Bangkok stress

Today marked my three weeks since I flew to Thailand which is pretty mental. My time here is going fast but I still have six weeks to get through which to be honest does still feel like absolutely ages! So after a crazy few weeks it was nice to have yesterday just to relax as the long weekend meant no school on Monday either- result! (No wonder the Thai's are such a happy nation with the amount of time off they take. The UK could learn a trick here..) So after some amazing food at this cafe just down the road from our apartment I

Fast becoming my fav cafe in the world!

managed to just have a few hours to relax on the beach which felt delightful- however the weather saw this opportunity, took it and proceeded to monsoon rain on my parade for about an hour. This meant the majority of my time was spent huddled in a little bamboo shack with 3 Thai women who were desperately trying to convince me to go Kite surfing and an Australian women with the loudest baby in Southern Asia I swear. Not quite the peaceful afternoon I was expecting but I've learnt to just accept whatever happens here. (Including the fact that I think it's frog mating season or something as it's IMPOSSIBLE to sleep with the amount of noise that the frogs make at night. HOW CAN ONE SMALL ANIMAL BE SO LOUD?! It literally defies physics. So sleep is looking unlikely for the next couple of weeks. Wonderful...)

Tuesday was the big day that the teachers at the college had been preparing and stressing about for weeks. A load of important looking business people from Bangkok who apparently were from the Ministry of Education and were here to see how the school's English programme was coming along (as far as I could tell they were only there to drink coffee and write a large cheque for the school but whatever) so we thought the day would be very stressful. All the teachers seemed to be running around after men in suits, my full day of lessons appeared to be cancelled, and we were never really told what to do which ended up being very frustrating! It wasn't made very clear if we had to talk to these

An architect student drew these as gifts for the visitors- I feel so inferior!

people, or attend the meeting or anything, so in the end the best option was to hide in the office all day until someone got us. So my entire day consisted of sitting at my desk and being in about 5 photographs next to men from the Thai government who seemed to be very keen on being in a photo with a "ferrang" (the local word for a foreigner) for some unknown reason. Hardly very taxing! With the long weekend, religious festivals and everything going on in the school I haven't taught a lesson in over a week now. I guess I should enjoy the chance to relax I'll probably be complaining about my teaching workload very soon... Although I was very proud of my 2nd year hospitality English students who were practising all morning to take coffee orders in English. They were so cute- all "Hello my name is and I will be your servant today" (I'm pretty sure they were trying to say server but close enough!). They seemed to be working a lot harder than the first years who spent 2 hours- nope that is not an exaggeration I assure you- looking into compact mirrors and doing their make up! I'm almost impressed by their dedication to Maybelline!

After a few weeks of doing cultural things I'm pretty ready to just be your average English tourist and sit on

Yep I live here it's a tough life!

the beach all weekend drinking cocktails out of a bucket. Although we may be biking distance from the beach here, we can't cycle back after dark because the roads are absolutely lethal and there are very very few road lights. I'm not a massive fan of dying on a Thai road either so before it gets dark we always have to make sure we're back at the apartment. This kind of sucks because we havent seen the night life along the beach or anything and it would be nice to be able to enjoy having a meal later than about 6pm! Hopefully this weekend we can rent a beach room which will be about 500 baht (£10. I will never get used to how cheap it is here compared to england) so we can finally go out and enjoy a Chang beer or two in our local town! And hopefully even brave a Thai massage. Well, when in Rome...