Kutchum

This week just gone I took a trip to Kutchum, to see my friends Tara and Phoebe, other PT volunteers, at their project.

My school (Uthaiwittayakhom) was off for three days (Wednesday, Thursday and Friday) because so many staff and students were going off to a big competition in Phrae, a northern province, to compete against other schools in areas like English, Maths, and knowledge of ASEAN. My host sister was competing in the storytelling category, after having progressed from the previous stage in a nearby competition in March. Tonicha decided to go along with the competition, while I thought I’d go somewhere seen as I now had five days off…

Newsletter Number 1

Hello! For all the lacking posts about what's been happening to me, here you can now read the round-up in the first issue of four to be published during this year I am away teaching English.

Moving Day

Today is the day when we will finally be moving into our own house. For the past two weeks we have stayed with two lovely families in Uthai Thani, basically living it up in comfort; I'm talking air conditioning, lovely food and wifi. Everyone has been really kind to us, making sure that we're OK, helping us out if we had a problem and taking us places, seeing things. And now we have to give all that up. It's time to move into the house and fend for ourselves...
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Touchdown in Bangkok

The date was 29^th September 2014 when the aeroplane finally landed in Bangkok. Fifteen hours earlier we had taken off from Heathrow, and I had had about five minutes of sleep the entire journey, simply because Bollywood films.

Training

 [Warning: this is quite a long post about not very much. I just wanted to talk I think :P]

I write this post from my "new" laptop. I say new, my Dad is kindly loaning it to me for a year! It's less than a week until Training, just trying to get some more things together for that, as well as learning things about this machine.

I am currently in a training period already, of sorts, on this laptop - there are a lot of things that could go wrong with it and I have to be able to bring it back to life myself if the worst should happen. I've spent a lot of years asking my Dad to sort computer things out for me - there won't be any of that this year! It's like a lot of things; suddenly I won't be able to ask my parents about a lot of things, and I don't think I realise how much I actually do that - just one of the shocks that's coming.
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Fundraising so far

There's been quite a considerable radio silence as regards fundraising over the past few months. Here are some of the things I've been doing/organising to raise money:

• Two Cake Sales
• A Christmas Quiz
• Busking carols around Cheltenham
• Non-school uniform day
• Valentine's Roses and Sweets delivery
• Spring concert ticket money at school
• Spring concert raffle at school 

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My Project!

After months of waiting, we have finally been given our specific projects!

It wasn't January as I first thought, it was actually May, which is when all selection courses have finished. I think some people can actually still get selected in April to go away this year - scary.

May came around, no news. The days passed by, still no news. We weren't sure if they were coming by post or by email either... then I checked my email....!

And so without further ado, let me tell you about my project.

Next year I will be volunteering as a full member of a secondary school English department in Uthai Thani, Thailand.

Uthai Thani is a small provincial town, so it will be a bit of a mix between the city proper, which is close by, and the more rural area in which I will actually be living. My partner and I will share a house in the grounds of the school where we will be working, which has been described to me as a "lovely wooden affair", which sounds wonderful!

Our actual job at the school is to teach classes of around forty (!) and make English learning more fun for the students. I have heard, a bit earlier on in the process, that truants are not cracked down on so much in Thailand as they are here, so if you're lesson isn't interesting, the students won't attend it! Pile on the pressure to make sure I'm a good teacher!

I'm really excited about the culture of the country as well; there are so many different things to see and  do from here! I'm particularly interested in the language, which I know is going to be hard. I really want to learn it properly though, language is something that really interests me. I've got a couple of books lined up to give me a basic understanding of the language which I can then build on, once my exams are finished.

Speaking of books, I was also given the National Geographic's Guide to Thailand for Christmas by my parents, and have since bought "Culture Shock!Thailand".

I now have all trains and accomodation booked for Training this summer. That's going to be hard as well. Lets just assume, from now on, that everything I talk about is going to be difficult, unless I expressly say so! That's not to say it won't be incredibly worthwhile or extremely enjoyable. After all, it's our first tangible step into the abyss on the journey to Thailand.