. I wish we were able to do the bamboo rafting as well , but a lot of the area has been flooded so it wasn't safe enough. Definitely was great thing to do though!

After heading back to the hostel to shower and wash the mud off us, we went to the night market where I picked up a couple of souveniers and practiced bartering skills , before heading out for a drink. By the end of the night it was only me and Meg up for carrying on, and on our way home we stumbled across a bar/club with loud music. After a few moments deciding whether to go in (bearing in mind we had just bought ice creams in 7/11) R.E.S.P.E.C.T came blasting out and we knew it was the place for us. We had some crazy dance moves and just had a lot of fun, even bumped into a few ETAs travelling for the weekend. Was a good night to top off a great day.

Monday we began the slow journey back to Sisaket, and after a few funny conversations on the bus (aaaaaaaaah memories ;)) we all managed to drift off and get a few hours sleep before school the next morning.

Chiang Mai was an awesome city, definitely my favourite part of Thailand yet, and would love to go back (if only it wasn't such a trek away!) to explore some more. Next time, jungle flight is definitely part of the plan!

Sisaket 4 on Tour!

This weekend we headed to nearby city Ubon Ratachani for the weekend. After a girly sleepover Friday night, Meg, Sian and I met up with Dan to get on our way. We travelled with one of the Chinese teachers I live with, an absolute legend called Cream. He insisted on paying for our train tickets and took us to our hotel before heading off to do his own thing in the city. Cream is really into music and we spent the train journey talking about our favourite singers and bands, his favourite being Craggy (Craig) David. So good.

Getting off the train - will never get used to walking straight over the train tracks to get to the other platform!

Saturday afternoon we had a look around a shopping centre looking for bargains and had a lush green curry! Sian managed to demonstrate her haggling skills to their full potential, offering a market stall trader 20 baht for a perfume spray and he knocked the price down to 5. Not really the way it is meant to work but who's gonna complain?! Then we headed out for a couple of drinks - was really good just to have a chilled out evening chatting rubbish and relaxing.

Me, Meg and Sian at the river

I am very lucky to have the other 3 living in my province - they are all at least a half hour drive away but its good to know someone is there! I definitely don't know what I would do without them I think we keep each other sane!!

Here is a little introduction to the others:

Sian
Competitive Uno player, M&M lover and my partner in crime being hungry all the time!

Meg
Mosquitoes love her, she is full after 2 mouthfuls of food and loves a good sing-song ;)

Dan
Adores taking photos of anything and everything, whiskey fiend and the world's worst vegetarian!

We have booked to visit Chiang Mai next weekend as we get Monday off school for the Queen's Birthday! Can't wait have heard so many good things!

Living it up in Sisaket

We decided to spend last weekend exploring our province and our local city...bit of a mistake!! We arrived in Si Saket with no real plan as to what to do, checked into a hotel (described in my lonely planet as designed like a dolls house?!) and went to explore.

We found reviews for an amazing restaurant on trip advisor, serving Thai and Western food so decided to give it a try. Frank's was definitely the weirdest place I have nearly eaten in....we arrived in what looked like somebody's house with some patio tables in the front garden. One man was sitting at the back on his laptop (presumably writing these amazing reviews on the internet for himself) and came over. We're not quite sure where he was from, maybe Germany, maybe South Africa, but we sat down and asked for a menu. There were no menus - Frank is a little bit too chilled for that. No, he had a little rummage in his personal freezer and offered us jumbo sausage and chips, pizza or something and red cabbage. It all got a bit too weird, so we made a speedy getaway back to the hotel to order room service instead...

The next day, we hit up Sisaket's biggest attraction  - the aquarium! Don't get too excited -it is 2 rooms of fish tanks and a shark tunnel! At the end, we decided to go the whole way and signed up for a 15 minute fish pedicure. I have never wished time to go faster, did not really enjoy hundreds of fish tickling my feet as they ate all the dead skin. Lush.

And then came the most exciting part of the day...taxi to tescos! We ate pizza and spent hours wandering around the supermarket, and came across the highlight of the weekend - TEABAGS!! YAY!

Sunday we went to Sisaket zoo - we bought bread and bananas on the way in and fed the animals as we went around. Dan nearly caught rabies from a monkey he was trying to feed which bit him, and I stood about a metre from a hippo's mouth. Could have put my arm in if I wanted to...no thanks!!

All in all, the weekend was funny, not the most thrilling, but good to spend it with the other ETAs Meg, Sian and Dan.

We headed back to Sisaket Wednesday evening to meet up with Joe, one of last year's ETAs who is starting a road trip around remote areas where students are placed. Was good to get a bit of moral support and for him to pass on some messages back to the British Council. We spent the evening chilling out with dinner, beer, shisha and Thai pop music.

Joe, Dan, Meg, Sian, Me and some of the Thai mentors (can't remember/spell everyone's name!)

 Meg, Sian, Me

Dan's mentor and Joe

3 weeks done in Sisaket, has gone quite quickly, and looking forward to doing some more travelling soon!

Home Comforts

I am settling in reasonably well into Thai life, I have had a few wobbly moments but on the whole embracing living in another culture. However, there are a few things which I am missing from home! Obviously not including friends and family - that's a given, these are luxury things which I cannot wait to go home to.

Hint hint mum and dad if you are reading, this is what I want stocked up when I get home - mainly food!!!

• Cadbury's chocolate - would kill for a Twirl about now - Thai chocolate is not up to standard!
• Cups of tea and a hobnob
• Pasta!
• Flushing toilet and loo roll
• Hot bath with bubbles
• Pizza! (pizza express of course - padana and a peroni for staff food please?!)
• TV - and make it crap TV please, give me a bit of This Morning or Jeremy Kyle with my breakkie!!
• Living within walking distance of beach
• A cold pint of cider after a busy shift - not too fussed about the shift but will meet you guys in the pub after!
• Nail varnish - forgot to bring any
• Home without any wildlife! e.g. no lizards, cockroaches, beetles etc please!!
• ROAST DINNER WITH PAPA KEV'S POTATOES my absolute fave!
• Some kind of cuddly toy - sounds incredibly sad but when you are this lonely would be nice to have something to cuddle up to!!
• Cheese and fresh baguette - actually any kind of bread Thais are obviously not big fans!

I am sure there is much more that I can't think of now, but this trip has definitely made me think about what I have got and to be grateful of the little things!!

Teaching Thai Style

As a primary ed student, the teaching aspect of the project was one of the main pulls for me. Teaching is something I feel reasonably confident in doing, obviously I am only a trainee, but absolutely love working with children and have really enjoyed my teaching placements as part of my course. However, teaching in Thailand has come as a big shock to me!

When I applied, I think I was incredibly naive in the level of English spoken in the school. In my head, the English teachers had a high level of spoken English, and children would be able to understand my instructions. Maybe this is the case if the schools are in the city, but in my village (in Thailand's poorest region), it is not reality.

I think that in hindsight, it would be more effective to teach English to the English teachers as opposed to the children. What's the saying - catch a man a fish he can eat for a day, teach a man to fish he can eat for a lifetime. Something along those lines anyway! But I definitely think that if I am only here for 8 weeks, teaching the teachers would make a bigger impact than teaching the children.

I am finding it a struggle to communicate with teachers as to what they want me to actually teach the children, so doing it a bit freestyle! Classroom management is incredibly difficult when children have no idea what I am telling them to do, and I have had my fair few lesson flops now where I have an activity planned, but no amount of gestures and pictures can get the message across to the children. For some lessons, I have the English teacher around who can translate a little bit into Thai, for other lessons it is me in control and I usually end up singing at the children.... I am not sure what they think of me!

My first day at school was a bit embarrassing (classic Caroline style). I was handed a microphone to introduce myself to 1000 students and 80 teachers. To cut a short story even shorter, I misheard the headteacher, and instead of answering the question "Are you single?" I thought he wanted a sing-song. So started singing heads, shoulders, knees and toes (with actions)...in front of the whole school...No wonder the answer to his original question is yes, yes I am...not surprising ha!!

The Primary end of Kiawnum school

Play area

The teachers in the school are some of the friendliest people I have ever met, they buy me fruit as I said once that I liked watermelon - I am now given bags of it every day! They do everything they can to help me settle in and make sure I am happy in the school, and even though on the whole they don't speak English, they always have a smile on their face and look pleased to see me.

I am becoming a local celebrity in my village, everytime I wobble along on my little pink bike I am met with shouts of "Hello Teacher" which I find very strange but sweet.

Teaching here will definitely have an impact on my teaching back in the UK - I am already becoming very aware of my word choices and how I phrase instructions - useful when teaching children with EAL back in the UK! There are some differences, mainly that Thai teachers often (mostly gently) hit the pupils for class control, and children sit in rows so there is limited group work - something which is greatly encouraged back home. I tried to get children to talk to their partners for one activity and it did not work at all!

One of the English displays

Another aspect which is different is that back home, we are encouraged to ask children high-level questions in order to develop their understanding, but here I have found that asking very simple, often closed, questions is the most effective way of engaging the children and ensuring they know what they are doing.